The traditionary notion that the life of a man of letters is necessarily
deficient in incident, appears to have originated in a misconception of
the essential nature of human action. The life of every man is full of
incidents, but the incidents are insignificant, because they do not
affect his species; and in general the importance of every occurrence is
to be measured by the degree with which it is recognised by mankind. An
author may influence the fortunes of the world to as great an extent as
a statesman or a warrior; and the deeds and performances by which this
influence is created and exercised, may rank in their interest and
importance with the decisions of great Congresses, or the skilful valour
of a memorable field. M. de Voltaire was certainly a greater Frenchman
than Cardinal Fleury, the Prime Minister of France in his time. His
actions were more important; and it is certainly not too much to
maintain that the exploits of Homer, Aristotle, Dante, or my Lord Bacon,
were as considerable events as anything that occurred at Actium,
Lepanto, or Blenheim. A Book may be as great a thing as a battle, and
there are systems of philosophy that have produced as great revolutions
as any that have disturbed even the social and political existence of
our centuries.
The life of the author, whose character and career we are venturing to
review, extended far beyond the allotted term of man: and, perhaps, no
existence of equal duration ever exhibited an uniformity more sustained.
The strong bent of his infancy was pursued through youth, matured in
manhood, and maintained without decay to an advanced old age. In the
biographic spell, no ingredient is more magical than predisposition. How
pure, and native, and indigenous it was in the character of this writer,
can only be properly appreciated by an acquaintance with the
circumstances amid which he was born, and by being able to estimate how
far they could have directed or developed his earliest inclinations.
My grandfather, who became an English Denizen in 1748, was an Italian
descendant from one of those Hebrew families whom the Inquisition forced
to emigrate from the Spanish Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth
century, and who found a refuge in the more tolerant territories of the
Venetian Republic. His ancestors had dropped their Gothic surname on
their settlement in the Terra Firma, and grateful to the God of Jacob
who had sustained them through unprecedented trials and guarded them
through unheard-of perils, they assumed the name of DISRAELI, a name
never borne before or since by any other family, in order that their
race might be for ever recognised. Undisturbed and unmolested, they
flourished as merchants for more than two centuries under the protection
of the lion of St. Mark, which was but just, as the patron saint of the
Republic was himself a child of Israel. But towards the middle of the
eighteenth century, the altered circumstances of England, favourable, as
it was then supposed, to commerce and religious liberty, attracted the
attention of my great-grandfather to this island, and he resolved that
the youngest of his two sons, Benjamin, the "son of his right hand,"
should settle in a country where the dynasty seemed at length
established, through the recent failure of Prince Charles Edward, and
where public opinion appeared definitively adverse to persecution on
matters of creed and conscience.
The Jewish families who were then settled in England were few, though,
from their wealth and other circumstances, they were far from
unimportant. They were all of them Sephardim, that is to say, children
of Israel, who had never quitted the shores of the Midland Ocean, until
Torquamada had driven them from their pleasant residences and rich
estates in Arragon, and Andalusia, and Portugal, to seek greater
blessings, even than a clear atmosphere and a glowing sun, amid the
marshes of Holland and the fogs of Britain. Most of these families, who
held themselves aloof from the Hebrews of Northern Europe, then only
occasionally stealing into England, as from an inferior caste, and whose
synagogue was reserved only for Sephardim, are now extinct; while the
branch of the great family, which, notwithstanding their own sufferings
from prejudice, they had the hardihood to look down upon, have achieved
an amount of wealth and consideration which the Sephardim, even with the
patronage of Mr. Pelham, never could have contemplated. Nevertheless, at
the time when my grandfather settled in England, and when Mr. Pelham,
who was very favourable to the Jews, was Prime Minister, there might be
found, among other Jewish families flourishing in this country, the
Villa Reals, who brought wealth to these shores almost as great as their
name, though that is the second in Portugal, and who have twice allied
themselves with the English aristocracy, the Medinas--the Laras, who
were our kinsmen--and the Mendez da Costas, who, I believe, still exist.
Whether it were that my grandfather, on his arrival, was not encouraged
by those to whom he had a right to look up,--which is often our hard
case in the outset of life,--or whether he was alarmed at the unexpected
consequences of Mr. Pelham's favourable disposition to his countrymen
in the disgraceful repeal of the Jew Bill, which occurred a very few
years after his arrival in this country, I know not; but certainly he
appears never to have cordially or intimately mixed with his community.
This tendency to alienation was, no doubt, subsequently encouraged by
his marriage, which took place in 1765. My grandmother, the beautiful
daughter of a family who had suffered much from persecution, had imbibed
that dislike for her race which the vain are too apt to adopt when they
find that they are born to public contempt. The indignant feeling that
should be reserved for the persecutor, in the mortification of their
disturbed sensibility, is too often visited on the victim; and the cause
of annoyance is recognised not in the ignorant malevolence of the
powerful, but in the conscientious conviction of the innocent sufferer.
Seventeen years, however, elapsed before my grandfather entered into
this union, and during that interval he had not been idle. He was only
eighteen when he commenced his career, and when a great responsibility
devolved upon him. He was not unequal to it. He was a man of ardent
character; sanguine, courageous, speculative, and fortunate; with a
temper which no disappointment could disturb, and a brain, amid
reverses, full of resource. He made his fortune in the midway of life,
and settled near Enfield, where he formed an Italian garden, entertained
his friends, played whist with Sir Horace Mann, who was his great
acquaintance, and who had known his brother at Venice as a banker, eat
macaroni which was dressed by the Venetian Consul, sang canzonettas, and
notwithstanding a wife who never pardoned him for his name, and a son
who disappointed all his plans, and who to the last hour of his life was
an enigma to him, lived till he was nearly ninety, and then died in
1817, in the full enjoyment of prolonged existence.
My grandfather retired from active business on the eve of that great
financial epoch, to grapple with which his talents were well adapted;
and when the wars and loans of the Revolution were about to create those
families of millionaires, in which he might probably have enrolled his
own. That, however, was not our destiny. My grandfather had only one
child, and nature had disqualified him, from his cradle, for the busy
pursuits of men.
A pale, pensive child, with large dark brown eyes, and flowing hair,
such as may be beheld in one of the portraits annexed to these volumes,
had grown up beneath this roof of worldly energy and enjoyment,
indicating even in his infancy, by the whole carriage of his life, that
he was of a different order from those among whom he lived. Timid,
susceptible, lost in reverie, fond of solitude, or seeking no better
company than a book, the years had stolen on, till he had arrived at
that mournful period of boyhood when eccentricities excite attention and
command no sympathy. In the chapter on Predisposition, in the most
delightful of his works,[1] my father has drawn from his own, though his
unacknowledged feelings, immortal truths. Then commenced the age of
domestic criticism. His mother, not incapable of deep affections, but so
mortified by her social position that she lived until eighty without
indulging in a tender expression, did not recognise in her only
offspring a being qualified to control or vanquish his impending fate.
His existence only served to swell the aggregate of many humiliating
particulars. It was not to her a source of joy, or sympathy, or solace.
She foresaw for her child only a future of degradation. Having a strong,
clear mind, without any imagination, she believed that she beheld an
inevitable doom. The tart remark and the contemptuous comment on her
part, elicited, on the other, all the irritability of the poetic
idiosyncrasy. After frantic ebullitions, for which, when the
circumstances were analysed by an ordinary mind, there seemed no
sufficient cause, my grandfather always interfered to soothe with
good-tempered commonplaces, and promote peace. He was a man who thought
that the only way to make people happy was to make them a present. He
took it for granted that a boy in a passion wanted a toy or a guinea. At
a later date, when my father ran away from home, and after some
wanderings was brought back, found lying on a tombstone in Hackney
churchyard, he embraced him, and gave him a pony.
In this state of affairs, being sent to school in the neighbourhood, was
a rather agreeable incident. The school was kept by a Scotchman, one
Morison, a good man, and not untinctured with scholarship, and it is
possible that my father might have reaped some advantage from this
change; but the school was too near home, and his mother, though she
tormented his existence, was never content if he were out of her sight.
His delicate health was an excuse for converting him, after a short
interval, into a day scholar; then many days of attendance were omitted;
finally, the solitary walk home through Mr. Mellish's park was dangerous
to the sensibilities that too often exploded when they encountered on
the arrival at the domestic hearth a scene which did not harmonise with
the fairy-land of reverie.
The crisis arrived, when, after months of unusual abstraction and
irritability, my father produced a poem. For the first time, my
grandfather was seriously alarmed. The loss of one of his argosies,
uninsured, could not have filled him with more blank dismay. His idea of
a poet was formed from one of the prints of Hogarth hanging in his room,
where an unfortunate wight in a garret was inditing an ode to riches,
while dunned for his milk-score. Decisive measures were required to
eradicate this evil, and to prevent future disgrace--so, as seems the
custom when a person is in a scrape, it was resolved that my father
should be sent abroad, where a new scene and a new language might divert
his mind from the ignominious pursuit which so fatally attracted him.
The unhappy poet was consigned like a bale of goods to my grandfather's
correspondent at Amsterdam, who had instructions to place him at some
collegium of repute in that city. Here were passed some years not
without profit, though his tutor was a great impostor, very neglectful
of his pupils, and both unable and disinclined to guide them in severe
studies. This preceptor was a man of letters, though a wretched writer,
with a good library, and a spirit inflamed with all the philosophy of
the eighteenth century, then (1780-1) about to bring forth and bear its
long-matured fruits. The intelligence and disposition of my father
attracted his attention, and rather interested him. He taught his charge
little, for he was himself generally occupied in writing bad odes, but
he gave him free warren in his library, and before his pupil was
fifteen, he had read the works of Voltaire and had dipped into Bayle.
Strange that the characteristics of a writer so born and brought up
should have been so essentially English; not merely from his mastery
over our language, but from his keen and profound sympathy with all that
concerned the literary and political history of our country at its most
important epoch.
When he was eighteen, he returned to England a disciple of Rousseau. He
had exercised his imagination during the voyage in idealizing the
interview with his mother, which was to be conducted on both sides with
sublime pathos. His other parent had frequently visited him during his
absence. He was prepared to throw himself on his mother's bosom, to
bedew her hands with his tears, and to stop her own with his lips; but,
when he entered, his strange appearance, his gaunt figure, his excited
manners, his long hair, and his unfashionable costume, only filled her
with a sentiment of tender aversion; she broke into derisive laughter,
and noticing his intolerable garments, she reluctantly lent him her
cheek. Whereupon Emile, of course, went into heroics, wept, sobbed, and
finally, shut up in his chamber, composed an impassioned epistle. My
grandfather, to soothe him, dwelt on the united solicitude of his
parents for his welfare, and broke to him their intention, if it were
agreeable to him, to place him in the establishment of a great merchant
at Bordeaux. My father replied that he had written a poem of
considerable length, which he wished to publish, against Commerce, which
was the corrupter of man. In eight-and-forty hours confusion again
reigned in this household, and all from a want of psychological
perception in its master and mistress.
My father, who had lost the timidity of his childhood, who, by nature,
was very impulsive, and indeed endowed with a degree of volatility which
is only witnessed in the south of France, and which never deserted him
to his last hour, was no longer to be controlled. His conduct was
decisive. He enclosed his poem to Dr. Johnson, with an impassioned
statement of his case, complaining, which he ever did, that he had never
found a counsellor or literary friend. He left his packet himself at
Bolt Court, where he was received by Mr. Francis Barber, the doctor's
well-known black servant, and told to call again in a week. Be sure that
he was very punctual; but the packet was returned to him unopened, with
a message that the illustrious doctor was too ill to read anything. The
unhappy and obscure aspirant, who received this disheartening message,
accepted it, in his utter despondency, as a mechanical excuse. But,
alas! the cause was too true; and, a few weeks after, on that bed,
beside which the voice of Mr. Burke faltered, and the tender spirit of
Benett Langton was ever vigilant, the great soul of Johnson quitted
earth.
But the spirit of self-confidence, the resolution to struggle against
his fate, the paramount desire to find some sympathising sage--some
guide, philosopher, and friend--was so strong and rooted in my father,
that I observed, a few weeks ago, in a magazine, an original letter,
written by him about this time to Dr. Vicesimus Knox, full of high-flown
sentiments, reading indeed like a romance of Scudery, and entreating
the learned critic to receive him in his family, and give him the
advantage of his wisdom, his taste, and his erudition.
With a home that ought to have been happy, surrounded with more than
comfort, with the most good-natured father in the world, and an
agreeable man; and with a mother whose strong intellect, under ordinary
circumstances, might have been of great importance to him; my father,
though himself of a very sweet disposition, was most unhappy. His
parents looked upon him as moonstruck, while he himself, whatever his
aspirations, was conscious that he had done nothing to justify the
eccentricity of his course, or the violation of all prudential
considerations in which he daily indulged. In these perplexities, the
usual alternative was again had recourse to--absence; he was sent
abroad, to travel in France, which the peace then permitted, visit some
friends, see Paris, and then proceed to Bordeaux if he felt inclined. My
father travelled in France, and then proceeded to Paris, where he
remained till the eve of great events in that capital. This was a visit
recollected with satisfaction. He lived with learned men and moved in
vast libraries, and returned in the earlier part of 1788, with some
little knowledge of life, and with a considerable quantity of books.
At this time Peter Pindar flourished in all the wantonness of literary
riot. He was at the height of his flagrant notoriety. The novelty and
the boldness of his style carried the million with him. The most exalted
station was not exempt from his audacious criticism, and learned
institutions trembled at the sallies whose ribaldry often cloaked taste,
intelligence, and good sense. His "Odes to the Academicians," which
first secured him the ear of the town, were written by one who could
himself guide the pencil with skill and feeling, and who, in the form of
a mechanic's son, had even the felicity to discover the vigorous genius
of Opie. The mock-heroic which invaded with success the sacred recesses
of the palace, and which was fruitlessly menaced by Secretaries of
State, proved a reckless intrepidity, which is apt to be popular with
"the general." The powerful and the learned quailed beneath the lash
with an affected contempt which scarcely veiled their tremor. In the
meantime, as in the latter days of the Empire, the barbarian ravaged the
country, while the pale-faced patricians were inactive within the walls.
No one offered resistance.
There appeared about this time a satire "On the Abuse of Satire." The
verses were polished and pointed; a happy echo of that style of Mr. Pope
which still lingered in the spell-bound ear of the public. Peculiarly
they offered a contrast to the irregular effusions of the popular
assailant whom they in turn assailed, for the object of their indignant
invective was the bard of the "Lousiad." The poem was anonymous, and was
addressed to Dr. Warton in lines of even classic grace. Its publication
was appropriate. There are moments when every one is inclined to praise,
especially when the praise of a new pen may at the same time revenge the
insults of an old one.
But if there could be any doubt of the success of this new hand, it was
quickly removed by the conduct of Peter Pindar himself. As is not
unusual with persons of his habits, Wolcot was extremely sensitive, and,
brandishing a tomahawk, always himself shrank from a scratch. This was
shown some years afterwards by his violent assault on Mr. Gifford, with
a bludgeon, in a bookseller's shop, because the author of the "Baviad
and Mæviad" had presumed to castigate the great lampooner of the age. In
the present instance, the furious Wolcot leapt to the rash conclusion,
that the author of the satire was no less a personage than Mr. Hayley,
and he assailed the elegant author of the "Triumphs of Temper" in a
virulent pasquinade. This ill-considered movement of his adversary of
course achieved the complete success of the anonymous writer.
My father, who came up to town to read the newspapers at the St. James's
Coffee-house, found their columns filled with extracts from the
fortunate effusion of the hour, conjectures as to its writer, and much
gossip respecting Wolcot and Hayley. He returned to Enfield laden with
the journals, and, presenting them to his parents, broke to them the
intelligence, that at length he was not only an author, but a successful
one.
He was indebted to this slight effort for something almost as agreeable
as the public recognition of his ability, and that was the acquaintance,
and almost immediately the warm personal friendship, of Mr. Pye. Mr. Pye
was the head of an ancient English family that figured in the
Parliaments and struggles of the Stuarts; he was member for the County
of Berkshire, where his ancestral seat of Faringdon was situate, and at
a later period (1790) became Poet Laureat. In those days, when literary
clubs did not exist, and when even political ones were extremely limited
and exclusive in their character, the booksellers' shops were social
rendezvous. Debrett's was the chief haunt of the Whigs; Hatchard's, I
believe, of the Tories. It was at the latter house that my father made
the acquaintance of Mr. Pye, then publishing his translation of
Aristotle's Poetics, and so strong was party feeling at that period,
that one day, walking together down Piccadilly, Mr. Pye, stopping at the
door of Debrett, requested his companion to go in and purchase a
particular pamphlet for him, adding that if he had the audacity to
enter, more than one person would tread upon his toes.
My father at last had a friend. Mr. Pye, though double his age, was
still a young man, and the literary sympathy between them was complete.
Unfortunately, the member for Berkshire was a man rather of an elegant
turn of mind, than one of that energy and vigour which a youth required
for a companion at that moment. Their tastes and pursuits were perhaps a
little too similar. They addressed poetical epistles to each other, and
were, reciprocally, too gentle critics. But Mr. Pye was a most amiable
and accomplished man, a fine classical scholar, and a master of correct
versification. He paid a visit to Enfield, and by his influence hastened
a conclusion at which my grandfather was just arriving, to wit, that he
would no longer persist in the fruitless effort of converting a poet
into a merchant, and that content with the independence he had realised,
he would abandon his dreams of founding a dynasty of financiers. From
this moment all disquietude ceased beneath this always well-meaning,
though often perplexed, roof, while my father, enabled amply to gratify
his darling passion of book-collecting, passed his days in tranquil
study, and in the society of congenial spirits.
His new friend introduced him almost immediately to Mr. James Pettit
Andrews, a Berkshire gentleman of literary pursuits, and whose
hospitable table at Brompton was the resort of the best literary society
of the day. Here my father was a frequent guest, and walking home one
night together from this house, where they had both dined, he made the
acquaintance of a young poet, which soon ripened into intimacy, and
which throughout sixty years, notwithstanding many changes of life,
never died away. This youthful poet had already gained laurels, though
he was only three or four years older than my father, but I am not at
this moment quite aware whether his brow was yet encircled with the
amaranthine wreath of the "Pleasures of Memory."
Some years after this, great vicissitudes unhappily occurred in the
family of Mr. Pye. He was obliged to retire from Parliament, and to sell
his family estate of Faringdon. His Majesty had already, on the death of
Thomas Warton, nominated him Poet Laureat, and after his retirement from
Parliament, the government which he had supported, appointed him a
Commissioner of Police. It was in these days that his friend, Mr. Penn,
of Stoke Park, in Buckinghamshire, presented him with a cottage worthy
of a poet on his beautiful estate; and it was thus my father became
acquainted with the amiable descendant of the most successful of
colonisers, and with that classic domain which the genius of Gray, as it
were, now haunts, and has for ever hallowed, and from which he beheld
with fond and musing eye, those
Distant spires and antique towers,
that no one can now look upon without remembering him. It was amid these
rambles in Stoke Park, amid the scenes of Gray's genius, the elegiac
churchyard, and the picturesque fragments of the Long Story, talking
over the deeds of "Great Rebellion" with the descendants of Cavaliers
and Parliament-men, that my father first imbibed that feeling for the
county of Buckingham, which induced him occasionally to be a dweller in
its limits, and ultimately, more than a quarter of a century afterwards,
to establish his household gods in its heart. And here, perhaps, I may
be permitted to mention a circumstance, which is indeed trifling, and
yet, as a coincidence, not, I think, without interest. Mr. Pye was the
great-grandson of Sir Robert Pye, of Bradenham, who married Anne, the
eldest daughter of Mr. Hampden. How little could my father dream, sixty
years ago, that he would pass the last quarter of his life in the
mansion-house of Bradenham; that his name would become intimately
connected with the county of Buckingham; and that his own remains would
be interred in the vault of the chancel of Bradenham Church, among the
coffins of the descendants of the Hampdens and the Pyes. All which
should teach us that whatever may be our natural bent, there is a power
in the disposal of events greater than human will.
It was about two years after his first acquaintance with Mr. Pye, that
my father, being then in his twenty-fifth year, influenced by the circle
in which he then lived, gave an anonymous volume to the press, the fate
of which he could little have foreseen. The taste for literary history
was then of recent date in England. It was developed by Dr. Johnson and
the Wartons, who were the true founders of that elegant literature in
which France had so richly preceded us. The fashion for literary
anecdote prevailed at the end of the last century. Mr. Pettit Andrews,
assisted by Mr. Pye and Captain Grose, and shortly afterwards, his
friend, Mr. Seward, in his "Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons," had
both of them produced ingenious works, which had experienced public
favour. But these volumes were rather entertaining than substantial, and
their interest in many instances was necessarily fleeting; all which
made Mr. Rogers observe, that the world was far gone in its anecdotage.
While Mr. Andrews and his friend were hunting for personal details in
the recollections of their contemporaries, my father maintained one day,
that the most interesting of miscellanies might be drawn up by a
well-read man from the library in which he lived. It was objected, on
the other hand, that such a work would be a mere compilation, and could
not succeed with its dead matter in interesting the public. To test the
truth of this assertion, my father occupied himself in the preparation
of an octavo volume, the principal materials of which were found in the
diversified collections of the French Ana; but he enriched his subjects
with as much of our own literature as his reading afforded, and he
conveyed the result in that lively and entertaining style which he from
the first commanded. This collection of "Anecdotes, Characters,
Sketches, and Observations; Literary, Critical, and Historical," as the
title-page of the first edition figures, he invested with the happy
baptism of "Curiosities of Literature."
He sought by this publication neither reputation nor a coarser reward,
for he published his work anonymously, and avowedly as a compilation;
and he not only published the work at his own expense, but in his
heedlessness made a present of the copyright to the bookseller, which
three or four years afterwards he was fortunate enough to purchase at a
public sale. The volume was an experiment whether a taste for literature
could not be infused into the multitude. Its success was so decided,
that its projector was tempted to add a second volume two years
afterward, with a slight attempt at more original research; I observe
that there was a second edition of both volumes in 1794. For twenty
years the brother volumes remained favourites of the public; when after
that long interval their writer, taking advantage of a popular title,
poured forth all the riches of his matured intellect, his refined taste,
and accumulated knowledge into their pages, and produced what may be
fairly described as the most celebrated Miscellany of Modern Literature.
The moment that the name of the youthful author of the "Abuse of Satire"
had transpired, Peter Pindar, faithful to the instinct of his nature,
wrote a letter of congratulation and compliment to his assailant, and
desired to make his acquaintance. The invitation was responded to, and
until the death of Wolcot, they were intimate. My father always
described Wolcot as a warm-hearted man; coarse in his manners, and
rather rough, but eager to serve those whom he liked, of which, indeed,
I might appropriately mention an instance.
It so happened, that about the year 1795, when he was in his 29th year
there came over my father that mysterious illness to which the youth of
men of sensibility, and especially literary men, is frequently
subject--a failing of nervous energy, occasioned by study and too
sedentary habits, early and habitual reverie, restless and indefinite
purpose. The symptoms, physical and moral, are most distressing:
lassitude and despondency. And it usually happens, as in the present
instance, that the cause of suffering is not recognised; and that
medical men, misled by the superficial symptoms, and not seeking to
acquaint themselves with the psychology of their patients, arrive at
erroneous, often fatal, conclusions. In this case, the most eminent of
the faculty gave it as their opinion, that the disease was consumption.
Dr. Turton, if I recollect right, was then the most considered physician
of the day. An immediate visit to a warmer climate was his specific; and
as the Continent was then disturbed and foreign residence out of the
question, Dr. Turton recommended that his patient should establish
himself without delay in Devonshire.
When my father communicated this impending change in his life to Wolcot,
the modern Skelton shook his head. He did not believe that his friend
was in a consumption, but being a Devonshire man, and loving very much
his native province, he highly approved of the remedy. He gave my father
several letters of introduction to persons of consideration at Exeter;
among others, one whom he justly described as a poet and a physician,
and the best of men, the late Dr. Hugh Downman. Provincial cities very
often enjoy a transient term of intellectual distinction. An eminent man
often collects around him congenial spirits, and the power of
association sometimes produces distant effects which even an individual,
however gifted, could scarcely have anticipated. A combination of
circumstances had made at this time Exeter a literary metropolis. A
number of distinguished men flourished there at the same moment: some of
their names are even now remembered. Jackson of Exeter still survives as
a native composer of original genius. He was also an author of high
æsthetical speculation. The heroic poems of Hole are forgotten, but his
essay on the Arabian Nights is still a cherished volume of elegant and
learned criticism. Hayter was the classic antiquary who first discovered
the art of unrolling the MSS. of Herculaneum. There were many others,
noisier and more bustling, who are now forgotten, though they in some
degree influenced the literary opinion of their time. It was said, and I
believe truly, that the two principal, if not sole, organs of periodical
criticism at that time, I think the "Critical Review" and the "Monthly
Review," were principally supported by Exeter contributions. No doubt
this circumstance may account for a great deal of mutual praise and
sympathetic opinion on literary subjects, which, by a convenient
arrangement, appeared in the pages of publications otherwise professing
contrary opinions on all others. Exeter had then even a learned society
which published its Transactions.
With such companions, by whom he was received with a kindness and
hospitality which to the last he often dwelt on, it may easily be
supposed that the banishment of my father from the delights of literary
London was not as productive a source of gloom as the exile of Ovid to
the savage Pontus, even if it had not been his happy fortune to have
been received on terms of intimate friendship by the accomplished family
of Mr. Baring, who was then member for Exeter, and beneath whose roof he
passed a great portion of the period of nearly three years during which
he remained in Devonshire.
The illness of my father was relieved, but not removed, by this change
of life. Dr. Downman was his physician, whose only remedies were port
wine, horse-exercise, rowing on the neighbouring river, and the
distraction of agreeable society. This wise physician recognised the
temperament of his patient, and perceived that his physical derangement
was an effect instead of a cause. My father instead of being in a
consumption, was endowed with a frame of almost super-human strength,
and which was destined for half a century of continuous labour and
sedentary life. The vital principle in him, indeed, was so strong that
when he left us at eighty-two, it was only as the victim of a violent
epidemic, against whose virulence he struggled with so much power, that
it was clear, but for this casualty, he might have been spared to this
world even for several years.
I should think that this illness of his youth, and which, though of a
fitful character, was of many years' duration, arose from his inability
to direct to a satisfactory end the intellectual power which he was
conscious of possessing. He would mention the ten years of his life,
from twenty-five to thirty-five years of age, as a period very deficient
in self-contentedness. The fact is, with a poetic temperament, he had
been born in an age when the poetic faith of which he was a votary had
fallen into decrepitude, and had become only a form with the public, not
yet gifted with sufficient fervour to discover a new creed. He was a
pupil of Pope and Boileau, yet both from his native impulse and from the
glowing influence of Rousseau, he felt the necessity and desire of
infusing into the verse of the day more passion than might resound from
the frigid lyre of Mr. Hayley. My father had fancy, sensibility, and an
exquisite taste, but he had not that rare creative power, which the
blended and simultaneous influence of the individual organisation and
the spirit of the age, reciprocally acting upon each other, can alone,
perhaps, perfectly develope; the absence of which, at periods of
transition, is so universally recognised and deplored, and yet which
always, when it does arrive, captivates us, as it were, by surprise. How
much there was of freshness, and fancy, and natural pathos in his mind,
may be discerned in his Persian romance of "The Loves of Mejnoon and
Leila." We who have been accustomed to the great poets of the nineteenth
century seeking their best inspiration in the climate and manners of the
East; who are familiar with the land of the Sun from the isles of Ionia
to the vales of Cashmere; can scarcely appreciate the literary
originality of a writer who, fifty years ago, dared to devise a real
Eastern story, and seeking inspiration in the pages of Oriental
literature, compose it with reference to the Eastern mind, and customs,
and landscape. One must have been familiar with the Almorans and Hamets,
the Visions of Mirza and the kings of Ethiopia, and the other dull and
monstrous masquerades of Orientalism then prevalent, to estimate such an
enterprise, in which, however, one should not forget the author had the
advantage of the guiding friendship of that distinguished Orientalist,
Sir William Ouseley. The reception of this work by the public, and of
other works of fiction which its author gave to them anonymously, was in
every respect encouraging, and their success may impartially be
registered as fairly proportionate to their merits; but it was not a
success, or a proof of power, which, in my father's opinion, compensated
for that life of literary research and study which their composition
disturbed and enfeebled. It was at the ripe age of five-and-thirty that
he renounced his dreams of being an author, and resolved to devote
himself for the rest of his life to the acquisition of knowledge.
When my father, many years afterwards, made the acquaintance of Sir
Walter Scott, the great poet saluted him by reciting a poem of
half-a-dozen stanzas which my father had written in his early youth. Not
altogether without agitation, surprise was expressed that these lines
should have been known, still more that they should have been
remembered. "Ah!" said Sir Walter, "if the writer of these lines had
gone on, he would have been an English poet."[2]
It is possible; it is even probable that, if my father had devoted
himself to the art, he might have become the author of some elegant and
popular didactic poem, on some ordinary subject, which his fancy would
have adorned with grace and his sensibility invested with sentiment;
some small volume which might have reposed with a classic title upon our
library shelves, and served as a prize volume at Ladies' Schools. This
celebrity was not reserved for him: instead of this he was destined to
give to his country a series of works illustrative of its literary and
political history, full of new information and new views, which time
and opinion has ratified as just. But the poetical temperament was not
thrown away upon him; it never is on any one; it was this great gift
which prevented his being a mere literary antiquary; it was this which
animated his page with picture and his narrative with interesting
vivacity; above all, it was this temperament, which invested him with
that sympathy with his subject, which made him the most delightful
biographer in our language. In a word, it was because he was a poet,
that he was a popular writer, and made belles-lettres charming to the
multitude.
It was during the ten years that now occurred that he mainly acquired
that store of facts which were the foundation of his future
speculations. His pen was never idle, but it was to note and to
register, not to compose. His researches were prosecuted every morning
among the MSS. of the British Museum, while his own ample collections
permitted him to pursue his investigation in his own library into the
night. The materials which he accumulated during this period are only
partially exhausted. At the end of ten years, during which, with the
exception of one anonymous work, he never indulged in composition, the
irresistible desire of communicating his conclusions to the world came
over him, and after all his almost childish aspirations, his youth of
reverie and hesitating and imperfect effort, he arrived at the mature
age of forty-five before his career as a great author, influencing
opinion, really commenced.
The next ten years passed entirely in production: from 1812 to 1822 the
press abounded with his works. His "Calamities of Authors," his "Memoirs
of Literary Controversy," in the manner of Bayle; his "Essay on the
Literary Character," the most perfect of his compositions; were all
chapters in that History of English Literature which he then commenced
to meditate, and which it was fated should never be completed.
It was during this period also that he published his "Inquiry into the
Literary and Political Character of James the First," in which he first
opened those views respecting the times and the conduct of the Stuarts,
which were opposed to the long prevalent opinions of this country, but
which with him were at least the result of unprejudiced research, and
their promulgation, as he himself expressed it, "an affair of literary
conscience."[3]
But what retarded his project of a History of our Literature at this
time was the almost embarrassing success of his juvenile production,
"The Curiosities of Literature." These two volumes had already reached
five editions, and their author found himself, by the public demand,
again called upon to sanction their re-appearance. Recognising in this
circumstance some proof of their utility, he resolved to make the work
more worthy of the favour which it enjoyed, and more calculated to
produce the benefit which he desired. Without attempting materially to
alter the character of the first two volumes, he revised and enriched
them, while at the same time he added a third volume of a vein far more
critical, and conveying the results of much original research. The
success of this publication was so great, that its author, after much
hesitation, resolved, as he was wont to say, to take advantage of a
popular title, and pour forth the treasures of his mind in three
additional volumes, which, unlike continuations in general, were at once
greeted with the highest degree of popular delight and esteem. And,
indeed, whether we consider the choice variety of the subjects, the
critical and philosophical speculation which pervades them, the amount
of new and interesting information brought to bear, and the animated
style in which all is conveyed, it is difficult to conceive
miscellaneous literature in a garb more stimulating and attractive.
These six volumes, after many editions, are now condensed into the form
at present given to the public, and in which the development of the
writer's mind for a quarter of a century may be completely traced.
Although my father had on the whole little cause to complain of unfair
criticism, especially considering how isolated he always remained, it is
not to be supposed that a success so eminent should have been exempt in
so long a course from some captious comments. It has been alleged of
late years by some critics, that he was in the habit of exaggerating the
importance of his researches; that he was too fond of styling every
accession to our knowledge, however slight, as a discovery; that there
were some inaccuracies in his early volumes (not very wonderful in so
multifarious a work), and that the foundation of his "secret history"
was often only a single letter, or a passage in a solitary diary.
The sources of secret history at the present day are so rich and
various; there is such an eagerness among their possessors to publish
family papers, even sometimes in shapes, and at dates so recent, as
scarcely to justify their appearance; that modern critics, in their
embarrassment of manuscript wealth, are apt to view with too
depreciating an eye the more limited resources of men of letters at the
commencement of the century. Not five-and-twenty years ago, when
preparing his work on King Charles the First, the application of my
father to make some researches in the State Paper Office was refused by
the Secretary of State of the day. Now, foreign potentates and ministers
of State, and public corporations and the heads of great houses, feel
honoured by such appeals, and respond to them with cordiality. It is not
only the State Paper Office of England, but the Archives of France,
that are open to the historical investigator. But what has produced this
general and expanding taste for literary research in the world, and
especially in England? The labours of our elder authors, whose taste and
acuteness taught us the value of the materials which we in our ignorance
neglected. When my father first frequented the reading-room of the
British Museum at the end of the last century, his companions never
numbered half-a-dozen; among them, if I remember rightly, were Mr.
Pinkerton and Mr. Douce. Now these daily pilgrims of research may be
counted by as many hundreds. Few writers have more contributed to form
and diffuse this delightful and profitable taste for research than the
author of the "Curiosities of Literature;" few writers have been more
successful in inducing us to pause before we accepted without a scruple
the traditionary opinion that has distorted a fact or calumniated a
character; and independently of every other claim which he possesses to
public respect, his literary discoveries, viewed in relation to the age
and the means, were considerable. But he had other claims: a vital
spirit in his page, kindred with the souls of a Bayle and a Montaigne.
His innumerable imitators and their inevitable failure for half a
century alone prove this, and might have made them suspect that there
were some ingredients in the spell besides the accumulation of facts and
a happy title. Many of their publications, perpetually appearing and
constantly forgotten, were drawn up by persons of considerable
acquirements, and were ludicrously mimetic of their prototype, even as
to the size of the volume and the form of the page. What has become of
these "Varieties of Literature," and "Delights of Literature," and
"Delicacies of Literature," and "Relics of Literature,"--and the other
Protean forms of uninspired compilation? Dead as they deserve to be:
while the work, the idea of which occurred to its writer in his early
youth, and which he lived virtually to execute in all the ripeness of
his studious manhood, remains as fresh and popular as ever,--the
Literary Miscellany of the English People.
I have ventured to enter into some details as to the earlier and
obscurer years of my father's life, because I thought that they threw
light upon human character, and that without them, indeed, a just
appreciation of his career could hardly be formed. I am mistaken, if we
do not recognise in his instance two very interesting qualities of life:
predisposition and self-formation. There was a third, which I think is
to be honoured, and that was his sympathy with his order. No one has
written so much about authors, and so well. Indeed, before his time, the
Literary Character had never been fairly placed before the world. He
comprehended its idiosyncrasy: all its strength and all its weakness. He
could soften, because he could explain, its infirmities; in the analysis
and record of its power, he vindicated the right position of authors in
the social scale. They stand between the governors and the governed, he
impresses on us in the closing pages of his greatest work.[4] Though he
shared none of the calamities, and scarcely any of the controversies, of
literature, no one has sympathised so intimately with the sorrows, or so
zealously and impartially registered the instructive disputes, of
literary men. He loved to celebrate the exploits of great writers, and
to show that, in these ages, the pen is a weapon as puissant as the
sword. He was also the first writer who vindicated the position of the
great artist in the history of genius. His pages are studded with
pregnant instances and graceful details, borrowed from the life of Art
and its votaries, and which his intimate and curious acquaintance with
Italian letters readily and happily supplied. Above all writers, he has
maintained the greatness of intellect, and the immortality of thought.
He was himself a complete literary character, a man who really passed
his life in his library. Even marriage produced no change in these
habits; he rose to enter the chamber where he lived alone with his
books, and at night his lamp was ever lit within the same walls.
Nothing, indeed, was more remarkable than the isolation of this
prolonged existence; and it could only be accounted for by the united
influence of three causes: his birth, which brought him no relations or
family acquaintance; the bent of his disposition; and the circumstance
of his inheriting an independent fortune, which rendered unnecessary
those exertions that would have broken up his self-reliance. He disliked
business, and he never required relaxation; he was absorbed in his
pursuits. In London his only amusement was to ramble among booksellers;
if he entered a club, it was only to go into the library. In the
country, he scarcely ever left his room but to saunter in abstraction
upon a terrace; muse over a chapter, or coin a sentence. He had not a
single passion or prejudice: all his convictions were the result of his
own studies, and were often opposed to the impressions which he had
early imbibed. He not only never entered into the politics of the day,
but he could never understand them. He never was connected with any
particular body or set of men; comrades of school or college, or
confederates in that public life which, in England, is, perhaps, the
only foundation of real friendship. In the consideration of a question,
his mind was quite undisturbed by traditionary preconceptions; and it
was this exemption from passion and prejudice which, although his
intelligence was naturally somewhat too ingenious and fanciful for the
conduct of close argument, enabled him, in investigation, often to show
many of the highest attributes of the judicial mind, and particularly to
sum up evidence with singular happiness and ability.
Although in private life he was of a timid nature, his moral courage as
a writer was unimpeachable. Most certainly, throughout his long career,
he never wrote a sentence which he did not believe was true. He will
generally be found to be the advocate of the discomfited and the
oppressed. So his conclusions are often opposed to popular impressions.
This was from no love of paradox, to which he was quite superior; but
because in the conduct of his researches, he too often found that the
unfortunate are calumniated. His vindication of King James the First, he
has himself described as "an affair of literary conscience:" his greater
work on the Life and Times of the son of the first Stuart arose from the
same impulse. He had deeply studied our history during the first moiety
of the seventeenth century; he looked upon it as a famous age; he was
familiar with the works of its great writers, and there was scarcely one
of its almost innumerable pamphlets with which he was not acquainted.
During the thoughtful investigations of many years, he had arrived at
results which were not adapted to please the passing multitude, but
which, because he held them to be authentic, he was uneasy lest he
should die without recording. Yet strong as were his convictions,
although, notwithstanding his education in the revolutionary philosophy
of the eighteenth century, his nature and his studies had made him a
votary of loyalty and reverence, his pen was always prompt to do justice
to those who might be looked upon as the adversaries of his own cause:
and this was because his cause was really truth. If he has upheld Laud
under unjust aspersions, the last labour of his literary life was to
vindicate the character of Hugh Peters. If, from the recollection of the
sufferings of his race, and from profound reflection on the principles
of the Institution, he was hostile to the Papacy, no writer in our
literature has done more complete justice to the conduct of the English
Romanists. Who can read his history of Chidiock Titchbourne unmoved? or
can refuse to sympathise with his account of the painful difficulties of
the English Monarchs with their loyal subjects of the old faith? If in
a parliamentary country he has dared to criticise the conduct of
Parliaments, it was only because an impartial judgment had taught him,
as he himself expresses it, that "Parliaments have their passions as
well as individuals."
He was five years in the composition of his work on the "Life and Reign
of Charles the First," and the five volumes appeared at intervals
between 1828 and 1831. It was feared by his publisher, that the
distracted epoch at which this work was issued, and the tendency of the
times, apparently so adverse to his own views, might prove very
injurious to its reception. But the effect of these circumstances was
the reverse. The minds of men were inclined to the grave and national
considerations that were involved in these investigations. The
principles of political institutions, the rival claims of the two Houses
of Parliament, the authority of the Established Church, the demands of
religious sects, were, after a long lapse of years, anew the theme of
public discussion. Men were attracted to a writer who traced the origin
of the anti-monarchical principle in modern Europe; treated of the arts
of insurgency; gave them, at the same time, a critical history of the
Puritans, and a treatise on the genius of the Papacy; scrutinised the
conduct of triumphant patriots, and vindicated a decapitated monarch.
The success of this work was eminent; and its author appeared for the
first and only time of his life in public, when amidst the cheers of
under-graduates, and the applause of graver men, the solitary student
received an honorary degree from the University of Oxford, a fitting
homage, in the language of the great University, "OPTIMI REGIS OPTIMO
VINDICI."
I cannot but recall a trait that happened on this occasion. After my
father returned to his hotel from the theatre, a stranger requested an
interview with him. A Swiss gentleman, travelling in England at the
time, who had witnessed the scene just closed, begged to express the
reason why he presumed thus personally and cordially to congratulate
the new Doctor of Civil Law. He was the son of my grandfather's chief
clerk, and remembered his parent's employer; whom he regretted did not
survive to be aware of this honourable day. Thus, amid all the strange
vicissitudes of life, we are ever, as it were, moving in a circle.
Notwithstanding he was now approaching his seventieth year, his health
being unbroken and his constitution very robust, my father resolved
vigorously to devote himself to the composition of the history of our
vernacular Literature. He hesitated for a moment, whether he should at
once address himself to this greater task, or whether he should first
complete a Life of Pope, for which he had made great preparations, and
which had long occupied his thoughts. His review of "Spence's Anecdotes"
in the Quarterly, so far back as 1820, which gave rise to the celebrated
Pope Controversy, in which Mr. Campbell, Lord Byron, Mr. Bowles, Mr.
Roscoe, and others less eminent broke lances, would prove how well
qualified, even at that distant date, the critic was to become the
biographer of the great writer, whose literary excellency and moral
conduct he, on that occasion, alike vindicated. But, unfortunately as it
turned out, my father was persuaded to address himself to the weightier
task. Hitherto, in his publications, he had always felt an extreme
reluctance to travel over ground which others had previously visited. He
liked to give new matter, and devote himself to detached points, on
which he entertained different opinions from those prevalent. Thus his
works are generally of a supplementary character, and assume in their
readers a certain degree of preliminary knowledge. In the present
instance he was induced to frame his undertaking on a different scale,
and to prepare a history which should be complete in itself, and supply
the reader with a perfect view of the gradual formation of our language
and literature. He proposed to effect this in six volumes; though, I
apprehend, he would not have succeeded in fulfilling his intentions
within that limit. His treatment of the period of Queen Anne would have
been very ample, and he would also have accomplished in this general
work a purpose which he had also long contemplated, and for which he had
made curious and extensive collections, namely, a History of the English
Freethinkers.
But all these great plans were destined to a terrible defeat. Towards
the end of the year 1839, still in the full vigour of his health and
intellect, he suffered a paralysis of the optic nerve; and that eye,
which for so long a term had kindled with critical interest over the
volumes of so many literatures and so many languages, was doomed to
pursue its animated course no more. Considering the bitterness of such a
calamity to one whose powers were otherwise not in the least impaired,
he bore on the whole his fate with magnanimity, even with cheerfulness.
Unhappily, his previous habits of study and composition rendered the
habit of dictation intolerable, even impossible to him. But with the
assistance of his daughter, whose intelligent solicitude he has
commemorated in more than one grateful passage, he selected from his
manuscripts three volumes, which he wished to have published under the
becoming title of "A Fragment of a History of English Literature," but
which were eventually given to the public under that of "Amenities of
Literature."
He was also enabled during these last years of physical, though not of
moral, gloom, to prepare a new edition of his work on the Life and Times
of Charles the First, which had been for some time out of print. He
contrived, though slowly, and with great labour, very carefully to
revise, and improve, and enrich these volumes. He was wont to say that
the best monument to an author was a good edition of his works: it is my
purpose that he should possess this memorial. He has been described by a
great authority as a writer sui generis; and indeed had he never
written, it appears to me, that there would have been a gap in our
libraries, which it would have been difficult to supply. Of him it might
be added that, for an author, his end was an euthanasia, for on the day
before he was seized by that fatal epidemic, of the danger of which, to
the last moment, he was unconscious, he was apprised by his publishers,
that all his works were out of print, and that their re-publication
could no longer be delayed.
In this notice of the career of my father, I have ventured to draw
attention to three circumstances which I thought would be esteemed
interesting; namely, predisposition, self-formation, and sympathy with
his order. There is yet another which completes and crowns the
character,--constancy of purpose; and it is only in considering his
course as a whole, that we see how harmonious and consistent have been
that life and its labours, which, in a partial and brief view, might be
supposed to have been somewhat desultory and fragmentary.
On his moral character I shall scarcely presume to dwell. The
philosophic sweetness of his disposition, the serenity of his lot, and
the elevating nature of his pursuits, combined to enable him to pass
through life without an evil act, almost without an evil thought. As the
world has always been fond of personal details respecting men who have
been celebrated, I will mention that he was fair, with a Bourbon nose,
and brown eyes of extraordinary beauty and lustre. He wore a small black
velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his shoulders in curls
almost as flowing as in his boyhood. His extremities were delicate and
well-formed, and his leg, at his last hour, as shapely as in his youth,
which showed the vigour of his frame. Latterly he had become corpulent.
He did not excel in conversation, though in his domestic circle he was
garrulous. Everything interested him; and blind, and eighty-two, he was
still as susceptible as a child. One of his last acts was to compose
some verses of gay gratitude to his daughter-in-law, who was his London
correspondent, and to whose lively pen his last years were indebted for
constant amusement. He had by nature a singular volatility which never
deserted him. His feelings, though always amiable, were not painfully
deep, and amid joy or sorrow, the philosophic vein was ever evident. He
more resembled Goldsmith than any man that I can compare him to: in his
conversation, his apparent confusion of ideas ending with some
felicitous phrase of genius, his naïveté, his simplicity not untouched
with a dash of sarcasm affecting innocence--one was often reminded of
the gifted and interesting friend of Burke and Johnson. There was,
however, one trait in which my father did not resemble Goldsmith: he had
no vanity. Indeed, one of his few infirmities was rather a deficiency of
self-esteem.
On the whole, I hope--nay I believe--that taking all into
consideration--the integrity and completeness of his existence, the fact
that, for sixty years, he largely contributed to form the taste, charm
the leisure, and direct the studious dispositions, of the great body of
the public, and that his works have extensively and curiously
illustrated the literary and political history of our country, it will
be conceded, that in his life and labours, he repaid England for the
protection and the hospitality which this country accorded to his father
a century ago.
D.
HUGHENDEN MANOR,
_Christmas_, 1848.