Drawn artfully aside; and on his sight
Burst the full tide of day. Surprised he stood,
Not knowing where he was, nor what he saw.
The skilful artist first, as first in place,
He view'd, then seized his hand, then felt his own,
Then mark'd their near resemblance, much perplex'd,
And still the more perplex'd the more he saw.
Now silence first th' impatient mother broke,
And, as her eager looks on him she bent,
"My son (she cried), my son!" On her he gazed
With fresh surprise. "And what!" he cried, "art thou
My mother? for thy voice bespeaks thee such,
Though to my sight unknown."--"Thy mother I
(She quick replied); thy sister, brother, these."--
"O! 'tis too much (he said); too soon to part,
Ere well we meet! But this new flood of day
O'erpowers me, and I feel a death-like damp
Chill all my frame, and stop my faltering tongue."
Now Lydia, so they call'd his gentle friend,
Who, with averted eye, but in her soul
Had felt the lancing steel, her aid applied,
"And stay, dear youth (she said), or with thee take
Thy Lydia, thine alike in life or death!"
At Lydia's name, at Lydia's well known voice,
He strove again to raise his drooping head
And ope his closing eye, but strove in vain,
And on her trembling bosom sunk away.
Now other fears distract his weeping friends:
But short their grief! for soon his life return'd,
And, with return of life, return'd their peace.--(B. iii.)
The country which he has undertaken to describe in this poem is fertile
and tame. There was little left to him, except to enlarge on its
antiquities, to speak of the habitations that were scattered over it,
and to compliment the most distinguished among their possessors. Every
day must detract something from the interest, such as it is, that arises
from these sources. A poet should take care not to make the fund of his
reputation liable to be affected by dilapidations, or to be passed away
by the hands of a conveyancer.
It would seem as if he had never visited a tract of land much wilder
than that in which he was bred and born. In speaking of "embattled
walls, raised on the mountain precipice," he particularises "Beaudesert;
Old Montfort's seat;"[2]--a place, which, though it is pleasantly
diversified with hill and dale, has no pretensions of so lofty a kind.
This, he tells us, was "the haunt of his youthful steps;" and here he
met with Somerville, the poet of the Chase, to whom both the subject and
the title of his poem might have been suggested by that extensive
common, known by the name of Cannock Chase,[3] on the border of which
Beaudesert is situated.
The digressions, with which he has endeavoured to enliven the monotony
of his subject, are sometimes very far-fetched. He has scarcely finished
his exordium, when he goes back to the third day of the creation, and
then passes on to the deluge. This reminds one of the Mock Advocate in
the Plaideurs of Racine, who, having to defend the cause of a dog that
had robbed the pantry, begins,
Avant la naissance du monde----
on which the judge yawns and interrupts him,
Avocat, ah! passons an deluge.
Of his shorter pieces, the three Elegies on Birds are well deserving of
notice. That entitled the Blackbirds is so prettily imagined, and so
neatly expressed, that it is worth a long poem. Thrice has Shenstone
mentioned it in his Letters, in such a manner as to show how much it had
pleased him. The Goldfinches is only less excellent. He has spoiled the
Swallows by the seriousness of the moral.
Nunc non erat his locus.
The first half of Peytoe's Ghost has enough in it to raise a curiosity,
which is disappointed by the remainder.
FOOTNOTES
[1] No. LV.
[2] Edge-Hill, Book I.
[3] The author has here fallen into an error in confounding Beaudesert,
near Henley in Arden, with a place of the same name, near Cannock
Chase. The mistake was pointed out to him a few days after its
publication, by his valued friend and relative, the Rev. Thomas
Price, Rector of Enville, Staffordshire. Mr. Price's letter will
furnish the best explanation. He writes:--
"MY DEAR CARY,
"In your life of Jago, I am afraid you have fallen into a mistake, by
confounding the two Beaudeserts. That one of which Jago's father was
Rector, and near which Somerville resided, is, as you have stated in
the beginning of the life, near Henley, and to that the words, "Old
Montfort's seat" must refer, because Dugdale, treating of Beldesert,
near Henley, says, 'on the east side of the last mentioned brook
runneth a hilly tract, bordered with deep vallies on each part; the
point whereof maketh a kind of promontory, whose ascent being
somewhat steep, gave occasion of the fortifying thereat first,
considering its situation in these woodland parts, where, through the
opportunity of so much shelter, advantage was most like to be taken
by the disherited English and their offspring, to make head for their
redemption from the Norman yoke. Tis not unlike, but this
_mountainous_ ground, &c. Thurslem de Montfort, near kinsman of the
first Norman Earl of Warwick, erected that strong castle, whereunto,
by reason of its pleasant situation, the French name Beldesert, was
given, and which continued the chief seat of his descendants for
divers ages.'"--ED.
* * * * *
RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE.
Richard Cambridge, the son of a Turkey merchant, descended from a family
long settled in Gloucestershire, was born in London, on the fourteenth
of February, 1717. His father dying soon after his birth, the care of
his education devolved on his mother and his maternal uncle, Thomas
Owen, Esq. a lawyer who had retired from practice to his seat in
Buckinghamshire, and who, having no children of his own, adopted his
nephew. At an early age he was sent to Eton, where, among his
schoolfellows and associates, were Gray, West, Jacob Bryant, the Earl
of Orford, and others eminent for wit or learning. Here he contracted
not only a literary taste and habits of study, but that preference for
the quiet amusements of a country life, which afterwards formed a part
of his character. In 1734 he was removed from Eton to Oxford, and
admitted a gentleman commoner of St. John's College. On the marriage of
the Prince of Wales, two years after, he contributed some verses to the
Congratulatory Poems from that University. A ludicrous picture, which he
draws of academical festivity, betrays the future author of the
Scribleriad:--
In flowing robes and squared caps advance,
Pallas their guide, her ever-favour'd band;
As they approach they join in mystic dance,
Large scrolls of paper waving in their hand;
Nearer they come, I heard them sweetly sing.
He left the University without taking a degree, and in 1737 became a
member of Lincoln's Inn. In four years after he married the second
daughter of George Trenchard, Esq. of Woolverton, in Dorsetshire, who
was Member of Parliament for Poole, and son of Sir John Trenchard,
Secretary of State to King William. Retiring to his family mansion of
Whitminster, in Gloucestershire, on the banks of the Stroud, he employed
himself in making that stream navigable to its junction with the Severn,
in improving his buildings, and in ornamenting his grounds, which lay
pleasantly in the rich vale of Berkeley. Here his happiness was
interrupted by the death of one among his former playmates at Eton, whom
he had most distinguished by his affection. This was Captain Berkeley,
an officer, who in those happy times, when military men were not yet
educated apart from scholars, had added to his other accomplishments a
love of letters, and who fell in the battle of Fontenoy. This affliction
discouraged him from proceeding in a poem on Society, which he had
intended as a memorial of their friendship. The opening does not promise
well enough to make us regret its discontinuance.
At Whitminster he had the honour of entertaining the Prince of Wales,
with his consort, and their daughter the late Duchess Dowager of
Brunswick, then on a visit to Lord Bathurst at Cirencester. The royal
guests were feasted in a vessel of his own constructing, that was moored
on a reach of the Severn; and the Prince gratified him by declaring,
that he had often made similar attempts on the Thames, but never with
equal success. To the exercise of mechanical ingenuity in improving the
art of boat-building, he added uncommon skill in the use of the bow and
arrow, and had assembled all the varieties of those instruments that
could be procured from different countries.
He appears to have possessed in an unusual degree, the power of suddenly
ingratiating himself with those who conversed with him. A gentleman who
had never before seen him, and who had reluctantly accompanied the
Prince in his aquatic expedition, was so much pleased with Cambridge, as
to be among the foremost to acknowledge his satisfaction; and having
been introduced by William Whitehead, then tutor to the Earl of Jersey's
eldest son, into the house of that nobleman, he soon became a welcome
guest, and formed a lasting friendship with one of the family, who was
afterwards Earl of Clarendon. In the number of his intimates he reckoned
Bathurst, afterwards Chancellor, with whom an acquaintance, begun at
Eton, had been continued at Lincoln's Inn; Carteret, Lyttelton,
Grenville, Chesterfield, Yorke, Pitt, and Pulteney. In order to
facilitate his intercourse with such associates, and perhaps in
conformity with the advice of his departed friend Berkeley, who had
recommended London as the proper stage for the display of his poetical
talent, he was induced to pass two of his winters in the capital; but
finding that the air of the town was injurious to his health, in 1751 he
purchased a residence at Twickenham. He had now another opportunity of
showing his taste for rural embellishment, in counteracting the effects
of his predecessor's formality, in opening his lawns and grouping his
trees with an art that wore the appearance of negligence. An addition to
his fortune by the decease of his uncle Mr. Owen, who left him his name
together with his estate, enabled him to gratify these propensities. By
some of his powerful friends he had been urged to obtain a seat in
Parliament, and addict himself to a public life; but he valued his
tranquillity too highly to comply with their solicitations. A sonnet
addressed to him by his friend Edwards, author of the Canons of
Criticism, and which is not without elegance, tended to confirm him in
his resolve.
In the year[1] of his removal to Twickenham, the Scribleriad was
published, a poem calculated to please the learned, rather than the
vulgar, and with respect to which he had observed the rule of the _nonum
prematur in annum_. To The World, the periodical paper undertaken soon
after by Moore, and continued for four years, he contributed twenty-one
numbers. Though determined against taking an active part in public
affairs, yet he shewed himself to be far from indifferent to the
interests of his country. Her maritime glory more peculiarly engaged his
attention.
Anson, Boscawen, and indeed nearly all the distinguished seamen of his
day, were among his intimates or acquaintance; and he assisted some of
the principal navigators in drawing up the relations which they gave to
the world of their discoveries. In 1761, he was prompted by his
apprehensions, that the nation was not sufficiently on her guard against
the endeavours making by the French to deprive her of her possessions in
the East, to publish a History of the War upon the Coast of Coromandel.
The great work undertaken by Mr. Orme prevented him from pursuing the
subject.
Continuing thus to pass his days in the enjoyment of domestic happiness
and learned ease, surrounded by a train of menials grown grey in his
service, exercising the rites of hospitality with uniform cheerfulness,
and performing the duties of religion with exemplary punctuality,
respected by the good and admired by the ingenious, he reached his
eighty-third year with little inconvenience from the usual infirmities
of age. His faculties then declining, he was dismissed by a gradual
exhaustion of his natural powers, and resigning his breath without a
sigh on the seventeenth of September, 1802--
--Like ripe fruit he dropp'd
Into his mother's lap ...
...for death mature.
Having always lived in an union of the utmost tenderness with his
family, he exhibited a pleasing instance of the "ruling passion strong
in death." "Having passed," says his son, "a considerable time in a sort
of doze, from which it was thought he had hardly strength to revive, he
awoke, and upon seeing me, feebly articulated, 'How do the dear people
do?' When I answered that they were well; with a smile upon his
countenance, and an increased energy of voice, he replied, 'I thank
God;' and then reposed his head upon his pillow, and spoke no more."
He was buried at Twickenham, where, on inquiring a few years ago, I
found that no monument had been raised to his memory.
He left behind a widow, a daughter, and two sons. From the narrative of
his life written by one of these, the Reverend Archdeacon Cambridge, and
prefixed to a handsome edition of his poems and his papers in The World,
the above account has been chiefly extracted.
Chesterfield, another of the contributors to The World, inserted in it a
short character of him under the name of Cantabrigiensis, introduced by
an encomium on his temperance; for he was a water-drinker.
That he was what is commonly termed a news-monger, appears from the
following laughable story, told by the late Mr. George Hardinge, the
Welch Judge:--
I wished upon some occasion to borrow a Martial. He told me he had no
such book, _except by heart_. I therefore inferred, that he could not
immediately detect me. Accordingly I sent him an epigram which I had
made, and an English version of it, as from the original. He commended
the latter, but said, that it wanted the neatness of the Roman. When I
undeceived him, he laughed, and forgave me.
It originated in a whimsical fact. Mr. Cambridge had a rage for news;
and living in effect at Richmond, though on the other side of the
Thames, he had the command of many political reporters. As I was then in
professional business at my chambers, I knew less of public news than he
did; and every Saturday, in my way from Lincoln's Inn to a villa of my
own near him, called upon him for the news from London. This I told him
was not unlike what Martial said, L. iii. 7.
Deciano salutem.
Vix Roma egressus, villa novus advena, ruris
Vicini dominum te "quid in urbe?" rogo.
Tu novitatis amans Roma si Tibura malles
Per nos "de villa quae nova" disce "tua."
_Nichols's Illust. of the Literary Hist, of the xviii. Cent_. v. i.
p. 131.
Of his poems, which are neither numerous, nor exhibit much variety of
manner, little remains to be said. Archimage, though a sprightly sally,
cannot be ranked among the successful imitations of Spenser's style.
_Als ne_ and _mote_, how often soever repeated, do not go far towards a
resemblance of the Faery Queene.
In his preface to the Scribleriad, which betrays great solicitude to
explain and vindicate the plan of the poem, he declares that his
intention is "to shew the vanity and uselessness of many studies, reduce
them to a less formidable appearance, and invite our youth to
application, by letting them see that a less degree of it than they
apprehend, judiciously directed, and a very few books indeed, well
recommended, will give them all the real information which they are to
expect from human science." The design was a laudable one. In the poem
itself we feel the want of some principal event, on the development and
issue of which the interest of the whole may turn; as in those patterns
of the mock-heroic, the Secchia Rapita, the Lutrin, and the Rape of the
Lock; an advantage, which these poems in some measure derive from having
been founded in fact; for however trifling the incident by which the
imagination of the poet may have been first excited, when once known or
believed to be true, it communicates something of its own reality to all
the fictions that grow out of it. The hero too is one of the [Greek:
amenaena karaena]; or rather is but the shadow of a shade; for he has
taken the character of Martinus Scriblerus, as he found it in the
memoirs of that unsubstantial personage. The adventures indeed in which
the author has engaged him, though they did not require much power of
invention, are yet sufficiently ludicrous; and we join, perhaps, more
willingly in the laugh, as it is aimed at general folly and not at
individual weakness. The wit is not condensed and sparkling as in the
Dunciad; the writer's chief resource consisting in an adaptation of
passages from writers, ancient and modern, to the purposes of a grave
burlesque; and for the application of these, by a contrivance not very
artificial, it is sometimes necessary to recur to the notes. The style,
if it be not distinguished by any remarkable strength or elegance, is at
least free and unaffected.
The imitations of Horace are often happy: that addressed to Lord
Bathurst, particularly towards the latter part, is perhaps the best. Of
the original jeux d'esprits, the verses occasioned by the Marriage and
Game Acts, both passed the same session, have, I think, most merit. The
Fable of Jotham, or the Borough Hunters, does not make up by ingenuity
for what it wants in reverence. In the Fakeer, a tale professedly
borrowed from Voltaire, the story takes a less humorous turn than as it
is told in the extracts from Pere Le Comte's memoirs in the preface.
FOOTNOTE
[1] In 1752 appeared his Dialogue between a Member and his Servant. The
Intruder in 1754; and the Fakeer in 1756.--_MS. addition_. ED.
* * * * *
TOBIAS SMOLLETT.
Tobias Smollett was born in the parish of Cardross, in Dumbartonshire,
in the year 1721. His father, Archibald, a Scotch gentleman of small
fortune, was the youngest son of Sir James Smollett, who was knighted on
King William's accession, represented the borough of Dumbarton in the
last Scotch Parliament, and was of weight enough to be chosen one of the
commissioners for framing the treaty of union between the two countries.
On his return from Leyden, where it was then the custom for young
Scotchmen to complete their education, Archibald married Barbara, the
daughter of Mr. Cunningham, of Gilbertfield, near Glasgow; and died soon
after the birth of our poet, leaving him, with another son and a
daughter, dependent on the bounty of their grandfather. The place of
Smollett's nativity was endeared to him by its natural beauties;
insomuch that, when he had an opportunity of comparing it with foreign
countries, he preferred the neighbouring lake of Loch Lomond to those
most celebrated in Switzerland and Italy. Being placed at the school of
Dumbarton, which was conducted by John Love, a man of some distinction
as a scholar, he is said to have exercised his poetical talents in
writing satires on the other boys, and in panegyrising his heroic
countryman Wallace. From hence, at the usual age, he was removed to
Glasgow; and there making choice of the study of medicine, was
apprenticed to Mr. John Gordon, a chirurgeon, who afterwards took out a
diploma, and practised as a physician. His irresistible propensity to
burlesque did not suffer the peculiarities of this man, whom he has
represented under the character of Potion, in Roderick Random, to escape
him. He made some amends for the indignity, by introducing honourable
mention of the name of Dr. Gordon in the last of his novels. A more
overt act of contumacy to his superiors, into which his vivacity hurried
him, trifling as it may appear, is so characteristic, that I cannot
leave it untold. A lad, who was apprenticed to a neighbouring
chirurgeon, and with whom he had been engaged in frolic on a winter's
evening, was receiving a severe reprimand from his master for quitting
the shop; and having alleged in his excuse, that he had been hit by a
snow-ball, and had gone out in pursuit of the person who had thrown it,
was listening to the taunts of his master, on the improbability of such
a story. "How long," said the son of Aesculapius, with the confident air
of one fearless of contradiction, "might I stand here, and such a thing
not happen to me?" when Smollett, who stood behind the pillar of the
shop-door, and heard what passed, snatching up a snow-ball, quickly
delivered his playmate from the dilemma in which this question had
placed him, by an answer equally prompt and conclusive. Not content with
this attack, he afterwards made the offender sit for his whole-length
portrait, in the person, as it is supposed, of Crab, in the same novel.
In the midst of these childish sallies, he meditated greater things; and
the sound of the pestle and mortar did not prevent him from attending to
the inspirations of Melpomene. At the age of eighteen he had composed a
tragedy on the murder of James I. the Scottish monarch, and about that
time losing his grandfather, by whom he had been supported, and
discovering that he must thenceforth rely on his own exertions for a
maintenance, he set forth with his juvenile production for London. On
his arrival there, failing as might be expected, to persuade the
managers to bring his tragedy on the stage, he solicited and obtained
the place of a chirurgeon's mate, on board the fleet destined for the
attack of Carthagena. Of this ill-conducted and unfortunate expedition,
he not only made a sketch in his Roderick Random, but afterwards
inserted a more detailed account of it in the Compendium of Voyages.
After a short time, he was so little pleased with his employment, that
he determined to relinquish it, and remain in the West Indies. During
his residence in Jamaica, he met with Miss Anne Lascelles, to whom,
after a few years, he was married, and with whom he expected to receive
a fortune of three thousand pounds. In the islands he probably depended
for a subsistence on the exercise of his skill as a chirurgeon. He
returned to London in the year 1746; and though his family had
distinguished themselves by their revolutionary principles, testified
his sympathy with the late sufferings of his countrymen, in their
expiring struggle for the house of Stuart, by some lines, entitled the
Tears of Scotland. When warned of his indiscretion, he added that
concluding stanza of reproof to his timid counsellors:--
While the warm blood bedews my veins,
And unimpair'd remembrance reigns,
Resentment of my country's fate
Within my filial breast shall beat;
And spite of her insulting foe,
My sympathizing verse shall flow:
Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banish'd peace, thy laurels torn!
His first separate publication was, Advice, a satire, in the autumn of
this year. At the beginning of the next it was followed by a second
part, called Reproof, in which he took an occasion of venting his
resentment against Rich, the manager of Covent Garden, with whom he had
quarrelled concerning an opera, written by him for that theatre, on the
story of Alcestis. In consequence of their dispute the piece was not
acted; nor did he take the poet's usual revenge by printing it.
The fallacious prospects of his wife's possessions now encouraged him to
settle himself in a better house, and to live with more hospitality than
his circumstances would allow him to maintain. These difficulties were
in some measure obviated by the sale of a new translation which he made
of Gil Bias, and still more by the success of Roderick Random, which
appeared in 1748. In none of his succeeding novels has he equalled the
liveliness, force, and nature of this his first essay. So just a picture
of a sea-faring life especially had never before met the public eye.
Many of our naval heroes may probably trace the preference which has
decided them in their choice of a profession to an early acquaintance
with the pages of Roderick Random. He has not, indeed, decorated his
scenes with any seductive colours; yet such is the charm of a highly
wrought description, that it often induces us to overlook what is
disgusting in the objects themselves, and transfer the pleasure arising
from the mere imitation to the reality.