In our last talk we had an opening skirmish with a group of royal people;
we saw James II. flitting away ignominiously from a throne he could not
fill or hold; we saw that rough fighter, the opinionated William III.,
coming to his honors--holding hard, and with gauntleted hand, his amiable
consort, Queen Mary. I spoke of the relationship of these two; also had
some fore-words about Mary’s sister, the future Queen Anne, and about the
death of her boy, the little Duke of Gloucester.
I had something to say of that easy and artful poet, Matthew Prior, who
smartly wrote his way, by judicious panegyrics and well-metred song, from
humble station to that of ambassador at the court of France. We had a
taste of the elegant Congreve, and said much of that bouncer of a man
Daniel De Foe; the character of this latter we cannot greatly esteem--but
when can we cease to admire the talent that gave to us the story of
_Robinson Crusoe_?
Then I spoke to you of Sir Richard Steele--poor Steele! poor Prue! And I
spoke also of his friend Addison, the courtly, the reticent, the graceful,
and the good. All of these men outlived William and Mary; all of them
shone--in their several ways--through the days of Queen Anne.
_Royal Griefs and Friends._
Mary, consort of William III., died some six years before the close of the
century; she was honestly mourned for by the nation; and I cited some of
the tender music which belonged to certain poetic lamentations at the
going off of the gentle Queen. The little boy prince, Gloucester,
presumptive heir to the throne, died in 1700 (so did John Dryden and Sir
William Temple). Scarce two years thereafter and William III.--who was
invalided in his latter days, and took frequent out-of-door exercise--was
thrown from his horse in passing over the roads--not so smooth as
now--between Hampton Court and Kensington. There was some bone-breakage
and bruises, which, like a good soldier, he made light of. In the enforced
confinement that followed, he struggled bravely to fulfil royal duties;
but within a fortnight, as he listened to Albemarle, who brought news
about affairs in Holland, it was observed that his eyes wandered, and his
only comment--whose comments had always been like hammer-strokes--was,
“I’m drawing to the end.”[103] Two days after he died.
Then the palace doors opened for that “good,” and certainly weak, Queen
Anne, whose name is so intimately associated with what is called “the
Augustan age” of English letters, and whose personal characteristics have
already been subjects of mention. She was hardly recovered from her grief
at the death of her prince-boy, and was supported at her advent upon
royalty by that conspicuous friend of her girl years and constant
associate, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. It would be hard to reach any
proper understanding of social and court influences in Anne’s time,
without bringing into view the sharp qualities of this First Lady of her
Chamber. Very few historians have a good word to say for her. She was the
wife of that illustrious general, John of Marlborough, whom we all
associate with his important victories of Blenheim and of Ramillies; and
in whose honor was erected the great memorial column in the Park of
Woodstock, where every American traveller should go to see remnants of an
old royal forest, and to see also the brilliant palace of Blenheim, with
its splendid trophies, all given by the nation--at the warm urgence of
Queen Anne--in honor of the conquering general.
You know the character of Marlborough--elegant, selfish, politic,
treacherous betimes, brave, greedy, sagacious, and avaricious to the last
degree. He made a great figure in William’s time, and still greater in
Anne’s reign; his Duchess, too, figured conspicuously in her court. She
was as enterprising as the Duke, and as money-loving--having smiles and
frowns and tears at command, by which she wheedled or swayed whom she
would. She did not believe in charities that went beyond the house of
Marlborough; in fact, this ancestress of the Churchills was reckoned by
most as a harpy and an elegant vampire. Never a Queen was so beleaguered
with such a friend; she was keeper of the privy purse, and Anne found it
hard (as current stories ran) to get money from her for her private
charities; hard, indeed, to dispose of her cast-off silken robes as she
desired. Why, you ask, did she not blaze up into a flame of anger and of
resolve, and bid the Duchess, once for all, begone? Why are some women
born weak and patient of the chains that bind them? And why are others
born with a cold, imperious disdain and power that tells on weaklings, and
makes the space all round them glitter with their sovereignty?
When this Sarah of Marlborough was first in waiting upon the Princess
Anne, neither Duke nor Duchess (without titles then) could count enough
moneys between them to keep a private carriage for their service; and
before the Duke died their joint revenues amounted to £94,000 per annum.
Then the great park at Woodstock became ducal property. I have said it was
richly worth visiting; its encircling wall is twelve miles in length; the
oaks are magnificent; the artificial waters skirt gardens and shrubberies
that extend over three hundred acres; the grass is velvety; the fallow
deer are in troops of hundreds. And one must remember, in visiting the
locality, that there stood the ancient and renowned royal mansion of Henry
II.--that there was born the Black Prince--and, very probably, Chaucer may
have wandered thereabout, and studied the “daisies white,” and listened to
the whirring of the pheasants--a wood-music one may hear now in all the
remoter alleys.
How many hundred thousands were expended upon the new Blenheim palace,
built in Anne’s time, I will not undertake to compute. The paintings
gathered in it--spoils of the great Duke’s military marches--interest
everyone; but the palace is as cold and stately and unhome-like and
unloveable as was the Duchess herself.
_Builders and Streets._
Sir John Vanbrugh[104] was the architect of Blenheim, and you will
recognize his name as that of one of the popular comedy writers of Queen
Anne’s time, who not only wrote plays, but ran a theatre which he built at
the Haymarket. It was not so successful as the more famous one which
stands thereabout now; the poor architect, too, had a good many buffets
from the stinging Duchess of Marlborough; and some stings besides from
Swift’s waspish pen, which the amiable Duchess did not allow him to
forget.
Another architect of these times, better worth our remembering--for his
constructive abilities--was Sir Christopher Wren, who designed some forty
of the church-spires now standing in London; and he also superintended the
construction of the Cathedral of St. Paul’s, which had been steadily
growing since a date not long after the great fire--thirty-five years
intervening between the laying of the foundations and the lifting of the
cross to the top of the lantern. It is even said that, when he was well
upon ninety, Wren supervised some of the last touches upon this noble
monument to his fame.[105]
There was not so much smoke in London in those days--the consumption of
coal being much more limited--and the great cross could be seen from
Notting Hill, and from the palace windows at Kensington. The Queen never
abandoned this royal residence; and from the gravel road by which
immediate entrance was made, stretched away the waste hunting ground,
afterward converted into the grassy slopes of Hyde Park--stagnant pools
and marshy thickets lying in place of what is now the Serpentine. People
living at Reading in that day--whence ladies now come in for a morning’s
shopping and back to lunch--did then, in seasons of heaviest travelling,
put two days to the journey; and joined teams, and joined forces and
outriders, to make good security against the highwaymen that infested the
great roads leading from that direction into the town. Queen Anne herself
was beset and robbed near to Kew shortly before she came to the throne;
and along Edgeware Road, where are now long lines of haberdasher shops,
and miles of gas-lamps, were gibbets, on which the captured and executed
highwaymen were hung up in warning.
_John Gay._
Some of these highwaymen were hung up in literature too, and made a figure
there; but not, I suspect, in way of warning. It was the witty Dean Swift
who suggested to the brisk and frolicsome poet, John Gay, that these
gentlemen of the high-road would come well into a pastoral or a comedy;
and out of that suggestion came, some years later, “The Beggar’s Opera,”
with Captain Macheath for a hero, that took the town by storm--ran for
sixty and more successive nights, and put its musical, saucy songlets
afloat in all the purlieus of London. It was, indeed, the great forerunner
of our ballad operas; much fuller, indeed, of grime and foul strokes than
Mr. Gilbert’s contagious sing-song; but possessing very much of his
briskness and quaint turns of thought, and of that pretty shimmer of
language which lends itself to melody as easily as the thrushes do.
This John Gay[106]--whose name literary-mongers will come upon in their
anthologies--was an alert, well-looking young fellow, who had come out of
Devonshire to make his way in a silk-mercer’s shop in London. He speedily
left the silk-mercer’s; but he had that about him of joyousness and
amiability, added to a clever but small literary faculty, which won the
consideration of helpful friends; and he never lost friends by his
antagonisms or his moodiness. Everybody seemed to love to say a good word
for John Gay. Swift was almost kind to him; and said he was born to be
always twenty-two, and no older. Pope befriended and commended him; great
ladies petted him; and neither Swift nor Pope were jealous of a petting to
such as Gay; his range was amongst the daisies--and theirs--above the
tree-tops. A little descriptive poem of his, called _Trivia_, brings
before us the London streets of that day--the coaches, the boot-blacks,
the red-heeled cavaliers, the book-stalls, the markets, the school-boys,
the mud, the swinging sign-boards, and the tavern-doors. In the course of
it he gives a score or more of lines to a description of the phenomena of
the solidly frozen Thames--sharply remembered by a good many living in his
time[107]--with booths all along the river, and bullocks cooked upon the
frozen roads which bridged the water; and he tells of an old apple-woman,
who somehow had her head lopped off when the break-up came, and the
ice-cakes piled above the level--tells it, too, in a very Gilbert-like
way, as you shall see:
“She now a basket bore;
That head alas! shall basket bear no more!
Each booth she frequent past, in quest of gain,
And boys with pleasure heard her thrilling strain.
Ah, Doll! all mortals must resign their breath,
And industry itself submit to Death;
The cracking crystal yields; she sinks; she dies,
Her head chopt off, from her lost shoulder flies;
_Pippins!_ she cry’d; but death her voice confounds;
And--_Pip_--_Pip_--_Pip_--along the ice resounds!”
Then there is the ballad, always quoted when critics would show what John
Gay could do, and which the Duchess of Queensberry (who greatly befriended
him) thought charming; I give the two final verselets only:
“How can they say that nature
Has nothing made in vain;
Why then beneath the water
Should hideous rocks remain?
No eyes the rocks discover,
That lurk beneath the deep,
To wreck the wandering lover,
And leave the maid to weep?
“All melancholy lying,
Thus wailed she for her dear;
Repaid each blast with sighing,
Each billow with a tear;
When o’er the white wave stooping,
His floating corpse she spied;
Then, like a lily drooping,
She bowed her head, and died!”
I think I have shown the best side of him; and it is not very imposing. A
man to be petted; one for confections and for valentines, rather than for
those lifts of poetic thought which buoy us into the regions of enduring
song.
Yet Swift says in a letter, “‘The Beggar’s Opera’ hath knocked down
Gulliver!” This joyous poet lies in Westminster Abbey, with an epitaph by
Alexander Pope. How, then, can we pass him by?
_Jonathan Swift._
But Dean Swift[108] does not lie in Westminster Abbey. We must go to St.
Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, to find his tomb, and that bust of him which
looks out upon the main aisle of the old church.
He was born in Dublin, at a house that might have been seen only a few
years ago, in Hoey’s Court. His father, however, was English, dying
before Swift was born; his mother, too, was English, and so poor that it
was only through the charity of an uncle the lad came to have schooling
and a place at Trinity College--the charity being so doled out that Swift
groaned under it; and groaned under the memory of it all his life. He took
his degree there, under difficulties; squabbling with the teachers of
logic and metaphysics, and turning his back upon them and upon what they
taught.
After some brief stay with his mother in Leicestershire, he goes, at her
instance, and in recognition of certain remote kinship with the family of
Sir William Temple, to seek that diplomat’s patronage. He was received
charitably--to be cordial was not Temple’s manner--at the beautiful home
of Sheen;[109] and thereafter, on Temple’s change of residence, was for
many years an inmate of the house at Moor Park. There he eats the bread of
dependence--sulkily at times, and grudgingly always. Another _protégée_ of
the house was a sparkling-eyed little girl, Hester Johnson--she scarce ten
when he was twenty-three--and who, doubtless, looked admiringly upon the
keen, growling, masculine graduate of Dublin, who taught her to write.
Swift becomes secretary to Sir William; through his influence secures a
degree at Oxford (1692); pushes forward his studies, with the Moor Park
library at his hand; takes his own measure--we may be sure--of the
stately, fine diplomat; measures King William too--who, odd times, visits
Temple at his country home, telling him how to cut his asparagus--measures
him admiringly, yet scornfully; as hard-working, subtle-thoughted,
ambitious, dependent students are apt to measure those whose consequence
is inherited and factitious.
Then, with the bread of this Temple charity irking his lusty manhood, he
swears (he is overfond of swearing) that he will do for himself. So he
tempestuously quits Moor Park and goes back to Ireland, where he takes
orders, and has a little parish with a stipend of £100 a year. It is in a
dismal country--looking east on the turbid Irish Sea, and west on
bog-lands--no friends, no scholars, no poets, no diplomats, no Moor-Park
gardens. Tired of this waste, and with new and better proposals from
Temple--who misses his labors--Swift throws up his curacy (or whatever it
may be) and turns again toward England.
There is record of a certain early flurry of feeling at date of this
departure from his first Irish parish--a tender, yet incisive, and
tumultuous letter to one “Varina,”[110] for whom he promises to “forego
all;” Varina, it would seem, discounted his imperious rapture, without
wishing to cut off ulterior hopes. But ulteriors were never in the lexicon
of Swift; and he broke away for his old cover at Moor Park. Sir William
welcomes, almost with warmth, the returned secretary, who resumes old
studies and duties, putting a fiercer appetite to his work, and a greater
genius. Miss Hester is there to be guided, too; she sixteen, and he fairly
turned among the thirties; she of an age to love moonlight in the Moor
Park gardens, and he of an age--when do we have any other?--to love tender
worship.
But _The Battle of the Books_[111] and _The Tale of a Tub_, are even then
seething and sweltering in his thought. They are wonderful products both;
young people cannot warm to them as they do to the men of Liliput and of
Brobdingnag; but there are old folk who love yet, in odd hours, to get
their faculties stirred by contact with the flashing wit and tremendous
satire of the books named.
The _Battle_--rather a pamphlet than a book--deals with the antagonism,
then noisy, between advocates of ancient and modern learning, to which
Bentley, Wotton, and Temple were parties. Swift strikes off heads all
round the arena, but inclines to the side of his patron, Temple; and in a
wonderful figure, of wonderful pertinence, and with witty appointments,
he likens the moderns to noisome spiders, spinning out of their own
entrails the viscous “mathematical” net-work, which catches the vermin on
which they feed; and contrasting these with the bees (ancients), who seek
natural and purer sources of nutriment--storing “wax and honey,” which are
the sources of the “light and sweetness of life.” There are horribly
coarse streaks in this satire, as there are in _The Tale of a Tub_; but
the wit is effulgent and trenchant.
In this latter book there is war on all pedantries again; but mostly on
shams in ecclesiastic teachings and habitudes; Swift finding (as so many
of us do) all the shams, in practices which are not his own. It is a mad,
strange, often foul-mouthed book, with thrusts in it that go to the very
marrow of all monstrous practices in all ecclesiasticisms; showing a love
for what is honest and of good report, perhaps; but showing stronger love
for thwacking the skulls of all sinners in high places; and the higher the
place the harder is the thwack.
Not long after these things were a-brewing, Sir William Temple died
(1699), bequeathing his papers to his secretary. Swift looked for more.
So many wasted years! Want of money always irked him. But he goes to
London to see after the publication of Temple’s papers. He has an
interview with King William--then in his last days--to whom Temple had
commended him, but no good comes of that. He does, however, get place as
chaplain for Lord Berkeley; goes to Ireland with him; reads good books to
Lady Berkeley--among them the _Occasional Reflections of the Hon. Robert
Boyle_, of whose long sentences I gave a taste in an earlier chapter.
Some of these Boyle meditations were on the drollest of topics--as, for
instance, “Upon the Sight of a Windmill Standing Still,” and again, “Upon
the Paring of a rare Summer Apple.”
Swift had no great appetite for such “parings;” but Lady Berkeley being
insatiate, he slips a meditation of his own, in manuscript, between the
leaves of the great folio of the Hon. Mr. Boyle; and opening to the very
place begins reading, for her edification, “Meditations on a Broomstick.”
“Dear me!” says her ladyship, “what a strange subject! But there is no
knowing what useful instructions this wonderful man may draw from topics
the most trivial. Pray, read on, Mr. Swift.”
And he did. He was not a man given to smiles when a joke was smouldering;
and he went through his meditation with as much unction as if the Hon.
Robert had written it. The good lady kept her eyes reverently turned up,
and never smacked the joke until it came out in full family conclave.
I have told this old story (which, like most good stories, some critics
count apocryphal) because it is so like Swift; he had such keen sense of
the ridiculous, that he ran like a hound in quest of it--having not only a
hound’s scent but a hound’s teeth.
At Laracor, the little Irish parish which he came by shortly after, he had
a glebe and a horse, and became in a way domesticated there, so far as
such a man could be domesticated anywhere. He duplicated, after a fashion,
some features of the Moor-Park gardens; he wrote sermons there which are
surprisingly good.
One wonders, as he comes from toiling through the sweat and muck and
irreverent satire of _The Tale of a Tub_, what could have possessed the
man to write so piously. He was used to open his sermons with a little
prayer that was devout enough and all-embracing enough for the
prayer-book. Then there is a letter of his to a young clergyman, giving
advice about the make-up of his sermons, which would serve for an
excellent week-day discourse at Marquand Chapel.
Indeed he has somewhat to say against the use of “hard words--called by
the better sort of vulgar, fine language”--that is worth repeating:
“I will appeal to any man of letters whether at least nineteen or
twenty of these perplexing words might not be changed into easy
ones, such as naturally first occur to ordinary men; … the fault is
nine times in ten owing to affectation, and not want of
understanding. When a man’s thoughts are clear, the properest words
will generally offer themselves first, and his own judgment will
direct him in what order to place them, so as they may be best
understood. In short, that simplicity, without which no human
performance can arrive to any great perfection, is nowhere more
eminently useful than in this.”
But let us not suppose from all this that Swift has settled down tamely,
and month by month, into the jog-trot duties of a small Irish vicar; no,
no! there is no quiet element in his nature. He has gone back and forth
from Dublin to London--sometimes on a Berkeley errand--sometimes on his
own. He has met Congreve, an old school-fellow, and Prior and Gay; he has
found the way to Will’s Coffee-house and to Button’s;[112] has some day
seen Dryden--just tottering to the grave; has certainly dined with
Addison, and finished a bottle with Steele. They call him the mad parson
at Button’s; they have seen _The Tale of a Tub_; his epigrams are floating
from mouth to mouth; his irony cuts like a tiger’s claw; he feels the
power of his genius tingling to his fingertips--_he_, a poor Irish parson!
why, the whole atmosphere around him, whether at London or at Dublin, is
charged and surcharged with Satan’s own lightning of worldly promises.
And Hester Johnson, and Moor Park? Well, she has not forgotten him; ah!
no; and he has by no means forgotten her. For she, with a good womanly
friend, Mrs. Dingley, has gone to live in Ireland; Swift thinks they can
live more economically there. These two ladies set up their homestead near
to Swift’s vicarage; he goes to see them; they come to see him. He is
thirty-three, and past; and she twenty, and described as beautiful. Is
there any scandalous talking? Scarce one word, it would seem. He is as
considerate as ice; and she as coy as summer clouds.
It does not appear that Swift had literary ambition, as commonly reckoned.
That _Tale of a Tub_ lay by him six or seven years before it came to
print. He wrote for Steele’s _Tatler_, and for the _Spectator_--not with
any understanding that his name was to appear, or that he was to be spoken
admiringly of. Many of his best things were addressed to friends or
acquaintances, and never saw the light through any instigation or privity
of his own.
When there was some purpose to effect--some wrong to lash--some puppet to
knock down--some tow-head to set on fire--some public drowsiness to
wake--he rushed into print with a vengeance. Was it benevolence that
provoked him to this? was it public spirit? Who can tell? I think there
were many times when he thought as much; but I believe that never a man
more often deceived himself than did Swift; and that over and over he
mistook the incentives of his own fiery and smarting spirit for the
leadings of an angel of light.
When we think of the infrequency and awkwardness of travel in that day, we
are not a little amazed to find him going back and forth as he did from
Ireland to London. The journey was not, as now, a mere skip over to
Holyhead, and then a five hours’ whirl to town, but a long, uncertain sail
in some lugger of a vessel--blown as the winds blew--till a landing was
made at Bristol or Swansea; and then the four to seven days of coaching
(as the roads might be) through Bath to London. Sometimes it is some
interest of the poor Irish Church that takes him over, for which we must
give him due credit; but oftener it is his own unrest. His energies and
his unsatisfied mind starve if not roused and bolstered and chafed by
contact with minds as keen and hard, from which will come the fiery
disputation that he loves. Great cities, where great interests are astir
and great schemes fomenting, are magnets whose drawing power such
intellects cannot resist. He is in London five or six months in 1701, six
or eight the next year, six or eight the next, and so on.
_Swift’s Politics._
He is in politics, too, which ran at high tide all through Anne’s time and
the previous reign; you will read no history or biography stretching into
that period but you may be confounded (at least I am) with talk of Whigs
and Tories; and of what Somers did, and of what Harley did, and of what
Ormond might do; and it is worth sparing a few moments to say something of
the great parties. In a large way Whiggism represented progress and the
new impulses which had come in with William III., and Toryism represented
what we call conservatism. Thus, in _Old Mortality_, young Henry Morton is
the Whig, and her ladyship of Tillietudlem is a starched embodiment of
Toryism. Those who favored the Stuart family, and made a martyr of Charles
I.--those who leaned to Romanism and rituals, or faith in tradition, were,
in general, Tories; and those who brought over William of Orange, or who
were dissenters or freethinkers, were apt to be Whigs. So the scars which
came of sword-cuts by Cromwellian soldiers were apt to mark an excellent
Tory; and the cropped ears of Puritans, that told of the savageness of
Prince Rupert’s dragoons, were pretty sure to brand a man a Whig for life.
But these distinctions were not steady and constant; thus, the elegant and
fastidious Sir William Temple was a Whig; and old Dryden, clinking mugs
with good fellows at Will’s coffee-house, was a Tory. Again, the courtly
and quiet Mr. Addison, with his De Coverley reverences, was a good Whig;
and Pope, with his _Essay on Man_, and fellowship with freethinkers, was
Toryish. Swift began with being a Whig, to which side his slapdash
wilfulness, his fellowship with Temple, and his scorn of tradition drew
him; but he ended with veering over to the Tory ranks, where his hate of
Presbyterianism and his eager thrusts at canting radicals gave him credit
and vogue.
Addison and others counted him a turncoat, and grew cold to him; for party
hates were most hot in those days; Swift himself says--the politicians
wrangle like cats. He was tired, too, of waiting on Whig promises;
perhaps he had larger hope of preferment with the Tories; Steele alleged
this with bitterness; and there can be no doubt that Swift had an eye on
preferment. Why not? Can he, so alert in mind, so loving of dignity, so
conscious of power, see Mr. Addison coming to place as Secretary of State,
and Steele with his fat commissions, without a tingling and irritating
sense of dissatisfaction? Can he see good, amiable, pious dunces getting
planted year after year in fat bishoprics, without a torturing remembrance
of that poor little parish of Laracor, with a following so feeble that he
is fain to open service some days (his factotum being the only auditor)
with--“My dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry
places----”
How these contrasts must have grated on the mind of a man who looked down
on all their lordships; who looked down on Steele; and who could count on
his finger-ends the personages whom he scanned eye to eye--and who were
upon a level with his commanding height.
He did service, too--this master of the pen and master of causticity--that
to most would have brought quick reward; but he was too strong and too
proud and too independent to come by reward easily. Such a man is bowed to
reverently; is invited to dine hither and yon; is flattered, is humored,
is conciliated; but as for office--ah! that is another matter. He is
unsafe; he will kick over the traces; he will take the bit in his mouth;
he will be his own man and not our man. What court, what cabinet, what
clique could trust to the moderation, to the docility, to the reticence of
a person capable of writing _Gulliver’s Travels_, and of turning all court
scandals, all political intrigues, all ecclesiastic decorum, into a
penny-show?
He is, indeed, urged for Bishop of Hereford--seems to have excellent
chance there; but some brother Bishop (I think ’tis the Archbishop of
York), who is much afraid, as he deserves to be, of _The Tale of a
Tub_--says to the hesitating Queen,--“Better inquire first if this man be
really a Christian;” and this frights the good Queen and the rest. So
Swift is let off with the poor sop of the Deanery of St. Patrick’s.
_His London Journal._
We know all about those days of his in London--days of expectancy. He has
told us:
“The ministry are good hearty fellows. I use them like dogs, because
I expect they will use me so. They call me nothing but Jonathan. I
said I believed they would leave me Jonathan, as they found me; and
that I never knew a minister do anything for those whom they make
companions of their pleasures; and I believe you will find it so,
but _I_ care not.”
And to whom does he talk so confidentially, and tell all the story of
those days? Why, to Hester Johnson. It is all down in Stella’s
journal--written for her eye only; and we have it by purest accident. It
was begun in 1710--he then in his forty-third year, and she in her
thirtieth.
She has kept her home over in Ireland with Mrs. Dingley--seeing him on
every visit there, and on every day, almost, of such visits; and, as her
sweetest pasturage, feeding on letters he writes other times, and lastly
on this Stella journal, “for her dear eyes,” at the rate of a page, or
even two pages a day, for some three years.
All his London day’s life comes into it. Let us listen:
“Dined at the chop-house with Will Pate, the learned woollen draper,
then we sauntered at china-shops and book-sellers; went to the
tavern; drank 2 pints of white wine; never parted till ten. Have a
care of those eyes--pray--pray, pretty Stella!
“So you have a fire now, and are at cards at home; I think of dining
in my lodgings to-day on a chop and a pot of ale.
“Shall I? Well, then, I will try to please M. D. [‘M. D.’ is ‘my
dear;’ or ‘my dears,’ when it includes, as it often does, Mrs.
Dingley]. I was to-night at Lord Masham’s; Lord Dupplin took out my
little pamphlet, the Secretary read a good deal of it to Lord
Treasurer; they all commended it to the skies; so did I.
“I’ll answer your letter to-morrow; good night, M. D. Sleep well.”
Again:
“I have no gilt paper left, so you must be content with plain. I
dined with Lord Treasurer.
“A poem is out to-day inscribed to me: a Whiggish poem and good for
nothing. They teased me with it.”
“I am not yet rid of my cold. No news to tell you: went to dine with
Mrs. Vanhomrigh, a neighbor. [Then a long political tale, and] Good
night, my dear little rogues.”
’Tis a strange journal; such a mingling of court gossip, sharp political
thrusts, lover-like, childish prattle, and personal details. If he is
sick, he scores down symptoms and curatives as boldly as a hospital nurse;
if he lunches at a chop-house, he tells cost; if he takes in his
waistcoat, he tells Stella of it; if he dines with Addison, he tells how
much wine they drank; if a street beggar or the Queen shed tears, they
slop down into that Stella journal; if she wants eggs and bacon, he tells
where to buy and what to give; if Lady Dalkeith paints, he sees it with
those great, protuberant eyes of his, and tells Stella.
There is coarseness in it, homeliness, indelicacies, wit, sharp hits,
dreary twaddle, and repeated good-nights to his beloved M. D.’s, and--to
take care of themselves, and eat the apples at Laracor, and wait for him.
No--I mistake; I don’t think he ever says with definiteness Stella must
wait for him. I should say (without looking critically over the journal to
that end) that he cautiously avoided so positive a committal. And
she?--ah! she, poor girl, waits without the asking. And those indelicacies
and that coarseness? Well, this strange, great man can do nothing wrong
in her eyes.
But she does see that those dinings at a certain Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s come in
oftener and oftener. ’Tis a delightfully near neighbor, and her instinct
scents something in the wind. She ventures a question, and gets a stormy
frown glowering over a page of the journal that puts her to silence. The
truth is, Mrs. Vanhomrigh[113] has a daughter--young, clever, romantic,
not without personal charms, who is captivated by the intellect of Mr.
Swift; all the more when he volunteers direction of her studies, and leads
her down the flowery walks of poetry under his stalwart guidance.
Then the suspicious entries appear more thickly in the journal. “Dined
with Mrs. Vanhomrigh”--and again: “Stormy, dined with a
neighbor”--“couldn’t go to court, so went to the Vans.” And thus this
romance went on ripening to the proportions that are set down in the poem
of “Cadenus and Vanessa.” He is old, she is young.
“Vanessa, not in years a score,
Dreams of a gown of forty-four;
Imaginary charms can find
In eyes with reading almost blind.
…
Cadenus, common forms apart,
In every scene had kept his heart;
Had sigh’d and languished, vowed and writ,
For pastime or to show his wit.”
But this wit has made conquest of her; she
“----called for his poetic works:
[Cupid] meantime in secret lurks;
And, while the book was in her hand,
The urchin from his private stand
Took aim, and shot with all his strength
A dart of such prodigious length,
It pierced the feeble volume through,
And deep transfixed her bosom too.”
This is part of his story of it, which he put in her hands for her
reading;[114] and which, like the Stella journal, only saw the light
after the woman most interested in it was in the ground.
_In Ireland Again._
Well, Swift at last goes back to Ireland--all his larger designs having
miscarried--a saddened and disappointed man; full of growlings and
impatience; taking with him from that wreck of London life and political
forgatherings, only the poor flotsam of an Irish deanery.
He has some few friends to welcome him there: Miss Hester and Mrs. Dingley
among the rest. How gladly would Stella have put all her woman’s art and
her womanly affection to the work of cheering and making glad the
embittered and disappointed Dean: but no; he has no notion of being
handicapped by marriage; he is sterner, narrower, more misanthropic than
ever. All the old severe proprieties and distance govern their
intercourse. He visits them betimes and listens to their adulatory
prattle; they, too, come up to the deanery when there are friends to
entertain; often take possession when the Dean is away.
The church dignitaries are not open-handed in their advances; the _Tale of
a Tub_, and stories of that London life (not much of it amongst churches)
have put a wall between them and the Dean. But he interests himself in
certain questions of taxation and of currency, which seem of vital
importance to the common people; and he wins, by an influence due to his
sharp pamphleteering, what they count a great relief from their dangers or
burdens. Thus he becomes a street idol, and crowds throw up their caps for
this doctor militant, whom they call the good Dean. He has his private
large charities, too; there are old women, decrepit and infirm, whom he
supports year after year; does this--Swift-like--when he will haggle a
half hour about the difference of a few pennies in the price for a bottle
of wine, and will serve his clerical friends with the lees of the last
dinner: strange, and only himself in everything.
Then Miss Vanhomrigh--after the death of her mother--must needs come
over--to the great perplexity of the Doctor--to a little country place
which she has inherited in the pretty valley of the Liffey--a short drive
away from Dublin; she has a fine house there, and beautiful gardens
(Swift never outgrew his old Moor-Park love for gardens); there she
receives him, and honors his visits. An old gardener, who was alive in
Scott’s time, told how they planted a laurel bush whenever the Dean came.
Perhaps the Dean was too blinded for fine reading in the garden alleys
then; certainly his fierce headaches were shaking him year by year nearer
to the grave.
Miss Hester comes to a knowledge of these visits, and is tortured, but
silent. Has she a right to nurse torture? Some biographers say that at her
urgence a form of marriage was solemnized between them (1716); but if so,
it was undeclared and unregarded. Vanessa, too, has her tortures; she has
knowledge of Stella and her friend, and of their attitude with respect to
the deanery; so, in a moment of high, impetuous daring, she writes off to
Mistress Hester Johnson asking what rights she has over her friend the
Dean? Poor Stella wilts at this blow; but is stirred to an angry woman’s
reply, making (it is said) avowal of the secret marriage. To the Dean, who
is away, she encloses Vanessa’s letter; and the Dean comes storming back;
rages across the country, carrying to Miss Vanhomrigh her own
letter--flings it upon the table before her, with that look of blackness
that has made duchesses tremble--turns upon his heel, and sees her no
more.
In a fortnight, or thereabout, Poor Vanessa was dead. It was a fever they
said; may be; certainly, if a fever, there were no hopes in her life now
which could make great head against it. She changed her will before her
death, cutting off Swift, who was sole legatee, and leaving one-half to
Bishop Berkeley; through whom, strangely enough, Yale College may be said
to inherit a part of poor Vanessa’s fortune.[115]
Such a blow, by its side bruises, must needs scathe somewhat the wretched
Hester Johnson; but time brought a little healing in its wings. The old
kindliness and friendship that dated from the pleasant walks in Moor Park,
came back--as rosy twilights will sometimes shoot kindly gleams between
stormy days, and the blackness of night. And Swift, I think, never came
nearer to insupportable grief than when he heard--on an absence in London,
a few years thereafter--that Stella was dying week by week.
“Poor Stella,” “dear Stella,” “poor soul,” break into his letters--break,
doubtless, into his speech on solitary walks; but in others’ presence his
dignity and coldness are all assured. There is rarely breakdown where man
or woman can see him. Old Dr. Sheridan[116] says that at the last she
appealed to him to declare and make public their private marriage; whereat
he “turned short away.” A more probable story is that in those last days
Swift himself proposed public declaration, to which the dying woman could
only wave a reply--“too late!”
She died in 1728: he in the sixty-second year of his age, and she
forty-eight.
He would have written about her the night she died; had the curtains drawn
that he might not see the light where her body lay; but he broke down in
the writing. They brought a lock of her hair to him. It was found many
years after in an old envelope, worn with handling, with this inscription
on it--in his hand--_Only a woman’s hair_.
I have not much more to say of Dean Swift, whose long story has kept us
away from gentler characters, and from verses more shining than his.
Indeed, I do not think the poems of Swift are much read nowadays; surely
none but a strong man and a witty one could have written them; but they do
not allure us. Everybody, however, remembers with interest the little
people that Lemuel Gulliver saw, and will always associate them with the
name of Swift. But if the stormy Dean had known that his Gulliver book
would be mostly relished by young folks, only for its story, and that its
tremendous satire--which he intended should cut and draw blood--would have
only rarest appreciation, how he would have raved and sworn!
They tell us he had private prayers for his household, and in secluded
places; and there are those who sneer at this--“as if a Dean should say
prayers in a crypt!” But shall we utterly condemn the poor Publican
who--though he sells drams and keeps selling them--smites his bosom _afar
off_ and cries, God be merciful!--as if there were a bottom somewhere that
might be reached, and stirred, and sparkle up with effervescence of hope
and truth and purity? He was a man, I think, who would have infinitely
scorned and revolted at many of the apologies that have been made for him.
To most of these he would have said, in his stentorian way, “I am what I
am; no rosy after-lights can alter this shape of imperfect manhood; wrong,
God knows; who is not? But a prevaricator--pretending feeling that is not
real--offering friendship that means nothing--proffering gentle words, for
hire; never, never!”
And in that great Court of Justice--which I am old-fashioned enough to
believe will one day be held--where juries will not be packed, and where
truth will shine by its own light, withstanding all perversion--and where
opportunities and accomplishment will be weighed in even scales against
possible hindrances of moral or of physical make-up--there will show, I am
inclined to think, in the strange individuality of Swift, a glimmer of
some finer and higher traits of Character than we are accustomed to
assign him.
After Stella’s death he wrote little:[117] perhaps he furbished up the
closing parts of _Gulliver_; there were letters to John Gay, light and
gossipy; and to Pope, weightier and spicier.
But the great tree was dying at the top. He grew stingier and sterner, and
broke into wild spasms of impatience, such as only a diseased brain could
excuse and explain. His loneliness became a more and more fearful thing to
be borne; but who shall live with this half-mad man of gloom?
At length it is only a hired keeper who can abide with him: yet still he
is reckless, proud, defiant, merciless, with no words coming to his fagged
brain whereby he may express his thought; having thoughts, but they were
bitter ones; having penitences maybe, but very vain ones; having
remorses--ah, what abounding ones!
Finally he has no longer the power, if the grace were in him, to ask
pardon of the humanity he has wronged; or to tell of the laments--if at
that stage he entertained them--over the grave of thwarted purposes and of
shattered hopes; condemned to that imbecile silence which overtook him at
last, and held him four weary years in fool’s grasp, suffering and making
blundering unintelligible moans.
He died in 1745--twenty-two years after Vanessa’s death--seventeen years
after the death of Stella.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Sir Walter Raleigh, b. 1552; executed 1618.
[2] Unless we except _The Ocean to Cynthia_, piquant fragments of which
exist, extending to some five hundred lines; the poem, by the estimate of
Mr. Gosse, may have reached in its entirety a length of ten thousand
lines. See _Athenæum_ for January 2, 1886; also, _Raleigh_ (pp. 44-48) by
Edmund Gosse. London, 1886.
[3] William Harrison, b. 1534; d. 1593. It is interesting to know that
much has come to light respecting the personal history of William
Harrison, through the investigations of that indefatigable American
genealogist, the late Colonel J. L. Chester.
[4] _Speeches of Gratulation_ on King’s Entertainment.
[5] Rawdon Brown.
[6] _Judith Shakespeare_, by William Black. The story of the royal letter
appears to rest mainly on the evidence of William Oldys (not a strong
authority), who says it originated with Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, who
had it from Sir William D’Avenant. Dr. Drake, however, as well as Farmer,
fully accredit the anecdote.
[7] The Globe was the summer theatre, the Blackfriars the winter
theatre--the same company playing much at both. The hour for opening in
Elizabeth’s time was usually one o’clock. Dekker (_Horne Booke_, 1609)
names three as the hour; and doubtless there were occasions when--in the
private theatres--plays began after nightfall. Fletcher and Shakespeare
were at the head of what was called the Lord Chamberlain’s Company. By
license of James I. (1603) this virtually became the King’s Company.
[8] Gosson was an Oxford man; b. 1555: d. 1624.
[9] Among the more important names were those of Bishop Andrewes (of
Winchester, friend of Herbert, and Dr. Donne)--famous for his oriental
knowledges: Bedwell (of Tottingham), a distinguished Arabic scholar: Sir
Henry Savile, a very learned layman, and warden of Merton College:
Rainolds, representing the Puritan wing of the Church, and President of
Corpus Christi, Oxford; and Chaderton, Master of Emmanuel, and
representing the same wing of the Church from Cambridge.
[10] John Donne, son of a London merchant, b. 1573, and d. 1631. There is
a charming life of him by Izaak Walton. The Grosart edition of his
writings is fullest and best.
[11] From his poem of _Nosce Teipsum_, published in 1599. John Davies b.
in Wiltshire about 1570, and d. 1626.
[12] Dr. Shedd (_Addenda_ to Lange’s _Matthew_) says--“Probably it was the
prevailing custom of the Christians _in the East_, from the beginning to
pray the Lord’s Prayer, with the Doxology.” It certainly appears in
earliest Syriac version (_Peschito_, so called, of second century). It
does not appear in the Wyclif of 1380. It will be found, however, in the
Tyndale of 1534--which I am led to believe is its first appearance in an
accredited English translation.
[13] The allusion is to the Harts, whose ancestress was Shakespeare’s
sister Joan. A monumental record in Trinity Church, Stratford, reads thus:
“In memory of Thomas Hart, who was the fifth descendant in a direct line
from Joan, eldest daughter of John Shakespeare. He died May 23, 1793.”
A son of the above Thomas Hart “followed the business of a butcher at
Stratford, where he was living in 1794.” Still another Thomas Hart (eighth
in descent from Joan) is said to be now living in Australia--the only male
representive of that branch of the family.
[14] Susanna, the eldest, baptized 1583; Hamnet and Judith (twins),
baptized 1585. In 1596 Hamnet died; in 1607 Susanna married Dr. Hall; and
in 1616 (year of Shakespeare’s death) Judith married Quiney, vintner.
[15] His father died in 1601, and his mother in 1608.
[16] The dedication of _Venus and Adonis_ (and subsequently of _Tarquin
and Lucrece_) to the Earl of Southampton is undoubted; nor are intimate
friendly relations doubted; but the further supposition--long
accredited--that the major part of the Sonnets were addressed to the same
Earl--is now generally abandoned--entirely so by the new Shakespearean
scholars. William Herbert (Earl of Pembroke)--to whom is dedicated the
1623 folio--is counted by many the “begetter” of these, and the rival of
the poet in loves of the “dark-eyed” frail one, whose identity has so
provoked inquiry.
A late theory favors a Miss Fitton, of whom a descendant, the Rev. Fred.
Fitton, has latterly made himself advocate. See _Athenæum_ for February
20, 1886.
[17] A very good exhibit of best opinions on such points may be found
briefly summarized in Stopford Brooke’s little _Primer of English
Literature_; see also Mr. Fleay’s recent _Chronical History of
Shakespeare_; and fuller discussion (though somewhat antiquated) in Dr.
Drake’s interesting discussion of _Shakespeare and his Times_. I name this
book, not as wholly authoritative, or comparable with the mass of newer
criticism which has been developed under the auspices of the different
Shakespeare societies, but as massing together a great budget of
information from cotemporaneous authors and full of entertaining reading.
In America, the Shakespearean labors of Hudson, Grant White, and Dr. Rolfe
are to be noted; and also--with larger emphasis--the beginnings of the
monumental work of Mr. Furniss.
[18] Seven editions of this poem were published between 1593 and 1602.
[19] The _Nation_ (N. Y.), of March 7, 1884, has this:
“In an indenture between the R^t Hon. Sir Rich^d Saltonstall, Knt., Lord
Mayor of London, and 2 others, Commissioners of her Majesty (fortieth yr
of Queen Elizabeth), and the parties deputed to collect the first of these
subsidies granted by Parliament the yr preceding--(bearing date Oct.
1598), for the _rate of S^t Helen’s Parish_, Bishopsgate ward--the name of
_Wm. Shakespeare_ is found as liable, with others, to that rate.”
This, if it be indeed our William who is named, would serve to show
residence in “S^t Helen’s Parish”--in which is the venerable Crosby Hall.
[20] See Halliwell-Phillips (vol. i., p. 130; 7th ed.).
[21] Edmond Shakespeare was buried in St. Saviour’s in 1607.
[22] I append table from French’s _Shakespeareana Genealogica_:
W^m Shakespeare, b. Apr. 23, 1564;
m. Anne Hathaway, b. 1556, dau. of Rich^d
and Joan Hathaway, of Shottery.
|
+----------------------+--------+-------------------+
| | |
Susanna, b. May, Hamnet, twin with Judith, bapt. Feb.
1583, d. July 2, Judith, bapt. Feb. 2, 2, 1585, d. 1661;
1649; m. Jno. Hall, 1585, d. s. p. 1596. m. Thos Quiney.
physician, b. 1575. |
| |
| +--------------------+--------------+--+
| | | |
| Shakespeare Quiney, Rich^d. Quiney, Thos. Quiney.
Elizabeth Hall, b. 1616. b. 1618. b. 1619.
b. 1608; d.
s. p. 1669.
Elizabeth Hall was twice married: 1st to Thomas Nash--2d to Jno. Bernard
(knighted by Charles II.), and had no issue by either marriage.
Of the Quiney children, above named, the 1st (Shakespeare), d. in infancy;
the 2d (Richard Quiney), d. without issue, in 1638; the 3d (Thomas
Quiney), died the same year, 1638--also without issue.
[23] The extreme limits of his life and career would probably lie between
1575 and 1635; _Strahan’s Biographical Dictionary_ of the last century
makes no mention of him; nor does the _Biographie Universelle_ of as early
date.
[24] Works of John Webster; with some account of the Author, and Notes, by
Rev. A. Dyce (original edition, 1830).
[25] Ford, b. about 1586, and d. 1640. Works edited by Gifford; revised,
with Dyce’s notes, 1869.
[26] John Marston, b. 1565 (?); d. about 1634; believed to have been a
Shropshire man, and one while of Brasenose College, Oxford.
[27] Philip Massinger, b. 1584; d. 1640. His works were edited by Gifford,
and on this edition is based the later one of Col. Cunningham (1870).
[28] “The Duke of Milan.”
[29] John Fletcher, b. 1579; d. 1625. Francis Beaumont, son of Sir Francis
Beaumont, b. (probably) 1585; d. 1616.
[30] Aubrey, who died in 1697, and who is often cited, was an
antiquary--not always to be relied upon--an Oxford man, friend of Thomas
Hobbes, was heir to sundry country estates, which, through defective
titles, involved him in suits, that brought him to grief. He was a
diligent collector of “whim-whams”--very credulous; supplied Anthony à
Wood (1632-1695) with much of his questionable material; and kept up
friendly relations with a great many cultivated and literary people.
[31] From the “Nice Valour or the Passionate Madman.” By Seward this
comedy is ascribed to Beaumont.
[32] John Taylor, b. 1580; d. 1654. Various papers and poems (so called)
of his are printed in vol. ii. of Hindley’s _Old Book Collector’s
Miscellany_, London, 1872. The Spenser Society has also printed an edition
of his works, in 5 vols., 1870-78.
[33] London was not over-large at this day; its population counted about
175,000.
[34] James Howell, b. 1594; d. 1666. He was son of a minister in
Carmarthenshire, and took his degree at Oxford in 1613.
[35] Of an ancient county family in Mid-Kent: b. 1568; d. 1639.
[36] In his will he suggested this epitaph to be put over his grave: “_Hic
jacet hujus sententiæ primus auctor, Disputandi Pruritus Ecclesiæ
Scabies_.”
[37] Izaak Walton, b. 1593; d. 1683.
[38] Statements about George Herbert, in the matter of the Melville
controversy, are specially to be doubted. Of Ben Jonson he says: “He lived
with a woman that governed him, near Westminster Abbey, and neither he nor
she took much care for next week, and would be sure not to want wine; of
which he usually took too much before he went to bed, if _not oftener and
sooner_”--all which shows a pretty accessibility to gossip.
[39] Overbury, b. 1581; d. 1613 (poisoned in London Tower). Rimbault’s
_Life_, 1856; also Strahan’s _Biographical Dictionary_, 1784.
[40] George Herbert, b. 1593; d. 1633. The edition of his poems referred
to is that of Bell & Daldy, London, 1861. Walton’s _Life_ of him is
delightful; but one who desires the whole story should not fail of reading
Dr. Grosart’s essay, prefatory to the works of George Herbert, in the
_Fuller Worthies’ Library_, London, 1874.
[41] Robert Herrick b. (or at least baptized) 1591; d. 1674. The fullest
edition of his works is that edited by Dr. Grosart, and published by
Chatto & Windus, London, 1876.
[42] Dr. Grosart objects that most portraits are too gross: I am content
if comparison be made only with the engraving authorized by Dr. Grosart,
and authenticated by his careful investigation and a warm admiration for
his subject.
[43] Herrick is not an example of this; but Herbert is; so is Overbury
with his “Wife;” so is Vaughan; so is Browne.
[44]
“Religion stands on tiptoe in our land
Ready to pass to the American strand.
My God, Thou dost prepare for them a way,
By carrying first their gold from them away;
For gold and grace did never yet agree;
Religion always sides with Poverty.”
--HERBERT’S _The Church Militant_.
[45] John Selden, b. 1584; d. 1654. His _Table-Talk_, by which he is best
known, was published in 1689. Coleridge said, “It contains more weighty
bullion sense than I have ever found in the same number of pages of any
uninspired writer.”
[46] John Milton: written 1629.
[47] Specially instanced in his final desertion of Strafford.
[48] “The Rehearsal.” Complete edition of his works published in 1775.
George Villiers, b. 1627; d. 1688.
[49] Jeremy Taylor, b. 1613; d. 1667. First collected edition of his works
issued in 1822 (Bishop Heber); reissued, with revision (C. P. Eden),
1852-61.
[50] John Evelyn, b. 1620; d. 1706. His best known books are his _Diary_,
and _Sylva_--a treatise on arboriculture.
[51] I have not been careful to give the _ipsissima verba_ of Taylor’s
version of this old Oriental legend, which has been often cited, but never
more happily transplanted into the British gardens of doctrine than by
Jeremy Taylor.
[52] John Suckling, b. 1609; d. 1642. An edition of his poems, edited by
W. C. Hazlitt, was published in 1874.
[53] William Prynne, b. 1600; d. 1669. He was a Somersetshire man,
severely Calvinistic, and before he was thirty had written about the
_Unloveliness of Love Locks_.
[54] Robert Burton, b. 1576; d. 1639, was too remarkable a man to get his
only mention in a note; but we cannot always govern our spaces. His
best-known work, _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, is an excellent book to
steal from--whether quotations or crusty notions of the author’s own.
[55] Abraham Cowley, b. 1618; d. 1667. Edmund Waller, b. 1605; d. 1687.
[56] I give a taste of these young verses, first published in the
_Poetical Blossoms_ of 1633; also sampled approvingly by the mature Cowley
in his essay _On Myself_:
“This only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honor I would have
Not from great deeds, but good alone.
The unknown are better than ill known;
Rumour can ope the grave.
“Thus would I double my life’s fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,
These unbought sports, this happy state,
I would not fear nor wish my fate.
But boldly say each night
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them;--I have liv’d to-day!”
[57] John Milton, b. 1608; d. 1674. Editions of his works are numberless;
but Dr. Masson is the fullest and best accredited contributor to Miltonian
literature.
[58] John and Edward Phillips both with him; the latter only as pupil.
[59] More probably, perhaps, sulking for lack of her old gayeties of life
in the range of Royal Oxford. Aubrey’s accounts would favor this
interpretation.
[60] _Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, composed at
several Times._ London, 1645.
[61] In that day Whitehall Street was separated from Charing Cross by the
famous gate of Holbein’s; and in the other direction it was crossed, near
Old Palace Yard, by the King’s-Street Gate--thus forming a vast court.
[62] Salmasius, a Leyden professor, had been commissioned by Royalists to
write a defence of Charles I., and vindicate his memory. Milton was
commissioned to reply; and the result was--a Latin battle in Billingsgate.
Milton calls his antagonist “a grammatical louse, whose only treasure of
merit and hope of fame consisted in a glossary.”
[63] His blindness dating from the year 1652.
[64] This marriage took place on February 24, 1662-63, the age of the
bride being twenty-five, and Milton in his fifty-fifth year.
[65] Vondel, b. 1587 (at Cologne); d. 1679. He was the author of many
dramatic pieces, among which were “Jephtha,” “Marie Stuart,” “Lucifer”
(_Luisevaar_). Vondel also wrote “Adam in Exile,” and “Samson, or Divine
Vengeance.” This latter, according to a writer in _The Athenæum_ of
November 7, 1885, has suspicious points of resemblance with “Samson
Agonistes.”
Other allied topics of interest are discussed in same journal’s notice of
George Edmundson’s book on the Milton and Vondel question (Trübner & Co.,
London, 1885).
Vondel survived the production of his “Lucifer” by a quarter of a century,
and died five years after Milton.
[66] Avitus was Bishop of Vienne (succeeding his father and grandfather)
about 490. His poem, “De Initio Mundi,” was in Latin hexameters. See
interesting account of same in _The Atlantic Monthly_ for January, 1890.
[67] The cottage is a half-timber, gable fronted building, and has
Milton’s name inscribed over the door. The village is reached by a branch
of the L. & N. W. R. R. American visitors will also look with interest at
the burial place of William Penn, who lies in a “place of graves” behind
the Friends’ Meeting House--a mile and a half only from Chalfont Church.
[68] The terms were £5 down; another £5 after sale of 1,300 copies, and
two equal sums on further sale of two other editions of same number. The
family actually compounded for £18, before the third edition was entirely
sold.
[69] Carew, b. about 1589; d. 1639; full of lyrical arts and of brazen
sensuality. Lovelace, b. 1618; d. 1658; a careless master of song, whom
wealth and royal favor did not save from a death of want and despair.
[70] George Villiers, b. 1627; d. 1688.
[71] Earl of Rochester (John Wilmot), b. 1647; d. 1680.
[72] Sir Peter Lely, b. (in Westphalia) 1617; d. 1680.
[73] Richard Baxter, b. 1615; d. 1691. His _Saints’ Rest_ published in
1653 (Lowndes).
[74] Andrew Marvell, b. 1620; d. 1678. Early edition of _Life and Works_
by Cooke, 1726. (Later reprints.) Dr. Grosart also a laborer in this
field.
[75] Aubrey.
[76] Samuel Butler, b. 1612; d. 1680. Editions of _Hudibras_ (his chief
book) are many and multiform; that of Bohn perhaps as good as any. His
posthumous works, not much known, were published in 1715. No scholarly
editing of his works or life has been done.
[77] _Paradise Lost_ appeared 1667; first part of _Hudibras_, 1663; third
part not till 1678.
[78] Some of the couplets in the two ran so nearly together as almost to
collide. Thus, Butler says:
“He that runs may fight again,
Which he can never do that’s slain.”
While Trumbull’s couplet _runs_ thus:
“He that fights and runs away
May live to fight another day.”
[79] This was Sir Samuel Luke of Cople-Wood-End, a Parliamentary leader
and a man of probity and distinction, supposed to have been the particular
subject of Butler’s lampoon. His own letter-book, however (_Egerton
Magazine_, cited by John Brown in his recent _Life of Bunyan_, p. 45)
shows him to have been much more a man of the world than was Butler’s
caricature of a “Colonel.”
[80] Samuel Pepys--whom those well up in cockney ways of speech persist in
calling “Mr. Peps”--was born 1633; died 1703. His _Diary_, running from
1660 to 1669, did not see the light until 1825. Since that date numerous
editions have been published; that of Bright, the best. See also Wheatley,
_Samuel Pepys and the World he lived in_.
[81] Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, b. 1609; d. 1674. He was a man of
large literary qualities, and his _History_ is chiefly prized for its
portraits.
[82] John Evelyn, b. 1620; d. 1706.
[83] B. 1628; d. 1688. Editions of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ are
innumerable. Southey and Macaulay have dealt with his biography, and in
later times Mr. Froude (“English Men of Letters”) and John Brown (8vo,
London, 1885).
[84] Mr. Froude (“English Men of Letters”) entertains an opposite
opinion--as do Offor (1862) and Copner (1883). Mr. Brown, however, who is
conscientious to a fault, and seems to have been indefatigable in his
research, confirms the general opinion entertained by most accredited
biographers. See _John Bunyan; his Life, Times, and Work_, by John Brown,
chap. iii., p. 45.
[85] Reference is again made to _Life, Etc._, by John Brown, Minister of
the Church at Bunyan Meeting, Bedford. The old popular belief was strong
that Bunyan’s entire prisonship was served in the jail of the bridge.
Well-authenticated accounts, however, of the number of his
fellow-prisoners forbid acceptance of this belief.
Froude alludes to the question without settling it; Mr. Brown ingeniously
sets forth a theory that explains the traditions, and seems to meet all
the facts of the case.
[86] There was a _quasi_ charge of plagiarism against Bunyan at one time
current, and particulars respecting it came to the light some sixty years
ago in a correspondence of Robert Southey (who edited the _Major_ edition
of _Pilgrim’s Progress_) with George Offor, Esq., which appears in the
_Reminiscences_ of Joseph Cottle of Bristol. The allegation was, that
Bunyan had taken hints for his allegory from an old Dutch book, _Duyfkens
ande Willemynkyns Pilgrimagee_ (with five cuts by Bolswert), published at
Antwerp in the year 1627. Dr. Southey dismissed the allegation with
disdain, after examination of the _Dutch Pilgrimage_; nor do recent
editors appear to have counted the charge worthy of refutation.
[87] Thomas Fuller, b. 1608; d. 1661. _The Worthies of England_ is his
best-known book--a reservoir of anecdote and witty comments upon “men and
manners.”
[88] Thomas Browne, b. 1605; d. 1682. Full collection of his works (with
Johnson’s _Life_), Bohn, 1851. A very charming edition of the _Religio
Medici_--so good in print--so full in notes--so convenient to the hand--is
that of the “Golden Treasury Series,” Macmillan. Nor can I forbear
reference to that keen, sympathetic essay on this writer which appears in
Walter Pater’s _Appreciations_, Macmillan, 1889.
[89] William Temple, b. 1628; d. 1699. His works, mainly political
writings, were published in two volumes folio, 1720; a later edition,
1731, including the Letters of Temple (edited, and as title-page
says--published by Jonathan Swift), was dedicated to his Majesty William
III.
[90] This old country home, very charming with its antique air, its mossy
terraces, its giant cedars, is still held by a Sir Henry Dryden.
[91] Otway, b. 1631; d. 1685, son of a Sussex clergyman, was author of
many poor plays, and of two--“The Orphan” and “Venice Preserved”--sure to
live. With much native refinement and extraordinary pathetic power, he
went to the bad; was crazed by hopeless love for an actress (Mrs. Barry)
in his own plays; plunged thereafter into wildest dissipation, and died
destitute and neglected.
[92] Shall I except his re-telling of the tale of Cymon and “Iphigene the
Fair?”
[93] John Locke, b. 1632; d. 1704. The best edition of Locke’s works is
said to be that by Bishop Law, four volumes, 4to, 1777. For Life, Fox
Bourne (1876) is latest authority.
[94] This was a weak scion of the house, “born a shapeless lump, like
anarchy,” as Dryden savagely says; but--by this very match--he became the
father of the brilliant author of the _Characteristics_ (1711).
[95] February 6, 1685.
[96] Matthew Prior, b. 1664; d. 1721.
[97] William Congreve, b. 1670; d. 1729. See edition of his dramatic
works, with pleasant introduction by Leigh Hunt (1840).
[98] Daniel Defoe, b. 1661; d. 1731. Little is known of his very early
life. Of _Robinson Crusoe_ there have been editions innumerable. Of his
complete works no full edition has ever been published--probably never
will be.
[99] Richard Steele, b. 1672; d. 1729. He was born in Dublin, and died on
his wife’s estate at Llanngunnor, near Caermarthen, in Wales.
[100] The _Christian Hero_ appeared in 1701; and it was in the same year
that Steele’s first play of “The Funeral” was acted at Drury Lane. “The
Lying Lover” appeared in 1703, and “The Tender Husband” in 1705.
[101] I take the careful reckoning of Mr. Dobson in his _Life of Steele_,
1886.
[102] It is, however, seriously to be doubted if Addison ever saw the
“Atticus” satire.
[103] “_Je tire vers ma fin._” Smollett (Book I., chap. vi.); not a strong
authority in most matters, but--from his profession of medicine--an apt
one to ferret out actual details in respect to royal illness.
[104] Sir John Vanbrugh, b. (about) 1666; d. 1726. His comedies were
better thought of than his buildings, both in his own day and in ours.
[105] Sir Christopher Wren, b. 1631; d. 1723. The cathedral was begun in
1675, and virtually finished in 1710, though there may have been many
“last touches” for the aged architect.
[106] John Gay, b. 1685; d. 1732.
[107]
“O roving muse! recall that wondrous year,
When hoary Thames, with frosted osiers crown’d,
Was three long moons in icy fetters bound.”
The allusion is doubtless to the year 1684, famous for its exceeding cold.
[108] Jonathan Swift, b. 1667; d. 1745. Most noticeable biographies are
those by Scott, Craik, and Stephen; the latter not minute, but having
judicial repose, and quite delightful. Scott’s edition of his works
(originally published in 1814) is still the fullest and best.
[109] Sir William Temple did not finally abandon his home at Sheen--where
he had beautiful gardens--until the year 1689. A stretch of Richmond Park,
with its deer-fed turf, now covers all traces of Temple’s old home; the
name however is kept most pleasantly alive by the pretty Sheen cottage
(Professor Owen’s home), with its carp-pond in front, and its charming,
sequestered bit of wild garden in the rear.
[110] “Varina” was a Miss Waring, sister of a college mate. Years after,
when Swift came by better church appointments, Varina wrote to him a
letter calculated to fan the flame of a constant lover; but she received
such reply--at once disdainful and acquiescent--as was met only with
contemptuous silence.
[111] Both of these satires written between 1696-1698, but not published
till six years later.
[112] Button’s was another favorite Coffee-house in Russell Street--on the
opposite side from Will’s--and nearer Covent Garden. I must express my
frequent obligations, in respect of London Topography, to the interesting
_Literary Landmarks_ of Mr. Laurence Hutton.
[113] Acquaintance with Miss Vanhomrigh probably first made in winter of
1708, but no family intimacy till year 1710. See _Athenæum_, January 16,
1886, in notice of Lane-Poole’s _Letters and Journals of Swift_.
[114] Henry Morley, in the recent editing of his Carrisbrooke _Swift_,
lays stress upon the sufficient warning which Miss Vanhomrigh should have
found in this poem. It appears to me that he sees too much in Swift’s
favor and too little in Vanessa’s.
[115] Miss Vanhomrigh died in May, 1723; and the final renewal of Bishop
Berkeley’s deed of gift (of the Whitehall farm, Newport) to Yale College,
is dated August 17, 1733.
[116] Thomas Sheridan, D.D., father of “Dictionary” Sheridan, and
grandfather of Richard Brinsley. He was a great friend of Swift, and
_Gulliver’s Travels_ was prepared for the press at his cottage in Cavan
(Quilca).
[117] _The Drapier Letters_ were published in 1724. When the successive
parts of _Gulliver_ were written it is impossible to determine. A portion
was certainly in existence as early as 1722. The whole was not published
until 1726-27.
_INDEX._
Addison, Joseph, 259, 280;
early life of, 288 _et seq._;
his “Cato,” 289;
_The Spectator_, 290;
“Sir Roger De Coverley,” 291;
Swift’s opinion of the _Spectator_, 292;
his marriage, 294;
“The Vision of Mirza,” 295;
his political life, 297;
his death, 298.
Anne, Princess, daughter of James II., 262;
Queen, 267;
her characteristics, 278;
her accession to the throne, 302.
Aubrey, 94, 141.
Baxter, Richard, his _Saints’ Rest_, 187.
Beaumont and Fletcher, 38, 93;
a quotation from “Philaster,” 97;
“The Faithful Shepherdess,” 98.
Bible, King James’, 44 _et seq._;
dedication of, 45;
the revisers of, 47 _et seq._;
its literary value, 51 _et seq._;
early English, 54;
the Genevan, 55;
the Bishops’, 55;
the first American, 56.
Blackfriars Theatre, 34.
Blenheim Palace, 305.
Bodley, John, 55.
Boyle, Robert, 207.
Boyne, battle of the, 264.
Browne, Sir Thomas, 222.
Buchanan, George, 7.
Buckingham, Duke of, and Charles I., 133;
his son, author of “The Rehearsal,” 134.
Buckingham, the Second Villiers, 184.
Bunyan, John, 209;
his birthplace, 210;
his early life and marriage, 211;
a preacher, 212;
imprisoned, 213;
his _Pilgrim’s Progress_, 215.
Burnet’s _History of his Own Times_, 202, 258.
Burton, Robert, author of _Anatomy of Melancholy_, 144.
Busino, his account of the representation of Jonson’s “Pleasure is
Reconciled to Virtue,” at Whitehall, 29 _et seq._
Butler, Samuel, author of _Hudibras_, 193.
Cary, Sir Robert, carries to Edinburgh the news of the Queen’s death, 8.
Charlecote House, 66.
Charles I., 105, 132;
influence of the Duke of Buckingham on, 133;
execution of, 162 _et seq._
Charles II., restoration of, 182;
death of, 255.
Charter House, the, 11.
Clarendon, Earl of, his _History of the Rebellion_, 201.
Compton, Lord, 24.
Congreve, William, 269;
visited by Voltaire, 270.
_Counterblast to Tobacco_, the, of James I., 7, 104.
Cowley, Abraham, 145;
an extract from his “Hymn to Light,” 146;
compared with Tennyson, 147.
Cromwell, 163.
Davies, Sir John, his lines on the _Immortality of the Soul_, 49.
Defoe, Daniel, 258, 272;
a pamphleteer, 273;
his _Advice to English Tradesmen_, 274;
his _Robinson Crusoe_, 276;
on the Commission in Edinburgh, 277.
Diodati, Charles, the friend of Milton, 156.
Donne, John, 49, note.
Dorset, 186.
Doxology, of the Lord’s Prayer, the, 52.
Drummond of Hawthornden, 28;
entertains Jonson, 28 _et seq._
Dryden, John, 227;
his fertility, 228;
his eulogies of Cromwell and Charles II., 230 _et seq._;
Mr. Saintsbury’s opinion of his consistency, 232;
his _Annus Mirabilis_, 233;
the London of, 234;
his plays, 238;
his _Hind and Panther_, 241;
his Virgil, 243;
his “All for Love,” 244;
estimate of him, 246, 259, 261.
Ellwood, Milton’s friend, 175.
Elizabeth, Queen, and the English Bible, 55.
Elizabeth, daughter of James I., 100.
England at the death of Elizabeth, 1 _et seq._
Etherege, 186.
Evelyn, John, 137;
his diary, 201.
Ford, John, 91.
_Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott’s, its picture of James I., 19, 35.
Freeman, Mr., his misleading averment as to the errors in _Ivanhoe_, 20.
Fuller, Thomas, his _English Worthies_, 221.
Gay, John, 308;
his “Beggar’s Opera,” 308;
his _Trivia_, 310.
Globe Theatre in Shakespeare’s time, 33, 36.
Gosson, Stephen, a representation of the Puritan feeling, 42.
Greenwich Hospital, 265.
Hampton Court Conference, 44 _et seq._
Harrison, William, 20 _et seq._
Herbert, George, the poet, 7;
poems of, 115;
his marriage, 118, 128.
Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 7.
Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke, 74, note.
Herrick, Robert, 120;
specimens of his verse, 122;
character of, 124;
his _Hesperides_, 125.
Howell, James, 107.
_Hudibras_, 193.
James I., his pedigree, 4 _et seq._;
his person and character, 6 _et seq._;
his journey to London to be crowned, 9 _et seq._;
his family, 100;
tastes and characteristics of, 101 _et seq._;
his _Counterblast to the Use of Tobacco_, 36, 104.
James II., 256.
Johnson, Hester (“Stella”), 314, 321;
Swift’s letters to, 328;
“Stella’s Journal,” 329;
her secret marriage with Swift, 335;
and Vanessa, 335;
death of, 337.
Jonson, Ben, his adulation of the King, 26;
his literary versatility, 27;
his masque at Whitehall, 29 _et seq._, 106.
_Judith Shakespeare_, William Black’s novel, 33.
Kenilworth, Walter Scott’s, 201.
Kensington in Queen Anne’s time, 308.
Kingsley’s pictures of Elizabethan characters and times, 18 _et seq._
Lamb, Charles, influence of Sir Thomas Browne upon, 224;
his essay, “The Genteel Style in Writing,” 227.
Laud, Archbishop, 134, 136.
Lily, Milton’s schoolmaster, 152, 186.
Locke, John, his treatise on the _Human Understanding_, 249;
his life, 250;
on education, 252.
“McFingal,” the, of John Trumbull, 196.
Marlborough, Duke of, 303.
Marlborough, Duchess of, 302;
her influence over Queen Anne, 304.
Marston, John, specimen of his satire, 92.
Marvell, Andrew, Milton’s assistant, 170;
story of his good fortune, 189;
his “Garden,” etc., 191.
Mary, Queen, daughter of James II., 262;
death of, 301.
Massinger’s “A New Way to Pay Old Debts,” 60, 93, 94.
Masson’s _Life and Times of Milton_, 151.
Mermaid Tavern, the, 34, 151.
Milton, John, 150;
Masson’s Life of, 151;
his father, 151;
at school, 152;
his early verse, 153 _et seq._;
at Cambridge, 153;
his travels, 156;
his marriage to Mary Powell, 157;
his daughters, 160;
his first published poems, 160;
his pamphlets, 161;
his defence of regicide, 164;
in peril, 167;
domestic life, 169;
Munkacsy’s picture of, 169;
his third marriage, 171;
_The Paradise Lost_, 171;
his use of other books, 173;
his last days, 174;
payments for his _Paradise_, 176;
deserted by his daughters, 177;
_Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_, 177, 188;
his death, 179.
_Mortality, Old_, Scott’s novel, 264.
Newton, Isaac, 207, 258.
“New Way to Pay Old Debts, A,” 60, 94.
_Nigel_, Scott’s novel, 19, 35.
_Old Mortality_, Scott’s novel, 324.
Otway, Thomas, 237.
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 114, his _Characters_.
“Overreach, Sir Giles,” 60, 94.
Penn, William, 258.
Pepys, Mr., his purchase of _Hudibras_, 194, 198;
his diary, 199;
extracts from, 202.
_Peveril of the Peak_, Scott’s, 184.
Primer, the Old New England, 54.
Prior, Matthew, 258, 268.
Prynne, William, 142;
his _Histriomastix_, 143.
Raleigh, Walter, 11 _et seq._;
in the Tower, 13;
his _History of the World_, 13;
his expedition to Guiana, 13;
executed, 15;
specimens of his writings, 15 _et seq._;
his _Ocean to Cynthia_, 17, note;
his life an epitome of Elizabethan times, 18.
Rochester, Earl of, 185.
Selden, John, his _Table-Talk_, 129.
Shakespeare, 32 _et seq._;
56 _et seq._;
his characters real, 58;
his personality, 61;
his family relations, 67;
his children, 68, 84;
in London, 73 _et seq._;
early poetry, 75;
“Love’s Labor’s Lost,” 76, 77;
his “Venus and Adonis,” and “Lucrece,” 77;
like Chaucer in taking his material, 79;
his closing years, 81 _et seq._;
his son-in-law, Dr. Hall, 83.
Sheridan, Thomas, 337.
Sidney, Lady Dorothy, pursued by Waller, 149.
Southampton, Earl of, 74.
Spencer, Sir John, his dwelling, Crosby Hall, 23;
a letter of his daughter, 24 _et seq._
Steele, Richard, 259;
author of the _Tatler_, 280;
his _Christian Hero_, 281;
his marriages, 281 _et seq._;
his literary qualities, 285.
Stratford, the town of, and surrounding country, 63;
a walk to, from Windsor, 70.
Stuart, house of, 4.
Suckling, Sir John, 140;
his tragic death, 142.
Swift, Jonathan, 226, 259;
early life of, 312;
his life at Sir William Temple’s, 313;
goes back to Ireland, 314;
his _Battle of the Books_ and _Tale of a Tub_, 316;
appointed chaplain to Lord Berkeley, 318;
his politics, 324;
his London life, 328;
_Stella’s Journal_, 328;
“Cadenus and Vanessa,” 332;
back in Ireland, 333;
his secret marriage with Stella, 335;
his _Gulliver’s Travels_, 340;
his madness and death, 340.
Swinburne, his estimate of Webster, 89.
Taine, his overdrawn picture of the Restoration, 186.
Taylor, Jeremy, 135;
his career, 136;
his _Holy Living and Dying_, 139.
Taylor, John, “the Water Poet,” a favorite of James I., 102.
Temple, Sir William, 224, 313;
death of, 317.
Theobalds, King James’ palace, 10, 105.
Tillotson, John, 188.
Tobacco in literature, 103 _et seq._
Trumbull, John, his _McFingal_, 196.
“Two Noble Kinsmen,” 95.
Vanbrugh, Sir John, 306.
“Vanessa,” Swift’s letter to, 315.
Vanhomrigh, Miss (“Vanessa”), 331;
death of, 336.
Waller, Edmund, 145;
his literary importance, 149.
Walton, Izaak, 111;
his _Angler_, 112;
his biographic sketches, 113.
Webster, John, 88;
Dyce’s edition of his works, 89;
character of his plays, 90;
Swinburne’s estimate of, 89.
_Westward, Ho!_ Kingsley’s, 18.
William and Mary, 256.
William of Orange, 263 _et seq._
William III., 263;
his death, 301.
Will’s Coffee-house, 236.
_Woodstock_, Scott’s novel, 168.
Woodstock, the park at, 305.
Wotton, Sir Henry, 109.
Wren, Sir Christopher, 306.