Waterford), with all convenient speede. He had with him fiftie men
in orange tawny cloaks,” (think of that, ye _Brunswickers_; a Lord
Lieutenant arriving in Ireland with fifty men in orange!!) “whereof
divers were gentlemen of good birth and qualitie. Also he had a _Noyce_
of musicians with hym, being his own servants. He was served all in
silver plate, with all things else suitable; and soe being royally
furnished in all respects, he departed from London, about August,
and going from thence, by barge, he had with him divers noblemen and
gentlemen, who did accompany hym unto the shipps. As they lay in this
barge, against Greenwich, where the Queene kept her court, Sir John
Perrot sent one of his gentlemen on shore, with a diamond, in a token
unto Mistres Blanche Parry, willing hym to tell her, that a diamond
coming unlooked for, did alwais bring goode looke along with it: which
the Queene hearing of, sent Sir John Perrot a fair jewell, hanged by a
white cypresse; signifying withall that as longe as he wore that for her
sake, she did believe, with God’s healpe, he should have no harme; which
message and jewell Sir John Perrot received joyfully; and he returned
answer to the Queene, that he would weare that for his soveraigne’s sake;
and doubted not, with God’s favour, to returne her shipps in safetie;
and either to bring the Spaniards if they came in his way, as prisoners,
or else to sink them in the sea. Soe as Sir John Perrot passed bye in
his barge, the Queen looking out at the window, shaked her fan, and put
out her hand towards him; who making a low obeysance, put the scarfe
and jewell about his necke, which the queen sent him. Being arrived at
Gyllingham, where the queen’s shipps rode, Sir John feasted on shipboard
such noblemen and gentlemen, as came with him thither.”
After enduring every misery and vicissitude, and “storms and contrary
winds,” that the tyranny and caprice of the elements could inflict, after
being obliged to put in by stress of weather, at Falmouth, Plymouth, and
“soe sett sea to Ireland, and touched at Baltimore, and Waterford, and
thereabouts, upon the Irish coast;” and having missed the Spanish ships,
encountered pirates and chased corsairs “to the Coste of Flaunders,” and
his ship striking ground on the Kentish Knocks, and being all but lost,
the unhappy Lord Deputy found himself, one fine day, driven near Harwich,
and so sailed back into the Thames, after a three months unprosperous
voyage.
His second descent upon Ireland, though more successful, was scarcely
less tedious. Contrast this vice-regal progress, when the wisdom of our
ancestors was wisest, with the progress of a Lord Lieutenant in these
degenerate times, when setting aside all precedents, and discarding all
time-honoured authorities, the new viceroy steps into his carriage for
Ireland, as if he were stepping into his chaise for a visit to Kew,
skims along the macadamized roads at ten miles an hour, and mounting
his steam-boat, crosses St. George’s Channel, without touching at
Falmouth, Plymouth, Baltimore, or Waterford; and instead of finding
himself at the end of three months in the mouth of the Thames, is in six
hours comfortably seated at dinner in Dublin Castle, in an easy chair,
cushioned with eider or iron, as the innovations of the day, for which
our ancestors were wise in vain, may suggest.
I do not defend this levelling principle of accommodation and comfort,
that spares so many risks of life, of health, and of time, incurred
when men on leaving Dublin for London, made their will, and invoked the
prayers of the church in crossing to Park Gate. I do not presume to doubt
the superiority of the times, which Madame de Genlis so fondly regrets: I
merely state the fact of the vice-regal progress in the older and wiser
times, as compared with the same journey at the present epoch, when we
have fallen upon evil men who make good roads, and upon evil times,
which have produced steam engines, and steam boats, without reference or
respect to the immutable order of things established either at, or before
1688.
BAD BOOKS.
“Je ferai quelque jour une apologie dans les formes, des plats
et mauvais livres. Ils sont sans prix pour un bon esprit.”[15]
GRIMM, p. 1. T. 3. p. 107.
“Il y a autant d’invention à s’enrichir par un sot livre, qu’il
y a de sottise à l’acheter. C’est ignorer le goût du peuple que
de ne pas hasarder quelquefois, de grandes fadaises.”[16]
LA BRUYÈRE.
I have just risen from perusing a tolerably accurate, but dull and
unphilosophical censure of our modern literature. No more Miltons, no
more Shakspeares, no more Bacons, and Jeremy Taylors!! One might as well
lament that there were no more knights-errant and battering rams. Every
age knows its own wants, and provides for them; and Milton would not
probably succeed much better, were he to reappear in this nineteenth
century, with a new Paradise Lost, than the Laureate, Robert Southey,
Esq. has done with his Vision of Judgment. It must, indeed, be admitted,
that if La Bruyère is right, our English booksellers are very inventive
personages; for they produce more bad books than the rest of Europe
put together. But there is also abundance of excellence afloat—of that
precise excellence which society requires; and as the overflowing
fertility of literature has generated a tact, prompt and accurate as
an instinct, for discovering what books are to be bought and studied,
what may be read, and what cast aside, the putting forth of nonsense and
villainy is much less mischievous than is supposed. In fact, a man is
drawn by a sort of elective attraction to the works which harmonize with
his intellectual peculiarities, assort with his feelings, and dovetail
with his wit, just as animals are drawn by nature to their appropriate
bodily nourishment; and the frequency of bad books proves only that fools
and knaves now employ their leisure in reading, instead of the more
dangerous and brutal pastimes which occupied their predecessors.
This evil of bad books is no novelty. Whoever runs his eye over the
catalogue lying on his library table, will be convinced, that in any
age, the number of really useful and valuable works bore no very large
proportion to the entire mass of literature. Men are apt to imagine, that
Ovid, and Virgil, and Horace, had the field to themselves; but the “mad,
melting, reciters of August” were, no doubt, as abundant in their day, as
in the silver age of latinity, which so rapidly followed. The unrolling
of the manuscripts of Pompeii has proved that “trash” preceded the
invention of reviews, and belongs to an elder antiquity than that of “the
Row:” and it may be questioned, whether, at the burning of the library
at Alexandria, there were an hundred volumes utterly lost to the world,
which were not more serviceable as fuel for the baths, than as food for
the mind.
The first efforts of the press were expended in disseminating the
accumulated errors of a thousand years, which had previously been in
the exclusive possession of the few; and since then, each successive
generation has pretty equally divided its time between refuting the
mistakes of its predecessors, and popularizing and accrediting others
of its own. Ignorance, pedantry, and bad taste, infect the earlier
writers, notwithstanding their eloquence and energy. Their alchymy, their
astrology, their witchcraft, were scarcely less mischievous, than their
false morality and silly politics. Of theology it is dangerous to speak;
but as every one will admit that whatever has been written without the
pale of his own narrow sect, is pernicious error; and as what every body
says must be true, the reader may draw his own consequence. Medicine,
to this very day, continues a tissue of ill-understood facts, a chaos
of false inferences and incongruous systems. The science of law is a
nullity; and each particular code a standing monument of the barbarity
and perversity of the species: and as for philosophy, why the less that
is said on the subject the better. Of all the works of imagination,
with which the press teemed during the last two centuries, how very few
live and are read! History has ever been a record of errors, of party
misrepresentation, and of mistaken views, passed through the cullender of
the historian’s fancy: while, as to essentials, it is the play of Hamlet,
with the part of the Prince of Denmark omitted by particular desire.
Each generation, again, has had its harvest of pamphlets, embodying the
corrupt interests and false views of the moment, which have fretted
their little hour on the stage, and then have been consigned to the
trunk-makers, pastry-cooks, and bibliomaniacs.
We are told that literature having become a matter of mercantile
speculation, and authorship having acquired much pecuniary value, men
are in haste to realize; so that, among the multitude of competitors, an
author dreads to be anticipated; and hurries his crude thoughts before
the public, lest, while he is digesting them, the market should change,
and all chance of reward be cut off for ever. But if authors do not now
“keep their piece nine years,” something must be attributed also to the
quickened movements of intellect: writing, aye, and thinking also, are
more easily performed than formerly; and a work is not always the worse
for being thrown off at a heat.
Another cause for the multiplication of flimsy books, is the universality
of authorship; and this fashion for writing is, at least, as good a
fashion as that of driving coaches and beating the watch. When all sorts
and conditions of persons publish, all sorts and conditions of persons
must read; and the annual quality of publications, is less an exponent
of the talent in the market, than of the _minimum_ of wit, sense and
utility, beyond which the public will not buy. Let there arise a demand
for any species of nonsense and absurdity, and there will be found a
corresponding supply.
The last generation ran very much upon literary cobblers and poetic
milk-maids. The present goes principally upon lords and honourables;
and low as the “collective wisdom” may rate in the estimation of some
persons, M. P. in a title page, is worth at least an extra hundred
pounds. Amateur writing, like amateur fiddling, need not be of the very
best. Those who are placed beyond the reach of great interests, have
rarely strong passions; and if they trifle agreeably, they have done all
that can reasonably be expected from them. The “degenerate race to come,”
will, perhaps, read nothing but the works of those who put their mark to
their MS., who write by deputy, and publish by dictation: or, perhaps,
Mr. Babbage, improving on his calculating machine, will apply it to the
purposes of general literature; and then authors, like coach-horses, may
be displaced by steam engines; and “the trade,” emigrating to Manchester
or Birmingham, may send opinions into the market _per_ sample, and
manufacture doctrines of every shade and pattern, “as bespoke.” For this
change we are not wholly unprepared. Already the study is converted into
a counting-house; the ledger has become the true _primum mobile_ of
intellect; and the rapid sale of a work is the signal for multiplying
it, in all possible varieties, and in all sorts of spurious imitation.
To-day, satirical poems are the vogue, to-morrow, _ottava rima_; the next
day, books of the church, and the day after, the lives of demireps of
both sexes. The Scotch robber so lately “your only wear,” is now falling
into “the sere and yellow leaf;” and Heaven knows what embryo original is
about to start a new idea, for the benefit of the writing community.
Another order of writers, peculiar to our age, are speculating tradesmen,
who, treading on the heels of physicians, write books to puff their
wares, and make their title page an advertisement of their shop. Cooks
and confectioners recommend the lightness of their pastry by that of
their style; and put forward the flavour of their wit, as a specimen of
that of their ragouts. Shakspeare speaks of “cutler’s poetry;” but we
boast of anthologies of razor-strop manufacturers, venders of lottery
tickets, and composers of French wines.
To return, however, from the starting point, where is the vast evil
of this teeming multiplicity, and its consequent mediocrity of books?
The reviewers have set the fashion of obloquy and vituperation, as if
blockheads and dolts were not their best friends, and as necessary to
their trade as the evil spirit is said to be to that of the clergy, or
thieves and rogues to my Lord Chief Justice. If none but good books
appeared, what would become of their essays on “every thing in the
world, and all that sort of thing,” which form the “striking article”
of their quarterly numbers. Reviewers should know that bad books make
good reviews, exactly as “_de mauvais vin on fait de bon vinaigre_.”[17]
Without the necessary supply, adieu the opportunity for being witty in
print, and of shewing forth your own superiority, and enlivening the
town at the small expence of an author’s feelings.
It is something very unreasonable and selfish in the wise and the learned
to desire that nothing should be published but what suits themselves. The
woollen manufacturer is not restricted to superfine articles, nor the
Glasgow weaver to fine muslins. If the whole community must be clothed,
even though all cannot afford to dress like gentlemen, by parity of
reasoning, the whole should be amused, although all cannot afford to be
wits and philosophers. We tolerate the fabrication of Tunbridge toys
and glass beads, and boggle about the printing of somniferous essays
for aldermen after dinner, of vapid novels for ladies’ maids, and of
sentimental mysticism for blue-stocking peeresses. It is no more than
fair that such persons should be supplied with their favourite articles,
and—
“Porque como las paga el volgo, es justo
Hablar le en necio, para darle gusto.”[18]
LOPEZ DE VEGA.
As for the cant of bad books debasing the intellect and corrupting the
morals of the public, the fact is quite the other way: it is the public
who debauch the _littérateur_. None read silly and wicked books, but the
silly and the wicked: and the charge is a mere confounding of cause and
effect. But, were things otherwise, have not the public their taverns and
gaming-houses, under the sanction of the highest authorities?
Books are, or ought to be, pictures of the human mind; and if the witty
and the wise alone found a reflection of themselves in the productions
of the press, the literary world would be as oddly constituted as the
political. The virtual representation of the commons would be but a cold
type of the general disfranchisement of the reading public. We have no
need here of parliamentary returns to prove the fact. No bookseller,
who knows what he is about, will have any thing to do with an original
thinker, a man of science, a philosopher, or in general with any one
whose matter exceeds “two handsome volumes in octavo.” Such works may
be excellent, may confer lasting benefits on the species, and entitle
their authors to immortal fame; but they don’t sell; or, at best, they
make but a slow return of capital. “_Quis leget hæc?_” Mr. Colburn or Mr.
Murray would ask; and the answer comes pat, “_vel duo vel nemo, turpe et
miserabile._” “Sir, let me see you and your works no more.”
As an article of trade, we may say of books, that bad is the best. The
nauseous absurdities of “cheap and nasty” tract societies, the spawn
of delirious fanaticism or canting hypocrisy, “go off” better than the
soundest works of a judicious churchman, and infinitely exceed the sale
of the most popular political economy.
The human intellect, like the livery of London, must be addressed by its
own recorder, and he who writes too deeply for his age, might as well
write in a foreign language. If you will but write down to the level of
the general understanding, shock no prejudice, startle no man’s faith,
break no new ground, give none the trouble of thinking, expose no mystery
of the human breast, but “amuse the eyes” without “grieving the heart,”
you will, if not positively as dull as an oyster, be sure of a third
edition, and a place at half the tea-tables of London. The mediocre, the
foolish, and the common-place, are the publisher’s best customers; and
to deprive them of their appropriate reading, would be as politically
unjust, as it is economically impolitic. In literature, as in all things,
we want a free trade: no embargoes on stupidity, no protecting duties
on right opinions. Why should the harmless literature of nations, and
the innocent amusement of the mass, be eclipsed or trampled under foot
by an arrogant censorship? ’Twere worse than the three-piled sanctity
of a judaical sabbath, or the anti-cake-and-ale virtue stolen from the
puritans of the great rebellion.
But the evil of restraint would not stop here. The wisest and the best
are sometimes glad to take refuge in a bad book, and to find relief from
the dulness of their own thoughts in the absurdities of another’s. It is
a rich literary year that produces three first-rate novels, the supply to
a moderate consumer, of barely ten days! How then are the public to get
through a long summer’s course of watering-places, without the aid of the
secondary Scotch novelists, and the third-rate imitators of Lord N. and
Lady C. B.? In the long vacation, the chancellor himself might be reduced
to the Minerva press, or be compelled to a second perusal of Almacks.
Your hungry reader is not nice, or at worst he eats, like Pistol,
his unsavoury leek, and grumbles. In this respect dulness has great
privileges. Genius never writes in folio, and if it ventures in quarto,
the bulk is as much owing to the publisher, as a dandy’s to Stultz’s
buckram. Besides, there is a metaphysical length in a bad book, valuable
to the literary glutton beyond expression. A volume of S.’s polemics is
matter for a week, and a surfeit of all desire for reading for a month
afterwards. In short, dulness is in literature, what bread is to a good
dinner—it prevents the cayenne and _coulis_ from palsying the palate,
and spoiling the digestion. It is the bitter olive to good port, or a
Cheshire cheese in a wine merchant’s cellar. Certain philosophers have
explained the existence of moral evil, as a necessary point of comparison
for relishing the blessings of life; and if so, why may not bad books
be tolerated, as contributing to the delight with which we enjoy the few
that are worth reading?
The same argument applies equally to error. Truth is “caviare to the
general,” and if given undiluted, the scandal would be intolerable.
Literature is the food, not the physic of the mind; and till we see the
opulent contented with roots and water, we must allow them the luxury of
conventional nonsense. Without literary rogues and false prophets, also,
there would be no controversy. Truth and error are too unfairly matched
if both must have a fair hearing; but when one error is pitted against
another, the quarrel is “a very pretty quarrel,” and may afford good
sport to the bye-stander. The controversialist puts not up Ajax’s prayer
for light; but, like Æneas, is concealed in his cloud, and lives and
triumphs in the friendly darkness.
If it be the great defect of Catholicism that it closes the door
against all inquiry, pure and unadulterated truth is equally liable to
the imputation. Men are better engaged in bowling down each other’s
prejudices, than in not thinking at all. If error were not recorded in
print, it would not be canvassed, and “_on doit savoir gré à ceux qui
osent établir les paradoxes. Si la raison reçue se trouve vraie, on a
l’avantage de croire par raison, ce qu’on croyait par habitude; si elle
est fausse, on est délivré d’une erreur._”[19] (Condorcet.)
Few, if any books, are so totally worthless as not to contribute
sometimes to the reader’s ideas; and what they do not communicate, they
may suggest. There are likewise degrees of comparison in absurdity; and
as one nail drives out another, a mitigated piece of nonsense is a good
cure for that which is more aggravated. One man’s opinion may be true,
as it respects another’s, though false to the nature of things. Such
opinions are stages on the journey of knowledge; and they may serve the
ignorant, though the philosopher despises them.
I have but one more consideration to urge, and that is the value of
bad books as an instrument of commerce. What multitudes are supported
by the mere manufacture! What type founders, ink makers, painters,
engravers, paper makers, and pressmen! what folders, and stitchers, and
distributers, tanners, leather-sellers, and binders, find an industrious
and honest subsistence out of the small class of writers alone, who print
for their own amusement, and whose circulation extends not beyond the
presentation copies! How many live by “parsons much bemused in beer,”
by visitation charges, _libretti_ for the opera, proceedings of learned
societies, experiences of hypochondriacal old gentlemen, and hysterically
evangelical ladies; religious novels by persons of quality, and novels
of high life by persons who live in low! But enumeration is useless. All
the good books in existence would not supply six months’ matter for the
London press. It is by the printing of nonsense alone, that booksellers
ride in their coaches, that the revenue is supported, and a countless
host of sooty artizans maintained in comfort and independence.
I should not feel, therefore, any great qualms of conscience in adding
another volume to the mass, even at the risk of its being dull or
foolish. A heavy volume is not worse than a heavy visiter, and the book
may be laid down without rudeness; while the bore must be endured, until
“_il s’ennuye nous d’ennuyer_.” If the purchaser finds, too late, that he
has bought folly or impertinence, let him put it in handsome binding; for
if gold and frippery will pass such qualities current when incarnated in
a coxcomb, they will perhaps do as much for them when embodied in print.
At all events the volume will fill a shelf as well as better books; and
this, after a time, becomes the destiny of the gravest authors, in the
most select libraries. Not, however, that one should write expressly
“_afin d’embobiliner les pauvres gens_,” but with a loyal intent to be
as little stale, flat, and unprofitable as possible. Of this, however,
authors are unfortunately not always the best judges; and moreover there
is so much danger in the imputation of setting the Thames on fire, that,
what between reviewers, attornies general, and hypocritical readers, they
have no great encouragement in putting forth their best wares.
DRAWING CHARACTERS.
“Each cried, that is levell’d at me.”
Molière was accused of putting living characters into his exquisite
comedies. The ridicules of society were then so graphic, the Hôtel
Rambouillet, the Jesuits, and the Court, all furnished such abundant
materials to truth and satire, that the temptation to give to fiction the
interest of fact, must have been irresistible. “_C’est une chose étrange
qu’on imprime les gens malgré eux_,”[20] observes the immortal author of
the “_Précieuses Ridicules_,” in allusion to the accusations made against
him. But Molière in drawing characters from the particular species and
genus, avoided all personal allusion. Nobody’s history was told,—nobody’s
secret was revealed; but his enemies made his fine delineations of life
and character, a subject of misrepresentation and persecution, from which
the power of the king only could protect him. It was Louis the XIVth,
who sheltered him from the wrath of the Tartuffes, and supplied him, from
his own observations, with some of the most striking characters in his
works; for kings like to be amused, even at the expense of their dearest
friends: and, provided their own characters, and conduct, and measures,
are held sacred, for the rest, “_Sauve qui peut_.”
Party spirit, which, from a decree of imperial proscription, to a column
in the lowest organ of purchaseable ribaldry, stops at no means of
blackening its opponent, frequently avails itself of this instrument for
bringing the self-love of the gullible to its side: and the legitimate
satire on a prevailing vice or folly, is affixed to some particular
individual, presumed to have been “put into the book” of the author,
who is to be run down at the expence of truth, honesty, and honour. But
between the ruffianism that attacks character for the gratifications of
base, vindictive, and sordid passions, and that honest and courageous
delineator of the peculiar vices or follies of the day, which comes under
the head of what Molière calls “_La Satire honnête et permise_,” there
is the same difference, as between the hired assassin who way-lays and
murders for a stated price, and the gallant soldier, who goes forth in
the broad day to combat the enemy of public safety and public rights.
PICTURE FRAMES.