Were you to inquire respectfully of the infallible critic (if such
indeed there be!) for the source of the aphorism, "Music has charms to
soothe a savage beast," he would probably "down" you contemptuously in
the Johnsonian fashion by replying that you had "just enough of learning
to misquote";--that the last word was notoriously "breast" and not
"beast";--and that the line, as Macaulay's, and every Board School-boy
besides must be abundantly aware, is to be found in Congreve's tragedy
of _The Mourning Bride_. But he would be wrong; and, in fact, would only
be confirming the real author's contention that "Sure, of all
blockheads, _Scholars_ are the worst." For, whether connected with
Congreve or not, the words are correctly given; and they occur in the
Rev. James Bramston's satire, _The Man of Taste_, 1733, running in a
couplet as follows:--
Musick has charms to sooth a savage beast,
And therefore proper at a Sheriff's feast.
Moreover, according to the handbooks, this is not the only passage from
a rather obscure original which has held its own. "Without
black-velvet-britches, what is man?"--is another (a speculation which
might have commended itself to Don Quixote);[4] while _The Art of
Politicks_, also by Bramston, contains a third:--
What's not destroy'd by Time's devouring Hand?
Where's _Troy_, and where's the _May-Pole_ in the _Strand_?
Polonius would perhaps object against a "devouring hand." But the
survival of--at least--three fairly current citations from a practically
forgotten minor Georgian satirist would certainly seem to warrant a few
words upon the writer himself, and his chief performance in verse.
The Rev. James Bramston was born in 1694 or 1695 at Skreens, near
Chelmsford, in Essex, his father, Francis Bramston, being the fourth son
of Sir Moundeford Bramston, Master in Chancery, whose father again was
Sir John Bramston, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, generally
known as "the elder."[5]James Bramston was admitted to Westminster
School in 1708. In 1713 he became a scholar at Christ Church, Oxford,
proceeding B.A. in 1717, and M.A. in 1720. In 1723 he was made Vicar of
Lurgashall, and in 1725 of Harting, both of which Sussex livings he held
until his death in March 1744, ten weeks before the death of Pope. His
first published verses (1715) were on Dr. Radcliffe. In 1729 he printed
_The Art of Politicks_, one of the many contemporary imitations of the
_Ars Poetica_; and in 1733 _The Man of Taste_. He also wrote a mediocre
variation on the _Splendid Shilling_ of John Philips, entitled _The
Crooked Sixpence_, 1743. Beyond a statement in Dallaway's _Sussex_ that
"he [Bramston] was a man of original humour, the fame and proofs of
whose colloquial wit are still remembered"; and the supplementary
information that, as incumbent of Lurgashall, he received an annual
_modus_ of a fat buck and doe from the neighbouring Park of Petworth,
nothing more seems to have been recorded of him.
Notes:
[4] Whose _grand tenue_ or holiday wear--Cervantes tells us--was "a
doublet of fine cloth and _velvet breeches_ and shoes to match." (ch. 1).
[5] Sir John Bramston, the younger, was the author of the "watery
incoherent _Autobiography_"--as Carlyle calls it--published by the Camden
Society in 1845.
_The Crooked Sixpence_ is, at best, an imitation of an imitation; and as
a Miltonic _pastiche_ does not excel that of Philips, or rival the more
serious _Lewesdon Hill_ of Crowe. _The Art of Politicks_, in its turn,
would need a fairly long commentary to make what is only moderately
interesting moderately intelligible, while eighteenth-century copies of
Horace's letter to the Pisos are "plentiful as blackberries." But _The
Man of Taste_, based, as it is, on the presentment of a never extinct
type, the connoisseur against nature, is still worthy of passing notice.
In the sub-title of the poem, it is declared to be "Occasion'd by an
Epistle of Mr. Pope's on that Subject" [i.e. "Taste"]. This was what is
now known as No. 4 of the _Moral Essays_, "On the Use of Riches." But
its first title In 1731 was "Of Taste"; and this was subsequently
altered to "Of False Taste." It was addressed to Pope's friend, Richard
Boyle, Earl of Burlington; and, under the style of "Timon's Villa,"
employed, for its chief illustration of wasteful and vacuous
magnificence, the ostentatious seat which James Brydges, first Duke of
Chandos, had erected at Canons, near Edgware. The story of Pope's
epistle does not belong to this place. But in the print of _The Man of
Taste_, William Hogarth, gratifying concurrently a personal antipathy,
promptly attacked Pope, Burlington, and his own _bête noire_,
Burlington's architect, William Kent. Pope, to whom Burlington acts as
hodman, is depicted whitewashing Burlington Gate, Piccadilly, which is
labelled "Taste," and over which rises Kent's statue, subserviently
supported at the angles of the pediment by Raphael and Michelangelo. In
his task, the poet, a deformed figure in a tye-wig, bountifully
bespatters the passers-by, particularly the chariot of the Duke of
Chandos. The satire was not very brilliant or ingenious; but its meaning
was clear. Pope was prudent enough to make no reply; though, as Mr. G.S.
Layard shows in his _Suppressed Plates_, it seems that the print was, or
was sought to be, called in by those concerned. Bramston's poem, which
succeeded in 1733, does not enter into the quarrel, it may be because of
the anger aroused by the pictorial reply. But if--as announced on its
title-page,--it was suggested by Pope's epistle, it would also seem to
have borrowed its name from Hogarth's caricature.
It was first issued in folio by Pope's publisher, Lawton Gilliver of
Fleet Street, and has a frontispiece engraved by Gerard Vandergucht.
This depicts a wide-skirted, effeminate-looking personage, carrying a
long cane with a head fantastically carved, and surrounded by various
objects of art. In the background rises what is apparently intended for
the temple of a formal garden; and behind this again, a winged ass
capers skittishly upon the summit of Mount Helicon. As might be
anticipated, the poem is in the heroic measure of Pope. But though many
of its couplets are compact and pointed, Bramston has not yet learned
from his model the art of varying his pausation, and the period closes
his second line with the monotony of a minute gun. Another defect,
noticed by Warton, is that the speaker throughout is made to profess the
errors satirised, and to be the unabashed mouthpiece of his own fatuity,
"Mine," say the concluding lines,--
Mine are the gallant Schemes of Politesse,
For books, and buildings, politicks, and dress.
This is _True Taste_, and whoso likes it not,
Is blockhead, coxcomb, puppy, fool, and sot.
One is insensibly reminded of a quotation from P.L. Courier, made in the
_Cornhill_ many years since by the once famous "Jacob Omnium" when
replying controversially to the author of _Ionica_, "_Je vois_"--says
Courier, after recapitulating a string of abusive epithets hurled at him
by his opponent--"_je vois ce qu'il veut dire: il entend que lui et moi
sont d'avis different; et c'est là sa manière de s'exprimer_." It was
also the manner of our Man of Taste.
The second line of the above quotation from Bramston gives us four of
the things upon which his hero lays down the law. Let us see what he
says about literature. As a professing critic he prefers books
with notes:--
Tho' _Blackmore's_ works my soul with raptures fill,
With notes by _Bently_ they'd be better still.
Swift he detests--not of course for detestable qualities, but because he
is so universally admired. In poetry he holds by rhyme as opposed to
blank verse:--
Verse without rhyme I never could endure,
Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure.
To him as Nature, when he ceas'd to see,
_Milton's_ an _universal Blank_ to me ...
_Thompson _[_sic_] write blank, but know that for that reason
These lines shall live, when thine are out of season.
Rhyme binds and beautifies the Poet's lays
As _London_ Ladies owe their shape to stays.
In this the Man of Taste is obviously following the reigning fashion.
But if we may assume Bramston himself to approve what his hero condemns,
he must have been in advance of his age, for blank verse had but sparse
advocates at this time, or for some time to come. Neither Gray, nor
Johnson, nor Goldsmith were ever reconciled to what the last of them
styles "this unharmonious measure." Goldsmith, in particular, would
probably have been in exact agreement with the couplet as to the
controlling powers of rhyme. "If rhymes, therefore," he writes, in the
_Enquiry into Polite Learning_,[6] "be more difficult [than blank
verse], for that very reason, I would have our poets write in rhyme.
Such a restriction upon the thought of a good poet, often lifts and
encreases the vehemence of every sentiment; for fancy, like a fountain,
plays highest by diminishing the aperture."[7]
Notes:
[6] Ed. 1759, p. 151.
[7] Montaigne has a somewhat similar illustration: "As _Cleanthes_ The
Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is said, that as the voice
being forciblie pent in the narrow gullet of a trumpet, at last issueth
forth more strong and shriller, so me seemes, that a sentence cunningly
and closely couched in measure-keeping Posie, darts it selfe forth more
furiously, and wounds me even to the quicke".
(_Essayes_, bk. i. ch. xxv. (Florio's translation).
The Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is Colley Cibber, who,
however, deserves the laurel he wears, not for _The Careless Husband_,
his best comedy, but for his Epilogues and other Plays.
It pleases me, that _Pope_ unlaurell'd goes,
While _Cibber_ wears the Bays for Play-house Prose,
So _Britain's_ Monarch once uncover'd sate,
While _Bradshaw_ bully'd in a broad-brimmed hat,--
a reminiscence of King Charles's trial which might have been added to
Bramston stock quotations. The productions of "Curll's chaste press" are
also this connoisseur's favourite reading,--the lives of players in
particular, probably on the now obsolete grounds set forth in Carlyie's
essay on Scott.[8] Among these the memoirs of Cibber's "Lady Betty
Modish," Mrs. Oldfield, then lately dead, and buried in Westminster
Abbey, are not obscurely indicated.
Note:
[8] "It has been said. 'There are no English lives worth reading except
those of Players, who by the nature of the case have bidden Respectability
good-day.'"
In morals our friend--as might be expected _circa_ l730--is a
Freethinker and Deist. Tindal is his text-book: his breviary the _Fable
of the Bees_;--
T' Improve In Morals _Mandevil_ I read,
And _Tyndal's_ Scruples are my settled Creed.
I travell'd early, and I soon saw through
Religion all, e'er I was twenty-two.
Shame, Pain, or Poverty shall I endure,
When ropes or opium can my ease procure?
When money's gone, and I no debts can pay,
Self-murder is an honourable way.
As _Pasaran_ directs I'd end my life,
And kill myself, my daughter, and my wife.
He would, of course, have done nothing of the kind; nor, for the matter
of that, did his Piedmontese preceptor.[9]
Note:
[9] Count Passeran was a freethinking nobleman who wrote _A
Philosophical Discourse on Death_, in which he defended suicide, though
he refrained from resorting to it himself. Pope refers to him in the
_Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue i. 124:--
If Blount despatch'd himself, he play'd the man,
And so may'st thou, illustrious Passeran!
_Nil admirari_ is the motto of the Man of Taste in Building, where he is
naturally at home. He can see no symmetry in the Banqueting House, or in
St. Paul's Covent Garden, or even in St. Paul's itself.
Sure wretched _Wren_ was taught by bungling _Jones_,
To murder mortar, and disfigure stones!
"Substantial" Vanbrugh he likes-=chiefly because his work would make
"such noble ruins." Cost is his sole criterion, and here he, too, seems
to glance obliquely at Canons:--
_Dorick, Ionick,_ shall not there be found,
But it shall cost me threescore thousand pound.
But this was moderate, as the Edgware "folly" reached £250,000. In
Gardening he follows the latest whim for landscape. Here is his
burlesque of the principles of Bridgeman and Batty Langley:--
Does it not merit the beholder's praise,
What's high to sink? and what is low to raise?
Slopes shall ascend where once a green-house stood,
And in my horse-pond I will plant a wood.
Let misers dread the hoarded gold to waste,
Expence and alteration show a _Taste_.
As a connoisseur of Painting this enlightened virtuoso is given over to
Hogarth's hated dealers in the Black Masters:--
In curious paintings I'm exceeding nice,
And know their several beauties by their _Price_.
_Auctions_ and _Sales_ I constantly attend,
But chuse my pictures by a _skilful Friend_,
Originals and copies much the same,
The picture's value is the _painter's name_.[10]