Smart, in return for our Janus-faced critic's treatment, balanced the amount of debtor and creditor with a pungent Dunciad The Hilliad. Hill, who had heard of the rod in pickle, anticipated the blow, to break its strength; and, according to his adopted system, introduced himself and Smart, with a story of his having recommended the bard to his bookseller, "who took him into salary on my approbation. I betrayed him into the profession, and having starved upon it, he has a right to abuse me." This story was formally denied by an advertisement from Newbery, the bookseller.

"The Hilliad" is a polished and pointed satire. The hero is thus exhibited on earth, and in heaven.

On earth, "a tawny sibyl," with "an old striped curtain—"

And tatter'd tapestry o'er her shoulders hung— Her loins with patchwork cincture were begirt, That more than spoke diversity of dirt. Twain were her teeth, and single was her eye— Cold palsy shook her head——

with "moon-struck madness," awards him all the wealth and fame she could afford him for sixpence; and closes her orgasm with the sage admonition—

The chequer'd world's before thee; go, farewell! Beware of Irishmen; and learn to spell!

But in heaven, among the immortals, never was an unfortunate hero of the vindicative Muses so reduced into nothingness! Jove, disturbed at the noise of this thing of wit, exclaims, that nature had never proved productive in vain before, but now,

On mere privation she bestow'd a frame, And dignified a nothing with a name; A wretch devoid of use, of sense, of grace, The insolvent tenant of incumber'd space!

Pallas hits off the style of Hill, as

The neutral nonsense, neither false nor true— Should Jove himself, in calculation mad, Still negatives to blank negations add; How could the barren ciphers ever breed; But nothing still from nothing would proceed. Raise, or depress, or magnify, or blame, Inanity will ever be the same.

But Phoebus shows there may still be something produced from inanity.

E'en blank privation has its use and end— From emptiness, how sweetest music flows! How absence, to possession adds a grace, And modest vacancy, to all gives place. So from Hillario, some effect may spring; E'en him—that slight penumbra of a thing!

The careless style of the fluent Inspectors, beside their audacity, brought Hill into many scrapes. He called Woodward, the celebrated harlequin, "the meanest of all characters." This Woodward resented in a pamphlet-battle, in which Hill was beaten at all points.[290] But Hill, or the Monthly Reviewer, who might be the same person, for that journal writes with the tenderness of a brother of whatever relates to our hero, pretends that the Inspector only meant, that "the character of Harlequin (if a thing so unnatural and ridiculous ought to be called a character) was the meanest on the stage!"[291]

I will here notice a characteristic incident in Hill's literary life, of which the boldness and the egotism is scarcely paralleled, even by Orator Henley. At the time the Sloane Collection of Natural History was purchased, to form a part of our grand national establishment, the British Museum, Hill offered himself, by public advertisement, in one of his Inspectors, as the properest person to be placed at its head. The world will condemn him for his impudence. The most reasonable objection against his mode of proceeding would be, that the thing undid itself; and that the very appearance, by public advertisement, was one motive why so confident an offer should be rejected. Perhaps, after all, Hill only wanted to advertise himself.

But suppose that Hill was the man he represents himself to be, and he fairly challenges the test, his conduct only appears eccentric, according to routine. Unpatronised and unfriended men are depressed, among other calamities, with their quiescent modesty; but there is a rare spirit in him who dares to claim favours, which he thinks his right, in the most public manner. I preserve, in the note, the most striking passages of this extraordinary appeal.[292]

At length, after all these literary quarrels, Hill survived his literary character. He had written himself down to so low a degree, that whenever he had a work for publication, his employers stipulated, in their contracts, that the author should conceal his name; a circumstance not new among a certain race of writers.[293] But the genius of Hill was not annihilated by being thrown down so violently on his mother earth; like Anthaeus, it rose still fresh; and like Proteus, it assumed new forms.[294] Lady Hill and the young Hills were claimants on his industry far louder than the evanescent epigrams which darted around him: these latter, however, were more numerous than ever dogged an author in his road to literary celebrity.[295] His science, his ingenuity, and his impudence once more practised on the credulity of the public, with the innocent quackery of attributing all medicinal virtues to British herbs. He made many walk out, who were too sedentary; they were delighted to cure headaches by feverfew tea; hectic fevers by the daisy; colics by the leaves of camomile, and agues by its flowers. All these were accompanied by plates of the plants, with the Linnaean names.[296] This was preparatory to the Essences of Sage, Balsams of Honey, and Tinctures of Valerian. Simple persons imagined they were scientific botanists in their walks, with Hill's plates in their hands. But one of the newly-discovered virtues of British herbs was, undoubtedly, that of placing the discoverer in a chariot.

In an Apology for the character of Sir John Hill, published after his death, where he is painted with much beauty of colouring, and elegance of form, the eruptions and excrescences of his motley physiognomy, while they are indicated—for they were too visible to be entirely omitted in anything pretending to a resemblance—are melted down, and even touched into a grace. The Apology is not unskilful, but the real purpose appears in the last page; where we are informed that Lady Hill, fortunately for the world, possesses all his valuable recipes and herbal remedies!

FOOTNOTES:

[281] The moral and literary character of Henley has been developed in "Calamities of Authors."

[282] The twenty-six folios of his "Vegetable System," with many others, testify his love and his labour. It contains 1600 plates, representing 26,000 different figures of plants from nature only. This publication ruined the author, whose widow (the sister of Lord Ranelagh) published "An Address to the Public, by the Hon. Lady Hill, setting forth the consequences of the late Sir John Hill's acquaintance with the Earl of Bute," 1787. I should have noticed it in the "Calamities of Authors." It offers a sad and mortifying lesson to the votary of science who aspires to a noble enterprise. Lady Hill complains of the patron; but a patron, however great, cannot always raise the public taste to the degree required to afford the only true patronage which can animate and reward an author. Her detail is impressive:—

"Sir John Hill had just wrote a book of great elegance—I think it was called 'Exotic Botany'—which he wished to have presented to the king, and therefore named it to Lord Bute. His lordship waived that, saying that 'he had a greater object to propose;' and shortly after laid before him a plan of the most voluminous, magnificent, and costly work that ever man attempted. I tremble when I name its title—because I think the severe application which it required killed him; and I am sure the expense ruined his fortune—'The Vegetable System.' This work was to consist of twenty-six volumes folio, containing sixteen hundred copper-plates, the engraving of each cost four guineas; the paper was of the most expensive kind; the drawings by the first hands. The printing was also a very weighty concern; and many other articles, with which I am unacquainted. Lord Bute said that 'the expense had been considered, and that Sir John Hill might rest assured his circumstances should not be injured.' Thus he entered upon and finished his destruction. The sale bore no proportion to the expense. After 'The Vegetable System' was completed, Lord Bute proposed another volume to be added, which Sir John strenuously opposed; but his lordship repeating his desire, Sir John complied, lest his lordship should find a pretext to cast aside repeated promises of ample provision for himself and family. But this was the crisis of his fate—he died." Lady Hill adds:—"He was a character on which every virtue was impressed." The domestic partiality of the widow cannot alter the truth of the narrative of "The Vegetable System," and its twenty-six tomes.

[283] His apologist forms this excuse for one then affecting to be a student and a rake:—"Though engaged in works which required the attention of a whole life, he was so exact an economist of his time that he scarcely ever missed a public amusement for many years; and this, as he somewhere observes, was of no small service to him; as, without indulging in these respects, he could not have undergone the fatigue and study inseparable from the execution of his vast designs."—Short Account of the "Life, Writings, and Character of the late Sir John Hill, M.D." Edinburgh: 1779.

[284] Hogarth has painted a portrait of Folkes, which is still hanging in the rooms of the Royal Society. He was nominated vice-president by the great Sir Isaac Newton, and succeeded him as president. He wrote a work on the "English Silver Coinage," and died at the age of sixty-four, 1754.—ED.

[285] Hill planned his Review with good sense. He says:—"If I am merry in some places, it ought to be considered that the subjects are too ridiculous for serious criticism. That the work, however, might not be without its real use, an Error is nowhere exposed without establishing a Truth in its place." He has incidentally thrown out much curious knowledge—such as his plan for forming a Hortus Siccus, &c. The Review itself may still be considered both as curious and entertaining.

[286] In exposing their deficiencies, as well as their redundancies, Hill only wishes, as he tells us, that the Society may by this means become ashamed of what it has been, and that the world may know that he is NOT a member of it till it is an honour to a man to be so! This was telling the world, with some ingenuity, and with no little impudence, that the Royal Society would not admit him as a member. He pretends to give a secret anecdote to explain the cause of this rejection. Hill, in every critical conjuncture of his affairs, and they were frequent ones, had always a story to tell, or an evasion, which served its momentary purpose. When caned by an Irish gentleman at Ranelagh, and his personal courage, rather than his stoicism, was suspected, he published a story of his having once caned a person whom he called Mario; on which a wag, considering Hill as a Prometheus, wrote—

"To beat one man great Hill was fated. What man?—a man whom he created!"

We shall see the story he turned to his purpose, when pressed hard by Fielding. In the present instance, in a letter to a foreign correspondent, who had observed his name on the list of the Correspondents of the Royal Society, Hill said—"You are to know that I have the honour NOT to be a member of the Royal Society of London."—This letter lay open on his table when a member, upon his accustomed visit, came in, and in his absence read it. "And we are not to wonder," says Hill, "that he who could obtain intelligence in this manner could also divulge it. Hinc illae lachrymae! Hence all the animosities that have since disturbed this philosophic world." While Hill insolently congratulates himself that he is not a member of the Royal Society, he has most evidently shown that he had no objection to be the member of any society which would enrol his name among them. He obtained his medical degree from no honourable source; and another title, which he affected, he mysteriously contracted into barbaric dissonance. Hill entitled himself—

Acad. Reg. Scient. Burd. &c. Soc.

To which Smart, in the "Hilliad," alludes—

"While Jargon gave his titles on a block, And styled him M.D. Acad. Budig. Soc."

His personal attacks on Martin Folkes, the president, are caustic, but they may not be true; and on Baker, celebrated for his microscopical discoveries, are keen. He reproaches Folkes, in his severe dedication of the work, in all the dignity of solemn invective.—"The manner in which you represented me to a noble friend, while to myself you made me much more than I deserved; the ease with which you had excused yourself, and the solemnity with which, in the face of Almighty God, you excused yourself again; when we remember that the whole was done within the compass of a day; these are surely virtues in a patron that I, of all men, ought not to pass over in silence." Baker, in his early days, had unluckily published a volume of lusory poems. Some imitations of Prior's loose tales Hill makes use of to illustrate his "Philosophical Transactions." All is food for the malicious digestion of Wit!

His anecdote of Mr. Baker's Louse is a piece of secret scientific history sufficiently ludicrous.

"The Duke of Montague was famous for his love to the whole animal creation, and for his being able to keep a very grave face when not in the most serious earnest. Mr. Baker, a distinguished member of the Royal Society, had one day entertained this nobleman and several other persons with the sight of the peristaltic motion of the bowels in a louse, by the microscope. When the observation was over, he was going to throw the creature away; but the Duke, with a face that made him believe he was perfectly in earnest, told him it would be not only cruel, but ungrateful, in return for the entertainment that creature had given them, to destroy it. He ordered the boy to be brought in from whom it was procured, and after praising the smallness and delicacy of Mr. Baker's fingers, persuaded him carefully to replace the animal in its former territories, and to give the boy a shilling not to disturb it for a fortnight."—"A Review of the Works of the Royal Society," by John Hill, M.D., p. 5.

[287] These papers had appeared in the London Daily Advertiser, 1754. At their close he gleaned the best, and has preserved them in two volumes. But as Hill will never rank as a classic, the original nonsense will be considered as most proper for the purposes of a true collector. Woodward, the comedian, in his lively attack on Hill, has given "a mock Inspector," an exquisite piece of literary ridicule, in which he has hit off the egotisms and slovenly ease of the real ones. Never, like "The Inspector," flamed such a provoking prodigy in the cloudy skies of Grub-street; and Hill seems studiously to have mortified his luckless rivals by a perpetual embroidery of his adventures in the "Walks at Marybone," the "Rotunda at Ranelagh," spangled over with "my domestics," and "my equipage." [One of his adventures at Ranelagh was sufficiently unfortunate to obtain for him the unenviable notoriety of a caricature print representing him enduring a castigation at the Rotunda gate from an Irish gentleman named Brown, with whose character he had made far too free in one of his "Inspectors." Hill showed much pusillanimity in the affair, took to his bed, and gave out that the whole thing was a conspiracy to murder him. This occasioned the publication of another print, in which he is represented in bed, surrounded by medical men, who treat him with very little respect. One insists on his fee, because Hill has never been acknowledged as one of themselves; and another, to his plea of want of money, responds, "Sell your sword, it is only an encumbrance."]

[288] It is useful to remind the public that they are often played upon in this manner by the artifices of political writers. We have observed symptoms of this deception practised at present. It is an old trick of the craft, and was greatly used at a time when the nation seemed maddened with political factions. In a pamphlet of "A View of London and Westminster, or the Town-spy," 1725, I find this account:—"The seeming quarrel, formerly, between Mist's Journal and the Flying Post was secretly concerted between themselves, in order to decoy the eyes of all the parties on both their papers; and the project succeeded beyond all expectation; for I have been told that the former narrowly missed getting an estate by it."—p. 32.

[289] Isaac Reed, in his "Repository of Fugitive Pieces of Wit and Humour," vol. iv., in republishing "The Hilliad," has judiciously preserved the offending "Impertinent" and the abjuring "Inspector." The style of "The Impertinent" is volatile and poignant. His four classes of authors are not without humour. "There are men who write because they have wit; there are those who write because they are hungry; there are some of the modern authors who have a constant fund of both these causes; and there are who will write, although they are not instigated either by the one or by the other. The first are all spirit; the second are all earth; the third disclose more life, or more vapidity, as the one or the other cause prevails; and for the last, having neither the one nor the other principle for the cause, they show neither the one nor the other character in the effect; but begin, continue, and end, as if they had neither begun, continued, nor ended at all." The first class he instances by Fielding; the second by Smart. Of the third he says:—"The mingled wreath belongs to Hill," that is himself; and the fourth he illustrates by the absurd Sir William Browne.

"Those of the first rank are the most capricious and lazy of all animals. The monkey genius would rarely exert itself, if even idleness innate did not give way to the superior love of mischief. The ass (that is Smart), which characters the second, is as laborious as he is empty; he wears a ridiculous comicalness of aspect (which was, indeed, the physiognomy of the poor poet), that makes people smile when they see him at a distance. His mouth opens, because he must be fed, while we laugh at the insensibility and obstinacy that make him prick his lips with thistles."

[290] Woodward humorously attributes Hill's attack on him to his jealousy of his successful performance of Harlequin, and opens some of the secret history of Hill, by which it appears that early in life he trod the theatrical boards. He tells us of the extraordinary pains the prompter had taken with Hill, in the part of Oroonoko; though, "if he had not quite forgotten it, to very little purpose." He reminds Hill of a dramatic anecdote, which he no doubt had forgotten. It seems he once belonged to a strolling company at May-fair, where, in the scene between Altamont and Lothario, the polite audience of that place all chorused, and agreed with him, when dying he exclaimed, "Oh, Altamont, thy genius is the stronger." He then shows him off as the starved apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, in one of his botanic peregrinations to Chelsea Garden; from whence, it is said, he was expelled for "culling too many rare plants"—

"I do remember an apothecary, Culling of simples——."

Hill, who was often so brisk in his attack on the wits, had no power of retort; so that he was always buffeting and always buffeted.

[291] He was also satirised in a poem termed "The Pasquinade," published in 1752, in which the goddesses of Pertness and Dulness join to praise him as their favourite reflex.

"Pertness saw her form distinctly shine In none, immortal Hill! so full as thine."

Dulness speaks of him thus rapturously:—

"See where my son, who gratefully repays Whate'er I lavish'd on his younger days; Whom still my arm protects to brave the town Secure from Fielding, Machiavel, or Brown; Whom rage nor sword e'er mortally shall hurt, Chief of a hundred chiefs o'er all the pert! Rescued an orphan babe from common sense, I gave his mother's milk to Confidence; She with her own ambrosia bronz'd his face, And changed his skin to monumental brass. Whom rage nor sword e'er mortally shall hurt, Chief of a hundred chiefs o'er all the pert! Rescued an orphan babe from common sense, I gave his mother's milk to Confidence; She with her own ambrosia bronz'd his face, And changed his skin to monumental brass."

[292] Hill addresses the Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Speaker, on Sir Hans Sloane's Collection of Natural History, proposing himself as a candidate for nomination in the principal office, by whatever name that shall be called:—"I deliver myself with humility; but conscious also that I possess the liberties of a British subject, I shall speak with freedom." He says that the only means left for a Briton is to address his sovereign and the public. "That foreigners will resort to this collection is certain, for it is the most considerable in the world; and that our own people will often visit it is as sure, because it may be made the means of much useful as well as curious knowledge. One and the other will expect a person in that office who has sufficient knowledge: he must be able to give account of every article, freely and fluently, not only in his own, but in the Latin and French languages.

"This the world, and none in it better than your lordship, sees is not a place that any one can execute: it requires knowledge in a peculiar and uncommon kind of study—knowledge which very few possess; and in which, my lord, the bitterest of my enemies (and I have thousands, although neither myself nor they know why) will not say I am deficient——.

"My lord, the eyes of all Europe are upon this transaction. What title I have to your lordship's favour, those books which I have published, and with which (pardon the necessary boast) all Europe is acquainted, declare. Many may dispute by interest with me; but if there be one who would prefer himself, by his abilities, I beg the matter may be brought to trial. The collection is at hand; and I request, my lord, such person and myself may be examined by that test, together. It is an amazing store of knowledge; and he has most, in this way, who shall show himself most acquainted with it.

"What are my own abilities it very ill becomes me thus to boast; but did they not qualify me for the trust, my lord, I would not ask it. As to those of any other, unless a man be conjured from the dead, I shall not fear to say there is not any one whoever that is able so much as to call the parts of the collection by their names.

"I know I shall be accused of ostentation in giving to myself this preference; and I am sorry for it: but those who have candour will know it could not be avoided.

"Many excel, my lord, in other studies: it is my chance to have bestowed the labour of my life on this: those labours may be of some use to others. This appears the only instance in which it is possible that they should be rewarded——."

In a subsequent Inspector, he treated on the improvement of botany by raising plants, and reading lectures on them at the British Museum, with the living plants before the lecturer and his auditors. Poor Sir John! he was born half a century too early!—He would, in this day, have made his lectures fashionable; and might have secured at the opera every night an elegant audience for the next morning in the gardens of the Museum.

[293] It would be difficult to form a list of his anonymous works or compilations, among which many are curious. Tradition has preserved his name as the writer of Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, and of several novels. There is a very curious work, entitled "Travels in the East," 2 vols. 8vo, of which the author has been frequently and in vain inquired after. These travels are attributed to a noble lord; but it now appears that they are a very entertaining narrative manufactured by Hill. Whiston, the bookseller, had placed this work in his MS. catalogue of Hill's books.

There is still another production of considerable merit, entitled "Observations on the Greek and Roman Classics," 1753. A learned friend recollects, when young, that this critical work was said to be written by Hill. It excels Blackwell and Fenton; and aspires to the numerous composition of prose. The sentimental critic enters into the feelings of the great authors whom he describes with spirit, delicacy of taste, and sometimes with beautiful illustration. It only wants a chastening hand to become a manual for the young classical student, by which he might acquire those vivid emotions, which many college tutors may not be capable of communicating.

I suspect, too, he is the author of this work, from a passage which Smart quotes, as a specimen of Hill's puffing himself, and of those smart short periods which look like wit, without being witty. In a letter to himself, as we are told, Hill writes:—"You have discovered many of the beauties of the ancients—they are obliged to you; we are obliged to you: were they alive, they would thank you; we who are alive do thank you." If Hill could discriminate the most hidden beauties of the ancients, the tact must have been formed at his leisure—in his busy hours he never copied them; but when had he leisure?

Two other works, of the most contrasted character, display the versatility and dispositions of this singular genius, at different eras. When "The Inspector" was rolling in his chariot about the town, appeared "Letters from the Inspector to a Lady," 1752. It is a pamphlet, containing the amorous correspondence of Hill with a reigning beauty, whom he first saw at Ranelagh. On his first ardent professions he is contemptuously rejected; he perseveres in high passion, and is coldly encouraged; at length he triumphs; and this proud and sullen beauty, in her turn, presents a horrid picture of the passions. Hill then becomes the reverse of what he was; weary of her jealousy, sated with the intercourse, he studiously avoids, and at length rejects her; assigning for his final argument his approaching marriage. The work may produce a moral effect, while it exhibits a striking picture of all the misery of illicit connexions: but the scenes are coloured with Ovidian warmth. The original letters were shown at the bookseller's: Hill's were in his own handwriting, and the lady's in a female hand. But whether Hill was the publisher, as an attempt at notoriety—or the lady admired her own correspondence, which is often exquisitely wrought, is not known.

Hill, in his serious hours, published a large quarto volume, entitled "Thoughts Concerning God and Nature," 1755. This work, the result of his scientific knowledge and his moral reasoning, was never undertaken for the purpose of profit. He printed it with the certainty of a considerable loss, from its abstract topics, not obvious to general readers; at a time, too, when a guinea quarto was a very hazardous enterprise. He published it purely from conscientious and religious motives; a circumstance mentioned in that Apology of his Life which we have noticed. The more closely the character of Hill is scrutinised, the more extraordinary appears this man, so often justly contemned, and so often unjustly depreciated.

[294] Through the influence of Lord Bute he became connected with the Royal Gardens at Kew; and his lordship also assisted him in publishing his botanical works. See note, p. 363.

[295] It would occupy pages to transcribe epigrams on Hill. One of them alludes to his philosophical as well as his literary character:—

"Hill puffs himself; forbear to chide! An insect vile and mean Must first, he knows, be magnified Before it can be seen."

Garrick's happy lines are well known on his farces:—

"For physic and farces his equal there scarce is— His farces are physic, his physic a farce is."

Another said—

"The worse that we wish thee, for all thy vile crimes, Is to take thy own physic, and read thy own rhymes."

The rejoinder would reverse the wish—

"For, if he takes his physic first, He'll never read his rhymes."

[296] Hill says, in his pamphlet on the "Virtues of British Herbs":—"It will be happy if, by the same means, the knowledge of plants also becomes more general. The study of them is pleasant, and the exercise of it healthful. He who seeks the herb for its cure, will find it half effected by the walk; and when he is acquainted with the useful kinds, he may be more people's, besides his own, physician."



BOYLE AND BENTLEY.

A Faction of Wits at Oxford the concealed movers of this Controversy—Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE'S opinions the ostensible cause; Editions of classical Authors by young Students at Oxford the probable one—BOYLE'S first attack in the Preface to his "Phalaris"—BENTLEY, after a silence of three years, betrays his feelings on the literary calumny of BOYLE—BOYLE replies by the "Examination of Bentley's Dissertation"—BENTLEY rejoins by enlarging it—the effects of a contradictory Narrative at a distant time—BENTLEY'S suspicions of the origin of the "Phalaris," and "The Examination," proved by subsequent facts—BENTLEY'S dignity when stung at the ridicule of Dr. KING—applies a classical pun, and nicknames his facetious and caustic Adversary—KING invents an extraordinary Index to dissect the character of BENTLEY—specimens of the Controversy; BOYLE'S menace, anathema, and ludicrous humour—BENTLEY'S sarcastic reply not inferior to that of the Wits.

The splendid controversy between BOYLE and BENTLEY was at times a strife of gladiators, and has been regretted as the opprobrium of our literature; but it should be perpetuated to its honour; for it may be considered, on one side at least, as a noble contest of heroism.

The ostensible cause of the present quarrel was inconsiderable; the concealed motive lies deeper; and the party feelings of the haughty Aristarchus of Cambridge, and a faction of wits at Oxford, under the secret influence of Dean Aldrich, provoked this fierce and glorious contest.

Wit, ridicule, and invective, by cabal and stratagem, obtained a seeming triumph over a single individual, but who, like the Farnesian Hercules, personified the force and resistance of incomparable strength. "The Bees of Christchurch," as this conspiracy of wits has been called, so musical and so angry, rushed in a dark swarm about him, but only left their fine stings in the flesh they could not wound. He only put out his hand in contempt, never in rage. The Christchurch men, as if doubtful whether wit could prevail against learning, had recourse to the maliciousness of personal satire. They amused an idle public, who could even relish sense and Greek, seasoned as they were with wit and satire, while Boyle was showing how Bentley wanted wit, and Bentley was proving how Boyle wanted learning.

To detect the origin of the controversy, we must find the seed-plot of Bentley's volume in Sir William Temple's "Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning," which he inscribed to his alma mater, the University of Cambridge. Sir William, who had caught the contagion of the prevalent literary controversy of the times, in which the finest geniuses in Europe had entered the lists, imagined that the ancients possessed a greater force of genius, with some peculiar advantages—that the human mind was in a state of decay—and that our knowledge was nothing more than scattered fragments saved out of the general shipwreck. He writes with a premeditated design to dispute the improvements or undervalue the inventions of his own age. Wotton, the friend of Bentley, replied by his curious volume of "Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning." But Sir William, in his ardour, had thrown out an unguarded opinion, which excited the hostile contempt of Bentley. "The oldest books," he says, "we have, are still in their kind the best; the two most ancient that I know of, in prose, are 'AEsop's Fables' and 'Phalaris's Epistles.'"—The "Epistles," he insists, exhibit every excellence of "a statesman, a soldier, a wit, and a scholar." That ancient author, who Bentley afterwards asserted was only "some dreaming pedant, with his elbow on his desk."

Bentley, bristled over with Greek, perhaps then considered that to notice a vernacular and volatile writer ill assorted with the critic's Fastus. But about this time Dean Aldrich had set an example to the students of Christchurch of publishing editions of classical authors. Such juvenile editorships served as an easy admission into the fashionable literature of Oxford. Alsop had published the "AEsop;" and Boyle, among other "young gentlemen," easily obtained the favour of the dean, "to desire him to undertake an edition of the 'Epistles of Phalaris.'" Such are the modest terms Boyle employs in his reply to Bentley, after he had discovered the unlucky choice he had made of an author.

For this edition of "Phalaris" it was necessary to collate a MS. in the king's library; and Bentley, about this time, had become the royal librarian. Boyle did not apply directly to Bentley, but circuitously, by his bookseller, with whom the doctor was not on terms. Some act of civility, or a Mercury more "formose," to use one of his latinisms, was probably expected. The MS. was granted, but the collator was negligent; in six days Bentley reclaimed it, "four hours" had been sufficient for the purpose of collation.

When Boyle's "Phalaris" appeared, he made this charge in the preface, that having ordered the Epistles to be collated with the MS. in the king's library, the collator was prevented perfecting the collation by the singular humanity of the library-keeper, who refused any further use of the MS.; pro singulari sua humanitate negavit: an expression that sharply hit a man marked by the haughtiness of his manners.[297]

Bentley, on this insult, informed Boyle of what had passed. He expected that Boyle would have civilly cancelled the page; though he tells us he did not require this, because, "to have insisted on the cancel, might have been forcing a gentleman to too low a submission;"—a stroke of delicacy which will surprise some to discover in the strong character of Bentley. But he was also too haughty to ask a favour, and too conscious of his superiority to betray a feeling of injury. Boyle replied, that the bookseller's account was quite different from the doctor's, who had spoken slightingly of him. Bentley said no more.

Three years had nearly elapsed, when Bentley, in a new edition of his friend Wotton's book, published "A Dissertation on the Epistles of the Ancients;" where, reprehending the false criticism of Sir William Temple, he asserted that the "Fables of AEsop" and the "Epistles of Phalaris" were alike spurious. The blow was levelled at Christchurch, and all "the bees" were brushed down in the warmth of their summer-day.

It is remarkable that Bentley kept so long a silence; indeed, he had considered the affair so trivial, that he had preserved no part of the correspondence with Boyle, whom no doubt he slighted as the young editor of a spurious author. But Boyle's edition came forth, as Bentley expresses it, "with a sting in its mouth." This, at first, was like a cut finger—he breathed on it, and would have forgotten it; but the nerve was touched, and the pain raged long after the stroke. Even the great mind of Bentley began to shrink at the touch of literary calumny, so different from the vulgar kind, in its extent and its duration. He betrays the soreness he would wish to conceal, when he complains that "the false story has been spread all over England."

The statement of Bentley produced, in reply, the famous book of Boyle's "Examination of Bentley's Dissertation." It opens with an imposing narrative, highly polished, of the whole transaction, with the extraordinary furniture of documents, which had never before entered into a literary controversy—depositions—certificates—affidavits—and private letters. Bentley now rejoined by his enlarged "Dissertation on Phalaris," a volume of perpetual value to the lovers of ancient literature, and the memorable preface of which, itself a volume, exhibits another Narrative, entirely differing from Boyle's. These produced new replies and new rejoinders. The whole controversy became so perplexed, that it has frightened away all who have attempted to adjust the particulars. With unanimous consent they give up the cause, as one in which both parties studied only to contradict each other. Such was the fate of a Narrative, which was made out of the recollections of the parties, with all their passions at work, after an interval of three years. In each, the memory seemed only retentive of those passages which best suited their own purpose, and which were precisely those the other party was most likely to have forgotten. What was forgotten, was denied; what was admitted, was made to refer to something else; dialogues were given which appear never to have been spoken; and incidents described which are declared never to have taken place; and all this, perhaps, without any purposed violation of truth. Such were the dangers and misunderstandings which attended a Narrative framed out of the broken or passionate recollections of the parties on the watch to confound one another.[298]

Bentley's Narrative is a most vigorous production: it heaves with the workings of a master-spirit; still reasoning with such force, and still applying with such happiness the stores of his copious literature, had it not been for this literary quarrel, the mere English reader had lost this single opportunity of surveying that commanding intellect.

Boyle's edition of "Phalaris" was a work of parade, designed to confer on a young man, who bore an eminent name, some distinction in the literary world. But Bentley seems to have been well-informed of the secret transactions at Christchurch. In his first attack he mentions Boyle as "the young gentleman of great hopes, whose name is set to the edition;" and asserts that the editor, no more than his own "Phalaris," has written what was ascribed to him. He persists in making a plurality of a pretended unity, by multiplying Boyle into a variety of little personages, of "new editors," our "annotators," our "great geniuses."[299] Boyle, touched at these reflections, declared "they were levelled at a learned society, in which I had the happiness to be educated; as if 'Phalaris' had been made up by contributions from several hands." Pressed by Bentley to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. John Freind, Boyle confers on him the ambiguous title of "The Director of Studies." Bentley links the Bees together—Dr. Freind and Dr. Alsop. "The Director of Studies, who has lately set out Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' with a paraphrase and notes, is of the same size for learning with the late editor of the AEsopian Fables. They bring the nation into contempt abroad, and themselves into it at home;" and adds to this magisterial style, the mortification of his criticism on Freind's Ovid, as on Alsop's AEsop.

But Boyle assuming the honours of an edition of "Phalaris," was but a venial offence, compared with that committed by the celebrated volume published in its defence.

If Bentley's suspicions were not far from the truth, that "the 'Phalaris' had been made up by contributions," they approached still closer when they attacked "The Examination of his Dissertation." Such was the assistance which Boyle received from all "the Bees," that scarcely a few ears of that rich sheaf fall to his portion. His efforts hardly reach to the mere narrative of his transactions with Bentley. All the varied erudition, all the Attic graces, all the inexhaustible wit, are claimed by others; so that Boyle was not materially concerned either in his "Phalaris," or in the more memorable work.[300]

The Christchurch party now formed a literary conspiracy against the great critic; and as treason is infectious when the faction is strong, they were secretly engaging new associates; Whenever any of the party published anything themselves, they had sworn to have always "a fling at Bentley," and intrigued with their friends to do the same.

They procured Keil, the professor of astronomy, in so grave a work as "The Theory of the Earth," to have a fling at Bentley's boasted sagacity in conjectural criticism. Wotton, in a dignified reproof, administered a spirited correction to the party-spirit; while his love of science induced him generously to commend Keil, and intimate the advantages the world may derive from his studies, "as he grows older." Even Garth and Pope struck in with the alliance, and condescended to pour out rhymes more lasting than even the prose of "the Bees."

But of all the rabid wits who, fastening on their prey, never drew their fangs from the noble animal, the facetious Dr. King seems to have been the only one who excited Bentley's anger. Persevering malice, in the teasing shape of caustic banter, seems to have affected the spirit even of Bentley.

At one of those conferences which passed between Bentley and the bookseller, King happened to be present; and being called on by Boyle to bear his part in the drama, he performed it quite to the taste of "the Bees." He addressed a letter to Dean Aldrich, in which he gave one particular: and, to make up a sufficient dose, dropped some corrosives. He closes his letter thus:—"That scorn and contempt which I have naturally for pride and insolence, makes me remember that which otherwise I might have forgotten." Nothing touched Bentley more to the quick than reflections on "his pride and insolence." Our defects seem to lose much of their character, in reference to ourselves, by habit and natural disposition; yet we have always a painful suspicion of their existence; and he who touches them with no tenderness is never pardoned. The invective of King had all the bitterness of truth. Bentley applied a line from Horace; which showed that both Horace and Bentley could pun in anger:—

Proscripti Regis Rupili pus atque venenum.[301]—Sat. i. 7. The filth and venom of Rupilius King.

The particular incident which King imperfectly recollected, made afterwards much noise among the wits, for giving them a new notion of the nature of ancient MSS. King relates that Dr. Bentley said—"If the MS. were collated, it would be worth nothing for the future." Bentley, to mortify the pertness of the bookseller, who would not send his publications to the Royal Library, had said that he ought to do so, were it but to make amends for the damage the MS. would sustain by his printing the various readings; "for," added Bentley, "after the various lections were once taken and printed, the MS. would be like a squeezed orange, and little worth for the future." This familiar comparison of a MS. with a squeezed orange provoked the epigrammatists. Bentley, in retorting on King, adds some curious facts concerning the fate of MSS. after they have been printed; but is aware, he says, of what little relish or sense the Doctor has of MSS., who is better skilled in "the catalogue of ales, his Humty-Dumty, Hugmatee, Three-threads, and the rest of that glorious list, than in the catalogue of MSS." King, in his banter on Dr. Lister's journey to Paris, had given a list of these English beverages. It was well known that he was in too constant an intercourse with them all. Bentley nicknames King through the progress of his Controversy, for his tavern-pleasures, Humty-Dumty, and accuses him of writing more in a tavern than in a study. He little knew the injustice of his charge against a student who had written notes on 22,000 books and MSS.; but they were not Greek ones.

All this was not done with impunity. An irritated wit only finds his adversary cutting out work for him. A second letter, more abundant with the same pungent qualities, fell on the head of Bentley. King says of the arch-critic—"He thinks meanly, I find, of my reading; yet for all that, I dare say I have read more than any man in England besides him and me; for I have read his book all over."[302] Nor was this all; "Humty-Dumty" published eleven "Dialogues of the Dead," supposed to be written by a student at Padua, concerning "one Bentivoglio, a very troublesome critic in the world;" where, under the character of "Signior Moderno," Wotton falls into his place. Whether these dialogues mortified Bentley, I know not: they ought to have afforded him very high amusement. But when a man is at once tickled and pinched, the operation requires a gentler temper than Bentley's. "Humty-Dumty," indeed, had Bentley too often before him. There was something like inveteracy in his wit; but he who invented the remarkable index to Boyle's book, must have closely studied Bentley's character. He has given it with all its protuberant individuality.[303]

Bentley, with his peculiar idiom, had censured "all the stiffness and stateliness, and operoseness of style, quite alien from the character of 'Phalaris,' a man of business and despatch." Boyle keenly turns his own words on Bentley. "Stiffness and stateliness, and operoseness of style, is indeed quite alien from the character of a man of business; and being but a library-keeper, it is not over-modestly done, to oppose his judgment and taste to that of Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE, who knows more of these things than Dr. Bentley does of Hesychius and Suidas. Sir William Temple has spent a good part of his life in transacting affairs of state: he has written to kings, and they to him; and this has qualified him to judge how kings should write, much better than the library-keeper at St. James's."—This may serve as a specimen of the Attic style of the controversy. Hard words sometimes passed. Boyle complains of some of the similes which Bentley employs, more significant than elegant. For the new readings of "Phalaris," "he likens me to a bungling tinker mending old kettles." Correcting the faults of the version, he says, "The first epistle cost me four pages in scouring;" and, "by the help of a Greek proverb, he calls me downright ass." But while Boyle complains of these sprinklings of ink, he himself contributes to Bentley's "Collection of Asinine Proverbs," and "throws him in one out of Aristophanes," of "an ass carrying mysteries:" "a proverb," says Erasmus, (as 'the Bees' construe him.) "applied to those who were preferred to some place they did not deserve, as when a dunce was made a library-keeper."

Some ambiguous threats are scattered in the volume, while others are more intelligible. When Bentley, in his own defence, had referred to the opinions which some learned foreigners entertained of him—they attribute these to "the foreigners, because they are foreigners—we, that have the happiness of a nearer conversation with him, know him better; and we may perhaps take an opportunity of setting these mistaken strangers right in their opinions." They threaten him with his character, "in a tongue that will last longer, and go further, than their own;" and, in the imperious style of Festus, add:—"Since Dr. Bentley has appealed to foreign universities, to foreign universities he must go." Yet this is light, compared with the odium they would raise against him by the menace of the resentments of a whole society of learned men.

"Single adversaries die and drop off; but societies are immortal: their resentments are sometimes delivered down from hand to hand; and when once they have begun with a man, there is no knowing when they will leave him."

In reply to this literary anathema, Bentley was furnished, by his familiarity with his favourite authors, with a fortunate application of a term, derived from Phalaris himself. Cicero had conveyed his idea of Caesar's cruelty by this term, which he invented from the very name of the tyrant.[304]

"There is a certain temper of mind that Cicero calls Phalarism; a spirit like Phalaris's. One would be apt to imagine that a portion of it had descended upon some of his translators. The gentleman has given a broad hint more than once in his book, that if I proceed further against Phalaris, I may draw, perhaps, a duel, or a stab upon myself; a generous threat to a divine, who neither carries arms nor principles fit for that sort of controversy. I expected such usage from the spirit of Phalarism."

In this controversy, the amusing fancy of "the Bees" could not pass by Phalaris without contriving to make some use of that brazen bull by which he tortured men alive. Not satisfied in their motto, from the Earl of Roscommon, with wedging "the great critic, like Milo, in the timber he strove to rend," they gave him a second death in their finis, by throwing Bentley into Phalaris's bull, and flattering their vain imaginations that they heard him "bellow."

"He has defied Phalaris, and used him very coarsely, under the assurance, as he tells us, that 'he is out of his reach.' Many of Phalaris's enemies thought the same thing, and repented of their vain confidence afterwards in his bull. Dr. Bentley is perhaps, by this time, or will be suddenly, satisfied that he also has presumed a little too much upon his distance; but it will be too late to repent when he begins to bellow."[305]

Bentley, although the solid force of his mind was not favourable to the lighter sports of wit, yet was not quite destitute of those airy qualities; nor does he seem insensible to the literary merits of "that odd work," as he calls Boyle's volume, which he conveys a very good notion of:—"If his book shall happen to be preserved anywhere as an useful commonplace book for ridicule, banter, and all the topics of calumny." With equal dignity and sense he observes on the ridicule so freely used by both parties—"I am content that what is the greatest virtue of his book should be counted the greatest fault of mine."

His reply to "Milo's fate," and the tortures he was supposed to pass through when thrown into Phalaris's bull, is a piece of sarcastic humour which will not suffer by comparison with the volume more celebrated for its wit.

"The facetious examiner seems resolved to vie with Phalaris himself in the science of Phalarism; for his revenge is not satisfied with one single death of his adversary, but he will kill me over and over again. He has slain me twice by two several deaths! one, in the first page of his book; and another, in the last. In the title-page I die the death of Milo, the Crotonian:—

——Remember Milo's end, Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend.

"The application of which must be this:—That as Milo, after his victories at six several Olympiads, was at last conquered and destroyed in wrestling with a tree, so I, after I had attained to some small reputation in letters, am to be quite baffled and run down by wooden antagonists. But in the end of his book he has got me into Phalaris's bull, and he has the pleasure of fancying that he hears me begin to bellow. Well, since it is certain that I am in the bull, I have performed the part of a sufferer. For as the cries of the tormented in old Phalaris's bull, being conveyed through pipes lodged in the machine, were turned into music for the entertainment of the tyrant, so the complaints which my torments express from me, being conveyed to Mr. Boyle by this answer, are all dedicated to his pleasure and diversion. But yet, methinks, when he was setting up to be Phalaris junior, the very omen of it might have deterred him. As the old tyrant himself at last bellowed in his own bull, his imitators ought to consider that at long run their own actions may chance to overtake them."—p. 43.

Wit, however, enjoyed the temporary triumph; not but that some, in that day, loudly protested against the award.[306] "The Episode of Bentley and Wotton," in "The Battle of the Books," is conceived with all the caustic imagination of the first of our prose satirists. There Bentley's great qualities are represented as "tall, without shape or comeliness; large, without strength or proportion." His various erudition, as "armour patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces;" his book, as "the sound" of that armour, "loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of lead from the roof of some steeple;" his haughty intrepidity, as "a vizor of brass, tainted by his breath, corrupted into copperas, nor wanted gall from the same fountain; so that, whenever provoked by anger or labour, an atramentous quality of most malignant nature was seen to distil from his lips." Wotton is "heavy-armed and slow of foot, lagging behind." They perish together in one ludicrous death. Boyle, in his celestial armour, by a stroke of his weapon, transfixes both "the lovers," "as a cook trusses a brace of woodcocks, with iron skewer piercing the tender sides of both. Joined in their lives, joined in their death, so closely joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his fare." Such is the candour of wit! The great qualities of an adversary, as in Bentley, are distorted into disgraceful attitudes; while the suspicious virtues of a friend, as in Boyle, not passed over in prudent silence, are ornamented with even spurious panegyric.

Garth, catching the feeling of the time, sung—

And to a Bentley 'tis we owe a Boyle.

Posterity justly appreciates the volume of Bentley for its stores of ancient literature; and the author, for that peculiar sagacity in emending a corrupt text, which formed his distinguishing characteristic as a classical critic; and since his book but for this literary quarrel had never appeared, reverses the names in the verse of the "Satirist."

FOOTNOTES:

[297] Haughtiness was the marking feature of Bentley's literary character; and his Wolseyan style and air have been played on by the wits. Bentley happened to express himself on the King's MS. of Phalaris in a manner their witty malice turned against him. "'Twas a surprise (he said) to find that OUR MS. was not perused."—"OUR MS. (they proceed) that is, his Majesty's and mine! He speaks out now; 'tis no longer the King's, but OUR MS., i.e. Dr. Bentley's and the King's in common, Ego et Rex meus—much too familiar for a library-keeper!"—It has been said that Bentley used the same Wolseyan egotism on Pope's publications:—"This man is always abusing me or the King!"

[298] Bentley, in one place, having to give a positive contradiction to the statement of the bookseller, rising in all his dignity and energy, exclaims, "What can be done in this case? Here are two contrary affirmations; and the matter being done in private, neither of us have any witness. I might plead, as AEmilius Scaurus did against one Varius, of Sucro. Varius Sucronensis ait, AEmilius Scaurus negat. Utri creditis Quirites?" p. 21.—The story is told by Valerius Maximus, lib. iii. c. 7. Scaurus was insolently accused by one Varius, a Sucronian, that he had taken bribes from Mithridates: Scaurus addressed the Roman people. "He did not think it just that a man of his age should defend himself against accusations, and before those who were not born when he filled the offices of the republic, nor witnessed the actions he had performed. Varius, the Sucronian, says that Scaurus, corrupted by gold, would have betrayed the republic; Scaurus replies, It is not true. Whom will you believe, fellow-Romans?"—This appeal to the people produced all the effect imaginable, and the ridiculous accuser was silenced.

Bentley points the same application, with even more self-consciousness of his worth, in another part of his preface. It became necessary to praise himself, to remove the odium Boyle and his friends had raised on him—it was a difficulty overcome. "I will once more borrow the form of argument that AEmilius Scaurus used against Varius Sucronensis. Mr. Spanheim and Mr. Graevius give a high character of Dr. B.'s learning: Mr. Boyle gives the meanest that malice can furnish himself with. Utri creditis, Quirites? Whether of the characters will the present age or posterity believe?"—p. 82. It was only a truly great mind which could bring itself so close to posterity.

[299] It was the fashion then to appear very unconcerned about one's literary reputation; but then to be so tenacious about it when once obtained as not to suffer, with common patience, even the little finger of criticism to touch it. Boyle, after defending what he calls his "honesty," adds, "the rest only touches my learning. This will give me no concern, though it may put me to some little trouble. I shall enter upon this with the indifference of a gamester who plays but for a trifle." On this affected indifference, Bentley keenly observes:—"This was entering on his work a little ominously; for a gamester who plays with indifference never plays his game well. Besides that, by this odd comparison, he seems to give warning, and is as good as his word, that he will put the dice upon his readers as often as he can. But what is worse than all, this comparison puts one in mind of a general rumour, that there's another set of gamesters who play him in his dispute while themselves are safe behind the curtain."—BENTLEY'S Dissertation on Phalaris, p. 2.

[300] Rumours and conjectures are the lot of contemporaries; truth seems reserved only for posterity; and, like the fabled Minerva, she is born of age at once. The secret history of this volume, which partially appeared, has been more particularly opened in one of Warburton's letters, who received it from Pope, who had been "let into the secret." Boyle wrote the Narrative, "which, too, was corrected for him." Freind, who wrote the entire Dissertation on AEsop in that volume, wrote also, with Atterbury, the body of the Criticisms; King, the droll argument, proving that Bentley was not the author of his own Dissertation, and the extraordinary index which I shall shortly notice. In Atterbury's "Epistolary Correspondence" is a letter, where, with equal anger and dignity, Atterbury avows his having written about half, and planned the whole of Boyle's attack upon Bentley! With these facts before us, can we read without surprise, if not without indignation, the passage I shall now quote from the book to which the name of Boyle is prefixed. In raising an artful charge against Bentley, of appropriating to himself some MS. notes of Sir Edward Sherburn, Boyle, replying to the argument of Bentley, that "Phalaris" was the work of some sophist, says:—"The sophists are everywhere pelted by Dr. Bentley, for putting out what they wrote in other men's names; but I did not expect to hear so loudly of it from one that has so far outdone them; for I think 'tis much worse to take the honour of another man's book to one's self, than to entitle one's own book to another man."—p. 16.

I am surprised Bentley did not turn the point of his antagonist's sword on himself, for this flourish was a most unguarded one. But Bentley could not then know so much of the book, "made up by contributions," as ourselves.

Partial truths flew about in rumours at the time; but the friends of a young nobleman, and even his fellow-workmen, seemed concerned that his glory should not be diminished by a ruinous division. Rymer, in his "Essay concerning Curious and Critical Learning," judiciously surmised its true origin. "I fancy this book was written (as most public compositions in that college are) by a select club. Every one seems to have thrown in a repartee or so in his turn; and the most ingenious Dr. Aldrich (he does not deserve the epithet in its most friendly sense) no doubt at their head, smoked and punned plentifully on this occasion." The arrogance of Aldrich exceeded even that of Bentley. Rymer tells further, that Aldrich was notorious for thus employing his "young inexperienced students;" that he "betrayed Mr. Boyle into the controversy, and is still involving others in the quarrel." Thus he points at the rival chieftains; one of whom never appeared in public, but was the great mover behind the curtain. These lively wits, so deeply busied among the obscurest writers of antiquity, so much against their will, making up a show of learning against the formidable array of Bentley, exhilarated themselves in their dusty labours by a perpetual stimulus of keen humour, playful wit, and angry invective. No doubt they were often enraged at bearing the yoke about their luxuriant manes, ploughing the darkest and heaviest soil of antiquity. They had been reared—

"Insultare solo, et gressus glomerare superbos." "Georg." Lib. iii. 117.

"To insult the ground, and proudly pace the plain." TRAPP.

Swift, in "The Battle of the Books," who, under his patron, Sir William Temple, was naturally in alliance with "the Bees," with ingenious ambiguity alludes to the glorious manufacture. "Boyle, clad in a suit of armour, which had been given him by all the GODS." Still the truth was only floating in rumours and surmises; and the little that Boyle had done was not yet known. Lord Orrery, his son, had a difficulty to overcome to pass lightly over this allusion. The literary honour of the family was at stake, and his filial piety was exemplary to a father, who had unfortunately, in passion, deprived his lordship of the family library—a stroke from which his sensibility never recovered, and which his enemies ungenerously pointed against him. Lord Orrery, with all the tenderness of a son, and the caution of a politician, observes on "the armour given by the Gods"—"I shall not dispute about the gift of the armour. The Gods never bestowed celestial armour except upon heroes, whose courage and superior strength distinguished them from the rest of mankind." Most ingeniously he would seem to convert into a classical fable what was designed as a plain matter of fact!

It does credit to the discernment of Bentley, whose taste was not very lively in English composition, that he pronounced Boyle was not the author of the "Examination," from the variety of styles in it.—p. 107.

[301] This short and pointed satire of Horace is merely a pleasant story about a low wretch of the name of King; and Brutus, under whose command he was, is entreated to get rid of him, from his hereditary hatred to all kings. I suppose this pun must be considered legitimate, otherwise Horace was an indifferent punster.

[302] A keen repartee! Yet King could read this mighty volume as "a vain confused performance," but the learned DODWELL declared to "the Bees of Christchurch," who looked up to him, that "he had never learned so much from any book of the size in his life." King was as unjust to Bentley, as Bentley to King. Men of genius are more subject to "unnatural civil war" than even the blockheads whom Pope sarcastically reproaches with it. The great critic's own notion of his volume seems equally modest and just. "To undervalue this dispute about 'Phalaris,' because it does not suit one's own studies, is to quarrel with a circle because it is not a square. If the question be not of vulgar use, it was writ therefore for a few; for even the greatest performances, upon the most important subjects, are no entertainment at all to the many of the world."—p. 107.

[303] This index, a very original morsel of literary pleasantry, is at once a satirical character of the great critic, and what it professes to be. I preserve a specimen among the curiosities I am collecting. It is entitled—

"A Short Account of Dr. BENTLEY, by way of Index.

"Dr. Bentley's true story proved false, by the testimonies of, &c., p. —

"His civil language, p. —

"His nice taste, in wit, p. — in style, p. — in Greek, p. — in Latin, p. — in English, p. —

"His modesty and decency in contradicting great men"—a very long list of authors, concluding with 'Everybody,' p. —

"His familiar acquaintance with books he never saw," p. —

And lastly, "his profound skill in criticism—from beginning to THE END."

Which thus terminates the volume.

[304] Cicero ad Atticum, Lib. vii., Epist. xii.

[305] No doubt this idea was the origin of that satirical Capriccio, which closed in a most fortunate pun—a literary caricature, where the doctor is represented in the hands of Phalaris's attendants, who are putting him into the tyrant's bull, while Bentley exclaims, "I had rather be roasted than Boyled."

[306] Sir Richard Blackmore, in his bold attempt at writing "A Satire against Wit," in utter defiance of it, without any, however, conveys some opinions of the times. He there paints the great critic, "crowned with applause," seated amidst "the spoils of ruined wits:"

"Till his rude strokes had thresh'd the empty sheaf, Methought there had been something else than chaff."

Boyle, not satisfied with the undeserved celebrity conceded to his volume, ventured to write poetry, in which no one appears to have suspected the aid of "The Bees"—

"See a fine scholar sunk by wit in Boyle! After his foolish rhymes, both friends and foes Conclude they know who did not write his prose." A Satire against Wit.



PARKER AND MARVELL.

MARVELL the founder of "a newly-refined art of jeering buffoonery"—his knack of nicknaming his adversaries—PARKER'S Portrait—PARKER suddenly changes his principles—his declamatory style—MARVELL prints his anonymous letter as a motto to "The Rehearsal Transprosed"—describes him as an "At-all"—MARVELL'S ludicrous description of the whole posse of answers summoned together by PARKER—MARVELL'S cautious allusion to MILTON—his solemn invective against PARKER—anecdote of MARVELL and PARKER—PARKER retires after the second part of "The Rehearsal Transprosed"—The Recreant, reduced to silence, distils his secret vengeance in a posthumous libel.

One of the legitimate ends of satire, and one of the proud triumphs of genius, is to unmask the false zealot; to beat back the haughty spirit that is treading down all; and if it cannot teach modesty, and raise a blush, at least to inflict terror and silence. It is then that the satirist does honour to the office of the executioner.

As one whose whip of steel can with a lash Imprint the characters of shame so deep, Even in the brazen forehead of proud Sin, That not eternity shall wear it out.[307]

The quarrel between PARKER and MARVELL is a striking example of the efficient powers of genius, in first humbling, and then annihilating, an unprincipled bravo, who had placed himself at the head of a faction.

Marvell, the under-secretary and the bosom-friend of Milton, whose fancy he has often caught in his verse, was one of the greatest wits of the luxuriant age of Charles II.; he was a master in all the arts of ridicule; and his inexhaustible spirit only required some permanent subject to have rivalled the causticity of Swift, whose style, in neatness and vivacity, seems to have been modelled on his.[308] But Marvell placed the oblation of genius on a temporary altar, and the sacrifice sunk with it; he wrote to the times, and with the times his writings have passed away; yet something there is incorruptible in wit, and wherever its salt has fallen, that part is still preserved.

Such are the vigour and fertility of Marvell's writings, that our old Chronicler of Literary History, Anthony Wood, considers him as the founder of "the then newly-refined art (though much in mode and fashion almost ever since) of sportive and jeering buffoonery;"[309] and the crabbed humorist describes "this pen-combat as briskly managed on both sides; a jerking flirting way of writing entertaining the reader, by seeing two such right cocks of the game so keenly engaging with sharp and dangerous weapons."—Burnett calls Marvell "the liveliest droll of the age, who writ in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and entertaining a conduct, that from the king to the tradesman, his books were read with great pleasure." Charles II. was a more polished judge than these uncouth critics; and, to the credit of his impartiality,—for that witty monarch and his dissolute court were never spared by Marvell, who remained inflexible to his seduction—he deemed Marvell the best prose satirist of the age. But Marvell had other qualities than the freest humour and the finest wit in this "newly-refined art," which seems to have escaped these grave critics—a vehemence of solemn reproof, and an eloquence of invective, that awes one with the spirit of the modern Junius,[310] and may give some notion of that more ancient satirist, whose writings are said to have so completely answered their design, that, after perusal, their victim hanged himself on the first tree; and in the present case, though the delinquent did not lay violent hands on himself, he did what, for an author, may be considered as desperate a course, "withdraw from the town, and cease writing for some years."[311]

The celebrated work here to be noticed is Marvell's "Rehearsal Transprosed;" a title facetiously adopted from Bayes in "The Rehearsal Transposed" of the Duke of Buckingham. It was written against the works and the person of Dr. Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, whom he designates under the character of Bayes, to denote the incoherence and ridiculousness of his character. Marvell had a peculiar knack of calling names,—it consisted in appropriating a ludicrous character in some popular comedy, and dubbing his adversaries with it. In the same spirit he ridiculed Dr. Turner, of Cambridge, a brother-genius to Parker, by nicknaming him "Mr. Smirk, the Divine in Mode," the name of the Chaplain in Etherege's "Man of Mode," and thus, by a stroke of the pen, conveyed an idea of "a neat, starched, formal, and forward divine." This application of a fictitious character to a real one, this christening a man with ridicule, though of no difficult invention, is not a little hazardous to inferior writers; for it requires not less wit than Marvell's to bring out of the real character the ludicrous features which mark the factitious prototype.

Parker himself must have his portrait, and if the likeness be justly hit off, some may be reminded of a resemblance. Mason applies the epithet of "Mitred Dullness" to him: but although he was at length reduced to railing and to menaces, and finally mortified into silence, this epithet does not suit so hardy and so active an adventurer.

The secret history of Parker may be collected in Marvell,[312] and his more public one in our honest chronicler, Anthony Wood. Parker was originally educated in strict sectarian principles; a starch Puritan, "fasting and praying with the Presbyterian students weekly, and who, for their refection feeding only on thin broth made of oatmeal and water, were commonly called Gruellers." Among these, says Marvell, "it was observed that he was wont to put more graves than all the rest into his porridge, and was deemed one of the preciousest[313] young men in the University." It seems that these mortified saints, both the brotherhood and the sisterhood, held their chief meetings at the house of "Bess Hampton, an old and crooked maid that drove the trade of laundry, who, being from her youth very much given to the godly party, as they call themselves, had frequent meetings, especially for those that were her customers." Such is the dry humour of honest Anthony, who paints like the Ostade of literary history.

But the age of sectarism and thin gruel was losing all its coldness in the sunshine of the Restoration; and this "preciousest young man," from praying and caballing against episcopacy, suddenly acquainted the world, in one of his dedications, that Dr. Ralph Bathurst had "rescued him from the chains and fetters of an unhappy education," and, without any intermediate apology, from a sullen sectarian turned a flaming highflyer for the "supreme dominion" of the Church.[314]

It is the after-conduct of Parker that throws light on this rapid change. On speculative points any man may be suddenly converted; for these may depend on facts or arguments which might never have occurred to him before. But when we watch the weathercock chopping with the wind, so pliant to move, and so stiff when fixed—when we observe this "preciousest grueller" clothed in purple, and equally hardy in the most opposite measures—become a favourite with James II., and a furious advocate for arbitrary power; when we see him railing at and menacing those, among whom he had committed as many extravagances as any of them;[315] can we hesitate to decide that this bold, haughty, and ambitious man was one of those who, having neither religion nor morality for a casting weight, can easily fly off to opposite extremes? and whether a puritan or a bishop, we must place his zeal to the same side of his religious ledger—that of the profits of barter!

The quarrel between Parker and Marvell originated in a preface,[316] written by Parker, in which he had poured down his contempt and abuse on his old companions, the Nonconformists. It was then Marvell clipped his wings with his "Rehearsal Transprosed;" his wit and humour were finely contrasted with Parker's extravagances, set off in his declamatory style; of which Marvell wittily describes "the volume and circumference of the periods, which, though he takes always to be his chiefest strength, yet, indeed, like too great a line, weakens the defence, and requires too many men to make it good." The tilt was now opened, and certain masqued knights appeared in the course; they attempted to grasp the sharp and polished weapon of Marvell, to turn it on himself.[317] But Marvell, with malicious ingenuity, sees Parker in them all—they so much resembled their master! "There were no less," says the wit, "than six scaramouches together on the stage, all of them of the same gravity and behaviour, the same tone, the same habit, that it was impossible to discern which was the true author of the 'Ecclesiastical Polity.' I believe he imitated the wisdom of some other princes, who have sometimes been persuaded by their servants to disguise several others in the regal garb, that the enemy might not know in the battle whom to single." Parker, in fact, replied to Marvell anonymously, by "A Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed," with a mild exhortation to the magistrate to crush with the secular arm the pestilent wit, the servant of Cromwell, and the friend of Milton. But this was not all; something else, anonymous too, was despatched to Marvell: it was an extraordinary letter, short enough to have been an epigram, could Parker have written one; but short as it was, it was more in character, for it was only a threat of assassination! It concluded with these words: "If thou darest to print any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the Eternal God I will cut thy throat." Marvell replied to "the Reproof," which he calls a printed letter, by the second part of "the Rehearsal Transprosed;" and to the unprinted letter, by publishing it on his own title-page.

Of two volumes of wit and broad humour, and of the most galling invective, one part flows so much into another, that the volatile spirit would be injured by an analytical process. But Marvell is now only read by the curious lovers of our literature, who find the strong, luxuriant, though not the delicate, wit of the wittiest age, never obsolete: the reader shall not, however, part from Marvell without some slight transplantations from a soil whose rich vegetation breaks out in every part.

Of the pleasantry and sarcasm, these may be considered as specimens. Parker was both author and licenser of his own work on "Ecclesiastical Polity;"[318] and it appears he got the licence for printing Marvell's first Rehearsal recalled. The Church appeared in danger when the doctor discovered he was so furiously attacked. Marvell sarcastically rallies him on his dual capacity:—

"He is such an At-all, of so many capacities, that he would excommunicate any man who should have presumed to intermeddle with any one of his provinces. Has he been an author? he is too the licenser. Has he been a father? he will stand too for godfather. Had he acted Pyramus, he would have been Moonshine too, and the Hole in the Wall. That first author of 'Ecclesiastical Polity,' (such as his) Nero, was of the same temper. He could not be contented with the Roman empire, unless he were too his own precentor; and lamented only the detriment that mankind must sustain at his death, in losing so considerable a fiddler."

The satirist describes Parker's arrogance for those whom Parker calls the vulgar, and whom he defies as "a rout of wolves and tigers, apes and buffoons;" yet his personal fears are oddly contrasted with his self-importance: "If he chance but to sneeze, he prays that the foundations of the earth be not shaken.—Ever since he crept up to be but the weathercock of a steeple, he trembles and cracks at every puff of wind that blows about him, as if the Church of England were falling." Parker boasted, in certain philosophical "Tentamina," or essays of his, that he had confuted the atheists: Marvell declares, "If he had reduced any atheist by his book, he can only pretend to have converted them (as in the old Florentine wars) by mere tiring them out, and perfect weariness." A pleasant allusion to those mock fights of the Italian mercenaries, who, after parading all day, rarely unhorsed a single cavalier.

Marvell blends with a ludicrous description of his answerers great fancy:—

"The whole Posse Archidiaconatus was raised to repress me; and great rising there was, and sending post every way to pick out the ablest ecclesiastical droles to prepare an answer. Never was such a hubbub made about a sorry book. One flattered himself with being at least a surrogate; another was so modest as to set up with being but a paritor; while the most generous hoped only to be graciously smiled upon at a good dinner; but the more hungry starvelings generally looked upon it as an immediate call to a benefice; and he that could but write an answer, whatsoever it were, took it for the most dexterous, cheap, and legal way of simony. As is usual on these occasions, there arose no small competition and mutiny among the pretenders."

It seems all the body had not impudence enough, and had too nice consciences, and could not afford an extraordinary expense in wit for the occasion. It was then

"The author of the 'Ecclesiastical Polity' altered his lodgings to a calumny-office, and kept open chamber for all comers, that he might be supplied himself, or supply others, as there was occasion. But the information came in so slenderly, that he was glad to make use of anything rather than sit out; and there was at last nothing so slight, but it grew material; nothing so false, but he resolved it should go for truth; and what wanted in matter, he would make out with invention and artifice. So that he and his remaining comrades seemed to have set up a glass-house, the model of which he had observed from the height of his window in the neighbourhood, and the art he had been initiated into ever since from the manufacture (he will criticise because not orifacture) of soap-bubbles, he improved by degrees to the mystery of making glass-drops, and thence, in running leaps, mounted by these virtues to be Fellow of the Royal Society, Doctor of Divinity, Parson, Prebend, and Archdeacon. The furnace was so hot of itself, that there needed no coals, much less any one to blow them. One burnt the weed, another calcined the flint, a third melted down that mixture; but he himself fashioned all with his breath, and polished with his style, till, out of a mere jelly of sand and ashes, he had furnished a whole cupboard of things, so brittle and incoherent, that the least touch would break them again in pieces, and so transparent, that every man might see through them."

Parker had accused Marvell with having served Cromwell, and being the friend of Milton, then living, at a moment when such an accusation not only rendered a man odious, but put his life in danger.[319] Marvell, who now perceived that Milton, whom he never looked on but with the eyes of reverential awe, was likely to be drawn into his quarrel, touches on this subject with infinite delicacy and tenderness, but not with diminished energy against his malignant adversary, whom he shows to have been an impertinent intruder in Milton's house, where indeed he had first known him. He cautiously alludes to our English Homer by his initials: at that moment the very name of Milton would have tainted the page!

"J. M. was, and is, a man of great learning and sharpness of wit, as any man. It was his misfortune, living in a tumultuous time, to be tossed on the wrong side; and he writ, flagrante bello, certain dangerous treatises. But some of his books, upon which you take him at advantage, were of no other nature than that one writ by your own father; only with this difference, that your father's, which I have by me, was written with the same design, but with much less wit or judgment, for which there was no remedy, unless you will supply his judgment with his high Court of Justice. At his Majesty's happy return, J. M. did partake, even as you yourself did, for all your huffing, of his royal clemency, and has ever since expiated himself in a retired silence. Whether it were my foresight, or my good fortune, I never contracted any friendship or confidence with you; but then it was you frequented J. M. incessantly, and haunted his house day by day. What discourses you there used, he is too generous to remember. But for you to insult over his old age, to traduce him by your scaramouches, and in your own person, as a schoolmaster, who was born and hath lived more ingenuously and liberally than yourself!"

Marvell, when he lays by his playful humour and fertile fancy for more solemn remonstrances, assumes a loftier tone, and a severity of invective, from which, indeed, Parker never recovered.

Accused by Parker of aiming to degrade the clerical character, Marvell declares his veneration for that holy vocation, and that he reflected even on the failings of the men, from whom so much is expected, with indulgent reverence:—

"Their virtues are to be celebrated with all encouragement; and if their vices be not notoriously palpable, let the eye, as it defends its organ, so conceal the object by connivance." But there are cases when even to write satirically against a clergyman may be not only excusable, but necessary:—"The man who gets into the church by the belfry or the window, ought never to be borne in the pulpit; and so the man who illustrates his own corrupt doctrines with as ill a conversation, and adorns the lasciviousness of his life with an equal petulancy of style and language."—In such a concurrence of misdemeanors, what is to be done? The example and the consequence so pernicious! which could not be, "if our great pastors but exercise the wisdom of common shepherds, by parting with one to stop the infection of the whole flock, when his rottenness grows notorious. Or if our clergy would but use the instinct of other creatures, and chastise the blown deer out of their herd, such mischiefs might easily be remedied. In this case it is that I think a clergyman is laid open to the pen of any one that knows how to manage it; and that every person who has either wit, learning, or sobriety, is licensed, if debauched, to curb him; if erroneous, to catechise him; and if foul-mouthed and biting, to muzzle him. Such an one would never have come into the church, but to take sanctuary; rather wheresoever men shall find the footing of so wanton a satyr out of his own bounds, the neighbourhood ought, notwithstanding all his pretended capering divinity, to hunt him through the woods, with hounds and horse, home to his harbour."

And he frames an ingenious apology for the freedom of his humour, in this attack on the morals and person of his adversary:—

"To write against him (says Marvell) is the odiousest task that ever I undertook, and has looked to me all the while like the cruelty of a living dissection; which, however it may tend to public instruction, and though I have picked out the noxious creature to be anatomised, yet doth scarce excuse the offensiveness of the scent and fouling of my fingers: therefore, I will here break off abruptly, leaving many a vein not laid open, and many a passage not searched into. But if I have undergone the drudgery of the most loathsome part already (which is his personal character), I will not defraud myself of what is more truly pleasant, the conflict with, if it may be so called, his reason."

It was not only in these "pen-combats" that this Literary Quarrel proceeded; it seems also to have broken out in the streets; for a tale has been preserved of a rencontre, which shows at once the brutal manners of Parker, and the exquisite wit of Marvell. Parker meeting Marvell in the streets, the bully attempted to shove him from the wall: but, even there, Marvell's agility contrived to lay him sprawling in the kennel; and looking on him pleasantly, told him to "lie there for a son of a whore!" Parker complained to the Bishop of Rochester, who immediately sent for Marvell, to reprimand him; but he maintained that the doctor had so called himself, in one of his recent publications; and pointing to the preface, where Parker declares "he is 'a true son of his mother, the Church of England:' and if you read further on, my lord, you find he says: 'The Church of England has spawned two bastards, the Presbyterians and the Congregationists;' ergo, my lord, he expressly declares that he is the son of a whore!"

Although Parker retreated from any further attack, after the second part of "The Rehearsal Transprosed," he in truth only suppressed passions to which he was giving vent in secrecy and silence. That, indeed, was not discovered till a posthumous work of his appeared, in which one of the most striking parts is a most disgusting caricature of his old antagonist. Marvell was, indeed, a republican, the pupil of Milton, and adored his master: but his morals and his manners were Roman—he lived on the turnip of Curtius, and he would have bled at Philippi. We do not sympathise with the fierce republican spirit of those unhappy times that scalped the head feebly protected by a mitre or a crown. But the private virtues and the rich genius of such a man are pure from the taint of party. We are now to see how far private hatred can distort, in its hideous vengeance, the resemblance it affects to give after nature. Who could imagine that Parker is describing Marvell in these words?—

"Among these insolent revilers of great fame for ribaldry was one Marvell. From his youth he lived in all manner of wickedness; and thus, with a singular petulancy from nature, he performed the office of a satirist for the faction, not so much from the quickness of his wit, as from the sourness of his temper. A vagabond, ragged, hungry poetaster, beaten at every tavern, where he daily received the rewards of his impudence in kicks and blows.[320] By the interest of Milton, to whom he was somewhat agreeable for his malignant wit, he became the under-secretary to Cromwell's secretary."

And elsewhere he calls him "a drunken buffoon," and asserts that "he made his conscience more cheap than he had formerly made his reputation;" but the familiar anecdote of Marvell's political honesty, when, wanting a dinner, he declined the gold sent to him by the king, sufficiently replies to the calumniator. Parker, then in his retreat, seems not to have been taught anything like modesty by his silence, as Burnet conjectured; who says, "That a face of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his was." It was even then that the recreant, in silence, was composing the libel, which his cowardice dared not publish, but which his invincible malice has sent down to posterity.

FOOTNOTES:

[307] Randolph's Muses' Looking-glass. Act 1, Scene 4.

[308] Swift certainly admired, if he did not imitate Marvell: for in his "Tale of a Tub" he says, "We still read Marvell's answer to Parker with pleasure, though the book it answers be sunk long ago."

[309] This is a curious remark of Wood's: How came raillery and satire to be considered as "a newly-refined art?" Has it not, at all periods, been prevalent among every literary people? The remark is, however, more founded on truth than it appears, and arose from Wood's own feelings. Wit and Raillery had been so strange to us during the gloomy period of the fanatic Commonwealth, that honest Anthony, whose prejudices did not run in favour of Marvell, not only considers him as the "restorer of this newly-refined art," but as one "hugely versed in it," and acknowledges all its efficacy in the complete discomfiture of his haughty rival. Besides this, a small book of controversy, such as Marvell's usually are, was another novelty—the "aureoli libelli," as one fondly calls his precious books, were in the wretched taste of the times, rhapsodies in folio. The reader has doubtless heard of Caryll's endless "Commentary on Job," consisting of 2400 folio pages! in small type. Of that monument of human perseverance, which commenting on Job's patience, inspired what few works do to whoever read them, the exercise of the virtue it inculcated, the publisher, in his advertisement in Clavel's Catalogue of Books, 1681, announces the two folios in 600 sheets each! these were a republication of the first edition, in twelve volumes quarto! he apologises "that it hath been so long a doing, to the great vexation and loss of the proposer." He adds, "indeed, some few lines, no more than what may be contained in a quarto page, are expunged, they not relating to the Exposition, which nevertheless some, by malicious prejudice, have so unjustly aggravated, as if the whole work had been disordered." He apologises for curtailing a few lines from 2400 folio pages! and he considered that these few lines were the only ones that did not relate to the Exposition! At such a time, the little books of Marvell must have been considered as relishing morsels after such indigestible surfeits.

[310] The severity of his satire on Charles's court may be well understood by the following lines:—

"A colony of French possess the court, Pimps, priests, buffoons, in privy-chamber sport; Such slimy monsters ne'er approached a throne Since Pharaoh's days, nor so defil'd a crown; In sacred ear tyrannick arts they croak, Pervert his mind, and good intentions choak."

"The Historical Poem," given in the poems on State affairs, is so personal in its attacks on the vices of Charles, that it is marvellous how its author escaped punishment. "Hodge's Vision from the Monument" is equally strong, while the "Dialogue between two Horses" (that of the statue of Charles I. at Charing-cross, and Charles II., then in the city), has these two strong lines of regret:—

"——to see Deo Gratias writ on the throne, And the king's wicked life say God there is none."

The satire ends with the question:—

"But canst thou devise when things will be mended?"

Which is thus answered:—

"When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended!".—ED.

[311] So Burnet tells us.

[312] See "The Rehearsal Transprosed, the second part," p. 76.

[313] One of the canting terms used by the saints of those days, and not obsolete in the dialect of those who still give themselves out to be saints in the present.

[314] Marvell admirably describes Parker's journey to London at the Restoration, where "he spent a considerable time in creeping into all corners and companies, horoscoping up and down concerning the duration of the government." This term, so expressive of his political doubts, is from "Judicial Astrology," then a prevalent study. "Not considering anything as best, but as most lasting and most profitable; and after having many times cast a figure, he at last satisfied himself that the episcopal government would endure as long as this king lived, and from thenceforwards cast about to find the highway to preferment. To do this, he daily enlarged not only his conversation but his conscience, and was made free of some of the town vices; imagining, like Muleasses, King of Tunis (for I take witness that on all occasions I treat him rather above his quality than otherwise), that by hiding himself among the onions he should escape being traced by his perfumes." The narrative proceeds with a curious detail of all his sycophantic attempts at seducing useful patrons, among whom was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Then began "those pernicious books," says Marvell, "in which he first makes all that he will to be law, and then whatsoever is law, to be divinity." Parker, in his "Ecclesiastical Polity," came at length to promulgate such violent principles as these, "He openly declares his submission to the government of a Nero and a Caligula, rather than suffer a dissolution of it." He says, "it is absolutely necessary to set up a more severe government over men's consciences and religious persuasions than over their vices and immoralities;" and that "men's vices and debaucheries may lie more safely indulged than their consciences." Is it not difficult to imagine that this man had once been an Independent, the advocate for every congregation being independent of a bishop or a synod?

[315] Parker's father was a lawyer, and one of Oliver's most submissive sub-committee men, who so long pillaged the nation and spilled its blood, "not in the hot and military way (which diminishes always the offence), but in the cooler blood and sedentary execution of an high court of justice." He wrote a very remarkable book (after he had been petitioned against for a misdemeanour) in defence of that usurped irregular state called "The Government of the People of England." It had "a most hieroglyphical title" of several emblems: two hands joined, and beneath a sheaf of arrows, stuffed about with half-a-dozen mottoes, "enough," says Marvell, "to have supplied the mantlings and achievement of this (godly) family." An anecdote in this secret history of Parker is probably true. "He shortly afterwards did inveigh against his father's memory, and in his mother's presence, before witnesses, for a couple of whining fanatics."—Rehearsal Transprosed, second part, p. 75.

[316] This preface was prefixed to Bishop Bramball's "Vindication of the Bishops from the Presbyterian Charge of Popery."

[317] As a specimen of what old Anthony calls "a jerking flirting way of writing," I transcribe the titles of these answers which Marvell received. As Marvell had nicknamed Parker, Bayes, the quaint humour of one entitled his reply, "Rosemary and Bayes;" another, "The Transproser Rehearsed, or the Fifth Act of Mr. Bayes's Play;" another, "Gregory Father Greybeard, with his Vizard off;" another formed "a Commonplace Book out of the Rehearsal, digested under heads;" and lastly, "Stoo him Bayes, or some Animadversions on the Humour of writing Rehearsals."—Biog. Brit. p. 3055.

This was the very Bartlemy-fair of wit!

[318] The title will convey some notion of its intolerant principles: "A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity, wherein the authority of the Civil Magistrate over the Consciences of Subjects, in matters of external Religion, is asserted."

[319] Milton had become acquainted with Marvell when travelling in Italy, where he had gone to perfect his studies. He returned to England in 1653, and was connected with the Cromwellian party, through the introduction of Milton, in 1657. The great poet was at that time secretary to Cromwell, and he became his assistant-secretary. He afterwards represented his native town of Hull in Parliament.—ED.

[320] Vanus, pannosus, et famelicus poetaster oenopolis quovis vapulans, fuste et calce indies petulantiae poenas tulit—are the words in Parker's "De Rebus sui Temporis Commentariorum," p. 275.



D'AVENANT

AND A CLUB OF WITS.

CALAMITIES of Epic Poets—Character and Anecdotes of D'AVENANT—attempts a new vein of invention—the Critics marshalled against each other on the "Gondibert"—D'AVENANT'S sublime feelings of Literary Fame—attacked by a Club of Wits in two books of Verses—the strange misconception hitherto given respecting the Second Part—various specimens of the Satires on Gondibert, the Poet, and his Panegyrist HOBBES—the Poet's silence; and his neglect of the unfinished Epic, while the Philosopher keenly retorts on the Club, and will not allow of any authority in WIT.

The memoirs of epic poets, in as far as they relate to the history of their own epics, would be the most calamitous of all the suitors of the Muses, whether their works have reached us, or scarcely the names of the poets. An epic, which has sometimes been the labour of a life, is the game of the wits and the critics. One ridicules what is written; the other censures for what has not been written:—and it has happened, in some eminent instances, that the rudest assailants of him who "builds the lofty rhyme," have been his ungenerous contemporaries. Men, whose names are now endeared to us, and who have left their KTEMA ES AEI, which HOBBES so energetically translates "a possession for everlasting," have bequeathed an inheritance to posterity, of which they have never been in the receipt of the revenue. "The first fruits" of genius have been too often gathered to place upon its tomb. Can we believe that MILTON did not endure mortification from the neglect of "evil days," as certainly as Tasso was goaded to madness by the systematic frigidity of his critics? He who is now before us had a mind not less exalted than Milton or Tasso; but was so effectually ridiculed, that he has only sent us down the fragment of a great work.

One of the curiosities in the history of our poetry, is the GONDIBERT of D'AVENANT; and the fortunes and the fate of this epic are as extraordinary as the poem itself. Never has an author deserved more copious memoirs than the fertility of this man's genius claims. His life would have exhibited a moving picture of genius in action and in contemplation. With all the infirmities of lively passions, he had all the redeeming virtues of magnanimity and generous affections; but with the dignity and the powers of a great genius, falling among an age of wits, he was covered by ridicule. D'Avenant was a man who had viewed human life in all its shapes, and had himself taken them. A poet and a wit, the creator of the English stage with the music of Italy and the scenery of France; a soldier, an emigrant, a courtier, and a politician:—he was, too, a state-prisoner, awaiting death with his immortal poem in his hand;[321] and at all times a philosopher!