some notion of him here, for his wit and _bon mots_, exquisite and
delightful as they were, were not of a kind that bear repetition, nor
such as the recollection of the events of the day or the state of
parties brings back naturally to one’s mind. He was, indeed, all fire
and fancy. His starting eyes and eager countenance seemed animated, and
his slender frame emaciated, by the vivacity of his genius [and] his
keen sense of ridicule; and the felicity of his language was inspired by
the earnestness with which he felt what he expressed. His knowledge was
confined to scholarship and _belles lettres_; his judgment, except in
matters of taste and language, was not very remarkable; and his temper
was always impetuous, and occasionally fretful. It rarely disfigured his
manners, but it not unfrequently gave such an edge of severity to his
wit, as raised more sympathy for his victim and perhaps more terror than
delight and admiration in his audience. In short, he was occasionally
unmerciful. His vanity, disciplined and chastised by good breeding
and good taste, never exposed him to ridicule; but when mortified it
inflicted, I suspect, some bitter sufferings in private and revenged
itself on some subsequent occasion by pitiless retaliation on those who
had offended him.
Of his birth and family I knew little. His father, who was, I believe,
an apothecary at Bristol,[375] died insolvent before, or soon after, his
son had left Eton. He consequently entered life almost without property.
He had no connections but such as his merits procured him at school,
at college, and in the world. If, as Horace affirms, the favour and
friendship of distinguished men constitute no slight commendation, no
person in English society ever earned a larger portion of that reward in
a manner more honourable to himself than Mr. Hare. He married, indeed,
early in life, a lady (Miss Hume) with some money but no beauty, and he
was soon separated from her, but on terms which, I believe, even her
friends acknowledged to be handsome and liberal on his part. Indeed, in
all _pecuniary_ transactions he conducted himself, even in the narrowest
circumstances, with great honour and disinterestedness. His figure,
without deformity, was neither robust nor elegant. His face, though full
of animation and exempt from any bad expression, was not prepossessing.
Yet to the honour of female judgment in wit and conversation, more, I
fear, than to the happiness of those to whom he devoted his attentions,
few men were more successful in gallantry with no external advantages.
He dazzled and captivated women of beauty, talent, and condition, by the
brilliancy of his wit, the vivacity of his imagination, and a natural,
unaffected earnestness of manner, in which there was not the slightest
tinge of vulgarity or ill-breeding. But as, with due preservation of the
forms of society, he could be unmerciful to men who had offended him,
so I am afraid that, without departing from the rules of good company,
he was occasionally sarcastic, cutting, and even cruel, to those of the
other sex who had had the imprudence of pleasing him too much. He was, in
truth, from over refinement, too exquisitely sensitive and fastidious not
to tease himself and others with unnecessary reproaches.
In politics he was a follower and almost a worshipper of Mr. Fox.[376]
He had himself never thought seriously on matters of State or principles
of government, but affection and gratitude attached him to any opinion
or party that his friend adopted. He measured all men’s political merits
and even talents by the degree of devotion they paid to Mr. Fox. He never
attempted to speak in Parliament but once. It was on a point of order,
in which his friend had been attacked. Rage almost choked his utterance,
and, as he used to relate, Mr. Fox, on his sitting down, greeted him
with a remark, more frank and natural than encouraging, “What a fine,
passionate fellow you are!”[377]
Nevertheless, the part he took in politics was very far from being
indifferent or unuseful to the cause he espoused or the friend he adhered
to. He devoted his wit and conversation to their service. The keenness
with which he, in private, exposed the fallacies and disparaged the
abilities of the adversary, came wonderfully in aid of the public and
more serious exertions of the leader, to inspire his followers with
zeal for his person and with indignation and even contempt for his most
formidable opponents. If many were convinced by Mr. Fox in the House of
Commons that the logic of the Minister was inconclusive and the measures
of Government pernicious, not a few, especially of the young members
of his party, were equally wrought upon at supper at Brookes’, where
several of his early friends, and Mr. Hare in particular, were wont to
descant on the incidents of the debate, to extol their supporters, and
run down their adversaries. How often, heated with the enthusiasm which
conviviality, wit, and a common cause inspire, have we left the room half
persuaded that Mr. Pitt was an empty declaimer, and his speech of that
night beneath criticism or even contempt!
I record these practices, whether laudable or blameworthy, merely to mark
the difference which a change in the habits of society has insensibly
wrought in political parties. Private dinners, tavern suppers, convivial
meetings, perhaps intemperance itself, constituted a large portion of
the ways and means of public men some thirty or forty years ago. But
our usages have been altered. Social intercourse is no longer confined
to those _qui idem sentiunt de republicâ_. The comparative disuse of
men dinners, improving no doubt the intercourse of private life, has
nevertheless very sensibly impaired the strength and union of party zeal
and connection.
To return to Gibbon. He was naturally a great object of veneration in
the small town of Lausanne, in which he resided: and he enjoyed the
superiority his celebrity gave him. If he did not positively exact,
he very complacently accepted, from all classes, such homage as is
rarely offered but to Royalty or power. No amusement commenced where
he was expected until he had made his appearance. Poets impatient to
read their works, ladies equally so to display their musical talents,
and all convened to partake of the Swiss collations called _thés_ or
_goûtées_, generally suspended the indulgence of their respective wishes
till the presence and sanction of the great historian allowed them to
begin. I have been assured that if the practice was ever departed from,
the oracles and responses of the idol never failed to betray, although
with becoming gentleness, that he had remarked the omission. Such a
life was more suited to his taste, as well as to his bodily powers,
than either Parliament or the Militia. He dwells, however, with some
complacency on the latter in his memoirs. He manifestly entertained
some pompous notions of the military knowledge he had acquired in the
country quarters of the Hampshire. Indeed, in the MS., chiefly written
in French, he betrayed, according to Lord Sheffield, who showed me the
passage, the same predilection for his warlike achievements. On his first
acquaintance with Lord Sheffield, then Mr. Holroyd, he writes: “Holroyd
est un homme d’esprit, mais un peu suffisant. Il a tous les préjuges
de son état (he was a Dragoon officer) _contre la Milice_.” Some less
partial persons might perhaps have thought that the unfavourable clause
of the judgment, thus pronounced, was perfectly intelligible without
further explanation, but Lord Sheffield himself accounted for it thus.
He was fresh from England when he met Gibbon at Paris. The _Mayor of
Garralt_ had just come out on the London theatre. Lord Sheffield was
full of it. He described Foote in Major Sturgeon, mimicked him in parts
of the character, and repeated all the jokes against train bands and
Militia, with which the dialogue abounds. Gibbon, still in the Hampshire,
grew half angry, inveighed against the licentiousness of the stage, and
seriously maintained that such satires on the national force of a free
country should not be endured.
It would be hardly just to myself and to my sense of literary merit to
close my true though flippant account of Gibbon’s person, manners, and
character, without bearing the tribute of my admiration, insignificant as
it is, to his immortal work. I have lately (1835) read it for the third
time, with some attention; and, in my judgment, his unwearied search for
historical truth, and his yet more rare and discriminating impartiality
in discerning it, place him in the very first rank of historians. He is
one of the chief ornaments of his age and country. To whatever strictures
his speculative opinions and somewhat indulgent morality may expose him
from the religious and the austere, none can doubt his humanity, question
his sincerity, or deny the justness of his views, without betraying their
own want [of] candour, sincerity, or judgment.
It is curious that, in the same corps with that great writer and at the
same time, another learned, though less eminent, historian was serving as
a subaltern. This was Mr. Mitford,[378] elder brother of Lord Redesdale,
and author of the _History of Greece_. He, like Gibbon, was somewhat
fatigued with his regimental duties, and consulted him how to dispel his
_ennui_ by any rational pursuit. Gibbon advised him to read, study, and
_write_ history; I believe he suggested Greece as the subject. The first
volume, in point of labour, ingenuity, and critical acumen, does credit
to the advice, and may vie with the works of the adviser himself. But
before the second was published the French Revolution had intervened.
Mitford, though a retired man, was virulent in his politics. His
detestation of the Republicans and reformers of his own day, combining
with a propensity to paradox inherent in his nature, induced him to extol
the tyrants whom the orators and historians of Greece have consigned to
the execration of mankind, and to detract from the acts of heroism and
models of oratory which the world has been taught for ages to regard as
the most signal triumphs of patriotism and genius.
Among the literary anecdotes related to us at Lausanne by Gibbon, there
were several that proved the superficial information of modern travellers
generally, and of Coxe, of King’s,[379] afterwards known by the nickname
of “Quarto” Coxe, in particular. He had been travelling tutor to Lord
Pembroke, Mr. Whitbread, and others. The exorbitance of his salaries
for such services was a common subject of ridicule in the University
of Cambridge. So much so, that in a puppetshow Punch was introduced
complaining or bragging of the high price he paid for a fashionable
bear-leader. When questioned who he was, he replied, “Who but Cocksh, of
King’s!”—a piece of buffoonery which the reverend object of it was so
ill-advised as to resent, and he solicited the Vice-Chancellor to put it
down by authority. Whatever were his gains as tutor, he was not satisfied
with them. He strove to draw from every journey he made fresh profit,
by transferring each item of information he picked up, from whatever
source derived, into a book of travels. He had as little discrimination
and delicacy in collecting as in retailing his intelligence. An anecdote
which suited his book was as welcome on the authority of a _laquais de
place_, as from that of a Minister of State: and on the other hand he
questioned the latter character, if admitted to his company, with as
little scruple as the former.
Gibbon was full of stories of his impudence and of proofs of his
inaccuracy. His sins, however, he said, had been visited by a species
of retributive justice, which had injured the sale of his books. No
sooner had his travels in Russia appeared than they had been abridged
and corrected by an abler pen, whose production superseded the original
publication; and his book upon Switzerland had been followed by a French
translation, with the notes of a well-informed Swiss, which was more
convenient to the traveller and more instructive to the student than the
English volumes of Coxe. He lived to an advanced age, and continued to
the last to load our shelves with compositions or compilations of history
and biography; for, being a thoughtless and hospitable man, as well as
an intrepid writer, he was compelled, notwithstanding his Archdeaconry
and some good Church preferment, to adhere to his trade of bookmaking.
In default of judgment he had great experience, some sort of felicity
in the choice of his subject, great industry, or rather importunity,
in procuring materials, though with an utter want of discrimination in
selecting, and yet greater in using or reasoning upon, such facts as he
collected. Of his rapidity in determining on laborious works without
any previous knowledge of the subjects whatever, and of his activity in
begging and purloining documents for his new undertaking, many ludicrous
stories are related; of his slender capacity of using them every reader
must be aware, and the posthumous production which lies on my table, as
I write this in 1829, proves that his judgment did not improve with his
years.[380]
That his selection from papers and correspondence was as injudicious as
his comment, may be inferred from one fact, that Sir James Mackintosh,
who followed him in his researches through many private correspondences,
seldom found that Coxe and himself marked the same paper or passage in
common for transcription. Yet his labours were not altogether unuseful.
His assiduity in discovering hidden or unheeded papers, and his
indelicacy in applying for the loan or perusal of them, dragged some
valuable documents into light; and the easy access he found to them
directed subsequent and better historians to the sources of intelligence
yet extant in private and family collections. He never lived with
literary men of much note, and his society during his latter years was
for the most part within [the] close of Salisbury, of which cathedral he
was a Prebendary.
He had seen, however, during his residence, two Bishops, who in different
ways were eminent for their scholarship. I mean Dr. Douglas[381] and
Dr. Burgess.[382] The last is a mere bookworm; but though a bad critic,
he is a laborious and learned man. He is more active in, what they call
at college, sporting paradoxes than ingenious in maintaining them. But
though singularly tenacious of his opinions, he formed them himself.
Narrow as they are, they are his own, and adopted without any suggestion
of others, or, I believe, any view of power or profit. He is chiefly
remarkable, although little remarked, for publishing a larger number of
dull polemical pamphlets in favour of exploded opinions in criticism,
politics, and religion than any person of his cloth, and certainly
than any or all the Bishops of the Bench. It is fair to add that, if
not candid, he is temperate in argument and quite exempt from that
irritability which such controversies usually either denote or create.
Dr. Douglas, who was not his immediate predecessor, was a very different
and very superior man. He had been private secretary to Pulteney, Lord
Bath. His detection of Lauder’s forgeries against Milton is well known.
I speak from my own experience when I mention him as liberal in his
dealings, and from particular as well as general report when I represent
him as amiable, agreeable, and simple, though somewhat irascible in his
disposition. His learning was considerable, and he combined with it the
taste of a poet and the acumen of a critic. Though in principle and
connection rather a Tory than a Whig, he obtained the good opinion of
Mr. Fox, who felt for his judgment in literary matters something nearly
approaching to admiration. Indeed, his estimation in the club where Mr.
Fox occasionally met him, in the company of Dr. Johnson, Mr. Burke,
Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir William Scott,[383] would raise a fair
presumption that he was no ordinary man, even if the direct testimony of
his writings and of his son (a person himself of strong understanding)
did not abundantly justify my favourable report.
Before I became a member of that celebrated club, he, as well as the yet
greater luminaries of it, were no more.[384] But as I had two uncles Mr.
Fox and Lord Ossory, who generally attended, and as I was well acquainted
in my childhood with Sir Joshua Reynolds, who never missed a meeting, I
was familiar with the style and character of the society which composed
it from the earliest period of my life. The origin of the institution
may be collected from Boswell; Johnson was its founder, object, and
oracle. Even now, though dignified by some with a more aspiring title,
the members less ostentatiously and more correctly term it “Johnson’s
Club.” He attended long as the living idol, and when he was no more it
continued to be the favourite shrine at which his worshippers offered,
in the shape of anecdotes and quotations, their incense to his memory.
In such rites Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Windham, and Sir William Scott
successively officiated as High Priests, and the conversation of the two
last, in addition to other attractions, derived no little lustre in that
place from the knowledge of their early study and admiration of him. Sir
Joshua, equally a worshipper, had been long distinguished in one branch
of excellence peculiarly and exclusively his own. Being, too, one of
the earliest, if not of the original, members of the club, he seemed to
depend less on the respect cherished for Johnson than on his own merits
as an artist and philosopher.
He was surely the greatest painter England ever produced. Even in his
blemishes there was thought, grace, and genius. His pictures, if duly
studied, elucidate the great truth which his conversation and writings so
earnestly and pleasantly inculcated, namely, that, to attain excellence
in the arts of imitation, intellect and fancy as well as observation and
diligence, are requisite. Though neither fluent nor grammatically correct
in his familiar language, he had acquired a habit from his intimacy
with Johnson and Burke that reminded one of the reported conversations
of those two extraordinary men, and proved that he was one of their
school. This consisted in a perpetual and often successful endeavour to
draw some general inference from casual facts or remarks mentioned in
conversation. He would account for them by some moral maxim or make them
subservient to the proof of some principle. He had not only caught this
manner of philosophising, but had studiously imitated it, partly for his
instruction and partly for his diversion.
I remember he repeated to me and my sister, in a journey we made
with him from Bedfordshire to London, a composition of his own in a
supposed dialogue between Johnson and Boswell. The affected simplicity
and deference and the real sycophancy of the disciple, as well as the
ponderous humour, contemptuous tone, and sterling good sense of the
Master, mingled with playful rudeness, were throughout very happily
preserved. The topic was the intellectual powers of Garrick. Johnson was
made, according to his custom, to disparage them, and yet more those of
his injudicious admirer, Boswell, most unmercifully. It ended, I think,
nearly thus:
_B._ “Surely, Sir, he is a great man?”
_J._ “No, Sir. He is _not_ a great man. Garrick, a great man indeed! Let
us have no more of such stuff.”
_B._ “You will allow him, at least, to be great in one line—a great
actor?”
_J._ “Aye, Sir, but what of that? There are many things great. There are
great merchants, great sportsmen, great brewers, great grocers, great
actors, and great fools; Davy Garrick for aught I know or care is the
last but one, and you, Bozzy (laughing immoderately), may be the last if
you like it.”
This propensity in Johnson to detract from the merits of Garrick, to
deride and scoff at his profession, and to expose without mercy the
infirmities of his character, was well known, and has often been adduced
as proofs of his envy, malignity, and ingratitude, by the friends of
that lively man and inimitable actor. For Johnson, as they urged, was
Garrick’s hero.
Judge, O ye Gods, how dearly Garrick loved him;
and thence they drew an inference that Johnson was a brute to stab him
with such merciless severity. John Kemble, however, who never loved
Garrick, and suspected him, on very slight grounds, of having been
jealous of Mrs. Siddons, pretended that he had frequently insulted his
old master and friend by a studious and pompous display of his wealth.
As an instance of this purse-proud insolence and assumed superiority, he
related that when Johnson complimented Garrick upon his tea, and owned
that he envied his success in nothing more sensibly than in being able to
purchase so exquisite a beverage, Garrick not only smiled complacently,
but added that the tea so admired was by no means the best he had; he
possessed some far more refined, but he reserved it for his fashionable
guests (naming Sir John this or Lord that). This affectation of
superiority Johnson resented so highly, that he wrote the two hundredth
Number of the _Rambler_ the very next day, and he stigmatised therein
the folly and insolence of men suddenly enriched, under the character of
Prospero, with signal severity, introducing the anecdote of the tea to
make the popular player feel that the portrait was intended for him.
Sir Joshua’s _Dialogue_ seems to preserve the recollection without
recording the excuse for such a practice in Johnson. It was printed
somewhere about the year 1801 by Lady Thomond.[385] It was always the
fashion to say that the _Discourses_ of Sir Joshua had been corrected and
retouched by Johnson. That great writer died, and the continued beauty of
the _Discourses_ confuted the supposition. But the public, ever grudging
fame in two lines of excellence at a time, hardily maintained that Burke
assisted Sir Joshua Reynolds, and, to borrow a metaphor from art, draped
the figures of the artist’s rhetoric.
It is, however, my firm belief that he was less assisted in his writings
than in his pictures. In the mechanical and inferior parts of the latter
he certainly employed very largely Northcote, Marchi, and other scholars
by no means incapable of extending their labours to the more finished
portions of the piece—a fact I would not invidiously record, if it
were not, I fear, equally true that munificence or even friendliness
to such assistants formed no part of his otherwise amiable character.
My opinion that his writings are his own is chiefly founded on his
conversation. That uniformly bespoke an ingenious and sprightly mind,
unwearied in exercising itself in the principles and philosophy of art,
and consequently well stored with the materials of which his _Discourses_
are composed. It is true that he did not disdain in talk to give a
paradoxical turn to his sound opinions on such subjects. I remember, when
fresh from school, I heard with astonishment this great judge, proficient
in the “beautiful,” declare that Vanbrugh was, in a painter’s eye, the
best of architects, and that Holland, with its dykes and canals, was the
most picturesque country in Europe. This way of enforcing just principles
by phrases seemingly paradoxical was, no doubt, devised to give point and
relish to his conversation, and to invite discussion on his favourite
topics. It answered its purpose. The practice taught him an arch,
playful, and delicate manner of insinuating philosophical tasks.