[129] The following are extracts from Ockley's letters to the Earl of Oxford, which I copy from the originals:—

"Cambridge Castle, May 2, 1717.

"I am here in the prison for debt, which must needs be an unavoidable consequence of the distractions in my family. I enjoy more repose, indeed, here, than I have tasted these many years, but the circumstance of a family obliges me to go out as soon as I can."

"Cambridge, Sept. 7, 1717.

"I have at last found leisure in my confinement to finish my Saracen history, which I might have hoped for in vain in my perplexed circumstances."



DANGER INCURRED BY GIVING THE RESULT OF LITERARY INQUIRIES.

An author occupies a critical situation, for, while he is presenting the world with the result of his profound studies and his honest inquiries, it may prove pernicious to himself. By it he may incur the risk of offending the higher powers, and witnessing his own days embittered. Liable, by his moderation or his discoveries, by his scruples or his assertions, by his adherence to truth, or by the curiosity of his speculations, to be persecuted by two opposite parties, even when the accusations of the one necessarily nullify the other; such an author will be fortunate to be permitted to retire out of the circle of the bad passions; but he crushes in silence and voluntary obscurity all future efforts—and thus the nation loses a valued author.

This case is exemplified by the history of Dr. COWEL'S curious work "The Interpreter." The book itself is a treasure of our antiquities, illustrating our national manners. The author was devoted to his studies, and the merits of his work recommended him to the Archbishop of Canterbury; in the Ecclesiastical Court he practised as a civilian, and became there eminent as a judge.[130]

Cowel gave his work with all the modesty of true learning; for who knows his deficiencies so well in the subject on which he has written as that author who knows most? It is delightful to listen to the simplicity and force with which an author in the reign of our first James opens himself without reserve.

"My true end is the advancement of knowledge; and therefore have I published this poor work, not only to impart the good thereof to those young ones that want it, but also to draw from the learned the supply of my defects. Whosoever will charge these my travels [labours] with many oversights, he shall need no solemn pains to prove them. And upon the view taken of this book sithence the impression, I dare assure them that shall observe most faults therein, that I, by gleaning after him, will gather as many omitted by him, as he shall show committed by me. What a man saith well is not, however, to be rejected because he hath some errors; reprehend who will, in God's name, that is, with sweetness and without reproach. So shall he reap hearty thanks at my hands, and thus more soundly help in a few months, than I, by tossing and tumbling my books at home, could possibly have done in many years."

This extract discovers Cowel's amiable character as an author. But he was not fated to receive "sweetness without reproach."

Cowel encountered an unrelenting enemy in Sir Edward Coke, the famous Attorney-General of James I., the commentator of Littleton. As a man, his name ought to arouse our indignation, for his licentious tongue, his fierce brutality, and his cold and tasteless genius. He whose vileness could even ruffle the great spirit of Rawleigh, was the shameless persecutor of the learned Cowel.

Coke was the oracle of the common law, and Cowel of the civil; but Cowel practised at Westminster Hall as well as at Doctors' Commons. Coke turned away with hatred from an advocate who, with the skill of a great lawyer, exerted all the courage. The Attorney-General sought every occasion to degrade him, and, with puerile derision, attempted to fasten on Dr. Cowel the nickname of Dr. Cowheel. Coke, after having written in his "Reports" whatever he could against our author, with no effect, started a new project. Coke well knew his master's jealousy on the question of his prerogative; and he touched the King on that nerve. The Attorney-General suggested to James that Cowel had discussed "too nicely the mysteries of his monarchy, in some points derogatory to the supreme power of his crown; asserting that the royal prerogative was in some cases limited." So subtly the serpent whispered to the feminine ear of a monarch, whom this vanity of royalty startled with all the fears of a woman. This suggestion had nearly occasioned the ruin of Cowel—it verged on treason; and if the conspiracy of Coke now failed, it was through the mediation of the archbishop, who influenced the King; but it succeeded in alienating the royal favour from Cowel.

When Coke found he could not hang Cowel for treason, it was only a small disappointment, for he had hopes to secure his prey by involving him in felony. As physicians in desperate cases sometimes reverse their mode of treatment, so Coke now operated on an opposite principle. He procured a party in the Commons to declare that Cowel was a betrayer of the rights and liberties of the people; that he had asserted the King was independent of Parliament, and that it was a favour to admit the consent of his subjects in giving of subsidies, &c.; and, in a word, that he drew his arguments from the Roman Imperial Code, and would make the laws and customs of Rome and Constantinople those of London and York. Passages were wrested to Coke's design. The prefacer of Cowel's book very happily expresses himself when he says, "When a suspected book is brought to the torture, it often confesseth all, and more than it knows."

The Commons proceeded criminally against Cowel; and it is said his life was required, had not the king interposed. The author was imprisoned, and the book was burnt.

On this occasion was issued "a proclamation touching Dr. Cowel's book called 'The Interpreter.'" It may be classed among the most curious documents of our literary history. I do not hesitate to consider this proclamation as the composition of James I.

I will preserve some passages from this proclamation, not merely for their majestic composition, which may still be admired, and the singularity of the ideas, which may still be applied—but for the literary event to which it gave birth in the appointment of a royal licenser for the press. Proclamations and burning of books are the strong efforts of a weak government, exciting rather than suppressing public attention.

"This later age and times of the world wherein we are fallen is so much given to verbal profession, as well of religion as of all commendable royal virtues, but wanting the actions and deeds agreeable to so specious a profession; as it hath bred such an unsatiable curiosity in many men's spirits, and such an itching in the tongues and pens of most men, as nothing is left unsearched to the bottom both in talking and writing. For from the very highest mysteries in the Godhead and the most inscrutable counsels in the Trinity, to the very lowest pit of hell and the confused actions of the devils there, there is nothing now unsearched into by the curiosity of men's brains. Men, not being contented with the knowledge of so much of the will of God as it hath pleased him to reveal, but they will needs sit with him in his most private closet, and become privy of his most inscrutable counsels. And, therefore, it is no wonder that men in these our days do not spare to wade in all the deepest mysteries that belong to the persons or state of kings and princes, that are gods upon earth; since we see (as we have already said) that they spare not God himself. And this licence, which every talker or writer now assumeth to himself, is come to this abuse; that many Phormios will give counsel to Hannibal, and many men that never went of the compass of cloysters or colleges, will freely wade, by their writings, in the deepest mysteries of monarchy and politick government. Whereupon it cannot otherwise fall out but that when men go out of their element and meddle with things above their capacity, themselves shall not only go astray and stumble in darkness, but will mislead also divers others with themselves into many mistakings and errors; the proof whereof we have lately had by a book written by Dr. Cowel, called 'The Interpreter.'"

The royal reviewer then in a summary way shows how Cowel had, "by meddling in matters beyond his reach, fallen into many things to mistake and deceive himself." The book is therefore "prohibited; the buying, uttering, or reading it;" and those "who have any copies are to deliver the same presently upon this publication to the Mayor of London," &c., and the proclamation concludes with instituting licensers of the press:—

"Because that there shall be better oversight of books of all sorts before they come to the press, we have resolved to make choice of commissioners, that shall look more narrowly into the nature of all those things that shall be put to the press, and from whom a more strict account shall be yielded unto us, than hath been used heretofore."

What were the feelings of our injured author, whose integrity was so firm, and whose love of study was so warm, when he reaped for his reward the displeasure of his sovereign, and the indignation of his countrymen—accused at once of contradictory crimes, he could not be a betrayer of the rights of the people, and at the same time limit the sovereign power. Cowel retreated to his college, and, like a wise man, abstained from the press; he pursued his private studies, while his inoffensive life was a comment on Coke's inhumanity more honourable to Cowel than any of Coke's on Littleton.

Thus Cowel saw, in his own life, its richest labour thrown aside; and when the author and his adversary were no more, it became a treasure valued by posterity! It was printed in the reign of Charles I., under the administration of Cromwell, and again after the Restoration. It received the honour of a foreign edition. Its value is still permanent. Such is the history of a book, which occasioned the disgrace of its author, and embittered his life.

A similar calamity was the fate of honest STOWE, the Chronicler. After a long life of labour, and having exhausted his patrimony in the study of English antiquities, from a reverential love to his country, poor Stowe was ridiculed, calumniated, neglected, and persecuted. One cannot read without indignation and pity what Howes, his continuator, tells us in his dedication. Howes had observed that—

"No man would lend a helping hand to the late aged painful Chronicler, nor, after his death, prosecute his work. He applied himself to several persons of dignity and learning, whose names had got forth among the public as likely to be the continuators of Stowe; but every one persisted in denying this, and some imagined that their secret enemies had mentioned their names with a view of injuring them, by incurring the displeasure of their superiors and risking their own quiet. One said, 'I will not flatter, to scandalise my posterity;' another, 'I cannot see how a man should spend his labour and money worse than in that which acquires no regard nor reward except backbiting and detraction.' One swore a great oath and said, 'I thank God that I am not yet so mad to waste my time, spend two hundred pounds a-year, trouble myself and all my friends, only to give assurance of endless reproach, loss of liberty, and bring all my days in question.'"

Unhappy authors! are such then the terrors which silence eloquence, and such the dangers which environ truth? Posterity has many discoveries to make, or many deceptions to endure! But we are treading on hot embers.

Such too was the fate of REGINALD SCOT, who, in an elaborate and curious volume,[131] if he could not stop the torrent of the popular superstitions of witchcraft, was the first, at least, to break and scatter the waves. It is a work which forms an epoch in the history of the human mind in our country; but the author had anticipated a very remote period of its enlargement. Scot, the apostle of humanity, and the legislator of reason, lived in retirement, yet persecuted by religious credulity and legal cruelty.

SELDEN, perhaps the most learned of our antiquaries, was often led, in his curious investigations, to disturb his own peace, by giving the result of his inquiries. James I. and the Court party were willing enough to extol his profound authorities and reasonings on topics which did not interfere with their system of arbitrary power; but they harassed and persecuted the author whom they would at other times eagerly quote as their advocate. Selden, in his "History of Tithes," had alarmed the clergy by the intricacy of his inquiries. He pretends, however, to have only collected the opposite opinions of others, without delivering his own. The book was not only suppressed, but the great author was further disgraced by subscribing a gross recantation of all his learned investigations—and was compelled to receive in silence the insults of Courtly scholars, who had the hardihood to accuse him of plagiarism, and other literary treasons, which more sensibly hurt Selden than the recantation extorted from his hand by "the Lords of the High Commission Court." James I. would not suffer him to reply to them. When the king desired Selden to show the right of the British Crown to the dominion of the sea, this learned author having made proper collections, Selden, angried at an imprisonment he had undergone, refused to publish the work. A great author like Selden degrades himself when any personal feeling, in literary disputes, places him on an equality with any king; the duty was to his country.—But Selden, alive to the call of rival genius, when Grotius published, in Holland, his Mare liberum, gave the world his Mare clausum; when Selden had to encounter Grotius, and to proclaim to the universe "the Sovereignty of the Seas," how contemptible to him appeared the mean persecutions of a crowned head, and how little his own meaner resentment!

To this subject the fate of Dr. HAWKESWORTH is somewhat allied. It is well known that this author, having distinguished himself by his pleasing compositions in the "Adventurer," was chosen to draw up the narrative of Cook's discoveries in the South Seas. The pictures of a new world, the description of new manners in an original state of society, and the incidents arising from an adventure which could find no parallel in the annals of mankind, but under the solitary genius of Columbus—all these were conceived to offer a history, to which the moral and contemplative powers of Hawkesworth only were equal. Our author's fate, and that of his work, are known: he incurred all the danger of giving the result of his inquiries; he indulged his imagination till it burst into pruriency, and discussed moral theorems till he ceased to be moral. The shock it gave to the feelings of our author was fatal; and the error of a mind, intent on inquiries which, perhaps, he thought innocent, and which the world condemned as criminal, terminated in death itself. Hawkesworth was a vain man, and proud of having raised himself by his literary talents from his native obscurity: of no learning, he drew all his science from the Cyclopaedia; and, I have heard, could not always have construed the Latin mottos of his own paper, which were furnished by Johnson; but his sensibility was abundant—and ere his work was given to the world, he felt those tremblings and those doubts which anticipated his fate. That he was in a state of mental agony respecting the reception of his opinions, and some other parts of his work, will, I think, be discovered in the following letter, hitherto unpublished. It was addressed, with his MSS., to a peer, to be examined before they were sent to the press—an occupation probably rather too serious for the noble critic:—

"London, March 2, 1761.

"I think myself happy to be permitted to put my MSS. into your Lordship's hands, because, though it increases my anxiety and my fears, yet it will at least secure me from what I should think a far greater misfortune than any other that can attend my performance, the danger of addressing to the King any sentiment, allusion, or opinion, that could make such an address improper. I have now the honour to submit the work to your Lordship, with the dedication; from which the duty I owe to his Majesty, and, if I may be permitted to add anything to that, the duty I owe to myself, have concurred to exclude the servile, extravagant, and indiscriminate adulation which has so often disgraced alike those by whom it has been given and received.

"I remain, &c. &c."

This elegant epistle justly describes that delicacy in style which has been so rarely practised by an indiscriminate dedicator; and it not less feelingly touches on that "far greater misfortune than any other," which finally overwhelmed the fortitude and intellect of this unhappy author!

FOOTNOTES:

[130] Cowel's book, "The Interpreter," though professedly a mere explanation of law terms, was believed to contain allusions or interpretations of law entirely adapted to party feeling. Cowel was blamed by both parties, and his book declared to infringe the royal prerogative or the liberties of the subject. It was made one of the articles against Laud at his trial, that he had sanctioned a new edition of this work to countenance King Charles in his measures. Cowel had died long before this (October, 1611); he had retired again to collegiate life as soon as he got free of his political persecutions.—ED.

[131] "The Discoverie of Witchcraft, necessary to be known for the undeceiving of Judges, Justices, and Juries, and for the Preservation of Poor People." Third edition, 1665. This was about the time that, according to Arnot's Scots Trials, the expenses of burning a witch amounted to ninety-two pounds, fourteen shillings, Scots. The unfortunate old woman cost two trees, and employed two men to watch her closely for thirty days! One ought to recollect the past follies of humanity, to detect, perhaps, some existing ones.



A NATIONAL WORK WHICH COULD FIND NO PATRONAGE.

The author who is now before us is DE LOLME!

I shall consider as an English author that foreigner, who flew to our country as the asylum of Europe, who composed a noble work on our Constitution, and, having imbibed its spirit, acquired even the language of a free country.

I do not know an example in our literary history that so loudly accuses our tardy and phlegmatic feeling respecting authors, as the treatment De Lolme experienced in this country. His book on our Constitution still enters into the studies of an English patriot, and is not the worse for flattering and elevating the imagination, painting everything beautiful, to encourage our love as well as our reverence for the most perfect system of governments. It was a noble as well as ingenious effort in a foreigner—it claimed national attention—but could not obtain even individual patronage. The fact is mortifying to record, that the author who wanted every aid, received less encouragement than if he had solicited subscriptions for a raving novel, or an idle poem. De Lolme was compelled to traffic with booksellers for this work; and, as he was a theoretical rather than a practical politician, he was a bad trader, and acquired the smallest remuneration. He lived, in the country to which he had rendered a national service, in extreme obscurity and decay; and the walls of the Fleet too often enclosed the English Montesquieu. He never appears to have received a solitary attention,[132] and became so disgusted with authorship, that he preferred silently to endure its poverty rather than its other vexations. He ceased almost to write. Of De Lolme I have heard little recorded but his high-mindedness; a strong sense that he stood degraded beneath that rank in society which his book entitled him to enjoy. The cloud of poverty that covered him only veiled without concealing its object; with the manners and dress of a decayed gentleman, he still showed the few who met him that he cherished a spirit perpetually at variance with the adversity of his circumstances.

Our author, in a narrative prefixed to his work, is the proud historian of his own injured feelings; he smiled in bitterness on his contemporaries, confident it was a tale reserved for posterity.

After having written the work whose systematic principles refuted those political notions which prevailed at the era of the American revolution,—and whose truth has been so fatally demonstrated in our own times, in two great revolutions, which have shown all the defects and all the mischief of nations rushing into a state of freedom before they are worthy of it,—the author candidly acknowledges he counted on some sort of encouragement, and little expected to find the mere publication had drawn him into great inconvenience.

"When my enlarged English edition was ready for the press, had I acquainted ministers that I was preparing to boil my tea-kettle with it, for want of being able to afford the expenses of printing it;" ministers, it seems, would not have considered that he was lighting his fire with "myrrh, and cassia, and precious ointment."

In the want of encouragement from great men, and even from booksellers, De Lolme had recourse to a subscription; and his account of the manner he was received, and the indignities he endured, all which are narrated with great simplicity, show that whatever his knowledge of our Constitution might be, "his knowledge of the country was, at that time, very incomplete." At length, when he shared the profits of his work with the booksellers, they were "but scanty and slow." After all, our author sarcastically congratulates himself, that he—

"Was allowed to carry on the above business of selling my book, without any objection being formed against me, from my not having served a regular apprenticeship, and without being molested by the Inquisition."

And further he adds—

"Several authors have chosen to relate, in writings published after death, the personal advantages by which their performances had been followed; as for me, I have thought otherwise—and I will see it printed while I am yet living."

This, indeed, is the language of irritation! and De Lolme degrades himself in the loudness of his complaint. But if the philosopher lost his temper, that misfortune will not take away the dishonour of the occasion that produced it. The country's shame is not lessened because the author who had raised its glory throughout Europe, and instructed the nation in its best lesson, grew indignant at the ingratitude of his pupil. De Lolme ought not to have congratulated himself that he had been allowed the liberty of the press unharassed by an inquisition: this sarcasm is senseless! or his book is a mere fiction!

FOOTNOTES:

[132] Except by the hand of literary charity; he was more than once relieved by the Literary Fund. Such are the authors only whom it is wise to patronise.



THE MISERIES OF SUCCESSFUL AUTHORS.

HUME is an author so celebrated, a philosopher so serene, and a man so extremely amiable, if not fortunate, that we may be surprised to meet his name inscribed in a catalogue of literary calamities. Look into his literary life, and you will discover that the greater portion was mortified and angried; and that the stoic so lost his temper, that had not circumstances intervened which did not depend on himself, Hume had abandoned his country and changed his name!

"The first success of most of my writings was not such as to be an object of vanity." His "Treatise of Human Nature" fell dead-born from the press. It was cast anew with another title, and was at first little more successful. The following letter to Des Maiseaux, which I believe is now first published, gives us the feelings of the youthful and modest philosopher:—

"DAVID HUME TO DES MAISEAUX.

"SIR,—Whenever you see my name, you'll readily imagine the subject of my letter. A young author can scarce forbear speaking of his performance to all the world; but when he meets with one that is a good judge, and whose instruction and advice he depends on, there ought some indulgence to be given him. You were so good as to promise me, that if you could find leisure from your other occupations, you would look over my system of philosophy, and at the same time ask the opinion of such of your acquaintance as you thought proper judges. Have you found it sufficiently intelligible? Does it appear true to you? Do the style and language seem tolerable? These three questions comprehend everything; and I beg of you to answer them with the utmost freedom and sincerity. I know 'tis a custom to flatter poets on their performances, but I hope philosophers may be exempted; and the more so that their cases are by no means alike. When we do not approve of anything in a poet we commonly can give no reason for our dislikes but our particular taste; which not being convincing, we think it better to conceal our sentiments altogether. But every error in philosophy can be distinctly markt and proved to be such; and this is a favour I flatter myself you'll indulge me in with regard to the performance I put into your hands. I am, indeed, afraid that it would be too great a trouble for you to mark all the errors you have observed; I shall only insist upon being informed of the most material of them, and you may assure yourself will consider it as a singular favour. I am, with great esteem

"Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, "Aprile 6, 1739. "DAVID HUME.

"Please direct to me at Ninewells, near Berwick-upon-Tweed."

Hume's own favourite "Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals" came unnoticed and unobserved in the world. When he published the first portion of his "History," which made even Hume himself sanguine in his expectations, he tells his own tale:—

"I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and, as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment! All classes of men and readers united in their rage against him who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford." "What was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion, and in a twelvemonth not more than forty-five copies were sold."

Even Hume, a stoic hitherto in his literary character, was struck down, and dismayed—he lost all courage to proceed—and, had the war not prevented him, "he had resolved to change his name, and never more to have returned to his native country."

But an author, though born to suffer martyrdom, does not always expire; he may be flayed like St. Bartholomew, and yet he can breathe without a skin; stoned, like St. Stephen, and yet write on with a broken head; and he has been even known to survive the flames, notwithstanding the most precious part of an author, which is obviously his book, has been burnt in an auto da fe. Hume once more tried the press in "The Natural History of Religion." It proved but another martyrdom! Still was the fall (as he terms it) of the first volume of his History haunting his nervous imagination, when he found himself yet strong enough to hold a pen in his hand, and ventured to produce a second, which "helped to buoy up its unfortunate brother." But the third part, containing the reign of Elizabeth, was particularly obnoxious, and he was doubtful whether he was again to be led to the stake. But Hume, a little hardened by a little success, grew, to use his own words, "callous against the impressions of public folly," and completed his History, which was now received "with tolerable, and but tolerable, success."

At length, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, our author began, a year or two before he died, as he writes, to see "many symptoms of my literary reputation breaking out at last with additional lustre, though I know that I can have but few years to enjoy it." What a provoking consolation for a philosopher, who, according to the result of his own system, was close upon a state of annihilation!

To Hume, let us add the illustrious name of DRYDEN.

It was after preparing a second edition of Virgil, that the great Dryden, who had lived, and was to die in harness, found himself still obliged to seek for daily bread. Scarcely relieved from one heavy task, he was compelled to hasten to another; and his efforts were now stimulated by a domestic feeling, the expected return of his son in ill-health from Rome. In a letter to his bookseller he pathetically writes—"If it please God that I must die of over-study, I cannot spend my life better than in preserving his." It was on this occasion, on the verge of his seventieth year, as he describes himself in the dedication of his Virgil, that, "worn out with study, and oppressed with fortune," he contracted to supply the bookseller with 10,000 verses at sixpence a line!

What was his entire dramatic life but a series of vexation and hostility, from his first play to his last? On those very boards whence Dryden was to have derived the means of his existence and his fame, he saw his foibles aggravated, and his morals aspersed. Overwhelmed by the keen ridicule of Buckingham, and maliciously mortified by the triumph which Settle, his meanest rival, was allowed to obtain over him, and doomed still to encounter the cool malignant eye of Langbaine, who read poetry only to detect plagiarism. Contemporary genius is inspected with too much familiarity to be felt with reverence; and the angry prefaces of Dryden only excited the little revenge of the wits. How could such sympathise with injured, but with lofty feelings? They spread two reports of him, which may not be true, but which hurt him with the public. It was said that, being jealous of the success of Creech, for his version of Lucretius, he advised him to attempt Horace, in which Dryden knew he would fail—and a contemporary haunter of the theatre, in a curious letter[133] on The Winter Diversions, says of Congreve's angry preface to the Double Dealer, that—

"The critics were severe upon this play, which gave the author occasion to lash them in his epistle dedicatory—so that 'tis generally thought he has done his business and lost himself; a thing he owes to Mr. Dryden's treacherous friendship, who being jealous of the applause he had got by his Old Bachelor deluded him into a foolish imitation of his own way of writing angry prefaces."

This lively critic is still more vivacious on the great Dryden, who had then produced his Love Triumphant, which, the critic says,

"Was damned by the universal cry of the town, nemine contradicente but the conceited poet. He says in his prologue that 'this is the last the town must expect from him;' he had done himself a kindness had he taken his leave before." He then describes the success of Southerne's Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery, and concludes, "This kind usage will encourage desponding minor poets, and vex huffing Dryden and Congreve to madness."

I have quoted thus much of this letter, that we may have before us a true image of those feelings which contemporaries entertain of the greater geniuses of their age; how they seek to level them; and in what manner men of genius are doomed to be treated—slighted, starved, and abused. Dryden and Congreve! the one the finest genius, the other the most exquisite wit of our nation, are to be vexed to madness!—their failures are not to excite sympathy, but contempt or ridicule! How the feelings and the language of contemporaries differ from that of posterity! And yet let us not exult in our purer and more dignified feelings—we are, indeed, the posterity of Dryden and Congreve; but we are the contemporaries of others who must patiently hope for better treatment from our sons than they have received from the fathers.

Dryden was no master of the pathetic, yet never were compositions more pathetic than the Prefaces this great man has transmitted to posterity! Opening all the feelings of his heart, we live among his domestic sorrows. Johnson censures Dryden for saying he has few thanks to pay his stars that he was born among Englishmen.[134] We have just seen that Hume went farther, and sighed to fly to a retreat beyond that country which knew not to reward genius.—What, if Dryden felt the dignity of that character he supported, dare we blame his frankness? If the age be ungenerous, shall contemporaries escape the scourge of the great author, who feels he is addressing another age more favourable to him?

Johnson, too, notices his "Self-commendation; his diligence in reminding the world of his merits, and expressing, with very little scruple, his high opinion of his own powers." Dryden shall answer in his own words; with all the simplicity of Montaigne, he expresses himself with the dignity that would have become Milton or Gray:—

"It is a vanity common to all writers to overvalue their own productions; and it is better for me to own this failing in myself, than the world to do it for me. For what other reason have I spent my life in such an unprofitable study? Why am I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and application which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning, and less honesty, than myself."

How feelingly Whitehead paints the situation of Dryden in his old age:—

Yet lives the man, how wild soe'er his aim, Would madly barter fortune's smiles for fame? Well pleas'd to shine, through each recording page, The hapless Dryden of a shameless age!

Ill-fated bard! where'er thy name appears, The weeping verse a sad memento bears; Ah! what avail'd the enormous blaze between Thy dawn of glory and thy closing scene! When sinking nature asks our kind repairs, Unstrung the nerves, and silver'd o'er the hairs; When stay'd reflection came uncall'd at last, And gray experience counts each folly past!

MICKLE'S version of the Lusiad offers an affecting instance of the melancholy fears which often accompany the progress of works of magnitude, undertaken by men of genius. Five years he had buried himself in a farm-house, devoted to the solitary labour; and he closes his preface with the fragment of a poem, whose stanzas have perpetuated all the tremblings and the emotions, whose unhappy influence the author had experienced through the long work. Thus pathetically he addresses the Muse:—

——Well thy meed repays thy worthless toil; Upon thy houseless head pale want descends In bitter shower; and taunting scorn still rends And wakes thee trembling from thy golden dream: In vetchy bed, or loathly dungeon ends Thy idled life——

And when, at length, the great and anxious labour was completed, the author was still more unhappy than under the former influence of his foreboding terrors. The work is dedicated to the Duke of Buccleugh. Whether his Grace had been prejudiced against the poetical labour by Adam Smith, who had as little comprehension of the nature of poetry as becomes a political economist, or from whatever cause, after possessing it for six weeks the Duke had never condescended to open the volume. It is to the honour of Mickle that the Dedication is a simple respectful inscription, in which the poet had not compromised his dignity,—and that in the second edition he had the magnanimity not to withdraw the dedication to this statue-like patron. Neither was the critical reception of this splendid labour of five devoted years grateful to the sensibility of the author: he writes to a friend—

"Though my work is well received at Oxford, I will honestly own to you, some things have hurt me. A few grammatical slips in the introduction have been mentioned; and some things in the notes about Virgil, Milton, and Homer, have been called the arrogance of criticism. But the greatest offence of all is, what I say of blank verse."

He was, indeed, after this great work was given to the public, as unhappy as at any preceding period of his life; and Mickle, too, like Hume and Dryden, could feel a wish to forsake his native land! He still found his "head houseless;" and "the vetchy bed" and "loathly dungeon" still haunted his dreams. "To write for the booksellers is what I never will do," exclaimed this man of genius, though struck by poverty. He projected an edition of his own poems by subscription.

"Desirous of giving an edition of my works, in which I shall bestow the utmost attention, which, perhaps, will be my final farewell to that blighted spot (worse than the most bleak mountains of Scotland) yclept Parnassus; after this labour is finished, if Governor Johnstone cannot or does not help me to a little independence, I will certainly bid adieu to Europe, to unhappy suspense, and perhaps also to the chagrin of soul which I feel to accompany it."

Such was the language which cannot now be read without exciting our sympathy for the author of the version of an epic, which, after a solemn devotion of no small portion of the most valuable years of life, had been presented to the world, with not sufficient remuneration or notice of the author to create even hope in the sanguine temperament of a poet. Mickle was more honoured at Lisbon than in his own country. So imperceptible are the gradations of public favour to the feelings of genius, and so vast an interval separates that author who does not immediately address the tastes or the fashions of his age, from the reward or the enjoyment of his studies.

We cannot account, among the lesser calamities of literature, that of a man of genius, who, dedicating his days to the composition of a voluminous and national work, when that labour is accomplished, finds, on its publication, the hope of fame, and perhaps other hopes as necessary to reward past toil, and open to future enterprise, all annihilated. Yet this work neglected or not relished, perhaps even the sport of witlings, afterwards is placed among the treasures of our language, when the author is no more! but what is posthumous gratitude, could it reach even the ear of an angel?

The calamity is unavoidable; but this circumstance does not lessen it. New works must for a time be submitted to popular favour; but posterity is the inheritance of genius. The man of genius, however, who has composed this great work, calculates his vigils, is best acquainted with its merits, and is not without an anticipation of the future feeling of his country; he

But weeps the more, because he weeps in vain.

Such is the fate which has awaited many great works; and the heart of genius has died away on its own labours. I need not go so far back as the Elizabethan age to illustrate a calamity which will excite the sympathy of every man of letters; but the great work of a man of no ordinary genius presents itself on this occasion.

This great work is "The Polyolbion" of MICHAEL DRAYTON; a poem unrivalled for its magnitude and its character.[135] The genealogy of poetry is always suspicious; yet I think it owed its birth to Leland's magnificent view of his intended work on Britain, and was probably nourished by the "Britannia" of Camden, who inherited the mighty industry, with out the poetical spirit, of Leland; Drayton embraced both. This singular combination of topographical erudition and poetical fancy constitutes a national work—a union that some may conceive not fortunate, no more than "the slow length" of its Alexandrine metre, for the purposes of mere delight. Yet what theme can be more elevating than a bard chanting to his "Fatherland," as the Hollanders called their country? Our tales of ancient glory, our worthies who must not die, our towns, our rivers, and our mountains, all glancing before the picturesque eye of the naturalist and the poet! It is, indeed, a labour of Hercules; but it was not unaccompanied by the lyre of Apollo.

This national work was ill received; and the great author dejected, never pardoned his contemporaries, and even lost his temper.[136] Drayton and his poetical friends beheld indignantly the trifles of the hour overpowering the neglected Polyolbion.

One poet tells us that

——————————they prefer The fawning lines of every pamphleter. GEO. WITHERS.

And a contemporary records the utter neglect of this great poet:—

Why lives Drayton when the times refuse Both means to live, and matter for a muse, Only without excuse to leave us quite, And tell us, durst we act, he durst to write? W. BROWNE.

Drayton published his Polyolbion first in eighteen parts; and the second portion afterwards. In this interval we have a letter to Drummond, dated in 1619:—

"I thank you, my dear sweet Drummond, for your good opinion of Polyolbion. I have done twelve books more, that is, from the 18th book, which was Kent (if you note it), all the east parts and north to the river of Tweed; but it lieth by me, for the booksellers and I are in terms; they are a company of base knaves, whom I scorn and kick at."

The vengeance of the poet had been more justly wreaked on the buyers of books than on the sellers, who, though knavery has a strong connexion with trade, yet, were they knaves, they would be true to their own interests. Far from impeding a successful author, booksellers are apt to hurry his labours; for they prefer the crude to the mature fruit, whenever the public taste can be appeased even by an unripened dessert.

These "knaves," however, seem to have succeeded in forcing poor Drayton to observe an abstinence from the press, which must have convulsed all the feelings of authorship. The second part was not published till three years after this letter was written; and then without maps. Its preface is remarkable enough; it is pathetic, till Drayton loses the dignity of genius in its asperity. In is inscribed, in no good humour—

"TO ANY THAT WILL READ IT!

"When I first undertook this poem, or, as some have pleased to term it, this Herculean labour, I was by some virtuous friends persuaded that I should receive much comfort and encouragement; and for these reasons: First, it was a new clear way, never before gone by any; that it contained all the delicacies, delights, and rarities of this renowned isle, interwoven with the histories of the Britons, Saxons, Normans, and the later English. And further, that there is scarcely any of the nobility or gentry of this land, but that he is some way or other interested therein.

"But it hath fallen out otherwise; for instead of that comfort which my noble friends proposed as my due, I have met with barbarous ignorance and base detraction; such a cloud hath the devil drawn over the world's judgment. Some of the stationers that had the selling of the first part of this poem, because it went not so fast away in the selling as some of their beastly and abominable trash (a shame both to our language and our nation), have despightfully left out the epistles to the readers, and so have cousened the buyers with imperfected books, which those that have undertaken the second part have been forced to amend in the first, for the small number that are yet remaining in their hands.

"And some of our outlandish, unnatural English (I know not how otherwise to express them) stick not to say that there is nothing in this island worth studying for, and take a great pride to be ignorant in anything thereof. As for these cattle, odi profanum vulgus, et arceo; of which I account them, be they never so great."

Yet, as a true poet, whose impulse, like fate, overturns all opposition, Drayton is not to be thrown out of his avocation; but intrepidly closes by promising "they shall not deter me from going on with Scotland, if means and time do not hinder me to perform as much as I have promised in my first song." Who could have imagined that such bitterness of style, and such angry emotions, could have been raised in the breast of a poet of pastoral elegance and fancy?

Whose bounding muse o'er ev'ry mountain rode, And every river warbled as it flow'd. KIRKPATRICK.

It is melancholy to reflect that some of the greatest works in our language have involved their authors in distress and anxiety: and that many have gone down to their grave insensible of that glory which soon covered it.

FOOTNOTES:

[133] A letter found among the papers of the late Mr. Windham, which Mr. Malone has preserved.

[134] There is an affecting remonstrance of Dryden to Hyde, Earl of Rochester, on the state of his poverty and neglect—in which is this remarkable passage:—"It is enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and starved Mr. Butler."

[135] The author explains the nature of his book in his title-page when he calls it "A Chorographicall Description of tracts, rivers, mountaines, forests, and other parts of this renowned Isle of Great Britaine, with intermixture of the most remarquable stories, antiquities, wonders, rarityes, pleasures, and commodities of the same; digested in a Poem." The maps with which it is illustrated are curious for the impersonations of the nymphs of wood and water, the sylvan gods, and other characters of the poem; to which the learned Selden supplied notes. Ellis calls it "a wonderful work, exhibiting at once the learning of an historian, an antiquary, a naturalist, and a geographer, and embellished by the imagination of a poet."—ED.

[136] In the dedication of the first part to Prince Henry, the author says of his work, "it cannot want envie: for even in the birth it alreadie finds that."—ED.



THE ILLUSIONS OF WRITERS IN VERSE.

Who would, with the awful severity of Plato, banish poets from the Republic? But it may be desirable that the Republic should not be banished from poets, which it seems to be when an inordinate passion for writing verses drives them from every active pursuit. There is no greater enemy to domestic quiet than a confirmed versifier; yet are most of them much to be pitied: it is the mediocre critics they first meet with who are the real origin of a populace of mediocre poets. A young writer of verses is sure to get flattered by those who affect to admire what they do not even understand, and by those who, because they understand, imagine they are likewise endowed with delicacy of taste and a critical judgment. What sacrifices of social enjoyments, and all the business of life, are lavished with a prodigal's ruin in an employment which will be usually discovered to be a source of early anxiety, and of late disappointment![137] I say nothing of the ridicule in which it involves some wretched Maevius, but of the misery that falls so heavily on him, and is often entailed on his generation. Whitehead has versified an admirable reflection of Pope's, in the preface to his works:—

For wanting wit be totally undone, And barr'd all arts, for having fail'd in one?

The great mind of BLACKSTONE never showed him more a poet than when he took, not without affection, "a farewell of the Muse," on his being called to the bar. DRUMMOND, of Hawthornden, quitted the bar from his love of poetry; yet he seems to have lamented slighting the profession which his father wished him to pursue. He perceives his error, he feels even contrition, but still cherishes it: no man, not in his senses, ever had a more lucid interval:—

I changed countries, new delights to find; But ah! for pleasure I did find new pain; Enchanting pleasure so did reason blind, That father's love and words I scorn'd as vain. I know that all the Muses' heavenly lays, With toil of spirit which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds of few or none are sought, That there is nothing lighter than vain praise; Know what I list, this all cannot me move, But that, alas! I both must write and love!

Thus, like all poets, who, as Goldsmith observes, "are fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future," he talks like a man of sense, and acts like a fool.

This wonderful susceptibility of praise, to which poets seem more liable than any other class of authors, is indeed their common food; and they could not keep life in them without this nourishment. NAT. LEE, a true poet in all the excesses of poetical feelings—for he was in such raptures at times as to lose his senses—expresses himself in very energetic language on the effects of the praise necessary for poets:—

"Praise," says Lee, "is the greatest encouragement we chamelions can pretend to, or rather the manna that keeps soul and body together; we devour it as if it were angels' food, and vainly think we grow immortal. There is nothing transports a poet, next to love, like commending in the right place."

This, no doubt, is a rare enjoyment, and serves to strengthen his illusions. But the same fervid genius elsewhere confesses, when reproached for his ungoverned fancy, that it brings with itself its own punishment:—

"I cannot be," says this great and unfortunate poet, "so ridiculous a creature to any man as I am to myself; for who should know the house so well as the good man at home? who, when his neighbour comes to see him, still sets the best rooms to view; and, if he be not a wilful ass, keeps the rubbish and lumber in some dark hole, where nobody comes but himself, to mortify at melancholy hours."

Study the admirable preface of POPE, composed at that matured period of life when the fever of fame had passed away, and experience had corrected fancy. It is a calm statement between authors and readers; there is no imagination that colours by a single metaphor, or conceals the real feeling which moved the author on that solemn occasion, of collecting his works for the last time. It is on a full review of the past that this great poet delivers this remarkable sentence:—

"I believe, if any one, early in his life, should contemplate the dangerous fate of AUTHORS, he would scarce be of their number on any consideration. The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth; and to pretend to serve the learned world in any way, one must have the constancy of a martyr, and a resolution to suffer for its sake."

All this is so true in literary history, that he who affects to suspect the sincerity of Pope's declaration, may flatter his sagacity, but will do no credit to his knowledge.

If thus great poets pour their lamentations for having devoted themselves to their art, some sympathy is due to the querulousness of a numerous race of provincial bards, whose situation is ever at variance with their feelings. These usually form exaggerated conceptions of their own genius, from the habit of comparing themselves with their contracted circle. Restless, with a desire of poetical celebrity, their heated imagination views in the metropolis that fame and fortune denied them in their native town; there they become half-hermits and half-philosophers, darting epigrams which provoke hatred, or pouring elegies, descriptive of their feelings, which move derision: their neighbours find it much easier to ascertain their foibles than comprehend their genius; and both parties live in a state of mutual persecution. Such, among many, was the fate of the poet HERRICK; his vein was pastoral, and he lived in the elysium of the west, which, however, he describes by the sullen epithet, "Dull Devonshire," where "he is still sad." Strange that such a poet should have resided near twenty years in one of our most beautiful counties in a very discontented humour. When he quitted his village of "Deanbourne," the petulant poet left behind him a severe "farewell," which was found still preserved in the parish, after a lapse of more than a century. Local satire has been often preserved by the very objects it is directed against, sometimes from the charm of the wit itself, and sometimes from the covert malice of attacking our neighbours. Thus he addresses "Deanbourne, a rude river in Devonshire, by which, sometime, he lived:"—

Dean-bourn, farewell! Thy rockie bottom that doth tear thy streams, And makes them frantic, e'en to all extremes. Rockie thou art, and rockie we discover Thy men,— O men! O manners!— O people currish, churlish as their seas—

He rejoices he leaves them, never to return till "rocks shall turn to rivers." When he arrives in London,

From the dull confines of the drooping west, To see the day-spring from the pregnant east,

he, "ravished in spirit," exclaims, on a view of the metropolis—

O place! O people! manners form'd to please All nations, customs, kindreds, languages!

But he fervently entreats not to be banished again:—

For, rather than I'll to the west return, I'll beg of thee first, here to have mine urn.

The Devonians were avenged; for the satirist of the English Arcadia was condemned again to reside by "its rockie side," among "its rockie men."

Such has been the usual chant of provincial poets; and, if the "silky-soft Favonian gales" of Devon, with its "Worthies," could not escape the anger of such a poet as Herrick, what county may hope to be saved from the invective of querulous and dissatisfied poets?

In this calamity of authors I will show that a great poet felicitated himself that poetry was not the business of his life; and afterwards I will bring forward an evidence that the immoderate pursuit of poetry, with a very moderate genius, creates a perpetual state of illusion; and pursues grey-headed folly even to the verge of the grave.

Pope imagined that PRIOR was only fit to make verses, and less qualified for business than Addison himself. Had Prior lived to finish that history of his own times he was writing, we should have seen how far the opinion of Pope was right. Prior abandoned the Whigs, who had been his first patrons, for the Tories, who were now willing to adopt the political apostate. This versatility for place and pension rather shows that Prior was a little more "qualified for business than Addison."

Johnson tells us "Prior lived at a time when the rage of party detected all which was any man's interest to hide; and, as little ill is heard of Prior, it is certain that not much was known:" more, however, than Johnson supposes. This great man came to the pleasing task of his poetical biography totally unprepared, except with the maturity of his genius, as a profound observer of men, and an invincible dogmatist in taste. In the history of the times, Johnson is deficient, which has deprived us of that permanent instruction and delight his intellectual powers had poured around it. The character and the secret history of Prior are laid open in the "State Poems;"[138] a bitter Whiggish narrative, too particular to be entirely fictitious, while it throws a new light on Johnson's observation of Prior's "propensity to sordid converse, and the low delights of mean company," which Johnson had imperfectly learned from some attendant on Prior.

A vintner's boy, the wretch was first preferr'd To wait at Vice's gates, and pimp for bread; To hold the candle, and sometimes the door, Let in the drunkard, and let out——. But, as to villains it has often chanc'd, Was for his wit and wickedness advanc'd. Let no man think his new behaviour strange, No metamorphosis can nature change; Effects are chain'd to causes; generally, The rascal born will like a rascal die. His Prince's favours follow'd him in vain; They chang'd the circumstance, but not the man. While out of pocket, and his spirits low, He'd beg, write panegyrics, cringe, and bow; But when good pensions had his labours crown'd, His panegyrics into satires turn'd; O what assiduous pains does Prior take To let great Dorset see he could mistake! Dissembling nature false description gave, Show'd him the poet, but conceal'd the knave.

To us the poet Prior is better known than the placeman Prior; yet in his own day the reverse often occurred. Prior was a State Proteus; Sunderland, the most ambiguous of politicians, was the Erle Robert to whom he addressed his Mice; and Prior was now Secretary to the Embassy at Ryswick and Paris; independent even of the English ambassador—now a Lord of Trade, and, at length, a Minister Plenipotentiary to Louis XIV.

Our business is with his poetical feelings.

Prior declares he was chiefly "a poet by accident;" and hints, in collecting his works, that "some of them, as they came singly from the first impression, have lain long and quietly in Mr. Tonson's shop." When his party had their downfall, and he was confined two years in prison, he composed his "Alma," to while away prison hours; and when, at length, he obtained his freedom, he had nothing remaining but that fellowship which, in his exaltation, he had been censured for retaining, but which he then said he might have to live upon at last. Prior had great sagacity, and too right a notion of human affairs in politics, to expect his party would last his time, or in poetry, that he could ever derive a revenue from rhymes!

I will now show that that rare personage, a sensible poet, in reviewing his life in that hour of solitude when no passion is retained but truth, while we are casting up the amount of our past days scrupulously to ourselves, felicitated himself that the natural bent of his mind, which inclined to poetry, had been checked, and not indulged, throughout his whole life. Prior congratulated himself that he had been only "a poet by accident," not by occupation.

In a manuscript by Prior, consisting of "An Essay on Learning," I find this curious and interesting passage entirely relating to the poet himself:—

"I remember nothing farther in life than that I made verses; I chose Guy Earl of Warwick for my first hero, and killed Colborne the giant before I was big enough for Westminster School. But I had two accidents in youth which hindered me from being quite possessed with the Muse. I was bred in a college where prose was more in fashion than verse,—and, as soon as I had taken my first degree, I was sent the King's Secretary to the Hague; there I had enough to do in studying French and Dutch, and altering my Terentian and Virgilian style into that of Articles and Conventions; so that poetry, which by the bent of my mind might have become the business of my life, was, by the happiness of my education, only the amusement of it; and in this, too, having the prospect of some little fortune to be made, and friendships to be cultivated with the great men, I did not launch much into satire, which, however agreeable for the present to the writers and encouragers of it, does in time do neither of them good; considering the uncertainty of fortune, and the various changes of Ministry, and that every man, as he resents, may punish in his turn of greatness and power."

Such is the wholesome counsel of the Solomon of Bards to an aspirant, who, in his ardour for poetical honours, becomes careless of their consequences, if he can but possess them.

I have now to bring forward one of those unhappy men of rhyme, who, after many painful struggles, and a long querulous life, have died amid the ravings of their immortality—one of those miserable bards of mediocrity whom no beadle-critic could ever whip out of the poetical parish.

There is a case in Mr. Haslam's "Observations on Insanity," who assures us that the patient he describes was insane, which will appear strange to those who have watched more poets than lunatics!

"This patient, when admitted, was very noisy, and importunately talkative—reciting passages from the Greek and Roman poets, or talking of his own literary importance. He became so troublesome to the other madmen, who were sufficiently occupied with their own speculations, that they avoided and excluded him from the common room; so that he was at last reduced to the mortifying situation of being the sole auditor of his own compositions. He conceived himself very nearly related to Anacreon, and possessed of the peculiar vein of that poet."

Such is the very accurate case drawn up by a medical writer. I can conceive nothing in it to warrant the charge of insanity; Mr. Haslam, not being a poet, seems to have mistaken the common orgasm of poetry for insanity itself.

Of such poets, one was the late PERCIVAL STOCKDALE, who, with the most entertaining simplicity, has, in "The Memoirs of his Life and Writings," presented us with a full-length figure of this class of poets; those whom the perpetual pursuits of poetry, however indifferent, involve in a perpetual illusion; they are only discovered in their profound obscurity by the piteous cries they sometimes utter; they live on querulously, which is an evil for themselves, and to no purpose of life, which is an evil to others.

I remember in my youth Percival Stockdale as a condemned poet of the times, of whom the bookseller Flexney complained that, whenever this poet came to town, it cost him twenty pounds. Flexney had been the publisher of Churchill's works; and, never forgetting the time when he published "The Rosciad," which at first did not sell, and afterwards became the most popular poem, he was speculating all his life for another Churchill, and another quarto poem. Stockdale usually brought him what he wanted—and Flexney found the workman, but never the work.

Many a year had passed in silence, and Stockdale could hardly be considered alive, when, to the amazement of some curious observers of our literature, a venerable man, about his eightieth year, a vivacious spectre, with a cheerful voice, seemed as if throwing aside his shroud in gaiety—to come to assure us of the immortality of one of the worst poets of the time.

To have taken this portrait from the life would have been difficult; but the artist has painted himself, and manufactured his own colours; else had our ordinary ones but faintly copied this Chinese grotesque picture—the glare and the glow must be borrowed from his own palette.

Our self-biographer announces his "Life" with prospective rapture, at the moment he is turning a sad retrospect on his "Writings;" for this was the chequered countenance of his character, a smile while he was writing, a tear when he had published! "I know," he exclaims, "that this book will live and escape the havoc that has been made of my literary fame." Again—"Before I die, I think my literary fame may be fixed on an adamantine foundation." Our old acquaintance, Blas of Santillane, at setting out on his travels, conceived himself to be la huitieme merveille du monde; but here is one, who, after the experience of a long life, is writing a large work to prove himself that very curious thing.

What were these mighty and unknown works? Stockdale confesses that all his verses have been received with negligence or contempt; yet their mediocrity, the absolute poverty of his genius, never once occurred to the poetical patriarch.

I have said that the frequent origin of bad poets is owing to bad critics; and it was the early friends of Stockdale, who, mistaking his animal spirits for genius, by directing them into the walks of poetry, bewildered him for ever. It was their hand that heedlessly fixed the bias in the rolling bowl of his restless mind.

He tells us that while yet a boy of twelve years old, one day talking with his father at Branxton, where the battle of Flodden was fought, the old gentleman said to him with great emphasis—

"You may make that place remarkable for your birth, if you take care of yourself. My father's understanding was clear and strong, and he could penetrate human nature. He already saw that I had natural advantages above those of common men."

But it seems that, at some earlier period even than his twelfth year, some good-natured Pythian had predicted that Stockdale would be "a poet." This ambiguous oracle was still listened to, after a lapse of more than half a century, and the decree is still repeated with fond credulity:—"Notwithstanding," he exclaims, "all that is past, O thou god of my mind! (meaning the aforesaid Pythian) I still hope that my future fame will decidedly warrant the prediction!"

Stockdale had, in truth, an excessive sensibility of temper, without any control over it—he had all the nervous contortions of the Sybil, without her inspiration; and shifting, in his many-shaped life, through all characters and all pursuits, "exalting the olive of Minerva with the grape of Bacchus," as he phrases it, he was a lover, a tutor, a recruiting officer, a reviewer, and, at length, a clergyman; but a poet eternally! His mind was so curved, that nothing could stand steadily upon it. The accidents of such a life he describes with such a face of rueful simplicity, and mixes up so much grave drollery and merry pathos with all he says or does, and his ubiquity is so wonderful, that he gives an idea of a character, of whose existence we had previously no conception, that of a sentimental harlequin.[139]

In the early part of his life, Stockdale undertook many poetical pilgrimages; he visited the house where Thomson was born; the coffee-room where Dryden presided among the wits, &c. Recollecting the influence of these local associations, he breaks forth, "Neither the unrelenting coldness, nor the repeated insolence of mankind, can prevent me from thinking that something like this enthusiastic devotion may hereafter be paid to ME."

Perhaps till this appeared it might not be suspected that any unlucky writer of verse could ever feel such a magical conviction of his poetical stability. Stockdale, to assist this pilgrimage to his various shrines, has particularised all the spots where his works were composed! Posterity has many shrines to visit, and will be glad to know (for perhaps it may excite a smile) that "'The Philosopher,' a poem, was written in Warwick Court, Holborn, in 1769,"—"'The Life of Waller,' in Round Court, in the Strand."—A good deal he wrote in "May's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane," &c., but

"In my lodgings at Portsmouth, in St. Mary's Street, I wrote my 'Elegy on the Death of a Lady's Linnet.' It will not be uninteresting to sensibility, to thinking and elegant minds. It deeply interested me, and therefore produced not one of my weakest and worst written poems. It was directly opposite to a noted house, which was distinguished by the name of the green rails; where the riotous orgies of Naxos and Cythera contrasted with my quiet and purer occupations."

I would not, however, take his own estimate of his own poems; because, after praising them outrageously, he seems at times to doubt if they are as exquisite as he thinks them! He has composed no one in which some poetical excellence does not appear—and yet in each nice decision he holds with difficulty the trepidations of the scales of criticism—for he tells us of "An Address to the Supreme Being," that "it is distinguished throughout with a natural and fervid piety; it is flowing and poetical; it is not without its pathos." And yet, notwithstanding all this condiment, the confection is evidently good for nothing; for he discovers that "this flowing, fervid, and poetical address" is "not animated with that vigour which gives dignity and impression to poetry." One feels for such unhappy and infected authors—they would think of themselves as they wish at the moment that truth and experience come in upon them and rack them with the most painful feelings.

Stockdale once wrote a declamatory life of Waller. When Johnson's appeared, though in his biography, says Stockdale, "he paid a large tribute to the abilities of Goldsmith and Hawkesworth, yet he made no mention of my name." It is evident that Johnson, who knew him well, did not care to remember it. When Johnson was busied on the Life of Pope, Stockdale wrote a pathetic letter to him earnestly imploring "a generous tribute from his authority." Johnson was still obdurately silent; and Stockdale, who had received many acts of humane kindness from him, adds with fretful naivete,

"In his sentiments towards me he was divided between a benevolence to my interests, and a coldness to my fame."

Thus, in a moment, in the perverted heart of the scribbler, will ever be cancelled all human obligation for acts of benevolence, if we are cold to his fame!

And yet let us not too hastily condemn these unhappy men, even for the violation of the lesser moral feelings—it is often but a fatal effect from a melancholy cause; that hallucination of the intellect, in which, if their genius, as they call it, sometimes appears to sparkle like a painted bubble in the buoyancy of their vanity, they are also condemned to see it sinking in the dark horrors of a disappointed author, who has risked his life and his happiness on the miserable productions of his pen. The agonies of a disappointed author cannot, indeed, be contemplated without pain. If they can instruct, the following quotation will have its use.

Among the innumerable productions of Stockdale, was a "History of Gibraltar," which might have been interesting, from his having resided there: in a moment of despair, like Medea, he immolated his unfortunate offspring.

"When I had arrived at within a day's work of its conclusion, in consequence of some immediate and mortifying accidents, my literary adversity, and all my other misfortunes, took fast hold of my mind; oppressed it extremely; and reduced it to a stage of the deepest dejection and despondency. In this unhappy view of life, I made a sudden resolution—never more to prosecute the profession of an author; to retire altogether from the world, and read only for consolation and amusement. I committed to the flames my History of Gibraltar and my translation of Marsollier's Life of Cardinal Ximenes; for which the bookseller had refused to pay me the fifty guineas, according to agreement."

This claims a tear! Never were the agonies of literary disappointment more pathetically told.

But as it is impossible to have known poor deluded Stockdale, and not to have laughed at him more than to have wept for him—so the catastrophe of this author's literary life is as finely in character as all the acts. That catastrophe, of course, is his last poem.

After many years his poetical demon having been chained from the world, suddenly broke forth on the reports of a French invasion. The narrative shall proceed in his own inimitable manner.

"My poetical spirit excited me to write my poem of 'The Invincible Island.' I never found myself in a happier disposition to compose, nor ever wrote with more pleasure. I presumed warmly to hope that unless inveterate prejudice and malice were as invincible as our island itself, it would have the diffusive circulation which I earnestly desired.

"Flushed with this idea—borne impetuously along by ambition and by hope, though they had often deluded me, I set off in the mail-coach from Durham for London, on the 9th of December, 1797, at midnight, and in a severe storm. On my arrival in town my poem was advertised, printed, and published with great expedition. It was printed for Clarke in New Bond-street. For several days the sale was very promising; and my bookseller as well as myself entertained sanguine hopes; but the demand for the poem relaxed gradually! From this last of many literary misfortunes, I inferred that prejudice and malignity, in my fate as an author, seemed, indeed, to be invincible."

The catastrophe of the poet is much better told than anything in the poem, which had not merit enough to support that interest which the temporary subject had excited.

Let the fate of Stockdale instruct some, and he will not have written in vain the "Memoirs of his Life and Writings." I have only turned the literary feature to our eye; it was combined with others, equally striking, from the same mould in which that was cast. Stockdale imagined he possessed an intuitive knowledge of human nature. He says, "everything that constituted my nature, my acquirements, my habits, and my fortune, conspired to let in upon me a complete knowledge of human nature." A most striking proof of this knowledge is his parallel, after the manner of Plutarch, between Charles XII. and himself! He frankly confesses there were some points in which he and the Swedish monarch did not exactly resemble each other. He thinks, for instance, that the King of Sweden had a somewhat more fervid and original genius than himself, and was likewise a little more robust in his person—but, subjoins Stockdale,

"Of our reciprocal fortune, achievements, and conduct, some parts will be to his advantage, and some to mine."

Yet in regard to Fame, the main object between him and Charles XII., Stockdale imagined that his own

"Will not probably take its fixed and immoveable station, and shine with its expanded and permanent splendour, till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines his tomb!"

POPE hesitated at deciding on the durability of his poetry. PRIOR congratulates himself that he had not devoted all his days to rhymes. STOCKDALE imagines his fame is to commence at the very point (the tomb) where genius trembles its own may nearly terminate!

To close this article, I could wish to regale the poetical Stockdales with a delectable morsel of fraternal biography; such would be the life, and its memorable close, of ELKANAH SETTLE, who imagined himself to be a great poet, when he was placed on a level with Dryden by the town-wits, (gentle spirits!) to vex genius.

Settle's play of The Empress of Morocco was the very first "adorned with sculptures."[140] However, in due time, the Whigs despising his rhymes, Settle tried his prose for the Tories; but he was a magician whose enchantments never charmed. He at length obtained the office of the city poet, when lord mayors were proud enough to have laureates in their annual pageants.

When Elkanah Settle published any party poem, he sent copies round to the chiefs of the party, accompanied with addresses, to extort pecuniary presents. He had latterly one standard Elegy and Epithalamium printed off with blanks, which, by the ingenious contrivance of filling up with the names of any considerable person who died or was married, no one who was going out of life or entering it could pass scot-free from the tax levied by his hacknied muse. The following letter accompanied his presentation copy to the Duke of Somerset, of a poem, in Latin and English, on the Hanover succession, when Elkanah wrote for the Whigs, as he had for the Tories:—

"SIR,—Nothing but the greatness of the subject could encourage my presumption in laying the enclosed Essay at your Grace's feet, being, with all profound humility, your Grace's most dutiful servant,

"E. SETTLE."

In the latter part of his life Settle dropped still lower, and became the poet of a booth at Bartholomew Fair, and composed drolls, for which the rival of Dryden, it seems, had a genius!—but it was little respected—for two great personages, "Mrs. Mynns and her daughter, Mrs. Leigh," approving of their great poet's happy invention in one of his own drolls, "St. George for England," of a green dragon, as large as life, insisted, as the tyrant of old did to the inventor of the brazen bull, that the first experiment should be made on the artist himself, and Settle was tried in his own dragon; he crept in with all his genius, and did "act the dragon, enclosed in a case of green leather of his own invention." The circumstance is recorded in the lively verse of Young, in his "Epistle to Pope concerning the authors of the age."

Poor Elkanah, all other changes past, For bread in Smithfield dragons hiss'd at last, Spit streams of fire to make the butchers gape, And found his manners suited to his shape; Such is the fate of talents misapplied, So lived your prototype, and so he died.

FOOTNOTES:

[137] An elegant poet of our times alludes, with due feeling, to these personal sacrifices. Addressing Poetry, he exclaims—

"In devotion to thy heavenly charms, I clasp'd thy altar with my infant arms; For thee neglected the wide field of wealth; The toils of interest, and the sports of health."

How often may we lament that poets are too apt "to clasp the altar with infant arms." Goldsmith was near forty when he published his popular poems—and the greater number of the most valued poems were produced in mature life. When the poet begins in "infancy," he too often contracts a habit of writing verses, and sometimes, in all his life, never reaches poetry.

[138] Vol. ii. p. 355.

[139] My old favourite cynic, with all his rough honesty and acute discrimination, Anthony Wood, engraved a sketch of Stockdale when he etched with his aqua-fortis the personage of a brother:—"This Edward Waterhouse wrote a rhapsodical, indigested, whimsical work; and not in the least to be taken into the hand of any sober scholar, unless it be to make him laugh or wonder at the simplicity of some people. He was a cock-brained man, and afterwards took orders."

[140] It was published in quarto in 1673, and has engravings of the principal scene in each act, and a frontispiece representing the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens, where it was first acted publicly; it had been played twice at court before this, by noble actors, "persons of such birth and honour," says Settle, "that they borrowed no greatness from the characters they acted." The prologues were written by Lords Mulgrave and Rochester, and the utmost eclat given to the five long acts of rhyming bombast, which was declared superior to any work of Dryden's. As City Poet afterwards Settle composed the pageants, speeches, and songs for the Lord Mayor's Shows from 1691 to 1708. Towards the close of his career he became impoverished, and wrote from necessity on all subjects. One of his plays, composed for Mrs. Mynns' booth in Bartholomew Fair, has been twice printed, though both editions are now uncommonly rare. It is called the "Siege of Troy;" and its popularity is attested by Hogarth's print of Southwark Fair, where outside of Lee and Harper's great theatrical booth is exhibited a painting of the Trojan horse, and the announcement "The Siege of Troy is here."—ED.



QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

OR,

SOME MEMOIRS FOR OUR LITERARY HISTORY.

"The use and end of this Work I do not so much design for curiosity, or satisfaction of those that are the lovers of learning, but chiefly for a more grave and serious purpose: which is, that it will make learned men wise in the use and administration of learning."—LORD BACON, "Of Learning."



PREFACE.

THE QUARRELS OF AUTHORS may be considered as a continuation of the CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS; and both, as some Memoirs for Literary History.

These Quarrels of Authors are not designed to wound the Literary Character, but to expose the secret arts of calumny, the malignity of witty ridicule, and the evil prepossessions of unjust hatreds.

The present, like the preceding work, includes other subjects than the one indicated by the title, and indeed they are both subservient to a higher purpose—that of our Literary History.

There is a French work, entitled "Querelles Litteraires," quoted in "Curiosities of Literature," many years ago. Whether I derive the idea of the present from the French source I cannot tell. I could point out a passage in the great Lord BACON which might have afforded the hint. But I am inclined to think that what induced me to select this topic was the interest which JOHNSON has given to the literary quarrels between Dryden and Settle, Dennis and Addison, &c.; and which Sir WALTER SCOTT, who, amid the fresh creations of fancy, could delve for the buried truths of research, has thrown into his narrative of the quarrel of Dryden and Luke Milbourne.

From the French work I could derive no aid; and my plan is my own. I have fixed on each literary controversy to illustrate some principle, to portray some character, and to investigate some topic. Almost every controversy which occurred opened new views. With the subject, the character of the author connected itself; and with the character were associated those events of his life which reciprocally act on each other. I have always considered an author as a human being, who possesses at once two sorts of lives, the intellectual and the vulgar: in his books we trace the history of his mind, and in his actions those of human nature. It is this combination which interests the philosopher and the man of feeling; which provides the richest materials for reflection; and all those original details which spring from the constituent principles of man. JOHNSON'S passion for literary history, and his great knowledge of the human heart, inspired at once the first and the finest model in this class of composition.

The Philosophy of Literary History was indeed the creation of BAYLE. He was the first who, by attempting a critical dictionary, taught us to think, and to be curious and vast in our researches. He ennobled a collection of facts by his reasonings, and exhibited them with the most miscellaneous illustrations; and thus conducting an apparently humble pursuit with a higher spirit, he gave a new turn to our studies. It was felt through Europe; and many celebrated authors studied and repeated BAYLE. This father of a numerous race has an English as well as a French progeny.

JOHNSON wrote under many disadvantages; but, with scanty means, he has taught us a great end. Dr. BIRCH was the contemporary of JOHNSON. He excelled his predecessors; and yet he forms a striking contrast as a literary historian. BIRCH was no philosopher, and I adduce him as an instance how a writer, possessing the most ample knowledge, and the most vigilant curiosity—one practised in all the secret arts of literary research in public repositories and in private collections, and eminently skilled in the whole science of bibliography—may yet fail with the public. The diligence of BIRCH has perpetuated his memory by a monument of MSS., but his, touch was mortal to genius! He palsied the character which could never die; heroes sunk pusillanimously under his hand; and in his torpid silence, even MILTON seemed suddenly deprived of his genius.

I have freely enlarged in the notes to this work; a practice which is objectionable to many, but indispensable perhaps in this species of literary history.

The late Mr. CUMBERLAND, in a conversation I once held with him on this subject, triumphantly exclaimed, "You will not find a single note through the whole volume of my 'Life.' I never wrote a note. The ancients never wrote notes; but they introduced into their text all which was proper for the reader to know."

I agreed with that elegant writer, that a fine piece of essay-writing, such as his own "Life," required notes no more than his novels and his comedies, among which it may be classed. I observed that the ancients had no literary history; this was the result of the discovery of printing, the institution of national libraries, the general literary intercourse of Europe, and some other causes which are the growth almost of our own times. The ancients have written history without producing authorities.

Mr. CUMBERLAND was then occupied on a review of Fox's History; and of CLARENDON, which lay open before him,—he had been complaining, with all the irritable feelings of a dramatist, of the frequent suspensions, and the tedious minuteness of his story.

I observed that notes had not then been discovered. Had Lord CLARENDON known their use, he had preserved the unity of design in his text. His Lordship has unskilfully filled it with all that historical furniture his diligence had collected, and with those minute discussions which his anxiety for truth, and his lawyer-like mode of scrutinising into facts and substantiating evidence, amassed. Had these been cast into notes, and were it now possible to pass them over in the present text, how would the story of the noble historian clear up! The greatness of his genius will appear when disencumbered of its unwieldy and misplaced accompaniments.

If this observation be just, it will apply with greater force to literary history itself, which, being often the mere history of the human mind, has to record opinions as well as events—to discuss as well as to narrate—to show how accepted truths become suspicious—or to confirm what has hitherto rested in obscure uncertainty, and to balance contending opinions and opposite facts with critical nicety. The multiplied means of our knowledge now opened to us, have only rendered our curiosity more urgent in its claims, and raised up the most diversified objects. These, though accessories to the leading one of our inquiries, can never melt together in the continuity of a text. It is to prevent all this disorder, and to enjoy all the usefulness and the pleasure of this various knowledge, which has produced the invention of notes in literary history. All this forms a sort of knowledge peculiar to the present more enlarged state of literature. Writers who delight in curious and rare extracts, and in the discovery of new facts and new views of things, warmed by a fervour of research which brings everything nearer to our eye and close to our touch, study to throw contemporary feelings in their page. Such rare extracts and such new facts BAYLE eagerly sought, and they delighted JOHNSON; but all this luxury of literature can only be produced to the public eye in the variegated forms of notes.



WARBURTON, AND HIS QUARRELS;

INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS LITERARY CHARACTER

The name of Warburton more familiar to us than his Works—declared to be "a Colossus" by a Warburtonian, who afterwards shrinks the image into "a human size"—Lowth's caustic retort on his Attorneyship—motives for the change to Divinity—his first literary mischances—Warburton and his Welsh Prophet—his Dedications—his mean flatteries—his taste more struck by the monstrous than the beautiful—the effects of his opposite studies—the SECRET PRINCIPLE which conducted Warburton through all his Works—the curious argument of his Alliance between Church and State—the bold paradox of his Divine Legation—the demonstration ends in a conjecture—Warburton lost in the labyrinth he had ingeniously constructed—confesses the harassed state of his mind—attacked by Infidels and Christians—his SECRET PRINCIPLE turns the poetical narrative of AEneas into the Eleusinian Mysteries—Hurd attacks Jortin; his Attic irony translated into plain English—Warburton's paradox on Eloquence; his levity of ideas renders his sincerity suspected—Leland refutes the whimsical paradox—Hurd attacks Leland—Leland's noble triumph—Warburton's SECRET PRINCIPLE operating in Modern Literature: on Pope's Essay on Man—Lord Bolingbroke the author of the Essay—Pope received Warburton as his tutelary genius—Warburton's systematic treatment of his friends and rival editors—his literary artifices and little intrigues—his Shakspeare—the whimsical labours of Warburton on Shakspeare annihilated by Edwards's "Canons of Criticism"—Warburton and Johnson—Edwards and Warburton's mutual attacks—the concealed motive of his edition of Shakspeare avowed in his justification—his SECRET PRINCIPLE further displayed in Pope's Works—attacks Akenside; Dyson's generous defence—correct Ridicule is a test of Truth, illustrated by a well-known case—Warburton a literary revolutionist; aimed to be a perpetual dictator—the ambiguous tendency of his speculations—the Warburtonian School supported by the most licentious principles—specimens of its peculiar style—the use to which Warburton applied the Dunciad—his party: attentive to raise recruits—the active and subtle Hurd—his extreme sycophancy—Warburton, to maintain his usurped authority, adopted his system of literary quarrels.

The name of WARBURTON is more familiar to us than his works: thus was it early,[141] thus it continues, and thus it will be with posterity! The cause may be worth our inquiry. Nor is there, in the whole compass of our literary history, a character more instructive for its greatness and its failures; none more adapted to excite our curiosity, and which can more completely gratify it.

Of great characters, whose actions are well known, and of those who, whatever claim they may have to distinction, are not so, ARISTOTLE has delivered a precept with his accustomed sagacity. If Achilles, says the Stagirite, be the subject of our inquiries, since all know what he has done, we are simply to indicate his actions, without stopping to detail; but this would not serve for Critias; for whatever relates to him must be fully told, since he is known to few;[142]—a critical precept, which ought to be frequently applied in the composition of this work.

The history of Warburton is now well known; the facts lie dispersed in the chronological biographer;[143] but the secret connexion which exists between them, if there shall be found to be any, has not yet been brought out; and it is my business to press these together; hence to demonstrate principles, or to deduce inferences.

The literary fame of Warburton was a portentous meteor: it seemed unconnected with the whole planetary system through which it rolled, and it was imagined to be darting amid new creations, as the tail of each hypothesis blazed with idle fancies.[144] Such extraordinary natures cannot be looked on with calm admiration, nor common hostility; all is the tumult of wonder about such a man; and his adversaries, as well as his friends, though differently affected, are often overcome by the same astonishment.

To a Warburtonian, the object of his worship looks indeed of colossal magnitude, in the glare thrown about that hallowed spot; nor is the divinity of common stature; but the light which makes him appear so great, must not be suffered to conceal from us the real standard by which only his greatness can be determined:[145] even literary enthusiasm, delightful to all generous tempers, may be too prodigal of its splendours, wasting itself while it shines; but truth remains behind! Truth, which, like the asbestos, is still unconsumed and unaltered amidst these glowing fires.

The genius of Warburton has called forth two remarkable anonymous criticisms—in one, all that the most splendid eloquence can bring to bear against this chief and his adherents;[146] and in the other, all that taste, warmed by a spark of Warburtonian fire, can discriminate in an impartial decision.[147] Mine is a colder and less grateful task. I am but a historian! I have to creep along in the darkness of human events, to lay my hand cautiously on truths so difficult to touch, and which either the panegyrist or the writer of an invective cover over, and throw aside into corners.

Much of the moral, and something too of the physical dispositions of the man enter into the literary character; and, moreover, there are localities—the place where he resides, the circumstances which arise, and the habits he contracts; to all these the excellences and the defects of some of our great literary characters may often be traced. With this clue we may thread our way through the labyrinth of Genius.

Warburton long resided in an obscure provincial town, the articled clerk of a country attorney,[148] and then an unsuccessful practising one. He seems, too, once to have figured as "a wine-merchant in the Borough," and rose into notice as "the orator of a disputing club;" but, in all his shapes, still keen in literary pursuits, without literary connexions; struggling with all the defects of a desultory and self-taught education, but of a bold aspiring character, he rejected, either in pride or in despair, his little trades, and took Deacon's orders—to exchange a profession, unfavourable to continuity of study, for another more propitious to its indulgence.[149] In a word, he set off as a literary adventurer, who was to win his way by earning it from patronage.

His first mischances were not of a nature to call forth that intrepidity which afterwards hardened into the leading feature of his character. Few great authors have begun their race with less auspicious omens, though an extraordinary event in the life of an author happened to Warburton—he had secured a patron before he was an author.

The first publication of his which we know, was his "Translations in Prose and Verse from Roman Poets, Orators, and Historians." 1724. He was then about twenty-five years of age. The fine forms of classic beauty could never be cast in so rough a mould as his prose; and his turgid unmusical verses betrayed qualities of mind incompatible with the delicacy of poetry. Four years afterwards he repeated another bolder attempt, in his "Critical and Philosophical Inquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles." After this publication, I wonder Warburton was ever suspected of infidelity or even scepticism.[150] So radically deficient in Warburton was that fine internal feeling which we call taste, that through his early writings he acquired not one solitary charm of diction,[151] and scarcely betrayed, amid his impurity of taste, that nerve and spirit which afterwards crushed all rival force. His translations in imitation of Milton's style betray his utter want of ear and imagination. He attempted to suppress both these works during his lifetime.

When these unlucky productions were republished by Dr. Parr, the Dedications were not forgotten; they were both addressed to the same opulent baronet, not omitting "the virtues" of his lady the Countess of Sunderland, whose marriage he calls "so divine a union." Warburton had shown no want of judgment in the choice of his patrons; for they had more than one living in their gift—and perhaps, knowing his patrons, none in the dedications themselves. They had, however, this absurdity, that in freely exposing the servile practices of dedicators, the writer was himself indulging in that luxurious sin, which he so forcibly terms "Public Prostitution." This early management betrays no equivocal symptoms of that traffic in Dedications, of which he has been so severely accused,[152] and of that paradoxical turn and hardy effrontery which distinguished his after-life. These dedications led to preferment, and thus hardily was laid the foundation-stone of his aspiring fortunes.