Why d----e what would you be at?
I _writ below myself_, you sot!
Avoiding figures, tropes, what not;
For fear I should my fancy raise
_Above the level of thy plays_!
Warton notices the common practice, about the reign of Elizabeth, of an
author's dedicating a work at once to a number of the nobility.
Chapman's Translation of Homer has sixteen sonnets addressed to lords
and ladies. Henry Lock, in a collection of two hundred religious
sonnets, mingles with such heavenly works the terrestrial composition of
a number of sonnets to his noble patrons; and not to multiply more
instances, our great poet Spenser, in compliance with this disgraceful
custom, or rather in obedience to the established tyranny of patronage,
has prefixed to the Faery Queen fifteen of these adulatory pieces, which
in every respect are the meanest of his compositions. At this period all
men, as well as writers, looked up to the peers as if they were beings
on whose smiles or frowns all sublunary good and evil depended. At a
much later period, Elkanah Settle sent copies round to the chief party,
for he wrote for both parties, accompanied by addresses to extort
pecuniary presents in return. He had latterly one standard _Elegy_, and
one _Epithalamium_, printed off with blanks, which by ingeniously
filling up with the printed names of any great person who died or was
married; no one who was going out of life, or was entering into it,
could pass scot-free.
One of the most singular anecdotes respecting DEDICATIONS in English
bibliography is that of the Polyglot Bible of Dr. Castell. Cromwell,
much to his honour, patronized that great labour, and allowed the paper
to be imported free of all duties, both of excise and custom. It was
published under the protectorate, but many copies had not been disposed
of ere Charles II. ascended the throne. Dr. Castell had dedicated the
work gratefully to Oliver, by mentioning him with peculiar respect in
the preface, but he wavered with Richard Cromwell. At the Restoration,
he cancelled the two last leaves, and supplied their places with three
others, which softened down the republican strains, and blotted
Oliver's name out of the book of life! The differences in what are now
called the _republican_ and the _loyal_ copies have amused the curious
collectors; and the former being very scarce, are most sought after. I
have seen the republican. In the _loyal_ copies the patrons of the work
are mentioned, but their _titles_ are essentially changed;
_Serenissimus_, _Illustrissimus_, and _Honoratissimus_, were epithets
that dared not shew themselves under the _levelling_ influence of the
great fanatic republican.
It is a curious literary folly, not of an individual but of the Spanish
nation, who, when the laws of Castile were reduced into a code under the
reign of Alfonso X. surnamed the Wise, divided the work into _seven
volumes_; that they might be dedicated to the _seven letters_ which
formed the name of his majesty!
Never was a gigantic baby of adulation so crammed with the soft pap of
_Dedications_ as Cardinal Richelieu. French flattery even exceeded
itself.--Among the vast number of very extraordinary dedications to this
man, in which the Divinity itself is disrobed of its attributes to
bestow them on this miserable creature of vanity, I suspect that even
the following one is not the most blasphemous he received. "Who has seen
your face without being seized by those softened terrors which made the
prophets shudder when God showed the beams of his glory! But as He whom
they dared not to approach in the burning bush, and in the noise of
thunders, appeared to them sometimes in the freshness of the zephyrs, so
the softness of your august countenance dissipates at the same time, and
changes into dew, the small vapours which cover its majesty." One of
these herd of dedicators, after the death of Richelieu, suppressed in a
second edition his hyperbolical panegyric, and as a punishment to
himself, dedicated the work to Jesus Christ!
The same taste characterises our own dedications in the reigns of
Charles II. and James II. The great Dryden has carried it to an
excessive height; and nothing is more usual than to compare the _patron_
with the _Divinity_--and at times a fair inference may be drawn that the
former was more in the author's mind than God himself! A Welsh bishop
made an _apology_ to James I. for _preferring_ the Deity--to his
Majesty! Dryden's extravagant dedications were the vices of the time
more than of the man; they were loaded with flattery, and no disgrace
was annexed to such an exercise of men's talents; the contest being who
should go farthest in the most graceful way, and with the best turns of
expression.
An ingenious dedication was contrived by Sir Simon Degge, who dedicated
"the Parson's Counsellor" to Woods, Bishop of Lichfield. Degge highly
complimented the bishop on having most nobly restored the church, which
had been demolished in the civil wars, and was rebuilt but left
unfinished by Bishop Hacket. At the time he wrote the dedication, Woods
had not turned a single stone, and it is said, that much against his
will he did something, from having been so publicly reminded of it by
this ironical dedication.