almost any age would be found wanting. Without being a profound thinker,
he was one of those people who "bother about ends" to the extent of
being unwilling to approve of means unless they are satisfied that the
end in view is good--or at least that there is some end in view. With a
self-complacent age, in which every one was shouting "Forward!" and no
one was expected to inquire "Whither?" he was necessarily out of
sympathy. To the shouters he seemed irrational and irrelevant. They
called him "immoral" when they were solemn, and "whimsical" when they
were merry; and "whimsical" is the epithet with which we are tempted to
label him, if labelled he must be. Genius makes strange bedfellows; and
Peacock's intellectual candour finds itself associated with the
emotional capriciousness of Sterne. Truly, he is always unexpected, and
as often as not superficially inconsequent. To state the three parts of
a syllogism is not in his way; and by implication he challenged half the
major premises in vogue. His scorn of rough-and-ready standards,
commonplaces, and what used to be called "the opinion of all sensible
men" made him disrespectful to common sense. It was common sense once to
believe that the sun went round the earth, and it is still the mark of a
sensible man to ignore, on occasions, the law of contradictions. To that
common sense which is compounded of mental sluggishness and a taste for
being in the majority Peacock's wit was a needle. He was intellectual
enough to enjoy pricking bladders, and so finished a performer that we
never tire of watching him at his play.
He was, in fact, an artist with intellectual curiosity; and just as he
lacked the depth of a philosopher so he wanted the vision of a poet.
That he possessed genius will not be denied; but his art is fanciful
rather than imaginative and of creative power he had next to none. His
life was neither a mission nor a miracle. But he was blessed with that
keen delight in his own sensations which makes a world full of beautiful
and amusing things, charming people, wine, and warm sunshine seem, on
the whole, a very tolerable place, and all metaphysical speculation and
political passion a little unnecessary. He made an art of living, and
his novels are a part of his life. He wrote them because he had a subtle
sense of the ludicrous, a turn for satire, and style. He wrote because
he enjoyed writing; and, with a disregard for the public inconceivable
in a man of sense, he wrote the sort of books that he himself would have
liked to read. They are the sort, we think, that will always be worth
reading.
II[6]
[Sidenote: _Athenaeum_ _Oct. 1911_]
"Between the publication of his [Peacock's] first and last poem
sixty years had elapsed; but the records of his existence would, if
placed in close juxtaposition, hardly fill out ten years."
Thus writes Mr. Freeman; and Mr. Van Doren's book is a failure just
because he has insisted on expanding those records into a volume of
three hundred pages. Of such a work a great part must consist in stating
trivial facts and drawing from them inferences which there is no reason
to accept, and which would be unimportant if accepted.
"About the time of the publication of 'Palmyra,' the young poet
went back to Chertsey to live. His grandfather, Thomas Love, died
December 10, 1805, and Mrs. Love, thus left alone, probably desired
the companionship of her daughter and grandson. A letter to
Hookham, dated two years later, testifies that Peacock soon
extended one of his walking tours much farther than he had hitherto
gone, in an excursion to Scotland."
Here follows an extract from a rather gushing and quite unimportant
letter about the beauties of Scotch scenery, after which the paragraph
concludes as follows:
"Nothing further is known of this Scottish tour, but from it
probably dates Peacock's inveterate prejudice against the Scotch."
This is Mr. Van Doren at his worst and hack biography at normal. At his
best he gives a straightforward account of the little that industry can
unearth concerning a writer of first-rate importance who died but
fifty-five years ago and whose life is yet more obscure than that of
many a smaller man who has been dead twice or thrice as long. Industry
in quest of facts is, indeed, Mr. Van Doren's chief merit, which only
aggravates our surprise and regret at his having concluded his
researches without discovering that Old Sarum is not in Cornwall. Still,
he has written a readable book. His knowledge of English is superior to
that of the majority of his compatriots; and when he is not trying to
be caustic or facetious he is often quite sensible. We can say no more
for him however.
Mr. Freeman aims higher, and though he comes short of his mark his is a
valuable book. He can write well, and will write better; at present he
is set upon being witty and clever, which is the more to be regretted in
that he is both by nature. He has a view of life and letters which, if
it be literary and rather superficial, is, at all events, personal.
Perceiving the insufficiency of material for a biography, he has
attempted an appreciation of Peacock's art. As we set ourselves a
similar task so recently as February last, when reviewing Dr. Young's
edition of the plays, we feel no call to restate our estimate or pit it
against that of this new critic. It need only be said that he realizes,
as does Mr. Van Doren, the singularity of Peacock's genius; that, though
neither has succeeded in showing precisely why it is unique, the English
critic has brought forward some highly illuminating suggestions; and
that reduction by a half would be the greatest improvement that either
book could undergo.
In the circumstances, our interest tends to centre on the biographical
parts of both works. For both are biographical: only Mr. Freeman, who
claims attention for judgment rather than for learning, has been at less
pains to sift and record the minute evidence that contemporary
literature and journalism afford. Fresh evidence, in the shape of
letters and memoirs, may, of course, be brought forward; until then
these two volumes will be final. So far as external evidence goes, the
student is now in possession of all that is known about the author of
"Headlong Hall."
It is surprising that Mr. Freeman's tact did not rescue him from the
temptation into which Mr. Van Doren's industry led him inevitably--the
temptation of finding in Peacock's mature work definable traces of
childish memories and impressions. Still more surprising is it that,
when both have quoted much that is worthless, neither should have
printed the one significant document amongst the surviving fragments of
his boyhood. This is a letter in verse to his mother, which not only
gives promise of the songs that, above all else, have made their author
famous, but is also worth quoting for its peculiar charm and fancy.
Unless we mistake, it has only once been printed, and is hardly known to
the literary public, so here it is:
Dear Mother,
I attempt to write you a letter
In verse, tho' in prose I could do it much better;
The Muse, this cold weather, sleeps up at Parnassus,
And leaves us poor poets as stupid as asses.
She'll tarry still longer, if she has a warm chamber,
A store of old massie, ambrosia, and amber.
Dear mother, don't laugh, you may think she is tipsy
And I, if a poet, must drink like a gipsy.
Suppose I should borrow the horse of Jack Stenton--
A finer ridden beast no muse ever went on--
Pegasus' fleet wings perhaps now are frozen,
I'll send her old Stenton's, I know I've well chosen;
Be it frost, be it thaw, the horse can well canter;
The sight of the beast cannot help to enchant her.
All the boys at our school are well, tho' yet many
Are suffered, at home, to suck eggs with their granny.
"To-morrow," says daddy, "you must go, my dear Billy,
To Englefield House; do not cry, you are silly."
Says the mother, all dressed in silk and in satin,
"Don't cram the poor boy with your Greek and your Latin,
I'll have him a little longer before mine own eyes,
To nurse him and feed him with tarts and mince-pies;
We'll send him to school when the weather is warmer;
Come kiss me, my pretty, my sweet little charmer!"
But now I must banish all fun and all folly,
So doleful's the news I am going to tell ye:
Poor Wade, my schoolfellow, lies low in the gravel,
One month ere fifteen put an end to his travel;
Harmless and mild, and remark'd for good nature;
The cause of his death was his overgrown stature:
His epitaph I wrote, as inserted below;
What tribute more friendly could I on him bestow?
The bard craves one shilling of his own dear mother,
And, if you think proper, add to it another.
That epitaph is better known, but deserves to be better still:
Here lies interred, in silent shade,
The frail remains of Hamlet Wade;
A youth more promising ne'er took breath;
But ere fifteen laid cold in death!
Ye young, ye old, and ye of middle age,
Act well your part, for quit the stage
Of mortal life, one day you must,
And, like him, crumble into dust.
Surely the boy of nine years old who wrote this was destined to be
something better than a minor poet. And did not the delightful mother
who encouraged him to express himself deserve something better for her
son? Indeed, he must have been an enchanting child, with his long,
flaxen curls, bright colouring, and fine, intelligent head. One fancies
him a happy creature, making light work of his Greek and Latin grammar
at Mr. Wicks's school on Englefield Green, at home spoilt and educated,
in the best and most literal sense of the word, by his pretty mother and
his gallant old grandfather. No wonder Queen Charlotte, driving in
Windsor Park, stopped her carriage and got down to kiss the winsome
little boy.
From Peacock's youth and early writings (he was born in 1785 and
published "Palmyra" in 1806) we can gather some idea of his character.
The obvious thing about him is his cleverness. The question is, What
will he make of it? He tries business for a short time; the sea for an
even shorter; and then he settles down in the country to a life of study
and composition: he will be a man of letters. His poems are what we
should expect a clever lad to write. Had they been written at the end of
the nineteenth century doubtless they would have been as fashionably
decadent as, written at the beginning, they are fashionably pompous. It
was clear from the first that Peacock would not be a poet; he lacked the
essential quality--the power of feeling deeply. Before he was twenty it
must have been clear that he possessed a remarkable head and an ordinary
heart. He had wits enough for anything and sufficient feeling and
imagination to write a good song; but in these early days his intellect
served chiefly to save him from sentimentality and the grosser kinds of
rhetoric. It gained him a friend too, and that friend was Shelley.
To think of Peacock's youth is to think of his relations with Shelley.
He seems to have given more than he received: his nature was not
receptive. He made the poet read Greek, and persuaded him that he was
not infected with elephantiasis by quoting Lucretius "to the effect that
the disease was known to exist on the banks of the Nile, _neque praeterea
usquam_." These words were "the greatest comfort to Shelley." The two
young men did a vast amount of walking, arguing, and miscellaneous
reading together, in which Peacock, partly from conviction and partly
from affectation, seems to have been pretty consistent in performing the
office of a wet blanket. Testing his intellect on other people's
enthusiasms, falling sedately and whimsically in love with various
ladies, amongst them his future wife, but keeping such feelings as he
had for the most part to himself, Peacock slipped through all the
critical stages of youth till in 1816 he published "Headlong Hall."
Brains will not make a poet, but they made a superb satirist.
There is nothing to puzzle us in Peacock's accepting a post under the
East India Company. An unusually strong inclination toward Miss Jane
Gryffydh, his "milk-white Snowdonian Antelope" as Shelley calls her,
whom he had not seen for more than eight years, and to whom he became
engaged without further inspection, may possibly have counted for
something in his decision. But the obvious explanation is that a man who
lives by the head needs regular employment, and only he who lives by the
emotions has anything to lose by it. Peacock's feelings were not so fine
that routine could blunt them, nor so deep that an expression of them
could give a satisfactory purpose to life. He entered the Company's
service at the age of four-and-thirty; he found in it congenial friends,
congenial employment, and a salary that enabled him to indulge his
rather luxurious tastes. He kept chambers in London, a house on the
Thames, a good cellar we may be sure, and a wife. Of this part of his
life we know little beyond the fact that he was an able and industrious
official. Probably, we shall not be far wrong in supposing him to have
been much like other officials, only more intelligent, more witty, more
sceptical, more learned, and more "cranky": also he kept stored
somewhere at the back of his mind a spark of that mysterious thing
called genius. At any rate, his recorded opinion, "There has never been
anything perfect under the sun except the compositions of Mozart,"
smacks strongly of classical concerts and the Treasury.
Though during this period he wrote his most entertaining, and perhaps
his most brilliant novel, "Crotchet Castle," the years were heavy with
misfortune. His mother, the human being for whom he seems to have cared
most, died in 1833; before that date his wife had become a hopeless
invalid. Three of his four children were dead before he retired from
affairs. Already he had outlived many of his companions. Sorrow does not
seem to have embittered but neither did it sweeten greatly his temper.
His reticence stiffened, so did his prejudices. Only emotion enables a
man to make something noble and lovely of pain; but intellect teaches
him to bear it like a gentleman.
It is easy to draw a pleasant picture of Peacock's old age; deeply
considered, however, it is profoundly sad. He had stood for many great
causes but for none had he stood greatly. Good nature and benevolence
had done duty for love and pity. He had been more intimate with books
than with men. And so, at the end, he found himself alone. His tragedy
is not that he was lonely, but that he preferred to be so. He retired
with a handsome pension to a sheltered life at Halliford. The jolly old
pagan, the scholar, and the caustic satirist were still alive in him. He
wrote "Gryll Grange." He packed poor Robert Buchanan out of the house
for smoking in it. He terrified a meek curate, who came to persuade him
to leave his burning home, by shouting at him, "By the immortal gods I
will not move." He carried on a desultory correspondence with Lord
Broughton, full of literary humour and literary sentiment. He practised
small benevolences and small tyrannies, liked to see smiling faces about
him, and declined to believe seriously in the unhappiness of others. He
was a thoroughly good-natured, selfish old man.
In old age he had to pay the penalty that awaits those who live by the
head and not by the heart. He had kind acquaintances, but he had no real
friends. He had nothing to look back upon but a series of more or less
amusing events and a tale of successful achievements--no high
enterprises, no splendid failures, no passionate affections. Before him
lay nothing but his books, his dinner, and a literary reputation.
Capable biographers can make pretty pictures of the white-haired scholar
surrounded by his favourite authors. They can turn his petulant
limitations and querulous prejudices into exquisite foibles, his
despotisms into quaint impetuosity, his insensibility to human want and
misery into mellow wisdom. But we cannot forget that the last years of
those who have never passionately pursued impossible ideals or loved
imperfect human beings are probably more attractive to the biographers
who record than to the men and women who have to endure them.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] "The Plays of Thomas Love Peacock." Published for the first time.
Edited by A. B. Young. (David Nutt.)
[5] The week after this article appeared Sir Frederick Pollock wrote to
the _Athenaeum_ complaining of my having called Spedding a prig. Well,
here is a sample of what Spedding has to say about "Melincourt":
"Had the business ended here we should have thought that the
author's better genius had prevailed. We might indeed have
questioned many of his doctrines, both social and political; and
shown cause to doubt whether in the faithful bosom of real nature
they would yield so fair a harvest as in the more accommodating soil
of fiction. But we should have met him with undivided sympathy, as
no idle talker on no idle theme. This, however, his worst genius
interferes to prevent. He has only a half faith in the cause he has
espoused, and dares not let go his interest with the other party. It
is as if, having, in sport or curiosity, raised the veil of truth,
he had felt rebuked by the severity of her aspect, and turned for
relief to more than usual levity and mockery. Hence the perpetual
interruption of the serious and affecting, and sometimes even awful,
interest which belongs to the main argument of the piece, by scenes
of farcical and extravagant caricature which might be pleasant
enough as varieties in that farce of unreason with which he usually
entertains us, but which, coming upon the mind in a state of serious
emotion, are offensive and disagreeable. The two styles appear two
opposite and incompatible moods; and it is impossible so to govern
the imagination or the sympathies as to be in the humour for both.
If you are not disgusted with the lighter, you cannot but be wearied
with the graver."
And again:
"As it is, this affected contrast [the contrast which Spedding
thinks Peacock may have intended between the beauty of Forester and
Anthelia's view of life, and the "gross pictures of corruption,
quackery, and worldliness" with which he surrounds them], instead of
bringing the virtue of his hero into stronger relief, serves only to
make more conspicuous his own want of constancy in his purpose and
faith in his principles."
Spedding solemnly proceeds to give Peacock a little advice about the
construction of his novels, and recommends that "Melincourt" should be
divided into two stories: one to deal with the adventures of Sir Oran
Haut-ton and his election for the borough of Onevote; the other to treat
of "the graver questions concerning the realizations of the spirit of
chivalry under the forms of modern society ... with Forester and
Anthelia for the central figures."
"If he would but set about this latter task in a faithful spirit, we
do not fear to predict, from the specimen which the tale before us,
even in its present state, exhibits, that he would produce a work of
far higher and more enduring interest than any he has yet
attempted."
Let the reader consider "Melincourt," what manner of work it is, and
then judge faithfully between me and Sir Fred.
[6] "The Life of Thomas Love Peacock," By Carl Van Doren. (Dent and
Sons.)
"Thomas Love Peacock." By A. Martin Freeman. (Martin Secker.)
BOSWELL'S LETTERS[7]
[Sidenote: _Athenaeum Feb. 1909_]
Boswell's letters enjoy the advantage of a mysterious history. They were
written between 1758 and 1795, not without a view to publication, but
were lost for more than fifty years. At Boulogne in 1850 Major Stone, of
the East India Company, had the fortunate curiosity to examine a scrap
of paper in which was wrapped some small purchase; it turned out to be a
letter signed by James Boswell, and was traced to the store of an
itinerant paper-vendor, where the letters published in 1856 were
discovered. The anonymous editor of this issue is conjectured--with good
reason, as we think--by Mr. Seccombe, who introduces the volume, to have
been a Philip Francis of the Middle Temple who became later Sir Philip
of the Supreme Consular Court of the Levant; but this matter also is
obscure. The strangest mystery of all, however, is that these
interesting, entertaining, in fact delightful letters, though on their
first appearance they created a mild literary sensation, till last
December had never been reprinted.
The volume before us is a reprint from the first edition, the
introduction by Mr. Seccombe being substituted for that of the original
editor. We wish that Mr. Seccombe had been less modest--less
conservative at any rate. With his view that "the editing was admirably
done" we cannot agree entirely. Francis, who has intercalated blocks of
exegesis and comment between the letters, writes good, straightforward
prose, and appears to have been a good, sensible sort of man. He has
enlivened his editorial labours with irruptions of legal facetiousness
and sagacious reflections. He admires Carlyle. But his lack of subtlety
and his prodigious good sense make him incapable of appreciating the
character of Boswell. Passages in the letters which seemed to him
ridiculous he, in his solicitude for the reader's enjoyment, has been
careful to print in italics; for it is difficult to suppose that Boswell
underlined them himself. The originals are again lost; should the
passages in question really be underlined, it would follow that Boswell
was not unintentionally or unconsciously ridiculous; that all his life
he practised an elaborate mystification; that he succeeded in
hoodwinking the world; that he enlightened Temple alone, who
nevertheless appears to have treated him as though he were what the
world took him for; and that Francis, who saw these underlined
manuscripts, and yet persisted in the conventional view of Boswell, was
not a Mid-Victorian prig but a common imbecile. It is true that he has
been stupid enough to mangle and emasculate the letters that he was
employed to publish; an officious prude unquestionably he was, but no
fool, much less an idiot.
To discuss the character of Boswell has ever been a delicate, not to say
dangerous, undertaking; but at least we may affirm that those who,
judging him from the "Life of Johnson," are dissatisfied with the
ordinary, unfavourable view, will not be put out of countenance by these
letters. To be sure they will not be disappointed of the popular
"Bozzy," ridiculous, vain, and a little vulgar, something of a snob, of
a sycophant even, with an undignified zeal for notoriety and an
imperfect moral sense; but beside him they will find another Boswell,
the friend of Hume and Johnson, with his passion for excellence,
generous nature, good understanding, and genius for observation--a man
by no means to be despised. They will see how this man expresses
thoughts and feelings, often sufficiently commonplace, in words so
astonishingly appropriate that we are amazed by the sheer truth of the
self-revelation; and they may even conjecture that some of his
performances, which have been lightly attributed to dull
self-complacency or a defective sense of proportion, are more probably
the effects of a whimsical and fantastic mind through which ran possibly
a queer strain of madness. Be that as it may, we now select for
quotation a few characteristic passages, leaving the reader to decide
for himself when and how far Boswell is laughing at "Bozzy."
The correspondence with Temple, a fellow-student at Edinburgh, began in
1758, when Boswell was eighteen; for the first eight years, however, he
was too busy making acquaintance with Johnson, travelling on the
Continent, and conducting his famous Corsican adventure, to be a very
prolific letter-writer. In 1766 he settled down in Edinburgh to the law,
which he found intolerably dreary, and a love-affair, which he found too
exciting. "The dear infidel," as he called her, besides being another
man's wife, seems to have been an extravagant and disreputable young
woman:
"In a former part of this letter I have talked a great deal of my
sweet little mistress; I am, however, uneasy about her. Furnishing
a house and maintaining her with a maid will cost me a great deal
of money, and it is too like marriage, or too much a settled plan
of licentiousness; but what can I do?
"Besides, she is ill-bred, quite a rompish girl. She debases my
dignity; she has no refinement, but she is very handsome and very
lively."
What he did was to break with her; four weeks later he writes:
"My life is one of the most romantic that I believe either you or I
really know of; and yet I am a very sensible, good sort of man.
What is the meaning of this, Temple? You may depend upon it that
very soon my follies will be at an end, and I shall turn out an
admirable member of society. Now that I have given my mind the
turn, I am totally emancipated from my charmer, as much as from the
gardener's daughter who now puts on my fire and performs menial
offices like any other wench; and yet just this time twelve month I
was so madly in love as to think of marrying her."
The frequency and solemnity of Boswell's resolutions to amend are
extraordinary, though the fact that his correspondent was a curate
suggests an explanation; in carrying them out he was perfectly normal.