an attack. I speak not here of faults against the rules of poetry,
but against the natural Genius. He had all the images of nature
present to him, studied her thoroughly, and boldly copied all her
various features, for though he has chiefly exerted himself on the
more masculine passions, 'tis as the choice of his judgment, not
the restraint of his genius, and he has given us as a proof he
could be every way equally admirable."
Lady Piers wrote the prologue to _The Unhappy Penitent_ in verses better
turned than might have been expected. She did not stint praise to her
young friend, whom she compares to the rising sun:--
"Like him, bright Maid, Thy great perfections shine
As awful, as resplendent, as divine!...
Minerva and Diana guard your soul!"
_The Unhappy Penitent_ is not a pleasing performance: it is amorous and
violent, but yet dull. Catharine's theory was better than her practice.
Nevertheless, it seems to have been successful, for the author some time
afterwards, speaking of the town's former discouragement of her dramas,
remarks that "the taste is mended." Later in 1701 she brought out at
Drury Lane her only comedy, _Love at a Loss_, dedicated in most
enthusiastic terms to Lady Piers, to whom "I owe the greatest Blessing
of my Fate," the privilege of a share in her friendship. _Love at a
Loss_ was made up of the comic scenes introduced into an old tragedy
which the author had failed to get acted. This is not a fortunate method
of construction, and the town showed no favour to Love at a Loss. The
first and only public section of Catharine Trotter's career was now
over, and she withdrew, a wayworn veteran at the age of twenty-two, to
more elevated studies.
When _Love at a Loss_ was published the author had already left town,
and after a visit to Lady Piers in Kent she now settled at Salisbury, at
the house of a physician, Dr. Inglis, who had married her only sister.
Her growing intimacy with the family of Bishop Burnet may have had
something to do with her determination to make this city her home. She
formed a very enthusiastic friendship with the Bishop's second lady, who
was an active theologian and a very intelligent woman. Our poetess was
fascinated by Mrs. Burnet. "I have not met," she writes in 1701, "such
perfection in any of our sex." She now visited in the best Wiltshire
society. When the famous singer, John Abell, was in Salisbury, he gave a
concert at the palace, and Catharine Trotter was so enchanted that she
rode out after him six miles to Tisbury to hear him sing again at Lord
Arundell of Wardour's house. She had a great appreciation of the
Bishop's "volatile activity." It is now that the name of Locke first
occurs in her correspondence, and we gather that she came into some
personal contact with him through a member of the Bishop's
family--George Burnet of Kemney, in Aberdeenshire--probably a cousin,
with whom she now cultivated an ardent intellectual friendship. He left
England on a mission which occupied him from the middle of 1701 until
1708, and this absence, as we may suspect, alone prevented their
acquaintance from ripening into a warmer feeling. The romance and
tragedy of Catharine Trotter's life gather, it is plain, around this
George Burnet, who was a man of brilliant accomplishments and
interested, like herself, in philosophical studies.
These, it would appear, Catharine Trotter had never abandoned, but she
applied herself to them closely at Salisbury, where she made some
superior acquaintances. One of these was John Norris of Bemerton, whose
_Theory of an Ideal and Intelligible World_ had just made some
sensation. By the intermediary of George Burnet she came in touch with
some of the leading French writers of the moment, such as Malebranche
and Madame Dacier. There is a French poet, unnamed, who understands
English, but he is gone to Rome before he can be made to read _The Fatal
Friendship_. Meanwhile, Catharine Trotter's obsession with the ideas of
Locke was giving some anxiety to her friends. That philosopher had
published his famous _Essay on the Human Understanding_ in 1690, and it
had taken several years for the opposition to his views, and in
particular to his theological toleration, to take effect. But in 1697
there were made a number of almost simultaneous attacks on Locke's
position. The circle at Salisbury was involved in them, for one of these
was written by Norris of Bemerton, and another is attributed to a member
of the Burnet family. Catharine Trotter, who had studied Locke's later
works with enthusiastic approval, was scandalised by the attacks, and
sat down to refute them. This must have been in 1701.
Although the intellectual society of Salisbury was prominent in taking
the conservative view of Locke, our bluestocking could not refrain from
telling Mrs. Burnet what she had done, nor from showing her treatise to
that friend under vows of confidence. But Mrs. Burnet, who was impulsive
and generous, could not keep the secret; she spoke about it to the
Bishop, and then to Norris of Bemerton, and finally (in June 1702) to
Locke himself. Locke was at Oates, confined by his asthma; he was old
and suffering, but still full of benevolence and curiosity, and he was
graciously interested in his remarkable defender at Salisbury. As he
could not himself travel, he sent his adopted son to call on Catharine
Trotter, with a present of books; this was Peter King, still a young
man, but already M.P. for Beer Alston, and later to become Lord
Chancellor and the first Lord King of Ockham. George Burnet, writing
from Paris, had been very insistent that Catharine should not publish
her treatise, but she overruled his objections, and her _Defence of Mr.
Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding_ appeared anonymously in May
1702. People were wonderfully polite in those days, and Locke himself
wrote to his "protectress" a charming letter in which he told her that
her "_Defence_ was the greatest honour my Essay could have procured me."
She sent her _Defence_ to Leibnitz, who criticised it at considerable
length:--[3]
"J'ai lu livre de Mlle. Trotter. Dans la dedicace elle exhorte M.
Locke a donner des demonstrations de morale. Je crois qu'il aurait
eu de la peine a y reussir. L'art de demontrer n'est pas son fait.
Je tiens que nous nous appercevons sans raisonnement de ce qui est
juste et injuste, comme nous nous appercevons sans raison de
quelques theoremes de Geometrie; mais il est tousjours bon de venir
a la demonstration. Justice et injustice ne dependent seulement de
la nature humaine, mais de la nature de la substance intelligente
en general; et Mlle. Trotter remarque fort bien qu'elle vient de la
nature de Dieu et n'est point arbitraire. La nature de Dieu est
tousjours fondee en raison."
Notwithstanding all this, the commentators of Locke appear, without
exception, to ignore the _Defence_, and it was probably never much read
outside the cultivated Salisbury circle.
In this year, 1702, the health of Catharine Trotter began to give her
uneasiness, and it was for this reason that she left Salisbury for a
while. She was once more living in that city, however, from May 1703 to
March 1704, making a special study of geography. "My strength," she
writes to George Burnet, "is very much impaired, and God knows whether I
shall ever retrieve it." Her thoughts turned again to the stage, and in
the early months of 1703 she composed her fifth and last play, the
tragedy of _The Revolution in Sweden_; "but it will not be ready for
the stage," she says, "till next winter." Her interest in philosophy
did not flag. She was gratified by some communications, through Burnet,
with Leibnitz, and she would have liked to be the intermediary between
Locke and some philosophical "gentlemen" on the Continent, probably
Malebranche and Leibnitz, in a controversy. But this was hopeless, and
she writes (March 16th, 1704):--
"Mr. Locke is unwilling to engage in controversy with the gentlemen
you mention; for, I am informed, his infirmities have obliged him,
for some time past, to desist from his serious studies, and only
employ himself in lighter things, which serve to amuse and unbend
the mind."
Locke, indeed, had but six months more to live, and though he retained
his charming serenity of spirit he was well aware that the end
approached. Never contentious or desirous of making a sensation, he was
least of all, in his present precarious state, likely to enter into
discussion with foreign philosophers. It does not appear that Catharine
Trotter ever enjoyed the felicity of seeing in the flesh the greatest
object of her homage; but he occupied most of her thoughts. She was
rendered highly indignant by the efforts made by the reactionaries at
Oxford and elsewhere to discourage the writings of Locke and to throw
suspicion on their influence. She read over and over again his
philosophical, educational, and religious treatises, and ever found them
more completely to her taste. If she had enjoyed the power to do so she
would have proclaimed the wisdom and majesty of Locke from every
housetop, and she envied Lady Masham her free and constant intercourse
with so beautiful a mind. Catharine Trotter watched, but from a
distance, the extinction of a life thus honoured, which came to a
peaceful end at Oates on October 28th, 1704. The following passage does
not appear--or I am much mistaken--to have attracted the attention of
Locke's biographers:--
"I was very sensibly touched with the news of Mr. Locke's death.
All the particulars I hear of it are that he retained his perfect
senses to the last, and spoke with the same composedness and
indifference on affairs as usual. His discourse was much on the
different views a dying man has of worldly things; and that nothing
gives him any satisfaction, but the reflection of what good he has
done in his life. Lady Masham went to his chamber to speak to him
on some, business; when he had answered in the same manner he was
accustomed to speak, he desired her to leave the room, and,
immediately after she was gone, turned about and died."
She records that, after the death of Locke, Lady Masham communicated
with Leibnitz, and Catharine is very indignant because a doubt had been
suggested as to whether the writer's thoughts and expressions were her
own. This was calculated to infuriate Catharine Trotter, who outpours in
forcible terms her just indignation:--
"Women are as capable of penetrating into the grounds of things,
and reasoning justly, as men are, who certainly have no advantage
of us, but in their opportunities of knowledge. As Lady Masham is
allowed by everybody to have great natural endowments, she has
taken pains to improve them; and no doubt profited much by a long
intimate society with so extraordinary a man as Mr. Locke. So that
I see no reason to suspect a woman of her character would pretend
to write anything that was not entirely her own. I pray, be more
equitable to her sex than the generality of your's are, who, when
anything is written by a woman that they cannot deny their
approbation to, are sure to rob us of the glory of it by
concluding 'tis not her own."
This is the real voice of Catharine Trotter, raised to defend her sex,
and conscious of the many intellectual indignities and disabilities
which they suffered.
The first draft of _The Revolution in Sweden_ being now completed, she
sent it to Congreve, who was living very quietly in lodgings in Arundell
Street. He allowed some time to go by before, on November 2nd, 1703, he
acknowledged it. His criticism, which is extremely kind, is also
penetrating and full. "I think the design in general," he says, "very
great and noble; the conduct of it very artful, if not too full of
business which may run into length and obscurity." He warns her against
having too much noise of fighting on the stage in her second act, and
against offending probability in the third. The fourth act is confused,
and in the fifth there are too many harangues. Catharine Trotter has
asked him to be frank, and so he is, but his criticism is practical and
encouraging. This excellent letter deserves to be better known.
To continue the history of Miss Trotter's fifth and last play, _The
Revolution in Sweden_ was at length brought out at the Queen's Theatre
in the Haymarket, towards the close of 1704. It had every advantage
which popular acting could give it, since the part of the hero, Count
Arwide, was played by Betterton; that of Constantia, the heroine, by
Mrs. Barry; Gustavus by Booth; and Christina by Mrs. Harcourt. In spite
of this galaxy of talent, the reception of the play was unfavourable.
The Duchess of Marlborough "and all her beauteous family" graced the
theatre on the first night, but the public was cold and inattentive.
Some passages of a particularly lofty moral tone provoked laughter. _The
Revolution in Sweden_, in fact, was shown to suffer from the
ineradicable faults which Congreve had gently but justly suggested. It
was very long, and very dull, and very wordy, and we could scarcely find
a more deadly specimen of virtuous and didactic tragedy. Catharine was
dreadfully disappointed, nor was she completely consoled by being
styled--by no less a person than Sophia Charlotte, Queen of
Prussia--"The Sappho of Scotland." She determined, however, to appeal to
readers against auditors, and when, two years later, after still further
revision, she published _The Revolution in Sweden_, she dedicated it in
most grateful terms to the Duke of Marlborough's eldest daughter,
Henrietta Godolphin.
How Miss Trotter came to be favoured by the Churchills appears from
various sources to be this. Her brother-in-law, Dr. Inglis, was now
physician-general in the army, and was in personal relations with the
General. When the victory at Blenheim (August 1704) was announced,
Catharine Trotter wrote a poem of welcome back to England. It is to be
supposed that a manuscript copy of it was shown by Inglis to the Duke,
with whose permission it was published about a month later. The poem
enjoyed a tremendous success, for the Duke and Duchess and Lord
Treasurer Godolphin "and several others" all liked the verses and said
they were better than any other which had been written on the subject.
George Burnet, who saw the Duke in Germany, reported him highly pleased
with her--"the wisest virgin I ever knew," he writes. She now hoped,
with the Duke's protection, to recover her father's fortune and be no
longer a burden to her brother-in-law. A pension of L20 from Queen Anne
gave her mother now a shadow of independence, but Catharine herself was
wholly disappointed at that "settlement for my life" which she was
ardently hoping for. I think that, if she had secured it, George Burnet
would have come back from Germany to marry her. Instead of that he sent
her learned messages from Bayle and from Leibnitz, who calls her "une
Demoiselle fort spirituelle."
Catharine Trotter now left London and Salisbury, and took up her abode
at Ockham Mills, close to Ripley, in Surrey, as companion to an invalid,
Mrs. De Vere. She probably chose this place on account of the Locke
connection and the friendship of Peter King, since there is now much in
her correspondence about Damaris, Lady Masham, and others in that circle
in which George Burnet himself was intimate. But great changes were
imminent. Although her correspondence at this time is copious it is not
always very intelligible, and it is very carelessly edited. Her constant
interchange of letters with George Burnet leaves the real position
between them on many points obscure. In 1704, when he thought that he
was dying in Berlin, he wrote to Catharine Trotter that he had left her
L100 in his will, and added: "Pray God I might live to give you much
more myself." He regrets that he had so easily "pulled himself from her
company," and suggests that if she had not left London to settle in
Salisbury he would have stayed in England. Years after they had parted
we find him begging her to continue writing to him "at least once a
week." She, on her part, tells him that he well knows that there is but
one person she could ever think of marrying. He seems to have made her
want of vivid religious conviction the excuse for not proposing to her,
but it is not easy to put aside the conviction that it was her want of a
fortune which actuated him most strongly. Finally, he tries to pique her
by telling her that he "knows of parties" in the city of Hanover "who
might bring him much honour and comfort" were he "not afraid of losing
(Catharine Trotter's) friendship." They write to one another with
extreme formality, but that proves nothing. A young woman, passionately
in love with a man whom she had just accepted as her future husband,
was expected, in 1705, to close her letter by describing herself as
"Sir, your very humble servant."
If George Burnet hinted of "parties" in Hanover, Catharine Trotter on
her side could boast of Mr. Fenn, "a young clergyman of excellent
character," who now laid an ardent siege to her heart. Embarrassed by
these attentions, she took the bold step of placing the matter before
Mr. Cockburn, a still younger clergyman, of even more excellent
character. The letter in which she makes this ingenuous declaration as
to a father confessor is one of the tenderest examples extant of the
"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" form of correspondence. Mr.
Cockburn, one of the minor clergy of the Salisbury set, did speak for
himself, and George Burnet having at length announced his own projected
marriage with a lady of old acquaintance, Catharine Trotter hesitated no
longer but accepted the hand of Mr. Cockburn. They were married early in
1708. Thackeray could have created an amusing romance out of the
relations of these four people to one another, and in particular it
would have been very interesting to see what he would have made of the
character of George Burnet.
Catharine Cockburn was now, after so eventful a life of emotional and
intellectual experience, still a young woman, not far past her
twenty-eighth birthday. She was to survive for more than forty-three
years, during which time she was to correspond much, to write
persistently, and to publish whenever opportunity offered. But I do not
propose to accompany her much further on her blameless career. All
through her married life, which was spent at various places far from
London, she existed almost like a plant in a Leyden jar. Constant
genteel poverty, making it difficult for her to buy books and impossible
to travel was supported by her with dignity and patience, but it dwarfed
her powers. Her later writings, on philosophy, on morality, on the
principles of the Christian religion, are so dull that merely to think
of them brings tears into one's eyes. She who had sparkled as a girl
with Congreve and exchanged polite amenities with Locke lived on to see
modern criticism begin with Samuel Johnson and the modern novel start
with Samuel Richardson, but without observing that any change had come
into the world of letters. Her husband, owing to his having fallen "into
a scruple about the oath of abjuration," lost his curacy and "was
reduced to great difficulties in the support of his family."
Nevertheless--a perfect gentleman at heart--he "always prayed for the
King and Royal family by name." Meanwhile, to uplift his spirits in this
dreadful condition, he is discovered engaged upon a treatise on the
Mosaic deluge, which he could persuade no publisher to print. He reminds
us of Dr. Primrose in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and, like him, Mr.
Cockburn probably had strong views on the Whistonian doctrine.
So little mark did poor Mrs. Cockburn make on her younger contemporaries
that she disappeared forthwith from literary history. Her works,
especially her plays, have become so excessively rare as to be almost
unprocurable. The brief narrative of her life and her activities which I
have taken the liberty of presenting to-day would be hopelessly engulfed
in obscurity, and we should know as little of Catharine Trotter as we do
of Mary Pix, and Delariviere Manley, and many late seventeenth-century
authors more eminent than they, had it not been that in 1751, two years
after her death, all her papers were placed in the hands of an ingenious
clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Birch, who printed them for subscribers
in two thick and singularly unpleasing volumes. This private edition was
never reissued, and is now itself a rare book. It is the sort of book
that for two hundred and fifty years must fatally have been destroyed as
lumber whenever an old country mansion that contained it has been
cleared out.
During all that time no one, so far as I can discover, has evinced the
smallest interest in Catharine Trotter. We gain an idea of the blackness
of her obscurity when we say that even Mr. Austin Dobson appears to have
never heard of her. The champion of Locke and Clarke, the correspondent
of Leibnitz and Pope, the friend of Congreve, the patroness of Farquhar,
she seems to have slipped between two ages and to have lost her hold on
time. But I hope her thin little lady-like ghost, still hovering in a
phantom-like transparence round the recognised seats of learning, will
be a little comforted at last by the polite attention of a few of my
readers.
[Footnote 2: Around the story of Agnes de Castro there gathered a whole
literature of fiction, which Mr. Montague Summers has investigated in
his _Works of Aphra Behn_, Vol. V. pp. 211-212.]
[Footnote 3: Printed in Otto Klopp's _Correspondance de Leibnitz avec
l'Electrice Sophie_. Hanover, 1875.]
TWO PIONEERS OF ROMANTICISM:
JOSEPH AND THOMAS WARTON[4]
The origins of the Romantic Movement in literature have been examined so
closely and so often that it might be supposed that the subject must be
by this time exhausted. But no subject of any importance in literature
is ever exhausted, because the products of literature grow or decay,
burgeon or wither, as the generations of men apply their ever-varying
organs of perception to them. I intend, with your permission, to present
to you a familiar phase of the literary life of the eighteenth century
from a fresh point of view, and in relation to two men whose surname
warrants a peculiar emphasis of respect in the mouth of a Warton
Lecturer. It is well, perhaps, to indicate exactly what it is which a
lecturer proposes to himself to achieve during the brief hour in which
you indulge him with your attention; it certainly makes his task the
easier if he does so. I propose, therefore, to endeavour to divine for
you, by scanty signs and indications, what it was in poetry, as it
existed up to the period of their childhood, which was stimulating to
the Wartons, and what they disapproved of in the verse which was
fashionable and popular among the best readers in their day.