not recorded in the Mansfield register, but has just been discovered
in an old memorandum book kept by the parish clerk, John Lodes. The
omission of his birth entry from the registers suggests that his
parents were perhaps Dissenters.
He is said to have been apprenticed at first to a stocking-weaver,
but, disliking the trade or the conditions in which he had to work,
he gave it up and became a footman. At this period of his life he
published a volume of verse entitled _The Muse in Livery_. He
received encouragement and support from his employer and her friends.
Ultimately, with the help of £100 from Pope, who befriended him also in
other ways, he set up a bookseller’s shop in Pall Mall, and from the
profits of this business and his writings he was able to retire towards
the close of his life with a comfortable competence. He died at Durham
and was buried there.
That Dodsley held a respectable position in the world of letters is
evident from the fact that Pope patronised his play of _The Toyshop_,
which was put on the stage in 1735; while of his tragedy of _Cleon_
Johnson says, “if Otway had written this play, no other of his pieces
would have been remembered,” praise which even Dodsley himself thought
rather above the merit of his work.
As a bookseller and publisher he succeeded well. It was Dodsley who
discerned the merit of Johnson’s _London_ for which he paid the author
ten guineas. Later on he paid fifteen guineas for _The Vanity of Human
Wishes_, and he was one of the publishers who bought _Rasselas_.
Johnson alludes to him affectionately as “Doddy my patron,” and says
“Dodsley first mentioned to me the scheme of an English Dictionary.”
To Dodsley’s enterprise the _Annual Register_, which is continued to
this day, owed its origin. This is not the place to give a full list of
his works, but mention must not be omitted of his two plays, _The King
and the Miller of Mansfield_, and _Sir John Cockle at Court_, which
show shrewd observation of men and affairs. Dodsley’s character seems
to have been very agreeable and estimable. He is described by Boswell
as “worthy, modest, and ingenious,” and we have it on the testimony of
Johnson and Walpole that he had the manly merit of not being ashamed to
recall “the limits of his narrower fate.” He honoured the memory of his
friend Shenstone the poet by publishing an edition in two volumes of
his works, both prose and verse.
[Illustration:
_Photo: Mr Emery Walker._
ROBERT DODSLEY.
_By kind permission of_ YATES THOMPSON, Esq.]
One or two quotations must serve to illustrate his manner of thought
and diction. In the _Miller of Mansfield_ he says: “Why we are all
of us lost in the dark every day of our lives, knaves keep us in the
dark by their cunning, and fools by their ignorance. Divines lose us in
dark mysteries, lawyers in dark cases, and statesmen in dark intrigues.
Nay, the light of reason, which we so much boast of, what is it but a
dark lanthorn, which just serves to prevent us from running our nose
against a post perhaps, but is no more able to lead us out of the dark
mists of error and ignorance, in which we are lost, than an ignis
fatuus would be to conduct us out of this wood.”
In the same play the countryman describes London:--
“O! ’tis a fine place! I have seen large houses with small
hospitality, great men do little actions, and fine ladies do
nothing at all. I have seen the honest lawyers of Westminster,
and the virtuous inhabitants of Change Alley; the politic madmen
of coffee-houses, and the wise statesmen of Bedlam. I have seen
merry tragedies, and sad comedies; devotion at an opera, and
mirth at a sermon; I have seen fine clothes at St. James’s,
and long bills at Ludgate Hill. I have seen poor grandeur and
rich poverty; high honours and low flattery; great pride and no
merit. In short, I have seen a fool with a title, a knave with a
pension, and an honest man with a thread-bare coat.”
He wrote several songs, one of the best known of which is “The Parting
Kiss.”
Dodsley sat for his portrait to Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1760. From the
interesting life of Dodsley, recently written by Mr. Ralph Straus,
it is abundantly clear that the bookseller was a remarkable and very
worthy man, and that English literature is greatly indebted to him in
many ways. It is indeed a cause for surprise that his life has not
been more fully written before. He not only had a keen discernment
of the literary merit of work submitted to his judgment, but he had
an equally keen discernment of what the public taste required at the
moment. He therefore very seldom failed in his publishing ventures. He
had also a high conception of the dignity of literature, and of his
responsibility as author and publisher. His conduct in respect of his
partnership in the _London Chronicle_ is deserving of the highest
praise, and his letter announcing his intention of relinquishing
his share in that periodical is worthy, for its manly sincerity and
straightforwardness, to be compared with the famous letter of Dr.
Johnson to Lord Chesterfield. Says Dodsley: “However, as I am but a
single person, I desire you will take the sense of the Partners on all
I have said, only assuring you that if the Paper cannot be carried on
without giving any of these cause of offence, I shall desire to dispose
of my share, being determined not to sacrifice my character to other
people’s indiscretions, nor to any lucrative consideration whatsoever.”
From the few private letters given in Mr. Straus’s book, we get a
pleasing glimpse of his good nature and humour in the relations of
ordinary family life, and can quite easily understand that he was
popular and much esteemed by his friends. Shenstone said of him, “Of
his simplicity, benevolence, humanity, and true politeness, I have
had repeated and particular experience.” Though Dodsley had not the
advantage of a good early education, yet, in the words of Mr. Straus,
“a long life spent in the society of literary and artistic people, and
much reading, had educated him more surely than a five years’ course at
one of the universities might have done. The education that comes to
the man in love with life is of far more importance than the forced, if
polite, education that is given to the boy.” With the exception of his
early want of opportunity, his life was singularly full and complete.
ERASMUS DARWIN [1731–1802], the bearer of a name which his illustrious
grandson has made for ever famous in the history of scientific
speculation, was himself a man of distinction, “the worthy grandfather
of a far more eminent contributor to human knowledge.” He was born
at Elston, near Newark, educated at Chesterfield and St. John’s
College, Cambridge, and finished his medical education at Edinburgh.
He practised in Lichfield and at Derby. His book, _The Botanic
Garden_, appeared in 1781, and consists of two parts, the “Economy
of Vegetation,” and “Loves of the Plants.” His work is full of
classical allusions, and he may be looked upon as one of the last
exponents of the classical tradition in English verse. As Ovid, in his
_Metamorphoses_, had set forth the change of human beings into plants
and animals, Darwin, reversing the process, undertook to “restore some
of them to their original animality, after having remained prisoners so
long in their vegetable mansions.” In other words, he personified and
allegorised the forms and natural properties of plants. The effects,
for instance, of a decoction of laurel or Laura, are represented in a
figure of Nightmare.
One quotation from his lengthy poems must suffice:--
“Press’d by the ponderous air the Piston falls
Resistless, sliding through its iron walls;
Quick moves the balanced beam, of giant birth,
Wields his large limbs, and nodding shakes the earth ...
Soon shall thy arm, Unconquered Steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the fields of air.
Fair crews triumphant, leaning from above,
Shall wave their fluttering kerchiefs as they move,
Or warrior bands alarm the gaping crowd,
And armies shrink beneath the shadowy cloud.”
Mention should also be made of his _Song to May_.
The close of the eighteenth century brings us to the age of Byron and
Kirke White, who were born within a year or two of each other.
GEORGE GORDON NOEL, LORD BYRON [1788–1824] is a man whose life and
writings are so well known to educated Englishmen, and have been the
theme of so much criticism and controversy, that it seems superfluous
to set down many details in this short notice. He was born in London,
educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, at Harrow, and at Trinity College,
Cambridge. He lived some time at the family home of Newstead, and after
a life of much dissipation, disappointment, and varied travel, he
died at Missolonghi, in Greece, while rendering chivalrous help to the
Greeks in their struggle to recover what they had lost--the freedom
which their forefathers had been able to preserve against seemingly
overwhelming odds so many centuries before. It was fitting that his
life should end in a country and amid a people for whose scenery and
history he had so great an affection.
It cannot be said that he has been enthusiastically honoured in his
own county. At Nottingham there is now a fine bronze bust of him
at the entrance to the Castle Art Museum; but otherwise there is
no conspicuous memorial, such as a statue or public building, to
perpetuate openly his fame. Yet by the quality and boldness of his
thought and the splendour of his diction he stands in the front rank
of our national poets; and his genius is recognised and acclaimed far
beyond the limits of his own island and Europe.
For this neglect he has perhaps mainly himself to blame. The
irregularities of his life, and his disregard of conventional morality,
so offended soberer minds and puritan instincts that the imperfections
of his character have been allowed by many to overshadow the greatness
of his poetic achievement. This is a pity. Where shall we find a finer
poem than _Childe Harold_, impressive alike by the truth and beauty of
its descriptions and the pathos of its reflexions?
Byron’s excesses and eccentricities were a not unnatural consequence
from his ancestry and bringing up. His was a nature that needed from
the very first wise guidance and discipline if it was to be nurtured
to self-control and regulated usefulness. Such discipline he seems
not to have had. Of his ancestry and inherited characteristics it is
well said in _English Men of Letters_: “Burns had only the fire of
his race: the same is true of Byron, whose genius, in some respects
less genuine, was indefinitely and inevitably wider. His intensely
susceptible nature took a dye from every scene, city, and society
through which he passed; but to the last he bore with him the marks of
a descendant of the sea-kings, and of the mad Gordons in whose domains
he had first learned to listen to the sound of the two ‘mighty voices’
that haunted and inspired him through life.” He loved “the mountain’s
shaggy side and sought the rocks where billows roll.” This love is
connected with his passion for liberty. It will be remembered that
he pleaded the cause in Parliament of the Luddite frame-breakers. It
is dangerous to argue, in the case of a great poet or novelist, from
their works to their personality. By their imagination they can realise
adequately situations and characters of which they may have had no
personal experience. Like the skilled anatomist they can construct
the whole from a small part. Still it is possible that the gloom and
self-abandonment and vivid pictures of remorse which we find in parts
of Byron, may have been partly due to a remorseful feeling he was too
proud to own except indirectly. Scott says:--
“High minds of native pride and force
Most deeply feel thy pangs, Remorse.
Fear for their scourge mean villains have:
Thou art the torturer of the brave.”
Byron also says:--
“Full many a stoic eye and aspect stern
Mask hearts where grief hath little left to learn;
And many a withering thought lies hid, not lost,
In smiles that least befit who wear them most.”
“None are all evil,” and whatever Byron’s faults may have been and
their cause, the fact remains that he has enriched his country’s
literature with noble poetry, and invested the ancestral home of
Newstead with undying fame. He was not afraid that he would be
forgotten:--
“But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and time, and breathe when I expire.”
Pollok’s estimate of his powers, given in _The Course of Time_, not
inadequately sums up his wayward genius:--
“All passions of all men,
The wild and tame, the gentle and severe;
All thoughts, all maxims, sacred and profane;
All creeds, all seasons, Time, Eternity;
All that was hated, and all that was dear;
All that was hoped, all that was feared by man,
He tossed about, as tempest-withered leaves,
Then smiling, looked upon the wreck he made.
With terror now he froze the cowering blood,
And now dissolved the heart in tenderness:
Yet would not tremble, would not weep himself;
But back into his soul retired, alone,
Dark, sullen, proud, gazing contemptuously
On hearts and passions prostrate at his feet.”
In a paper written for a book on Nottinghamshire, it is not
inappropriate to add that plates to illustrate Murray’s edition of
_Childe Harold_ were taken from sketches supplied by Sir Charles
Fellows, the Lycian traveller, and a member of a well-known Nottingham
family.
After Byron we may take HENRY KIRKE (or KIRK) WHITE [1785–1806], the
son of a butcher, afterwards articled to a firm of solicitors, and
for the last year of his short life a student at St. John’s College,
Cambridge. He fell a victim to consumption, aggravated, it is thought,
if not actually brought on, by premature and excessive devotion to his
studies. Hence Byron’s beautiful and pathetic lines on him:--
“Unhappy White! while life was in its spring,
And thy young muse just waved her joyous wing,
The spoiler came; and all thy promise fair
Has sought the grave, to sleep for ever there.”
In one of his letters White says of himself: “My mind is of a very
peculiar cast. I began to think too early; and the indulgence of
certain trains of thought, and too free an exercise of the imagination,
have superinduced a morbid kind of sensibility; which is to the
mind what excessive irritability is to the body.” Gray’s lines are
particularly applicable to White:--
“Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.”
Matthew Arnold remarks that “much good poetry is profoundly
melancholy,” that condition of mind being natural to a sensitive and
poetic temperament in contact with the difficulties and disappointments
of life. “The eternal note of sadness” strikes too keenly on such a
mind in view of the “turbid ebb and flow of human misery.”
But White’s melancholy is often due mainly to the depression of
illness. This makes all the more admirable the spirit of resignation
with which he faced his end:--
“God of the Just, Thou gavest the bitter cup;
I bow to Thy behest, and drink it up.”
Speculations upon the “might have been” of a writer dying long before
his prime are a somewhat useless exercise of the imagination, and it
is impossible to say what White would have produced had his mind been
filled, expanded, and matured by more reading, by travel and experience.
Keats, with whom White was “equalled in fate,” if not in renown, has
left us an example of what genius can accomplish in even a short span
of years; but his life was prolonged some four years longer than
White’s, a not inconsiderable period in the years of growth, and he
was happier in his early opportunities. White was barely past the time
of imitative work, and shows many traces of the influence of Milton
and Gray. He has, however, left enough to show that he was not a mere
writer of pretty verse, but was capable of conceiving and sustaining
a higher flight. His _Clifton Grove_, and _Christiad_ fragment will
illustrate this statement. And he will always have a charm for
Nottingham readers, because his inspiration, when not religious, was
mainly derived from the sights and sounds and association of his own
country side; he was a home-bred poet.
A poem “To an early primrose,” written, he says, at the age of
thirteen, seems a natural outcome of his feelings and circumstances.
The flower--
“Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire!
Whose modest form, so delicately fine,
Was nurs’d in whirling storms,
And cradled in the winds,”
is taken as symbolical of virtue hardened by “chill adversity.”
When his age and circumstances are duly considered, the extent and
maturity of his production fully entitle White to be called a genius.
His letters are well worth reading for their sound sense, and for the
light they throw on his thoughtful regard for the best interests of his
family.
The first half of the nineteenth century was remarkable for its output
of local writings. In Wylie’s _Old and New Nottingham_, to which this
paper is much indebted for information and suggestions, it is said:
“Fifteen years ago, _i.e._ in 1838, Nottingham was the residence of a
more brilliant literary circle than was probably ever drawn together
in a town of the like extent.” Perhaps Norwich may be fitly compared
with it in this respect, and it is singular that the migration thence
of several families established what was in literary matters perhaps
partially causal, a connexion between the two cities.
This literary activity need cause no great surprise. Men were living
“mid the stir of the forces whence issued” the modern world. The French
Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon, the struggle for religious
and political emancipation, scientific discoveries and inventions,
the diffusion of cheap literature, were all having their effect upon
the more thoughtful minds of the time. And there was less distraction
of amusement and multitudinous publication. Men had to be content
with fewer books; they made them, however, their own by study and
quiet reflexion; life was less diffuse and “scrappy.” It is evident
from the history of many of the writers that the literary life of
Nottingham was much helped and stimulated by such papers as _Dearden’s
Miscellany_, _Sutton’s Review_, and the _Nottingham Journal_, to the
pages of which many fugitive pieces were contributed, as well as others
which have survived in book form. Not much of the verse is of the type
usually known as religious, though some of the writers handle religious
topics. The ordinary religious poem is not difficult to write, dealing
as it does with a stock-in-trade of emotions common to the race handed
down through the ages, and to a large extent realized in each man’s
personal experience, having besides a form of expression of the finest
kind familiar to every Englishman from childhood. But to adapt by
strenuous thought and long reflexion the old faith to new conditions,
to state its eternal verities in terms of fresh science and advancing
ideas is another and a more difficult matter; and such adaptation is
what several of our local writers have attempted after the manner of
Clough and Matthew Arnold.
A remarkable thing about many of the writers is the largeness of their
conceptions, the ambitious scale on which they essayed to write.
Another noteworthy fact is that many of them were of humble origin,
and did their literary work in circumstances which might well have
smothered their nascent aspirations. Millhouse, Ragg, and Miller are
all examples of this pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. They
“broke their birth’s invidious bar,” and of them may be truly said what
Millhouse said of Richard Booker--
“In yonder humble grave there lies a Man.”
Chief of these nineteenth-century poets is Bailey, the son of
Thomas Bailey [1785–1856], who was himself an industrious writer
and journalist. Besides poems Thomas Bailey wrote the _Annals of
Nottinghamshire_. Among his poems are _Ireton_, dedicated to Lord John
Russell; the _Carnival of Death_; _What is Life?_ In business he was
first in the stocking-trade, and afterwards a wine merchant.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY [1816–1902], the author of _Festus_, was fortunate
in having a father whose literary interests enabled and induced him to
sympathize with the poetic aspirations of his son, and the poem is very
appropriately dedicated by the son to the father:--
“My Father! unto thee to whom I owe
All that I am, all that I have and can;
Who madest me in thyself the sum of man
In all his generous aims and powers to know,
These first fruits bring I.”
Bailey studied for the bar, and was called, but did not practise. His
education at the University of Glasgow was perhaps a better training
for his future career than residence at the old English universities
might have been; it was wider and less purely classical. He is
remarkable for having deliberately resolved to be a poet, for having
prepared himself most scrupulously to rise to “the height of his great
argument,” and for having refused to court popularity by following a
lower aim in his verse. Such a work as _Festus_ can not be popular; it
is too long and difficult for that. It does not lend itself readily
to quotation, but must be read and studied as a whole. The lines most
commonly cited from it are these:--
“Life’s more than breath and the quick round of blood:
It is a great spirit and a busy heart,
The coward and small in soul scarce live.
One generous feeling; one great thought; one deed
Of good, ere night, would make life longer seem
Than if each year might number a thousand days,
Spent as is this by nations of mankind.
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most; feels the noblest; acts the best.
And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest,
Lives in one hour more than in years do some
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins.
Life is but a means unto an end; that end,
Beginning, mean and end to all things--God.”
[Illustration: PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. “FESTUS.”
_By kind permission of_ MISS CAREY.]
We may note also for its quiet humour--
“He sleeps! The fate of many a gracious moral
This to be stranded on a drowsy ear;”
and this, as indicating Bailey’s aim as a writer--
“Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear
Glean after what it can. The voice of great
Or graceful thoughts is sweeter far than all
Word-music; and great thoughts, like great deeds, need
No trumpet. Never be in haste in writing.
Let that thou utterest be of nature’s flow,
Not Art’s; a fountain’s, not a pump’s.”
Bailey’s work has hitherto been more appreciated in America than in
England. On the death of Tennyson, in 1892, it was suggested that he
should be made Poet Laureate; and he was one of the distinguished men
on whom the University of Glasgow conferred an honorary degree at its
Jubilee Celebration in 1901.
In 1901 Mr. James Ward, of Nottingham, published a pamphlet entitled
_Recollections of Philip James Bailey_, in which was published for the
first time a poem called “Liberty, a Poetical Protocol,” which begins:--
“Time was when Liberty came down
From the high seat
Where, by God’s feet,
With Law, she claims one same and sacred crown;
And to the dominant nations of the earth,
Massed in the West,
Where most her votaries dwell, who own her worth,
And love her best
These words addressed:--”
Of criticism _Festus_ has had plenty. Tennyson said, “I can scarcely
trust myself to say how much I admire it, for fear of falling into
extravagance.” Gilfillan says “Shelley’s _Prometheus_ is the argument
of _Faust_ extended from man the individual to man the species; while
_Festus_ is the argument of Job applied in the like manner to the whole
human family; _Festus_ is to the one as Job to the other, a type of the
fall and recovery of all men. The scene of Faust and Prometheus is on
earth; that of Job and of Festus is (essentially) in eternity.”