The name of Dean Berkeley--an acute and kindly philosopher--engaged our
attention in the last chapter. So did that ripe scholar and master of
Trinity, Richard Bentley;[1] then came that more saintly Doctor--Isaac
Watts, whose Doxologies will long waken the echoes in country churches;
we had a glimpse of the gloomy and lurid draperies, with which the muse
of Dr. Edward Young sailed over earth and sky; sadly draggled, too, we
sometimes found that muse with the stains of earth. We spoke of a
Lady--Wortley Montagu--conspicuous for her beauty, for her
acquirements, for her vivacity of mind, for her {53} boldness, for her
contempt of the convenances of society, and at last, I think, a
contempt for the whole male portion of the human race.
Then came that keen, discerning, accomplished poet, Alexander Pope,
with a brain as strong and elastic as his body was weak and shaky; and
who, of all the poets we have encountered since Elizabeth's day, knew
best how to give to words their full forces, and how to make them
jingle and shine.
But the lives of these I have now named, and of those previously
brought to your notice[2] overreached the reign of Queen Anne, and
dropped off--some in the time of George I., some under his son George
II., and others in an early part of the long reign of George III.
_From Stuart to Brunswick._
But how came the Georges of Hanover and Brunswick to succeed Anne
Stuart? Yes, there was a son of the deposed and exiled James II.
(whose {54} mother was an Italian princess--making him half-brother to
Queen Anne) known, sometimes as James Edward, and sometimes as The
Pretender. He had favorers about the Court of Anne; and if the Queen
had lingered somewhat longer, or if the Jacobite or Tory political
machine had been a little better oiled and in better play, this
Pretender might have come to the throne instead of Hanover George.
Poet and Ambassador Prior, who was suspected of favoring this, was one
of those who went to the Tower, and came near losing his head in the
early days of King George; and Bolingbroke, the friend of Pope, a known
plotter for the Stuarts, took himself off hastily to France for safety.
James Edward, however, did not give the matter up, but made a landing
in Scotland in 1715 and led that dreary rebellion, in which the poor
Earl of Mar went astray, and in which Argyle figured; a rebellion which
gives its small scenes of battle and its network of conspiracies to
Scott's story of _Rob Roy_. The Pretender escaped with difficulty to
France, made no succeeding attempt, lived in comparative obscurity, and
died in Rome fifty years {55} later. He was, according to best
accounts, a poor, weak creature, of dissipated habits--of melancholy
aspect--dubbed King of England[3] by the Pope--given a stipend by the
over-gracious Holy Father--and at last a costly tomb in St. Peter's,
which is dignified by some good sculptural work. Travelling
sentimentalists may meditate over its grandiose inscription of James
III., King of England!
James Edward had married, however, a Princess Sobieski of the Polish
family, by whom he had two sons, Charles Edward and Henry. The elder,
Charles Edward, an ambitious, handsome, gentlemanly, and amiable
man--known as the Young Pretender--did, by favor of French aid, and
stimulated by larger French promises, make a landing in Scotland in
1745, which was successful at first, but ended with that defeat on
Culloden Moor, which--with pretty romantic broidery--gives a gloomy
setting to Scott's first novel of _Waverley_.
{56}
A second plotting of some friends of the Young Pretender, somewhere
about 1751-1752 (dimly foreshadowed in the story of _Redgauntlet_),
proved abortive. Thenceforward he appears no more in English history.
We know only that this bright, clever, brave Chevalier, who bewitched
many a Highland maiden, lived a corrupt life, made a dreary and
unfortunate marriage (1772), and, bloated with drink and blighted in
hopes, died at Rome in 1788.
His brother Henry was a priest, and was made a cardinal. He spent all
his money in pompous living, became miserably poor, and died in Venice
early in the present century--the last of his family. There is in St.
Peter's Church at Rome, in the Chapel of the Presentation, a great
tomb, showy with the sculptures of Canova, which commemorates all these
Stuarts, and--so far as Latin inscriptions can do it--makes kings and
princes of these unfortunate representatives of the family of King
James II.
Still we are without an answer to our question: How and why did the
Georges of Hanover come to the British throne?
{57}
Those who recall my mention[4] of that slip-shod pedantic king, James
I., who came from Scotland, and who brought the Stuart name with him,
will remember an allusion to an ambitious daughter of his, Elizabeth
Stuart, who married a certain Frederic of the Palatinate, and possessor
of the famous chateau whose beautiful ruins are still to be seen on the
hill above Heidelberg. You will remember my mention of that
extravagant ambition which brought her husband to grief and to an early
death. Well, she had many children; and among them one named Sophia,
who married, in 1658, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick
and--afterward--Elector of Hanover. She was a good woman, a fairly
pronounced Protestant--unlike some sisters she had; so that in casting
about for a Protestant successor to William III. and to Anne, the
orthodox wise ones of England fixed upon this Sophia, the
grand-daughter of old James I. She died, however, before Anne died and
in the same year; so that the succession fell to her son George Louis,
who became George I. of Great Britain.
{58}
He was well toward sixty when he came to England--did not care overmuch
to come; loved his ease; loved his indulgences, of which he had a good
many, and a good many bad ones; was a German all over; not speaking
English even, nor ever learning to speak it; had been a good soldier
and fought hard in his day, but did not care for more fighting, or
fatigue of any sort; had little culture, and minded the welcoming odes
which English poets sang to him less than he would mind the gurgling of
good "trink" from a beer-bottle. Yet withal, he was fairly
well-intentioned, not a meddler, never wantonly unjust, willing to do
kindnesses, if not fatiguing; a heavy, good-natured, heathenish,
sottish lout of a king.
Yet, as I have said,[5] Addison could not find words noble enough to
tell this man how Anne was dead and he was king; if Addison had made
his letter as noble as the drama of _Cato_, George I. would have yawned
and lighted his pipe with it.
This George I. had married in early life a beautiful cousin, and a rich
one, but without much {59} character; perhaps he treated her brutally
(it was certainly a Georgian fashion); and she, who was no saint, would
have run away from that Hanover home--had plotted it all, and the night
came, when suddenly her lover and the would-be attendant of her flight
was savagely slain; and she, separated from her two children and
speaking no word more to her grim husband, was consigned a prisoner to
a gloomy fortress in the Aller valley, where she dragged out an
embittered and disappointed life for thirty odd years; then, Death
opened the gates and set the poor soul free.
This was the wife of George I., and the mother of George II.; this
latter being over thirty at the time of his father's coming to England,
and not getting on over-well with the king--the son, perhaps, resenting
that confinement of his mother in the Ahlden fortress.
This Prince of Wales had no more love for letters than his father
George I.; would have liked a jolly German drinking song better than
anything Pope could do; was short, irascible, as good a fighter as the
father, swore easily and often; had a good, honest wife though, who
clung to him {60} through all his badnesses. He had a city home in
Leicester Square and a lodge in Richmond Park, whence he used to ride,
at a hard gait, with hunting parties (Pope speaks of meeting him with
such an one) and come home to long dinners and heavy ones.
It was at this lodge in Richmond Park (which is now less changed than
almost any park about London and so one of the best worth seeing) that
a messenger came galloping in jack-boots one evening, thirteen years
after George I. had come to the throne, to tell the Prince that old
George was dead (over in Osnaburg, where he had gone on a visit) and
that he, the Prince, was now King George II.[6]
{61}
"Dat is one big lie"--said the new and incredulous King with an oath.
But it was not a lie; the King was wrathy at being waked too early, and
wanted to swear at something or somebody. But having rubbed his eyes
and considered the matter, he began then and there those thirty-three
years of reign, which, without much credit to George II. personally,
were, as the careful Mr. Hallam says in his history, the most
prosperous years which England had ever known.
Remember please, then, that George I., who succeeded Anne, reigned some
thirteen years; and after him came this short, sharp-spoken George II.,
who reigned thirty-three years--thus bringing us down to 1760. I have
dwelt upon the personalities of these two monarchs, not because they
are worthy of special regard, but rather that they may serve more
effectively as finger-posts or clumsy mile-stones (with wigs upon
them)--to show us just how far we are moving along upon the big
high-road of English history.
{62}
_Samuel Richardson._
Quite early in that century into which these royal people found their
way, there lived over beyond Temple Bar, near to St. Bride's Church, in
the City of London, a mild-mannered, round-faced, prim little man who
was printer and bookseller--in both which callings he showed great
sagacity and prudence. He was moreover very companionable, especially
with bookish ladies, who often dropped in upon him--he loving to talk;
and to talk much about himself, and his doings, and the characters he
put in his books. For this was Samuel Richardson[7]--the very great
man as many people thought him--who had written _Pamela_, _Clarissa
Harlowe_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_. It is doubtful if he knew Pope
or Swift or Berkeley; he was never of the "Spectator set." Pope we
know read his {63} _Pamela_ and said there was as much good in it as in
twenty sermons: yet I do not think he meant to compliment it--or the
sermons. Neither did Bookseller Richardson know people in high
position, except Hon. Mr. Onslow the Speaker, who gave him some of the
public printing to do and put him in way of business by which he grew
rich for these times and had a fine large house out by Hammersmith,
where he kept a little court of his own in summer weather; the
courtiers being worthy women, to whom he would read his books, or
correspondence relating to them, by the hour. Possibly you have not
read his novels; but I am sure your grandmothers or great-grandmothers
have read some of them, and wept over them. He was not learned; was
the son of a country carpenter, and in his early days was known for an
easy letter-writing faculty he had; and he used to be set upon by
sighing maidens--who were suffering under a prevalent contagious
affection of young years--to write their love-letters for them; and so
at last, in busy London, when his head was streaked with gray, he began
to put together books of letters--written as if {64} some suffering or
wishful one had whispered them all in his ear. There was no machinery,
no plot, no classicism, no style--but sentiment in abundance and vast
prolixity, and ever-recurring villanies, and "pillows bedew'd with
tears." The particularity and fulness of his descriptions were
something wonderful; every button on a coat, every ring on the fingers,
every tint of a ribbon, every ruffle on a cap, every ruffle of emotion,
every dimple in a cheek is pictured, and then--the "pillows bedew'd
with tears."
There's a great budget of Richardson correspondence that shows us how
the leaven of such stories worked; letters from Miss Suffern and Miss
Westcomb, and Mr. Dunallan, and a dozen others, all interlaced with his
own; for it does not appear that the old gentleman ever refused the
challenge of a letter, or grew tired of defending and illustrating his
theories of literary art and of morals, which in his view were closely
joined. The stories were published by himself--volume by volume, so
that his correspondents had good chance to fire upon him--on the wing
as it were: "Poor Clarissa," they say; "my heart bleeds for her, and
what, {65} pray, is to become of her; and why don't you reform
Lovelace, and sha'n't he marry Clarissa? And I do not believe there
was ever such a man as Sir Charles in the world." The old gentleman
enjoys this and writes back by the ream; has his own little sentiment
of a sort too, even in the correspondence. Mme. Belfour wants to see
him--"the delightful man"--without herself being observed; so entreats
him to walk some day in the Park (St. James') at a given hour; and
Richardson complies, giving these data for his picture:--
"I go through the Park, once or twice a week to my little retirement;
but I will for a week together, be in it, every day three or four
hours, till you tell me you have seen a person who answers to this
description, namely, short--rather plump--fair wig, lightish cloth
coat, all black besides; one hand generally in his bosom, the other a
cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat ...
looking directly fore-right as passers-by would imagine, but observing
all that stirs on either hand of him; hardly ever turning back, of a
light brown complexion, smoothish faced and ruddy cheeked--looking
about sixty-five, a regular even pace, a gray eye sometimes
lively--very lively if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he loves and
honors."
{66}
Then he writes to Miss Westbrook--an adopted daughter as he calls her:--
"You rally me on my fears for your safety, and yet I know you to be
near a forest where lies a great wild bear: I am accused for these
fears--I am accused for playing off a sheet-full of witticisms, which
you, poor girl, can't tell what to do with. Witticism! Miss W. Very
well, Miss W---- But I did not expect--but no matter;--what have I done
with my handkerchief--I--I--I did not really expect; but no matter,
Miss W----"
A man who can put tears so easily, and for so little cause, into a
letter, can put them by the barrelful in his books: and so he did, and
made Europe weep. Rousseau and Diderot from over in France,
philosophers as they professed to be, blubbered their admiring thanks
for _Clarissa Harlowe_.
I have spoken of him not because he is to be counted a great classic
(though Dr. Johnson affirmed it); not because I advise your wading
through six or seven volumes of the darling _Sir Charles Grandison_--as
some of our grandames did; but because he was, in a sense, the father
of the modern novel; coming before Fielding; in fact, spurring the
latter, by _Pamela_, to his great, {67} coarse, and more wonderful
accomplishment. And although what I have said of Richardson may give
the impression of something paltry in the man and in his works, yet he
was an honest gentleman, with good moral inclinations, great art in the
dissection of emotional natures, and did give a fingering to the
heart-strings which made them twang egregiously.
_Harry Fielding._
The British Guild of Critics is, I think, a little more disposed to
_admit_ Richardson's claims to distinction than to be proud of them: it
is not so, however, with Fielding;[8] if Richardson was "womanish,"
Fielding was masculine with a vengeance; gross, too, in a way, which
always will, and always should, keep his books outside the pale of
decent family reading. Filth is filth, and always deserves to be
scored by its name--whatever blazon of genius may compass it about. I
have no {68} argument here with the artists who, for art's sake, want
to strip away all the protective kirtles which the Greek Dianas wore:
but when it comes to the bare bestialities of such tavern-bagnios as
poor Fielding knew too well,[9] there seems room for reasonable
objection, and for a strewing of some of the fig-leaves of decency.
And yet this stalwart West-of-England man, "raised" in the fat meadows
of Somersetshire, and who had read _Pamela_ as a stepping-stone for his
first lift into the realms of romance, was a jovial, kind-hearted,
rollicking, dare-devil of a man, with no great guile in him, and no
hypocrisies and no snivelling laxities. He had a great lineage,
tracing back to that Landgrave of Alsace, from whom are descended the
kings and emperors of the House of Hapsburg: and what a warrant for
immortality does this novelist carry in those words of Gibbon!--
"The successors of Charles V. may disdain their [Somersetshire]
brethren of England; but the romance of _Tom {69} Jones_--that
exquisite picture of humor and manners--will outlive the Palace of the
Escurial and the imperial eagle of Austria."
It was at home or near by that Henry Fielding found his first
schooling; at the hand--a tradition runs--of that master who served as
the original for his picture of Parson Trulliber: if this indeed be so,
never were school-master severities so permanently punished. After
this came Eton, where he was fellow of Lord Lyttleton, who befriended
him later, and of William Pitt (the elder), and of Fox--the
rattle-brain father of Charles James. Then came two or more years of
stay at the University of Leyden, from which he laid his course
straight for the dramatic world of London; for his father, General
Fielding, had a good many spendthrift habits, with which he had
inoculated the son. There was need for that son to work his own way;
and the way he favored was by the green-room, where the sparkle of such
lively elderly ladies as Mrs. Oldcastle and Mrs. Bracegirdle had not
yet wholly gone out.
He wrote play upon play with nervous English, and pretty surprises in
them; but not notable for {70} any results, whether of money-making or
of moral-mending. He also had his experiences as stage manager; and
between two of his plays (1735 or thereabout) married a pretty girl
down in Salisbury; and with her dot, and a small country place
inherited from his mother, set up as country gentleman, on the north
border of Dorsetshire, determined to cut a new and larger figure in
life--free from the mephitic airs of Drury Lane. There were
stories--very likely apocryphal--that he ordered extravagant liveries;
it is more certain that he gave himself freely, for a time, to hounds,
horses, and friends. Of course such a country symposium devoured both
his own and his wife's capital; and we find him very shortly back in
London, buckling down to law study; very probably showing there or
thereabout the "inked ruffles and the wet towel round his head," which
appear in the charming retrospective glasses of Thackeray.[10]
But times are hard with him; those fast years of green-room life have
told upon him; the "wet {71} towels" round the head are in demand; some
of his later plays are condemned by the Lord Chancellor;[11] in 1742,
however, he makes that lunge at the sentimentalism of Richardson which,
in the shape of _Joseph Andrews_, gives him a trumpeting success. It
encourages him to print two or three volumes of miscellanies. But
shadows follow him; a year later, his wife dies in his arms; Lady
Wortley Montagu (who was a cousin) tells us this; and tells us how
other cousins were scandalized because, a few years afterward, the
novelist, with an effusive generosity that was characteristic of him,
married his maid, who had lamented her mistress so sincerely, and was
tenderly attached to his children. At about the same period he
accepted office as Justice of the Peace--thereby still further
disgruntling his aristocratic Denbigh cousins. But the quick-coming
volumes of _Tom Jones_ and their wonderful acclaim cleared the space
around him; he had room to breathe and {72} to play the magistrate; it
is Henry Fielding, Esq., now,--of Bow Street, Covent Garden. _Amelia_
followed, for which he received L1,000; and we hear of a new home out
in the pleasant country, by Baling, north of Brentford, and the Kew
Gardens.
Finally on a June day of 1754 we see him leaving this home; "at twelve
precisely," he says in his last Journal, "my coach was at the door,
which I was no sooner told than I kissed my children all around, and
went into it with some little resolution." There needed resolution;
for he was an utterly broken-down man, the pace of his wild, young days
telling now fearfully, and he bound away for a voyage to the sunny
climate of Portugal--to try if this would stay the end.
But it does not; in October of the same year he died in Lisbon; and
there his body rests in the pretty Cemetery of the Cypresses, where all
visitors who love the triumphs of English letters go to see his tomb,
among the myrtles and the geraniums. If he had only lived to pluck
away some of those grosser stains which defile the pages where the
characters of an Allworthy and of a Parson Adams will shine forever!
{73}
_Poet of the Seasons._
It was just about the opening of the second quarter of the eighteenth
century--when Fielding was fresh from Eton, fifteen years before
_Pamela_ had appeared and while George II. was in waiting for the
slipping off of Father George at Osnaburg--that a stout Scotch poet
found his way to London to try a new style of verses with the public
which was still worshipping at the shrine of Mr. Pope. This was the
poet of _The Seasons_,[12] whose boyhood had been passed and enriched
in that bight of the beautiful Tweed valley which lies between
Coldstream and the tall mass of Kelso's ruin,--with Melrose and
Smailhome Tower and Ettrickdale not far away, and the Lammermuir hills
glowering in the north. He had studied theology in Edinboro', till
some iris-hued version of a psalm (which he had wrought) brought the
warning from some grim orthodox friend--that {74} a good Dominie should
rein up his imagination. So he set his face southward, with the
crystal scenery of a winter on Tweed-side sparkling in his thought. He
lived humbly in London, for best of reasons, near to Charing Cross; but
by the aid of Northern friends, brought his _Winter_ to book, in the
spring of 1726.
It delighted everybody; the tric-trac of Pope was lacking, and so was
the master's arrant polish; but the change brought its own blithe
welcome.
We will try a little touch from this first poem of his which he brought
in his satchel, on the boy journey to London:--
"Thro' the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
At first, thin, wavering, till at last the flakes
Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow....
Low, the woods
Bow their hoar heads; and ere the languid sun
Faint from the west emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep hid and chill,
Is one wide dazzling waste.
The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing stone....
{75}
One alone,
The red-breast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky
In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves
His shivering mates.
Half afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then hopping o'er the floor
Eyes all the smiling family askance
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is."
That robin red-breast has hopped over a great many floors in his time;
and now after a hundred and sixty years he comes brisk as ever out of
that Winter poem of Thomson's. This Scotch poet is wordy; he draws
long breaths; he is sometimes tiresome; but you will catch good honest
glimpses of the country in his verse without going there--not true to
our American seasons in detail, but always true to Nature. The sun
never rises in the west in his poems; the jonquils and the daisies are
not confounded; the roses never forget to blush as roses should; the
oaks are sturdy; the hazels are lithe; the brooks murmur; the torrents
roar a song; the winds carry waves across the grain-fields; the clouds
plant shadows on the mountains.
{76}
Thomson was befriended by Pope, who kindly made corrections in the
first draught of some of his poems; and that you may see together the
wordy ways of these two poets I give a sample of Pope's mending.
Thomson wrote--speaking of a gleaning girl:--
"Thoughtless of Beauty, she was beauty's self
Recluse among the woods; if city dames
Will deign their faith; and thus she went, compelled
By strong necessity, with as serene
And pleased a look as Patience ere put on,
To glean Palemon's fields."
And this is the way in which Pope does the mending:--
"Thoughtless of Beauty, she was beauty's self
Recluse among the close embowering woods.
As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,
A myrtle rises far from human eyes,
And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
So flourished, blooming, and unseen by all,
The sweet Lavinia; till at length compelled
By strong necessity's supreme command,
With smiling patience in her looks, she went
To glean Palemon's fields."
{77}
There are more words, but the words gleam! Pope is the master, yet
mastered by rules; Thomson less a master, but free from bonds.
He tried play-writing, in those days when Fielding was just beginning
in the same line, but it was not a success. After a year or two of
travel upon the Continent, on some tutoring business, he published an
ambitious poem (1734-1736) entitled _Liberty_--never a favorite. He
had made friends, however, about the Court; and he pleasantly contrived
to possess himself of some of those pensioned places, which fed unduly
his natural indolence. But all will forgive him this vice, who have
read his fine poem of the _Castle of Indolence_ in Spenserian verse.
It was his last work--perhaps his best, and first published in 1748,
the year of his death.
One stanza from it I must quote; and shall never forget my first
hearing of it, in tremulous utterance, from the lips of the venerable
John Quincy Adams, after he had bid adieu (as he thought) to public
life and was addressing[13] a {78} large assemblage in the university
town of New Haven:
"I care not, Fortune, what you me deny!
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns by living streams at eve;
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace
And I their toys to the great children leave,
Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave."
Most readers will think kindly and well of this poet; and if you love
the country, you will think yet more kindly of him; and on summer
afternoons, when cool breezes blow in at your windows and set all the
leaves astir over your head, his muse--if you have made her
acquaintance--will coo to you from among the branches: but you will
never and nowhere find in him the precision, the vigor, the point, the
polish, we found in Pope; and which you may find, too, in the fine
parcel-work {79} done by Thomas Gray, who was a contemporary of
Thomson's, but younger by some fifteen years.
_Thomas Gray._
You will know of that first poem of his--_Ode to Eton College_; at
least you know its terminal lines, which are cited on all the
high-roads:--
"Where ignorance is bliss
'Tis folly to be wise!"
All the world knows, too, his _Elegy_, on which his fame principally
rests. Its melancholy music gets somehow stamped on the brain of
nearly all of us, and lends a poetic halo to every old graveyard that
has the shadow of a church tower slanted over it.
Gray[14] was, like Milton, a London boy--born on Cornhill under the
shadow almost of St. Paul's. The father was a cross-grained man,
living apart from Mrs. Gray, who, it is said, by the gains of some
haberdashery traffic which she set up in {80} Cornhill, sent her boy to
Eton and to Cambridge. At Eton he came to know Horace Walpole,
travelled with him over Europe, after leaving Cambridge, until they
quarrelled and each took his own path. That quarrel, however, was
mended somewhat later and Walpole became as good a friend to Gray as he
could be to anybody--except Mr. Walpole.
The poet, after his father's death, undertook, in a languid way, the
study of law; but finally landed again in Cambridge, and was a
dilettanteish student there nearly all his days, being made a Professor
of History at last; but not getting fairly into harness before the gout
laid hold of him and killed him. Probably no man in English literature
has so large a reputation for so little work. Gibbon regretted that he
should not have completed his philosophic poem on education and
government; Dr. Johnson, who spoke halting praise of his poems, thought
he would have made admirable books of travel; Cowper says, "I once
thought Swift's letters the best that could be written, but I like
Gray's better."
The truth is, he was a fastidious, scholarly man, whose over-nicety of
taste was always in {81} the way of large accomplishment. He was
content to do nothing, except he did something in the best possible
way. He so cherished refinements that refinements choked his impulses.
A great stickler he was, too, for social refinements--distinctions,
preferments, and clap-trap--wanting his courtesies, of which he was as
chary as of his poems, to have the last stamp of gentility; thus
running into affectations of decorum, which, one time, made him the
butt of practical jokers at his college. Some lovers of fun there
sounded an alarm of fire for the sake of seeing the elegant Mr. Gray
(not then grown famous, to be sure) slipping down a rope-ladder in
undress, out of his window; which he did do, but presently changed his
college in dudgeon. He had, moreover, a great deal of Walpole's
affected contempt for authorship--wanted rather to be counted an
elegant gentleman who only played with letters. He writes to his
friend that the proprietors of a magazine were about to print his
Elegy, and says:--
"I have but one bad way to escape the honor they would inflict upon me,
and therefore desire you would make {82} Dodsley print it immediately,
without my name, but on his best paper and type. _If he would add a
line to say it came into his hands by accident, I should like it
better_."
I think he caught this starched folly (if it were folly) from Walpole.
I have heard of over-elegant people in our day with the same
affectation; but, as a rule, they do not write poems so good as the
_Elegy_.
Gray died, after that quiet life of his, far down in the days of George
III., 1771, leaving little work done, but a very great name. He was
buried, as was fitting, beside his mother, in that churchyard at Stoke,
out of which the Elegy grew. And if you ever have a half day to spare
in London, it is worth your while to go out to Slough (twenty miles by
the Great Western road), and thence, two miles of delicious walk among
shady lanes and wanton hedges, to where Stoke-Pogis Church, curiously
hung over with ivy, rises amongst the graves; and if sentimentally
disposed, you may linger there, till the evening shadows fall, and
repeat to yourself (or anybody you like)--
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea.
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness and to me."
{83}
_A Courtier._
I have spoken of the association of Walpole with Gray; it was not an
intimate one after the two had outgrown their youth-age; indeed
Walpole's association with nobody was intimate; nor was he a man whose
literary reputation ever was, or ever can be great. He was son[15] of
that famous British Minister of State, Sir Robert Walpole, who for many
long years held the fate of England in his hand. But his son Horace
cared little for politics. He was unmarried, and kept so always; had
money in plenty (coming largely from Government sinecures) and a fat
place at Twickenham--called Strawberry Hill; which by his vagaries in
architecture and his enormous collection of bric-a-brac, he made the
show place of all that region. He established a private press at this
country home, and printed, among a {84} multitude of other books, a
catalogue of royal and noble authors--not reckoning others so worthy of
his regard; indeed, he had a well-bred contempt for ordinary literary
avocations; but he wrote and published (privately at first) a romance
called _The Castle of Otranto_.[16] It was "a slight thing," he told
his friends, which he had dashed off in an idle hour, and which he "had
not put his name to; but which succeeded so well that he did not any
longer entirely keep the secret." It is a tale, quite ingenious, of
mingled mystery and chivalry; there are castles in it, and huge
helmets, that only giants could wear; and there are dungeons, and
forlorn maidens; ghosts, and sighing lovers; mysterious sounds, and
pictures that come out of their frames and walk about in the
moonlight--it is a pattern book to read at night in an old country
house which has long corridors and deserted rooms, where the bats fly
in and out, and the doors clang and clash.
But this strange creature, Horace Walpole, is {85} known best of all by
his letters[17]--nine solid volumes of them, big octavo--covering
nearly the whole of his life and addressed to a half score or so of men
and women on all possible topics except any serious one; and all made
ready, with curious care, for publication when his death should come.
On that one point he did have serious belief--he believed he should
die. This great budget of his letters is one of the most extraordinary
products--if we may call it so--of literature. It is hard to say what
is not touched upon in them; if he is robbed, you hear how a voice out
of the night said "stop"--how he slipped his watch under his
waistband--how he gave up his purse with nine guineas in it--how Lady
Browne was frightened and gave up _her_ watch; if the king has gout in
his toe you hear of that; if he goes to the palace he tells you who was
in the ante-room and how two fellows were sweeping the floor, dancing
about in sabots; how the Duc of Richelieu was pale except his nose,
"which is red and wrinkled." Great hoops with brocade dresses come
sailing into {86} his letters; so do all the scandals about my lady
_this_, or the duchess _that_; so do the votes in Parliament and
reports about the last battle, if a war is in progress; and the French
news, and new things at Strawberry Hill--over and over. And he does
not think much of Gibbon, and does not think much of Dr. Johnson--who
"has no judgment and no taste;" and why doesn't his friend Mason[18] (a
third-rate poet) "show up the doctor and make an end of him?"--which is
much like saying that Mr. Wardle's fat boy should make an end of Mr.
Pickwick.
Yet do not think there is no art in all this, and that you would not
like them: there is art of the highest gossipy kind; and I can readily
understand how his correspondents all relished immensely his letters
whenever they came. There is humor and sparkle, and there are delicate
touches; he approaches his lighter topics as a humming-bird approaches
flowers--a swift dart {87} at them--a sniff, a whirl of wings, and away
again.
Then he has that rare literary instinct of knowing just what each
correspondent would like best to hear of--that's the secret of writing
letters that will be welcome. You cannot interchange his letters. He
tickles Lady Ossory's ear with sheerest gossip, and Lady Suffolk with
talk of dress and of the last great Paris ball, and the poet Mason with
bookish platitudes, and Conway with the leakings of political talk, and
Cole with twaddle on art or science. You want to turn your back on him
again and again for his arrant snobbish pretensions or some weak and
violent prejudice; yet you want to listen again and again. It is such
a pretty, lively, brisk, frolicsome, _petillant_ small-beerish talk,
that engages and does not fatigue, and piques appetite yet feeds you
with nothings.
He grew old there in his _gim-crack_ of a palace, cultivating his
flowers and his complexion; tiptoeing while he could over his waxed
floors in lavender suit, with embroidered waistcoat and "partridge silk
stockings," with _chapeau bas_ held before him--very reverent to any
visitor of {88} distinction--and afterward (he lived almost into this
century), when gout seizes him, I seem to see still--as once
before[19]--the fastidious old man shuffling up and down from
drawing-room to library--stopping here and there to admire some newly
arrived bit of pottery--pulling out his golden snuff-box and whisking a
delicate pinch into his old nostrils--then dusting his affluent
shirt-frills with the tips of his dainty fingers, with an air of
gratitude to Providence for having created so fine a gentleman as
Horace Walpole, and of gratitude to Horace Walpole for having created
so fine a place as Strawberry Hill.
_Young Mr. Johnson._
And now what a different man we come upon, living just abreast of him
in that rich English century and that beautiful English country! We go
into Staffordshire and to the old town of Lichfield, to find the boy
who afterward became the great lexicographer[20] and the great talker.
The {89} house in which he was born is there upon a corner of the great
broadened street, opposite St. Mary's Church. We get a pleasant
glimpse of the house on a page of _Our Old Home_, by Hawthorne; and
another glimpse of the colossal figure of Dr. Johnson, seated in his
marble chair, upon that Lichfield market-place.
His father was a bookseller; held, too, some small magistracy; was
eminently respectable; loved books as well as sold them, and had a
corresponding inaptitude for business. The son added to indifferent
schooling, here and there, a habit of large browsing along his father's
shelves; was a great, ungainly lout of a boy, but marvellously
quick-witted. With some help from his father, and some from friends,
and with a reputation for making verses, and tastes ranging above
bookstalls, he entered at Oxford when nineteen; but {90} the stings of
poverty smote him there early; and after three years of irregular
attendance, he left--only to find his father lapsing into bankruptcy
and a fatal illness. On the settlement of the old bookseller's estate,
L20 only was the portion of the son. Then follow some dreary years; he
is hypochondriac and fears madness; he is under-teacher in a school; he
offers to do job-work for the book-makers; he translates the narrative
of a Portuguese missionary about Abyssinia; he ponders over a tragedy
of _Irene_. Not much good comes of all this, when--on a sudden, our
hero, who is now twenty-six, marries a widow--who admired his
talents--who is twenty years his senior and has L800. Johnson was not
a person to regard closely such little discrepancies as that difference
in age--nor she, I suppose.
The bride is represented as not over-comely, and as one--of good
judgment in most matters--who resorted to some vulgar appliances for
making the most of her "good looks." Lord Macaulay[21] uses a very
rampant rhetoric in his encyclopaedic {91} mention of the paint she put
upon her cheeks. With the aid of her L800, Johnson determined to set
up a boarding-school for young gentlemen; a gaunt country-house three
miles out of Lichfield was rented and equipped and advertised; but the
young gentlemen did not come.
How could they be won that way? The mistress frowsy, simpering,
ancient, painted, and becurled; and Mr. Johnson, gaunt, clumsy,
squinting--one side of his face badly scarred with some early surgical
cut; one eye involved and drooping, and a twitchy St. Vitus's dance
making all uglier. What boy would not dread a possible whipping from
such a master, and what mamma would not tremble for her boy? Yet I do
not believe he ever whipped hard, when he had occasion; he was
kind-hearted; but his scolds at a false syntax must have been terrific
and have made the floors shiver.
Among the boys who did venture to that Edial school was one David
Garrick, whose father had been a friend of the elder Johnson; and when
the school broke up--as it did presently--Johnson and David Garrick set
out together for London, to {92} seek their fortune--carrying letters
to some booksellers there; and Johnson carrying that half-written
tragedy of _Irene_ in his pocket. Garrick's rise began early, and was
brilliant, but of this we cannot speak now. Johnson knocked about
those London streets--translating a little, jobbing at books a little,
starving and scrimping a great deal. He fell in early with a certain
Richard Savage,[22] a wild, clever, disorderly poet, as hard pinched as
Johnson. According to his story, he was the son of the Countess
Macclesfield, but disowned by her--he only coming to knowledge of his
parentage through accident, when he was grown to manhood. Johnson
tells the pathetic tale of how Savage paced up and down, at night, in
sight of his mother's palatial windows, gazing grief-smitten at them,
and yearning for the maternal recognition, which the heartless,
dishonored woman refused. So, this castaway runs to drink and all
deviltries; Johnson staying him much as {93} he can--walking with him
up and down through London streets till midnight--talking poetry,
philosophy, religion; hungry both of them, and many a time with only
ten pence between them.
Well, at last, Savage kills his man in a tavern broil; would have been
hung--the mother countess (as the story runs) hoping it would be so;
but he escapes, largely through the influence of that Queen Caroline,
to whom Jeanie Deans makes her eloquent plea in Scott's ever-famous
novel of _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_. Savage escapes, but 'tis only to
go to other bad ways, and at last he died in a Bristol jail.
All this offered material for a pathetic story, and Johnson made the
most of it in his _Life of Savage_--afterward incorporated in his
_Lives of the Poets_, but first published in 1744, about seven years
after his coming to London. The book appeared anonymously; but its
qualities gave it great vogue; and its essential averments formed the
basis of all biographic and encyclopaedic[23] notices for nearly a
century thereafter.
{94}
But was the story true? There were those who doubted at the time, and
had an unpleasant sense that Johnson had been wheedled by an
adventurer; but demonstration of the imposture of Savage did not come
till the middle of the present century. The investigations of Moy
Thomas[24] would go to show that the Savage friend of Johnson's early
days in London was the most arrant of impostors; and that of all the
shame that rests upon him, he can only justly be relieved of that which
counts him a child of such a woman as the Countess of Macclesfield. I
have dwelt upon the Savage episode, not alone because it provoked one
of Johnson's best pieces of prose work, but because it shows how open
were his sympathies to such tales of distress, and how quick he was to
lift the rod of chastisement upon wrong-doers of whatever degree.
In _London_, too, that imitative classic poem, there shone in a glitter
of couplets (which provoked Pope's praises) the same righteous
indignation, and the stings--pricking through all his big {95}
Staffordshire bulk--of supperless-days and of shortened means:--
"By numbers here from shame or censure free
All crimes are safe, but hated Poverty;
This, only this, the rigid Law pursues,
This, only this, provokes the snarling muse.
"The sober trader at a tattered cloak
Wakes from his dream, and labors for a joke;
With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze
And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways."
Better than this was that poem (_Vanity of Human Wishes_) in which,
even now, some of us--admiringly--
"In full flown dignity see Wolsey stand,
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand."
And the couplet leads on through Wolsey's story to the poet's coupleted
sermon, with its savors of a church-bell--
"Still raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.
Safe in his power whose eye discerns afar
The secret ambush of a specious prayer;
Implore his aid, in his decisions rest,
Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best.
* * * * *
{96}
Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resigned;
* * * * *
For faith, that, panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind nature's signal of retreat."
We must note also that famous Prologue, spoken at Drury Lane in 1747,
when the theatre came first under control of his old friend, Garrick.
Never had the stage, before nor since, a nobler summons in worthier
verse: it closes--
"Then prompt no more the follies you decry,
As Tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die:
'Tis yours, this night, to bid the reign commence
Of rescued Nature and reviving Sense:
To chase the charms of Sound, the pomp of Show,
For useful Mirth and salutary Woe:
Bid scenic Virtue form the rising age
And Truth diffuse her radiance from the Stage."
Garrick must have been proud to act under such banner of song as that.
The tragedy of _Irene_ came to its first representation a short time
afterward; and surely it would have been worth one's while to see the
stout, awkward gerund-grinder of forty, slipping into a side-box, or
even behind {97} the scenes "in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold
lace and a gold-laced hat!" The play, however, did not prove a great
success either then or thereafter. The Dictionary, for which proposals
had already been issued, promised better things. That Dictionary did
ultimately give him a great lift--as it has to a good many, since. The
ponderous volume furnished very many New England households seventy
years ago; and I can remember sitting upon it, in my child-days, to
bring my head properly above the level of the table. An immense and
long-continued toil went to the Dictionary. Lord Chesterfield,[25] the
finished orator and the elegant man--not unwilling to have so great a
work bear his name--called attention to the book and the author, when
nearly ready; but Johnson was too sore with hope deferred to catch {98}
that bait; he writes an indignant letter (not published until 1790) to
the elegant Chesterfield:--
"Seven years have now passed, my Lord, since I waited in your
outward-rooms, or was repulsed from your door--during which time I have
been pushing on my work, thro' difficulties of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile
of favor.... The notice which you have been pleased to take of my
labors--had it been early--had been kind; but it has been delayed till
I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary [his wife dead
now] and cannot impart it, till I am known and do not want it."
This does not show the stuff which went to the making of such a man as
Walpole!
The _Rambler_, too, it must be remembered, is making its periodic
visits in those early days of the Dictionary toil. Heavy it is, like
the master; and his prejudices as arrant Churchman and sturdy Tory do
indeed break through its piled-up pages; but never insidiously: he
sounds a trumpet before he strikes. Perhaps a little over-fond of
trumpeting; loving so much his long sonorous roll of Ciceronian
vocables.
But I have not the same dislike of long {99} Johnsonian periods that a
good many people have--provided always there is a Johnson to utter
them. They belong to _him_; they match with their wordy convolutions
his great billowy make of mind; and short, sharp sentences would be as
incongruous as a little spurting _jet d'eau_ where great waves come
rocking on the beach.
In fact, I have a large unbelief in much of current pedagogic talk
about style, and "getting a good style," and "reforming style," and
"Saxon style," and so on. To be thoroughly possessed of one's own
thought, and then to tell it, in the clearest possible way, is the best
law I know for a good style; and a proper following of it will give to
every mind that has any color of its own a style of its own. To putter
about the rhetorics in search of fine phrases to wrap your thoughts in,
is like going in masquerade; furbish it as you will, people will see
the smear of old wear in the tinsel trappings, and smell it too.
If short, homely Saxon will serve one's purpose best in giving sharp,
shrewd expression to thought, as most times it will, use Saxon; but if
a Latin derivation will hit the very shade of your thinking {100} more
aptly, do not affect to scorn the Latin. Even if a French
word--provided always it be at once and easily comprehensible by all
whom you address--shall touch the very eye of your purpose better than
another, do not scruple to use it.
But we must ask pardon for this intrusion of small school-mastery talk,
while the great master of the Dictionary and of the _Rambler_ waits.
As yet we have followed him through only half of his career; a stalwart
man, still in the full prime of his years; and I see grouping about him
at the Turk's Head many another whom we wish to follow; a Boswell and a
Burke; Reynolds and Beauclerk and Goldsmith--these all are in waiting.
But for a fuller and nearer view of these old club-men of more than a
century ago, we open upon another chapter of these _Lands and Letters_.
[1] Whoso would take measure, of his scholarly thoroughness, his reach,
his pertinacity, and his capacity for striking sharp blows, should
struggle through his _Dissertation on Phalaris_.
[2] Swift, Addison, Steele, Gay, _et al._, in preceding volume of
_Lands, Letters, and Kings_ ("Elizabeth to Anne")
[3] He lived for many years in the _Palazzo Muti_ near to the church of
the _SS. Apostoli_, in Rome; his disorderly life there made it a _Regio
Palazzo_!
[4] _Lands and Letters_: "From Elizabeth to Anne," p. 100.
[5] _Lands and Letters_: "Elizabeth to Anne."
[6] This is one contemporary account of it--adopted by Thackeray; but
Wraxall (1st vol., pp. 384-385 American reprint, Lea & Blanchard) says
that the Duke of Dorset was commissioned to carry the news; but some
little time being required to make himself ready, the Duchess was sent
in advance. She arrived at Kew (where the Prince was staying) just as
that Prince had gone to bed, as was his wont, after dinner. The
Princess undertook the announcement--though demurring at the duty, and
anticipating a brutal reception for one who should disturb his
after-dinner nap; he was in a huff and _did_ make the comment, noted in
the text; but it was not (says Wraxall) to a messenger in jack-boots,
but to the Princess of Wales herself.
[7] Richardson: b. 1689; d. 1761. Various editions of his works.
Known quite generally to buyers of cheap books in our day by an
abbreviated issue of _Clarissa Harlowe_ (Routledge & Sons).
[8] Henry Fielding: b. 1707; d. 1754. Editions of his works have been
edited by Arthur Murphy, William Roscoe, and Leslie Stephen; (10 vols.,
1882-1883.) Life by Sir Walter Scott in Ballantyne Library; more
trustworthy one is that by Austin Dobson.
[9] It is perhaps to be doubted if the bare-faced coarsenesses of
Fielding (much as they are to be condemned) would provoke pruriency so
much as the sentimental and sensuous languors of Richardson.
[10] _History of Pendennis_, Household Ed., Boston: Chap. xxix.
[11] It was in virtue of some altercations growing out of Fielding's
plays that British censorship was established in 1737, and (perhaps)
Fielding thereby diverted to the study of Law.
[12] James Thomson, b. 1700; d. 1748. Various editions of his poems; a
very elegant one, illustrated by the Etching Club, published 1842-62.
[13] _The Jubilee of the Constitution_, a discourse delivered by
request of the New York Historical Society, April 30, 1839, and
repeated shortly after in the old "Ludlow" Church, (now "Dime
Theatre"), in Church Street, New Haven.
[14] Thomas Gray, b. 1716; d. 1771. See Gosse's recent biography for
critical as well as sympathetic account of his life and writings. See
also Mitford's edition of his works, with life, London, 1836.
[15] Horace Walpole, b. 1717; d. 1785. The enumeration of his books,
pamphlets, and of titles relating thereto fill a dozen columns of
_Lowndes_. His letters give best measurement of the man.
[16] It purported to be a translation from the Italian of Onuphrio
Muralto.
[17] Peter Cunningham Edition. London, 1857-1859. See also _Horace
Walpole and His World_, by L. B. Seeley. 1884.
[18] Rev. William Mason, b. 1725; d. 1797; author of _The English
Garden_, published at intervals (its successive books) between 1772 and
1782. It has little merit--Walpole to the contrary.
[19] _Wet Days at Edgewood_, p. 239.
[20] Samuel Johnson, b. 1709; d. 1784. Boswell's the standard life of
him, and Birkbeck Hill's the best edition of that life. We miss in it,
indeed, some of the "Croker" notes, which made such inviting quarry for
the sharp huntsmanship of Macaulay. But the editing is done with a
love and a tirelessness which are as winning as they are rare. See,
also, Leslie Stephen's sketch--which is the best short life.
[21] _Ency. Britannica_; Art. Johnson.
[22] B. 1698; d. 1743. Poet and dramatist. Collected edit. of his
writings published in 1775. His largest claim to distinction is due to
the _Life of Richard Savage_, by Samuel Johnson; first published 1744.
[23] _Vide_ old edition of _Ency. Britannica_, also Strahan's
_Biographical Dictionary_ of 1784; _Biographie Universelle, et al._
[24] See _Notes and Queries_, November and December, 1858.
[25] Philip Dormer Stanhope (Earl of Chesterfield), b. 1694; d. 1773,
best known by his _Letters to His Son_, first published in 1774.
Johnson said they taught "the morals of a courtesan, and the manners of
a dancing-master." This was perhaps over-severe. People who do not
love to disport in fashionable waters are apt to be severe upon those
who spend their faculties upon the coquetries of bathing costume.
{101}