(_Edinburgh Review_, January, 1841.)
We {350}have a kindness for Mr. Leigh Hunt. We form our judgment of
him, indeed, only from events of universal notoriety, from his own works
and from the works of other writers, who have generally abused him in
the most rancorous manner. But, unless we are greatly mistaken, he is a
very clever, a very honest, and a very good-natured man. We can clearly
discern, together with many merits, many faults both in his writings and
in his conduct. But we really think that there is hardly a man living
whose merits have been so grudgingly allowed, and whose faults have been
so cruelly expiated.
In some respects Mr. Leigh Hunt is excellently qualified for the task
which he has now undertaken. His style, in spite of its mannerism, nay,
partly by reason of its mannerism, is well suited for light, garrulous,
desultory _ana_, half critical, half biographical. We do not always
agree with his literary judgments; but we find in him what is very rare
in our time, the power of justly appreciating and heartily enjoying
good things of very different kinds. He can adore Shakspeare and Spenser
without denying poetical
(1) _The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh,
and Farquhar, with Biographical and Critical Notices_. By
Leigh Hunt. 8vo. London: 1840.
{351}genius to the author of Alexander’s Feast, or fine observation,
rich fancy, and exquisite humour to him who imagined Will Honeycomb and
Sir Roger de Coverley. He has paid particular attention to the history
of the English drama, from the age of Elizabeth down to our own time,
and has every right to be heard with respect on that subject.
The plays to which he now acts as introducer are, with few exceptions,
such as, in the opinion of many very respectable people, ought not to
be reprinted. In this opinion we can by no means concur. We cannot wish
that any work or class of works which has exercised a great influence
on the human mind, and which illustrates the character of an important
epoch in letters, politics and morals, should disappear from the world.
If we err in this matter, we err with the gravest men and bodies of men
in the empire, and especially with the Church of England, and with
the great schools of learning which are connected with her. The whole
liberal education of our countrymen is conducted on the principle, that
no book which is valuable, either by reason of the excellence of its
style, or by reason of the light which it throws on the history, polity,
and manners of nations, should be withheld from the student on account
of its impurity. The Athenian Comedies, in which there are scarcely a
hundred lines together without some passage of which Rochester would
have been ashamed, have been reprinted at the Pitt Press, and the
Clarendon Press, under the direction of syndics and delegates appointed
by the Universities, and have been illustrated with notes by reverend,
very reverend, and right reverend commentators. Every year the most
distinguished young men in the kingdom are examined {352}by bishops and
professors of divinity in such works as the Lysistrata of Aristophanes
and the Sixth Satire of Juvenal. There is certainly something a little
ludicrous in the idea of a conclave of venerable fathers of the church
praising and rewarding a lad on account of his intimate acquaintance
with writings compared with which the loosest tale in Prior is modest.
But, for our own part, we have no doubt that the great societies which
direct the education of the English gentry have herein judged wisely. It
is unquestionable that an extensive acquaintance with ancient literature
enlarges and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable that a man whose
mind has been thus enlarged and enriched is likely to be far more useful
to the state and to the church than one who is unskilled, or little
skilled, in classical learning. On the other hand, we find it difficult
to believe that, in a world so full of temptation as this, any gentleman
whose life would have been virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes and
Juvenal will be made vicious by reading them. A man who, exposed to all
the influences of such a state of society as that in which we live, is
yet afraid of exposing himself to the influences of a few Greek or Latin
verses, acts, we think, much like the felon who begged the sheriffs to
let him have an umbrella held over his head from the door of Newgate to
the gallows, because it was a drizzling morning, and he was apt to take
cold.
The virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, mot a
valetudinarian virtue, a virtue which can expose itself to the risks
inseparable from all spirited exertion, not a virtue which keeps out of
the common air for fear of infection, and eschews the common food as too
stimulating. It would be indeed absurd to attempt {353}to keep men from
acquiring those qualifications which fit them to play their part in life
with honour to themselves and advantage to their country, for the sake
of preserving a delicacy which cannot be preserved, a delicacy which a
walk from Westminster to the Temple is sufficient to destroy.
But we should be justly chargeable with gross inconsistency if, while we
defend the policy which invites the youth of our country to study such
writers as Theocritus and Catullus, we were to set up a cry against a
new edition of the Countiy Wife or the Way of the World. The immoral
English writers of the seventeenth century are indeed much less
excusable than those of Greece and Rome. But the worst English writings
of the seventeenth century are decent, compared with much that has been
bequeathed to us by Greece and Rome. Plato, we have little doubt, was a
much better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has written things
at which Sir George Etherege would have shuddered. Buckhurst and
Sedley, even in those wild orgies at the Cock in Bow Street for which
they were pelted by the rabble and fined by the Court of King’s, Bench,
would never have dared to hold such discourse as passed between Socrates
and Phædrus on that fine summer day under the plane-tree, while the
fountain warbled at their feet, and the cicadas chirped overhead. If
it be, as we think it is, desirable that an English gentleman should
be well informed touching the government and the manners of little
commonwealths which both in place and time are far removed from us,
whose independence has been more than two thousand years extinguished,
whose language has not been spoken for ages, and whose ancient
magnificence is attested only by a few broken {354}columns and friezes,
much more must it be desirable that lie should be intimately acquainted
with the history of the public mind of his own country, and with the
causes, the nature, and the extent of those revolutions of opinion and
feeling which, during the last two centuries, have alternately raised
and depressed the standard of our national morality. And knowledge of
this sort is to be very sparingly gleaned from Parliamentary debates,
from state papers, and from the works of grave historians. It must
either not be acquired at all, or it must be acquired by the perusal of
the light literature which has at various periods been fashionable. We
are therefore by no means disposed to condemn this publication, though
we certainly cannot recommend the handsome volume before us as an
appropriate Christmas present for young ladies.
We have said that we think the present publication perfectly
justifiable. But we can by no means agree with Mr. Leigh Hunt, who seems
to hold that there is little or no ground for the charge of immorality
so often brought against the literature of the Restoration. We do not
blame him for not bringing to the judgment-seat the merciless rigour
of Lord Angelo; but we really think that such flagitious and impudent
offenders as those who are now at the bar deserved at least the gentle
rebuke of Escalus. Mr. Leigh Hunt treats the whole matter a little
too much in the easy style of Lucio; and perhaps his exceeding lenity
disposes us to be somewhat too severe.
And yet it is not easy to be too severe. For in truth this part of our
literature is a disgrace to our language and our national character.
It is clever, indeed, and very entertaining; but it is, in the
most emphatic sense of the words, “earthly, sensual, devilish.” Its
{355}indecency, though perpetually such as is condemned not less by the
rules of good taste than by those of morality, is not, in our opinion,
so disgraceful a fault as its singularly inhuman spirit. We have here
Belial, not as when he inspired Ovid and Ariosto, “graceful and humane,”
but with the iron eye and cruel sneer of Mephistophiles. We find
ourselves in a world, in which the ladies are like very profligate,
impudent, and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any
place but Pandæmonium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads
of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of
hell.
Dryden defended or excused his own offences and those of his
contemporaries by pleading the example of the earlier English
dramatists: and Mr. Leigh Hunt seems to think that there is force in the
plea. We altogether differ from his opinion. The crime charged is not
mere coarseness of expression. The terms which are delicate in one age
become gross in the next. The diction of the English version of the
Pentateuch is sometimes such as Addison would not have ventured to
imitate; and Addison, the standard of moral purity in his own age,
used many phrases which are now proscribed. Whether a thing shall be
designated by a plain noun substantive or by a circumlocution is mere,
matter of fashion. Morality is not at all interested in the question.
But morality is deeply interested in this, that what is immoral shall
not be presented to the imagination of the young and susceptible in
constant connection with what is attractive. For every person who has
observed the operation of the law of association in his own mind and in
the minds of others knows that whatever is constantly presented to the
imagination in connection with what is attractive will itself become
attractive. {356}There is undoubtedly a great deal of indelicate writing
in Fletcher and Massinger, and more than might be wished even in Ben
Jonson and Shakspeare, who are comparatively pure. But it is impossible
to trace in their plays any systematic attempt to associate vice with
those things which men value most and desire most, and virtue with every
thing ridiculous and degrading. And such a systematic attempt we find
in the whole dramatic literature of the generation which followed the
return of Charles the Second. We will take, as an instance of what we
mean, a single subject of the highest importance to the happiness of
mankind, conjugal fidelity. We can at present hardly call to mind
a single English play, written before the civil war, in which the
character of a seducer of married women is represented in a favourable
light. We remember many plays in which such persons are baffled,
exposed, covered with derision, and insulted by triumphant husbands.
Such is the fate of Falstaff, with all his wit and knowledge of the
world. Such is the fate of Brisac in Fletcher’s Elder Brother, and of
Ricardo and Ubaldo in Massinger’s Picture. Sometimes, as in the Fatal
Dowry and Love’s Cruelty, the outraged honour of families is repaired
by a bloody revenge. If now and then the lover is represented as
an accomplished man, and the husband as a person of weak or odious
character, this only makes the triumph of female virtue the more signal,
as in Jonson’s Celia and Mrs. Fitadottrel, and in Fletcher’s Maria.
In general we will venture to say that the dramatists of the age
of Elizabeth and James the First either treat the breach of the
marriage-vow as a serious crime, or, if they treat it as matter for
laughter, turn the laugh against the gallant.
On the contrary, during the forty years which followed {357}the
Restoration, the whole body of the dramatists invariably represent
adultery, we do not say as a peccadillo, we do not say as an error
which the violence of passion may excuse, but as the calling of a fine
gentleman, as a grace without which his character would be imperfect.
It is as essential to his breeding and to his place in society that he
should make love to the wives of his neighbours as that he should know
French, or that he should have a sword at his side.
In all this there is no passion, and scarcely any thing that can be
called preference. The hero intrigues just as he wears a wig; because,
if he did not, he would be a queer fellow, a city prig, perhaps a
Puritan. All the agreeable qualities are always given to the gallant.
All the contempt and aversion are the portion of the unfortunate
husband. Take Dryden for example; and compare Woodall with Brainsick, or
Lorenzo with Gomez. Take Wycherley; and compare Horner with Pinchwife.
Take Vanbrugh; and compare Constant with Sir John Brute. Take Farquhar;
and compare Archer with Squire Sullen. Take Congreve; and compare
Bellmour with Fondlewife, Careless with Sir Paul Plyant, or Scandal
with Foresight. In all these cases, and in many more which might be
named, the dramatist evidently does his best to make the person who
commits the injury graceful, sensible, and spirited, and the person who
suffers it a fool, or a tyrant, or both.
Mr. Charles Lamb, indeed, attempted to set up a defence for this way of
writing. The dramatists of the latter part of the seventeenth century
are not, according to him, to be tried by the standard of morality which
exists, and ought to exist, in real life. Their world is a conventional
world. Their heroes and {358}heroines belong, not to England, not to
Christendom, but to an Utopia of gallantry, to a Fairyland, where the
Bible and Burn’s Justice are unknown, where a prank which on this earth
would be rewarded with the pillory is merely matter for a peal of elvish
laughter. A real Horner, a real Careless, would, it is admitted, be
exceedingly bad men. But to predicate morality or immorality of the
Homer of Wycherley and the Careless of Congreve is as absurd as it would
be to arraign a sleeper for his dreams. “They belong to the regions of
pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. When we are among them we
are among a chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our usages. No
reverend institutions are insulted by their proceedings, for they have
none among them. No peace of families is violated, for no family ties
exist among them. There is neither right nor wrong, gratitude or its
opposite, claim or duty, paternity or sonship.”
This is, we believe, a fair summary of Mr. Lamb’s doctrine. We are sure
that we do not wish to represent him unfairly. For we admire his genius;
we love the kind nature which appears in all his writings; and we
cherish his memory as much as if we had known him personally. But we
must plainly say that his argument, though ingenious, is altogether
sophistical.
Of course we perfectly understand that it is possible for a writer to
create a conventional world in which things forbidden by the Decalogue
and the Statute Book shall be lawful, and yet that the exhibition may
be harmless, or even edifying. For example, we suppose that the most
austere critics would not accuse Fenelon of impiety and immorality on
account of his Telemachus and his Dialogues of the Dead. In Telemachus
{359}and the Dialogues of the Dead we have a false religion, and
consequently a morality which is in some points incorrect. We have a
right and a wrong differing from the right and the wrong of real life.
It is represented as the first duty of men to pay honour to Jove and
Minerva. Philocles, who employs his leisure in making graven images
of these deities, is extolled for his piety in a way which contrasts
singularly with the expressions of Isaiah on the same subject. The dead
are judged by Minos, and rewarded with lasting happiness for actions
which Fenelon would have been the first to pronounce splendid sins.
The same may be said of Mr. Southey’s Mahommedan and Hindoo heroes and
heroines. In Thalaba, to speak hi derogation of the Arabian imposter
is blasphemy: to drink wine is a crime: to perform ablutions and to pay
honour to the holy cities are works of merit. In the curse of Kehama,
Kailyal is commended for her devotion to the statue of Mariataly, the
goddess of the poor. But certainly no person will accuse Mr. Southey of
having promoted or intended to promote either Islamism or Brahminism.
It is easy to see why the conventional worlds of Fenelon and Mr. Southey
are unobjectionable. In the first place, they are utterly unlike the
real world in which we live. The state of society, the laws even of the
physical world, are so different from those with which we are familiar,
that we cannot be shocked at finding the morality also very different.
But in truth the morality of these conventional worlds differs from the
morality of the real world only in points where there is no danger
that the real world will ever go wrong. The generosity and docility
of Telemachus, the fortitude, the modesty, the filial tenderness
of Kailyal, are virtues of all ages and nations. And there was very
{360}little danger that the Dauphin would worship Minerva, or that an
English damsel would dance, with a bucket on her head, before the statue
of Mariataly.
The case is widely different with what Mr. Charles Lamb calls the
conventional world of Wycherley and Congreve. Here the garb, the
manners, the topics of conversation are those of the real town and of
the passing day. The hero is in all superficial accomplishments exactly
the fine gentleman whom every youth in the pit would gladly resemble.
The heroine is the fine lady whom every youth in the pit would gladly
marry. The scene is laid in some place which is as well known to the
audience as their own houses, in St. James’s Park, or Hyde Park, or
Westminster Hall. The lawyer bustles about with his bag, between the
Common Pleas and the Exchequer. The Peer calls for his carriage to go
to the House of Lords on a private bill. A hundred little touches are
employed to make the fictitious world appear like the actual world. And
the immorality is of a sort which never can be out of date, and which
all the force of religion, law, and public opinion united can but
imperfectly restrain.
In the name of art, as well as in the name of virtue, we protest against
the principle that the world of pure comedy is one into which no moral
enters. If comedy be an imitation, under whatever conventions, of real
life, how is it possible that it can have no reference to the great
rule which directs life, and to feelings which are called forth by
every incident of life? If what Mr. Charles Lamb says were correct, the
inference would be that these dramatists did not in the least understand
the very first principles of their craft. Pure landscape-painting into
which no light or shade enters, pure portrait-painting into which
no expression {361}enters, are phrases less at variance with sound
criticism than pure comedy into which no moral enters.
But it is not the fact that the world of these dramatists is a world
into which no moral enters. Morality constantly enters into that world,
a sound morality, and an unsound morality; the sound morality to be
insulted, derided, associated with every thing mean and hateful; the
unsound morality to be set off to every advantage, and inculcated by
all methods, direct and indirect. It is not the fact that none of
the inhabitants of this conventional world feel reverence for sacred
institutions and family ties. Fondlewife, Pinch wife, every person in
short of narrow understanding and disgusting manners, expresses that
reverence strongly. The heroes and heroines, too, have a moral code of
their own, an exceedingly bad one, but not, as Mr. Charles Lamb seems to
think, a code existing only in the imagination of dramatists. It is, on
the contrary, a code actually received and obeyed by great numbers of
people. We need not go to Utopia or Fairyland to find them.. They
are near at hand. Every night some of them cheat at the hells in the
Quadrant, and others pace the Piazza in Covent Garden. Without flying to
Nephelococcygia or to the Court of Queen Mab, we can meet with sharpers,
bullies, hard-hearted impudent debauchees, and women worthy of such
paramours. The morality of the Country Wife and the Old Bachelor is the
morality, not as Mr. Charles Lamb maintains, of an unreal world, but
of a world which is a great deal too real. It is the morality, not of
a chaotic people, but of low town-rakes, and of those ladies whom the
newspapers call “dashing Cyprians.” And the question is simply this,
whether a man of genius who constantly and systematically endeavours to
make this {362}sort of character attractive, by uniting it with beauty,
grace, dignity, spirit, a high social position, popularity, literature,
wit, taste, knowledge of the world, brilliant success in every
undertaking, does or does not make an ill use of his powers. We own that
we are unable to understand how this question can be answered in any way
but one.
It must, indeed, be acknowledged, in justice to the writers of whom
we have spoken thus severely, that they were, to a great extent, the
creatures of their age. And if it be asked why that age encouraged
immorality which no other age would have tolerated, we have no
hesitation in answering that this great depravation of the national
taste was the effect of the prevalence of Puritanism under the
Commonwealth.
To punish public outrages on morals and religion is unquestionably
within the competence of rulers. But when a government, not content with
requiring decency, requires sanctity, it oversteps the bounds which mark
its proper functions. And it may be laid down as a universal rule that
a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less. A
lawgiver who, in order to protect distressed borrowers, limits the rate
of interest, either makes it impossible for the objects of his care
to borrow at all, or places them at the mercy of the worst class of
usurers. A lawgiver who, from tenderness for labouring men, fixes the
hours of their work and the amount of their wages, is certain to make
them far more wretched than he found them. And so a government which,
not content with repressing scandalous excesses, demands from its
subjects fervent and austere piety, will soon discover that, while
attempting to render an impossible service to the cause of virtue, it
has in truth only promoted vice. {363}For what are the means by which
a government can effect its ends? Two only, reward and punishment;
powerful means, indeed, for influencing the exterior act, but altogether
impotent for the purpose of touching the heart. A public functionary who
is told that he will be promoted if he is a devout Catholic, and turned
out of his place if he is not, will probably go to mass every morning,
exclude meat from his table on Fridays, shrive himself regularly, and
perhaps let his superiors know that he wears a hair shirt next his
skin. Under a Puritan government, a person who is apprised that piety is
essential to thriving in the world will be strict in the observance of
the Sunday, or, as he will call it, Sabbath, and will avoid a theatre as
if it were plague-stricken. Such a show of religion as this the hope
of gain and the fear of loss will produce, at a week’s notice, in
any abundance which a government may require. But under this show,
sensuality, ambition, avarice, and hatred retain unimpaired power, and
the seeming convert has only added to the vices of a man of the world
all the still darker vices which are engendered by the constant practice
of dissimulation. The truth cannot be long concealed. The public
discovers that the grave persons who are proposed to it as patterns are
more utterly destitute of moral principle and of moral sensibility than
avowed libertines. It sees that these Pharisees are farther removed from
real goodness than publicans and harlots. And, as usual, it rushes
to the extreme opposite to that which it quits. It considers a high
religious profession as a sure mark of meanness and depravity. On the
very first day on which the restraint of fear is taken away, and on
which men can venture to say what they think, a frightful peal of
blasphemy {364}and ribaldry proclaims that the short-sighted policy
which aimed at making a nation of saints has made a nation of scoffers.
It was thus in France about the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Lewis the Fourteenth in his old age became religious: he determined
that his subjects should be religious too: he shrugged his shoulders and
knitted his brows if he observed at his levee or near his dinner-table
any gentleman who neglected the duties enjoined by the church, and
rewarded piety with blue ribands, invitations to Marli, governments,
pensions, and regiments. Forthwith Versailles became, in everything
but dress, a convent. The pulpits and confessionals were surrounded by
swords and embroidery. The Marshals of France were much in prayer; and
there was hardly one among the Dukes and Peers who did not carry good
little books in his pocket, fast during Lent, and communicate at Easter.
Madame de Main-tenon, who had a great share in the blessed work, boasted
that devotion had become quite the fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and
like a fashion it passed away. No sooner had the old king been carried
to St. Denis than the whole court unmasked. Every man hastened to
indemnify himself, by the excess of licentiousness and impudence, for
years of mortification. The same persons who, a few months before, with
meek voices and demure looks, had consulted divines about the state
of their souls, now surrounded the midnight table where, amidst the
bounding of champagne corks, a drunken prince, enthroned between Dubois
and Madame de Parabère, hiccoughed out atheistical arguments and obscene
jests. The early part of the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth had been
a time of license; but the most dissolute men of that generation
{365}would have blushed at the orgies of the Regency.
It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil War. We
are by no means unmindful of the great debt which mankind owes to the
Puritans of that time, the deliverers of England, the founders of
the American Commonwealths. But in the day of their power, those men
committed one great fault, which left deep and lasting traces in the
national character and manners. They mistook the end and overrated the
force of government. They determined, not merely to protect religion
and public morals from insult, an object for which the civil sword, in
discreet hands, may be beneficially employed, but to make the people
committed to their rule truly devout. Yet, if they had only reflected
on events which they had themselves witnessed and in which they had
themselves borne a great part, they would have seen what was likely to
be the result of their enterprise. They had lived under a government
which, during a long course of years, did all that could be done, by
lavish bounty and by rigorous punishment, to enforce conformity to the
doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. No person suspected of
hostility to that church had the smallest chance of obtaining favour
at the court of Charles; dissent was punished by imprisonment, by
ignominious exposure, by cruel mutilations, and by ruinous fines. And
the event had been that the Church had fallen, and had, in its fall,
dragged down with it a monarchy which had stood six hundred years.
The Puritan might have learned, if from nothing else, yet from his own
recent victory, that governments which attempt things beyond their reach
are likely not merely to fail, but to produce an {366}effect directly
the opposite of that which they contemplate as desirable.
All this was overlooked. The saints were to inherit the earth. The
theatres were closed. The fine arts were placed under absurd restraints.
Vices which had never before been even misdemeanors were made capital
felonies. It was solemnly resolved by Parliament “that no person
shall be employed but such as the House shall be satisfied of his
real godliness.” The pious assembly had a Bible lying on the table for
reference.
If they had consulted it they might have learned that the wheat and the
tares grow together inseparably, and must either be spared together,
or rooted up together. To know whether a man was really godly was
impossible. But it was easy to know whether he had a plain dress, lank
hair, no starch in his linen, no gay furniture in his house; whether he
talked through his nose, and showed the whites of his eyes; whether he
named his children Assurance, Tribulation, and Maher-shalal-hash-baz;
whether he avoided Spring Garden when in town, and abstained from
hunting and hawking when in the country; whether he expounded hard
scriptures to his troops of dragoons, and talked in a committee of ways
and means about seeking the Lord. These were tests which could easily be
applied. The misfortune was that they were tests which proved nothing.
Such as they were, they were employed by the dominant party. And the
consequence was that a crowd of impostors, in every walk of life, began
to mimic and to caricature what were then regarded as the outward signs
of sanctity. The nation was not duped. The restraints of that gloomy
time were such as would have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men
who were universally believed to be saints. {367}Those restraints became
altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the
profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the royal family
had never returned, even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Cromwell had
been at the head of the administration, there would have been a great
relaxation of manners. Before the Restoration many signs indicated that
a period of license was at hand. The Restoration crushed for a time the
Puritan party, and placed supreme power in the hands of a libertine. The
political counter-revolution assisted the moral counter-revolution, and
was in turn assisted by it. A period of wild and desperate dissoluteness
followed. Even in remote manor-houses and hamlets the change was in some
degree felt; but in Loudon the outbreak of debauchery was appalling; and
in London the places most deeply infected were the Palace, the quarters
inhabited by the aristocracy, and the Inns of Court. It was on the
support of these parts of the town that the playhouses depended. The
character of the drama became conformed to the character of its patrons.
The comic poet was the mouthpiece of the most deeply corrupted part of
a corrupted society. And in the plays before us we find, distilled and
condensed, the essential spirit of the fashionable world during the
Anti-puritan reaction.
The Puritan had affected formality; the comic poet laughed at decorum.
The Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet took
under his patronage the most flagitious excesses. The Puritan had
canted; the comic poet blasphemed. The Puritan had made an affair of
gallantry, felony without benefit of clergy; the comic poet represented
it as an honourable distinction. The Puritan spoke with disdain of
{368}the low standard of popular morality; his life was regulated by a
far more rigid code; his virtue was sustained by motives unknown to
men of the world. Unhappily it had been amply proved in many cases, and
might well be suspected in many more, that these high pretensions were
unfounded. Accordingly, the fashionable circles, and the comic poets
who were the spokesmen of those circles, took up the notion that all
professions of piety and integrity were to be construed by the rule of
contrary; that it might well be doubted whether there was such a thing
as virtue in the world; but that, at all events, a person who affected
to be better than his neighbours was sure to be a knave.
In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever
compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained
in the volume before us will see how much the profligacy which follows
a period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy which
precedes such a period. The nation resembled the demoniac in the New
Testament. The Puritans boasted that the unclean spirit was cast out.
The house was empty, swept, and garnished; and for a time the expelled
tenant wandered through dry places seeking rest and finding none. But
the force of the exorcism was spent. The fiend returned to his abode;
and returned not alone. He took to him seven other, spirits more wicked
than himself. They entered in, and dwelt together: and the second
possession was worse than the first.
We will now, as far as our limits will permit, pass in review the
writers to whom Mr. Leigh Hunt has introduced us. Of the four, Wycherley
stands, we think, last in literary merit, but first in order of time,
and first, beyond all doubt, in immorality.
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY {369}was born in 1640. He was the son of a Shropshire
gentleman of old family, and of what was then accounted a good estate.
The property was estimated at six hundred a year, a fortune which,
among the fortunes at that time, probably ranked as a fortune of two
thousand a year would rank in our days.
William was an infant when the civil war broke ont; and, while he
was still in his rudiments, a Presbyterian hierarchy and a republican
government were established on the ruins of the ancient church and
throne. Old Mr. Wycherley was attached to the royal cause, and was not
disposed to intrust the education of his heir to the solemn Puritans
who now ruled the universities and public schools. Accordingly the young
gentleman was sent at fifteen to France. He resided some time in the
neighbourhood of the Duke of Montausier, chief of one of the noblest
families of Touraine. The Duke’s wife, a daughter of the house
of Rambouillet, was a finished specimen of those talents and
accomplishments for which her race was celebrated. The young foreigner
was introduced to the splendid circle which surrounded the duchess, and
there he appears to have learned some good and some evil. In a few
years he returned to his country a fine gentleman and a Papist. His
conversion, it may safely be affirmed, was the effect, not of any strong
impression on his understanding or feelings, but partly of intercourse
with an agreeable society in which the Church of Rome was the fashion,
and partly of that aversion to Calvinistic austerities which was then
almost universal among young Englishmen of parts and spirit, and which,
at one time, seemed likely to make one half of them Catholics, and the
other half Atheists. {370}But the Restoration came. The universities
were again in loyal hands; and there was reason to hope that there
would be again a national church fit for a gentleman. Wycherley became a
member of Queen’s College, Oxford, and abjured the errors of the Church
of Rome. The somewhat equivocal glory of turning, for a short time, a
good-for-nothing Papist into a good-for-nothing Protestant is ascribed
to Bishop Barlow.
Wycherley left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered at the
Temple, where he lived gaily for some years, observing the humours of
the town, enjoying its pleasures, and picking up just as much law as
was necessary to make the character of a pettifogging attorney or of a
litigious client entertaining in a comedy.
From an early age he had been in the habit of amusing himself by
writing. Some wretched lines of his on the Restoration are still extant.
Had he devoted himself to the making of verses, he would have been
nearly as far below Tate and Blackmore as Tate and Black-more are below
Dryden. His only chance for renown would have been that he might have
occupied a niche in a satire, between Flecknoe and Settle. There
was, however, another kind of composition in which his talents and
acquirements qualified him to succeed; and to that he judiciously betook
himself.
In his old age he used to say that he wrote Love in a Wood at nineteen,
the Gentleman Dancing-Master at twenty-one, the Plain Dealer at
twenty-five, and the Country Wife at one or two and thirty. We are
incredulous, we own, as to the truth of this story. Nothing that we know
of Wycherley leads us to think him incapable of sacrificing truth
to vanity. And his memory in the decline of his life played him such
strange tricks that we might question the correctness of {371}his
assertion without throwing any imputation on his veracity. It is certain
that none of his plays was acted till 1672, when he gave Love in a
Wood to the public. It seems improbable that he should resolve, on so
important an occasion as that of a first appearance before the world,
to ran his chance with a feeble piece, written before his talents were
ripe, before his style was formed, before he had looked abroad into the
world; and this when he had actually in his desk two highly finished,
plays, the fruit of his matured powers. When we look minutely at the
pieces themselves, we find in every part of them reason to suspect the
accuracy of Wycherley’s statement. In the first scene of Love in a Wood,
to go no further, we find many passages which he could not have written
when he was nineteen. There is an allusion to gentlemen’s periwigs,
which first came into fashion in 1663; an allusion to guineas, which
were first struck in 1683; an allusion to the vests which Charles
ordered to be worn at court in 1666; an allusion to the fire of 1666;
and several political allusions which must be assigned to times later
than the year of the Restoration, to times when the government and the
city were opposed to each other, and when the Presbyterian ministers
had been driven from the parish churches to the conventicles. But it is
needless to dwell on particular expressions. The whole air and spirit of
the piece belong to a period subsequent to that mentioned by Wycherley.
As to the Plain Dealer, which is said to have been written when he was
twenty-five, it contains one scene unquestionably written after 1675,
several which are later than 1668, and scarcely a line which can have
been composed before the end of 1666.
Whatever may have been the age at which Wycherley {372}composed his
plays, it is certain that he did not bring them before the public till
he was upwards of thirty. In 1672, Love in a Wood was acted with more
success than it deserved, and this event produced a great change in the
fortunes of the author. The Duchess of Cleveland cast her eyes upon him,
and was pleased with his appearance. This abandoned woman, not content
with her complaisant husband and her royal keeper, lavished her fondness
on a crowd of paramours of all ranks, from dukes to rope-dancers. In
the time of the commonwealth she commenced her career of gallantry, and
terminated it under Anne, by marrying, when a great-grandmother, that
worthless fop, Beau Fielding. It is not strange that she should
have regarded Wycherley with favour. His figure was commanding, his
countenance strikingly handsome, his look and deportment full of grace
and dignity. He had, as Pope said long after, “the true nobleman
look,” the look which seems to indicate superior, and a not unbecoming
consciousness of superiority. His hair indeed, as he says in one of his
poems, was prematurely grey. But in that age of periwigs this misfortune
was of little importance. The Duchess admired him, and proceeded to make
love to him, after the fashion of the coarse-minded and shameless circle
to which she belonged. In the Ring, when the crowd of beauties and fine
gentlemen was thickest, she put her head out of her coach-window, and
bawled to him, “Sir, you are a rascal; you are a villain;” and, if
she is not belied, she added another phrase of abuse which we will
not quote, but of which we may say that it might most justly have been
applied to her own children. Wycherley called on her Grace the next day,
and with great humility begged to know in what way {373}he had been so
unfortunate as to disoblige her. Thus began an intimacy from which the
poet probably expected wealth and honours. Nor were such expectations
unreasonable. A handsome young fellow about the court, known by the name
of Jack Churchill, was, about the same time, so lucky as to become the
object of a short-lived fancy of the Duchess. She had presented him with
four thousand five hundred pounds, the price, in all probability, of
some title or pardon. The prudent youth had lent the money on high
interest, and on landed security; and this judicious investment was the
beginning of the most splendid private fortune in Europe. Wycherley was
not so lucky. The partiality with which the great lady regarded him was
indeed the talk of the whole town; and sixty years later old men who
remembered those days told Voltaire that she often stole from the court
to her lover’s chambers in the Temple, disguised like a country girl,
with a straw-hat on her head, pattens on her feet, and a basket in
her hand. The poet was indeed too happy and proud to be discreet. He
dedicated to the Duchess the play which had led to their acquaintance,
and in the dedication expressed himself in terms which could not but
confirm the reports which had gone abroad. But at Whitehall such an
affair was regarded in no serious light. The lady was not afraid to
bring Wycherley to court, and to introduce him to a splendid society
with which, as far as appears, he had never before mixed. The easy
king, who allowed to his mistresses the same liberty which he claimed
for himself, was pleased with the conversation and manners of his new
rival. So high did Wycherley stand in the royal favour that once, when
he was confined by a fever to his lodgings in Bow Street, Charles, who,
with all his {374}faults, was certainly a man of social and affable
disposition, called on him, sat by his bed, advised him to try change
of air, and gave him a handsome sum of money to defray the expense of a
journey. Buckingham, then Master of the Horse, and one of that infamous
ministry known by the name of the Cabal, had been one of the Duchess’s
innumerable paramours. He at first showed some symptoms of jealousy;
but he soon, after his fashion, veered round from anger to fondness, and
gave Wycherley a commission in his own regiment and a place in the royal
household.
It would be unjust to Wycherley’s memory not to mention here the only
good action, as far as we know, of his whole life. He is said to have
made great exertions to obtain the patronage of Buckingham for the
illustrious author of Hudribas, who was now sinking into an obscure
grave, neglected by a nation proud of his genius, and by a court which
he had served too well. His Grace consented to see poor Butler; and
an appointment was made. But unhappily two pretty women passed by; the
volatile Duke ran after them; the opportunity was lost, and could never
be regained.
The second Dutch war, the most disgraceful war in the whole history of
England, was now raging. It was not in that age considered as by any
means necessary that a naval officer should receive a professional
education. Young men of rank, who were hardly able to keep their feet
in a breeze, served on board of the King’s ships, sometimes with
commissions, and sometimes as volunteers. Mulgrave, Dorset, Rochester,
and many others, left the playhouses and the Mall for hammocks and salt
pork, and, ignorant as they were of the rudiments of naval service,
showed, at least, on the day of battle, the courage which is seldom
wanting in {375}an English gentleman. All good judges of maritime
affairs complained that, under this system, the ships were grossly
mismanaged, and that the tarpaulins contracted the vices, without
acquiring the graces, of the court. But on this subject, as on every
other where the interests or whims of favourites were concerned, the
government of Charles was deaf to all remonstrances. Wycherley did not
choose to be out of the fashion. He embarked, was present at a battle,
and celebrated it, on his return, in a copy of verses too had for the
bellman. (1)
About the same time, he brought on the stage his second piece, the
Gentleman Dancing-Master. The biographers say nothing, as far as we
remember, about the fate of this play. There is, however, reason to
believe that, though certainly far superior to Love in a Wood, it was
not equally successful. It was first tried at the west end of the
town, and, as the poet confessed, “would scarce do there.” It was then
performed in Salisbury Court, but, as it should seem, with no better
event. For, in the prologue to the Country Wife,
(1) Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes that the battle at which
Wycherley was present was that which the Duke of York gained
over Opdam, in 1665. We believe that it was one of the
battles between Rupert and De Ruyter, in 1673.
The point is of no importance; and there cannot be said to
be much evidence either way. We offer, however, to Mr. Leigh
Hunt’s consideration three arguments, of no great weight
certainly, yet such as ought, we think, to prevail in the
absence of better. First, it is not very likely that a young
Templar, quite unknown in the world,--and Wycherley was
such in 1665,--should have quitted his chambers to go to
sea. On the other hand, it would be in the regular course of
things, that, when a courtier and an equerry, he should
offer his services. Secondly, his verses appear to have been
written after a drawn battle, like those of 1673, and not
after a complete victory, like that of 1675. Thirdly, in the
epilogue to the Gentleman Dancing-Master, written in 1673,
he says that “all gentlemen must pack to sea an expression
which makes it probable that he did not himself mean to stay
behind.
Wycherley {376}described himself as “the late so baffled scribbler.”
In 1675, the Country Wife was performed with brilliant success, which,
in a literary point of view, was not wholly unmerited. For, though one
of the most profligate and heartless of human compositions, it is
the elaborate production of a mind, not indeed rich, original, or
imaginative, but ingenious, observant, quick to seize hints, and patient
of the toil of polishing.
The Plain Dealer, equally immoral and equally well written, appeared in
1677. At first this piece pleased the people less than the critics; but
after a time its unquestionable merits and the zealous support of
Lord Dorset, whose influence in literary and fashionable society was
unbounded, established it in the public favour.
The fortune of Wycherley was now in the zenith, and began to decline.’
A long life was still before him. But it was destined to be filled
with nothing but shame and wretchedness, domestic dissensions, literary
failures, and pecuniary embarrassments.
The King, who was looking about for an accomplished man to conduct the
education of his natural son, the young Duke of Richmond, at length
fixed on Wycherley. The poet, exulting in his good luck, went down to
amuse himself at Tunbridge Wells, looked into a bookseller’s shop on the
Pantiles, and, to his great delight, heard a handsome woman ask for the
Plain Dealer which had just been published. He made acquaintance with
the lady, who proved to be the Countess of Drogheda, a gay young widow,
with an ample jointure. She was charmed with his person and his wit,
and, after a short flirtation, agreed to become his wife. Wycherley
seems to have been apprehensive {377}that this connection might not
suit well with the King’s plans respecting the Duke of Richmond. He
accordingly prevailed on the lady to consent to a private marriage. All
came out. Charles thought the conduct of Wycherley both disrespectful
and disingenuous. Other causes probably assisted to alienate the
sovereign from the subject who had lately been so highly favoured.
Buckingham was now in opposition, and had been committed to the Tower;
not, as Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes, on a charge of treason, but by an order
of the House of Lords for some expressions which he had used in debate.
Wycherley wrote some bad lines in praise of his imprisoned patron,
which, if they came to the knowledge of the King, would certainly have
made his majesty very angry. The favour of the court was completely
withdrawn from the poet. An amiable woman with a large fortune might
indeed have been an ample compensation for the loss. But Lady Drogheda
was ill-tempered, imperious, and extravagantly jealous. She had herself
been a maid of honour at Whitehall. She well knew in what estimation
conjugal fidelity was held among the fine gentlemen there, and watched
her town husband as assiduously as Mr. Pinchwife watched his country
wife. The unfortunate wit was, indeed, allowed to meet his friends at a
tavern opposite to his own house. But on such occasions the windows were
always open, in order that her Ladyship, who was posted on the other
side of the street, might be satisfied that no woman was of the party.
The death of Lady Drogheda released the poet from this distress; but
a series of disasters, in rapid succession, broke down his health, his
spirits, and his fortune. His wife meant to leave him a good property,
{378}and left him only a lawsuit. His father could not or would
not assist him. Wycherley was at length thrown into the Fleet, and
languished there during seven years utterly forgotten, as it should
seem, by the gay and lively circle of which he had been a distinguished
ornament. In the extremity of his distress he implored the publisher who
had been enriched by the sale of his works to lend him twenty pounds,
and was refused. His comedies, however, still kept possession of the
stage, and drew great audiences which troubled themselves little about
the situation of the author. At length James the Second, who had now
succeeded to the throne, happened to go to the theatre on an evening
when the Plain Dealer was acted. He was pleased by the performance, and
touched by the fate of the writer, whom he probably remembered as one
of the gayest and handsomest of his brother’s courtiers. The King
determined to pay Wycherley’s debts, and to settle on the unfortunate
poet a pension of two hundred pounds a year. This munificence on the
part of a prince who was little in the habit of rewarding literary
merit, and whose whole soul was devoted to the interests of his church,
raises in us a surmise which Mr. Leigh Hunt will, we fear, pronounce
very uncharitable. We cannot help suspecting that it was at this time
that Wycherley returned to the communion of the Church of Rome. That he
did return to the communion of the Church of Rome is certain. The date
of his reconversion, as far as we know, has never been mentioned by
any biographer. We believe that, if we place it at this time, we do no
injustice to the character either of Wycherley or James.
Not long after, old Mr. Wycherley died; and his son, {379}now past the
middle of life, came to the family estate. Still, however, he was not at
his ease. His embarrassments were great: his property was strictly tied
up; and he was on very had terms with the heir-at-law. He appears to
have led, during a long course of years, that most wretched life, the
life of a vicious old boy about town. Expensive tastes with little
money, and licentious appetites with declining vigour, were the just
penance for his early irregularities. A severe illness had produced a
singular effect on his intellect. His memory played him pranks stranger
than almost any that are to be found in the history of that strange
faculty. It seemed to be at once preternaturally strong, and
preternaturally weak. If a book was read to him before he went to bed,
he would wake the next morning with his mind full of the thoughts and
expressions which he had heard over night; and he would write them
down, without in the least suspecting that they were not his own. In his
verses the same ideas, and even the same words, came over and over again
several times in a short composition. His fine person bore the marks of
age, sickness, and sorrow; and he mourned for his departed beauty with
an effeminate regret. He could not look without a sigh at the portrait
which Lely had painted of him when he was only twenty-eight, and often
murmured, _Quantum mutatus ab illo_. He was still nervously anxious
about his literary reputation, and, not content with the fame which
he still possessed as a dramatist, was determined to be renowned as
a satirist and an amatory poet. In 1704, after twenty-seven years of
silence, he again appeared as an author. He put forth a large folio of
miscellaneous verses, which, we believe, has never been reprinted.
Some of these pieces had probably circulated through {380}the town
in manuscript. For, before the volume appeared, the critics at the
coffee-houses very confidently predicted that it would be utterly
worthless, and were in consequence bitterly reviled by the poet in an
ill-written, foolish, and egotistical preface. The book amply vindicated
the most unfavourable prophecies that had been hazarded. The style and
versification are beneath criticism; the morals are those of Rochester.
For Rochester, indeed, there was some excuse. When his offences against
decorum were committed, he was a very young man, misled by a prevailing
fashion. Wycherley was sixty-four. He had long outlived the times when
libertinism was regarded as essential to the character of a wit and
a gentleman. Most of the rising poets, Addison, for example, John
Phillips, and Rowe, were studious of decency. We can hardly conceive any
thing more miserable than the figure which the ribald old man makes in
the midst of so many sober and well-conducted youths.
In the very year in which this bulky volume of obscene doggerel was
published, Wycherley formed an acquaintance of a very singular kind.
A little, pale, crooked, sickly, bright-eyed urchin, just turned of
sixteen, had written some copies of verses in which discerning judges
could detect the promise of future eminence. There was, indeed, as yet
nothing very striking or original in the conceptions of the young poet.
But he was already skilled in the art of metrical composition. His
diction and his music were not those of the great old masters; but that
which his ablest contemporaries were labouring to do, he already did
best. His style was not richly poetical; but it was’ always neat,
compact, and pointed. His verse wanted variety of pause, of swell, and
of cadence, but never grated {381}harshly on the ear, or disappointed
it by a feeble close. The youth was already free of the company of wits,
and was greatly elated at being introduced to the author of the Plain
Dealer and the Country Wife.
It is curious to trace the history of the intercourse which took place
between Wycherley and Pope, between the representative of the age that
was going out, and the representative of the age that was coming in,
between the friend of Rochester and Buckingham, and the friend of
Lyttelton and Mansfield. At first the boy was enchanted by the kindness
and condescension of so eminent a writer, haunted his door, and followed
him about like a spaniel from coffee-house to coffeehouse. Letters full
of affection, humility, and fulsome flattery were interchanged between
the friends. But the first ardour of affection could not last. Pope,
though at no time scrupulously delicate in his writings or fastidious as
to the morals of his associates, was shocked by the indecency of a
rake who, at seventy, was still the representative of the monstrous
profligacy of the Restoration. As the youth grew older, as his mind
expanded and his fame rose, he appreciated both himself and Wycherley
more correctly. He felt a just contempt for the old gentleman’s verses,
and was at no great pains to conceal his opinion. Wycherley, on the
other hand, though blinded by self-love to the imperfections of what
he called his poetry, could not but see that there was an immense
difference between his young companion’s rhymes and his own. He was
divided between two feelings. He wished to have the assistance of
so skilful a hand to polish his lines; and yet he shrank from the
humiliation of being beholden for literary assistance to a lad who
might have been his grandson. Pope was willing to give assistance, but
{382}was by no means disposed to give assistance and flattery too. He
took the trouble to retouch whole reams of feeble stumbling verses,
and inserted many vigorous lines which the least skilful reader will
distinguish in an instant. But he thought that by these services he
acquired a right to express himself in terms which would not, under
ordinary circumstances, become one who was addressing a man of four
times his age. In one letter he tells Wycherley that “the worst pieces
are such as, to render them very good, would require almost the entire
new writing of them.” In another, he gives the following account of his
corrections: “Though the whole be as short again as at first, there is
not one thought omitted but what is a repetition of something in your
first volume, or in this very paper; and the versification throughout
is, I believe, such as nobody can be shocked at. The repeated permission
you give me of dealing freely with you, will, I hope, excuse what I have
done; for, if I have not spared you when I thought severity would do you
a kindness, I have not mangled you where there was no absolute
need of amputation.” Wycherley continued to return thanks for all this
hacking and hewing, which was, indeed, of inestimable service to
his compositions. But at last his thanks began to sound very like
reproaches. In private, he is said to have described Pope as a person
who could not cut out a suit, but who had some skill in turning
old coats. In his letters to Pope, while he acknowledged that the
versification of the poems had been greatly improved, he spoke of
the whole art of versification with scorn, and sneered at those who
preferred sound to sense. Pope revenged himself for this outbreak of
spleen by return of post. He had in his hands a volume of Wycherley’s
rhymes, {383}and he wrote to say that this volume was so full of faults
that he could not correct it without completely defacing the manuscript.
“I am,” he said, “equally afraid of sparing you, and of offending you
by too impudent a correction.” This was more than flesh and blood could
bear. Wycherley reclaimed his papers, in a letter in which resentment
shows itself plainly through the thin disguise of civility. Pope, glad
to be rid of a troublesome and inglorious task, sent back the deposit,
and, by way of a parting courtesy, advised the old man to turn his
poetry into prose, and assured him that the public would like thoughts
much better without his versification. Thus ended this memorable
correspondence.
Wycherley lived some years after the termination of the strange
friendship which we have described. The last scene of his life
was, perhaps, the most scandalous. Ten days before his death, at
seventy-five, he married a young girl, merely in order to injure his
nephew, an act which proves that neither years, nor adversity, nor what
he called his philosophy, nor either of the religions which he had at
different times professed, had taught him the rudiments of morality. He
died in December, 1715, and lies in the vault under the church of St.
Paul in Convent-Garden.
His bride soon after married a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became
possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a
bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no
printer could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a
professed critic; and Theobald, the editor of Shakspeare, and the hero
of the first Dunciad, was employed to ascertain the true reading. In
this way a volume of miscellanies in verse and prose was {384}got up
for the market. The collection derives all its value from the traces of
Pope’s hand, which are everywhere discernible.
Of the moral character of Wycherley it can hardly be necessary for us to
say more. His fame as a writer rests wholly on his comedies, and chiefly
on the last two. Even as a comic writer, he was neither of the best
school, nor highest in his school. He was in truth a worse Congreve. His
chief merit, like Congreve’s, lies in the style of his dialogue. But the
wit which lights up the Plain Dealer and the Country Wife is pale and
flickering, when compared with the gorgeous blaze which dazzles us
almost to blindness in Love for Love and the Way of the World. Like
Congreve, and, indeed, even more than Congreve, Wycherley is ready to
sacrifice dramatic propriety to the liveliness of his dialogue. The poet
speaks out of the mouths of all his dunces and coxcombs, and makes them
describe themselves with a good sense and acuteness which puts them on
a level with the wits and heroes. We will give two instances, the first
which occur to us, from the Country Wife. There are in the world fools
who find the society of old friends insipid, and who are always running
after new companions. Such a character is a fair subject for comedy. But
nothing can be more absurd than to introduce a man of this sort saying
to his comrade, “I can deny you nothing: for though I have known thee
a great while, never go if I do not love thee as well as a new
acquaintance.” That town-wits, again, have always been rather a
heartless class, is true. But none of them, we will answer for it, ever
said to a young lady to whom he was making love, “We wits rail and make
love often, but to show our parts: as we have no affections, so we have
no malice.” {385}Wycherley’s plays are said to have been the produce of
long and patient labour. The epithet of “slow” was early given to him by
Rochester, and was frequently repeated. In truth his mind, unless we are
greatly mistaken, was naturally a very meagre soil, and was forced only
by great labour and outlay to hear fruit which, after all, was not of
the highest flavour. He has scarcely more claim to originality than
Terence. It is not too much to say that there is hardly any thing of the
least value in his plays of which the hint is not to be found elsewhere.
The best scenes in the Gentleman Dancing Master were suggested by
Calderon’s _Maestro de Danzar_, not by any means one of the happiest
comedies of the great Castilian poet. The Country Wife is borrowed from
the _E’cole des Maris_ and the _E’cole des Femmes_. The groundwork of
the Plain Dealer is taken from the _Misanthrope_ of Molière. One whole
scene is almost translated from the _Critique de l’E’cole des Femmes_.
Fidelia is Shakspeare’s Viola stolen, and marred in the stealing; and
the Widow Blackacre, beyond comparison Wycherley’s best comic character,
is the Countess in Racine’s _Plaideurs_, talking the jargon of English
instead of that of French chicane.
The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could
furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It
is curious to observe how every thing that he touched, however pure
and noble, took in an instant the colour of his own mind. Compare the
_E’cole des Femmes_ with the Country Wife. Agnes is a simple and amiable
girl, whose heart is indeed full of love, but of love sanctioned by
honour, morality, and religion. Her natural talents are great. They have
been hidden, and, as it {386}might appear, destroyed by an education
elaborately bad. But they are called forth into full energy by a
virtuous passion. Her lover, while he adores her beauty, is too honest
a man to abuse the confiding tenderness of a creature so charming and
inexperienced. Wycherley takes this plot into his hands; and forthwith
this sweet and graceful courtship becomes a licentious intrigue of the
lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and
the idiot wife of a country squire. We will not go into details. In
truth, Wycherley’s indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk
is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy
to handle, and too noisome even to approach.
It is the same with the Plain Dealer. How careful has Shakspeare been
in Twelfth Night to preserve the dignity and delicacy of Viola under
her disguise! Even when wearing a page’s doublet and hose, she is never
mixed up with any transaction which the most fastidious mind could
regard as leaving a stain on her. She is employed by the Duke on an
embassy of love to Olivia, but on an embassy of the most honourable
kind. Wycherley borrows Viola; and Viola forthwith becomes a pandar of
the basest sort. But the character of Manly is the best illustration of
our meaning. Moliere exhibited in his misanthrope a pure and noble mind,
which had been sorely vexed by the sight of perfidy and malevolence,
disguised under the forms of politeness. As every extreme naturally
generates its contrary, Alceste adopts a standard of good and evil
directly opposed to that of the society which surrounds him. Courtesy
seems to him a vice; and those stem virtues which are neglected by the
fops and coquettes of Paris become too exclusively the objects of his
veneration. {387}He is often to blame; he is often ridiculous; but he
is always a good man; and the feeling which he inspires is regret that a
person so estimable should be so unamiable. Wycherley borrowed Alceste,
and turned him,--we quote the words of so lenient a critic as Mr. Leigh
Hunt,--into “a ferocious sensualist, who believed himself as great a
rascal as he thought everybody else.” The surliness of Moliere’s hero is
copied and caricatured. But the most nauseous libertinism and the most
dastardly fraud are substituted for the purity and integrity of the
original. And, to make the whole complete, Wycherley does not seem to
have been aware that he was not drawing the portrait of an eminently
honest man. So depraved was his moral taste that, while he firmly
believed that he was producing a picture of virtue too exalted for the
commerce of this world, he was really delineating the greatest rascal
that is to be found, even in his own writings.
We pass a very severe censure on Wycherley, when we say that it is a
relief to turn from him to Congreve. Congreve’s writings, indeed, are
by no means pure; nor was he, as far as we are able to judge, a
warm-hearted or high-minded man. Yet, in coming to him, we feel that the
worst is over, that we are one remove further from the Restoration, that
we are past the Nadir of national taste and morality.
WILLIAM CONGREVE was born in 1670, at Bardsey, in the neighbourhood of
Leeds. His father, a younger son of a very ancient Staffordshire family,
had distinguished himself among the cavaliers in the civil war, was
set down after the Restoration for the Order of the Royal Oak, and
subsequently settled in Ireland, under the patronage of the Earl of
Burlington.
Congreve passed his childhood and youth in Ireland. {388}He was sent
to school at Kilkenny, and thence went to the University of Dublin.
His learning does great honour to his instructors. From his writings it
appears, not only that he was well acquainted with Latin literature, but
that his knowledge of the Greek poets was such as was not, in his time,
common even in a college.
When he, had, completed his academical studies, he was sent to London
to study the law, and was entered of the Middle Temple. He troubled
himself, however, very little about pleading or conveyancing, and gave
himself up to literature and society. Two kinds of ambition early took
possession of his mind, and often pulled it in opposite directions.
He was conscious of great fertility of thought and power of ingenious
combination. His lively conversation, his polished manners, and his
highly respectable connections, had obtained for him ready access to the
best company. He longed to be a great writer. He longed to be a man of
fashion. Either object was within his reach. But could he secure both?
Was there not something vulgar in letters, something inconsistent with
the easy apathetic graces of a man of the mode? Was it aristocratical to
be confounded with creatures who lived in the cocklofts of Grub Street,
to bargain with publishers, to hurry printers’ devils and be hurried
by them, to squabble with managers, to be applauded or hissed by pit,
boxes, and galleries? Could he forego the renown of being the first wit
of his age? Could he attain that renown without sullying what he valued
quite as much, his character for gentility? The history of his life is
the history of a conflict between these two impulses. In his youth the
desire of literary fame had the mastery; but soon the meaner ambition
overpowered the higher, and obtained supreme dominion over his mind.
{389}His first work, a novel of no great value, he published under the
assumed name of Cleophil. His second was the Old Bachelor, acted in
1693, a play inferior indeed to his other comedies, but, in its own
line, inferior to them alone. The plot is equally destitute of interest
and of probability. The characters are either not distinguishable, or
are distinguished only by peculiarities of the most glaring kind. But
the dialogue is resplendent with wit and eloquence, which indeed are so
abundant that the fool comes in for an ample share, and yet preserves a
certain colloquial air, a certain indescribable ease, of which Wycherley
had given no example, and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate.
The author, divided between pride and shame, pride at having written a
good play, and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing, pretended
that he had merely scribbled a few scenes for his own amusement, and
affected to yield unwillingly to the importunities of those who pressed
him to try his fortune on the stage. The Old Bachelor was seen in
manuscript by Dryden, one of whose best qualities was a hearty and
generous admiration for the talents of others. He declared that he had
never read such a first play, and lent his services to bring it into a
form fit for representation. Nothing was wanted to the success of the
piece. It was so cast as to bring into play all the comic talent, and
to exhibit on the boards in one view all the beauty, which Drury Lane
Theatre, then the only theatre in London, could assemble. The result
was a complete triumph; and the author was gratified with rewards more
substantial than the applauses of the pit. Montagu, then a lord of the
treasury, immediately gave him a place, and, in a short time, added the
reversion of another place of much {390}greater value, which, however,
did not become vacant till many years had elapsed.
In 1694, Congreve brought out the Double Dealer, a comedy in which
all the powers which had produced the Old Bachelor showed themselves,
matured by time and improved by exercise. But the audience was shocked
by the characters of Maskwell and Lady Touchwood. And, indeed, there is
something strangely revolting in the way in which a group that seems to
belong to the house of Laius or of Pelops is introduced into the midst
of the Brisks, Froths, Carlesses, and Plyants. The play was unfavourably
received. Yet, if the praise of distinguished men could compensate an
author for the disapprobation of the multitude, Congreve had no reason
to repine. Dryden, in one of the most ingenious, magnificent, and
pathetic pieces that he ever wrote, extolled the author of the Double
Dealer in terms which now appear extravagantly hyperbolical. Till
Congreve came forth,--so ran this exquisite flattery,--the superiority
of the poets who preceded the civil wars was acknowledged.
“Theirs was the giant race before the flood.”
Since the return of the Royal house, much art and ability had been
exerted, but the old masters had been still unrivalled.
“Our builders were with want of genius curst,
The second temple was not like the first.”
At length a writer had arisen who, just emerging from boyhood, had
surpassed the authors of the Knight of the Burning Pestle and of the
Silent Woman, and who had only one rival left to contend with.
“Heaven that but once was prodigal before,
To Shakspeare gave as much, she could not give him more.” {391}Some
lines near the end of the poem are singularly grave and touching, and
sank deep into the heart of Congreve.
“Already am I worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning the ungrateful stage;