(_Edinburgh Review_, April 1830.)
The {188}wise men of antiquity loved to convey instruction under the
covering of apologue; and though this practice is generally thought
childish, we shall make no apology for adopting it on the present
occasion. A generation which has bought eleven editions of a poem by Mr.
Robert Montgomery may well condescend to listen to a fable of Pilpay.
(2)
A pious Brahmin, it is written, made a vow that on a certain day he
would sacrifice a sheep, and on the appointed morning he went forth to
buy one. There lived in his neighbourhood three rogues who knew of his
vow, and laid a scheme for profiting by it. The first met him and said,
“Oh Brahmin, wilt thou buy a sheep? I have one fit for sacrifice.”
“It is for that very purpose,” said the holy man, “that I came forth
this day.” Then the impostor opened a bag, and brought out of it an
unclean beast, an ugly dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried
out, “Wretch, who touchest things impure, and utterest things untrue,
callest thou that cur a sheep?” “Truly,” answered the other, “it is a
sheep of the finest fleece, and of the
(1). _The Omnipresence of the Deity: a Poem_. By Robert
Montgomery. Eleventh Edition. London: 1830.
(2). _Satan: a Poem_. By Robert Montgomery. Second Edition.
London: 1830.
{189}sweetest flesh. Oh Brahmin, it will be an offering most acceptable
to the gods.”
“Friend,” said the Brahmin, “either thou or I must be blind.”
Just then one of the accomplice’s came up. “Praised be the gods,” said
this second rogue, “that I have been saved the trouble of going to the
market for a sheep! This is such a sheep as I wanted. For how much wilt
thou sell it?” When the Brahmin heard this, his mind waved to and fro,
like one swinging in the air at a holy festival. “Sir,” said he to the
new comer, “take heed what thou dost; this is no sheep, but an unclean
cur.”
“Oh Brahmin,” said the new comer, “thou art drunk or mad!”
At this time the third confederate drew near. “Let us ask this man,”
said the Brahmin, “what the creature is, and I will stand by what he
shall say.” To this the others agreed; and the Brahmin called out, “Oh
stranger, what dost thou call this beast?”
“Surely, oh Brahmin,” said the knave, “it is a fine sheep.” Then the
Brahmin said, “Surely the gods have taken away my senses;” and he asked
pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it for a measure of rice
and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the gods, who, being wroth at
this unclean sacrifice, smote him with a sore disease in all his joints.
Thus, or nearly thus, if we remember rightly, runs the story of the
Sanscrit Æsop. The moral, like the moral of every fable that is worth
the telling, lies on the surface. The writer evidently means to caution
us against the practices of puffers, a class of people who have more
than once talked the public into the most absurd errors, but who surely
never played a more curious or a more difficult trick than when they
passed Mr. Robert Montgomery off upon the world as a great poet. {190}In
an age in which there are so few readers that a writer cannot subsist
on the sum arising from the sale of his works, no man who has not an
independent fortune can devote himself to literary pursuits, unless he
is assisted by patronage. In such an age, accordingly, men of letters
too often pass their lives in dangling at the heels of the wealthy and
powerful; and all the faults which dependence tends to produce, pass
into their character. They become the parasites and slaves of the great.
It is melancholy to think how many of the highest and most exquisitely
formed of human intellects have been condemned to the ignominious labour
of disposing the commonplaces of adulation in new forms and brightening
them into new splendour. Horace invoking Augustus in the most
enthusiastic language of religious veneration, Statius flattering a
tyrant, and the minion of a tyrant, for a morsel of bread, Ariosto
versifying the whole genealogy of a niggardly patron, Tasso extolling
the heroic virtues of the wretched creature who locked him up in a
mad-house, these are but a few of the instances which might easily be
given of the degradation to which those must submit who, not possessing
a competent fortune, are resolved to write when there are scarcely any
who read.
This evil the progress of the human mind tends to remove. As a taste for
books becomes more and more common, the patronage of individuals becomes
less and less necessary. In the middle of the last century a marked
change took place. The tone of literary men, both in this country and in
France, became higher and more independent. Pope boasted that he was
the “one poet” who had “pleased by manly ways;” he derided the
soft dedications with which Halifax had been fed, asserted his own
superiority over the pensioned Boileau, {191}and gloried in being not
the follower, but the friend, of nobles and princes. The explanation of
all this is very simple. Pope was the first Englishman who, by the
mere sale of his writings, realised a sum which enabled him to live
in comfort and in perfect independence. Johnson extols him for the
magnanimity which he showed in inscribing his Iliad not to a minister
or a peer, but to Congreve. In our time this would scarcely be a subject
for praise. Nobody is astonished when Mr. Moore pays a compliment of
this kind to Sir Walter Scott, or Sir Walter Scott to Mr. Moore. The
idea of either of those gentlemen looking out for some lord who would
be likely to give him a few guineas in return for a fulsome dedication
seems laughably incongruous. Yet this is exactly what Dryden or Otway
would have done; and it would be hard to blame them for it. Otway is
said to have been choked with a piece of bread which he devoured in the
rage of hunger; and, whether this story be true or false, he was beyond
all question miserably poor. Dryden, at near seventy, when at the head
of the literary men of England, without equal or second, received three
hundred pounds for his Fables, a collection of ten thousand verses,
and of such verses as no man then living, except himself, could have
produced. Pope, at thirty, had laid up between six and seven thousand
pounds, the fruits of his poetry. It was not, we suspect, because he had
a higher spirit or a more scrupulous conscience than his predecessors,
but because he had a larger income, that he kept up the dignity of the
literary character so much better than they had done.
From the time of Pope to the present day the readers have been
constantly becoming more and more numerous, and the writers,
consequently, more and more {192}independent. It is assuredly a great
evil that men, fitted by their talents and acquirements to enlighten and
charm the world, should be reduced to the necessity of flattering wicked
and foolish patrons in return for the sustenance of life. But, though
we heartily rejoice that this evil is removed, we cannot but see with
concern that another evil has succeeded to it. The public is now the
patron, and a most liberal patron. All that the rich and powerful
bestowed on authors from the the time of Mæcenas to that of Harley would
not, we apprehend, make up a sum equal to that which has been paid
by English booksellers to authors during the last fifty years. Men of
letters have accordingly ceased to court individuals, and have begun to
court the public. They formerly used flattery. They now use puffing.
Whether the old or the new vice be the worse, whether those who formerly
lavished insincere praise on others, or those who now contrive by
every art of beggary and bribery to stun the public with praises of
themselves, disgrace their vocation the more deeply, we shall not
attempt to decide. But of this we are sure, that it is high time to
make a stand against the new trickery. The puffing of books is now so
shamefully and so successfully carried on that it is the duty of all who
are anxious for the purity of the national taste, or for the honour of
the literary character, to join in discountenancing the practice. All
the pens that ever were employed in magnifying Bish’s lucky office,
Romanis’s fleecy hosiery, Packwood’s razor strops, and Rowland’s
Kalydor, all the placard-bearers of Dr. Eady, all the wall-chalkers of
Day and Martin, seem to have taken service with the poets and novelists
of this generation. Devices which in the lowest trades {193}are
considered as disreputable are adopted without scruple, and improved
upon with a despicable ingenuity, by people engaged in a pursuit which
never was and never will be considered as a mere trade by any man of
honour and virtue. A butcher of the higher class disdains to ticket his
meat. A mercer of the higher class would be ashamed to hang up papers in
his window inviting the passers-by to look at the stock of a bankrupt,
all of the first quality, and going for half the value. We expect some
reserve, some decent pride, in our hatter and our bootmaker. But no
artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too abject for a
man of letters.
It is amusing to think over the history of most of the publications
which have had a run during the last few years. The publisher is often
the publisher of some periodical work. In this periodical work the first
flourish of trumpets is sounded. The peal is then echoed and re-echoed
by all the other periodical works over which the publisher, or the
author, or the author’s coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers
are for a fortnight filled with puffs of all the various kinds which
Sheridan enumerated, direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes the
praise is laid on thick for simple-minded people. “Pathetic,” “sublime,”
“splendid,” “graceful,” “brilliant wit,” “exquisite humour,” and other
phrases equally flattering, fall, in a shower as thick and as sweet as
the sugar-plums at a Roman carnival. Sometimes greater art is used. A
sinecure has been offered to the writer if he would suppress his work,
or if he would even soften down a few of his incomparable portraits. A
distinguished military and political character has challenged the
inimitable satirist of the vices of the great; and the puffer is glad to
{194}learn that the parties have been bound over to keep the peace.
Sometimes it is thought expedient that the puffer should put on a grave
face, and utter his panegyric in the form of admonition. “Such attacks
on private character cannot be too much condemned. Even the exuberant
wit of our author, and the irresistible power of his withering sarcasm,
are no excuses for that utter disregard which he manifests for the
feelings of others. We cannot but wonder that a winter of such
transcendent talents, a writer who is evidently no stranger to the
kindly charities and sensibilities of our nature, should show so little
tenderness to the foibles of noble and distinguished individuals, with
whom it is clear, from every page of his work, that he must have been
constantly mingling in society.” These are but tame and feeble
imitations of the paragraphs with which the daily papers are filled
whenever an attorney’s clerk or an apothecary’s assistant undertakes to
tell the public in bad English and worse French, how people tie their
neckcloths and eat their dinners in Grosvenor Square. The editors of the
higher and more respectable newspapers usually prefix the words
“Advertisement,” or “From a Correspondent,” to such paragraphs. But this
makes little difference. The panegyric is extracted, and the significant
heading omitted. The fulsome eulogy makes its appearance on the covers
of all the Reviews and Magazines, with “Times” or “Globe” affixed,
though the editors of the Times and the Globe have no more to do with it
than with Mr. Goss’s way of making old rakes young again.
That people who live by personal slander should practise these arts is
not surprising. Those who stoop to write calumnious books may well stoop
to puff them; {195}and that the basest of all trades should be carried
on in the basest of all manners is quite proper and as it should be. But
how any man who has the least self-respect, the least regard for his
own personal dignity, can condescend to persecute the public with this
Rag-fair importunity, we do not understand. Extreme poverty may, indeed,
in some degree, be an excuse for employing these shifts, as it may be
an excuse for stealing a leg of mutton. But we really think that a man
of spirit and delicacy would quite as soon satisfy his wants in the one
way as in the other.
It is no excuse for an author that the praises of journalists are
procured by the money or influence of his publishers, and not by his
own. It is his business to take such precautions as may prevent others
from doing what must degrade him. It is for his honour as a gentleman,
and, if he is really a man of talents, it will eventually be for his
honour and interest as a writer, that his works should come before the
public recommended by their own merits alone, and should be discussed
with perfect freedom. If his objects be really such as he may own
without shame, he will find that they will, in the long run, be better
attained by suffering the voice of criticism to be fairly heard. At
present, we too often see a writer attempting to obtain literary fame as
Shakspeare’s usurper obtains sovereignty. The publisher plays Buckingham
to the author’s Richard. Some few creatures of the conspiracy are
dexterously disposed here and there in the crowd. It is the business of
these hirelings to throw up their caps, and clap their hands, and utter
their _vivas_. The rabble at first stare and wonder, and at last join in
shouting for shouting’s sake; and thus a crown is placed on a head which
has no right to it, by the huzzas of a few servile dependents. {196}The
opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially
influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume
a right to criticize. Nor is the public altogether to blame on this
account. Most even of those who have really a great enjoyment in reading
are in the same state, with respect to a book, in which a man who has
never given particular attention to the art of painting is with respect
to a picture. Every man who has the least sensibility or imagination
derives a certain pleasure from pictures. Yet a man of the highest and
finest intellect might, unless he had formed his taste by contemplating
the best pictures, be easily persuaded by a knot of connoisseurs that
the worst daub in Somerset House was a miracle of art. If he deserves
to be laughed at, it is not for his ignorance of pictures, but for his
ignorance of men. He knows that there is a delicacy of taste in
painting which he does not possess, that he cannot distinguish hands,
as practised judges distinguish them, that he is not familiar with the
finest models, that he has never looked at them with close attention,
and that, when the general effect of a piece has pleased him or
displeased him, he has never troubled himself to ascertain why. When,
therefore, people, whom he thinks more competent to judge than himself,
and of whose sincerity he entertains no doubt, assure him that a
particular work is exquisitely beautiful, he takes it for granted that
they must be in the right. He returns to the examination, resolved to
find or imagine beauties; and, if he can work himself up into something
like admiration, he exults in his own proficiency.
Just such is the manner in which nine readers out of ten judge of a
book. They are ashamed to dislike what men who speak as having authority
declare to be good. At present, however contemptible a poem {197}or a
novel may be, there is not the least difficulty in procuring favourable
notices of it from all sorts of publications, daily, weekly, and
monthly. In the mean time, little or nothing is said on the other side.
The author and the publisher are interested in crying up the book.
Nobody has any very strong interest in crying it down. Those who are
best fitted to guide the public opinion think it beneath them to expose
mere nonsense, and comfort themselves by reflecting that such popularity
cannot last. This contemptuous lenity has been carried too far. It is
perfectly true that reputations which have been forced into an unnatural
bloom fade almost as soon as they have expanded; nor have we any
apprehensions that puffing will ever raise any scribbler to the rank
of a classic. It is indeed amusing to turn over some late volumes of
periodical works, and to see how many immortal productions have, within
a few months, been gathered to the Poems of Blackmore and the novels
of Mrs. Behn; how many “profound views of human nature,” and “exquisite
delineations of fashionable manners,” and “vernal, and sunny, and
refreshing thoughts,” and “high imaginings,” and “young breathings,”
and “embody-ings,” and “pinings,” and “minglings with the beauty of the
universe,” and “harmonies which dissolve the soul in a passionate sense
of loveliness and divinity,” the world has contrived to forget. The
names of the books and of the writers are buried in as deep an oblivion
as the name of the builder of Stonehenge. Some of the well puffed
fashionable novels of eighteen hundred and twenty-nine hold the pastry
of eighteen hundred and thirty; and others, which are now extolled in
language almost too high-flown for the merits of Don Quixote, will, we
have no doubt, line the trunks of eighteen {198}hundred and thirty-one.
But, though we have no apprehensions that puffing will ever confer
permanent reputation on the undeserving, we still think its influence
most pernicious. Men of real merit will, if they persevere, at last
reach the station to which they are entitled, and intruders will be
ejected with contempt and derision. But it is no small evil that the
avenues to fame should be blocked up by a swarm of noisy, pushing,
elbowing pretenders, who, though they will not ultimately be able to
make good their own entrance, hinder, in the mean time, those who have
a right to enter. All who will not disgrace themselves by joining in the
unseemly scuffle must expect to be at first hustled and shouldered back.
Some men of talents, accordingly, turn away in dejection from pursuits
in which success appears to bear no proportion to desert. Others
employ in self-defence the means by which competitors, far inferior to
themselves, appear for a time to obtain a decided advantage. There are
few who have sufficient confidence in their own powers and sufficient
elevation of mind to wait with secure and contemptuous patience, while
dunce after dunce presses before them. Those who will not stoop to the
baseness of the modern fashion are too often discouraged. Those who
stoop to it are always degraded.
We have of late observed with great pleasure some symptoms which lead us
to hope that respectable literary men of all parties are beginning to be
impatient of this insufferable nuisance. And we purpose to do what in
us lies for the abating of it. We do not think that we can more usefully
assist in this good work than by showing our honest countrymen what that
sort of poetry is which puffing can drive through eleven editions,
and how easy any bellman might, if a bellman {199}would stoop to the
necessary degree of meanness, become a “master-spirit of the age.” We
have no enmity to Mr. Robert Montgomery. We know nothing whatever about
him, except what we have learned from his books, and from the portrait
prefixed to one of them, in which he appears to be doing his very best
to look like a man of genius and sensibility, though with less success
than his strenuous exertions deserve. We select him, because his works
have received more enthusiastic praise, and have deserved more unmixed
contempt, than any which, as far as our knowledge extends, have appeared
within the last three or four years. His writing bears the same relation
to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are colours in
a Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be made. There are words
in Mr. Montgomery’s writing which, when disposed in certain orders and
combinations, have made, and will again make, good poetry. But, as they
now stand, they seem to be put together on principle in such a manner
as to give no image of any thing “in the heavens above, or in the earth
beneath, or in the waters under the earth.”
The poem on the Omnipresence of the Deity commences with a description
of the creation, in which we can find only one thought which has the
least pretension to ingenuity, and that one thought is stolen from
Dryden, and marred in the stealing;
“Last, softly beautiful as music’s close,