Neither the English nor any other people have foundations established in
favour of the polite arts like those in France. There are Universities
in most countries, but it is in France only that we meet with so
beneficial an encouragement for astronomy and all parts of the
mathematics, for physic, for researches into antiquity, for painting,
sculpture, and architecture. Louis XIV. has immortalised his name by
these several foundations, and this immortality did not cost him two
hundred thousand livres a year.
I must confess that one of the things I very much wonder at is, that as
the Parliament of Great Britain have promised a reward of 20,000 pounds
sterling to any person who may discover the longitude, they should never
have once thought to imitate Louis XIV. in his munificence with regard to
the arts and sciences.
Merit, indeed, meets in England with rewards of another kind, which
redound more to the honour of the nation. The English have so great a
veneration for exalted talents, that a man of merit in their country is
always sure of making his fortune. Mr. Addison in France would have been
elected a member of one of the academies, and, by the credit of some
women, might have obtained a yearly pension of twelve hundred livres, or
else might have been imprisoned in the Bastile, upon pretence that
certain strokes in his tragedy of _Cato_ had been discovered which
glanced at the porter of some man in power. Mr. Addison was raised to
the post of Secretary of State in England. Sir Isaac Newton was made
Master of the Royal Mint. Mr. Congreve had a considerable employment.
Mr. Prior was Plenipotentiary. Dr. Swift is Dean of St. Patrick in
Dublin, and is more revered in Ireland than the Primate himself. The
religion which Mr. Pope professes excludes him, indeed, from preferments
of every kind, but then it did not prevent his gaining two hundred
thousand livres by his excellent translation of Homer. I myself saw a
long time in France the author of _Rhadamistus_ ready to perish for
hunger. And the son of one of the greatest men our country ever gave
birth to, and who was beginning to run the noble career which his father
had set him, would have been reduced to the extremes of misery had he not
been patronised by Monsieur Fagon.
But the circumstance which mostly encourages the arts in England is the
great veneration which is paid them. The picture of the Prime Minister
hangs over the chimney of his own closet, but I have seen that of Mr.
Pope in twenty noblemen's houses. Sir Isaac Newton was revered in his
lifetime, and had a due respect paid to him after his death; the greatest
men in the nation disputing who should have the honour of holding up his
pall. Go into Westminster Abbey, and you will find that what raises the
admiration of the spectator is not the mausoleums of the English kings,
but the monuments which the gratitude of the nation has erected to
perpetuate the memory of those illustrious men who contributed to its
glory. We view their statues in that abbey in the same manner as those
of Sophocles, Plato, and other immortal personages were viewed in Athens;
and I am persuaded that the bare sight of those glorious monuments has
fired more than one breast, and been the occasion of their becoming great
men.
The English have even been reproached with paying too extravagant honours
to mere merit, and censured for interring the celebrated actress Mrs.
Oldfield in Westminster Abbey, with almost the same pomp as Sir Isaac
Newton. Some pretend that the English had paid her these great funeral
honours, purposely to make us more strongly sensible of the barbarity and
injustice which they object to us, for having buried Mademoiselle Le
Couvreur ignominiously in the fields.
But be assured from me, that the English were prompted by no other
principle in burying Mrs. Oldfield in Westminster Abbey than their good
sense. They are far from being so ridiculous as to brand with infamy an
art which has immortalised a Euripides and a Sophocles; or to exclude
from the body of their citizens a set of people whose business is to set
off with the utmost grace of speech and action those pieces which the
nation is proud of.
Under the reign of Charles I. and in the beginning of the civil wars
raised by a number of rigid fanatics, who at last were the victims to it;
a great many pieces were published against theatrical and other shows,
which were attacked with the greater virulence because that monarch and
his queen, daughter to Henry I. of France, were passionately fond of
them.
One Mr. Prynne, a man of most furiously scrupulous principles, who would
have thought himself damned had he worn a cassock instead of a short
cloak, and have been glad to see one-half of mankind cut the other to
pieces for the glory of God, and the _Propaganda Fide_; took it into his
head to write a most wretched satire against some pretty good comedies,
which were exhibited very innocently every night before their majesties.
He quoted the authority of the Rabbis, and some passages from St.
Bonaventure, to prove that the OEdipus of Sophocles was the work of the
evil spirit; that Terence was excommunicated _ipso facto_; and added,
that doubtless Brutus, who was a very severe Jansenist, assassinated
Julius Caesar for no other reason but because he, who was Pontifex
Maximus, presumed to write a tragedy the subject of which was OEdipus.
Lastly, he declared that all who frequented the theatre were
excommunicated, as they thereby renounced their baptism. This was
casting the highest insult on the king and all the royal family; and as
the English loved their prince at that time, they could not bear to hear
a writer talk of excommunicating him, though they themselves afterwards
cut his head off. Prynne was summoned to appear before the Star Chamber;
his wonderful book, from which Father Le Brun stole his, was sentenced to
be burnt by the common hangman, and himself to lose his ears. His trial
is now extant.
The Italians are far from attempting to cast a blemish on the opera, or
to excommunicate Signor Senesino or Signora Cuzzoni. With regard to
myself, I could presume to wish that the magistrates would suppress I
know not what contemptible pieces written against the stage. For when
the English and Italians hear that we brand with the greatest mark of
infamy an art in which we excel; that we excommunicate persons who
receive salaries from the king; that we condemn as impious a spectacle
exhibited in convents and monasteries; that we dishonour sports in which
Louis XIV. and Louis XV., performed as actors; that we give the title of
the devil's works to pieces which are received by magistrates of the most
severe character, and represented before a virtuous queen; when, I say,
foreigners are told of this insolent conduct, this contempt for the royal
authority, and this Gothic rusticity which some presume to call Christian
severity, what an idea must they entertain of our nation? And how will
it be possible for them to conceive, either that our laws give a sanction
to an art which is declared infamous, or that some persons dare to stamp
with infamy an art which receives a sanction from the laws, is rewarded
by kings, cultivated and encouraged by the greatest men, and admired by
whole nations? And that Father Le Brun's impertinent libel against the
stage is seen in a bookseller's shop, standing the very next to the
immortal labours of Racine, of Corneille, of Moliere, &c.