"All is said," exclaims the lively La Bruyère; but at the same moment, by

his own admirable Reflections, confutes the dreary system he would

establish. An opinion of the exhausted state of literature has been a

popular prejudice of remote existence; and an unhappy idea of a wise

ancient, who, even in his day, lamented that "of books there is no end,"

has been transcribed in many books. He who has critically examined any

branch of literature has discovered how little of original invention is to

be found even in the most excellent works. To add a little to his

predecessors satisfies the ambition of the first geniuses. The popular

notion of literary novelty is an idea more fanciful than exact. Many are

yet to learn that our admired originals are not such as they mistake them

to be; that the plans of the most original performances have been

borrowed; and that the thoughts of the most admired compositions are not

wonderful discoveries, but only truths, which the ingenuity of the author,

by arranging the intermediate and accessary ideas, has unfolded from that

confused sentiment, which those experience who are not accustomed to think

with depth, or to discriminate with accuracy. This Novelty in Literature

is, as Pope defines it,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.

Novelty, in its rigid acceptation, will not be found in any judicious

production.

Voltaire looked on everything as imitation. He observes that the most

original writers borrowed one from another, and says that the instruction

we gather from books is like fire--we fetch it from our neighbours, kindle

it at home, and communicate it to others, till it becomes the property of

all. He traces some of the finest compositions to the fountainhead; and

the reader smiles when he perceives that they have travelled in regular

succession through China, India, Arabia, and Greece, to France and to

England.

To the obscurity of time are the ancients indebted for that originality in

which they are imagined to excel, but we know how frequently they accuse

each other; and to have borrowed copiously from preceding writers was not

considered criminal by such illustrious authors as Plato and Cicero. The

Æneid of Virgil displays little invention in the incidents, for it unites

the plan of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.

Our own early writers have not more originality than modern genius may

aspire to reach. To imitate and to rival the Italians and the French

formed their devotion. Chaucer, Gower, and Gawin Douglas, were all

spirited imitators, and frequently only masterly translators. Spenser, the

father of so many poets, is himself the child of the Ausonian Muse. Milton

is incessantly borrowing from the poetry of his day. In the beautiful

Masque of Comus he preserved all the circumstances of the work he

imitated. Tasso opened for him the Tartarean Gulf; the sublime description

of the bridge may be found in Sadi, who borrowed it from the Turkish

theology; the paradise of fools is a wild flower, transplanted from the

wilderness of Ariosto. The rich poetry of Gray is a wonderful tissue,

woven on the frames, and composed with the gold threads, of others. To

Cervantes we owe Butler; and the united abilities of three great wits, in

their _Martinus Scriblerus_, could find no other mode of conveying

their powers but by imitating at once Don Quixote and Monsieur Oufle.

Pope, like Boileau, had all the ancients and moderns in his pay; the

contributions he levied were not the pillages of a bandit, but the taxes

of a monarch. Swift is much indebted for the plans of his two very

original performances: he owes the "Travels of Gulliver" to the "Voyages

of Cyrano de Bergerac to the Sun and Moon;" a writer, who, without the

acuteness of Swift, has wilder flashes of fancy; Joseph Warton has

observed many of Swift's strokes in Bishop Godwin's "Man in the Moon,"

who, in his turn, must have borrowed his work from Cyrano. "The Tale of a

Tub" is an imitation of such various originals, that they are too numerous

here to mention. Wotton observed, justly, that in many places the author's

wit is not his own. Dr. Ferriar's "Essay on the Imitations of Sterne"

might be considerably augmented. Such are the writers, however, who

imitate, but remain inimitable!

Montaigne, with honest naïveté, compares his writings to a thread that

binds the flowers of others; and that, by incessantly pouring the waters

of a few good old authors into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper.

The good old man elsewhere acquaints us with a certain stratagem of his

own invention, consisting of his inserting whole sentences from the

ancients, without acknowledgment, that the critics might blunder, by

giving _nazardes_ to Seneca and Plutarch, while they imagined they tweaked

his nose. Petrarch, who is not the inventor of that tender poetry of which

he is the model, and Boccaccio, called the father of Italian novelists,

have alike profited by a studious perusal of writers, who are now only

read by those who have more curiosity than taste. Boiardo has imitated

Pulci, and Ariosto, Boiardo. The madness of Orlando Furioso, though it

wears, by its extravagance, a very original air, is only imitated from Sir

Launcelot in the old romance of "Morte Arthur," with which, Warton

observes, it agrees in every leading circumstance; and what is the

Cardenio of Cervantes but the Orlando of Ariosto? Tasso has imitated the

_Iliad_, and enriched his poem with episodes from the _Æneid_. It is

curious to observe that even Dante, wild and original as he appears, when

he meets Virgil in the Inferno, warmly expresses his gratitude for the

many fine passages for which he was indebted to his works, and on which he

says he had "long meditated." Molière and La Fontaine are considered to

possess as much originality as any of the French writers; yet the learned

Ménage calls Molière "un grand et habile picoreur;" and Boileau tells us

that La Fontaine borrowed his style and matter from Marot and Rabelais,

and took his subjects from Boccaccio, Poggius, and Ariosto. Nor was the

eccentric Rabelais the inventor of most of his burlesque narratives; and

he is a very close imitator of Folengo, the inventor of the macaronic

poetry, and not a little indebted to the old _Facezie_ of the Italians.

Indeed Marot, Villon, as well as those we have noticed, profited by the

authors anterior to the age of Francis I. La Bruyère incorporates whole

passages of Publius Syrus in his work, as the translator of the latter

abundantly shows. To the "Turkish Spy" was Montesquieu beholden for his

"Persian Letters," and a numerous crowd are indebted to Montesquieu.

Corneille made a liberal use of Spanish literature; and the pure waters of

Racine flowed from the fountains of Sophocles and Euripides.

This vein of imitation runs through the productions of our greatest

authors. Vigneul de Marville compares some of the first writers to bankers

who are rich with the assembled fortunes of individuals, and would be

often ruined were they too hardly drawn on.

* * * * *

VERS DE SOCIÉTÉ

Pliny, in an epistle to Tuscus, advises him to intermix among his severer

studies the softening charms of poetry; and notices a species of poetical

composition which merits critical animadversion. I shall quote Pliny in

the language of his elegant translator. He says, "These pieces commonly go

under the title of poetical amusements; but these amusements have

sometimes gained as much reputation to their authors as works of a more

serious nature. It is surprising how much the mind is entertained and

enlivened by these little poetical compositions, as they turn upon

subjects of gallantry, satire, tenderness, politeness, and everything, in

short, that concerns life, and the affairs of the world."

This species of poetry has been carried to its utmost perfection by the

French. It has been discriminated by them, from the mass of poetry,

under the apt title of "_Poésies légères,"_ and sometimes it has been

significantly called "_Vers de Société_." The French writers have formed a

body of this fugitive poetry which no European nation can rival; and to

which both the language and genius appear to be greatly favourable.

The "_Poésies légères_" are not merely compositions of a light and gay

turn, but are equally employed as a vehicle for tender and pathetic

sentiment. They are never long, for they are consecrated to the amusement

of society. The author appears to have composed them for his pleasure, not

for his glory; and he charms his readers, because he seems careless of

their approbation.

Every delicacy of sentiment must find its delicacy of expression, and

every tenderness of thought must be softened by the tenderest tones.

Nothing trite or trivial must enfeeble and chill the imagination; nor must

the ear be denied its gratification by a rough or careless verse. In these

works nothing is pardoned; a word may disturb, a line may destroy the

charm.

The passions of the poet may form the subjects of his verse. It is in

these writings he delineates himself; he reflects his tastes, his

desires, his humours, his amours, and even his defects. In other poems the

poet disappears under the feigned character he assumes; here alone he

speaks, here he acts. He makes a confidant of the reader, interests him in

his hopes and his sorrows; we admire the poet, and conclude with esteeming

the man. The poem is the complaint of a lover, or a compliment to a

patron, a vow of friendship, or a hymn of gratitude.

These poems have often, with great success, displayed pictures of manners;

for here the poet colours the objects with all the hues of social life.

Reflection must not be amplified, for these are pieces devoted to

the fancy; a scene may be painted throughout the poem; a sentiment

must be conveyed in a verse. In the "Grongar Hill" of Dyer we discover

some strokes which may serve to exemplify this criticism. The poet,

contemplating the distant landscape, observes--

A step methinks may pass the stream,

So little distant dangers seem;

So we mistake the future's face,

Eyed through Hope's deluding glass.

It must not be supposed that, because these poems are concise, they

are of easy production; a poet's genius may not be diminutive because

his pieces are so; nor must we call them, as a fine sonnet has been

called, a difficult trifle. A circle may be very small, yet it may be as

mathematically beautiful and perfect as a larger one. To such compositions

we may apply the observation of an ancient critic, that though a little

thing gives perfection, yet perfection is not a little thing.

The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with

the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a

science, and art a nature.

Genius will not always be sufficient to impart that grace of amenity. Many

of the French nobility, who cultivated poetry, have therefore oftener

excelled in these poetical amusements than more professed poets. France

once delighted in the amiable and ennobled names of Nivernois, Boufflers,

and St. Aignan; they have not been considered as unworthy rivals of

Chaulieu and Bernard, of Voltaire and Gresset.

All the minor odes of Horace, and the entire Anacreon, are compositions of

this kind; effusions of the heart, and pictures of the imagination, which

were produced in the convivial, the amatory, and the pensive hour. Our

nation has not always been successful in these performances; they have not

been kindred to its genius. With Charles II. something of a gayer and more

airy taste was communicated to our poetry, but it was desultory and

incorrect. Waller, both by his habits and his genius, was well adapted to

excel in this lighter poetry; and he has often attained the perfection

which the state of the language then permitted. Prior has a variety of

sallies; but his humour is sometimes gross, and his versification is

sometimes embarrassed. He knew the value of these charming pieces, and

he had drunk of this Burgundy in the vineyard itself. He has some

translations, and some plagiarisms; but some of his verses to Chloe are

eminently airy and pleasing. A diligent selection from our fugitive poetry

might perhaps present us with many of these minor poems; but the "_Vers de

Société_" form a species of poetical composition which may still be

employed with great success.

* * * * *

THE GENIUS OF MOLIÈRE.

The genius of comedy not only changes with the age, but appears different

among different people. Manners and customs not only vary among European

nations, but are alike mutable from one age to another, even in the same

people. These vicissitudes are often fatal to comic writers; our old

school of comedy has been swept off the stage: and our present uniformity

of manners has deprived our modern writers of those rich sources of

invention when persons living more isolated, society was less monotonous;

and Jonson and Shadwell gave us what they called "_the humours_,"--that

is, the individual or particular characteristics of men.[A]

[Footnote A: Aubrey has noted this habit of our two greatest dramatists,

when speaking of Shakspeare he says--"The humour of the constable in _A

Midsummer Night's Dream_, he happened to take at Grendon in Bucks; which

is the roade from London to Stratford; and there was living that constable

in 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours

of men dayly, wherever they came." Shadwell, whose best plays were

produced in the reign of Charles II., was a professed imitator of the

style of Jonson; and so closely described the manners of his day that he

was frequently accused of direct personalities, and obliged to alter one

of his plays, _The Humorists_, to avoid an outcry raised against him. Sir

Walter Scott has recorded, in the Preface to his "Fortunes of Nigel," the

obligation he was under to Shadwell's comedy, _The Squire of Alsatia_, for

the vivid description it enabled him to give of the lawless denizens of

the old Sanctuary of Whitefriars.--ED.]

But however tastes and modes of thinking may be inconstant, and customs

and manners alter, at bottom the groundwork is Nature's, in every

production of comic genius. A creative genius, guided by an unerring

instinct, though he draws after the contemporary models of society, will

retain his pre-eminence beyond his own age and his own nation; what was

temporary and local disappears, but what appertains to universal nature

endures. The scholar dwells on the grotesque pleasantries of the sarcastic

Aristophanes, though the Athenian manners, and his exotic personages, have

long vanished.

MOLIÈRE was a creator in the _art of comedy_; and although his personages

were the contemporaries of Louis the Fourteenth, and his manners, in the

critical acceptation of the term, local and temporary, yet his admirable

genius opened that secret path of Nature, which is so rarely found among

the great names of the most literary nations. CERVANTES remains single in

Spain; in England SHAKSPEARE is a consecrated name; and centuries may pass

away before the French people shall witness another MOLIÈRE.

The history of this comic poet is the tale of powerful genius creating

itself amidst the most adverse elements. We have the progress of that

self-education which struck out an untried path of its own, from the time

Molière had not yet acquired his art to the glorious days when he gave his

country a Plautus in his farce, a Terence in his composition, and a

Menander in his moral truths. But the difficulties overcome, and the

disappointments incurred, his modesty and his confidence, and, what was

not less extraordinary, his own domestic life in perpetual conflict with

his character, open a more strange career, in some respects, than has

happened to most others of the high order of his genius.

It was long the fate of Molière to experience that restless importunity of

genius which feeds on itself, till it discovers the pabulum it seeks.

Molière not only suffered that tormenting impulse, but it was accompanied

by the unhappiness of a mistaken direction. And this has been the lot of

some who for many years have thus been lost to themselves and to the

public.

A man born among the obscure class of the people, thrown among the

itinerant companies of actors--for France had not yet a theatre--occupied

to his last hours by too devoted a management of his own dramatic corps;

himself, too, an original actor in the characters by himself created; with

no better models of composition than the Italian farces _all' improvista_,

and whose fantastic gaiety he, to the last, loved too well; becomes the

personal favourite of the most magnificent monarch, and the intimate of

the most refined circles. Thoughtful observer of these new scenes and new

personages, he sports with the affected _précieuses_ and the flattering

_marquises_ as with the _naïve_ ridiculousness of the _bourgeois,_ and the

wild pride and egotism of the _parvenus_; and with more profound designs

and a hardier hand unmasks the impostures of false _pretenders_ in all

professions. His scenes, such was their verity, seem but the reflections

of his reminiscences. His fertile facility when touching on transient

follies; his wide comprehension, and his moralising vein, in his more

elevated comedy, display, in this painter of man, the poet and the

philosopher, and, above all, the great moral satirist. Molière has shown

that the most successful reformer of the manners of a people is a great

comic poet.

The youth _Pocquelin_--this was his family name--was designed by the

_tapissier_, his father, to be the heir of the hereditary honours of an

ancient standing, which had maintained the Pocquelins through four

or five generations by the articles of a furnishing upholsterer. His

grandfather was a haunter of the small theatres of that day, and

the boy often accompanied this venerable critic of the family to his

favourite recreations. The actors were usually more excellent than their

pieces; some had carried the mimetic art to the perfection of eloquent

gesticulation. In these loose scenes of inartificial and burlesque pieces

was the genius of Molière cradled and nursed. The changeful scenes of the

_Théâtre de Bourgogne_ deeply busied the boy's imagination, to the great

detriment of the _tapisserie_ of all the Pocquelins.

The father groaned, the grandfather clapped, the boy remonstrated till, at

fourteen years of age, he was consigned, as "un mauvais sujet" (so his

father qualified him), to a college of the Jesuits at Paris, where the

author of the "Tartuffe" passed five years, studying--for the bar!

Philosophy and logic were waters which he deeply drank; and sprinklings of

his college studies often pointed the satire of his more finished

comedies. To ridicule false learning and false taste one must be intimate

with the true.

On his return to the metropolis the old humour broke out at the

representation of the inimitable Scaramouch of the Italian theatre. The

irresistible passion drove him from his law studies, and cast young

Pocquelin among a company of amateur actors, whose fame soon enabled them

not to play gratuitously. Pocquelin was the manager and the modeller, for

under his studious eye this company were induced to imitate Nature with

the simplicity the poet himself wrote.

The prejudices of the day, both civil and religious, had made these

private theatres--no great national theatre yet existing--the resource

only of the idler, the dissipated, and even of the unfortunate in society.

The youthful adventurer affectionately offered a free admission to the

dear Pocquelins. They rejected their _entrées_ with horror, and sent their

genealogical tree, drawn afresh, to shame the truant who had wantoned into

the luxuriance of genius. To save the honour of the parental upholsterers

Pocquelin concealed himself under the immortal name of Molière.

The future creator of French comedy had now passed his thirtieth year, and

as yet his reputation was confined to his own dramatic corps--a pilgrim in

the caravan of ambulatory comedy. He had provided several temporary

novelties. Boileau regretted the loss of one, _Le Docteur Amoureux;_ and

in others we detect the abortive conceptions of some of his future pieces.

The severe judgment of Molière suffered his skeletons to perish; but, when

he had discovered the art of comic writing, with equal discernment he

resuscitated them.

Not only had Molière not yet discovered the true bent of his genius, but,

still more unfortunate, he had as greatly mistaken it as when he proposed

turning _avocat_, for he imagined that his most suitable character was

tragic. He wrote a tragedy, and he acted in a tragedy; the tragedy he

composed was condemned at Bordeaux; the mortified poet flew to Grenoble;

still the unlucky tragedy haunted his fancy; he looked on it with paternal

eyes, in which there were tears. Long after, when Racine, a youth, offered

him a very unactable tragedy,[A] Molière presented him with his own:

--"Take this, for I am convinced that the subject is highly tragic,

notwithstanding my failure." The great dramatic poet of France opened his

career by recomposing the condemned tragedy of the comic wit in _La

Thébaïde._ In the illusion that he was a great tragic actor, deceived by

his own susceptibility, though his voice denied the tones of passion, he

acted in one of Corneille's tragedies, and quite allayed the alarm of a

rival company on the announcement. It was not, however, so when the

author-actor vivified one of his own native personages; then, inimitably

comic, every new representation seemed to be a new creation.

[Footnote A: The tragedy written by Racine was called _Théagenè et

Chariclée_, and founded on the tale by Heliodorus. It was the first

attempt of its author, and submitted by him to Molière, while director of

the Theatre of the Palais Royal; the latter had no favourable impression

of its success if produced, but suggested _La Thébaïde_ as a subject for

his genius, and advanced the young poet 100 louis while engaged on his

work, which was successfully produced in 1664.--ED.]

It is a remarkable feature, though not perhaps a singular one, in the

character of this great comic writer, that he was one of the most serious

of men, and even of a melancholic temperament. One of his lampooners wrote

a satirical comedy on the comic poet, where he figures as "Molière

hypochondre." Boileau, who knew him intimately, happily characterised

Molière as _le Contemplateur_. This deep pensiveness is revealed in his

physiognomy.

The genius of Molière, long undiscovered by himself, in its first attempts

in a higher walk did not move alone; it was crutched by imitation, and it

often deigned to plough with another's heifer. He copied whole scenes from

Italian comedies and plots from Italian novelists: his sole merit was

their improvement. The great comic satirist, who hereafter was to people

the stage with a dramatic crowd who were to live on to posterity, had not

yet struck at that secret vein of originality--the fairy treasure which

one day was to cast out such a prodigality of invention. His two first

comedies, _L'Etourdi_ and _Le Dépit Amoureux_, which he had only ventured

to bring out in a provincial theatre, were grafted on Italian and Spanish

comedy. Nothing more original offered to his imagination than the Roman,

the Italian, and the Spanish drama; the cunning adroit slave of Terence;

the tricking, bustling _Gracioso_ of modern Spain; old fathers, the dupes

of some scapegrace, or of their own senile follies, with lovers sighing at

cross-purposes. The germ of his future powers may, indeed, be discovered

in these two comedies, for insensibly to himself he had fallen into some

scenes of natural simplicity. In _L'Etourdi,_ Mascarille, "le roi des

serviteurs," which Molière himself admirably personated, is one of those

defunct characters of the Italian comedy no longer existing in society;

yet, like our Touchstone, but infinitely richer, this new ideal personage

still delights by the fertility of his expedients and his perpetual and

vigorous gaiety. In _Le Dépit Amoureux_ is the exquisite scene of the

quarrel and reconciliation of the lovers. In this fine scene, though

perhaps but an amplification of the well-known ode of Horace, _Donec

gratus eram tibi_, Molière consulted his own feelings, and betrayed his

future genius.

It was after an interval of three or four years that the provincial

celebrity of these comedies obtained a representation at Paris; their

success was decisive. This was an evidence of public favour which did

not accompany Molière's more finished productions, which were so far

unfortunate that they were more intelligible to the few; in fact, the

first comedies of Molière were not written above the popular taste; the

spirit of true comedy, in a profound knowledge of the heart of man, and in

the delicate discriminations of individual character, was yet unknown.

Molière was satisfied to excel his predecessors, but he had not yet

learned his art.

The rising poet was now earnestly sought after; a more extended circle of

society now engaged his contemplative habits. He looked around on living

scenes no longer through the dim spectacles of the old comedy, and he

projected a new species, which was no longer to depend on its conventional

grotesque personages and its forced incidents; he aspired to please a more

critical audience by making his dialogue the conversation of society, and

his characters its portraits.

Introduced to the literary coterie of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, a new view

opened on the favoured poet. To occupy a seat in this envied circle was a

distinction in society. The professed object of this reunion of nobility

and literary persons, at the hôtel of the Marchioness of Rambouillet, was

to give a higher tone to all France, by the cultivation of the language,

the intellectual refinement of their compositions, and last, but not

least, to inculcate the extremest delicacy of manners. The recent civil

dissensions had often violated the urbanity of the court, and a grossness

prevailed in conversation which offended the scrupulous. This critical

circle was composed of both sexes. They were to be the arbiters of taste,

the legislators of criticism, and, what was less tolerable, the models of

genius. No work was to be stamped into currency which bore not the

mint-mark of the hôtel.

In the annals of fashion and literature no coterie has presented a more

instructive and amusing exhibition of the abuses of learning, and the

aberrations of ill-regulated imaginations, than the Hôtel de Rambouillet,

by its ingenious absurdities. Their excellent design to refine the

language, the manners, and even morality itself, branched out into every

species of false refinement; their science ran into trivial pedantries,

their style into a fantastic jargon, and their spiritualising delicacy

into the very puritanism of prudery. Their frivolous distinction between

the mind and the heart, which could not always be made to go together,

often perplexed them as much as their own jargon, which was not always

intelligible, even to the initiated. The French Academy is said to have

originated in the first meetings of the Hôtel de Rambouillet; and it is

probable that some sense and taste, in its earliest days, may have visited

this society, for we do not begin such refined follies without some show

of reason.

The local genius of the hôtel was feminine, though the most glorious men

of the literature of France were among its votaries. The great magnet was

the famed Mademoiselle Scudery, whose voluminous romances were their code;

and it is supposed these tomes preserve some of their lengthened

_conversaziones_. In the novel system of gallantry of this great inventor

of amorous and metaphysical "twaddle," the ladies were to be approached as

beings nothing short of celestial paragons; they were addressed in a

language not to be found in any dictionary but their own, and their habits

were more fantastic than their language: a sort of domestic chivalry

formed their etiquette. Their baptismal names were to them profane, and

their assumed ones were drawn from the folio romances--those Bibles of

love. At length all ended in a sort of Freemasonry of gallantry, which had

its graduated orders, and whoever was not admitted into the mysteries was

not permitted to prolong his existence--that is, his residence among

them. The apprenticeship of the craft was to be served under certain

_Introducers to Ruelles_.

Their card of invitation was either a rondeau or an enigma, which served

as a subject to open conversation. The lady received her visitors reposing

on that throne of beauty, a bed placed in an alcove; the toilet was

magnificently arranged. The space between the bed and the wall was called

the _Ruelle_[A], the diminutive of _la Rue_; and in this narrow street, or

"Fop's alley," walked the favoured. But the chevalier who was graced by

the honorary title of _l'Alcoviste,_ was at once master of the household

and master of the ceremonies. His character is pointedly defined by St.

Evremond, as "a lover whom the _Précieuse_ is to love without enjoyment,

and to enjoy in good earnest her husband with aversion." The scene offered

no indecency to such delicate minds, and much less the impassioned style

which passed between _les chères_, as they called themselves. Whatever

offered an idea, of what their jargon denominated _charnelle_, was treason

and exile. Years passed ere the hand of the elected maiden was kissed by

its martyr. The celebrated Julia d'Angennes was beloved by the Duke de

Montausier, but fourteen years elapsed ere she would yield a "yes." When

the faithful Julia was no longer blooming, the Alcoviste duke gratefully

took up the remains of her beauty.

[Footnote A: In a portion of the ancient Louvre, still preserved amid the

changes to which it has been subjected, is the old wainscoted bedroom of

the great Henry IV., with the carved recess, and the _ruelle_, as

described above: it is a most interesting fragment of regal domestic

life.--ED.]

Their more curious project was the reform of the style of conversation, to

purify its grossness, and invent novel terms for familiar objects. Ménage

drew up a "Petition of the Dictionaries," which, by their severity of

taste, had nearly become superannuated. They succeeded better with the

_marchandes des modes_ and the jewellers, furnishing a vocabulary

excessively _précieuse_, by which people bought their old wares with new

names. At length they were so successful in their neology, that with great

difficulty they understood one another. It is, however, worth observation,

that the orthography invented by the _précieuses_--who, for their

convenience, rejected all the redundant letters in words--was adopted, and

is now used; and their pride of exclusiveness in society introduced the

singular term _s'encanailler,_ to describe a person who haunted low

company, while their morbid purity had ever on their lips the word

_obscénité_, terms which Molière ridicules, but whose expressiveness has

preserved them in the language.

Ridiculous as some of these extravagances now appear to us, they had been

so closely interwoven with the elegance of the higher ranks, and so

intimately associated with genius and literature, that the veil of fashion

consecrated almost the mystical society, since we find among its admirers

the most illustrious names of France.

Into this elevated and artificial circle of society our youthful and

unsophisticated poet was now thrown, with a mind not vitiated by any

prepossessions of false taste, studious of nature and alive to the

ridiculous. But how was the comic genius to strike at the follies of his

illustrious friends--to strike, but not to wound? A provincial poet and

actor to enter hostilely into the sacred precincts of these Exclusives?

Tormented by his genius Molière produced _Les Précieuses Ridicules_, but

admirably parried, in his preface, any application to them, by averring

that it was aimed at their imitators--their spurious mimics in the

country. The _Précieuses Ridicules_ was acted in the presence of the

assembled Hôtel de Rambouillet with immense applause. A central voice from

the pit, anticipating the host of enemies and the fame of the reformer of

comedy, exclaimed, "Take courage, Molière, this is true comedy." The

learned Ménage was the only member of the society who had the good sense

to detect the drift; he perceived the snake in the grass. "We must now,"

said this sensible pedant (in a remote allusion to the fate of idolatry

and the introduction of Christianity) to the poetical pedant, Chapelain,

"follow the counsel which St. Rémi gave to Clovis--we must burn all that

we adored, and adore what we have burned." The success of the comedy was

universal; the company doubled their prices; the country gentry flocked to

witness the marvellous novelty, which far exposed that false taste, that

romance-impertinence, and that sickly affectation which had long disturbed

the quiet of families. Cervantes had not struck more adroitly at Spanish

rodomontade.

At this universal reception of the _Précieuses Ridicules_, Molière, it is

said, exclaimed--"I need no longer study Plautus and Terence, nor poach in

the fragments of Menander; I have only to study the world." It may be

doubtful whether the great comic satirist at that moment caught the sudden

revelation of his genius, as he did subsequently in his _Tartuffe_, his

_Misanthrope_, his _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and others. The _Précieuses

Ridicules_ was the germ of his more elaborate _Femmes Savantes_, which was

not produced till after an interval of twelve years.

Molière returned to his old favourite _canevas_, or plots of Italian

farces and novels, and Spanish comedies, which, being always at hand,

furnished comedies of intrigue. _L'Ecole des Maris_ is an inimitable model

of this class.

But comedies which derive their chief interest from the ingenious

mechanism of their plots, however poignant the delight of the artifice

of the _denouement_, are somewhat like an epigram, once known, the

brilliant point is blunted by repetition. This is not the fate of those

representations of men's actions, passions, and manners, in the more

enlarged sphere of human nature, where an eternal interest is excited, and

will charm on the tenth repetition.

No! Molière had not yet discovered his true genius; he was not yet

emancipated from his old seductions. A rival company was reputed to have

the better actors for tragedy, and Molière resolved to compose an heroic

drama on the passion of jealousy--a favourite one on which he was

incessantly ruminating. _Don Garcie de Navarre, ou Le Prince Jaloux_, the

hero personated by himself, terminated by the hisses of the audience.

The fall of the _Prince Jaloux_ was nearly fatal to the tender reputation

of the poet and the actor. The world became critical: the marquises,

and the précieuses, and recently the bourgeois, who were sore from

_Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu Imaginaire_, were up in arms; and the rival

theatre maliciously raised the halloo, flattering themselves that the

comic genius of their dreaded rival would be extinguished by the ludicrous

convulsed hiccough to which Molière was liable in his tragic tones, but

which he adroitly managed in his comic parts.

But the genius of Molière was not to be daunted by cabals, nor even

injured by his own imprudence. _Le Prince Jaloux_ was condemned in

February, 1661, and the same year produced _L'Ecole des Maris_ and _Les

Fâcheux_. The happy genius of the poet opened on his Zoiluses a series of

dramatic triumphs.

Foreign critics--Tiraboschi and Schlegel--have depreciated the Frenchman's

invention, by insinuating that were all that Molière borrowed taken from

him, little would remain of his own. But they were not aware of his

dramatic creation, even when he appropriated the slight inventions of

others; they have not distinguished the eras of the genius of Molière, and

the distinct classes of his comedies. Molière had the art of amalgamating

many distinct inventions of others into a single inimitable whole.

Whatever might be the herbs and the reptiles thrown into the mystical

caldron, the incantation of genius proved to be truly magical.

Facility and fecundity may produce inequality, but, when a man of genius

works, they are imbued with a raciness which the anxious diligence of

inferior minds can never yield. Shakspeare, probably, poured forth many

scenes in this spirit. The multiplicity of the pieces of Molière, their

different merits, and their distinct classes--all written within the space

of twenty years--display, if any poet ever did, this wonder-working

faculty. The truth is, that few of his comedies are finished works; he

never satisfied himself, even in his most applauded productions. Necessity

bound him to furnish novelties for his theatre; he rarely printed any

work. _Les Fâcheux_, an admirable series of scenes, in three acts, and in

verse, was "planned, written, rehearsed, and represented in a single

fortnight." Many of his dramatic effusions were precipitated on the stage;

the humorous scenes of _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_ were thrown out to

enliven a royal fête.

This versatility and felicity of composition made everything with Molière

a subject for comedy. He invented two novelties, such as the stage had

never before witnessed. Instead of a grave defence from the malice of his

critics, and the flying gossip of the court circle, Molière found out the

art of congregating the public to _The Quarrels of Authors_. He dramatised

his critics. In a comedy without a plot, and in scenes which seemed rather

spoken than written, and with characters more real than personated, he

displayed his genius by collecting whatever had been alleged to depreciate

it; and _La Critique de L'Ecole des Femmes_ is still a delightful

production. This singular drama resembles the sketch-book of an artist,

the _croquis_ of portraits--the loose hints of thoughts, many of which we

discover were more fully delineated in his subsequent pieces. With the

same rapid conception he laid hold of his embarrassments to furnish

dramatic novelties as expeditiously as the king required. Louis XIV. was

himself no indifferent critic, and more than once suggested an incident or

a character to his favourite poet. In _L'Impromptu de Versailles_, Molière

appears in his own person, and in the midst of his whole company, with all

the irritable impatience of a manager who had no piece ready. Amidst this

green-room bustle Molière is advising, reprimanding, and imploring, his

"ladies and gentlemen." The characters in this piece are, in fact, the

actors themselves, who appear under their own names; and Molière himself

reveals many fine touches of his own poetical character, as well as his

managerial. The personal pleasantries on his own performers, and the hints

for plots, and the sketches of character which the poet incidentally

throws out, form a perfect dramatic novelty. Some of these he himself

subsequently adopted, and others have been followed up by some dramatists

without rivalling Molière. The _Figaro_ of Beaumarchais is a descendant of

the _Mascarille_ of Molière; but the glory of rivalling Molière was

reserved for our own stage. Sheridan's _Critic, or a Tragedy Rehearsed,_

is a congenial dramatic satire with these two pieces of Molière.

The genius of Molière had now stepped out of the restricted limits of the

old comedy; he now looked on the moving world with other eyes, and he

pursued the ridiculous in society. These fresher studies were going on at

all hours, and every object was contemplated with a view to comedy. His

most vital characters have been traced to living originals, and some of

his most ludicrous scenes had occurred in reality before they delighted

the audience. Monsieur Jourdain had expressed his astonishment, "qu'il

faisait de la prose," in the Count de Soissons, one of the uneducated

noblemen devoted to the chase. The memorable scene between Trissotin and

Vadius, their mutual compliments terminating in their mutual contempt, had

been rehearsed by their respective authors--the Abbé Cottin and Ménage.

The stultified booby of Limoges, _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_, and the

mystified millionaire, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, were copied after life,

as was _Sganarelle_, in _Le Médecin malgré lui_. The portraits in that

gallery of dramatic paintings, _Le Misanthrope_, have names inscribed

under them; and the immortal _Tartuffe_ was a certain bishop of Autun. No

dramatist has conceived with greater variety the female character; the

women of Molière have a distinctness of feature, and are touched with a

freshness of feeling. Molière studied nature, and his comic humour is

never checked by that unnatural wit where the poet, the more he discovers

himself, the farther he removes himself from the personage of his

creation. The quickening spell which hangs over the dramas of Molière is

this close attention to nature, wherein he greatly resembles our

Shakspeare, for all springs from its source. His unobtrusive genius never

occurs to us in following up his characters, and a whole scene leaves on

our mind a complete but imperceptible effect.

The style of Molière has often been censured by the fastidiousness of his

native critics, as _bas_ and _du style familier_. This does not offend the

foreigner, who is often struck by its simplicity and vigour. Molière

preferred the most popular and naïve expressions, as well as the most

natural incidents, to a degree which startled the morbid delicacy of

fashion and fashionable critics. He had frequent occasions to resist their

petty remonstrances; and whenever Molière introduced an incident, or made

an allusion of which he knew the truth, and which with him had a settled

meaning, this master of human life trusted to his instinct and his art.

This pure and simple taste, ever rare at Paris, was the happy portion of

the genius of this Frenchman. Hence he delighted to try his farcical

pieces, for we cannot imagine that they were his more elevated comedies,

on his old maid-servant. This maid, probably, had a keen relish for comic

humour, for once when Molière read to her the comedy of another writer as

his own, she soon detected the trick, declaring that it could not be her

master's. Hence, too, our poet invited even children to be present on such

rehearsals, and at certain points would watch their emotions. Hence, too,

in his character of manager, he taught his actors to study nature. An

actress, apt to speak freely, told him, "You torment us all; but you

never speak to my husband." This man, originally a candle-snuffer, was a

perfect child of nature, and acted the Thomas Diaforius, in _Le Malade

Imaginaire_. Molière replied, "I should be sorry to say a word to him; I

should spoil his acting. Nature has provided him with better lessons to

perform his parts than any which I could give him." We may imagine

Shakspeare thus addressing his company, had the poet been also the

manager.

A remarkable incident in the history of the genius of Molière is the

frequent recurrence of the poet to the passion of jealousy. The "jaundice

in the lover's eye," he has painted with every tint of his imagination.

"The green-eyed monster" takes all shapes, and is placed in every position.

Solemn, or gay, or satirical, he sometimes appears in agony, but often

scorns to make its "trifles light as air," only ridiculous as a source of

consolation. Was _Le Contemplateur_ comic in his melancholy, or melancholy

in his comic humour?

The truth is, that the poet himself had to pass through those painful

stages which he has dramatised. The domestic life of Molière was itself

very dramatic; it afforded Goldoni a comedy of five acts, to reveal the

secrets of the family circle of Molière; and l'Abbate Chiari, an Italian

novelist and playwright, has taken for a comic subject, _Molière, the

Jealous Husband_.

The French, in their "petite morale" on conjugal fidelity, appear so

tolerant as to leave little sympathy for the real sufferer. Why should

they else have treated domestic jealousy as a foible for ridicule, rather

than a subject for deep passion? Their tragic drama exhibits no Othello,

nor their comedy a Kitely, or a _Suspicious Husband_. Molière, while his

own heart was the victim, conformed to the national taste, by often

placing the object on its comic side. Domestic jealousy is a passion which

admits of a great diversity of subjects, from the tragic or the pathetic,

to the absurd and the ludicrous. We have them all in Molière. Molière

often was himself "Le Cocu Imaginaire;" he had been in the position of the

guardian in _L'Ecole des Maris_. Like Arnolphe in _L'Ecole des Femmes_, he

had taken on himself to rear a young wife who played the same part, though

with less innocence; and like the _Misanthrope_, where the scene between

Alceste and Celimène is "une des plus fortes qui existant au théâtre," he

was deeply entangled in the wily cruelties of scornful coquetry, and we

know that at times he suffered in "the hell of lovers" the torments of his

own _Jealous Prince_.

When this poet cast his fate with a troop of comedians, as the manager,

and whom he never would abandon, when at the height of his fortune, could

he avoid accustoming himself to the relaxed habits of that gay and

sorrowful race, who, "of imagination all compact," too often partake of

the passions they inspire in the scene? The first actress, Madame Béjard,

boasted that, with the exception of the poet, she had never dispensed her

personal favours but to the aristocracy. The constancy of Molière was

interrupted by another actress, Du Parc; beautiful but insensible, she

only tormented the poet, and furnished him with some severe lessons for

the coquetry of his Celimène, in _Le Misanthrope_. The facility of the

transition of the tender passion had more closely united the susceptible

poet to Mademoiselle de Brie. But Madame Béjard, not content to be the

chief actress, and to hold her partnership in "the properties," to retain

her ancient authority over the poet, introduced, suddenly, a blushing

daughter, some say a younger sister, who had hitherto resided at Avignon,

and who she declared was the offspring of the count of Modena, by a secret

marriage. Armande Béjard soon attracted the paternal attentions of the

poet. She became the secret idol of his retired moments, while he fondly

thought that he could mould a young mind, in its innocence, to his own

sympathies. The mother and the daughter never agreed. Armande sought his

protection; and one day rushing into his study, declared that she would

marry her friend. The elder Béjard freely consented to avenge herself on

De Brie. De Brie was indulgent, though "the little creature," she

observed, was to be yoked to one old enough to be her father. Under the

same roof were now heard the voices of the three females, and Molière

meditating scenes of feminine jealousies.

Molière was fascinated by his youthful wife; her lighter follies charmed:

two years riveted the connubial chains. Molière was a husband who was

always a lover. The actor on the stage was the very man he personated.

Mademoiselle Molière, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in

_Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. With what fervour the poet feels her neglect!

with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend

who would have dissolved the spell!

The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows than slights.

Mademoiselle had the art of persuading Molière that he was only his own

"cocu imaginaire;" but these domestic embarrassments multiplied.

Mademoiselle, reckless of the distinguished name she bore, while she

gratified her personal vanity by a lavish expenditure, practised that

artful coquetry which attracted a crowd of loungers. Molière found no

repose in his own house, and retreated to a country-house, where, however,

his restless jealousy often drove him back to scenes which he trembled to

witness. At length came the last argument of outraged matrimony--he

threatened confinement. To prevent a public rupture, Molière consented to

live under the same roof, and only to meet at the theatre. Weak only in

love, however divided from his wife, Molière remained her perpetual lover.

He said, in confidence, "I am born with every disposition to tenderness.

When I married, she was too young to betray any evil inclinations. My

studies were devoted to her, but I soon discovered her indifference. I

ascribed it to her temper; her foolish passion for Count Guiche made too

much noise to leave me even this apparent tranquillity. I resolved to live

with her as an honourable man, whose reputation does not depend on the bad

conduct of his wife. My kindness has not changed her, but my compassion

has increased. Those who have not experienced these delicate emotions have

never truly loved. In her absence her image is before me; in her presence,

I am deprived of all reflection; I have no longer eyes for her defects; I

only view her amiable. Is not this the last extreme of folly? And are you

not surprised that I, reasoning as I do, am only sensible of the weakness

which I cannot throw off?"

Few men of genius have left in their writings deeper impressions of their

personal feelings than Molière. With strong passions in a feeble frame, he

had duped his imagination that, like another Pygmalion, he would create a

woman by his own art. In silence and agony he tasted the bitter fruits of

the disordered habits of the life of a comedian, a manager, and a poet.

His income was splendid; but he himself was a stranger to dissipation. He

was a domestic man, of a pensive and even melancholy temperament. Silent

and reserved, unless in conversation with that more intimate circle whose

literature aided his genius, or whose friendship consoled for his domestic

disturbances, his habits were minutely methodical; the strictest order was

observed throughout his establishment; the hours of dinner, of writing, of

amusement, were allotted, and the slightest derangement in his own

apartment excited a morbid irritability which would interrupt his studies

for whole days.

Who, without this tale of Molière, could conjecture, that one skilled in

the workings of our nature would have ventured on the perilous experiment

of equalizing sixteen years against forty--weighing roses against grey

locks--to convert a wayward coquette, through her capricious womanhood,

into an attached wife? Yet, although Mademoiselle could cherish no

personal love for the intellectual being, and hastened to change the

immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she seems to have been

impressed by a perfect conviction of his creative genius. When the

Archbishop of Paris, in the pride of prelacy, refused the rites of

sepulture to the corpse of Molière THE ACTOR, it was her voice which

reminded the world of Molière THE POET, exclaiming--"Have they denied a

grave to the man to whom Greece would have raised an altar!"

* * * * *

THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE.

The "Memoirs of the poet Racine," composed by his son, who was himself no

contemptible poet, may be classed among those precious pieces of biography

so delightful to the philosopher who studies human nature, and the

literary man whose curiosity is interested in the history of his republic.

Such, works are rare, and rank in merit next to autobiographies. Such

biographical sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, contain what we often

regret is wanting in the more regular life of a professed biographer.

These desultory memoirs interest by their warmth, their more personal

acquaintance with the hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which

give so much life to the individual character.

The prominent feature in the character of Racine was an excessive

tenderness of feeling; his profound sensibility even to its infirmity, the

tears which would cover his face, and the agony in his heart, were perhaps

national. But if this sensibility produced at times the softest emotions,

if it made him the poet of lovers, and even the poet of imagination, it

also rendered him too feelingly alive to criticism, it embittered his

days with too keen a perception of the domestic miseries which all men

must alike undergo.

During a dramatic performance at St. Cyr, the youthful representative of

Esther suddenly forgot her part; the agitated poet exclaimed, "Oh,

mademoiselle, you are ruining my piece!" Terrified at this reprimand, the

young actress wept; the poet flew to her, wiped away her tears, and with

contagious sympathy shed tears himself. "I do not hesitate," says Louis

Racine, "to relate such minute circumstances, because this facility of

shedding tears shows the goodness of the heart, according to the

observation of the ancients--

[Greek:] "agathohi d aridakryes andres."

This morbid state of feeling made his whole literary life uneasy; unjust

criticism affected him as much as the most poignant, and there was nothing

he dreaded more than that his son should become a writer of tragedies. "I

will not dissimulate," he says, addressing his son, "that in the heat of

composition we are not sometimes pleased with ourselves; but you may

believe me, when the day after we look over our work, we are astonished

not to find that excellence we admired in the evening; and when we reflect

that even what we find good ought to be still better, and how distant we

are still from perfection, we are discouraged and dissatisfied. Besides

all this, although the approbation I have received has been very

flattering, the least adverse criticism, even miserable as it might be,

has always occasioned me more vexation than all the praise I received

could give me pleasure." And, again, he endeavours to impress on him that

the favour he received from the world he owed not to his verses. "Do not

imagine that they are my verses that attract all these kindnesses.

Corneille composes verses a hundred times finer than mine, but no one

regards him. His verses are only applauded from the mouths of the actors.

I do not tire men of the world by reciting my works; I never allude to

them; I endeavour to amuse them with matters which please them. My talent

in their company is, not to make them feel that I have any genius, but to

show them that they possess some themselves. When you observe the duke

pass several hours with me, you would be surprised, were you present, that

he frequently quits me without my having uttered three words; but

gradually I put him in a humour of chatting, and he leaves me more

satisfied with himself than with me." When Rochefoucault said that Boileau

and Racine had only one kind of genius, and could only talk about their

own poetry, it is evident that the observation should not have extended to

Racine, however it might to Boileau. It was Racine's excessive sensibility

which made him the finest dramatic reciter. The celebrated actress,

Mademoiselle Champmeslé,[A] the heroine of his tragedies, had no genius

whatever for the stage, but she had beauty, voice, and memory. Racine

taught her first to comprehend the verses she was going to recite, showed

her the appropriate gesture, and gave her the variable tones, which he

even sometimes noted down. His pupil, faithful to her lessons, though a

mere actress of art, on the stage seemed inspired by passion; and as she,

thus formed and fashioned, naturally only played thus effectively in the

dramas of her preceptor, it was supposed that love for the poet inspired

the actress.

[Footnote A: Racine first met this actress at the Marquis de Sevigné's

_petit soupers_; so much lamented by his more famous mother in one of her

admirable letters, who speaks of "the Racines and the Despreaux's" who

assisted his prodigality. In one of Madame de Sevigné's letters, dated in

1672, she somewhat rashly declares, "Racine now writes his dramas, not for

posterity, but for Mademoiselle Champmeslé:" she had then forsaken the

marquis for the poet, who wrote _Roxane_ in _Bajazet_ expressly for her.

--ED.]

When Racine read aloud he diffused his own enthusiasm once with Boileau

and Nicole, amid a literary circle, they talked of Sophocles, whom Racine

greatly admired, but from whom he had never dared to borrow a tragic

subject. Taking up a Greek Sophocles, and translating the OEdipus, the

French poet became so deeply imbued with the Greek tragedian, that his

auditors caught all the emotions of terror and pity. "I have seen," says

one of those auditors, "our best pieces represented by our best actors,

but never anything approached the agitation which then came over us; and

to this distant day I have never lost the recollection of Racine, with the

volume in his hand, full of emotion, and we all breathlessly pressing

around him."

It was the poet's sensibility that urged him to make the most

extraordinary sacrifice that ever poet made; he wished to get rid entirely

of that poetical fame to which he owed everything, and which was at once

his pleasure, his pride, and his property. His education had been a

religious one, in the Port-Royal;[A] but when Nicole, one of that

illustrious fraternity, with undistinguishing fanaticism, had once

asserted that all dramatic writers were public poisoners of souls, Racine,

in the pride and strength of his genius, had eloquently repelled the

denouncement. But now, having yet only half run his unrivalled course, he

turned aside, relinquished its glory, repented of his success, and

resolved to write no more tragedies.[B] He determined to enter into the

austere order of the Chartreux; but his confessor, more rational than his

penitent, assured him that a character so feeling as his own, and so long

accustomed to the world, could not endure that terrible solitude. He

advised him to marry a woman of a serious turn, and that little domestic

occupations would withdraw him from the passion he seemed most to dread,

that of writing verses.

[Footnote A: For an account of this very celebrated religious foundation,

its fortunes and misfortunes, see the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i.

p. 94.--ED.]

[Footnote B: Racine ultimately conceived an aversion for his dramatic

offspring, and could never be induced to edit a proper edition of his

works, or even give a few lessons in declamation to a juvenile princess,

who selected his _Andromaque_ for the subject, perhaps out of compliment

to the poet, whose first visit became in consequence his last.--ED.]

The marriage of Racine was an act of penance--neither love nor interest

had any share in the union. His wife was a good sort of woman, but perhaps

the most insensible of her sex; and the properest person in the world to

mortify the passion of literary glory, and the momentary exultation of

literary vanity.[A] It is scarcely credible, but most certainly true,

since her own son relates the fact, that the wife of Racine had neither

seen acted, nor ever read, nor desired to read, the tragedies which had

rendered her husband so celebrated throughout Europe; she had only learned

some of their titles in conversation. She was as insensible to fortune as

to fame. One day, when Racine returned from Versailles, with the princely

gift from Louis XIV. of a purse of 1000 louis, he hastened to embrace his

wife, and to show her the treasure. But she was full of trouble, for one

of the children for two days had not studied. "We will talk of this

another time," exclaimed the poet; "at present let us be happy." But she

insisted he ought instantly to reprimand this child, and continued her

complaints; while Boileau in astonishment paced to and fro, perhaps

thinking of his Satire on Women, and exclaiming, "What insensibility! Is

it possible that a purse of 1000 louis is not worth a thought!" This

stoical apathy did not arise in Madame Racine from the grandeur, but the

littleness, of her mind. Her prayer-books and her children were the sole

objects that interested this good woman. Racine's sensibility was not

mitigated by his marriage; domestic sorrows weighed heavily on his

spirits: when the illness of his children agitated him, he sometimes

exclaimed, "Why did I expose myself to all this? Why was I persuaded not

to be a Chartreux?"--His letters to his children are those of a father and

a friend; kind exhortations, or pathetic reprimands; he enters into the

most domestic detail, while he does not conceal from them the mediocrity

of their fortune. "Had you known him in his family," said Louis Racine,

"you would be more alive to his poetical character, you would then know

why his verses are always so full of sentiment. He was never more pleased

than when, permitted to be absent from the court, he could come among us

to pass a few days. Even in the presence of strangers he dared to be

a father, and used to join us in our sports. I well remember our

processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I the rector, and the

author of 'Athaliah,' chanting with us, carried the cross."

[Footnote A: The lady he chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family

was of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described as

possessing any marked personal attractions.--ED.]

At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days. He was naturally of a

melancholic temperament, apt to dwell on objects which occasion pain,

rather than on those which exhilarate. Louis Racine observes that his

character resembled Cicero's description of himself, more inclined to

dread unfortunate events, than to hope for happy ones; _semper magis ad_

_versos rerum exitus metuens quam sperans secundos_. In the last incident

of his life his extreme sensibility led him to imagine as present a

misfortune which might never have occurred.

Madame de Maintenon, one day in conversation with the poet, alluded to the

misery of the people. Racine observed it was the usual consequence of long

wars: the subject was animating, and he entered into it with all that

enthusiasm peculiar to himself. Madame de Maintenon was charmed with his

eloquent effusion, and requested him to give her his observations in

writing, assuring him they should not go out of her hand. She was reading

his memoir when the king entered her apartment; he took it up, and, after

having looked over a few pages, he inquired with great quickness who was

the author. She replied it was a secret; but the king was peremptory, and

the author was named. The king asked with great dissatisfaction, "Is it

because he writes the most perfect verses, that he thinks that he is able

to become a statesman?"

Madame de Maintenon told the poet all that had passed, and declined to

receive his visits for the present. Racine was shortly after attacked with

violent fever. In the languor of recovery he addressed Madame de Maintenon

to petition to have his pension freed from some new tax; and he added an

apology for his presumption in suggesting the cause of the miseries of the

people, with an humiliation that betrays the alarms that existed in his

mind. The letter is too long to transcribe, but it is a singular instance

how genius can degrade itself when it has placed all its felicity on the

varying smiles of those we call the great. Well might his friend Boileau,

who had nothing of his sensibility nor imagination, exclaim, with his good

sense, of the court:--

Quel séjour étranger, et pour vous et pour moi!

Racine afterwards saw Madame de Maintenon walking in the gardens of

Versailles; she drew aside into a retired allée to meet him; she exhorted

him to exert his patience and fortitude, and told him that all would end

well. "No, madam," he replied, "never!" "Do you then doubt," she said,

"either my heart, or my influence?" He replied, "I acknowledge your

influence, and know your goodness to me; but I have an aunt who loves me

in quite a different manner. That pious woman every day implores God to

bestow on me disgrace, humiliation, and occasions for penitence, and she

has more influence than you." As he said these words, the sound of a

carriage was heard; "The king is coming!" said Madame de Maintenon; "hide

yourself!"

To this last point of misery and degradation was this great genius

reduced. Shortly after he died, and was buried at the feet of his master

in the chapel of the studious and religious society of Port-Royal.

The sacred dramas of _Esther_ and _Athaliah_ were among the latter

productions of Racine. The fate of _Athaliah_, his masterpiece, was

remarkable. The public imagined that it was a piece written only for

children, as it was performed by the young scholars of St. Cyr, and

received it so coldly that Racine was astonished and disgusted.[A]

He earnestly requested Boileau's opinion, who maintained it was his

capital work. "I understand these things," said he, "and the public _y

reviendra_." The prediction was a true one, but it was accomplished too

late, long after the death of the author; it was never appreciated till it

was publicly performed.

[Footnote A: They were written at the request of Madame de Maintenon, for

the pupils of her favourite establishment at St. Cyr; she was anxious that

they should be perfect in declamation, and she tried them with the poet's

_Andromaque_, but they recited it with so much passion and feeling that

they alarmed their patroness, who told Racine "it was so well done that

she would be careful they should never act that drama again," and urged

him to write plays on sacred subjects expressly for their use. He had not

written a play for upwards of ten years; he now composed his _Esther_,

making that character a flattering reflection of Maintenon's career.--ED.]

Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the booksellers.

Boileau particularly, though fond of money, was so delicate on this point

that he gave all his works away. It was this that made him so bold in

railing at those authors _qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages d'un

libraire_, and he declared that he had only inserted these verses,

Je sai qu'un noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime

Tirer de son travail un tribut légitime,

to console Racine, who had received some profits from the printing of his

tragedies. Those profits were, however, inconsiderable; the truth is, the

king remunerated the poets.

Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed by Colbert for six

hundred livres, _to give him the means of continuing his studies of the

belles-lettres_. He received, by an account found among his papers, above

forty thousand livres from the cassette of the king, by the hand of the

first valet-de-chambre. Besides these gifts, Racine had a pension of four

thousand livres as historiographer, and another pension as a man of

letters.

Which is the more honourable? to crouch for a salary brought by the hand

of the first valet-de-chambre, or to exult in the tribute offered by the

public to an author?

* * * * *

OF STERNE.

Cervantes is immortal--Rabelais and STERNE have passed away to the

curious.

These fraternal geniuses alike chose their subjects from their own times.

Cervantes, with the innocent design of correcting a temporary folly of his

countrymen, so that the very success of the design might have proved fatal

to the work itself; for when he had cut off the heads of the Hydra, an

extinct monster might cease to interest the readers of other times, and

other manners. But Cervantes, with judgment equal to his invention, and

with a cast of genius made for all times, delighted his contemporaries and

charms his posterity. He looked to the world and collected other follies

than the Spanish ones, and to another age than the administration of the

duke of Lerma; with more genuine pleasantry than any writer from the days

of Lucian, not a solitary spot has soiled the purity of his page; while

there is scarcely a subject in human, nature for which we might not find

some apposite illustration. His style, pure as his thoughts, is, however,

a magic which ceases to work in all translations, and Cervantes is not

Cervantes in English or in French; yet still he retains his popularity

among all the nations of Europe; which is more than we can say even of our

Shakspeare!

Rabelais and Sterne were not perhaps inferior in genius, and they were

read with as much avidity and delight as the Spaniard. "Le docte Rabelais"

had the learning which the Englishman wanted; while unhappily Sterne

undertook to satirise false erudition, which requires the knowledge of the

true. Though the _Papemanes_, on whom Rabelais has exhausted his grotesque

humour and his caustic satire, have not yet walked off the stage, we pay a

heavy price in the grossness of his ribaldry and his tiresome balderdash

for odd stories and flashes of witty humour. Rabelais hardly finds readers

even in France, with the exception of a few literary antiquaries. The day

has passed when a gay dissolute abbe could obtain a rich abbey by getting

Rabelais by heart, for the perpetual improvement of his patron--and

Rabelais is now little more than a Rabelais by tradition.[A]

[Footnote A: The clergy were not so unfavourable to Rabelais as might

have been expected. He was through life protected by the Cardinal

Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who employed him in various important

negotiations; and it is recorded of him that he refused a scholar

admittance to his table because he had not read his works. This

familiarity with his grotesque romance was also shared by Cardinal Duprat,

who is said to have always carried a copy of it with him, as if it was his

breviary. The anecdote of the priest who obtained promotion from a

knowledge of his works is given in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol.

ii. p. 10.--ED.]

In my youth the world doted on Sterne! Martin Sherlock ranks him among

"the luminaries of the century." Forty years ago, young men in their most

facetious humours never failed to find the archetypes of society in the

Shandy family--every good-natured soul was uncle Toby, every humorist was

old Shandy, every child of Nature was Corporal Trim! It may now be doubted

whether Sterne's natural dispositions were the humorous or the pathetic:

the pathetic has survived!

There is nothing of a more ambiguous nature than strong humour, and Sterne

found it to be so; and latterly, in despair, he asserted that "the taste

for humour is the gift of heaven!" I have frequently observed how humour,

like the taste for olives, is even repugnant to some palates, and have

witnessed the epicure of humour lose it all by discovering how some have

utterly rejected his favourite relish! Even men of wit may not taste

humour! The celebrated Dr. Cheyne, who was not himself deficient in

originality of thinking with great learning and knowledge, once entrusted

to a friend a remarkable literary confession. Dr. Cheyne assured him that

"he could not read 'Don Quixote' with any pleasure, nor had any taste for

'Hudibras' or 'Gulliver;' and that what we call _wit_ and _humour_ in

these authors he considered as false ornaments, and never to be found in

those compositions of the ancients which we most admire and esteem."[A]

Cheyne seems to have held Aristophanes and Lucian monstrously cheap! The

ancients, indeed, appear not to have possessed that comic quality that

we understand as _humour_, nor can I discover a word which exactly

corresponds with our term _humour_ in any language, ancient or modern.

Cervantes excels in that sly satire which hides itself under the cloak of

gravity, but this is not the sort of humour which so beautifully plays

about the delicacy of Addison's page; and both are distinct from the

broader and stronger humour of Sterne.

[Footnote A: This friend, it now appears, was Dr. King, of Oxford, whose

anecdotes have recently been published. This curious fact is given in a

strange hodge-podge, entitled "The Dreamer;" a remarkable instance where a

writer of learning often conceives that to be humour, which to others is

not even intelligible!]

The result of Dr. Cheyne's honest confession was experienced by Sterne,

for while more than half of the three kingdoms were convulsed with

laughter at his humour, the other part were obdurately dull to it. Take,

for instance, two very opposite effects produced by "Tristram Shandy" on a

man of strong original humour himself, and a wit who had more delicacy and

sarcasm than force and originality. The Rev. Philip Skelton declared that

"after reading 'Tristram Shandy,' he could not for two or three days

attend seriously to his devotion, it filled him with so many ludicrous

ideas." But Horace Walpole, who found his "Sentimental Journey" very

pleasing, declares that of "his tiresome 'Tristram Shandy,' he could never

get through three volumes."

The literary life of Sterne was a short one: it was a blaze of existence,

and it turned his head. With his personal life we are only acquainted by

tradition. Was the great sentimentalist himself unfeeling, dissolute,

and utterly depraved? Some anecdotes which one of his companions[A]

communicated to me, confirm Garrick's account preserved in Dr. Bumey's

collections, that "He was more dissolute in his conduct than his writings,

and generally drove every female away by his ribaldry. He degenerated in

London like an ill-transplanted shrub; the incense of the great spoiled

his head, and their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud

--an invalid in body and mind." Warburtou declared that "he was an

irrecoverable scoundrel." Authenticated facts are, however, wanting for a

judicious summary of the real character of the founder of sentimental

writing. An impenetrable mystery hangs over his family conduct; he has

thrown many sweet domestic touches in his own memoirs and letters

addressed to his daughter: but it would seem that he was often parted from

his family. After he had earnestly solicited the return of his wife from

France, though she did return, he was suffered to die in utter neglect.

[Footnote A: Caleb Whitefoord, the wit once famed for his invention of

cross-readings, which, appeared under the name of "Papirius Cursor."]

His sermons have been observed to be characterised by an air of levity; he

attempted this unusual manner. It was probably a caprice which induced him

to introduce one of his sermons in "Tristram Shandy;" it was fixing a

diamond in black velvet, and the contrast set off the brilliancy. But he

seems then to have had no design of publishing his "Sermons." One day, in

low spirits, complaining to Caleb Whitefoord of the state of his finances,

Caleb asked him, "if he had no sermons like the one in 'Tristram Shandy?'"

But Sterne had no notion that "sermons" were saleable, for two preceding

ones had passed unnoticed. "If you could hit on a striking title, take my

word for it that they would go down." The next day Sterne made his

appearance in raptures. "I have it!" he cried: "Dramatic Sermons by

Torick." With great difficulty he was persuaded to drop this allusion to

the church and the playhouse![A]

[Footnote A: He published these two volumes of discourses under the title

of "Yorick's Sermons," because, as he stated in his preface, it would

"best serve the booksellers' purpose, as Yorick's name is possibly of the

two the more known;" but, fearing the censure of the world, he added a

second title-page with his own name, "to ease the minds of those who see a

jest, and the danger which lurks under it, where no jest is meant." All

this did not free Sterne from much severe criticism.--ED.]

We are told in the short addition to his own memoirs, that "he submitted

to fate on the 18th day of March, 1768, at his lodgings in Bond-street."

But it does not appear to have been noticed that Sterne died with

neither friend nor relation by his side! a hired nurse was the sole

companion of the man whose wit found admirers in every street, but

whose heart, it would seem, could not draw one to his death-bed. We

cannot say whether Sterne, who had long been dying, had resolved to

practise his own principle,--when he made the philosopher Shandy, who had

a fine saying for everything, deliver his opinion on death--that "there is

no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groan? and

convulsions--and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with

the bottoms of curtains in a dying man's room. Strip it of these, what is

it?" I find the moment of his death described in a singular book, the

"Life of a Foot-man." I give it with all its particulars. "In the month of

January, 1768, we set off for London. We stopped for some time at Almack's

house in Pall-Mall. My master afterwards took Sir James Gray's house in

Clifford-street, who was going ambassador to Spain. He now began

house-keeping, hired a French cook, a house-maid, and kitchen-maid, and

kept a great deal of the best company. About this time, Mr Sterne, the

celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond-street.

He was sometimes called 'Tristram Shandy,' and sometimes 'Yorick;' a very

great favourite of the gentlemen's. One day my master had company to

dinner who were speaking about him: the Duke of Roxburgh, the Earl of

March, the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Hume,

and Mr. James. 'John,' said my master, 'go and inquire how Mr. Sterne is

to-day.' I went, returned, and said,--I went to Mr. Sterne's lodging; the

mistress opened the door; I inquired how he did. She told me to go up to

the nurse; I went into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten

minutes; but in five he said, 'Now it is come!' He put up his hand as if

to stop a blow, and died in a minute. The gentlemen were all very sorry,

and lamented him very much[A]."

[Footnote A: "Travels in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, during

a series of thirty years and upwards, by John Macdonald, a cadet of the

family of Kippoch, in Invernesshire, who after the ruin of his family, in

1765, was thrown, when a child, on the wide world, &c. Printed for the

author, 1790."--He served a number of noblemen and gentlemen in the humble

station of a footman. There is such an air of truth and sincerity

throughout the work that I entertain no doubt of its genuineness.]

Such is the simple narrative of the death of this wit[A]! Some letters and

papers of Sterne are now before me which reveal a piece of secret history

of our sentimentalist. The letters are addressed to a young lady of the

name of De Fourmantel, whose ancestors were the Berangers de Fourmantel,

who during the persecution of the French Protestants by Louis XIV.

emigrated to this country: they were entitled to extensive possessions in

St. Domingo, but were excluded by their Protestantism. The elder sister

became a Catholic, and obtained the estates; the younger adopted the name

of Beranger, and was a governess to the Countess of Bristol. The paper

states that Catherine de Fourmantel formed an attachment to Sterne, and

that it was the expectation of their friends that they would be united;

but that on a visit Sterne became acquainted with a lady, whom he married,

in the space of one month, after having paid his addresses to Miss de

Fourmantel for five years. The consequence was, the total derangement of

intellect of this young lady. She was confined in a private madhouse.

Sterne twice saw her there; and from observation on her state drew the

"Maria" whom he has so pathetically described. The elder sister, at the

instigation of the father of the communicator of these letters, came to

England, and took charge of the unhappy Maria, who died at Paris. "For

many years," says the writer of this statement, "my mother had the

_handkerchief_ Sterne alludes to." The anxious wish of Sterne was to have

his letters returned to him. In this he failed; and such as they are,

without date, either of time or place, they are now before me.

[Footnote A: Sterne was buried in the ground belonging to the parish of

St. George's, Hanover Square, situated in the Bayswater Road. His funeral

was "attended only by two gentlemen in a mourning coach, no bell tolling;"

and his grave has been described as "distinguished by a plain headstone,

set up with an unsuitable inscription, by a tippling fraternity of

Freemasons." In 1761, long before his death, was published a satire on the

tendencies of his writings, mixed with a good deal of personal censure, in

a pamphlet entitled "A Funeral Discourse, occasioned by the much lamented

death of Mr. Yorick, preached before a very mixed society of Jemmies,

Jessamies, Methodists, and Christians, at a nocturnal meeting in Petticoat

Lane; by Christopher Flagellan, A.M." As one of the minor "Curiosities of

Literature" this tract is worth noting; its author, in a preface, says

that "it has been _maliciously_, or rather _stupidly_, reported that the

late Mr. Sterne, alias Yorick, is not dead; but that, on the contrary, he

is writing a fifth and sixth, and has carried his plan as far as a

fiftieth and sixtieth volume of the book called 'The Life and Opinions of

Tristram Shandy;' but they are rather to be attributed to his ghastly

ghost, which is said to walk the purlieus of Covent Garden and Drury

Lane."--ED.]

The billets-doux are unquestionably authentic, but the statement is

inaccurate. I doubt whether the narrative be correct in stating that

Sterne married after an acquaintance of one month; for he tells us in his

Memoirs that he courted his wife for two years; he, however, married in

1741. The "Sermon of Elijah," which he presents to Miss de Fourmantel in

one of these letters, was not published till 1747. Her disordered mind

could not therefore have been occasioned by the _sudden_ marriage of

Sterne. A sentimental intercourse evidently existed between them. He

perhaps sought in her sympathy, consolation for his domestic infelicity;

he communicates to her the minutest events of his early fame; and these

letters, which certainly seem very like love-letters, present a picture of

his life in town in the full flower of his fame eager with hope and

flushed with success.

LETTER I.

"My dear Kitty,--I beg you will accept of the inclosed sermon, which I do

not make you a present of merely because it was wrote by myself, but

because there is a beautiful character in it of a tender and compassionate

mind in the picture given of Elijah. Read it, my dear Kitty, and believe

me when I assure you that I see something of the same kind and gentle

disposition in your heart which I have painted in the prophet's, which has

attached me so much to you and your interests, that I shall live and die

"Your affectionate and faithful servant,

"Laurence Sterne.

"P.S.--If possible, I will see you this afternoon before I go to Mr.

Fothergil's. Adieu, dear friend,--I had the pleasure to drink your health

last night."

LETTER II.

"My dear Kitty,--If this billet catches you in bed, you are a lazy, sleepy

little slut, and I am a giddy, foolish, unthinking fellow, for keeping you

so late up--but this Sabbath is a day of rest, at the same time that it is

a day of sorrow; for I shall not see my dear creature to-day, unless you

meet me at Taylor's half an hour after twelve; but in this do as you like.

I have ordered Matthew to turn thief, and steal you a quart of honey; what

is honey to the sweetness of thee, who art sweeter than all the flowers it

comes from! I love you to distraction, Kitty, and will love you on so to

eternity--so adieu, and believe, what time will only prove me, that I am,

"Yours."

LETTER III.

"My dear Kitty,--I have sent you a pot of sweetmeats and a pot of honey

--neither of them half so sweet as yourself--but don't be vain upon this,

or presume to grow sour upon this character of sweetness I give you; for

if you do I shall send you a pot of pickles (by way of contraries) to

sweeten you up, and bring you to yourself again--whatever changes happen

to you, believe me that I am unalterably yours, and according to your

motto, such a one, my dear Kitty,

"Qui ne changera pas qu'en mourant.

"L.S."

He came up to town in 1760, to publish the two first volumes of 'Shandy,'

of which the first edition had appeared at York the preceding year.

LETTER IV.

"_London, May 8._

"My dear Kitty,--I have arrived here safe and sound--except for the hole

in my heart which you have made, like a dear enchanting slut as you are.

--I shall take lodgings this morning in Piccadilly or the Haymarket, and

before I send this letter will let you know where to direct a letter to

me, which letter I shall wait for by the return of the post with great

impatience.

"I have the greatest honours paid me, and most civilities shown me that

were ever known from the great; and am engaged already to ten noblemen and

men of fashion to dine. Mr. Garrick pays me all and more honour than I

could look for: I dined with him to-day, and he has prompted numbers of

great people to carry me to dine with them--he has given me an order for

the liberty of his boxes, and of every part of his house, for the whole

season; and indeed leaves nothing undone that can do me either service or

credit. He has undertaken the whole management of the booksellers, and

will procure me a great price--but more of this in my next.

"And now, my dear girl, let me assure you of the truest friendship for you

that ever man bore towards a woman--wherever I am, my heart is warm

towards you, and ever shall be, till it is cold for ever. I thank you for

the kind proof you gave me of your desire to make my heart easy in

ordering yourself to be denied to you know who--while I am so miserable to

be separated from my dear, dear Kitty, it would have stabbed my soul to

have thought such a fellow could have the liberty of coming near you.--I

therefore take this proof of your love and good principles most kindly--

and have as much faith and dependence upon you in it, as if I was at your

elbow--would to God I was at this moment--for I am sitting solitary and

alone in my bedchamber (ten o'clock at night after the play), and would

give a guinea for a squeeze of your hand. I send my soul perpetually out

to see what you are a-doing--wish I could convey my body with it--adieu,

dear and kind girl. Ever your kind friend and affectionate admirer.

"I go to the oratorio this night. My service to your mamma."

LETTER V.

"My dear Kitty,--Though I have but a moment's time to spare, I would not

omit writing you an account of my good fortune; my Lord Fauconberg has

this day given me a hundred and sixty pounds a year, which I hold with all

my preferment; so that all or the most part of my sorrows and tears are

going to be wiped away.--I have but one obstacle to my happiness now left

--and what that is you know as well as I.[A]

"I long most impatiently to see my dear Kitty. I had a purse of guineas

given me yesterday by a bishop--all will do well in time.

"From morning to night my lodgings, which by the bye are the genteelest in

town,[B] are full of the greatest company.--I dined these two days with

two ladies of the bedchamber--then with Lord Buckingham, Lord Edgcumb,

Lord Winchelsea, Lord Littleton, a bishop, &c. &c.

"I assure you, my dear Kitty, that Tristram is the fashion.--Pray to God I

may see my dearest girl soon and well.--Adieu.

"Your affectionate friend,

"L. STERNE."

[Footnote A: Can this allude to the death of his wife?--that very year he

tells his daughter he had taken a house at York, "for your mother and

yourself."]

[Footnote B: They were the second house from St. Alban's Street, Pall

Mall.]

* * * * *

HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH.

The rarest of literary characters is such an historian as Gibbon; but

we know the price which he paid for his acquisitions--unbroken and

undeviating studies. Wilkes, a mere wit, could only discover the drudgery

of compilation in the profound philosopher and painter of men and of

nations. A speculative turn of mind, delighting in generalising principles

and aggregate views, is usually deficient in that closer knowledge,

without which every step we take is on the fairy-ground of conjecture and

theory, very apt to shift its unsubstantial scenes. The researchers are

like the inhabitants of a city who live among its ancient edifices, and

are in the market-places and the streets: but the theorists, occupied by

perspective views, with a more artist-like pencil may impose on us a

general resemblance of things; but often shall we find in those shadowy

outlines how the real objects are nearly, if not wholly lost--for much is

given which is fanciful, and much omitted which is true.

Of our two popular historians, Hume and Robertson, alike in character but

different in genius, it is much to be lamented that neither came to their

tasks with the previous studies of half a life; and their speculative or

theoretical histories are of so much the less value whenever they are

deficient in that closer research which can be obtained only in one way;

not the most agreeable to those literary adventurers, for such they are,

however high they rank in the class of genius, who grasp at early

celebrity, and depend more on themselves than on their researches.

In some curious letters to the literary antiquary Dr. Birch, Eobertson

acknowledges "my chief object is to _adorn_, as far as I am capable of

adorning, the history of a period which deserves to be better known," He

probably took his lesson from Voltaire, the reigning author of that day,

and a great favourite with Robertson. Voltaire indeed tells us, that no

writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw any interest

into a history; that we must know to paint and excite the passions; and

that a history, like a dramatic piece, must have situation, intrigue, and

catastrophe; an observation which, however true, at least shows that there

can be but a moderate quantity of truth in such agreeable narratives.

Robertson's notion of _adorning_ history was the pleasing labour of

genius--it was to amplify into vastness, to colour into beauty, and

to arrange the objects of his meditation with a secret artifice of

disposition. Such an historian is a sculptor, who, though he display a

correct semblance of nature, is not less solicitous to display the

miracles of his art, and enlarges his figures to a colossal dimension.

Such is theoretical history.

The theoretical historian communicates his own character to his history;

and if, like Robertson, he be profound and politic, he detects the secret

motives of his actors, unravels the webs of cabinet councils, explains

projects that were unknown, and details stratagems which never took place.

When we admire the fertile conceptions of the Queen Regent, of Elizabeth,

and of Bothwell, we are often defrauding Robertson of whatever admiration

may be due to such deep policy.

When Hume received from Dr. Birch Forbes's Manuscripts and Murdin's

State-papers, in great haste he writes to his brother historian:--"What I

wrote you with regard to Mary, &c., was from the printed histories and

papers. But I am now sorry to tell you that by Murdin's State-papers, the

matter is put beyond all question. I got these papers during the holidays

by Dr. Birch's means; and as soon as I read them _I ran to Millar_, and

desired him very earnestly to stop the publication of your history till I

should write to you, and give you an opportunity of correcting a mistake

so important; but he absolutely refused compliance. He said that your book

was now finished; that the whole narrative of Mary's trial must be wrote

over again; that it was uncertain whether the new narrative could be

brought within the same compass with the old: that this change would

require the cancelling a great many sheets; that there were scattered

_passages through the volumes founded on your theory._" What an interview

was this of Andrew Millar and David Hume! truly the bibliopole shone to

greater advantage than the _two theoretical historians_! And so the world

had, and eagerly received, what this critical bookseller declared

"required the new printing (that is, the new writing) of a great part of

the edition!"

When this successful history of Scotland invited Robertson to pursue this

newly-discovered province of philosophical or theoretical history, he was

long irresolute in his designs, and so unpractised in those researches he

was desirous of attempting, that his admirers would have lost his popular

productions, had not a fortunate introduction to Dr. Birch, whose life had

been spent in historical pursuits, enabled the Scottish historian to open

many a clasped book, and to drink of many a sealed fountain. Robertson was

long undecided whether to write the history of Greece, of Leo X., that of

William III. and Queen Anne, or that of Charles V., and perhaps many other

subjects.

We have a curious letter of Lord Orford's, detailing the purport of a

visit Robertson paid to him to inquire after materials for the reigns of

William and Anne; he seemed to have little other knowledge than what he

had taken upon trust. "I painted to him," says Lord Orford, "the

difficulties and the want of materials--but the booksellers will out-argue

me." Both the historian and "the booksellers" had resolved on another

history: and Robertson looked upon it as a task which he wished to have

set to him, and not a glorious toil long matured in his mind. But how did

he come prepared to the very dissimilar subjects he proposed? When he

resolved to write the history of Charles V., he confesses to Dr. Birch: "I

never had _access to any copious libraries_, and do not pretend to _any

extensive knowledge of authors_; but I have made a list of such as I

thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down _as I found

them mentioned in any book I happened to read_. Your erudition and

knowledge of hooks is infinitely superior to mine, and I doubt not but you

will be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use

to me. I know very well, and to my sorrow, _how servilely historians copy

from one another_, and how little is to be learned from reading many

books; but at the same time, when one writes upon any particular period,

it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to

it upon which he can lay his hands." This avowal proves that Robertson

knew little of the history of Charles V. till he began the task; and he

further confesses that "he had no knowledge of the Spanish or German,"

which, for the history of a Spanish monarch and a German emperor, was

somewhat ominous of the nature of the projected history.

Yet Robertson, though he once thus acknowledged, as we see, that he "never

had access to any copious libraries, and did not _pretend to any extensive

knowledge of authors_," seems to have acquired from his friend, Dr. Birch,

who was a genuine researcher in manuscripts as well as printed books, a

taste even for bibliographical ostentation, as appears by that pompous and

voluminous list of authors prefixed to his "History of America;" the most

objectionable of his histories, being a perpetual apology for the Spanish

Government, adapted to the meridian of the court of Madrid, rather than to

the cause of humanity, of truth, and of philosophy. I understand, from

good authority, that it would not be difficult to prove that our historian

had barely examined them, and probably had never turned over half of that

deceptive catalogue. Birch thought so, and was probably a little disturbed

at the overwhelming success of our eloquent and penetrating historian,

while his own historical labours, the most authentic materials of history,

but not history itself, hardly repaid the printer. Birch's publications

are either originals, that is, letters or state-papers; or they are

narratives drawn from originals, for he never wrote but from manuscripts.

They are the true _materia historica_.

Birch, however, must have enjoyed many a secret triumph over our popular

historians, who had introduced their beautiful philosophical history into

our literature; the dilemma in which they sometimes found themselves must

have amused him. He has thrown out an oblique stroke at Bobertson's "pomp

of style, and fine eloquence," "which too often tend to disguise the real

state of the facts."[A] When he received from Robertson the present of his

"Charles V.," after the just tribute of his praise, he adds some regret

that the historian had not been so fortunate as to have seen Burghley's

State-papers, "published since Christmas," and a manuscript trial of Mary,

Queen of Scots, in Lord Boyston's possession. Alas! such is the fate of

_speculative history_; a Christmas may come, and overturn the elaborate

castle in the air. Can we forbear a smile when we hear Robertson, who had

projected a history of British America, of which we possess two chapters,

when the rebellion and revolution broke out, congratulate himself that he

had not made any further progress? "It is lucky that my American History

was not finished before this event; how many plausible theories that I

should have been entitled to form are contradicted by what has now

happened!" A fair confession!

[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 387.]

Let it not be for one moment imagined that this article is designed to

depreciate the genius of Hume and Robertson, who are the noblest of our

modern authors, and exhibit a perfect idea of the literary character.

Forty-four years ago, I transcribed from their originals the

correspondence of the historian with the literary antiquary. For the

satisfaction of the reader, I here preserve these literary relics.

_Letters between Dr. Birch and Dr. W. Robertson, relative to

the Histories of Scotland and of Charles V._

"TO DR. BIRCH.

"_Gladsmuir, 19 Sept. 1757._

"Reverent Sir,--Though I have not the good fortune to be known to you

personally, I am so happy as to be no stranger to your writings, to which

I have been indebted for much useful instruction. And as I have heard from

my friends, Sir David Dalrymple and Mr. Davidson, that your disposition to

oblige was equal to your knowledge, I now presume to write to you and to

ask your assistance without any apology.

"I have been engaged for some time in writing the history of Scotland from

the death of James V. to the accession of James VI. to the throne of

England. My chief object is to adorn (as far as I am capable of adorning)

the history of a period which, on account of the greatness of the events,

and their close connection with the transactions in England, deserves to

be better known. But as elegance of composition, even where a writer can

attain that, is but a trivial merit without historical truth and accuracy,

and as the prejudices and rage of factions, both religious and political,

have rendered almost every fact, in the period which I have chosen, a

matter of doubt or of controversy, I have therefore taken all the pains in

my power to examine the evidence on both sides with exactness. You know

how copious the _materia, historian_ in this period is. Besides all the

common historians and printed collections of papers, I have consulted

several manuscripts which are to be found in this country. I am persuaded

that there are still many manuscripts worth my seeing to be met with in

England, and for that reason I propose to pass some time in London this

winter. I am impatient, however, to know what discoveries of this kind I

may expect, and what are the treasures before me, and with regard to this

I beg leave to consult you.

"I was afraid for some time that Dr. Forbes's Collections had been

lost upon his death, but I am glad to find by your 'Memoirs' that

they are in the possession of Mr. Yorke. I see likewise that the 'Dépêches

de Beaumont' are in the hands of the same gentleman. But I have no

opportunity of consulting your 'Memoirs' at present, and I cannot remember

whether the 'Dépêches de Fenelon' be still preserved or not. I see that

Carte has made a great use of them in a very busy period from 1563 to

1576. I know the strength of Carte's prejudices so well, that I dare say

many things may be found there that he could not see, or would not

publish. May I beg the favour of you to let me know whether Fenelon's

papers be yet extant and accessible, and to give me some general idea of

what Dr. Forbes's Collections contain with regard to Scotland, and whether

the papers they consist of are different from those published by Haynes,

Anderson, &c. I am far from desiring that you should enter into any detail

that would be troublesome to you, but some short hint of the nature of

these Collections would be extremely satisfying to my curiosity, and I

shall esteem it a great obligation laid upon me.

"I have brought my work almost to a conclusion. If you would be so good as

to suggest anything that you thought useful for me to know or to examine

into, I shall receive your directions with great respect and gratitude.

"I am, with sincere esteem,

"Rev'd Sir, Y'r m. ob. & m. h. S'r,

"Wm. ROBERTSON."

TO DR. BIRCH.

"_Edinburgh, 1 Jan. 1759._

"Dear Sir,--If I had not considered a letter of mere compliment as an

impertinent interruption to one who is so busy as you commonly are, I

would long before this have made my acknowledgments to you for the

civilities which you was so good as to show me while I was in London. I

had not only a proof of your obliging disposition, but I reaped the good

effects of it.

"The papers to which I got access by your means, especially those from

Lord Royston, have rendered my work more perfect than it could have

otherwise been. My history is now ready for publication, and I have

desired Mr. Millar to send you a large paper copy of it in my name, which

I beg you may accept as a testimony of my regard and of my gratitude. He

will likewise transmit to you another copy, which I must entreat you to

present to my Lord Royston, with such acknowledgments of his favours

toward me as are proper for me to make. I have printed a short appendix of

original papers. You will observe that there are several inaccuracies in

the press work. Mr. Millar grew impatient to have the book published, so

that it was impossible to send down the proofs to me. I hope, however, the

papers will be abundantly intelligible. I published them only to confirm

my own system, about particular facts, not to obtain the character of an

antiquarian. If, upon perusing the book, you discover any inaccuracies,

either with regard to style or facts, whether of great or of small

importance, I will esteem it a very great favour if you'll be so good as

to communicate them to me. I shall likewise be indebted to you, if you'll

let me know what reception the book meets with among the literati of your

acquaintance. I hope you will be particularly pleased with the critical

dissertation at the end, which is the production of a co-partnership

between me and your friend Mr. Davidson. Both Sir D. Dalrymple and he

offer compliments to you. If Dean Tucker be in town this winter, I beg you

will offer my compliments to him.

"I am, w. great regard, Dr. Sir,

"Y'r m. obed't. & rust. o. ser't.,

"WILLIAM ROBERTSON.

"My address is, one of the ministers of Ed."