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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..86ddd53 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #54219 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54219) diff --git a/old/54219-0.txt b/old/54219-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 33d0752..0000000 --- a/old/54219-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5728 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Little English Gallery, by Louise Imogen -Guiney - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: A Little English Gallery - - -Author: Louise Imogen Guiney - - - -Release Date: February 21, 2017 [eBook #54219] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE ENGLISH GALLERY*** - - -E-text prepared by Emmy, MFR, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team -(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by -Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this - file which includes the original illustration. - See 54219-h.htm or 54219-h.zip: - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54219/54219-h/54219-h.htm) - or - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54219/54219-h.zip) - - - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/littleenggallery00guinrich - - -Transcriber's note: - - Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). - - A carat character is used to denote superscription. A - single character following the carat is superscripted - (example: 9^a). - - - - - -[Illustration] - - -A LITTLE ENGLISH GALLERY - -by - -LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY - - - - - - -[Illustration] - -New York -Harper and Brothers -MDCCCXCIV - -Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers. - -All rights reserved. - - - - - TO - - EDMUND GOSSE - - THIS FRIENDLY TRESPASS ON HIS FIELDS - - - - -PREFATORY NOTE - - -THE studies in this book are chosen from a number written at irregular -intervals, and from sheer interest in their subjects, long ago. -Portions of them, or rough drafts of what has since been wholly -remodelled from fresher and fuller material at first hand, have -appeared within five years in _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Macmillan’s_, -_The Catholic World_, and _Poet-Lore_; and thanks are due the -magazines for permission to reprint them. Yet more cordial thanks, -for kind assistance on biographical points, belong to the Earl of -Powis; the Rev. R. H. Davies, Vicar of old St. Luke’s, Chelsea; the -Rev. T. Vere Bayne, of Christchurch, and H. E. D. Blakiston, Esq., -of Trinity College, Oxford; T. W. Lyster, Esq., of the National -Library of Ireland; Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, Esq.; Miss Langton, -of Langton-by-Spilsby; the Vicars of Dauntsey, Enfield Highway, and -Montgomery, and especially those of High Ercall and Speke; and the -many others in England through whose courtesy and patience the tracer -of these unimportant sketches has been able to make them approximately -life-like. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAP. PAGE - I. LADY DANVERS (1561-1627) 1 - - II. HENRY VAUGHAN (1621-1695) 53 - - III. GEORGE FARQUHAR (1677-1707) 119 - - IV. TOPHAM BEAUCLERK (1739-1780) - AND - BENNET LANGTON (1741-1800) 171 - - V. WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830) 229 - - - - -I - -LADY DANVERS - -1561-1627 - - -MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD somewhere devotes a grateful sentence to the women -who have left a fragrance in literary history, and whose loss of long -ago can yet inspire men of to-day with indescribable regret. Lady -Danvers is surely one of these. As John Donne’s dear friend, and George -Herbert’s mother, she has a double poetic claim, like her unforgotten -contemporary, Mary Sidney, for whom was made an everlasting epitaph. -If Dr. Donne’s fraternal fame have not quite the old lustre of the -incomparable Sir Philip’s, it is, at least, a greater honor to own -Herbert for son than to have perpetuated the race of Pembroke. Nor is -it an inharmonious thing to remember, in thus calling up, in order to -rival it, the sweet memory of “Sidney’s sister,” that Herbert and -Pembroke have long been, and are yet, married names. - -Magdalen, the youngest child of Sir Richard Newport, and of Margaret -Bromley, his wife, herself daughter of that Bromley who was -Privy-Councillor, Lord Chief-Justice, and executor to Henry VIII., was -born in High Ercall, Salop; the loss or destruction of parish registers -leaves us but 1561-62 as the probable date. Of princely stock, with -three sisters and an only brother, and heir to virtue and affluence, -she could look with the right pride of unfallen blood upon “the many -fair coats the Newports bear” over their graves at Wroxeter. It was -the day of learned and thoughtful girls; and this girl seems to have -been at home with book and pen, with lute and viol. She married, in -the flower of her youth, Richard Herbert, Esquire, of Blache Hall, -Montgomery, black-haired and black-bearded, as were all his line; a man -of some intellectual training, and of noted courage, descended from -a distinguished brother of the yet more distinguished Sir Richard -Herbert of Edward IV.’s time, and from the most ancient rank of Wales -and England. At Eyton in Salop, in 1581, was born their eldest child, -Edward, afterwards Lord Herbert of Cherbury, a writer who is still the -puzzle and delight of Continental critics. He is said to have been a -beautiful boy, and not very robust; his first speculation with his -infant tongue was the piercing query: “How came I into this world?” But -his next brother, Richard, was of another stamp; and went his frank, -flashing, fighting way through Europe, “with scars of four-and-twenty -wounds upon him, to his grave” at Bergen-op-Zoom, with William, the -third son, following in his soldierly footsteps. Charles grew up -reserved and studious, and died, like his paternal uncle, a dutiful -Fellow of New College, Oxford. The fifth of these Herberts, “a soul -composed of harmonies,” as Cotton said of him, and destined to make the -name beloved among all readers of English, was George, the poet, the -saintly “parson of Fuggleston and Bemerton.” Henry, his junior, with -whom George had a sympathy peculiarly warm and long, became in his -manhood Master of the Revels, and held the office for over fifty years. -“You and I are alone left to brother it,” Lord Herbert of Cherbury once -wrote him, in a mood more tender than his wont, when all else of that -radiant family had gone into dust. The youngest of Magdalen Newport’s -sons was Thomas, “a posthumous,” traveller, sailor, and master of a -ship in the war against Algiers. Elizabeth, Margaret, and Frances -were the daughters, of whom Izaak Walton says, with satisfaction, -that they lived to be examples of virtue, and to do good to their -generation. None of them made an illustrious match. Margaret married -a Vaughan. Frances secured unto herself the patronymic Brown, and was -happily seconded by Elizabeth, George Herbert’s “dear sick sister,” -who became Mistress Jones. In the south chancel transept of Montgomery -Church, where Richard Herbert the elder had been buried three years -before, there was erected in 1600, at his wife’s cost, a large canopied -alabaster altar-tomb, with two portrait-figures recumbent. All around -it, in the quaint and affectionate boast of the age, are the small -images of these seven sons and three daughters; “Job’s number and Job’s -distribution,” as she once remarked, and as her biographers failed -not to repeat after her. But their kindred ashes are widely sundered, -and “as content with six foot as with the moles of Adrianus.” This at -Montgomery is the only known representation of the Lady Magdalen. Her -effigy lies at her husband’s left, the palms folded, the eyes open, the -full hair rolled back from a low brow, beneath a charming and simple -head-dress. Nothing can be nobler than the whole look of the face, like -her in her prime, and reminding one of her son’s loving epithet, “my -Juno.” The short-sighted inscription upon the slab yet includes her -name. - -Never had an army of brilliant and requiring children a more excellent -mother. “_Severa parens_,” her gentle George called her in his -scholarly verses; and such she was, with the mingled sagacity and -joyousness which made up her character. If we are to believe their -own testimony, the leading members of her young family were of -excessively peppery Cymric temperaments, and worthy to call out that -“manlier part” of her which Dr. Donne, who had every opportunity of -observing it in play, was so quick to praise. There is a passage in -a letter of Sir Thomas Lacy, addressed to Edward Herbert, touching -upon “the knowledge I had how ill you can digest the least indignity.” -“Holy George Herbert” himself, in 1618, commended to his dear brother -Henry the gospel of self-honoring: “It is the part of a poor spirit to -undervalue himself and blush.” And physical courage went hand in hand -with this blameless haughtiness of the Herberts, a pretty collateral -proof of which may be adduced from a message of Sir Henry Jones to his -brother-in-law, the other Henry just mentioned, concerning a gift for -his little nephew. “If my cozen, William Herbert your sonne . . . be -ready for the rideing of a horse, I will provide him with a Welch nagg -that shall be as mettlesome as himself.” There is no doubt that all -this racial fire was fostered by one woman. “Thou my root, and my most -firm rock, O my mother!” George cried, long after in the _Parentalia_, -aware that he owed to her his high ideals, and the strength of -character which is born of self-discipline. - -“God gave her,” says one of her two devoted annalists, who we wish -were not so brief and meagre of detail—“God gave her such a comeliness -as though she was not proud of it, yet she was so content with it as -not to go about to mend it by any art.” Her fortune was large, her -benevolence wide-spreading. All the countryside knew her for the living -representative of the ever-hospitable houses of Newport and Bromley. -“She gave not on some great days,” continues Dr. Donne, “or at solemn -goings abroad; but as God’s true almoners, the sun and moon, that pass -on in a continual doing of good; as she received her daily bread from -God, so daily she distributed it, and imparted it to others.” In these -years of her wifehood and widowhood at Montgomery Castle (the “romancy -place” dating from the eleventh century, and ruined, like the fine -old house at High Ercall, during the Civil Wars), and afterwards at -Oxford and London, she reared her happy crew of boys and girls in an -air of generosity and honor; training them to habits of hardiness and -simplicity, and to the equal relish of work and play. “Herself with -her whole family (as a church in that elect lady’s house, to whom John -wrote his second Epistle) did every Sabbath shut up the day at night -with a general, with a cheerful singing of psalms.” One may guess at -young Richard’s turmoil in-doors, and at the little Elizabeth’s soft, -patient ways, and think of George (on Sundays at any rate) as the child -of content, “the contesseration of elegances” worthy Archdeacon Oley -called him. - -The fair and stately matron moving over them and among them was not -without her prejudices. “I was once,” Edward testifies, “in danger of -drowning, learning to swim. My mother, upon her blessing, charged me -never to learn swimming; telling me, further, that she had learned of -more drowned than saved by it.” Though the given reason failed to -impress him, he adds, the commandment did; so that the accomplished -Crichton of Cherbury, who understood alchemy, broke his way through -metaphysics, and rode the Great Horse; the ambassador, author, and -beau, to whom Ben Jonson sent his greeting: - - “What man art thou that art so many men, - All-virtuous Herbert?” - -even he lacked, on principle, the science of keeping himself alive -in an alien element, because it had been pronounced less risky to -die outright! It was a pretty paradox, and one which sets down our -high-minded Magdalen as quite feminine, quite human. - -Her Edward was matriculated in 1595 at University College, Oxford,[1] -for which he seemed to retain no great partiality; he bequeathed his -books, like a loyal Welshman, to Jesus College, instead, and his -manuscripts to the Bodleian Library. In 1598, when he was little -more than seventeen, he was wedded to his cousin Mary Herbert, of -St. Gillian in Monmouthshire. Her age was one-and-twenty; she was an -heiress, enjoined by her father’s will to marry a Herbert or forfeit -her estates; she was also almost a philosopher. There was no wild -affection on either side, but the marriage promised rather well, both -persons having resources; and no real catastrophe befell either in -after-life. Much as she desired the match for worldly motives, the -chief promoter of it was too solicitous for her tall dreamer of a -son, who underwent the pleasing peril of having Queen Bess clap him -on the cheek, not to take the whole weight of conjugal direction on -her own shoulders. Without undue officiousness, but with the masterly -foresight of a shrewd saint, she moved to Oxford from Montgomery with -her younger children and their tutors, in order to handle Mistress -Herbert’s husband during his minority. “She continued there with him,” -says Walton, in his _Life of George Herbert_, “and still kept him in -a moderate awe of herself, and so much under her own eye as to see and -converse with him daily; but she managed this power over him without -any such rigid sourness as might make her company a torment to her -child, but with such a sweetness and compliance with the recreations -and pleasures of youth as did incline him willingly to spend much of -his time in the company of his dear and careful mother.” - -It was during this stay that she contracted the chivalrous friendship -which has embalmed her tranquil memory. Dr. John Donne (not ordained -until 1614, and indeed not Dr. Donne then at all, but “Jack Donne,” -his profaner self) had been at Cadiz with Essex, and had wandered over -the face of Europe; and he came back, accidentally, to Oxford during -the most troubled year of his early prime. It was no strange place to -him,[2] who had been, at eleven, the Pico della Mirandola of Hart -Hall, and whose relatives seem to have resided always in the town. -There and then, however, he cast his bright eye upon Excellence, and in -his own phrase, - - “—dared love that, and say so, too, - And forget the He and She.” - -We can do no better than cite a celebrated and beautiful passage, once -more from Walton: “This amity, begun at this time and place, was not -an amity that polluted their souls, but an amity made up of a chain of -suitable inclinations and virtues; an amity like that of St. Chrysostom -to his dear and virtuous Olympias, whom, in his letters, he calls his -saint; or an amity, indeed, more like that of St. Hierom to his Paula, -whose affection to her was such that he turned poet in his old age, and -then made her epitaph, wishing all his body were turned into tongues -that he might declare her just praises to posterity.” How these words -remind one of the sweet historic mention which Condivi gives to the -relations between Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo! The little English -idyl of friendship and the great Italian one run parallel in much. - -Donne’s trenchant _Satires_, some of the earliest and very best in -the language, were already written, and he was not without the hint -of fame. Born in 1573, he was but eight years the senior of Edward -Herbert, and not more than a dozen years the junior of Edward Herbert’s -mother. To her two sons, also, who were to figure as men of letters, -he was sincerely attached from the first, and had a marked and lasting -influence on their minds. Donne had the superabundance of mental power -which Mr. Minto has pointed out as the paradoxical cause of his failure -to become a great poet. He was a three-storied soul, as the French say: -a spirit of many sides and moods, a life-long dreamer of good and bad -dreams. To his restless, incisive intelligence his contemporaries, with -Jonson and Carew at their head, bowed in hyperboles of acclaim. He had -a changeful conscience, often antagonized and often appeased. There -was a strain in him of strong joy, for he was descended through his -mother from pleasant John Heywood the dramatist, and from the father -of that great and merry-hearted gentleman, Sir Thomas More. If ever -man needed vitality to buoy him over sorrows heavy and vast, it was -Donne in his “yeasting youth.” Thrown, through no fault but his own, -from his old footholds of religion and occupation, and unable, despite -his versatile and alert genius, to grind a steady living from the hard -mills of the world, he was in the midst of a bitter plight when the -friends worthy of him found a heavenly opportunity which they did not -let go by, and made his acceptance of their favor a rich gift unto -themselves. Foremost among these, besides Lady Herbert, were Sir Robert -Drury of Drury Lane, and a kinsman, Sir Francis Woolly, of Pirford, -Surrey, fated to die in his youth, both of whom gave the Donnes, for -some nine consecutive years, the use of their princely houses. John -Donne had been in the service of the Chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, -and lost place and purse by the opposition to his marriage with his -“_lectissima dilectissimaque_,” Anne More, who was Lady Ellesmere’s -niece, the daughter of Sir George More of Loxly, Lieutenant of the -Tower, and probably a distant cousin of his own. No reverses, however, -could beat the pathetic cheer out of him. “Anne Donne,[3] undone,” was -one of his inveterate teary jests over the state of things at home. He -wrote once, with sickness, poverty, and despair at his elbow: “If God -should ease us with burials, I know not how to perform even that. But I -flatter myself that I am dying, too, for I cannot waste faster than by -such griefs.” Five of his twelve children passed before their father to -the grave, the good domestic daughter Constance upholding him always, -and keeping the house together. But just as hope dawned with his -appointment to the Lectureship of Lincoln’s Inn, heavenward suddenly, -with her youngest-born, in 1617, went his dear and faithful wife, whom -he laid to rest in St. Clement Danes. - -About the time when the remorseful old queen died disdainfully on her -chamber-floor at Richmond, the necessities of this family called for -daily succors, and with a simple and noble delicacy they were supplied. -Nor did they cease. Magdalen Herbert was a “bountiful benefactor,” -Donne “as grateful an acknowledger.” His first letter to her from -Mitcham in Surrey, dated July 10, 1607, is made up of terse, tender -thanks, in his heart’s own odd language. He sends her an enclosure of -sonnets and hymns, “lost to us,” says Walton, movingly, “but doubtless -they were such as they two now sing in heaven.” Dr. Grosart, with a -great show of justice, claims that the sequence called _La Corona_, and -familiar to latter-day readers, are the identical sonnets passed from -one to the other. During this same month of July we know that, paying a -call in his “London, plaguey London,” and finding his friend abroad,[4] -Dr. Donne consoled himself by leaving a courtliest message: “Your -memory is a state-cloth and presence which I reverence, though you be -away;” and went back after to his “sallads and onions” at Mitcham, or -to his solitary lodgings near Whitehall. - -The attachment, close and deferent on both sides, was continued without -a breach, and with the intention, at least, of “almost daily letters.” -Thoreau, quoting Chaucer, so saluted Mrs. Emerson: “You have helped -to keep my life on loft.” No meaner service than this was his dear -lady’s to John Donne, often heretofore astray in the slough of doubt -and dissipation; she fed more than his little children, clothed more -than his body, and fostered anew in him that faith in humanity which -is the well-spring of good works. He was not a poet of Leigh Hunt’s -innocent temperament, who could accept benefits gladly and gracefully -from any appreciator; his soul dwelt too remote and proud in her -accustomed citadels. But this loving help, thrust upon him, he took -with dignity, and after 1621, when he was able, in his own person, to -befriend others, he gave back gallantly to mankind the blessings he -once received from two or three. It was something for Magdalen Herbert -to have saved a master-name to English letters, and kept in his unique -place the poet, interesting beyond many, whose fantastic but real force -swayed generations of thinking and singing men; it was something, also, -to have won in return the words which were his gold coin of payment. -Nowhere is Donne’s sentiment more genuine, his workmanship more happy -and less complex, than in the verses dedicated to her blameless -name. They have a lucidity unsurpassed among the yet straightforward -lyrics of their day. Drayton’s self, who died in the same year with -Donne, might have addressed to the lady of Eyton so much of his noble -extravagance; - - “Queens hereafter shall be glad to live - Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise.” - -Yet in these eulogies, as in most of the graver contemporaneous poems -of the sort, there is little personality to be detected; the homage -has rather a floating outline, an unapproaching music, exquisite and -awed. Donne gives, sometimes, the large Elizabethan measure: - - “Is there any good which is not she?” - -In the so-called _Elegy, The Autumnal_, written on leaving Oxford, he -starts off with a well-known cherishable strophe: - - “No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace - As I have seen in one autumnal face.” - -The entire poem is a monody on the encroachments of years, and neatly -chronological: - - “If we love things long-sought, age is a thing - Which we are fifty years in compassing; - If transitory things, which soon decay, - Age must be loveliest at the latest day.” - -It strikes the modern ear as maladroit enough that a woman in her yet -sunshiny forties, and a most comely woman to boot, should have required -prosody’s ingenious excuses for wrinkles and kindred damages. Was life -so hard as that in “the spacious days”? Shakespeare, in agreement with -Horace, had already reminded his handsome “Will” of the pitiless and -too expeditious hour, - - “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, - And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field!” - -which also seems, to a nice historical sense, somewhat staggering. The -close of Donne’s little homily is perfect, and full of the winning -melancholy which was part of his birthright in art, whenever he allowed -himself direct and homely expression: - - “May still - My love descend! and journey down the hill, - Not panting after growing beauties; so - I shall ebb on with them who homeward go.” - -Such was John Donne’s first known tribute to his friend. She must have -been early and thoroughly familiar with his manuscripts, which were -passed about freely, Dr. Grosart thinks, prior to 1613, and which -burned what Massinger would call “no adulterate incense” to herself. -Her bays are to be gleaned off many a tree, and she must have cast a -frequent influence on Donne’s work, which is not traceable now. He -seems to have had a Crashaw-like devotion to the Christian saint whose -inheritance - - “Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo,” - -not unconnected with the fact that some one else was Magdalen also; -never does he tire of dwelling on the coincidence and the difference. -In one of his quaintly moralizing songs, he goes seeking a “true-love” -primrose, where but on Montgomery Hill! for he is hers, by all -chivalrous tokens, as much as he may be. Again he cites, and almost -with humor: - - “that perplexing eye - Which equally claims love and reverence.” - -And his platonics make their honorable challenge at the end of some -fine lines: - - “So much do I love her choice, that I - Would fain love him that shall be loved of her!” - -There was prescience in that couplet. As early, at least, as 1607-8, -the widow’s long privacy ended, probably while she was at her “howse -at Charing Cross,” watching over the progress of her son George at -Westminster School; and he that was “loved of her” was the grandson of -the last Lord Latimer of the Nevilles, junior brother of a nobleman -who perished with Essex in 1602, and brother and heir of that Sir -Henry Danvers who was created Earl of Danby in 1625 for his services -in Ireland, and who literally left a green memory as the founder of -the pleasant Physic Gardens at Oxford. The name of Danvers, the kindly -step-father, is one of the noteworthy omissions of Lord Herbert of -Cherbury’s _Autobiography_. But George Herbert was devoted to him, -as his many letters show, and turned to him, never in vain, during -his restless years at Cambridge; and into his circle of relatives, -with romantic suddenness, he afterwards married. Sir John Danvers, of -Dauntsey, Wilts, was twenty years younger than his wife. It is worth -while to quote the very deft and courtly statement of the case made at -the last by Dr. Donne: “The natural endowments of her person were such -as had their part in drawing and fixing the affections of such a person -as by his birth and youth and interest in great favors at court, and -legal proximity to great possessions in the world, might justly have -promised him acceptance in what family soever, or upon what person -soever, he had directed. . . . He placed them here, neither diverted -thence, nor repented since. For as the well-tuning of an instrument -makes higher and lower strings of one sound, so the inequality of their -years was thus reduced to an evenness, that she had a cheerfulness -agreeable to his youth, and he had a sober staidness conformable to her -more advanced years. So that I would not consider her at so much more -than forty, nor him at so much less than thirty, at that time; but as -their persons were made one and their fortunes made one by marriage, -so I would put their years into one number, and finding a sixty -between them, think them thirty apiece; for as twins of one hour they -lived.”[5] - -In the August of 1607, a masque by John Marston was given in the now -ruined castle of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, eighteen miles from Leicester, as -an entertainment devised by Lord Huntingdon and his young wife, the -Lady Elizabeth Stanley, to welcome her mother, Alice, Countess-Dowager -of Derby,[6] “the first night of her honor’s arrival at the house of -Ashby.” Fourteen noble ladies took part in the masque, and among them -was “Mris Da’vers.” The name may, perhaps, be recognized as that of the -subject of this sketch, for Sir John Danvers was not knighted until the -following year; and it has been so recognized by interested scholars -who have searched Nichols’s _Progresses of James I_. And yet we cannot -be too sure that we have her before us, in the wreaths and picturesque -draperies of the amateur stage; for there was another Mistress Da’vers -at court, whose purported letter, dated February 3, 1613, signed with -her confusing Christian names of “Mary Magdaline,” gave great trouble, -thirty years ago, to the experts of the Camden Society. Besides, a -letter of the good gossipy Chamberlain, dated March 3, 1608-9, mentions -as if it were then a piece of fresh news: “Young Davers is likewise -wedded to the widow Herbert, Sir Edward’s mother, of more than twice -his age.” This would seem to preclude the possibility of the fair -masquer being the same person. - -The mother of many Herberts, the “more than forty” bride, was by -nature a home-keeping character. Among the correspondence relating -to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, privately printed in 1886 by the Earl -of Powis, are a few pages which give us invaluable glimpses of the -London household. Lady Danvers’s eldest son, who set off upon his -travels soon after her second marriage, and who applied himself -vigorously to the various diversions of body and mind catalogued -in the _Autobiography_, found himself often pinched for money. In -such a strait, not unfamiliar to other fine gentlemen of his day, he -invariably appealed to the services of the step-father who was his -junior, in England. The latter, writing how “wee are all some what -after the olde manner, and doe hartely wish you well,” seems to have -busied himself to some avail, in concert with his brother-in-law, Sir -Francis Newport (the first Lord Newport), in securing letters of credit -to Milan, Turin, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, and in explaining at -length, in his long involved sentences, how matters could be bettered. -Whether or not the absent Knight of the Bath had reason to suspect Sir -John’s disinterested action when it came to the handling of pounds -and pence, he does not seem, then or after, to have burdened him with -any great harvest of thanks. But Sir John’s faithful wife knew how to -defend him, in a script of May 12, 1615, which may be quoted precisely -as it stands in the Herbert papers. - - “To my best beloved sonn, S’r Edward Herbert, Knight, - “My deare Sonn, - - it is straunge to me to here you - to complayne of want of care of you in your absence - when my thoughts are seldom removed from you which - must assuredly set me aworkinge of any thinge may doe - you good, & for writinge the one of us yf not both - never let messenges pass without letter, your stay - abroad is so short in any one place & we so unhappy in - givinge you contentment as our letters com not to your - hands which we are sorry for. And to tel you further - of S’r John Da’vers Love which I dare sweare is to no - man more, he is & hath beene so careful to keep you - from lake of money now you are abroad as your Baylife - faylinge payment as they continually doe & pay no man, - he goeth to your Merchaunt, offers him self & all the - powers he can make to supply you as your occasions may - require, mistake him not, but beleeve me there was - never a tenderer hart or a lovinger minde in any man - then is in him towards you who have power to com’aund - him & all that is his. Now for your Baylifs I must - tell you they have not yet payed your brothers all - their Anuities due at Midsom’er past & but half due - at Christmas last and no news of the rest, this yf - advauntage were taken might be preiuditiall to you and - it is ill for your Brothers & very ill you have such - officers. - - “I hope it will bringe you home & that is all the good - can com of this. your sister Johnes hath long beene - sicke & within this 8 dayes hath brought a boy she is - so weake as she is much feared by those aboute her. my - Lady Vachell lyes now adyeinge the bell hath twice gone - for her. your wife & sweet children are well & herein - I send you little Florence letter to see what comfort - you may have of your deare children, let them, my Dear - sonn, draw you home & affoorde them your care and me - your comfort that desire more to see you then I desire - any thinge ells in the world, and now I end with my - dayly prayer for your health and safe retorne to Your - ever lovinge mother, - - Magd: Da’vers. - - “I have received the Pattent of your Br: William, & S’r - John hath beene with the ambassatore who stayes for S’r - James Sandaline[7] his cominge.” - -A sympathizing reader, aware of sequences, may wonder whence Sir John -drew “all the powers he can make”! The dignified letter, with its -undulating syntax and thrifty punctuation, harmonizes with all we -know of this delightful woman, who could so reproach what she deemed -a shortcoming, without a touch of temper. How affectionate is the -reference to the “little Florence” who died young, and to the other -children, sufficiently precious to all that household, except to the -wool-gathering chevalier their father, far away! Their innocent faces -peer again through a sweet postscript of their grand-uncle: (“Dick -is here, Ned and Bettye at Haughmond,”) written in the winter, from -Eyton, to the truant at the Hague.[8] This same genial Sir Francis -Newport, “imoderately desyring to see you,” confides to his nephew, -during what he complains of as “a verye drye and hott time”[9] for -Shropshire farmers, that “mye syster your mother is confident to take -a iourney into these pts this somer, the rather, I think, because yo’r -brother Vaugh’n is dead & if yo’ have a willing harte you maye come -tyme enough to acco’pany her heare, & would not then the companye bee -much the better?” But we fear the little excursion never came off. -Edward Herbert’s next visit to his home, presumably after a four-years’ -absence, was in 1619; and in May of that year he accepted the office -of Ambassador to France, and spread his ready wing again to the -Continent. And the _Athenæ Oxoniensis_ will not let us forget that the -too spirited envoy had to be temporarily recalled in 1621, because he -had “irreverently treated” De Luynes, the powerful but good-for-nothing -Constable of France. It is not insignificant that this was the year in -which George Herbert wrote to his mother in one of his consoling moods, -bidding her be of good cheer, albeit her health and wealth were gone, -and the conduct of her children was not very satisfying! - -We know that Lady Danvers had the “honor, love, obedience, troops of -friends” which became her, and that she lost none of her influence, -none of her serene charm. Her poet was much with her in his advancing -age. In July, 1625, while the plague was raging in London, Donne -reminded Sir Henry Wotton of the leisure he enjoyed, golden as -Cicero’s, by dating his letter “from S’r John Davor’s house at Chelsey, -of w’ich house & my Lord Carlil’s at Hanworth I make up my Tusculum.” -Many a peaceful evening must they have passed upon the terraces, -within sound of the solemn songs always dear to both. Visitors yet -more illustrious came there from the city; for the noble hostess -had once the privilege of reviving the great Lord Bacon,[10] who -had fainted in her garden. We learn, with sympathy, that “sickness, -in the declination of her years, had opened her to an overflowing -of melancholy; not that she ever lay under that water, but yet had, -sometimes, some high tides of it.” Death chose Dr. Donne’s ministering -angel before him, after thirty years of mutual fealty. Her restless son -Edward, now at home, was already eminent, and wearing his little Irish -title of Baron Castleisland; her thoughtful Charles was long dead; her -brother, also, was no more; her daughters were matrons, and dwelling in -prosperity. With but one unfulfilled wish, that of seeing her favorite -George married and in holy orders,[11] and after a life which left a -wake of sunshine behind it in the world, very patiently and hopefully -Magdalen Newport, Lady Danvers, entered upon eternity, in the early -June of 1627. On the eighth day of the month, in St. Luke’s, the parish -church of Chelsea, she was buried: - - “Old age with snow-bright hair, and folded palm,” - -the final earthly glimpse of her still traditionally beautiful. On the -first of July her faithful liegeman, now Dean of St. Paul’s and Vicar -of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, preached her funeral sermon there, before -a crowd of the great ones of London, the clergy, and the poor. Izaak -Walton’s kind face looked up from a near pew, whence he saw Dr. Donne’s -tears, and felt his breaking voice, the voice of one who did not belie -his friend, nigh the end of his own pilgrimage. In present grief and -among graver memories, he had the true perception not to forget how -joyous she had been. “She died,” he said, “without any change of -countenance or posture, without any struggling, any disorder, . . . and -expected that which she hath received: God’s physic and God’s music, -a Christianly death. . . . She was eyes to the blind, and feet to the -lame, . . . naturally cheerful and merry, and loving facetiousness and -sharpness of wit.” His own fund of mirth and strength was fast going; -and a haunting line of his youth, - - “And all my pleasures are like yesterday,” - -must have reverted to him many and many a time. Morbid and persistent -thoughts beset him from this hour, probably, more than ever, until -he had the effigy of himself, painted as he was, laid in his failing -sight;[12] morbid and persistent thoughts of the ruin which befalls the -bright bodies of humanity, sometimes surging up in his loneliness, and -crowding out the better vision which yet may “grace us in the disgrace -of death.” His inward eye was drawn strongly to his friend’s sepulchre, -sealed and sombre before him, and to what had been her, “going into -dust now almost a month of days, almost a lunar year . . . which, while -I speak, is mouldering and crumbling into less and less dust.” But he -ended in a wholesomer strain, subdued and calm: “This good soul being -thus laid down to sleep in His peace, ‘I charge you, O daughters of -Jerusalem, that ye wake her not!’” - -The rare little duodecimo which contains Lady Danvers’s funeral sermon -was printed soon after, “together with other Commemorations of Her, by -her Sonne G. Herbert,” and offered to the public at the Golden Lion in -Paul’s Churchyard. The commemorations are in Greek and Latin. Strangely -enough, nowhere is the sweet and sage poet of _The Temple_ so set upon -his prosody, so given to awkward pagan conceits, so out of tune with -the ideals of classic diction. But he, who tenderly loved his mother, -has given to us, in the _Memoriæ Matris Sacrum_, several precious -personal fragments, and one more precious whole picture of daily habits -in the lines beginning _Corneliæ sanctæ_: her morning prayer, her bath, -and the plaiting of her glossy hair; her housewifely cares, her fit -replies, her writing to her friends, her passion for music, her gentle -helpfulness; the long felicity of a glad and stainless life, - - “Quicquid habet tellus, quicquid et astra, fruens.” - -Dr. Donne died in 1631, whatever was yet of earth in his spirit healed -and chastened by long pain. His last remembrance to some he loved -was his own seal of Christ on the Anchor, “engraven very small on -heliotropium stones, and set in gold, for rings.” Many of those to -whom his heart would have turned, the “autumnal beauty” scarce second -among them, had preceded him out of England. But in travelling towards -his Maker, he had that other sacred hope to “ebb on with them,” and -gloriously overtake them, as he traced the epitaph which covered -him in old St. Paul’s: “_Hic licet in occiduo cinere, aspicit eum -cujus nomen est Oriens_.” The tie between himself and her was not -unremembered in the next generation; for we find John Donne the younger -dedicating his father’s posthumous work to Francis, Lord Newport, -and when making his will, in 1662, bequeathing also to the same Lord -Newport “the picture of St. Anthony in a round frame.” And thus, in a -revived fragrance, the annals of true friendship close. - -These rapid, ragged strokes of a pen make the only possible biography -of Lady Danvers. When Walton wrote of her, he had the entire -correspondence with Dr. Donne before him.[13] “There were sacred -endearments betwixt these two excellent persons,” he assures us, but -disappointingly hurries on into the highway of his subject. It is -curious that it seems impossible now to trace these breathing relics, -or others from the same source; for George Herbert, in the second -elegy of the _Parentalia_, has much to say, and very sweetly, of the -industry of his mother’s “white right hand,” and of the “many and most -notable letters, flying over all the world.” Much detail is utterly -lost which men who agree with Prosper Mérimée that all Thucydides -would not be worth an authentic memoir of Aspasia, or even of one of -the slaves of Pericles, might be glad to remember. A copy of a song, -a reminiscence of the glow and stir of the days through which she -moved, a guess through a mist at the blond head,[14] the half-imperious -carriage, the open hand, as she went her ways, like Dante’s lovely -lady, _sentendosi laudare_,—these are all we have of the daughter of -England’s golden age. It would be easy, were it also just, to throw -a dash of color into her shadowy history. One would like to verify -the scene at Eyton, while the news of the coming Armada roused the -lion in Drake, and struck terror into the Devon towns; and to hear the -young wife, with three lisping Herberts at her knee, beguile them with -mellow contralto snatches of a Robin Hood ballad, or with the sweet -yesterday’s tale of Zutphen, where their country’s dearest gave his -cup of water to a dying comrade. A decade later, before their handsome -bluff father, her other healthful boys stood up to wrestle, and twang -their arrows at forty paces; or a rosy daughter stole to his side, and -asked him of mishaps in Ireland, or of the giant laughter bubbling -from the “oracle of Apollo” in a London street. It is to be believed -that one who watched events through the insurrection of Essex, through -Raleigh’s dramatic trial, reprieve, and execution, through the national -mourning for the Prince of Wales, through the fever for colonization, -the savage sea-fights, the great intrigues in behalf of the Queen of -Scots, the religious divisions, the muttering parliamentary thunders, -the stress and heat of the exciting dawn of the seventeenth century, -was not unmindful of all it meant to be alive, there and then. Magdalen -Newport’s girlhood fell on Lyly’s _Euphues_, fresh from the printers; -the _Arcadia_ made the talk of Oxford, in her prime; the dusky splendor -of Marlowe’s _Faustus_ was abroad before her second marriage. She was, -surely, aware of Shakespeare, and of the wonder-folio of 1623; of the -newest delighting madrigals and antiphons set forth by one Robert -Jones, when every soul in England had the gift of music; of rascal -Robert Greene’s lovable lyrics, of Wyatt’s, Campion’s, and Drayton’s. -She wrote no verses, indeed, but her familiars wrote them; her every -step jostled a Muse. We may assume that no growth nor loss in literary -circles escaped that tender “perplexing eye.” Perhaps it glistened from -a bench, in the pioneer British theatre, on the actors of _Volpone_, -and followed silently, behind the royal group, the first mincings -of the first dear Fool in _King Lear_, one day-after-Christmas at -Whitehall. Last of all, for whim’s sake, how any sociologist would -enjoy having the honest opinion of young Lady Herbert, or that of -little Mistress Donne, concerning the person they could but thank and -praise! _Utinam vivisset Pepys!_ It is a cheat of history that it -preserves no clearer tint or trace of this chosen passer-by. Such, in -truth, she was, and the quiet vanishing name clings to her: the woman -of durable gladness, happily born and taught, like the soul whereof Sir -Henry Wotton, who must have known her well, made his immortal song. - -Of the gracious figure of Sir John Danvers we may be said to lose -sight; for he seems less gracious, as by a Hindoo trick, as soon as -it is written that his wife departed unto her reward. Comment on -his character is equal comment upon hers, and adds new force to the -classic episode of a lady philanthropist espousing a ne’er-do-weel and -a featherbrain. Aubrey, always happy over a little ultra-contemporary -gossip, calls it “a disagreeable match,” disappointing to the -bridegroom’s kindred; but adds that “he married her for love of her -wit.” Now, wit is an admirable magnet, but it is to be suspected that -there was also, and in the immediate vicinity, “metal more attractive,” -as Hamlet says. In the Chelsea parish-books is an entry, the first of -its kind, certifying that Sir John Danvers had settled his account with -“the poore,” a matter of thirty pounds’ loan (in which the vicar must -have connived), for the year ending in January of 1628. If the payment -were, by any hap, in advance, it may have fallen in Lady Danvers’s own -lifetime; and if so, it is quite as likely that she paid it, with an -admonition! Her “high tides of melancholy,” of whose true cause she -certainly would not have complained to Dr. Donne, had something to -do with this young spendthrift, who must have had his wheedling way, -sooner or later, with such of her ample revenues as were yet extant. -Perhaps Lord Herbert of Cherbury was both shrewd and charitable, in -suppressing mention of his new relative.[15] The longer one looks into -the matter, the less curious seems his unexplained silence concerning -this late graft of a family hitherto always respectable and always -loyal. - -There are gleams of subsequent private history in the tell-tale records -at Chelsea. We are not incurably astonished to learn that as early as -May of 1629 was christened Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Danvers -and Elizabeth his wife. This Lady Elizabeth, arriving providentially -with her Dauntsey wealth, having borne him four children, died, as -did his mother, in 1636; and left him even as she found him, none too -monogamous. In 1648 Sir John Danvers again appeared at the venerable -altars where his first saint never had a memorial, loving, honoring, -and cherishing a Mrs. Grace Hewes, Hawes, or Hewet, of Kemerton in -Gloucestershire, and, as it is to be surmised, leading her tame -fortune by a ribbon. His debts and difficulties, not of one but of all -time, sprout perennially in the registers. His indefatigable name, -oftener than any rival’s whatsoever, figures as borrowing and paying -interest on a forty-pound note, which, like a Hydra-head, was always -forthcoming so soon as it was demolished. This disgraceful business was -the man’s chief concern: for the older he grew the deeper and deeper -he sank into entanglements, particularly after the death of the King. -It was never doubted, in his day, but that this was a judgment on the -former Gentleman Usher who affixed hand and seal to the warrant of his -sovereign’s execution.[16] His own family, it is said, as well as the -royalist Herberts and Newports, dropped his acquaintance; and who knows -whether Mrs. Grace Hewet was faithful? At his favorite Chelsea, in the -April of 1655, and in about the seventy-fourth year of his age, Sir -John Danvers ended his career by more conventional agencies than the -rope and the knife, which might have befallen him in the Stuart triumph -of the morrow. His manor fell an immediate forfeit to the crown. In -1661, the dead republican was attainted, and all of his estate which -was unprotected was declared regal booty. The year before his own -burial at Dauntsey he laid there, “to the great grief of all good men,” -the body of his elder son Henry, who had just attained his majority. -The Earl of Danby had died, “full of honors, wounds, and days,” in -1643, while this Henry, his nephew, was still a hopeful child; and on -him alone he had taken pains to settle his possessions. But Henry, in -turn, was persuaded to bequeath the major part of them to his father’s -ever-gaping pocket, the remainder reverting to one of his two surviving -sisters. The third Lady Danvers, who lived until 1678, had also a son -Charles,[17] who petitioned the crown for his paternal rights, but -died in old age, with neither income nor issue. - -Clarendon quietly indicts Sir John Danvers as a “proud, formal, weak -man,” such as Cromwell “employed and contemned at once.” George Bate -gives him a harder character, saying that he “proved his brother to be -a delinquent in the Rump Parliament, whereby he might overthrow his -will, and so compass the estate himself. He sided with the sectarian -party, was one of the King’s judges, and lived afterwards some years -in his sin, without repentance.” But the same accuser adds the saving -fact that Dr. Thomas Fuller, like Aubrey, was Sir John’s friend, and, -by his desire, preached many times at Chelsea, “where, I am sure, he -was instructed to repent of his misguided and wicked consultations in -having to do with the murther of that just man.” One half surmises -that had the preliminaries of the great struggle occurred in her time -Magdalen Herbert’s rather austere and advanced standards of right would -have stood it out, despite her traditions, for the Commons against -_Carolus Agnus_.[18] But that would have been a very different matter -from sharing the feelings of the crude advocates of revolution and -regicide. What a misconception of her spotless motives must she have -borne, had others found her in agreement with her vagabond lord, who -treated politics as he treated the sacrament of matrimony, purely as a -makeshift and a speculation! - -He was no raw-head-and-bloody-bones, this Roderigo-like Briton who won -the approval of Lord Bacon, and whom George Wither thanks for “those -pleasurable refreshments often vouchsafed”; and whom very different -men, such as George Herbert and Walton[19] and peaceable Fuller loved. -He was a comely creature of some parts, a luckless worldling anxious -to feather his own nest, and driven by timidity and the desire of gain -into treacheries against himself. His short, thin, and “fayre bodie,” -common, as George Herbert would have us imply, to all who bore his -name, his elegance, his hospitality, and his devotedness to his elderly -wife, carried him off handsomely in the eyes of her jealous circle. His -house in Chelsea, commemorated now by Danvers Street, adjoined that -which had been Sir Thomas More’s, and was presumably a part of the same -estate. All around it, and due to its master’s genuine enthusiasm, lay -the first Italian garden planted in England; and there, rolling towards -the Thames, were the long glowing flower-beds and green orchard-alleys, -which were also the “_horti deliciæ dominæ_” recalled thrice in the -music of filial sorrow. This home of Magdalen Danvers was pulled down, -and built over, in 1716. Within its unfallen walls, where she spent -her serene married life, and where she died, she had time to think, -nevertheless, that she stood, towards evening, in the ways of folly, -and that hers was one of those little incipient domestic tragedies -which must always look amusing, even to a friend. - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] Walton confuses this Edward Herbert with a namesake entered at -Queen’s College; and he follows the erring dates of the _Autobiography -of Lord Herbert of Cherbury_. The boy’s age is correctly given as -fourteen in the college registers. - -[2] Donne had been in residence at both Universities, but took no -degree at either, as he had scruples against accepting the conditions -imposed. He was at that time, and until about 1593, like his parents, a -Catholic. His father was of Welsh descent: a fact which may have borne -its share in attracting him towards the Herberts. - -[3] Anne Donne, it may be remarked, was also the name of Cowper’s -mother. - -[4] Sir Richard Baker’s _Chronicle_, 1684, mentions Dr. Donne as one -of his “heroic Grecians,” and adds, in the same breath, that he was “a -great visitor of ladies.” - -[5] Dr. Donne’s conceit about the ages of his friends is better handled -in the young Cartwright’s - -“Chloe, why wish you that your years,” - -a little later. It is not impossible that Cartwright, an Oxonian and an -observer, may have drawn upon Donne’s report of this very wedding for -his charming and ingenious lyric. - -[6] This august personage was one of the Spencers of Althorp. At -this time she had been for six years the wife of her second husband, -the Lord Keeper Egerton, although retaining the magnificent title of -her widowhood. At their estate of Harefield in Middlesex, Milton’s -_Arcades_ was afterwards given, and it will be remembered what fine -compliments to the then aged countess-dowager figure in its opening -verses. Spenser’s _Teares of the Muses_ had been dedicated to her, in -her prime, and she was the Amaryllis “highest in degree” of his _Colin -Clout’s Come Home Again_. - -[7] Sir James Sandelyn, Sandalo, or Sandilands (who cuts his finest -figure as Jacobus Sandilandius in _The Muses’ Welcome_) was appointed -Maistre d’Hostel to the beloved and beautiful Princess Elizabeth on -her marriage to Frederic, Count Palatine of the Rhine, afterwards -King of Bohemia, in 1612. As Sir James’s name is down on the lists of -the Exchequer for a gift in 1615, and as his little son Richard was -baptized in Deptford Church two months after the date of Lady Danvers’s -letter, we may conclude that he came back to England just when the -“ambassatore” expected him. - -[8] Edward Herbert served as a volunteer in the campaign of 1614-15 -in the Netherlands, under the Prince of Orange. Richard Herbert, here -mentioned, was his eldest son, a future Cavalier and captain of a troop -of horse in the Civil Wars; Edward was the baby, and “Bettye” the child -Beatrice, destined, like her sister, to a short life. - -[9] This 1614-15 was an eccentric and un-English year throughout. The -winter signalized itself by the Great Snow; “_frigus intensum_,” as -Camden says, “_et nix copiosissima_.” - -[10] Lord Bacon dedicated to Edward Herbert, “the father of English -deists,” his very flat translation of the Psalms! George wrote three -Latin poems in his honor, one being upon the occasion of his death. - -[11] He was, in July of 1626, ordained deacon, and prebendary of Layton -Ecclesia in Huntingdonshire. Readers of Walton will remember how his -dear mother invited him to commit simony on that occasion. - -[12] The standing marble figure in a winding-sheet which Dr. King had -modelled upon this strange painting on wood, may yet be seen in the -south ambulatory of the choir of St. Paul’s; almost the only relic -saved from the old cathedral which perished in the Great Fire of 1666. -It is not only of unique interest, but of considerable artistic beauty, -and “seems to breathe faintly,” as Sir Henry Wotton said of it. - -[13] Dr. Donne’s papers were bequeathed to Dr. Henry King, the -poet-Bishop of Chichester, then residentiary of St. Paul’s. The “find” -were a precious one, if they yet survive. - -[14] The half-romantic reference, which occurs more than once in -Donne’s poems, to his own long-dead arm which still shall keep - -“The bracelet of bright hair about the bone,”— - -has it nothing to do with this blond head? _Honi soit qui mal y pense._ -The internal evidences in _The Relic_, with its mention of St. Mary -Magdalen, and its boast of purest friendship, and the roguery of the -closing line in _The Funeral_, are somewhat strong, nevertheless. - -[15] The famous _Autobiography_, indeed, boldly assures posterity -that Lady Herbert, after 1597, “continued unmarried,” and, in brief, -“was the woman Dr. Donne hath described her.” The acknowledgment of -the accuracy of that funeral sermon, containing, as it does, its very -specific Danvers passages, is in our fearless philosopher’s best style. - -[16] There was afterwards, in France, a Gentleman of the Bedchamber who -had other notions. “Gratitude,” said Thierry to his executioner in the -court-yard of the Abbaye—“gratitude has no opinions. I am leal to my -master.” - -[17] An elder Charles, son of the Lady Elizabeth Danvers, was baptized -in 1632, and must have died early. - -[18] Edward Herbert sided eventually with the Parliament, which -indemnified him for the burning and sacking of Montgomery Castle. - -[19] The six very innocent, cheerful, pious ten-syllable stanzas, -attributed in _The Complete Angler_ to “another angler, Jo. Davors, -Esq.,” are not, it is hardly necessary to add, from our scapegrace’s -pen. He ceased to be “Jo. Davors, Esq.,” when Walton was fourteen years -old. - - - - - -II - -HENRY VAUGHAN - -1621-1695 - - -IN his own person, Henry Vaughan left no trace in society. His life -seemed to slip by like the running water on which he was forever gazing -and moralizing, and his memory met early with the fate which he hardly -foresaw. Descended from the royal chiefs of southern Wales whom Tacitus -mentions, and whose abode, in the day of Roman domination, was in the -district called Siluria,[20] he called himself the Silurist upon his -title-pages; and he keeps the distinctive name in the humblest of -epitaphs, close by his home in the glorious valley of the Usk and the -little Honddu, under the shadow of Tretower, the ruined castle of his -race, and of Pen-y-Fan and his kindred peaks. What we know of him -is a sort of pastoral: how he was born, the son of a poor gentleman, -in 1621, at Newton St. Bridget, in the old house yet asleep on the -road between Brecon and Crickhowel; how he went up to Oxford, Laud’s -Oxford, with Thomas, his twin, as a boy of sixteen, to be entered at -Jesus College;[21] how he took his degree (just where and when no one -can discover), and came back, after a London revel, to be the village -physician, though he was meant for the law, in what had become his -brother’s parish of Llansantffraed; to write books full of sequestered -beauty, to watch the most tragic of wars, to look into the faces of -love and loss, and to spend his thoughtful age on the bowery banks of -the river he had always known, his _Isca parens florum_, to which -he consecrated many a sweet English line. And the ripple of the not -unthankful Usk was “distinctly audible over its pebbles,” as was the -Tweed to the failing sense of Sir Walter, in the room where Henry -Vaughan drew his last breath, on St. George’s day, April 23, 1695. He -died exactly seventy-nine years after Shakespeare, exactly one hundred -and fifty-five years before Wordsworth. - -Circumstances had their way with him, as with most poets. He knew -the touch of disappointment and renunciation, not only in life, but -in his civic hopes and in his art. He broke his career in twain, and -began over, before he had passed thirty; and he showed great æsthetic -discretion, as well as disinterestedness, in replacing his graceful -early verses by the deep dedications of his prime. Religious faith and -meditation seem so much part of his innermost nature, it is a little -difficult to remember that Vaughan considered himself a brand snatched -from the burning, a lawless Cavalier brought by the best of chances -to the quiet life, and the feet of the moral Muse. He suffered most -of the time between 1643 and 1651 from a sorely protracted and nearly -fatal illness; and during its progress his wife and his dearest friends -were taken from him. Nor was the execution of the King a light event -to so sensitive a poet and so passionate a partisan. Meanwhile Vaughan -read George Herbert, and his theory of proportional values began to -change. It was a season of transition and silent crises, when men bared -their breasts to great issues, and when it was easy for a childlike -soul, - - “Weary of her vain search below, above, - In the first Fair to find the immortal Love.”[22] - -Vaughan, in his new fervor, did his best to suppress the numbers -written in his youth, thus clearing the field for what he afterwards -called his “hagiography”; and a critic may wonder what he found in his -first tiny volume of 1646, or in _Olor Iscanus_, to regret or cancel. -Every unbaptized song is “bright only in its own innocence, and -kindles nothing but a generous thought”; and one of them, at least, -has a manly postlude of love and resolve worthy of the free lyres of -Lovelace and Montrose. Vaughan, unlike other ardent spirits of his -class, had nothing very gross to be sorry for; if he was, indeed, one -of his own - - “feverish souls, - Sick with a scarf or glove,” - -he had none but noble ravings. Happily, his very last verses, _Thalia -Rediviva_, breaking as it were by accident a silence of twenty-three -years, indorse with cheerful gallantry the accents of his youth. -The turn in his life which brought him lasting peace, in a world -rocking between the cant of the Parliament and resurgent audacity -and riot, achieved for us a body of work which, small as it is, has -rare interest, and an out-of-door beauty, as of the natural dusk, -“breathless with adoration,” which is almost without parallel. Eternity -has been known to spoil a poet for time, but not in this instance. -Never did religion and art interchange a more fortunate service, -outside Italian studios. Once he had shaken off secular ambitions, -Vaughan’s voice grew at once freer and more forceful. In him a -marked intellectual gain sprang from an apparently slight spiritual -readjustment, even as it did, three centuries later, in one greater -than he, John Henry Newman. - -Vaughan’s work is thickly sown with personalities, but they are so -delicate and involved that there is little profit in detaching them. -What record he made at the University is not apparent; nor is it at -all sure that so independent and speculative a mind applied itself -gracefully to the curriculum. He was, in the only liberal sense, a -learned man, full of life-long curiosity for the fruit of the Eden -Tree. His lines beginning - - “Quite spent with thought I left my cell” - -show the acutest thirst for hidden knowledge; he would “most gladly -die,” if death might buy him intellectual growth. He looks forward to -eternity as to the unsealing and disclosing of mysteries. He makes the -soul sing joyously to the body: - - “I that here saw darkly, in a glass, - But mists and shadows pass, - And by their own weak shine did search the springs - And source of things, - Shall, with inlighted rays, - Pierce all their ways!” - -With an imperious query, he encounters the host of midnight stars: - - “Who circled in - Corruption with this glorious ring?” - -What Vaughan does know is nothing to him; when he salutes the Bodleian -from his heart, he is thinking how little honey he has gathered from -that vast hive, and how little it contains, when measured with what -there is to learn from living and dying. He had small respect for the -sinister sciences among which the studies of his beloved brother, -a Neo-Platonist, lay. Though he was no pedant, he dearly loved to -get in a slap against the ignorant whom we have always with us. At -twenty-five, he printed a good adaptation of the Tenth of Juvenal, and -flourished his wit, in the preface, at the expense of some possible -gentle reader of the parliamentary persuasion who would “quarrel with -antiquitie.” “These, indeed, may think that they have slept out so many -centuries in this Satire, and are now awaked; which had it been still -Latin, perhaps their nap had been everlasting!” - -He was an optimist, proven through much personal trial; he had -sympathy with the lower animals, and preserved a humorous deference -towards all things alive, even the leviathan of Holy Writ, which -he affectionately exalts into “the shipmen’s fear” and “the comely -spacious whale”! Vaughan adored his friends; he had a unique veneration -for childhood; his adjective for the admirable and beautiful, whether -material or immaterial, is “dear”; and his mind dwelt with habitual -fondness on what Sir Thomas Browne (a man after his own heart) calls -“incomprehensibles, and thoughts of things which thoughts do but -tenderly touch.” - -His occupation as a resident physician must have fostered his fine -eye and ear for the green earth, and furnished him, day by day, -with musings in sylvan solitudes, and rides abroad over the fresh -hill-paths. The breath of the mountains is about his books. An early -riser, he uttered a constant invocation to whomever would listen, that - - “Manna was not good - After sun-rising; far-day sullies flowers.” - -He was hospitable on a limited income.[23] His verses of invitation -_To his Retired Friend_, which are not without their thrusts at -passing events, have a classic jollity fit to remind the reader of -Randolph’s ringing ode to Master Anthony Stafford. Again and again -Vaughan reiterates the Socratic and Horatian song of content: that he -has enough lands and money, that there are a thousand things he does -not want, that he is blessed in what he has. All this does not prevent -him from recording the phenomenal ebb-tides of his purse, and from -whimsically synthesizing on “the threadbare, goldless genealogie” of -bards! No sour zealot in anything, he enjoyed an evening now and then -at the Globe Tavern in London, where he consumed his sack with relish, -that he might be “possessor of more soul,” and “after full cups have -dreams poetical.” But he was no lover of the town. Country life was -his joy and pride; the only thing which seemed, in his own most vivid -phrase, to “fill his breast with home.” - - “Here something still like Eden looks! - Honey in woods, juleps in brooks.” - -A literary acquaintance, one unrecognized N. W., congratulates -Vaughan that he is able to “give his Muse the swing in an hereditary -shade.” He translated with great gusto _The Old Man of Verona_, out -of Claudian, and Guevara’s _Happiness of Country Life_; and he notes -with satisfaction that Abraham was of his rural mind, in “Mamre’s holy -grove.” Vaughan was an angler, need it be added? Nay, the autocrat of -anglers: he was a salmon-catcher. - -With “the charity which thinketh no evil,” he loved almost everything, -except the Jesuits, and his ogres the Puritans. For Vaughan knew where -he stood, and his opinion of Puritanism never varied. He kept his -snarls and satires, for the most part, hedged within his prose, the -proper ground of the animosities. When he put on his singing-robes, he -tried to forget, not always with success, his spites and bigotries. -For his life, he could not help sidelong glances, stings, strictures -between his teeth, thistle-down hints cast abroad in the neatest of -generalities: - - “Who saint themselves, they are no saints!” - -The introduction to his _Mount of Olives_ (whose pages have a soft -billowy music like Jeremy Taylor’s) is nominally inscribed to “the -peaceful, humble, and pious reader.” That functionary must have found -it a trial to preserve his peaceful and pious abstraction, while the -peaceful and pious author proceeded to flout the existing government, -in a towering rage, and in very elegant caustic English. Vaughan was -none too godly to be a thorough hater. He was genially disposed to -the pretensions of every human creature; he refused to consider his -ancestry and nurture by themselves, as any guarantee of the justice -of his views or of his superior insight into affairs. Yet in spite of -his enforced Quaker attitude during the clash of arms, he nursed in -that gentle bosom the heartiest loathing of democracy, and shared the -tastes of a certain clerk of the Temple “who never could be brought to -write Oliver with a great O.” It is fortunate that he did not spoil -himself, as Wither did, upon the wheels of party, for politics were his -most vehement concern. Had he been richer, as he tells us in a playful -passage, nothing on earth would have kept him from meddling with -national issues. - -The poets, save the greatest, Milton, his friend Andrew Marvell, and -Wither, rallied in a bright group under the royal standard. Those -among them who did not fight were commonly supposed, as was Drummond -of Hawthornden, to redeem their reputation by dying of grief at the -overthrow of the King. Yet Vaughan did not fight, and Vaughan did not -die of grief. It is so sure that he suffered some privation, and it -may be imprisonment, for his allegiance, that shrewd guessers, before -now, have equipped him and placed him in the ranks of the losing cause, -where he might have had choice company. His generous erratic brother (a -writer of some note, an alchemist, an Orientalist, a Rosicrucian, who -was ejected from his vicarage in 1654, and died either of the plague, -or of inhaling the fumes of a caldron, at Albury, in 1665, while the -court was at Oxford)[24] had been a recruit, and a brave one. But Henry -Vaughan explicitly tells us, in his _Ad Posteros_, and in a prayer in -the second part of _Silex Scintillans_, that he had no personal share -in the constitutional struggle, that he shed no blood. Again he cries, -in a third lyric, - - “O accept - Of his vowed heart, whom Thou hast kept - From bloody men!” - -This painstaking record of a fact by one so loyal as he goes far -to prove, to an inductive mind not thoroughly familiar with his -circumstances, that he considered war the worst of current evils, and -was willing, for this first principle of his philosophy, to lay himself -open to the charge, not indeed of cowardice (was he not a Vaughan?), -but of lack of appreciation for the one romantic opportunity of his -life. His withdrawal from the turmoil which so became his colleagues -may seem to harmonize with his known moral courage and right sentiment; -and fancy is ready to fasten on him the sad neutrality, and the -passionate “ingemination” for “peace, peace,” which “took his sleep -from him, and would shortly break his heart,” such as Clarendon tells -us of in his beautiful passage touching the young Lord Falkland. But -it is greatly to be feared that Vaughan, despite all the abstract -reasoning which arrays itself against so babyish and barbarous a thing -as a battle, would have swung himself into a saddle as readily as any, -had not “God’s finger touched him.” A comparison of dates will show -that he was bedridden, while his hot heart was afield with the shouting -gentlemen whom Mr. Browning heard in a vision: - - “King Charles! and who’ll do him right, now? - King Charles! and who’s ripe for fight, now? - Give a rouse: here’s in Hell’s despite now, - King Charles!” - -This is the secret of Vaughan’s blood-guiltlessness. Of course he -thanked Heaven, after, that he was kept clean of carnage; he would have -thanked Heaven for anything that happened to him. It was providential -that we of posterity lost a soldier in the Silurist, and gained a poet. -As the great confusion cleared, his spirit cleared too, and the Vaughan -we know, - - “Delicious, lusty, amiable, fair,” - -comes in, like a protesting angel, with the Commonwealth. Perhaps -he lived long enough to sum up the vanity of statecraft and the -instability of public choice, driven from tyranny to license, from -absolute monarchy to absolute anarchy; and to turn once more to his -“loud brook’s incessant fall” as an object much worthier of a rational -man’s regard. Born while James I. was vain-gloriously reigning, Henry -Vaughan survived the Civil War, the two Protectorates, the orgies of -the Restoration (which he did not fail to satirize), and the Revolution -of “Meenie the daughter,” as the old Scots song slyly calls her. He had -seen the Stuarts in and out, in and out again, and his seventy-four -years, on-lookers at a tragedy, were not forced to sit through the dull -Georgian farce which began almost as soon as his grave was green. - -Moreover, he was thoroughly out of touch with his surroundings. While -all the world was either devil-may-care or Calvin-colored, he had for -his characteristic a rapt, inexhaustible joy, buoying him up and -sweeping him away. He might well have said, like Dr. Henry More, his -twin’s rival and challenger in metaphysics, that he was “most of his -time mad with pleasure.” While - - “every burgess foots - The mortal pavement in eternal boots,” - -Vaughan lay indolently along a bank, like a shepherd swain, pondering -upon the brood of “green-heads” who denied miracles to have been or to -be, and wishing the noisy passengers on the highways of life could be -taught the value of - - “A sweet self-privacy in a right soul.” - -His mind turned to paradoxes and inverted meanings, and the analysis -of his own tenacious dreams, in an England of pikes and bludgeons and -hock-carts and wassail-cakes. “A proud, humoursome person,” Anthony -à Wood called him. He was something of a fatalist, inasmuch as he -followed his lonely and straight path, away from crowds, and felt eager -for nothing but what fell into his open hands. He strove little, being -convinced that temporal advantage is too often an eternal handicap. -“Who breaks his glass to take more light,” he reminds us, “makes way -for storms unto his rest.” This passive quality belongs to happy men, -and Vaughan was a very happy man, thanks to the faith and will which -made him so, although he had known calamity, and had failed in much. -Throughout his pages one can trace the affecting struggle between -things desired and things forborne. It is only a brave philosopher who -can afford to pen a stanza intimate as this: - - “O Thou who didst deny to me - The world’s adored felicity! - Keep still my weak eyes from the shine - Of those gay things which are not Thine.” - -He had better possessions than glory under his hand in the health and -peace of his middle age and in his cheerful home. He was twice married, -and must have lost his first wife, nameless to us, but most tenderly -mourned, in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year. She seems to have been -the mother of five of his six children. Vaughan was rich in friends. He -had known Davenant and Cartwright, but it is quite characteristic of -him that the two great authors to whom he was especially attached were -Jonson and John Fletcher, both only a memory at the time of his first -going to London. Of Randolph, Jonson’s strong “son,” who so beggared -English literature by dying young in 1634, Vaughan sweetly says -somewhere that he will hereafter - - “Look for Randolph in those holy meads.” - -Mention of his actual fellow-workers is very infrequent, nor does he -mention the Shakespeare who had “dwelt on earth unguessed at,” and who -is believed to have visited the estates of the Vaughans at Scethrog, -and to have picked up the name of his merry fellow Puck from goblin -traditions of the neighborhood. Vaughan followed his leisure and his -preference in translating divers works of meditation, biography, and -medicine, pleasing himself, like Queen Bess, with naturalizing bits of -Boethius, and much from Plutarch, Ausonius, Severinus, and Claudian. -He did some passages from Ovid, but he must have felt sharply the -violence done to the lyric essence in passing it ever so gently from -language to language, for he lingered over Adrian’s darling _Animula -vagula blandula_, only to leave it alone, and to write of it as the -saddest poetry that ever he met with. - -Not the least of Henry Vaughan’s blessings was his warm friendship with -“the matchless Orinda.”[25] This delightful Catherine Fowler married, -in 1647, a stanch royalist, Mr. James Philips of Cardigan Priory, and -as his bride, became what, in the Welsh solitudes, was considered -“neighbor” to Vaughan, her home being distant from his just fifty miles -as the crow flies. She had been, in her infancy, a prodigy of Biblical -quotation, like Evelyn’s little Richard, and grew up to be such another -_précieuse_ as Madame la Comtesse de Lafayette, _née_ Lavergne; but -we know that she was the cleverest and comeliest of good women, and -Vaughan’s association with her must have been a perpetual sunshine -to him and his. She prefixed, after the fashion of the day, some -commendatory verses to his published work. They are not only pretty, -but they furnish a bit of adequate criticism. The secular Muse of the -Silurist is, according to Orinda, - - “Truth clothed in wit, and Love in innocence,” - -and has, for her birthright, seriousness and a “charming rigour.” The -last two words might stand for him in the fast-coming day when nobody -will have time to discuss old poets in anything but technical terms and -epigrams. Orinda, with her accurate judgment, should have had a chance -to talk to Mr. Thomas Campbell, who adorned his _Specimens_ with the -one official and truly prepositional phrase that “Vaughan was one of -the harshest of writers, even of the inferior order of the school of -conceit!”[26] - -While Henry Vaughan was preparing for publication the first half of -_Silex Scintillans_ as the token of his arrested and uplifted youth, -Rev. Mr. Thomas Vaughan, backed by a few other sanguine Oxonians, and -disregardful of his twin’s exaggerated remorse for the fruits of his -profaner years, brought out the “formerly written and newly named” -_Olor Iscanus_, over the author’s head, in 1650, and gave to it a -motto from the Georgics. The preface is in Eugenius Philalethes’ own -gallant style, and offers a haughty commendation to “beauty from the -light retired.” Perhaps Vaughan’s earliest and most partial editor -felt, like Thoreau on a certain occasion, that it were well to make an -extreme statement, if only so he might make an emphatic one. He chose -to supplicate the public of the Protectorate in this wise: “It was -the glorious Maro that referred his legacies to the fire, and though -princes are seldom executors, yet there came a Cæsar to his testament, -as if the act of a poet could not be repealed but by a king. I am -not, reader, Augustus Vindex: here is no royal rescue, but here is a -Muse that deserves it. The author had long ago condemned these poems -to obscurity and the consumption of that further fate which attends -it. This censure gave them a gust of death, and they have partly known -that oblivion which our best labors must come to at last. I present -thee, then, not only with a book, but with a prey, and, in this kind, -the first recoveries from corruption. Here is a flame hath been some -time extinguished, thoughts that have been lost and forgot, but now -they break out again like the Platonic reminiscency. I have not the -author’s approbation to the fact, but I have law on my side, though -never a sword: I hold it no man’s prerogative to fire his own house. -Thou seest how saucy I am grown, and if thou dost expect I should -commend what is published, I must tell thee I cry no Seville oranges; -I will not say ‘Here is fine,’ or ‘cheap’: that were an injury to -the verse itself, and to the effect it can produce. Read on; and -thou wilt find thy spirit engaged, not by the deserts of what we call -tolerable, but by the commands of a pen that is above it.” All this is -uncritical, but useful and proper on the part of the clerical brother, -who writes very much as Lord Edward Herbert might be supposed to write -for George under like conditions; for he knew, according to an ancient -adage, that there is great folly in pointing out the shortcomings of -a work of art to eyes uneducated to its beauties. It was just as well -to insist disproportionately upon the principle at stake, that Henry -Vaughan’s least book was unique and precious. He was not, like the -majority of the happy lyrists of his time, a writer by accident; he -was strictly a man of letters, and his sign-manual is large and plain -upon everything which bears his name. He indites like a Roman, with -evenness and without a superfluous syllable. One cannot italicize -him; every word is a congested force, packed to bursting with meaning -and insistence; the utterance of a man who has been thinking all his -life upon his own chosen subjects, and who unerringly despatches -a language about its business, as if he had just created it. Like -Andrew Marvell’s excellent father, “he never broached what he had -never brewed.” It follows that his work, to which second editions were -wellnigh unknown, shows scarcely any variation from itself. It carries -with it a testimony that, such as it stands, it is the very best its -author can do. Its faults are not slips; they are quite as radical and -congenital as its virtues. Vaughan (to transfer a fine phrase of Mr. -W. T. Arnold) is “enamoured of perfection,” but he is fully so before -he makes up his mind to write, and from the first every stroke of his -pen is fatal. It transfixes a noun or a verb, pins it to the page, and -challenges a reformer to move or replace it. His modest Muse is as -sure as Shakespeare, as nice as Pope; she is incapable of scruples and -apprehensions, once she has spoken. What Vaughan says of Cartwright may -well be applied to his own deliberate grace of diction: - - “Thou thy thoughts hast drest in such a strain - As doth not only speak, but rule and reign.” - -His verses have the tone of a Vandyck portrait, with all its firm -pensive elegance and lack of shadow. - -Vaughan has very little quaintness, as we now understand that word, and -none of the cloudiness and incorrigible grotesqueness which dominated -his Alexandrian day. He has great temperance; he keeps his eye upon -the end, and scarcely falls at all into “the fond adulteries of art,” -inversions, unscholarly compound words, or hard-driven metaphors. If -he be difficult to follow, it is only because he lives, as it were, in -highly oxygenated air; he is remote and peculiar, but not eccentric. -His conceits are not monstrous; the worst of them proclaims: - - “Some love a rose - In hand, some in the skin; - But, cross to those, - I would have mine within”; - -which will bear a comparison with Carew’s hatched cherubim, or with -that very provincialism of Herbert’s which describes a rainbow as the -lace of Peace’s coat! Those of Vaughan’s figures not drawn from the -open air, where he was happiest, are, indeed, too bold and too many, -and they come from strange corners: from finance, medicine, mills, the -nursery, and the mechanism of watches and clocks. In no one instance, -however, does he start wrong, like the great influencer, Donne, in -_The Valediction_, and finish by turning such impediments as “stiff -twin-compasses” into images of memorable beauty. The _Encyclopædia -Britannica_, like Campbell, finds Vaughan “untunable,” and so he is -very often. But poets may not always succeed in metaphysics and in -music too. The lute which has the clearest and most enticing twang -under the laurel boughs is Herrick’s, and not Donne’s; Mr. Swinburne’s, -and not Mr. Browning’s. It is to be observed that when Vaughan lets go -of his regrets, his advice, and his growls over the bad times, he falls -into instant melody, as if in that, and not in a rough impressiveness, -were his real strength. His blessing for the river Usk flows sweetly as -the tide it hangs upon: - - “Garlands, and songs, and roundelays, - And dewy nights, and sunshine days, - The turtle’s voice, joy without fear, - Dwell on thy bosom all the year! - To thee the wind from far shall bring - The odors of the scattered spring, - And, loaden with the rich arrear, - Spend it in spicy whispers here.” - -Vaughan played habitually with his pauses, and unconsciously threw the -metrical stress on syllables and words least able to bear it; but no -sensitive ear can be otherwise than pleased at the broken sequence of -such lines as - - “these birds of light make a land glad - Chirping their solemn matins on a tree,” - -and the hesitant symbolism of - - “As if his liquid loose retinue stayed - Lingering, and were of this steep place afraid.” - -The word “perspective,” with the accent upon the first syllable, was -a favorite with him; and Wordsworth approved of that usage enough to -employ it in the majestic opening of the sonnet on King’s College -Chapel.[27] In short, if Vaughan be “untunable,” it is because he -never learned to distil vowels at the expense or peril of the message -which he believed himself bound to deliver, even where hearers were -next to none, and which he tried only to make compact and clear. His -speech has a deep and free harmony of its own, to those whom abruptness -does not repel; and even critics who turn from him to the masters of -verbal sound may do him the parting honor of acknowledging the nature -of his limitation. - - “A noble error, and but seldom made, - When poets are by too much force betrayed!” - -Vaughan was a born observer, and in his poetry may be found the pioneer -expression of the nineteenth-century feeling for landscape. His canvas -is not often large; he had an indifference towards the exquisite -presence of autumn, and an inland ignorance of the sea. But he could -portray depth and distance at a stroke, as in the buoyant lines: - - “It was high spring, and all the way - Primrosed, and hung with shade,” - -which etches for you the whole winding lane, roofed and floored with -beauty; he carries a reader over half a continent in his - - “Paths that are hidden from the vulture’s eyes,” - -and suspends him above man’s planet altogether with his audacious -eagle, to whom “whole seas are narrow spectacles,” and who - - “in the clear height and upmost air - Doth face the sun, and his dispersèd hair!” - -Besides this large vision, Vaughan had uncommon knowledge how to employ -detail, during the prolonged literary interval when it was wholly out -of fashion. It has been the lot of the little rhymesters of all periods -to deal with the open air in a general way, and to embellish their -pages with birds and boughs; but it takes a true modern poet, under the -influence of the Romantic revival, to sum up perfectly the ravages of -wind and frost: - - “Where is the pride of summer, the green prime, - The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three - On the mossed elm; three on the naked lime - Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree”; - -and it takes another to give the only faithful and ideal report of a -warbling which every schoolboy of the race had heard before him: - - “That’s the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over, - Lest you should think he never could recapture - The first fine careless rapture.” - -That Vaughan’s pages should furnish this patient specification is -remarkable in a man whose mind was set upon things invisible. His gaze -is upon the inaccessible ether, but he seems to detect everything -between himself and heaven. He sighs over the inattentive rustic, whom, -perhaps, he catches scowling by the pasture-bars of the wild Welsh -downs: - - “O that he would hear - The world read to him!” - -Whatever is in that pleasant world he himself hears and sees; and his -interrupted chronicle is always terse, graphic, straight from life. He -has the inevitable phrase for every phenomenon, a little low-comedy -phrase, sometimes, such as Shakespeare and Carew had used before him: - - “Deep snow - Candies our country’s woody brow.” - -It seems never to have entered the primitive mind of Vaughan to love, -or serve, art and nature for themselves. His cue was to walk abroad -circumspectly and with incessant reverence, because in all things -he found God. He marks, at every few rods in the thickets, “those -low violets of Thine,” and the “breathing sacrifice” of earth-odors -which the “parched and thirsty isle” gratefully sends back after a -shower.[28] His prayer is that he may not forget that physical beauty -is a great symbol, but only a symbol; a “hid ascent” through “masks and -shadows” to the divine; or, as Mr. Lowell said in one of his last poems, - - “a tent - Pitched for an Inmate far more excellent.” - -A humanist of the school of Assisi, Vaughan was full of out-of-door -meeknesses and pieties, nowhere sweeter in their expression than in -this all-embracing valedictory: - - “O knowing, glorious Spirit! when - Thou shalt restore trees, beasts, and men, - - * * * * * - - Give him among Thy works a place - Who in them loved and sought Thy face.” - -He muses in the garden, at evenfall: - - “Man is such a marigold - As shuts, and hangs the head.” - -Clouds, seasons, and the eternal stars are his playfellows; he -apostrophizes our sister the rainbow, and reminds her of yesterday, when - - “Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot, - The youthful world’s grey fathers, in one knot,” - -lifted anxious looks to her new splendor. He is familiar with the -depression which comes from boding weather, when - - “a pilgrim’s eye, - Far from relief, - Measures the melancholy sky.” - -He has an artist’s feeling, also, for the wrath of the elements, which -inevitably hurry him on to the consummation - - “When Thou shalt spend Thy sacred store - Of thunders in that heat, - And low as e’er they lay before - Thy six-days buildings beat!” - -“I saw,” he says, suddenly— - - “I saw Eternity the other night”; - -and he is perpetually seeing things almost as startling and as bright: -the “edges and the bordering light” of lost infancy; the processional -grandeur of old books, which he fearlessly calls - - “The track of fled souls, and their Milky Way”; - -and visions of the Judgment, when - - “from the right - The white sheep pass into a whiter light.” - -Here the figure beautifully forecasts a famous one of Rossetti’s. -Light, indeed, is Vaughan’s distinctive word, and the favorite source -of his similes and illustrations. - -If Vaughan’s had not been so profoundly moral a nature, he would -have lacked his picturesque sense of the general, the continuous. -That shibboleth, “a primrose by the river’s brim,” is to him all the -generations of all the yellow primroses smiling there since the Druids’ -day, and its mild moonlike ray reflects the hope and fear and pathos -of the mortal pilgrimage that has seen and saluted it, age after age. -Whatever he meets upon his walk is drowned and dimmed in a wide halo -of association and sympathy. His unmistakable accent marks the opening -of a little sermon called _The Timber_; a sigh of pity, tender as a -child’s, over the fallen and unlovely logs: - - “Sure, thou didst flourish once! and many springs - Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers, - Passed o’er thy head; many light hearts and wings, - Which now are dead, lodged in thy living towers.”[29] - -Leigh Hunt once challenged England and America[30] to produce anything -approaching, for music and feeling, the beauty of - - “boughs that shake against the cold, - Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” - -He forgot the closes of these artless lines of a minor poet; or he did -not know them. - -Vaughan’s meek reputation began to renew itself about 1828, when four -critics eminently fitted to appraise his worth were in their prime; -but, curiously enough, none of these, not even the best of them, the -same Charles Lamb who said a just and generous word for Wither, had the -satisfaction of rescuing his sunken name. Lamb’s friend, the good soul -Bernard Barton, seems, however, to have known and admired his Vaughan. - -Eight little books, if we count the two parts of _Silex Scintillans_ -as one,[31] enclose all of the Silurist’s original work. He began to -publish in 1646, and he practically ceased in 1655, reappearing but -in 1678 with _Thalia Rediviva_, which was not issued under his own -supervision. It is commonly supposed that his verses were forgotten -up to the date (1847) of the faulty but timely Aldine edition of the -Rev. H. F. Lyte, thrice reprinted and revised since then, and until the -appearance of Dr. Grosart’s four inestimable quartos; but Mr. Carew -Hazlitt has been fortunate enough to discover the advertisement of an -eighteenth-century reprint of Vaughan. As the results of Dr. Grosart’s -patient service to our elder writers are necessarily semi-private, -it may be said with truth that the real Vaughan is still debarred -from the general reader, who is, indeed, the identical person least -concerned about that state of affairs. His name is not irrecoverable -nor unfamiliar to scholars.[32] His mind, on the whole, might pass -for the product of yesterday; and he, who needs no glossary, may -handsomely cede the honors of one to Mr. William Morris. It is at least -certain that had Vaughan lately lifted up his sylvan voice out of -Brecknockshire, he would not so readily be accused of having modelled -himself unduly upon George Herbert.[33] He has gone into eclipse behind -that gracious name. - -Henry Vaughan was a child of thirteen when Herbert, a stranger to -him, died at Bemerton, and he read him first in the sick-chamber to -which the five years’ distresses of his early manhood confined him. -The reading could not have been prior to 1647, for _Olor Iscanus_, -Vaughan’s second volume, was lying ready for the press that year, as -we know from the date of its dedication to Lord Kildare Digby. As no -novice poet, therefore, he fell under the spell of a sweet and elect -soul, who was also a lover of vanquished royalty, a convert who had -looked upon the vanities of the court and the city, a Welshman born, -and not unconnected with Vaughan’s own ancient and patrician house. -These were slight coincidences, but they served to strengthen a forming -tie. The Silurist somewhere thanks Herbert’s “holy ever-living lines” -for checking his blood; and it was, perhaps, the only service rendered -of which he was conscious. But his endless iambics and his vague -allegorical titles are cast thoroughly in the manner of Herbert, and -he takes from the same source the heaped categorical epithets, the -didactic tone, and the introspectiveness which are his most obvious -failings. Vaughan’s intellectual debt to Herbert resolves itself into -somewhat less than nothing; for in following him with zeal to the -Missionary College of the Muses, he lost rather than gained, and he -is altogether delightful and persuasive only where he is altogether -himself. Nevertheless, a certain spirit of conformity and filial -piety towards Herbert has betrayed Vaughan into frequent and flagrant -imitations. It seems as if these must have been voluntary, and rooted -in an intention to enforce the same truths in all but the same -words; for the moment Vaughan breaks into invective, or comes upon -his distinctive topics, such as childhood, natural beauty (for which -Herbert had an imperfect sense), friendship, early death, spiritual -expectation, he is off and away, free of any predecessor, thrilling and -unforgettable. Comparisons will not be out of place here, for Vaughan -can bear, and even invoke them. Dryden said in Jonson’s praise that he -was “a learned plagiary,” and nobody doubts nowadays that Shakespeare -and Milton were the bandit kings of their time. There was, indeed, -in English letters, up to Queen Anne’s reign, an open communism of -ideas and idioms astonishing to look upon; there is less confiscation -at present, because, outside the pale of the sciences, there is less -thinking. If any one thing can be closer to another, for instance, than -even Drummond’s sonnet on _Sleep_ is to Sidney’s, it is the dress of -Vaughan’s morality to that of George Herbert’s. Mr. Simcox is the only -critic who has taken the trouble to contrast them, and he does so in -so random a fashion as to suggest that his scrutiny, in some cases, -has been confined to the rival titles. It is certain that no other -mind, however bent upon identifications, can find a likeness between -_The Quip_ and _The Queer_, or between _The Tempest_ and _Providence_. -Vaughan’s _Mutiny_, like _The Collar_, ends in a use of the word -“child,” after a scene of strife; and if ever it were meant to match -Herbert’s poem, distinctly falls behind it, and deals, besides, with -a much weaker rebelliousness. _Rules and Lessons_ is so unmistakably -modelled upon _The Church Porch_ that it scarcely calls for comment. -Herbert’s admonitions, however, are continued, but nowhere repeated; -and Vaughan’s succeed in being poetic, which the others are not. Beyond -these replicas, Vaughan’s structural genius is in no wise beholden to -Herbert’s. But numerous phrases and turns of thought descend from the -master to the disciple, undergoing such subtle and peculiar changes, -and given back, as Coleridge would say, with such “usurious interest,” -that it may well be submitted whether, in this casual list, every -borrowing, save two, be not a bettering. - - -HERBERT. - - “A throbbing conscience, spurrèd by remorse, - Hath a strange force.” - - “My thoughts are all a case of knives, - Wounding my heart - With scattered smart.” - - “And trust - Half that we have - Unto an honest faithful grave.” - - “Teach me Thy love to know, - That this new light which now I see - May both the work and workman show: - Then by a sunbeam I will climb to Thee!” - - “I will go searching, till I find a sun - Shall stay till we have done, - A willing shiner, that will shine as gladly - As frost-nipt suns look sadly. - Then we will sing and shine all our own day, - And one another pay; - His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine - Till even his beams sing, and my music shine.” - -(_Of prayer._) - - “Heaven in ordinary, man well-drest, - The Milky Way, the bird of Paradise.” - - “Then went I to a garden, and did spy - A gallant flower, - The crown-imperial: Sure, said I, - Peace at the root must dwell.” - - -VAUGHAN. - - “A darting conscience, full of stabs and fears.” - - “And wrap us in imaginary flights - Wide of a faithful grave.” - - “That in these masks and shadows I may see - Thy sacred way, - And by these hid ascents climb to that day - Which breaks from Thee - Who art in all things, though invisibly!” - - “O would I were a bird or star - Fluttering in woods, or lifted far - Above this inn - And road of sin! - Then either star or bird would be - Shining or singing still to Thee!” - -(_Of books._) - - “The track of fled souls, and their Milky Way.” - - “I walked the other day to spend my hour - Into a field, - Where I sometime had seen the soil to yield - A gallant flower.” - - -HERBERT. - - “But groans are quick and full of wings, - And all their motions upward be, - And ever as they mount, like larks they sing: - The note is sad, yet music for a king.” - - “Joys oft are there, and griefs as oft as joys, - But griefs without a noise; - Yet speak they louder than distempered fears: - What is so shrill as silent tears?” - - “At first Thou gavest me milk and sweetnesses, - I had my wish and way; - My days were strewed with flowers and happiness; - There was no month but May.” - - “Only a scarf or glove - Doth warm our hands, and make them write of Love.” - - “I got me flowers to strew Thy way, - I got me boughs off many a tree; - But Thou wast up by break of day, - And brought Thy sweets along with Thee.” - - “O come! for Thou dost know the way: - Or if to me Thou wilt not move, - Remove me where I need not say, - ‘Drop from above.’” - - “Sure Thou wilt joy by gaining me - To fly home like a laden bee.” - - -VAUGHAN. - - “A silent tear can pierce Thy throne - When loud joys want a wing; - And sweeter airs stream from a groan - Than any artèd string.” - - “Follow the cry no more! There is - An ancient way, - All strewed with flowers and happiness, - And fresh as May!” - - “feverish souls - Sick with a scarf or glove.” - - “I’ll get me up before the sun, - I’ll cull me boughs off many a tree; - And all alone full early run - To gather flowers and welcome Thee.” - - “Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill - My perspective still as they pass; - Or else remove me hence unto that hill - Where I shall need no glass!” - - “Thy grave, to which my thoughts shall move - Like bees in storms unto their hive.” - -To arraign Vaughan is to vindicate him. In the too liberal assizes of -literature, an idea becomes the property of him who best expresses -it. Herbert’s odd and fresh metaphors, his homing bees and pricks of -conscience and silent tears, the adoring star and the comrade bird, -even his famous female scarf, go over bodily to the spoiler. In many an -instance something involved and difficult still characterizes Herbert’s -diction; and it is diverting to watch how the interfering hand sorts -and settles it at one touch, and sends it, in Mr. Matthew Arnold’s -word, to the “centre.” Vaughan’s mind, despite its mysticism, was full -of despatch and impetuosity. Like Herbert, he alludes to himself, more -than once, as “fierce”; and the adjective undoubtedly belongs to him. -There is in Vaughan, at his height, an imaginative rush and fire which -Herbert never knew, a greater clarity and conciseness, a far greater -restraint, a keener sense both of color and form, and so much more -deference for what Mr. Ruskin calls “the peerage of words,” that the -younger man could never have been content to send forth a line which -might mean its opposite, such as occurs in the fine stanza about glory -in the beautiful _Quip_. It is only on middle ground that the better -poet and the better saint collide. Vaughan never could have written - - “O that I once past changing were - Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!” - -or the tranquil confession of faith: - - “Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust, - Thy hands made both, and I am there: - Thy power and love, my love and trust - Make one place everywhere!” - -For his best is not Herbert’s best, nor his worst Herbert’s worst. It -is not Vaughan who reminds us that “filth” lies under a fair face. He -does the “fiercer” thing: he goes to the Pit’s mouth in a trance, and -“hears them yell.” Herbert’s noblest and most winning art still has its -stand upon the altar steps of _The Temple_; but Vaughan is always on -the roof, under the stars, like a somnambulist, or actually above and -out of sight, “pinnacled dim in the intense inane”; absorbed in larger -and wilder things, and stretching the spirits of all who try to follow -him. Herbert has had his reward in the world’s lasting appreciation; -and though Vaughan had a favorable opinion of his own staying powers, -nothing would have grieved him less than to step aside, if the choice -had lain between him and his exemplar. Or re-risen, he would cry -loyally to him, as to that other Herbert, the rector of Llangattock and -his old tutor: “_Pars vertat patri, vita posthuma tibi_.” - -Vaughan, then, owed something to Herbert, although it was by no means -the best which Herbert could give; but he himself is, what Herbert is -not, an ancestor. He leans forward to touch Cowper and Keble; and Mr. -Churton Collins has taken the pains to trace him in Tennyson. - -The angels who - - “familiarly confer - Beneath the oak and juniper,” - -invoke an instant thought of the Milton of the _Allegro_; and the -fragrant winds which linger by Usk, “loaden with the rich arrear,” -appear to be Milton’s, too. His austere music first sounded in the -public ear in 1645, one year before Vaughan, much his junior, began -to print. It would seem very unlikely that a Welsh physician should -be beholden long after to the manuscripts of the Puritan stripling, -close-kept at Cambridge and Horton; but it is interesting to find the -prototype of Vaughan’s charming lines about Rachel, - - “the sheep-keeping Syrian maid,” - -in the _Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester_, dating from -1631.[34] Vaughan’s dramatic Fleet Street, - - “Where the loud whip and coach scolds all the way,” - -might as well be Swift’s, or Crabbe’s; and his salutation to the lark, - - “And now, as fresh and cheerful as the light, - Thy little heart in early hymns doth sing,” - -is like a quotation from some tender sonnet of Bowles, or from his -admirer, the young Coleridge who instantly outstepped him. _Olor_, -_Silex_, and _Thalia_ establish unexpected relationships with genius -the most remote from them and from each other. The animated melody of -poor Rochester’s best songs seems deflected from - - “If I were dead, and in my place,” - -addressed to Amoret,[35] in the _Poems_ of 1646. The delicate simile, - - “As some blind dial, when the day is done, - Can tell us at midnight there was a sun,” - -and - - “But I am sadly loose and stray, - A giddy blast each way. - O let me not thus range: - Thou canst not change!” - -(a verse of a poem headed by an extract, in the Vulgate, from the -eighth chapter to the Romans), come home with a smile to the lover of -Clough. Vaughan was that dangerous person, an original thinker; and the -consequence is that he compromises a great many authors who may never -have heard of him. It is admitted now that we owe to his prophetic lyre -one of the boasts of modern literature. Dr. Grosart has handled so well -the obvious debt of Wordsworth in _The Intimations of Immortality_, and -has proven so conclusively that Vaughan figured in the library at Rydal -Mount, that little need be said here on that theme. In _Corruption_, -_Childhood_, _Looking Back_, and _The Retreat_, most markedly in the -first, lie the whole point and pathos of - - “Trailing clouds of glory do we come - From Heaven, which is our home.” - -Few studies are more fascinating than that of the liquidation, so -to speak, of Vaughan’s brief, tense, impassioned monodies into “the -mighty waters rolling evermore” of the great _Ode_. It is Holinshed’s -accidental honor that he is lost in Shakespeare, and incorporated -with him. So with Vaughan: if shorn of his dues, he still remains -illustrious by virtue of one signal service to Wordsworth, whom, in the -main, he distinctly foreshadows. Yet it is no unpardonable heresy to be -jealous that the “first sprightly runnings” of a classic should not be -better known, and to prefer their touching simplicity to the grandly -adult and theory-burdened lines which everybody quotes. In the broad -range of English letters we find two persons whose normal mental habits -seem altogether of a piece with Vaughan’s: a woman of the eighteenth -century, and a philosopher of the nineteenth. The lovely _Petition for -an Absolute Retreat_, by Anne, Countess of Winchelsea (whose genius -was the charming _trouvaille_ of Mr. Edmund Gosse), might pass for -Vaughan’s, in Vaughan’s best manner; and so might - - “Their near camp my spirit knows - By signs gracious as rainbows,” - -as indeed the whole of Emerson’s ever-memorable _Forerunners_, itself a -mate for _The Retreat_; or rather, had these been anonymous lyrics of -Vaughan’s own day, it would have been impossible to persuade a Caroline -critic that he could not name their common author. - -Our poet had a curious fashion of coining verbs and adjectives out of -nouns, and carried it to such a degree as to challenge pre-eminence -with Keats. - - “O how it bloods - And spirits all my earth!” - -is part and parcel of the young cries of Endymion. When Vaughan has -discovered something to produce a fresh effect, he is not the man who -will hesitate to use it; and this mannerism occurs frequently: “our -grass straight russets,” “angel’d from that sphere,” “the mountained -wave,” “He heavened their walks, and with his eyes made those wild -shades a Paradise.” A little informality of this sort sometimes -justifies itself, as in the couplet ending the grim and powerful -_Charnel-House_: - - “But should wild blood swell to a lawless strain, - One check from thee shall channel it again!” - -And Henry Vaughan shares also with Keats, writing three hundred -years later, a defect which he had inherited, together with many -graces, directly from Ben Jonson:[36] the fashion of crowding the -sense of his text and the pauseless voice of his reader from the -natural breathing-place at the end of a line into the beginning or -the middle of the next line. More than any other, except Keats in his -first period, he roughens, without always strengthening, his rich -decasyllabics, by using what Mr. Gosse has happily classified as the -“overflow.” - -Though the Silurist had in him the possibilities of a great elegiac -poet, and his laments for his dead are many and memorable, there is not -one sustained masterpiece among them; nothing to equal or approach, -for example, Cowley’s _Ode on the Death of Mr. William Hervey_, in -the qualities which abide, and are visited with the honors of the -class-book and the library shelf. Yet Vaughan’s elegies are exquisite -and endearing; they haunt one with the conviction that they stop short -of immortality, not because their author had too little skill, but -because, between his repressed speech and his extreme emotions, no art -could make out to live. He had a deep heart, such as deep hearts will -always recognize and reverence: - - “And thy two wings were grief and love.” - -In the face of eternity he seems so to accord with the event which -all but destroys him, that sorrow inexpressible becomes suddenly -unexpressed, and his funeral music ends in a high enthusiasm and -serenity open to no misconception. Distance, and the lapse of time, -and his own utter reconciliation to the play of events make small -difference in his utterance upon the old topic. The thought of his -friend, forty years after, is the same mystical rapture: - - “O could I track them! but souls must - Track one the other; - And now the spirit, not the dust, - Must be thy brother: - Yet I have one pearl by whose light - All things I see, - And in the heart of death and night, - Find Heaven and thee.” - -_Daphnis_, the eclogue to the memory of Thomas Vaughan, is the only -one of these elegies which, possessing a surplus of beautiful lines, -is not even in the least satisfying. “R. Hall,” “no woolsack soldier,” -who was slain at the siege of Pontefract, won from Henry Vaughan a -passionate requiem, which opens with a gush of agony, “I knew it would -be thus!” as affecting as anything in the early ballads; and the battle -of Rowton Heath took from him “R. W.,” the comrade of his youth. But -it was in one who bore his sovereign’s name (hitherto unidentified, -although he is said to have been the subject of a “public sorrow”) that -Vaughan lost the friend upon whom his whole nature seemed to lean. The -soldier-heart in himself spoke out firmly in the cry he consecrated -_To the Pious Memory of C. W._ Its masculine dignity; the pride and -soft triumph which it gathers about it, advancing; the plain heroic -ending which sweeps away all images of remoteness and gloom, in - - “Good-morrow to dear Charles! for it is day,” - -can be compared to nothing but an _agitato_ of Schubert’s mounting -strings, slowing to their major chord with a courage and cheer that -bring tears to the eyes. Vaughan’s tender threnodies would make a small -but precious volume. _To the Pious Memory_, with _Thou that Knowest for -Whom I Mourn_, _Silence and Stealth of Days_, _Joy of my Life while -Left me Here_, _I Walked the other Day to spend my Hour_, _The Morning -Watch_, and _Beyond the Veil_, are alone enough to give him rank -forever as a genius and a good man. - -“C. W.’s” death was one of the things which turned him forever from -temporal pursuits and pleasures. Of his first wife we can find none but -conjectural traces in his books, for he was shy of using the beloved -name. The sense of those departed is never far from him. The air of -melancholy recollection, not morbid, which hangs over his maturer -lyrics, is directly referable to the close-following calamities which -estranged him from the presence of “the blessèd few,” and sent him, as -he nobly hoped, - - “Home from their dust to empty his own glass.” - -His thoughts centred, henceforward, in their full intensity, on the -supernatural world; nay, if he were irremediably depressed, not only -on the persistence of resolved matter, by means of which buried men -come forth again in the color of flowers and the fragrance of the wind, -but even on the physical damp and dark which confine our mortality. It -is the poet of dawn and of crisp mountain air who can pack horror on -horror into his nervous quatrains about Death: - - “A nest of nights; a gloomy sphere - Where shadows thicken, and the cloud - Sits on the sun’s brow all the year, - And nothing moves without a shroud.” - -This is masterly; but here, again, there is reserve, the curbing hand -of a man who holds, with Plato, a wilful indulgence in the “realism” of -sadness to be an actual crime. Vaughan’s dead dwell, indeed, as his own -mind does, in “the world of light.” As his corporeal sight is always -upon the zenith or the horizon, so his fancy is far away, with his -radiant ideals, and with the virtue and beauty he has walked with in -the flesh. He takes his harp to the topmost hill, and sits watching - - “till the white-winged reapers come.” - -He thinks of his obscured self, the child he was, and of “the narrow -way” (an ever-recurrent Scriptural phrase in his poetry) by which he -shall “travel back.” To leave the body is merely to start anew and -recover strength, and, with it, the inspiring companionship of which he -is inscrutably deprived. - -Chambers’ _Cyclopædia_ made an epic blunder, long ago, when it ascribed -to this gentlest of Anglicans a “gloomy sectarianism.” He, of all -religious poets, makes the most charming secular reading, and may well -be a favorite with the heathen for whom Herbert is too decorative, -Crashaw too hectic and intense, Cowper too fearful, and Faber too -fluent; _Lyra Apostolica_ a treatise, though a glorious one, on Things -which Must be Revived, and _Hymns Ancient and Modern_ an exceeding -weariness to the spirit. It is a saw of Dr. Johnson’s that it is -impossible for theology to clothe itself in attractive numbers; but -then Dr. Johnson was ignorant of Vaughan. It is not in human nature to -refuse to cherish the “holy, happy, healthy Heaven” which he has left -us (in a graded alliteration which smacks of the physician rather than -of the “gloomy sectarian”), his very social “angels talking to a man,” -and his bright saints, hovering and smiling nigh, who - - “are indeed our pillar-fires - Seen as we go; - They are the city’s shining spires - We travel to.” - -Who can resist the earnestness and candor with which, in a few -sessions, he wrote down the white passion of the last fifty years -of his life? No English poet, unless it be Spenser, has a piety so -simple and manly, so colored with mild thought, so free from emotional -consciousness. The elect given over to continual polemics do not count -Henry Vaughan as one of themselves. His double purpose is to make life -pleasant to others and to praise God; and he considers that he is -accomplishing it when he pens a compliment to the valley grass, or, -like Coleridge, caresses in some affectionate strophes the much-abused -little ass. All this liberal sweetness and charity heighten Vaughan’s -poetic quality, as they deepen the impression of his practical -Christianity. The nimbus is about his laic songs. When he talks of -moss and rocks, it is as if they were incorporated into the ritual. He -has the genius of prayer, and may be recognized by “those graces which -walk in a veil and a silence.” He is full of distinction, and of a sort -of golden idiosyncrasy. Vaughan’s true “note” is—Vaughan. To read him -is like coming alone to a village church-yard with trees, where the -west is dying, in hues of lilac and rose, behind the low ivied Norman -tower. The south windows are open, the young choir are within, and the -organist, with many a hushed unconventional interlude of his own, is -rehearsing with them the psalm of “pleasures for evermore.” - -FOOTNOTES: - -[20] Siluria comprised the shires of Monmouth, Hereford, Glamorgan, -Radnor, and Brecon. - -[21] The Reverend H. F. Lyte, Vaughan’s enthusiastic editor, best known -as the author of _Abide with Me_, reminds us that there was another -Henry Vaughan of the same college and the same neighborhood at home—a -pleasant theological person not to be confounded with the poet. It was -probably he, and not the Silurist, who devoted some verses to Charles -the First in the book called _Eucharistica Oxoniensis_, 1641. - -[22] These deep Augustinian lines are Carew’s, gay Carew’s; and they -mark the highest religious expression of their time. - -[23] Vaughan apparently enjoyed that privilege of genius, acquaintance -with a London garret, if we may take autobiographically the fine brag -worthy of the tribe of Henri Mürger: - -“I scorn your land, So far it lies below me; here I see How all the -sacred stars do circle me.” - -[24] The King lodged at Christchurch, the Queen and my Lady Castlemaine -(together, alas!) at Merton, amid endless hawking, tennis, boating, -basset, and general revelry. - -[25] Orinda’s own verses, scattered in manuscript among her friends, -were collected and printed without her knowledge, and much against her -desire, in 1663: a piece of treachery which threw her into a severe -indisposition. She could therefore condole more than enough with Henry -Vaughan. Friends were officious creatures in those days. - -[26] This, to say the least, was not “pretty” of Campbell, who thought -so well of the “world’s grey fathers” congregated to gaze at Vaughan’s -_Rainbow_ that he conveyed them bodily into the foreground of his own. - -[27] Per´-spective was, of course, the general pronunciation from -Shakespeare to Dr. Johnson, and is used with great beauty in Dryden’s -_Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew_. But it is a characteristic -word with Vaughan, and it was from Vaughan that Wordsworth took it. - -[28] Vaughan had a relish for damp weather, the thing which makes the -loveliness of the British isles, and which the ungrateful islanders -are prone to revile. He never passes a sheet of water without looking -upward for the forming cloud: - -“That drowsy lake From her faint bosom breathed thee!” - -[29] Sometimes erroneously printed “bowers.” - -[30] It was kind of the ever-kind Hunt to include America in his -enumeration, at a time when the United States were supposed by his -fellow-countrymen to have no literature at all of their own. The -circumstance that his challenge appeared in the preface to _The Book -of the Sonnet_, which was edited by Hunt in conjunction with an -American, and published at Boston in 1868, may help to account for the -mannerliness of the reference. - -[31] In the _Letters and Memorials of Archbishop Trench_, vol. ii., -p. 57, there is a letter bearing upon this point from Mr. Frank -Millson, dated 1868, which deserves serious consideration from -Vaughan’s forthcoming editors. “I think,” he writes the Dean, “that -your supposition that the 1655 edition is the same book as the one -of 1650, with a new title-page and additions, can hardly be correct, -though I know that Lyte, the editor of Pickering’s reprint, thinks as -you do. The preface to the 1655 edition is dated September 30, 1654, -and contains this passage” (not given in the _Memorials_) “which seems -to me to refer to the fact of a new edition. A comparison of my two -copies shows that the 1650 edition consists of half a sheet, title -and dedication, and 110 pages. The second edition has title, preface, -dedication, motto, the 110 pages of the first edition, with 84 pages -of new matter, and a table of first lines. A noticeable thing in the -arrangement is that the sheets do not begin with new printer’s marks, -as they might be expected to do if the second part were simply new -matter added to the first volume, but begin with A, the last sheet of -the former volume having ended with G. I am sorry to trouble you with -these trifling details; but as Vaughan has long been a favorite author -of mine, they have an interest for me, and if they help to show that he -was not neglected by readers of his own time, I shall be glad.” - -[32] Anthologies and cyclopædias nowadays, especially since Dr. John -Brown and Principal Shairp drew attention to the Silurist in their -pages, are more than likely to admit him. It was not so always. -Winstanley, sharp as was his eye, let Vaughan escape him in his -_Lives of the Poets_, published in 1687. He is not in the _Theatrum -Poetarum_, nor in Johnson’s _Lives_. He is in neither of Southey’s -collections. Mr. Palgrave allows him, in _The Golden Treasury_, but -a song and a half; Ellis’s sheaf of excellent _Specimens_ of 1811 -furnishes eighteen lines of a wedding blessing on the _Best and Most -Accomplished Couple_ apologizing for “their too much quaintness and -conceit”; and in Willmott’s _Sacred Poets_ Vaughan occupies four -pages, as against Crashaw’s thirty-five, Herbert’s thirty-seven, and -Wither’s one hundred and thirty-two. But Vaughan fares well in Dr. -George Macdonald’s _England’s Antiphon_, and in Archbishop Trench’s -_Household Book_. Ward’s _English Poets_, in the second volume, has a -conventional selection from him, as has, at greater length, Fields’ and -Whipple’s _Family Library of British Poetry_. There is a goodly list -entered under Vaughan’s name in Gilfillan’s _Less-Known British Poets_, -all chosen from his devotional work. Thirty-seven religious lyrics -again adorn the splendid _Treasury of Sacred Song_. Vaughan’s secular -numbers yet await their proper bays, although a limited edition of most -of them, containing a bibliography, was printed in 1893 by J. R. Tutin -of Hull. Mr. Saintsbury, in his _Seventeenth Century Lyrics_, has a -small and very choice group of Vaughan’s songs, and Professor Palgrave, -having to do with him for the third time, gives him large and cordial -honor in the eleventh volume of _Y Cymmrodor_. In Emerson’s Parnassus -he appears but once. He had his most graceful and grateful American -tribute when Mr. Lowell, long ago, named him in passing as “dear Henry -Vaughan,” in _A Certain Condescension in Foreigners_. - -[33] In one of his prefaces, Vaughan hits neatly at the crowd of -Herbertists: “These aim more at verse than at perfection.” Where there -are noble resemblances, it is well to remember that two sides have the -right to be heard. Mrs. Thoreau used to say: “Mr. Emerson imitates -Henry!” And she was at least as accurate as the critics who annoyed her -old age by the reversed statement. - -[34] Mr. R. H. Stoddard owns a copy of the first edition of -_Nieremberg’s Meditations_, translated by Vaughan in 1654, and -published the following year, which has upon the title-page an -autographic “J. M.” supposed, by every evidence, to be Milton’s. If it -be so, the busy Latin Secretary, meditating his grand work, must have -been, on his part, a reader and a lover of the man who was almost his -equal at golden phrases. - -[35] Congreve and Waller employ the same rather too obvious love-name -for their serenaded divinities. - -[36] Vaughan openly wears jewels which belong to Jonson. - -“Go seek thy peace in war: Who falls for love of God shall rise a star!” - -wrote brave Father Ben; and no Englishman of spirit, between 1642 and -the Restoration, was likely to forget it. The passage certainly clung -to Vaughan’s mind, for he assimilated it later in a sweet line all for -peace: - -“Do thou the works of day, and rise a star.” - - - - -III - -GEORGE FARQUHAR - -1677-1707 - - -THERE is a narrow dark Essex Street West in the city of Dublin, running -between Fishamble Street and Essex Gate, at the rear of the Lower -Blind Quay. The older people still bluntly call it what it was called -before 1830: Smock Alley. On its north side stands the sufficiently -ugly church of SS. Michael and John. The arched passage still in use, -parallel with the nave of this church, was the entrance to a theatre -on the same site; what is now the burial vault was once the pit, full -of ruddy and uproarious faces. The theatre, erected about 1660, which -had a long, stormy and eventful history, was rebuilt in 1735, and -having been turned into a warehouse, fell into decay, to be replaced -by a building of another clay. But while it was still itself, it was -great and popular, and the lane between Trinity College and the old -arched passage was choked every night with the press of jolly youths, -who, as Archbishop King pathetically complained, appeared to love the -play better than study! Among those who hung about Smock Alley like a -barnacle in the years 1694 and 1695, was a certain George Farquhar, -son of William,[37] a poor Londonderry clergyman of the Establishment; -a long-faced peculiar lad of mild mien but high spirits. He had come -from the north, under episcopal patronage, to wear a queer dress among -his social betters, to sweep and scour and carry tankards of ale to -the Fellows in hall; and incidentally, to imbibe, on his own part, the -lore of all the ages. The major event in his history is that, instead -of sitting up nights over _Isocrates de Pace_, he slipped off to see -Robert Wilkes and the stock company, and to decide that acting, or, -as he afterwards sarcastically defined it, “tearing his Lungs for a -Livelihood,” was also the thing for him. Wherefore, at eighteen, either -because his benefactor, Bishop Wiseman of Dromore, had died, or else, -as is not very credibly reported, because he was cashiered from his -class, Master Farquhar, cut loose from his old moorings, applied to -Manager Ashbury of the Dublin Theatre, and to such avail that he was -able presently to make his own appearance there as no less a personage -than Othello. He had a weak voice and a shy presence; but the public -encouraged him. One of his first parts was that of Guyomar, Montezuma’s -younger brother, in Dryden’s tragedy of _The Indian Emperor_. In the -fifth act, as soon as he had declaimed to Vasquez in sounding sing-song: - - “Friendship with him whose hand did Odmar kill? - Base as he was, he was my brother still! - But since his blood has washed away his guilt, - Nature asks thine for that which thou hast spilt,” - -he made, according to stage directions, a fierce lunge at his too -conciliatory foe. Guyomar had armed himself, inadvertently, with -a genuine sword, and Vasquez came near enough to being killed in -the flesh. The man eventually recovered; but it shows of what -impressionable stuff Farquhar was made, that his mental horror -and pain, during that moment while he believed he had slain a -fellow-creature, should have turned the course of his life. He left the -stage; nor would he return to it. Some eight years after, indeed, he -visited Dublin again, and on the old boards played Sir Harry Wildair -for his own benefit; but this was at a time when he forced himself to -undertake all honorable chances of money-making, out of his consuming -anxiety for his family. - -Wilkes and his wife returned to London, and the lad Farquhar went with -them. He obtained a commission in the army from the Earl of Orrery; -he was in Holland on duty during a part of the year 1700, and came -back to England with one of her earliest military red coats on his -back, in the train of his much-approved sovereign, William III. He -had already written, thanks to Wilkes and his incessant urging, his -first two plays, and had seen them successful at Drury Lane;[38] he -had also overheard with enthusiasm, at the Mitre Tavern in St. James’s -Market, Mistress Nance Oldfield, an orphan of sixteen, niece of the -proprietress, reading _The Scornful Lady_ behind the bar. Captain -Vanbrugh was duly told of Farquhar’s delight and admiration, and on -the strength of them introduced the girl to Rich, who did few things -so good in his lifetime as when he put her upon the stage at fifteen -shillings a week. It was not long before this distinguished actress -and generous woman, destined to lend her gayety and beautiful bearing -to the interpretation of Farquhar’s women, enlivened the town as the -glorious Sylvia of _The Recruiting Officer_, who can “gallop all the -morning after a hunting-horn, and all the evening after a fiddle.” - -“We hear of Farquhar at one time,” says Leigh Hunt, in a pretty -summary, “in Essex, hare-hunting (not in the style of a proficient); -at another, at Richmond, sick; and at a third, in Shropshire on a -recruiting party, where he was treated with great hospitality, and -found material for one of the best of his plays.” - -_Love and a Bottle_ inaugurated the vogue of the Farquhar comedy; and -Wilkes, whose name in London carried favor and precedence, was the -Roebuck of the cast. Its successors, _The Constant Couple_ (with a -framework transferred and adapted from its author’s earlier _Adventures -of Covent Garden_), and its sequel, _Sir Harry Wildair_, again -championed by the “friendly and indefatigable” Wilkes, who impersonated -the engaging rakish heroes, had long runs, and firmly established -their author’s fame. In 1702 Farquhar produced _The Inconstant_ (which -he had perverted from Fletcher’s _Wild Goose Chase_, as if a fit -setting were sought for the wonderfully effective last act of his own -devising); and after _The Inconstant_, _The Twin Rivals_. _The Stage -Coach_, a one-act farce in which he had a collaborator,[39] dates from -1704, and _The Recruiting Officer_ from 1706; _The Beaux’ Stratagem_ -was written in the spring of 1707. This is a working record of barely -nine years; it represents a secure and continuous artistic advance; and -it should have brought its patient originator something better than the -privilege of dying young, “broken-hearted,” as he confessed to Wilkes, -“and without a shilling.” - -Farquhar had but the trifling income of an officer’s pay on which to -support his wife and his two little daughters. He seems to have sought -no political preferment, nor did his numerous patrons put themselves -out to advance him, although these were the very days when men of -letters were crowded into the public service. Ever and anon he received -fifteen guineas, then a very handsome sum, for a play. Perhaps, -like his rash gallants, he had “a head to get money, and a heart to -spend it.” He greatly wished success, for the sake of those never -absent from his thought; and he complained bitterly when the French -acrobats and rope-dancers took from _The Twin Rivals_ the attention of -pleasure-seeking Londoners, much as poor Haydon complained afterwards -of the crowds who surged down Piccadilly, to behold not his “Christ’s -Entry into Jerusalem” at all, but General Tom Thumb, holding court -under the same roof. - -When Farquhar’s health was breaking, and debts began to involve him at -last, it appears that the Earl of Ormonde, his general, prompted him -to sell his commission in order to liquidate them, and agreed to give -him a captaincy. Or, as is yet more probable, in view of the fact that -Farquhar was already known by the title of captain, he was urged to -sell out of the army, on a given pledge that preferment of another sort -awaited him. His other industrious devices to secure support for four -having missed fire, he gladly performed his part of the transaction, -only to experience a fatal delay on the part of my Lord Ormonde, -whose mind had strayed to larger matters. In fine, the unkept promise -hurt the subaltern to the heart; he sank, literally from that hour, -of grief and disquietude. Lintott the stationer, and his old friend -Wilkes stood manfully by him, one with liberal payment in advance, -and one with affectionate furtherance and gifts; but Farquhar did not -rally. It was to Wilkes, as everybody knows, that he penned this most -touching testament: “Dear Bob, I have not anything to leave thee to -perpetuate my memory but two helpless girls. Look upon them sometimes! -and think of him who was, to the last moment of his life, thine.” The -end came on or about April 29, 1707, George Farquhar being just thirty -years of age. While he lay dying in Soho, his last and best comedy -was in progress at the new magnificent Haymarket, and his audiences, -with a barren benevolence not uncharacteristic of the unthinking human -species, are said to have wept for him. He was buried in the parish -church-yard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields,[40] where Nell Gwynne’s -contrite ashes lay, and where her legacied bells tolled for his passing. - -Farquhar’s name is always coupled with those of Congreve, Wycherley, -and Vanbrugh, although in spirit and also in point of time he was -removed from the influences which formed them. Many critics, notably -Hazlitt, Macaulay, and Thackeray, have allowed him least mention of the -four, but he is, in reality, the best playwright among them; and it is -greatly to the credit of a discreditable period if he be taken as its -representative. He had Vanbrugh’s exuberant vivacity, Congreve’s grace, -Wycherley’s knack of climax. Wycherley, retiring into private life when -Farquhar was born, lived to see his exit; Etherege was then at his -zenith; Dryden’s _All for Love_ was in the printer’s case, and Otway, -almost on the point of his two great works, was coming home ragged -from Flanders: Otway, whose boyish ventures on the stage, and whose -subsequent soldiering, Farquhar was so closely to follow. - -Pope, and a gentler observer, Steele, found Farquhar’s dialogue “low,” -and so it must have sounded between the brave surviving extravagances -of the Jacobean buskin and the modulated utterances of _Cato_ and _The -Revenge_. A practical talent like Farquhar’s was bound to provoke hard -little words from the Popes who shrank from his spontaneous style, -and the Steeles who could not approve of the gross themes he had -inherited. For sheer good-breeding, some scenes in _The Way of the -World_ can never be surpassed; they prove that one cannot hold the -stage by talk alone. It is fortunate for Farquhar that he could not -emulate the exquisitely civilized depravities of Congreve’s urban Muse. -But his dialogue is not “low” to modern tastes; it has, in general, a -simple, natural zest, infinitely preferable to the Persian apparatus -of the early eighteenth century. Even he, however, can rant and -deviate into rhetoric, as soon as his lovers drop upon one knee. More -plainly in Farquhar’s work than in that of any contemporary, we mark -the glamour of the Caroline literature fading, and the breath of life -blowing in. An essentially Protestant nationalism began to settle down -upon England for good and all with William and Mary, and it brought -subtle changes to bear upon the arts, the trades, the sports, and -the manners of the people. In Farquhar’s comedies we have the reflex -of a dulling and strengthening age; the fantasticalities of the last -three reigns are all but gone; the Vandyck dresses gleam and swish -no longer. Speech becomes more pert and serviceable, in a vocabulary -of lesser range; lives are vulgarizing, that is, humanizing, and -getting closer to common unromantic concerns; no such delicately unreal -creature as Millamant, all fire and dew and perfumery,—Millamant who -could not suffer to have her hair done up in papers written in prose, -and who, quite by herself, is a vindication of what Mr. Allibone is -pleased to call “Lamb’s sophistical and mischievous essay,”—walks the -world of Farquhar. With him, notwithstanding that the sorry business -to be despatched is the same old amorous intrigue, come in at once -less license, less affectation, less Gallicism. He reports from the -beginning what he himself apprehends; his plays are shorthand notes, -albeit timid in character, upon the transitional and prosaic time. His -company is made up of individuals he had seen in a thousand lights at -the Spread Eagle and the Rummer; in the Inner Temple and in St. James’s -Park; in barracks domestic and foreign; and in his native place, where -adventurers, eloquent in purest Londonderry,[41] stumbled along -full of whiskey and ideas. He anticipates certain phases of Private -Ortheris’s thorough-going love of London, and figures his exiled Dicky -as “just dead of a consumption, till the sweet smoke of Cheapside -and the dear perfume of Fleet-ditch” made him a man again. In this -laughing affectionate apprehension of the local and the temporal -lies Farquhar’s whole strength or weakness. From the poets of the -Restoration there escapes, most incongruously, now and then, something -which betokens a sense of natural beauty, or even a recognition of the -divine law; but Farquhar is not a poet, and this spray from the deeps -is not in him. He perceives nothing that is not, and opens no crack or -chink where the fancy can air itself for a moment and - - —“step grandly out into the infinite.” - -Such a lack would not be worth remarking in the debased and insincere -writers who but just preceded him. But from the very date of his -first dealings with London managers, idealism was abroad, and a man -with affinities for “the things that are more excellent” need have -feared no longer to divulge them, since the court and the people, if -not the dominant town gentry, were with him. Farquhar had neither the -full moral illumination nor the will, though he had the capacity, -to lend a hand to the blessed work waiting for the opportunist. He -was young, he was of provincial nurture; he was carried away by the -theatrical tradition. Yet his mind was a Medea’s kettle, out of which -everything issued cleaner and more wholesome. Despite the prodigious -animal spirits of his characters, they conduct their mad concerns with -sense and moderation; they manage tacitly to proclaim themselves as -temporarily “on a tear,” as going forth to angle in angling weather, -and as likely to lead sober citizen lives from to-morrow on. Under bad -old maintained conditions they develop traits approximately worthy of -the _Christian Hero_. They “look before and after.” They are to be -classed as neutrals and nondescripts, for they have all the swagger -of their lax progenitors, and none of their deviltry. They belong -professionally to one family, while they bear a tantalizing resemblance -to another. Farquhar himself, perhaps unaware that partisanship is -better than compromise, made his bold toss for bays both spiritual -and temporal. Imitating, as novices will ever do, the art back of -him, he adopted the claim to approbation which that art never dreamed -of. In the very good preface to _The Twin Rivals_ (which has always -been approved of critics rather than of audiences), he sets up for a -castigator of vice and folly, and he offers to appease “the ladies and -the clergy,” as, in some measure apparent to the more metaphysical -among them, he may have done. His friend, Mr. John Hopkins, the -author of _Amasia_, invited, on behalf of _The Constant Couple_, the -commendation of Collier. That open-minded censor may have seen with -satisfaction, in the general trend of Farquhar’s composition, the less -and less dubious day-beams of Augustan decency. Though Farquhar did not -live, like Vanbrugh and the magnanimous Dryden, to admit the abuse of a -gift, and to deplore it, he alone, of the minor dramatists, seems all -along to have had a negative sort of conscience better than none. His -instincts continually get the better not only of his environment, but -of his practice. Some uneasiness, some misgiving, are at the bottom of -his homely materialism. He thinks it best, on the whole, to forswear -the temptation to be sublime, and to keep to his cakes and ale; and -for cakes and ale he had an eminent and inborn talent. What was ably -said of Hogarth, the great exemplar, will cover all practicians of his -school: “He had an intense feeling for and command over the impressions -of senses and habit, of character and passion, the serious and the -comic; in a word, of nature as it fell in with his own observation, or -came into the sphere of his actual experience. But he had little power -beyond that sphere, or sympathy for that which existed only in idea. He -was ‘conformed to this world, not transformed.’” Or, as Leigh Hunt, in -his beautiful memoir, adds, with acuteness, of Farquhar himself: “He -could turn what he had experienced in common life to the best account, -but he required in all cases the support of ordinary associations, and -could not project his spirit beyond them.” In short, Farquhar lacked -imagination. He had insight, however, of another order, which is -his praise, and which distinguishes him from all his fellows: he had -sympathy and charity. - -The major blot on the literature of the English stage of the period is -not its libertinism, but rather its concomitant utter heartlessness. -“Arrogance” (so, according to Erasmus, that ascetic scholar Dean Colet -used to remind his clergy) “is worse than a hundred concubines.” The -slight sporadic touches of tenderness, of pity, of disinterested -generosity, to be found by patient search in Congreve, come in boldly -with Farquhar, and boldly overrun his prompter’s books. Vanbrugh’s -scenes stand on nothing but their biting and extravagant sarcasm. As -Congreve’s characters are indiscriminately witty, so Vanbrugh’s are -universally and wearisomely cynical, and at the expense of themselves -and all society. His women in high life have no individuality; they -wear stings of one pattern. The genial conception of the shrewd, -material Mrs. Amlet, however, in _The Confederacy_, is worthy of -Farquhar, and certainly Congreve himself could not have bettered -her in the execution. Etherege’s typical Man of Mode is a tissue -of untruth, hardness, and scorn, all in impeccable attire; a most -mournful spectacle. Thinking of such dainty monsters, Macaulay let fly -his famous invective against their creators: “Foreheads of bronze, -hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of hell!” -George Farquhar may be exempted altogether from this too-deserved -compliment. There is honest mirth in his world of fiction, there is -dutifulness, there is true love, there are good women; there is genuine -friendship between Roebuck and Lovewell, between Trueman and Hermes -Wouldbe, between Aimwell and Archer, and between the green Tummas of -_The Recruiting Officer_ and his Costar, whom he cannot leave behind. -Sylvia, Angelica, Constance, Leanthe, Oriana, Dorinda, free-spoken -as they are, how they shine, and with what morning freshness, among -the tiger-lilies of that evil garden of the Restoration drama! These -heroines are an innovation, for they are maids, not wedded wives. -As to the immortal periwigged young bloods their suitors, they are -“real gentlemen,” as Hazlitt, who loved Farquhar, called them, “and -only pretended impostors;” or, to quote Farquhar’s latest editor, Mr. -A. C. Ewald, they are “always men and never yahoos.” Their author -had no interest in “preferring vice, and rendering virtue dull and -despicable.” Their praise may be negative, but it establishes a wide -wall of difference between them and the fops and cads with whom they -have been confounded. In their conversations, glistening with epigram -and irony, malevolence has no part; they sneer at no virtue, they -tamper with none; and at every turn of a selfish campaign they find -opportunity for honorable behavior. From the mouths of these worldlings -comes satire, hot and piping, against worldliness; for Farquhar is -as moralizing, if not as moral, as he dares be. Some of the least -attractive of them, the most greedy and contriving, have moments of -sweetly whimsical and optimistic speech. Thus Benjamin Wouldbe, the -plotter against his elder brother in _The Twin Rivals_, makes his -adieu after the fashion of a true gallant: “I scorn your beggarly -benevolence! Had my designs succeeded, I would not have allowed you the -weight of a wafer, and therefore will accept none.” The same person -soars again into a fine Aurelian speculation: “Show me that proud stoic -that can bear success and champagne! Philosophy can support us in hard -fortune, but who can have patience in prosperity?” Over his men and -women in middle life Farquhar lingers with complacence entirely foreign -to his colleagues, to whom mothers, guardians, husbands, and other -apple-guarding dragons were uniformly ridiculous and odious. Justice -Balance is as attractive as a hearth-fire on a December night; so is -Lady Bountiful. Over Fairbank, the good goldsmith, Farquhar gets fairly -sentimental, and permits him to drop unaware into decasyllabics, like -the pastoral author of _Lorna Doone_. His rogues are merely roguish, -in the softened sense of the word; in his panorama, though black -villains come and go, it is only for an instant, and to further some -one dramatic effect. He has eulogy for his heroes when they deserve it, -and when they do not you may trust him to find a compassionate excuse; -as when poor Leanthe feelingly says of her lover that “his follies are -weakly founded upon the principles of honor, where the very foundation -helps to undermine the structure.” Even Squire Sullen, for his -lumpishness, is divorced without derision, and in a peal of harmless -laughter. Farquhar, indeed, is all gentleness, all kindness. He had the -pensive attitude of the true humorist towards the world he laughed at; -his characters let slip words too deep for their living auditors. It -is curious that to a Restoration dramatist, “a nether millstone,” we -should owe a perfect brief description of ideal married life. In the -scene of the fourth act of _Sir Harry Wildair_, where Lady Lurewell, -with her “petrifying affectation,” is trying to tease Sir Harry out -of all endurance on the subject of his wife (whom he believes to be -lost or dead), and the degree of affection he had for her, he makes -reply: “My own heart whispered me her desires, ’cause she herself was -there; no contention ever rose but the dear strife of who should most -oblige—no noise about authority, for neither would stoop to command, -where both thought it glory to obey.” This is meant to be spoken -rapidly, and not without its tantalizing lack of emphasis; but what a -pearl it is, set there in the superlatively caustic dialogue! English -chivalry and English literature have no such other golden passage in -their rubrics, unless it be the famous tribute to the Lady Elizabeth -Hastings that “to love her was a liberal education,” or Lovelace’s -unforgettable song: - - “I could not love thee, dear, so much, - Loved I not Honour more!” - -The passage takes on a very great accidental beauty when we remember -that it required courage, in its time and place, to have written it. -It is characteristic also of Farquhar that it should be introduced, -as it is, on the top wave of a vivacious and stormy conversation, -which immediately sweeps it under, as if in proof that he understood -both his art and his audience. The conjugal tie, among the leaders -of fashion, was still something to laugh at and to toy with. Captain -Vanbrugh, from whom nobody need expect much edification, had put in the -mouth of his Constant, in a play which was a favorite with Garrick, -a bit of sense and sincerity quoted, as it deserved to be, by Hunt: -“Though marriage be a lottery in which there are a wondrous many -blanks, yet there is one inestimable lot in which the only heaven on -earth is written.” And again: “To be capable of loving one is better -than to possess a thousand.” This was in 1698, and Farquhar therefore -was not first, nor alone, in daring to speak for the derided idea of -wedlock. Steele was soon to arise as the very champion of domestic -life; and English wit, since he wrote, has never subsisted by its -mockery of the conditions which create - - “home-keeping days and household reverences.” - -But it was Farquhar who spoke in behalf of these the most memorable -word of his generation. After that lofty evidence of what he must be -suspected to have been, it is well to see, as best we may, what manner -of man George Farquhar was. And first let us take some extracts from -his own account of himself, “candid and modest,” as Hunt named it. - -He gives us to understand that he had an ardent temperament, held in -check by an introspective turn of thought, by natural bashfulness, and -by habits of consideration for others. The portrait is drawn from a -letter in the _Miscellanies_, of “a mind and person generally dressed -in black,” and might have come bodily, and with charming grace, from -_The Spectator_. “I have very little estate but what lies under the -circumference of my hat . . . and should I by misfortune come to lose -my head, I should not be worth a groat.” “I am seldom troubled by what -the world calls airs and caprices, and I think it an idiot’s excuse -for a foolish action to say: ‘’Twas my humor.’” “I cannot cheerfully -fix to any study which bears not a pleasure in the application.” -“Long expectation makes the blessing always less to me; I lose the -great transport of surprise.” “I am a very great epicure; for which -reason I hate all pleasure that’s purchased by excess of pain. I can’t -relish the jest that vexes another. In short, if ever I do a wilful -injury, it must be a very great one.” “I have many acquaintances, very -few intimates, but no friend; I mean, in the old romantic way.” “I -have no secret so weighty but that I can bear it in my own breast.” -“I would have my passion, if not led, at least waited on by my -reason.” This last text, repeated elsewhere by Farquhar, which is the -counterpart of one in Sir Philip Sidney’s _Arcadia_, has interest from -the lips of a child of the “dancing, drinking, and unthinking time.” -Farquhar’s face, in the old prints, is wonderfully of a piece with -these amiable reports: a handsome, humane, careworn, melancholy young -face, the negation of the contemporary idea of the man about town. His -constitution, at its best, was but frail. “You are as dear to me,” he -says, pathetically, to his Penelope, “as my hopes of waking in health -to-morrow morning.” - -A tradition has been received without question by his many critics and -biographers, that his chief characters, all cast in the same animated -mould, are but incognitos of himself. Highly-colored projections of -himself, with latent traits exaggerated, and formed mental restraints -removed, they may indeed be. The public, which loves identifications, -insisted on finding him revealed in his Archers and Sir Harrys. Whether -or not the dramatists of the day had universally the Rembrandtesque -whim of painting themselves into their own foregrounds, they were -obstinately supposed to do so, with Etherege in Young Bellair, with -Otway in Jaffier. But the real Farquhar - - —“courteous, facile, sweet, - Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride,” - -with his reserve, his simple dress, his thin, agreeable voice, -his early reputation at college for uncongeniality, acting in -every emergency whither we can fairly trace him with deliberate -high-mindedness, is far enough from the temper of his restless and -jocund creations. He wished to remove the impression that he could have -been his own model; for he took pains to inscribe _The Inconstant_ to -his classmate, Richard Tighe, and to compliment him upon his kinship -with Mirabel, “a gay, splendid, easy, generous, fine young gentleman”; -the applauded type, in short, of all that Farquhar’s heroes set out to -be. Again, lest he should pass for a realist as rabid as Mademoiselle -de Scudéry, who pinioned three hundred and seventy of her acquaintances -between the covers of _Clélie_, Farquhar adds this warning to his -enthusiastic dedication of _The Recruiting Officer_ “to all friends -round the Wrekin”: “Some little turns of humor that I met with almost -within the shade of that famous hill gave the rise to this comedy; -and people were apprehensive that, by the example of some others, I -would make the town merry at the expense of the country gentleman. But -they forgot that I was to write a comedy, not a libel.” He disclaims -everywhere, with the same playful decisiveness, the interpretations put -upon his designs and actions by the world of overgrown infants which he -entertained. Endowed with courage and much personal charm, he had small -chance of distinguishing himself upon the field, and for the most part -shone at a garrison mess; but he had led a not inadventurous life, in -which were incidents of the most pronounced melodrama, with a touch of -mystery to enhance their value for the curious. Farquhar had travelled, -and with an open, not an insular mind; he had, by his own confession, -too deep an acquaintance with wine, and with the nightingales of Spring -Gardens, outsinging “the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow”; he had -been, in short, though with “melancholy as his every-day apparel,” -alive and abroad as a private Whig of the Revolution, shy of ladies’ -notice till it came, and proud of it ever after. When he printed, in -his twenty-first year, _The Adventures of Covent Garden_, he added to -it a boy’s bragging motto: _Et quorum pars magna fui_. The inference -seems to have clung closer to him than he found comfortable. He -complains, not without significance, in his prose essay upon the -drama, that the public think any rôle compounded of “practical rake -and speculative gentleman is, ten to one, the author’s own character.” -With the incident which furnished its thrilling closing scenes to _The -Inconstant_, Farquhar had probably no connection; he takes pains to -state that the hero of it was the Chevalier de Chastillon, quite as if -he feared another confusion of himself, as fearless and quick-witted -a man, with the “golden swashbucklers” of his imagination. The rumor -which confounded them with him has next to nothing to support it. -Fortune, fashion, foolhardiness, impudence, were not the stars which -shone upon Farquhar’s nativity. Such exotic and epic virtues as may -flourish under these, such as do adorn the delightful dandies he -depicted, surely belonged to him in person; and his quiet habit of -living apart and letting the town talk, fixed to perpetuity the belief -that he had exploited himself vicariously, for good and all, upon the -stage. Certain qualities of his, certain brave truces established with -adverse conditions, force one to consider him with more attention and -respect than even his brilliant pen invites. It is something to find -him diffident and studious in a bacchanalian society, and with such -scrupulous sensitiveness that a mere inadvertence in boyhood forbade -him ever to fence again;[42] but his outstanding characteristic, the -thing which sets him apart from his brocaded _dramatis personæ_, is his -known lasting devotion to the welfare of his family, and his admirable -behavior in relation to his early and extraordinary marriage. - -In 1702, Farquhar issued a charming and little-known miscellany, -called _Love and Business_, “a collection of occasionary verse and -epistolary prose.” The poetic exercises are of small importance; -but the other data (which survive as a hindrance, rather than as a -help, to biographers) come near being of very definite value. All -manner of futile guesses have been expended upon the identification -of his Penelope. It is given to no mouser to name her with certainty; -but, despite the gossip of the greenroom, now as ever too ready to -weave romances about the name of George Farquhar, internal evidence -is strongly against her having been Anne Oldfield. Yet this is the -supposition of most of his editors. Commenting upon one passage -touching some villanous stratagem from which Farquhar says he was -able to rescue a friend in the Low Countries, a friend with whom he -afterwards condoles upon a robbery she had undergone, Leigh Hunt adds -that this may have been the woman whom Farquhar subsequently made his -wife. A widow, whose Christian name was Margaret, but of whom we know -so little else that we cannot say whether she was English, or whether -her age considerably exceeded his, conceived a passionate attachment -for him, and managed to have it represented to him from several -quarters not only that she was kindly disposed towards him, but that -it would be well for his opening career if he should seek her hand, -as she had estates and revenues. Eventually, after we know not what -hesitations natural to a fastidious temperament, he proposed to her -and was accepted, and it soon transpired that the bride was quite as -penniless as himself. Hunt does not follow out his own hint in the -matter of the robbery, though the question, when carefully considered, -has a vital import. If the victim were indeed the lady whom Farquhar -married later, and if she were indeed robbed, it should signify that -she must then have been possessed of some wealth, so that the report -given to Farquhar could not have been, up to that time at least, a -lie. On the other hand, casuists must decide whether, again in the -event of the victim having been correctly identified by Hunt, the -robbery itself may not have been an invention meant, after Farquhar had -declared his allegiance, to quicken his sympathy, and to soften the -coming revelation that the robbery could never have resulted, owing to -a defect in the premises! There is very much else about the _Letters_ -which is confusing and inconsistent. They are so disconnected, and -they vary so in tone and manner, as to suggest a doubt whether, if not -altogether imaginary, they could have been meant for any one person. A -lady is announced as having returned them for publication; she dresses -in mourning, and resides now on the Continent, now in London or in the -country; her suitor very explicitly states that he had long solicited -in vain the honor of her hand; and, in the end, with farewells and an -abrupt and unexplained severing, he gives up the quest, with his own -admission that he has lost her and that her heart “had no room for -him.” Now that the recipient of this correspondence, Anne Oldfield -or another, should have returned it for commercial purposes, not -having been won by the very real passion exhibited in parts of it, -seems somewhat peculiar; but to accept as fact that Farquhar himself -actually asked these letters back from her, and printed them as they -stood, is, under the conditions, absurd, and irreconcilable with -our knowledge of his character from other and prior sources. Hunt -further suggests that the _Miscellany_ was gathered together in some -press of pecuniary trouble; and its title, indeed, may hint at a -whimsical expectation that Love, being harnessed and sent abroad to -arouse curiosity among readers, may return in the way of Business to -headquarters. But Farquhar, in his bachelor days, had a fair income, -and would not have been so likely to hear the wolf at the door as he -was later, when that sound would awake in him a dread not ominous to -himself alone. It is possible that the undiscovered register of his -marriage bears the date of 1702 or even of 1701; if it were so, that -might explain the issue of his only book not in dramatic dress, and the -emergency which called it forth. It is difficult indeed to suppose, -although modern delicacy in these matters was just then a somewhat -unknown quantity, that we have between its covers genuine love-letters -hot from the pen. Steele, of an August morning nine years later, -inserted in _The Spectator_ as the communication of a third person, six -of his own notes to his comely and noble _fiancée_, Mary Scurlock. But -Farquhar had not Steele’s earnestness and love of circumstantial truth, -nor his zest for pointing a moral. Or was this publication the sort of -thing he would be likely, for a not unworthy purpose, to do? Was he, -in reality, a shade more obtuse and misguided than Miss Fanny Brawne? -Rather let us believe the _Letters_ a work of fiction, and only founded -largely upon various bygone moods and incidents of the foregoing two -years, which for one reason or another might interest buyers. Such is -the description to “dear Sam” of Dryden’s erratic funeral, which is -almost too keenly rhetorical a summing-up to have been written the next -day, or the thoughtful and sensible surveys of the Dutch. The amatory -epistles, with their leaven of reality, are presumably edited out of -all recognition. They make no defined impression; they do not move -forward; they veil impenetrably the traits of the person addressed, who -is made to appear as a vanishing unrelenting goddess, deaf and blind to -George Farquhar pleading his best. Whatever were the facts, the report -of them is chivalrous. Assume for a moment that his wife stands behind -the whole of this correspondence, or even behind the latter part of -it, and what seemed to constitute a little betrayal in the very worst -taste turns out to be an innocent joke. Of course the “lady” (or one of -the ladies) lent the manuscripts to the printers; of course Farquhar -originated, in order to give color to Mistress Farquhar’s known -pretence of riches, and their joint subsequent poverty, the magnificent -thieving practised upon the never-thieved and the unthievable! One can -fancy them both, in their hard chairs in the bare room, laughing well -and long, between tears of anxious hope that the more personal element -in the _Miscellany_ might fetch them from the Covent Garden book-stalls -a parcel of fagots and a dinner. - -Aside from all theorizing, it is pleasant to know that their life -together was a happy one. The consensus of all witnesses, in the -significant absence of any contrary voice, affirms that Farquhar, -having been trapped, bore himself like the gentleman he was. Two -children were born to him, to brighten, but also to sadden, his brief -and diligent life. Under his added anxieties he did his royal best; he -addressed to their mother, from first to last, no word of reproach for -her fraud. - - “The secret pleasure of the generous act - Is the great mind’s great bribe.” - -In its fragrance of faith and patience and self-sacrificing tenderness, -their domestic story can almost rank next after that sacred one of -Charles and Mary Lamb. - -Farquhar’s widow, who had loved him, appears to have loved his -memory.[43] She did not survive her husband many years; for there is -reason to suppose she died before 1719, and in penury. Poor Farquhar -used to declare that the dread that his family might suffer want was -far more bitter to him than death. Wilkes gave at his theatre, in the -May of 1708, a benefit for Margaret Farquhar, and twelve years later -he was acting as trustee for the young girls Mary and Anne Margaret, -whose pension is said by the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ to have amounted -to thirty pounds; it was obtained through the exertions of Edmund -Challoner, to whom their father had dedicated his _Miscellanies_. -Wilkes seems to have again aided both the orphans when they came of -age. One of them married an humble tradesman, and died early; the -other was living in 1764, wholly uneducated, and, as it is said on -small authority, as a maid-servant. Farquhar’s elder biographers -and editors, Ware, Genest, Chetwood, and the rest, writing in this -daughter’s lifetime, were apparently unconscious of her existence; but -the thought of her father’s child, old, neglected, and in a menial -position, served to anger Leigh Hunt as late as 1842. - -Fear and forecast of what is only too likely to befall the helpless, -depressed Farquhar in the April long ago, when he lay dying of -consumption, and when, with a fortitude which sustained him under -his bitter disappointment, for six weeks, he wrote and finished his -masterly comedy _The Beaux’ Stratagem_. As he drew near the end of the -second act he was told to give up hope; but the second act closes with -the famous rattling catechism between Cherry and Archer, and the best -bit of verse its author ever made; and the third starts in with the -hearty sweet laugh—Anne Oldfield’s laugh—of that “exquisite creature, -Mrs. Sullen.” On a fund of grief, Farquhar enriched his London with a -legacy of perpetual merriment. The unflagging impetus of his dramas, -above and beyond their very real intrinsic merit, accounts for their -great and yet unforfeited popularity. They descend to us associated -with the intellectual triumphs of the most dear and dazzling names -upon the English stage; they move upon the wings of intelligence -and good-nature; they “give delight, and hurt not.” They swarm with -soldiers, welcome figures long tacitly prohibited from the boards, as -too painful a reminder of the Civil Wars. They begin with the clatter -of spurs, the bang of doors, the hubbub of bantering voices in “a -broadside of damme’s.” Sergeant Kite appears, followed by a mob on -whom he lavishes his wheedling, inspiriting gibble-gabble; Roebuck -enters in fantastic colloquy with a beggar; Sir Harry crosses the road, -singing, with footmen after him, and Vizard meanwhile indicating him -to Standard as “the joy of the playhouse and the life of the park, -Sir Harry Wildair, newly come from Paris”; _The Twin Rivals_ opens -in a volley of epigrams; the rise of the curtain in _The Beaux’ -Stratagem_ discloses sly old Boniface and the ingenious Cherry calling -and running, running and calling, in a fluster pregnant of farce and -revel. Farquhar’s pages are not for the closet; they have little -passive charm; to quote from them, full as they are of familiar saws -almost all his own, is hardly fair. His mother-wit arises from the -ludicrous and unforeseen predicament, not from vanity and conscious -power; it is integral, not mere repartee; and it never calls a halt to -the action. As was well said by Charles Cowden Clarke, “there are no -traps for jests” in Farquhar; “no trains laid to fire _équivoque_.” The -clear fun, spurting unannounced in dialogue after dialogue, in incident -after incident; the incessant Molière-like masquerades; the thousand -little issues depending upon by-play and transient inspiration; the -narrowing scope and deepening sentiment of the plot, like a secret -given to the players, to be told fully only to the audience most in -touch with them—these commend Farquhar’s vivacious rôles to actors, and -make them both difficult and desirable. With what unction, from an -actor’s lips, falls his manifold and glowing praise of theatres! What -a pretty picture, a broad wash of rose-purple and white, he can make -of the interior seen from the wings! “There’s such a hurry of pleasure -to transport us; the bustle, noise, gallantry, equipage, garters, -feathers, wigs, bows, smiles, ogles, love, music, and applause!” And -again, in another mood: “The playhouse is the element of poetry, -because the region of beauty; the ladies, methinks, have a more -inspiring, triumphant air in the boxes than anywhere else. They sit -commanding on their thrones, with all their subject slaves about them; -their best clothes, best looks; shining jewels, sparkling eyes; the -treasures of the world in a ring.” And Mirabel, who is speaking, ends -with an ecstatic sigh: “I could wish that my whole life long were the -first night of a new play!” - -This is a drop, or a rise, from Congreve and his aristocratic -abstractions. Farquhar, in his youth, had modelled himself chiefly -upon the comedy of Congreve, and may be said to have perfected the -mechanism which the genius of Congreve had brought into vogue. He never -attained, nor could attain, Congreve’s scholarly elegance of proportion -and his consummate diction. But he had the happiness of being no purely -literary dramatist; he had technical knowledge and skill. He brought -the existing heroes with their conniving valets, the buxom equivocal -maids, the laughing, masking, conscienceless fine ladies, out of their -disreputable moonlight into healthful comic air; and added to them, in -the transfer, a leaven of homely lovableness which will forever keep -his masterpieces upon the stage. - -Farquhar’s original intellect has a value only relative; he may be -considered as Goldsmith’s tutor rather than as Congreve’s disciple. -Goldsmith had no small knowledge of Farquhar, his forerunner by sixty -years as a sizar student of Trinity; and, like him, he is reported -to have been dropped from his class for a buffoonery. What friends -(_Arcades ambo_, in both Virgilian and blameless Byronese) might -these two parsons’ sons have been! Scrub, Squire Sullen’s servant, -in _The Beaux’ Stratagem_, who “on Saturday draws warrants, and on -Sunday draws beer,” was a part Goldy once greatly desired to act. He, -too, when he came to write plays, cast about for conventional types -to handle and improve. Tony and his incomparable mother would hardly -have been, without their first imperfect apparition in Wycherley’s -powerful (and stolen) _Plain Dealer_; and Young Marlow and Hastings -are frank reproductions of Archer and Aimwell, in a much finer -situation. Miss Hardcastle hopes that in her cap and apron she may -resemble Cherry. And no one seems to have traced a celebrated passage -in _The Vicar of Wakefield_ either to my Lady Howdye’s message to my -Lady Allnight repeated by Archer (who in this same scene introduces -the “topical song” upon the modern boards), or else to the example -of the manœuvring Bisarre in Act II., Scene I., of _The Inconstant_. -Surely, “forms which proceed from simple enumeration and are exposed to -validity from a contradictory instance” supplies the unique original -of the nonsense-rhetoric which so confounded poor Moses.[44] The talk -of Clincher Junior and Tim, of Kite, Bullock, Scrub, Lyric, and the -unbaptized wench Parly, of the constable showing the big bed to Hermes -Wouldbe, the talk, that is, of Farquhar’s common people, shows humor -altogether of what we may call the Goldsmith order: genial, odd, -grotesque paradox, springing from Irish inconsequence and love of human -kind. - -In the sixth year of Queen Anne, when Farquhar died, Steele was married -to his “Prue,” and having seen the last of his three reformatory -dramas “damned for its piety,” sought Joseph Addison’s approval and -collaboration, and fell to designing _The Tatler_. Fielding was -newborn, Johnson just out of the cradle, Pope was trying a cunning -young hand at his first _Pastorals_; Defoe, an alumnus of Newgate, was -beating his way outward and upward; Swift, yet a Whig, was known but -for his _Tale of a Tub_. The fresh waters were rising on all sides to -vivify the sick lowlands of the decadence. The kingdoms had a forgotten -lesson, and long in the learning, set before them: to regain, as a -basis for legitimate results, their mental independence and simplicity; -to serve art for art’s sake, and to achieve, through the reactionary -formalism of the nascent eighteenth century, freedom and a broad ethic -outlook. It was as if Comedy, in her winning meretricious perfections, -had to die, that English prose might live. It is enough for an immature -genius of the third order, born under Charles the Second, to have -vaguely foreshadowed a just and imperative change. Farquhar certainly -does foreshadow it, albeit with what theologians might call absence of -the necessary intention. - -He wrote excellent prefaces and prologues. His _Discourse upon Comedy_, -in the _Miscellanies_, did pioneer work for his theory, since -expounded by more authoritative critics, and received by the English -world, that the observance or non-observance of the dramatic unities -is at the will of the wise, and that for guidance in all such matters -playwrights should look to Shakespeare rather than to Aristotle. The -_Discourse_, in Farquhar’s clear, sunny, homespun, forceful style, -does him honor, and should be reprinted. His best charm is that he -cannot be didactic. His suasion is of the strongest, but he has the -self-consciousness of all sensitive and analytic minds, which keeps -him free here as elsewhere from the slightest assumption of despotism. -It is very refreshing, in the face of that incessant belaboring of -the reader which Lesage was setting as a contemporaneous fashion, to -come across Farquhar’s gentle good-humored salutatory: “If you like -the author’s book, you have all the sense he thought you had; if you -dislike it, you have more sense than he was aware of!” Had he lived -longer, or a little later, we should have found him as well, with his -turn for skirmishing psychology, among the essayists and the novelists. -There were in him a mellowness and an unction which have their fullest -play in professedly subjective writing. Farquhar, after all, did not -fulfil himself, for he followed an ill outgoing fashion in æsthetics -rather than further a right incoming one. No one can help begrudging -him to the period he adorned. He deserved to flourish on the manlier -morrow, and to hold a historic position with the regenerators of public -taste in England. “Ah, go hang thyself up, my brave Crillon, for at -Arques we had a fight, and thou wert NOT in it!” One can fancy Sir -Richard Steele forever quoting that at Captain George Farquhar, in some -roomy club-window in Paradise. - -FOOTNOTES: - -[37] Incipit Annus Academicus Die Julii 9^a 1694. - -------+---------+----------+-----+-----------+------------+----------+ -Die |Georgius | filius | | Natus | ibidem | Eu. Lloyd 17a |Farquhare| -Gulielmi |Annos|Londonderry|educatus sub|(college Julii | Sizator -| Farqhare | 17 | | magistro | tutor) | | Clerici | | | Walker | -------+---------+----------+-----+-----------+------------+----------+ - -This matriculation entry from the register of Trinity does away -with our sizar’s presumed father, Rev. John Farquhar, prebendary of -Raphoe. We hear nothing more, ever after, of the Farquhar family, who -henceforth leave young George to his own profane devices; nor can any -certainty be attached to additional information, sometimes proffered, -that the father had seven children in all, and held a living of only -one hundred and fifty pounds a year. One other point is fixed by the -entry, to wit: if George Farquhar was seventeen in the July of 1694, he -cannot have been born in 1678. - -[38] This was the theatre built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1672. - -[39] Peter Anthony Motteux, the wild and clever linguist and dramatist, -who made the best English translation of _Don Quixote_. _The Stage -Coach_, itself an adaptation, has little merit beyond its liveliness. - -[40] The register of burial is dated a month later than the received -date of his death. It reads simply: “23 May, George Falkwere, M.” The -initial is the sapient sexton’s indication that this was neither a W -(woman) nor a C (child). The spelling of the name betokens its usual -and original pronunciation. The present famous porticoed church was not -built for nineteen years after Farquhar died. - -[41] The not altogether foolish censure has been cast upon the rogue -Teague in _The Twin Rivals_ that he speaks an impossible brogue, which -might as well be Welsh. Farquhar did not succeed in transferring to -paper the weird and unlovely Ulster dialect with which he was familiar -in boyhood, and which had figured already in the third act of _Henry -the Fifth_, in Jonson’s Irish masque, in Shadwell’s _Lancashire -Witches_; which was simultaneously being used in his farce _The -Committee_, by Dryden’s friend Howard, and which was afterwards to have -good corroboration in Aytoun’s _Massacre of the MacPherson_. Farquhar -employs it twice elsewhere, passably well in the case of Torlough -Macahone of the parish of Curroughabegley (the personage who built a -mansion-house for himself and his predecessors after him), and with -lamentable flatness in that of Dugard in his last comedy. Dugard is a -rival of the nursery-maid dear to almanac humorists, who is wont to -exclaim: “Can’t ye tell boi me accint that ’tis Frinch Oi am!” It was -one of Farquhar’s inartistic mistakes that he made no loving study of -this or of anything touching nearly his own people. His Irishmen, with -the exception of Roebuck, are either rascals or characterless nobodies. -The name Teague, or Teig, which Howard had also employed, is old and -pure North Irish; and no less pleasant an authority than George Borrow -reminds us in the _Romano Lavo-Lil_ that it is Danish in origin. - -[42] Dear Dick Steele, in 1701, while Captain of Fusileers, had a -duel thrust upon him; and in parrying, his sword pierced his man. To -his remorse may be ascribed his hatred of the custom of duelling, -expressed afterwards on every occasion. Steele owed his start in life -to James Butler, Duke of Ormonde, who entered him among the boys on -the Charterhouse foundation. This peer was grandfather to the man who -failed George Farquhar. - -[43] Mrs. Farquhar published in 1711 an octavo volume of the _Plays, -Letters, and Verses_. Among the verses figures a poem of six cantos -dedicated to the victorious Earl of Peterborough, entitled _Barcelona_. -“It was found among my dear deceased husband’s writings,” says the -widow, in her prefatory note. He was not at the siege, and it is -possible that the six cantos were a manuscript copy of the effusion of -some former comrade. Farquhar was the author of several songs, one, of -highly didactic complexion, having emanated from him at the reputed age -of ten. Of these, only two are of fair lyrical quality: the page’s song -in _Love and a Bottle_, and “Tell me, Aurelia, tell me, pray,” which -Robert Southey included in his collection. - -[44] _The Vicar of Wakefield_ dates from 1766. Almost twenty years -before that, the immortal Partridge had remarked to Tom Jones, quoting -his schoolmaster: “Polly matete cry town is my daskalon.” Noble -nonsense hath her pedigree. Goldsmith, however, is not so likely to -have taken his cue from Fielding. - - - - -IV - -TOPHAM BEAUCLERK - -1739-1780 - -AND - -BENNET LANGTON - -1741-1800 - - -IN Samuel Johnson’s famous circle nearly every man stands for himself, -full of definite purpose and power. But two young men are there who -did nothing of moment, whose names chime often down the pages of all -his biographies, and to whom the world must pay honor, if only for -the friendship they took and gave. As Apollo should be set about with -his Graces “tripping neatly,” so the portentous old apparition of -Johnson seems never so complete and endearing as when attended by these -two above all things else Johnsonians. When the Turk’s Head is ajar -in Gerrard Street, in shadow-London; when the “unclubable” Hawkins -strides over the threshold, and Hogarth goes by the window with his -large nod and smile; when Chamier is there reading, Goldsmith posing -in purple silk small-clothes, Sir Joshua fingering his trumpet, Burke -and little brisk Garrick stirring “bishop”[45] in their glasses, and -the king of the hour, distinguished by his lack of ruffles, is rolling -about in his chair of state, saying something prodigiously humorous -and wise, it is still Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk who most -give the scene its human genial lustre, standing with laughter behind -him, arm in arm. They were his favorites, and it is the most adorable -thing about them both that they made out to like James Boswell, who -was jealous of them. (Perhaps they had apprehended thoroughly Newman’s -fine aphorism concerning a bore: “You may yield, or you may flee: you -cannot conquer!”) The rare glimpses we have of their brotherly lives is -through the door which opens or shuts for Johnson. Between him and them -was deep and enduring affection, and what little is known of them has -a right to be more, for his sake. - -Bennet Langton, born in 1741 in the very neighborhood famous now as the -birthplace of Tennyson, was the elder son of the odd and long-descended -George Langton of Langton, and of Diana his wife, daughter of Edmund -Turnor, Esquire, of Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire. While a lad in the -fen-country, he read _The Rambler_, and conceived the purest enthusiasm -for its author. He came to London, indeed, on the ideal errand of -seeking him out, and, thanks to the kind apothecary Levett, found the -idol of his imagination at home at No. 17 Gough Square, Fleet Street. -Despite the somewhat staggering circumstances of Johnson’s attire,—for -the serious boy had rashly presupposed a stately, fastidious, and -well-mannered figure,—he paid his vows, and commended himself to -his new friend for once and all. Langton entered Trinity College, -Oxford, in 1757, at the age of sixteen.[46] The Doctor, who had -known him about three years, followed his career at the university -with interest, writing to Langton’s tutor, then “dear Tom Warton,” -just appointed to the professorship of poetry held by his father, and -afterwards poet-laureate: “I see your pupil: his mind is as exalted -as his stature,” and to Langton’s self the sweet generality: “I love, -dear sir, to think of you.” He even paid his Freshman a visit, and -swam sportively across a dangerous pool in the Isis, in the teeth of -his warning; and here also, in the Oxford which was long ago his own -“tent of a night,” he fell across a part of his destiny in the shape -of that strange bird, Mr. Topham Beauclerk, then a taking scapegrace -of eighteen. The Doctor must have shaken his head at first, and -wondered at the juxtaposition of this arrant Lord of Misrule and the -“evangelical goodness” of his admirable Langton, until mollified by -the knowledge that a species of cult for himself, and ardent perusal -of his writings, had first brought them together. It was a pleasant -thought to him, that of the two young ribboned heads high in the -quadrangle, bending for the ninth time over _The Reasons Why Advice is -Generally Ineffectual_, _The Mischief of Unbounded Raillery_, and the -jolly satire on _Screech-Owls_; or smiling over the shy Verecundulus -and the too-celebrated Misellus who were part of the author’s machinery -for adding “Christian ardor to virtue, and Christian confidence to -truth.” - -Beauclerk, like Langton, was a critic and a student; he was well-bred, -urbane, and of excellent natural parts; moreover, he was a wit, one -of the very foremost of his day, when wits grew in every garden. An -only child, he was born in London in the December of 1739, and named -after that benevolent Topham of Windsor who left the manors of Clewer -Brocas and Didworth and a collection of paintings and drawings to his -father, the handsome wild Lord Sydney Beauclerk, fifth son of the -first Duke of St. Albans, and also, in his time, a gentleman commoner -of Trinity. Lord Sydney died early, in the autumn of 1744, and was -buried in Westminster Abbey with his hero-brother Aubrey, whose -epitaph, still to be read there, Thomson seems to have written. All -the pretty toys and curios passed to Topham the little boy, under the -guardianship of Lady Beauclerk, his excellent but literal mother, once -Mary Norris of Speke in Lancashire. His tutor was named Parker, and -must have been a much-enduring man. Young Beauclerk grew up, bearing -a resemblance in many ways to Charles II.; and so it befell that with -his aggravating flippancy, his sharp sense, his quiver full of gibes, -his time-wasting, money-wasting moods, foreign as Satan and his pomps -to those of his sweet-natured college companion, he was able to strike -Dr. Johnson in his own political weak spot. A flash of the liquid -Stuart eye was enough to disarm Johnson at the very moment when he was -calling up his most austere frown; it was enough to turn the vinegar -of his wrath to the honey of kindness. _Il ne nous reste qu’une chose -à faire: embrassons-nous!_ as the wheedling Prince, at a crisis, -says to Henry Esmond. Johnson, as everybody knows, was a Jacobite. -No sincerer testimony could he have given to his inexplicable liking -for a royal rogue than that he allowed Nell Gwynn’s great-grandson to -tease him and tyrannize over him during an entire lifetime. A choice -spectacle this: Mr. Topham Beauclerk, on his introduction, literally -bewitching Dr. Samuel Johnson! The stolid moralist was enraptured -with his Jack-o’-lantern antics; he rejoiced in his manners, his -taste and literary learning; admired him indiscreetly, rich clothes, -equipage, and all; followed his whims meekly, expostulated with him -almost against his traitorous impulses, and clung to him to the end in -unbroken fondness and faith. - -Beauclerk had immense gayety and grace, and the full force given by -high spirits. His accurate, ever-widening knowledge of books and men, -his consummate culture, and his fearlessness, sat handsomely on one -who was regarded by contemporary old ladies as a mere “macaroni.” It -was a matter of course that he tried for no degree at college. The -mistress of Streatham Park, who was by no means his adorer, and who -remembered his chief wickedness in remembering that “he wished to be -accounted wicked,” informs us in a private jotting since published -that he was “a man of very strict veracity.” A philosopher and a -truth-teller, whatever his worldly weaknesses, was sure to be a -character within the range of Johnson’s affections. It was he who most -troubled the good Doctor, he for whom he suffered in silence, with whom -he wrangled; he whose insuperable taunting promise, never reaching any -special development, vexed and disheartened him; yet, perhaps because -of these very things, though Bennet Langton was infinitely more to his -mind, it was Absalom, once again, whom the old fatherly heart loved -best. Nor was he unrepaid. None loved him better, in return, than his -“Beau,” the very mirror of the name, who was wont to pick his way up -the grimy Fleet Street courts “with veneration,” as Boswell records. - -Bennet Langton, as Mr. Forster expresses it in his noble _Life of -Goldsmith_, was “an eminent example of the high and humane class who -are content to ‘ring the bell’ to their friends.” He was a mild young -visionary, scrupulous, tolerant, and generous in the extreme; modest, -contemplative, averse to dissipation; a perfect talker and reader, -and a perfect listener; with a face sweet as a child’s, fading but -now, among his kindred, on the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He left -a gracious memory behind at Oxford, where his musing bust adorns the -old monastic library of Trinity. He was six feet six inches tall, -slenderly built, and slightly stooping. “The ladies got about him in -drawing-rooms,” said Edmund Burke, “like maids about the Maypole!” - -Miss Hawkins, in her _Memoirs_, names him as the person with whom -Johnson was certainly seen to the fairest advantage. His deferent -suave manner was the best foil possible to the Doctor’s extraordinary -explosions. He had supreme self-command; no one ever saw him angry; -and in most matters of life, as a genuine contrast to his beloved -friend Beauclerk, he was apt to take things a shade too seriously. We -learn from Mr. Henry Best, author of some good _Personal and Literary -Memorials_, that the advance rumors of the French Revolution found -Langton, in the fullest sense, an aristocrat; but it was not long -before he became, from conviction, a thorough Liberal, and so remained, -although he suffered a great unpopularity, owing to this change, in -his native county. He wrote, in 1760, a little book of essays entitled -_Rustics_, which never got beyond the passivity of manuscript. The -year before, under the date of July 28th, Langton contributed to the -pages of _The Idler_ the paper numbered 67 and entitled _A Scholar’s -Journal_. It is a pleasant study of procrastination and of shifting -plans, a gentle bit of humor to be ranked as autobiographic. There is -an indorsement of Montrose in its heroic advice to “risk the certainty -of little for the chance of much.” But Langton’s graceful academic -pen was not destined to a public career. Perseverance of any sort was -not native to him. He fulfilled beautifully, adds the vivacious Miss -Hawkins, “the pious injunction of Sir Thomas Browne, ‘to sit quietly -in the soft showers of Providence,’ and might, without injustice, -be characterized as utterly unfit for every species of activity.” -Yet at the call of duty, so well was the natural man dominated by -his unclouded will, he girded himself to any exertion. Wine-drinking -was habitual with him, and he felt its need to sharpen and rouse -his intellect; “but the idea of Bennet Langton being what is called -‘overtaken,’” wrote the same associate whom we have been quoting, “is -too preposterous to be dwelt on.” She furnishes one illustration of -Langton’s Greek serenity. Talking to a company, of a chilly forenoon, -in his own house, he paused to remark that if the fire lacked attention -it might go out: a brief, casual, murmurous interruption. He resumed -his discourse, breaking off presently, and pleading abstractedly with -eye in air: “Pray ring for coals!” All sat looking at the fire, and -so little solicitous about the impending catastrophe that presently -Langton was off again on the stream of his softened eloquence. In a few -minutes came another lull. “Did anybody answer that bell?” A general -negative. “Did anybody ring that bell?” A sly shaking of heads. And -once more the inspired monody soared among the clouds, at last dropping -meditatively to the hearthstone: “Dear, dear, the fire is out!” - -Langton was the centre of a group, wherever he happened to be, talking -delightfully, and twirling the oblong gold-mounted snuff-box, which -promptly appeared as sociabilities began: a conspicuous figure, with -his height, his courteous smile, his mild beauty, and his habit of -crossing his arms over his breast, or locking his hands together on -his knee. He was a great rider, and could run like a hound. He had a -queerness of constitution which seemed to leave him at his lowest ebb -every afternoon about two of the clock, forgetful, weary, confused, -and without an idea in his head; but after a little food, he was -himself again. At dinner-parties he usually rose fasting, “such was the -perpetual flow of his conversation, and such the incessant claim made -upon him.” A morning call from Mr. Langton was a thing to suggest the -eternal years; yet we are told that satiety dwelt not where he was; -like Cowley, “he never oppressed any man’s parts, or put any man out -of countenance.” He had much the same sense of humor as Beauclerk had, -and his speech was quite as full of good sense and direct observation, -if not as cutting. He indicted a fault of Edmund Burke’s in one extreme -stroke: “Burke whisks the end of his tail in the face of an arguer!” -Johnson, the arch-whisker of tails, was not to be brought to book; but -Burke’s greatness was of a texture to bear and enjoy the thrust. It is -curious that Langton was markedly fond of _Hudibras_; such a relish -indicates, perhaps, the turn his own wit might have taken, had it not -been held in by too much second thought. - -Johnson was wont to announce that he valued Langton for his piety, -his ancient descent, his amiable behavior, and his mastery of Greek. -“Who in this town knows anything of Clenardus, sir, but you and I?” -he would say. In the midst of his talk Langton would fall into the -“vowelled undertone” of the tongue he loved, correcting himself with a -little wave of the hands, and the apologetic phrase: “And so it goes -on.” “Steeped to the lips in Greek” he was indeed, bursting out with -a joyous salute to the moon of Hellas, upon a friend’s doorstep, or -making grotesque Hellene puns, for his own delight,[47] upon the blank -leaves of a pocket-book. Every one familiar with Johnsoniana will -recall the charming and spirited retort written by Dr. Barnard, then -Dean of Derry, later, Bishop of Killaloe, which closes: - - “If I have thoughts and can’t express ’em, - Gibbon shall teach me how to dress ’em - In terms select and terse; - Jones teach me modesty and Greek; - Smith, how to think; Burke, how to speak; - And Beauclerk, to converse!” - -In all deference to the illustrious Sir William Jones, it may be -claimed that “modesty and Greek” were the very arts in which Langton -was a past-master. But he was an amateur, and a private scholar, and -his name was a dissyllable; else the Dean might have tossed at his feet -as pretty a compliment as that given in the last line to his colleague. -It must have gratified Johnson that Langton refused, at Reynolds’s -dinner-table, “like a sturdy scholar,” to sign the famous Round Robin -(not signed, either, by Beauclerk) which besought him to “disgrace the -walls of Westminster with an English inscription.” And as if to keep -Langton firmly of his own mind on the subject, it was to him the Doctor -confided the Greek quatrain, sad and proud, which he had dedicated to -Goldsmith’s[48] memory. - -For Bennet Langton Johnson had no criticism but praise. He presented -him with pride to Young and to Richardson, described him handsomely to -Hannah More, and proceeded to draw his character for Miss Reynolds, ere -she had met him, with such “energy and fond delight” as she avowed she -never could forget. What fine ringing metal was Johnson’s commendation! -“He is one of those to whom Nature has not spread her volumes, -nor uttered her voices, in vain.” “Earth does not bear a worthier -gentleman.” “I know not who will go to Heaven if Langton does not.” And -in the sweetest and completest approval ever put by one mortal upon -another: “_Sit anima mea cum Langtono!_” Yet even with this “angel of a -man” the Doctor had one serious and ludicrous quarrel. - -It was the fatal outcome of his uneven moods that he must needs be -disenchanted at times even with his best beadsmen: there came days -when he would deny Beauclerk’s good-humor to be anything but “acid,” -Langton’s anything but “muddy.” He considered it the sole grave -fault of the latter that he was too ready to introduce a religious -discussion into a mixed assembly, where he knew scarcely any two of -the company would be of the same mind. On Boswell’s suggestion that -this may have been done for the sake of instructing himself, Johnson -replied angrily that a man had no more right to take that means of -gaining information than he had to pit two persons against each other -in a duel for the sake of learning the art of self-defence. Some -indiscretion of this sort on Langton’s part seems to have alienated -the friends for the first and last time. It was during their transient -bitterness that the Doctor made the historic apology, across the table, -to Oliver Goldsmith; an incident which, however beautiful in itself, -was a hard back-handed hit at Langton, standing by. Croker’s conjecture -may be true that the business which threatened to break a fealty of -some sixteen years’ standing arose rather from Langton’s settling his -estate by will upon his sisters, whose tutor he had been. On hearing -of it, the Great Cham grumbled and fumed, politely applying to the -Misses Langton the title of “three dowdies!”[49] and shouting, in a -feudal warmth, that “an ancient estate, sir! an ancient estate should -always go to males.” In fact, the Doctor behaved very badly, very -sardonically, and was pleased to lay hold of a post by Temple Bar one -night, and roar aloud over a piece of possible folly up in Lincolnshire -which concerned him not in the least. But in due time the breach, -whatever its cause, was healed. The Doctor, in writing of it, uses -one of his balancing sentences: “Langton is a worthy fellow, without -malice, though not without resentment.” The two could not keep apart -very long, despite all the unreason in the world. “Johnson’s quarrels,” -Mr. Forster tells us, “were lovers’ quarrels.” Another memorable -passage-at-arms, rich in comedy, happened in the course of one of -Johnson’s sicknesses, when, in the cloistral silence of his chamber, -he solemnly implored Bennet Langton, always the companion who comforted -his sunless hours, to tell him wherein his life had been faulty. His -shy and sagacious monitor wrote down, as accusation enough, various -Scriptural texts recommending tolerance, humility, long-suffering, -and other meek ingredients which were not predominant in the sinner’s -social composition. The penitent earnestly thanked Langton on taking -the paper from his hand, but presently turned his short-sighted eyes -upon him from the pillow, and emerging from what his own verbology -would call a “frigorific torpor,” he exclaimed in a loud, wrathful, -suspicious tone: “What’s your drift, sir?” “And when I questioned him,” -so Johnson afterwards told his blustering tale—“when I questioned him -as to what occasion I had given him for such animadversion, all that -he could say amounted to this: that I sometimes contradicted people in -conversation! Now, what harm does it do any man to be contradicted?” To -this same paternal young Langton the rebel submitted his Latin verses; -the _Poemata_, in the shape in which we possess them, were rigorously -edited by him. And Johnson leaned upon him in more intimate ways, as he -could never lean upon Beauclerk. To the scrupulous nature instinctively -right he made comfortable confidences: “Men of harder minds than ours -will do many things from which you and I would shrink; yet, sir, they -will, perhaps, do more good in life than we.” - -As to the Honorable Topham Beauclerk, more volatile than Langton, he -had as steady a “sunshine of cheerfulness” for his heritage. We find -him complaining to a friend in the July of 1773: “Every hour adds to -my misanthropy; and I have had a pretty considerable share of it for -some years past.” This incursion of low spirits was not normal with -him. Johnson, bewailing his own morbid habits of mind, once said: “Some -men, and very thinking men, too, have not these vexing thoughts. Sir -Joshua Reynolds is the same all the year round; Beauclerk, when not ill -and in pain, is the same.” Boswell attests that Beauclerk took more -liberties with Johnson than durst any man alive, and that Johnson was -more disposed to envy Beauclerk’s talents than those of any one he had -ever known. Born into the freedom of London, Beauclerk was familiar -with Fox, Selwyn, and Walpole, and with the St. James men who did not -ache to consort with Johnson; and he was quite their match in ease and -astuteness. He walked the modish world, where Langton could not and -would not follow; he alternated the Ship Tavern and the gaming-table -with the court levees; Davies’s shop with the golden insipidities of -the drawing-room; _la comédie_, _la danse_, _l’amour même_, with the -intellectual tie-wigs of Soho. It shows something of his spirit that -whereas no member of the Club save himself was a frequenter of White’s -and Betty’s,[50] or a chosen guest at Strawberry Hill, yet there was no -person of fashion whom he was not proud to make known to Doctor Johnson -whenever he judged the candidate for so genuine an honor worthy of it. -Some of these encounters must have been queer and memorable! - -Beauclerk’s unresting sarcasm often flattened out Boswell and irritated -the Doctor, though Bennet Langton, in his abandonments of enthusiastic -optimism, was never more than grazed. It is not to be denied that this -spoiled child of the Club liked to worry Goldsmith, the maladroit great -man who might have quoted often on such occasions the sad gibe of -Hamlet: - - “I’ll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance - Your skill shall, like a star in the darkest night, - Stick fiery off indeed.” - -What a pity that Goldsmith’s _Retaliation_ was never finished, so as -to include his portrait of Beau! He was “a pestilent wit,” as Anthony -à Wood calls Marvell. Johnson, shy creature! deplored Beauclerk’s -“predominance over his company.” The tyranny, however, was gracefully -and decorously exercised, if we are to believe the unique eulogy that -“no man was ever freer, when he was about to say a good thing, from a -look which expressed that it was coming; nor, when he had said it, from -a look which expressed that it had come.” Few human beings have had -a finer sense of fun than Topham Beauclerk. He had an infallible eye -for the values of blunders, and an incongruity came home to him like -a blessing from above. Life with him was a night-watch for diverting -objects and ideas. When he was not studying, he was disporting himself, -like the wits of the Restoration; and he was equal to all emergencies, -as they succeeded one another. Every specimen preserved of his talk -is perfect of its kind, and makes us long for a full index. Pointed -his speech was, always, and reminds one indeed of a foil, but without -the button; a dangerous little weapon, somewhat unfair, but carried -with such consummate flourish that those whom it pricks could almost -cheer it. “O Lord! how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk!” Mrs. Piozzi -scribbled once on the margin of Wraxall’s _Memoirs_, in an exquisite -feminine vindication of poor Beau’s accomplished tongue. - -He was no disguiser of his own likes and dislikes. Politics he avoided -as much as possible; but he affected less concern in public matters -than he really felt. “Consecrate that time to your friends,” he writes -with mock severity to the ideal Irishman, Lord Charlemont, “which -you spend in endeavoring to promote the interests of a half-million -of scoundrels.” For his private business he had least zeal of all; -and cites “my own confounded affairs” as the cause of his going into -Lancashire. Beauclerk had great tact, boldness, and independence; his -natural scorn of an oppressor was his modern and democratic quality. -His idleness (for he was as idle by habit as Langton was by nature) he -recognized, and lightly deprecated. Fastidious in everything, he made -“one hour of conversation at Elmsley’s”[51] his standard of enjoyment, -and his imagined extreme of annoyance was “to be clapped on the back -by Tom Davies.” What he chose to call his leisure (again the ancestral -Stuart trait!) he dedicated to the natural sciences in his beloved -laboratory. “I see Mr. Beauclerk often, both in town and country,” -wrote Goldsmith to Bennet Langton; “he is now going directly forward -to become a second Boyle, deep in chemistry and physics.” When there -was some fanciful talk of setting up the Club as a college, “to draw -a wonderful concourse of students,” Beauclerk, by unanimous vote, was -elected to the professorship of Natural Philosophy. - -Johnson’s influence on him, potent though it was, seems to have been -negative enough. It kept him from a few questionable things, and -preserved in him an outward decorum towards customs and established -institutions; but it failed to incite him to make of his manifold -talents the “illustrious figure” which Langton’s eyes discerned in a -vain anticipation. Beauclerk and the great High Churchman went about -much together, and had amusing experiences. On such occasions, as in -all their familiar intercourse, the disciple had the true salt of the -Doctor’s talk, which, as Hazlitt remarks, was often something quite -unlike “the cumbrous cargo of words” he kept for professional use. In -the late winter of 1765 the two visited Cambridge, Beauclerk having a -mind to call upon a friend at Trinity. - -These, as we know, had their many differences, “like a Spanish great -galleon, and an English man-o’-war”; the one smooth, sharp, and civil, -the other indignantly dealing with the butt-end of personality. Boswell -gives a long account of a charming dispute concerning the murderer -of Miss Reay, and the evidence of his having carried two pistols. -Beauclerk was right; but Johnson, with quite as solid a sense of -virtue, was angry; and he was soothed at the end only by an adroit -and affectionate reply. “Sir,” the Doctor began, sternly, at another -time, after listening to some mischievous waggery, “you never open your -mouth but with the intention to give pain, and you often give me pain, -not from the power of what you say, but from seeing your intention.” -And again, he said to him whom he had compared to Alexander, marching -in triumph into Babylon: “You have, sir! a love of folly, and a scorn -of fools; everything you do attests the one, and everything you say -the other.”[52] Beauclerk could also lecture his mentor. It was his -steadfast counsel that the Doctor should devote himself to poetry, and -draw in his horns of dogma and didactics. - -He had, ever ready, some quaint simile or odd application from the -classics; in the habit of “talking from books,” as the Doctor called -it, he was, however, distanced by Langton. Referring to that friend’s -habit of sitting or standing against the fireplace, with one long leg -twisted about the other, “as if fearing to occupy too much space,” -Beauclerk likened him, for all the world, to the stork in Raphael’s -cartoon of The Miraculous Draught.[53] One of Beauclerk’s happiest -hits, and certainly his boldest, was made while Johnson was being -congratulated upon his pension. “How much now it was to be hoped,” -whispered the young blood, in reference to Falstaff’s celebrated vow, -“that he would purge and live cleanly, as a gentleman should do!” -Johnson seems to have taken the hint in good-humor, and actually to -have profited by it. - -Very soon after leaving Oxford, Beauclerk became engaged to a Miss -Draycott, whose family were well known to that affable blue-stocking, -Mrs. Montagu; but some coldness on his part, some sensitiveness on -hers, broke off the match. His fortune-hunting parent is said to have -been disappointed, as the lady owned several lead-mines in her own -right. That same year, with Bennet Langton for companion part of the -way, Beauclerk, whose health, never robust, now began to give him -anxiety, set out on a Continental tour. Baretti, whom he had met at -home, received him most kindly at Milan, thanks to Johnson’s urgent -and friendly letter. By his subsequent knowledge of Italian popular -customs, he was able to testify in Baretti’s favor, when the latter -was under arrest for killing his man in the Haymarket, and in concert -with Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Johnson, to help him, in a very -interesting case, towards his acquittal. It was reported to Selwyn -that the handsome gambling Inglese was robbed at Venice of £10,000! -an incident which, perhaps, shortened his peregrinations. If the -report were accurate, it would prove that he could have been in no -immediate need of pecuniary rescue from his leaden sweetheart. It was -Dr. Johnson’s opinion, coinciding with the opinion of Roger Ascham on -the same general subject, that travel adds very little to one’s mental -forces, and that Beauclerk might have learned more in the Academe of -“Fleet Street, sir!” - -Topham Beauclerk married Lady Diana Spencer, the eldest daughter of -the second Duke of Marlborough, as soon as she obtained a divorce from -her first husband. This was Frederick, Lord Bolingbroke, nephew and -heir of the great owner of that title; a very trying gentleman, who -was the restless “Bully” of Selwyn’s correspondence; he survived until -1787. The ceremony took place March 12, 1768, in St. George’s, Hanover -Square, “by license of the Archbishop of Canterbury,” both conspirators -being then residents of the parish. Lady Diana Spencer was born in -the spring of 1734, and was therefore in her thirty-fifth year, while -Beauclerk was but twenty-nine.[54] Johnson was disturbed, and felt -offended at first with the whole affair; but he never withdrew from the -agreeable society of Beauclerk’s wife. It is nothing wonderful that the -courtship and honey-moon was signalized by the forfeit of Beauclerk’s -place in the exacting Club, “for continued inattendance,” and not -regained for a considerable period. “They are in town, at Topham’s -house, and give dinners,” one of George Selwyn’s gossiping friends -wrote, after the wedding. “Lord Ancram dined there yesterday, and -called her nothing but Lady Bolingbroke the whole time!” Let us hope -that “Milady Bully” triumphed over her awkward guest, and looked, as -Earl March once described her under other difficulties, “handsomer than -ever I saw her, and not the least abashed;” or as deliberately easy as -when she entertained with her gay talk the nervous Boswell who awaited -the news of his election or rejection from the Club. She was a blond -goddess, exceedingly fair to see. In her middle age she fell under the -observant glance of delightful Fanny Burney, who did not fail to allow -her “pleasing remains of beauty.” - -The _divorcée_ was fond of and faithful to her new lord, and no -drawback upon his æsthetic pride, inasmuch as she was an artist of no -mean merit. Horace Walpole built a room for the reception of some of -her drawings, which he called his Beauclerk Closet, “not to be shown -to all the profane that come to see the house,” and he always praised -them extravagantly. It is surer critical testimony in her favor that -her name figures yet in encyclopædias, and that Sir Joshua, the honest -and unbought judge, much admired her work, which Bartolozzi was kept -busy engraving. It was her series of illustrations to Bürger’s wild -ballad of _Leonora_ (with the dolly knight, the wooden monks, the -genteel heroine, and the vigorous spectres) which, long after, helped -to fire the young imagination of Shelley. It is to be feared that her -invaluable portrait of Samuel Johnson is not, or never was, extant. -“Johnson was confined for some days in the Isle of Skye,” writes her -rogue of a spouse, “and we hear that he was obliged to swim over to -the mainland, taking hold of a cow’s tail. . . . Lady Di has promised -to make a drawing of it.” Sir Joshua’s pretty “Una” is the little -Elizabeth, afterwards Countess of Pembroke, elder daughter of Lady Di -and Topham Beauclerk, painted the year her father died. - -The family lived in princely style, both at their “summer quarters” at -Muswell Hill, and on Great Russell Street, where the library, set in a -great garden, reached, as Walpole mischievously gauged it, “half-way to -Highgate.” Lady Di, an admirable hostess, proved herself one of those -odd and rare women who take to their husbands’ old friends. Selwyn -she cordially liked, and her warmest welcome attended Langton, whom -she would rally for his remissness, when he failed to come to them at -Richmond. He could reach them so easily! she said; all he need do was -to lay himself at length, his feet in London and his head with them, -_eodem die_. This Richmond home remained her residence during her -widowhood. Walpole mentions a Thames boat-race in 1791, when he sat in -a tent “just before Lady Di’s windows,” and gazed upon “a scene that -only Richmond, on earth, can exhibit.” In the church of the same leafy -town her body rests. - -Beauclerk died at his Great Russell Street house on March 11, 1780. He -had been failing steadily under visitations of his old trouble since -1777, when he lay sick unto death at Bath, and when his wife nursed -him tenderly into what seemed to Walpole a miraculous recovery. He was -but forty-one years old, and, for all his genius, left no more trace -behind than that Persian prince who suddenly disappeared in the shape -of a butterfly, and whom old Burton calls a “light phantastick fellow.” -His air of boyish promise, quite unconsciously worn, hoodwinked his -friends into prophecies of his fame. He did not give events a chance to -put immortality on his “bright, unbowed, insubmissive head.” Yet he was -bitterly mourned. “I would walk to the extent of the diameter of the -earth to save him,” cried Johnson, who had loved him for over twenty -years; and again, to Lord Althorp: “This is a loss, sir, that perhaps -the whole nation could not repair.” Boswell mentions the Doctor’s April -stroll, at this time, while he was writing his _Lives of the Poets_; -and tells us how, returning from a call on the widow of the companion -of his youth, David Garrick, he leaned over the rails of the Adelphi -Terrace, watching the dark river, and thinking of “two such friends -as cannot be supplied.” “Poor dear Beauclerk!” Johnson wrote, when his -violent grief had somewhat subsided, “_nec, ut soles, dabis joca!_ His -wit and his folly, his acuteness and his maliciousness, his merriment -and his reasoning, are alike over. Such another will not often be found -among mankind.” Beyond this well-known and characteristic summing-up, -the Doctor made no discoverable mention, in his correspondence, of his -bereavement, certainly not to the highly-prejudiced Mrs. Thrale, to -whom he wrote often and gayly in the year of Beauclerk’s death. Nor -shall we know how the catastrophe affected Bennet Langton; for all the -most interesting papers relating to him were destroyed when the old -Hall at Langton-by-Spilsby was burned in 1855. On this subject, as on -others as intimate, he stands, perforce, silent. - -Readers may recall a passage in Miss Burney’s _Diary_ which gives -countenance to an accusation not borne out by any other testimony, -that Beauclerk and his wife had not lived happily together. Dining -at Sir Joshua’s at Richmond, in 1782, Edmund Burke, sitting next the -author of _Evelina_, took occasion, on catching sight of Lady Di’s -“pretty white house” through the trees, to rejoice in the fact that -she was well-housed, moneyed, and a widow. He added that he had never -enjoyed the good-fortune of another so keenly as in this blessed -instance. Then, turning to his new acquaintance, as the least likely -to be informed of the matter, he spoke in his own “strong and marked -expressions” of the singular ill-treatment Beauclerk had shown his -wife, and the “necessary relief” it must have been to her when he was -called away. The statement does not seem to have been gainsaid by any -of the company; nor was Burke liable to a slanderous error. So severe a -comment on Beauclerk, resting, even as it does, wholly on Miss Burney’s -veracity, ought, in fairness, to be incorporated into any sketch of the -man. On the other side, it is pleasant to discover that Beauclerk, in -his will, made five days before the end, bequeathed all he possessed to -his wife, and reverted to her the estates of his children, should they -die under age. There was but one bequest beyond these, and that was to -Thomas Clarke, the faithful valet. The executors named were Lady Di -and her brother, Lord Charles Spencer, who had also been groomsman at -the marriage, which, despite Burke and its own evil beginnings, it is -hard to think of as ill-starred. The joint guardians of Charles George -Beauclerk, the only son, were to be Bennet Langton and a Mr. Loyrester, -whom Dr. Johnson speaks of as “Leicester, Beauclerk’s relation, and a -man of good character;” but the guardianship, provisional in case of -Lady Di’s decease, never came into force, as she survived, in fullest -harmony with her three children, up to August 1, 1808, having entered -her seventy-fifth year. Various private legacies came to Langton, by -his old comrade’s dying wish, the most precious among them, perhaps, -being the fine Reynolds portrait of Johnson, which had been painted at -Beauclerk’s cost. Under it was inscribed: - - “_Ingenium ingens - Inculto latet hoc sub corpore._” - -Langton thoughtfully effaced the lines. “It was kind of you to take -it off,” said the burly Doctor, with a sigh; and then (for how could -he but recall the contrast of temperament in the two, as well as the -affectionate context of Horace?), “not unkind in him to have put it -on.” The collection of thirty thousand glorious books “_pernobilis -Angli T. Beauclerk_” was sold at auction. The advertisement alone is -royal reading. There is much amiable witness to the circumstance that -Beauclerk was not only an admirer but a buyer of his friends’ works. -From some kind busybody who attended the twenty-ninth day of the sale, -and pencilled his observations upon the margins of the catalogue now in -the British Museum, we learn that Goldsmith’s _History of the Earth and -Animated Nature_ (nothing less!), which was issued, with cuts, in the -year he died, was knocked down to the vulgar for two and threepence. -The shelves, naturally, were stocked with Johnsons. Things dear to -the bibliophile were there: innumerable first editions, black-letter, -mediæval manuscript, Elzevirs, priceless English and Italian classics, -gathered with real feeling and pride; but the most vivid personal -interest belonged to the unpretending Lot 3444, otherwise known to fame -as _The Rambler_, printed at Edinburgh in 1751; for that was the young -Beauclerk’s own copy, carried with him to Oxford, and with a fragrance, -as of a last century garden, of the first hearty friendship of boys. -One cannot help wishing that a sentimental fate left it in Langton’s -own hands. - -Lady Beauclerk, Topham’s mother, had died in 1766; and he asked to be -buried beside her, or at her feet, in the old chapel of Garston, near -Liverpool: “an instance of tenderness,” said Johnson, “which I should -hardly have expected.” There, in the place of his choice, he rests, -without an epitaph. - -After this the Doctor consoled himself more than ever with Bennet -Langton, and with the atmosphere of love and reverence which surrounded -him in Langton’s house. He had been of old the most desired of all -guests at the family seat in Lincolnshire. “Langton, sir!” as he -liked to announce, “had a grant of warren from Henry II.; and Cardinal -Stephen Langton, of King John’s reign, was of this family.” Peregrine -Langton, Bennet’s uncle, was a man of simple and benevolent habits, who -brought economy to a science, without niggardliness, and whom Johnson -declared to be one of those he clung to at once, both by instinct and -reason; Bennet’s father, learned, good, and unaffected, the prototype -of his learned, good, and unaffected son, was, however, a more -diverting character. He had sincerest esteem for Johnson, but looked -askance on him for his liberal views, and suspected him, indeed, of -being a Papist in secret! He once offered the Doctor a living of some -value in the neighborhood, with the suggestion that he should qualify -himself for Orders: a chance gravely refused. Of this exemplary but -rather archaic squire, Johnson, a dissector of everything he loved, -said: “Sir! he is so exuberant a talker in public meetings that the -gentlemen of his county are afraid of him. No business can be done -for his declamation.” In his behalf, too, Johnson produced one of his -most astounding words; for having understood that both Mr. and Mrs. -Langton were averse to having their portraits taken, he observed aloud -that “a superstitious reluctance to sit for one’s picture is among the -anfractuosities of the human mind.” - -Bennet Langton married, on the 24th of May, 1770, Mary Lloyd, daughter -of the Countess of Haddington, and widow of John, the eighth Earl of -Rothes, the stern soldier in laced waistcoat and breastplate beneath, -painted by Sir Joshua. It was a common saying at the time that -everybody was welcome to a Countess Dowager of Rothes; for it did so -happen that three ladies bearing that title were all remarried within -a few years. Lady Rothes, although a native of Suffolk, had acquired -from long residence in Scotland the accent of that country, which Dr. -Johnson bore with magnanimously, on the consideration that it was not -indigenous. She had a handsome presence, full of easy dignity, and a -naturalness marked enough in the heyday of Georgian affectation. With -a vivacity very different from Lady Di Beauclerk’s, she kept herself -the spring and centre of Langton’s tranquil domestic circle: a more -womanly woman historiographers cannot find. His own charm of character, -after his marriage, slipped more and more into the underground channels -of home-life, and so coursed on beneficently in silence. Their children -were no fewer than nine,[55] “not a plain face nor faulty person -among them:” the goddess daughters six feet in height, and the three -sons so like their Maypole father that they were able once to amuse -the Parisians by raising their arms to let a crowd pass. Langton was -wont to repeat with some glee certain jests about his height, and Dr. -Johnson’s nickname of “Lanky” he took ever with excellent grace; and -when Garrick had leaped upon a chair to shake hands with him, in old -days, he had knelt, at parting, to shake hands with Garrick. But the -King’s awkward digs at his “long legs” he found terribly distasteful, -nor was he thereby disposed to agree with the Doctor’s enthusiastic -proclamation, after the famous interview of 1767, that George III. was -“as fine a gentleman as Charles II.” - -It was his cherished plan to educate his boys and girls at home, and -to give them a thorough acquaintance with the learned languages. No -social engagements were to stand in the way of this prime exigency. He -was in great haste to turn his young brood into Masters and Mistresses -of Arts. Johnson complained to Miss Burney, as they were both taking -tea at Mrs. Thrale’s, that nothing would serve Langton but to stand -them up before company, and get them to repeat a fable or the Hebrew -alphabet, supplying every other word himself, and blushing with pride -at the vicarious learning of his infants. But another of the tedious -royal jokes, “How does Education go on?” actually lessened his devotion -to his self-set task, and worried him like the water-drop in the -story, which fell forever on a criminal’s head until it had drilled -his brain. Again, both he and his wife, even after they had moved into -the retirement of Great George Street, Westminster, in pursuance of -their design, were far too agreeable and too accessible to be spared -the incursions of society. In a word, Minerva found her seat shaken, -and her altar-fires not very well tended, and therefore withdrew. -Langton impressed one axiom on his young scholars which they never -forgot: “Next best to knowing is to be sensible that you do not know.” -An entirely superfluous waif of a baby was once left at the doors of -this same many-childrened house, to be fed, clothed, and petted by Mr. -Bennet Langton and Lady Rothes, without protest. Dr. Johnson, who made -friends with all children, was especially attached to their third girl, -his god-daughter, whom he called “pretty Mrs. Jane,” and “my own little -Jenny.” The very last year of his life her “most humble servant” sent -her a loving letter, extant yet, and written purposely in a large round -hand as clear as print. - -“Langton’s children are very pretty,” Johnson wrote to Boswell in -1777, “and his lady loses her Scotch.” But again, during the same -year, condescendingly: “I dined lately with poor dear Langton. I do -not think he goes on well. His table is rather coarse, and he has his -children too much about him.” Boswell takes occasion, in reproducing -this censure, to reprehend the custom of introducing the children after -dinner: a parental indulgence to which he, at least, was not addicted. -The Doctor gave him a mild nudge on the subject in remarking later: -“I left Langton in London. He has been down with the militia, and is -again quiet at home, talking to his little people, as I suppose you -do sometimes.” While Langton was in camp on Warley Common, in command -of the Lincolnshire troops, Johnson spent with him five delightful -days, admiring his tall captain’s blossoming energies, and poking -about curiously among the tents. Langton had fallen, little by little, -into a confirmed extravagance, so that the moral of Uncle Peregrine’s -sagacious living bade fair to be lost upon him. Boswell had a quarrel -with Johnson on the subject of Langton’s expenditure, during the course -of which, according to his own report, the Laird of Auchinleck suffered -a “horrible shock” by being told that the best way to drive Langton out -of his costly house would be to put him (Boswell) into it. The Doctor -was truly concerned, nevertheless, about his engaging spendthrift; up -to the very end, he would implore him to keep account-books, even if -he had to omit his Aristophanes. “He complains of the ill effects of -habit,” grumbled the great moralizer, “and he rests content upon a -confessed indolence. He told his father himself that he had ‘no turn -for economy!’ but a thief might as well plead that he had no turn for -honesty.” Such were the hard hits sacred to those Dr. Johnson most -esteemed. It transpires from his will that, by way of discouragement, -he had lent Langton £750.[56] - -In the winter of 1785, Langton came from the country, and took lodgings -in Fleet Street, in order to sit beside Johnson as he lay dying, and -hold his hand. Nor was he alone in his pious offices: the Hooles, Mr. -Sestre, and several others were there, to keep constant vigil. Miss -Burney met Langton in the passage December 11th, two days before the -end: “He could not,” she wrote in her journal, “look at me, nor I at -him.” But through the foggy and restless nights when Johnson tried -to cheer himself, like More and Master William Lilly, by translating -into Latin some epigrams from the _Anthologia_, the true Grecian -beside him must have been his chief comfort. One can picture the old -eyes turning to him for sympathy, perhaps with that same murmured -“Lanky!” on awaking, which Boswell laughed to hear from him one merry -Hebridean morning, twelve years before. The last summons did not come -in Langton’s presence. Hurrying over to Bolt Court at eight of the -fatal evening, he was told that all was over three-quarters of an hour -ago. That large soul had gone away, as Leigh Hunt so beautifully said -of Coleridge, “to an infinitude hardly wider than his thoughts.” Then -Langton, who was wont to shape his words with grace and ease, went -up-stairs, and tried to pen a letter to Boswell, which is more touching -than tears: “I am now sitting in the room where his venerable remains -exhibit a spectacle, the interesting solemnity of which, difficult as -it would be in any sort to find terms to express, so to you, my dear -sir, whose sensations will paint it so strongly, it would be of all men -the most superfluous to”—and there, hopelessly choked and confused, it -broke off. - -Langton bore Johnson’s pall; and he succeeded him as Professor of -Ancient Literature in the Royal Academy, as Gibbon had replaced -Goldsmith in the chair of Ancient History. He survived many years, -the delight of his company to the last. He, like others, was given -in his later years to detailing anecdotes of his great friend, with -an approximation to that friend’s manner. One lady critic, at least, -thought that these explosive imitations did not become “his own serious -and respectable character.” On December 18, 1801, in Anspach Place, -Southampton, a venerable nook “between the walls and the sea,” when -Wordsworth, Scott, and Coleridge were yet in their unheralded prime, -when Charles Lamb was twenty-six, Byron a dreaming boy on the Cotswold -hills, and Keats and Shelley little fair-eyed children, gentle Bennet -Langton, known to none of these, and somewhat forgotten as a loiterer -from the march of a glorious yesterday, slipped out of life. “I am -persuaded,” wrote one who knew him well, “that all his inactivity, all -the repugnance he showed to putting on the harness of this world’s -toil, arose from the spirituality of his frame of mind . . . I believe -his mind was in Heaven, wheresoever he corporeally existed.” He was -laid under the chancel of ancient St. Michael’s at Southampton, with -Johnson’s fond benison, “Be my soul with Langton’s!” inscribed on the -marble tablet above him.[57] The Rev. John Wooll of Midhurst, Joseph -Warton’s editor, was one of the few present at the funeral ceremony, -and he leaves us to infer that it had a rather neglectful privacy, -not, indeed, out of keeping with the “godly, righteous, and sober -life” it closed. Langton’s will, drawn up in the June of 1800, and -preserved in Somerset House, devised to the sole executrix, his “dear -wife,” who outlived him by nearly twenty years, his real and personal -estate, his books, his wines, his prints, his horses, and, as a gift -particularly pretty, his right of navigation in the river Wey. George -Langton was separately provided for, but there were some £8000 for the -eight younger children. The document is crowded with technical details, -and very long; and the manifest inference, on the whole, is that the -dear squire’s affairs were in a prodigious tangle. There is no wish -expressed concerning his burial, and, what is more curious, there -are no Christian formulas for the committal of the _animula vagula -blandula_: a lack perhaps not to be wondered at in Beauclerk’s concise -testament, but somewhat notable in the case of a person who certainly -had a soul. - -So went Beauclerk first of the three, Langton last, with the good ghost -still between them, as he in his homespun, they in their flowered -velvet, had walked many a year together on this earth. The old -companionship had undergone some sorry changes ere it fell utterly to -dust and ashes. Its happy prime had been in the Oxford “Longs,” when -the Doctor humored his lads, and tented under their roofs, plucking -flowers at one house, and romping with dogs at the other; or in 1764, -at the starting of the immortal Club, when the two of its founders, who -had no valid or pretended claim to celebrity, perched on the sills like -useful genii, with a mission to overrule sluggish melancholy, and renew -the sparkle in abstracted eyes. How supereminently they did what they -chose to do, and what vagaries they roused out of Johnson’s profound -hypochondria! Did not Topham Beauclerk’s mother once have to reprove -that august author for a suggestion to seize some pleasure-grounds -which they were passing in a carriage? “Putting such things into young -people’s heads!” said she. Where could the innocent Beauclerk’s elbow -have been at that moment, contrary to the canons of polite society, -but in the innocent Langton’s ribs? The gray reprobate, so censured, -explained to Boswell: “Lady Beauclerk has no notion of a joke, sir! She -came late into life, and has a mighty unpliable understanding.” Who -can forget the Doctor’s visit to Beauclerk at Windsor, when, falling -into the clutches of that gamesome and ungodly youth, he was beguiled -from church-going of a fine Sunday morning, and strolled about outside, -talking and laughing during sermon-time, and finally spread himself at -length on a mossy tomb, only to be told, with a giggle and a pleased -rub of the hands, that he was as bad as Hogarth’s Idle Apprentice? -Or the other visit in the north, when, after ceremoniously relieving -his pockets of keys, knife, pencil, and purse, Samuel Johnson, LL.D., -deliberately rolled down a hill, and landed, betumbled out of all -recognition, at the bottom? Langton had tried to dissuade him, for the -incline was very steep, and the candidate scarcely of the requisite -suppleness. “Oh, but I haven’t had a roll for such a long time!” -pleaded his unanswerable big guest. - -Best of all, we have the history of that memorable morning when -Beauclerk and Langton, having supped together at a city tavern, roused -Johnson at three o’clock at his Inner Temple Lane Chambers, and brought -him to the door, fearful but aggressive, in his shirt and his little -dark wig, and his slippers down at the heels, armed with a poker. -“What! and is it YOU? Faith, I’ll have a frisk with you, ye young -dogs!” We have visions of the Covent Garden inn, and the great brimming -bowl, with Lord Lansdowne’s drinking-song for grace; the hucksters and -fruiterers staring at the strange central figure, always sure to gather -a mob, even during the moment he would stand by a lady’s coach-door -in Fleet Street; the merry boat going its way by oar to Billingsgate, -its mad crew bantering the watermen on the river; and two of the -roisterers (equally wild, despite a little chronological disparity -of thirty years or so) scolding the other for hastening off, on an -afternoon appointment, “to dine with wretched unidea’d girls!” What -golden vagabondism! “I heard of your frolic t’other night; you’ll be in -_The Chronicle_! . . . I shall have my old friend to bail out of the -round-house!” said Garrick. “As for Garrick, sirs,” tittered the pious -Johnson aside to his accomplices, “he dare not do such a thing. His -wife would not let him!” All this mirth and whim sweetened the Doctor’s -heavy life. He had other intimates, other disciples. But these were Gay -Heart and Gentle Heart, who drove his own blue-devils away with their -idolatrous devotion, and whose bearing towards him stands ever as the -best possible corroboration of his great and warm nature. With him -and for him, they so fill the air of the time that to whomsoever has -but thought of them that hour, London must seem lonely without their -idyllic figures. - - —“Our day is gone: - Clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done.” - -There are gods as good for the after-years; but Odin is down, and his -pair of unreturning birds have flown west and east. - -FOOTNOTES: - -[45] A popular eighteenth-century beverage, composed of wine, orange, -and sugar. - -[46] Although Langton is recorded on his college books as having given -the usual £10 for plate, and also as having paid his caution money -in 1757, his name is not down upon the matriculation lists, possibly -because he failed to appear at the moment the entries were being made. -In what must have been his destined space upon one of the pages, Dr. -Ingram made this note: “Q. Num Bennet Langton hic inserendus?” - -[47] A boyish fashion of self-entertainment afterwards in great favor -with Shelley. - -[48] It is a pleasant thing to remember that it was Langton, always an -appreciator of Goldsmith’s lovable genius, who suggested “Auburn” as -the name for his _Deserted Village_. There is a hamlet called Auborne -in Lincolnshire. - -[49] Langton’s sisters are generally spoken of as three in number. But -Burke’s _History of the Landed Gentry_ mentions but two, Diana and -Juliet. There was a younger brother, Ferne, who died in boyhood, and -the floral name, not unlike a girl’s, may have been responsible for the -confusion. - -[50] The fruiterer. - -[51] The bookseller’s. - -[52] Rochester, in his immortal epigram, had said the same of King -Charles II. - -[53] This neat descriptive stroke has been attributed also to Richard -Paget. - -[54] The register of St. George’s betrays a little eager blunder of -Lady Di’s which is amusing. When the officiating curate asked her to -sign, she wrote “Diana Beauclerk,” and was obliged to cross out the -signature—one knows with what a smile and a flush!—and substitute the -“Diana Spencer” which stands beside it. - -[55] Miss Hawkins says “ten,” and may have had the extra adopted child -in mind. - -[56] It is a pity he did not live to read the jolly _American Ballad -of Bon Gaultier_, which seems to have a sort of muddled clairvoyant -knowledge of this transaction: - -“Every day the huge Cawana Lifted up its monstrous jaws; And it -swallowed Langton Bennet,(!) And digested Rufus Dawes. - -“Riled, I ween, was Philip Slingsby Their untimely deaths to hear; For -one author owed him money,(!) And the other loved him dear.” - -[57] The church has since been “restored,” and the fine epitaph is now -(1890) “skyed” on the south wall of the nave. - - - - -V - -WILLIAM HAZLITT - -1778-1830 - - -THE titles of William Hazlitt’s first books bear witness to the ethic -spirit in which he began life. From his beloved father, an Irish -dissenting minister, he inherited his unworldliness, his obstinacy, his -love of inexpedient truth, and his interest in the emancipation and -well-being of his fellow-creatures. Bred in an air of seriousness and -integrity, the child of twelve announced by post that he had spent “a -very agreeable day” reading one hundred and sixty pages of Priestley, -and hearing two good sermons. A year later he appeared, under a Greek -signature, in _The Shrewsbury Chronicle_, protesting against sectarian -injustice; an infant herald in the great modern movement towards fair -play. The roll of the portentous periods must have made his father -weep for pride and diversion. William’s young head was full of moral -philosophy and jurisprudence, and he had what is the top of luxury -for one of his temperament: perfect license of mental growth. Alone -with his parents (one of whom was always a student and a recluse), -and for the most part without the school-fellows who are likely to -adjust the perilous effects of books, he became choked with theories, -and thought more of the needful repeal of the Test Act than of his -breakfast. He found his way at fourteen into the Unitarian College at -Hackney, but eventually broke from his traces, saving his fatherland -from the spectacle of a unique theologian. During the year 1795 he -saw the pictures at Burleigh House, and began to live. Desultory but -deep study, at home and near home, took up the time before his first -leisurely choice of a profession. His lonely broodings, his early -love for Miss Railton, his four enthusiastic months at the Louvre, -his silent friendship with Wordsworth and with Coleridge; the country -walks, the pages and prints, the glad tears of his youth,—these were -the fantastic tutors which formed him; nor had he ever much respect for -any other kind of training. The lesson he prized most was the lesson -straight from life and nature. He comments, tartly enough, on the -sophism that observation in idleness, or the growth of bodily skill and -social address, or the search for the secret of honorable power over -people, is not in any wise to be accounted as learning. Montaigne, who -was in Hazlitt’s ancestral line, was of this mind: “_Ce qu’on sçait -droictement, on en dispose sans regarder au patron, sans tourner les -yeulx vers son livre._” Hazlitt insists, too, that learned men are -but “the cisterns, not the fountain-heads, of knowledge.” He hated -the schoolmaster, and has said as witty things of him as Mr. Oscar -Wilde. Yet his little portrait-study of the mere book-worm, in _The -Conversation of Authors_, has a never-to-be-forgotten sweetness. His -mental nurture was serviceable; it was of his own choosing; it fitted -him for the work he had to do. Like Marcus Aurelius, he congratulated -himself that he did not squander his youth “chopping logic and scouring -the heavens.” Hazlitt once entered upon an _Inquiry whether the Fine -Arts are promoted by Academies_; the answer, from him, is readily -anticipated. - - “If arts and schools reply,” - -he might have added,—and it is a wonder that he did not, - - “Give arts and schools the lie!” - -Mr. Matthew Arnold made a famous essay on the same topic, and some -readers recollect distinctly that his verdict, for England, would be -in the affirmative, whereas it was no such matter. Now, no man can -conceive of Hazlitt presenting both sides of a case so impartially as -to be misunderstood, especially upon so vital a subject. He pastured, -he was not trained; and therefore he would have you and your children’s -children scoff at universities. Indeed, though the boy’s lack of -discipline told on him all through life, his reader regrets nothing -else which a university could have given him, except, perhaps, milder -manners. Hazlitt was perfectly aware that he had too little general -knowledge; but general knowledge he did not consider so good a tool for -his self-set task in life as a persistent, passionate study of one or -two subjects. Again, he is pleased to conjecture, with bluntness, that -if he had learned more he would have thought less. (Perhaps he was the -friend cited by Elia, who gave up reading to improve his originality! -He was certainly useful to Elia in delicate and curious ways: a whole -vein of rich eccentricity ready for that sweet philosopher’s working.) -Hear him pronouncing upon himself at the very end: “I have, then, given -proof of some talent and more honesty; if there is haste and want of -method, there is no common-place, nor a line that licks the dust. If -I do not appear to more advantage, I at least appear such as I am.” -Divorce that remark and the truth of it from Hazlitt, and there is -no Hazlitt left. He stood for individualism. He wrote from what was, -in the highest degree for his purpose, a full mind, and with that -blameless conscious superiority which a full mind must needs feel in -this empty world. His whole intellectual stand is taken on the positive -and concrete side of things. He has a fine barbaric cocksureness; he -dwells not with althoughs and neverthelesses, like Mr. Symonds and Mr. -Saintsbury. “I am not one of those,” he says, concerning Edmund Kean’s -first appearance in London, “who, when they see the sun breaking from -behind a cloud, stop to inquire whether it is the moon.” And he takes -enormous interest in his own promulgation, because it is inevitably -not only what he thinks, but what he has long thought. He delivers an -opinion with the air proper to a host who is master of a vineyard, and -can furnish name and date to every flagon he unseals. - -None of Hazlitt’s energies went to waste: he earned his soul early, and -how proud he was of the possession! Retrospection became his forward -horizon. He was all aglow at the thought of that beatific yesterday; -in his every mood “the years that are fled knock at the door, and -enter.” He struggled no more thereafter, having fixed his beliefs and -found his voice. He saw no occasion to change. “As to myself,” he wrote -at fifty, referring to Lamb’s well-known “surfeits of admiration” -concerning some objects once adored, “as to myself, any one knows -where to have me!” He adds: “In matters of taste and feeling, one -proof that my conclusions have not been quite shallow or hasty is the -circumstance of their having been lasting. . . . This continuity of -impression is the only thing on which I pride myself.” A fine saying in -the _Boswell Redivivus_, attributed to Opie, is as clearly expressed -elsewhere by Hazlitt’s self: that a man in his lifetime can do but -one thing; that there is but one effort and one victory, and all the -rest is as machinery in motion. “What I write costs me nothing, but it -cost me a great deal twenty years ago. I have added little to my stock -since then, and taken little from it.” His sensations, latterly, were -“July shoots,” graftings on the old sap. It is his boast in almost his -final essay that his tenacious brain holds fast while the planets are -turning. He can look at a child’s kite in heaven, to the last, with the -eyes of a child: “It pulls at my heart.” - -His conservative habit, however, seemed to teach him everything by -inference. In 1821, familiar with none of the elder dramatists save -Shakespeare, he borrowed their folios, and shut himself up for six -weeks at Winterslow Hut on Salisbury Plain. He returned to town steeped -in his theme, and with the beautiful and authoritative _Lectures_ -written. Appreciation of the great Elizabethans is common enough now; -seventy years ago, propagated by Lamb’s _Specimens_, 1808, it was the -business only of adventurers and pioneers. Here is a critic indeed who, -without a suspicion of audacity, can arise as a stranger to arraign -the _Arcadia_, and “shake hands with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo as the -oldest acquaintance” he has! The thing, exceptional as it was, proves -that William Hazlitt knew his resources. His devoted friend Patmore -attributes his “unpremeditated art,” terse, profound, original, and -always moving at full speed, to two facts: “first, that he never, by -choice, wrote on any topic or question in which he did not, for some -reason or other, feel a deep personal interest; and, secondly, because -on all questions on which he did so feel, he had thought, meditated, -and pondered, in the silence and solitude of his own heart, for years -and years before he ever contemplated doing more than thinking of -them.” Unlike a distinguished historian, who, according to Horace -Walpole, “never understood anything until he had written of it,” -Hazlitt brought to his every task a mind violently made up, and a -vocation for special pleading which nothing could withstand. - -Sure as he is, he means to be nobody’s hired guide: a resolve for -which the general reader cannot be too grateful. In wilful and mellow -study of what chance threw in his way his strength grew, and his -limitations with it. It is small wonder that he hated schoolmasters, -and the public which expected of him schoolmaster platitudes. He had -a pride of intellect not unlike Rousseau’s, and he seems to have had -ever in mind Rousseau’s cardinal declaration that if he were no better -than other men, he was at least different from them. Hazlitt defined -his own functions with proper haughtiness, in the amusing apology of -_Capacity and Genius_. “I was once applied to, in a delicate emergency, -to write an article on a difficult subject for an encyclopædia; and was -advised to take time, and give it a systematic and scientific form; -to avail myself of all the knowledge that was to be obtained upon the -subject, and arrange it with clearness and method. I made answer that, -as to the first, I _had_ taken time to do all that I ever pretended -to do, as I had thought incessantly on different matters for twenty -years of my life; that I had no particular knowledge of the subject -in question, and no head for arrangement; that the utmost I could do, -in such a case, would be, when a systematic and scientific article -was prepared, to write marginal notes upon it, to insert a remark or -illustration of my own (not to be found in former encyclopædias!) or to -suggest a better definition than had been offered in the text.”[58] -Such independence nobly became him, and none the less because it kept -him poor. But in the course of time, he had to work, and keep on -working, under wretched disadvantages. He had spurts of revolt, after -long experience of compulsory composition; his darling wish in 1822 -(confided to his wife, of all persons) being that he “could marry some -woman with a good fortune, that he might not be under the necessity of -writing another line!” - -There was in him absolutely nothing of the antiquary and the -scholar, as the modern world understands those most serviceable -gentlemen. He was a “surveyor,” as he said, erroneously, of Bacon. -He was continuously drawn into the byway, and ever in search of the -accidental, the occult; he lusted, like Sir Thomas Browne, to find the -great meanings of minor things. The “pompous big-wigs” of his day, as -Thackeray called them, hated his informality, his boldly novel methods, -his vivacity and enthusiasm. He had, within proscribed bounds, an -exquisite and affectionate curiosity, like that of the Renaissance. -“The invention of a fable is to me the most enviable exertion of human -genius: it is the discovery of a truth to which there is no clew, and -which, when once found out, can never be forgotten.” “If the world were -good for nothing else, it would be a fine subject for speculation.” It -is his deliberate dictum that it were “worth a life” to sit down by an -Italian wayside, and work out the reason why the Italian supremacy in -art has always been along the line of color, not along the line of form. - -He depended so entirely upon his memory that those who knew him best -say that he never took notes, neither in gallery, library, nor theatre; -yet his inaccuracies are few and slight,[59] and he must have secured -by this habit a prodigious freedom and luxury in the act of writing. -He would rather stumble than walk according to rule; and he was so -pleasantly beguiled with some of his own images (that, for instance, -of immortality the bride of the youthful spirit, and of the procession -of camels seen across the distance of three thousand years) that he -reiterates them upon every fit occasion. He cites, twice and thrice, -the same passages from the Elizabethans. He is a masterly quoter, and -lingers like a suitor upon the borders of old poesy. His infallibility, -like the Pope’s, is of narrow scope and nicely defined. When he steps -beyond his accustomed tracks, which is seldom, his vagaries are -entertaining. You may account for his declaration that Thomas Warton’s -sonnets rank as the very best in the language, by reflecting that he -dealt not in sonnets and knew nothing of them; if he prefer _Hercules -Raging_ to any other Greek tragedy, it is collateral proof that he was -no wide-travelled Grecian, nor even Euripideian; when he gives his -distinguished preference to Shakespeare’s Helena, there is small need -of adding that Mr. Hazlitt, albeit with an affectionate friendship for -Mary Lamb, with a mother, a sister, a dynasty of sweethearts, and two -wives, was notoriously unlearned in women.[60] - -The events of his life count for so little that they are hardly worth -recording. He was born into a high-principled and intelligent family, -at Mitre Lane, Maidstone, Kent, on the 10th of April, in the year 1778. -His infancy was passed there and in Ireland, his boyhood in New England -and in Shropshire. Prior to a long visit to Paris, where he made some -noble copies of Titian, he came in 1802 to Bloomsbury, where his -elder brother John, an advanced Liberal in politics and an excellent -miniature-painter, had a studio; and here he worked at art for several -joyous years, finally abandoning it for literature. The portraits he -painted, utterly lacking in grace, are fraught with power and meaning; -few of these are extant, thanks to the fading and cracking pigments -of the modern schools. The old Manchester woman in shadow, done in -1803, and the head of his father, dating from a twelvemonth later (two -things to which Hazlitt makes memorable reference in his essays), -are no longer distinguishable, save to a very patient eye, upon the -blackened canvases in his grandson’s possession. The picture of the -child Hartley Coleridge, begun at the Lakes in 1802, has perished -from the damp; that of Charles Lamb in the Venetian doublet survives -since 1804, in its serious and primitive browns,[61] as the best-known -example of an English artist not in the catalogues. Its historic value, -however, is not superior to that of two portraits of Hazlitt himself: -one a study in strong light and shade, with a wreath upon the head, -now very much time-eaten; and another representing him at about the -age of twenty-five, with a three-quarters front face looking over the -right shoulder, which appeals to the spectator like spoken truth. It -is all but void of the beauty characterizing the striking Bewick head -(especially as retouched and reproduced in Mr. Alexander Ireland’s -valuable book of 1889, which is a sort of Hazlitt anthology), and -characterizing, no less, John Hazlitt’s charming miniatures of William -at five and at thirteen; therefore it can deal in no self-flattery. -Fortunately, we have from the hand which knew him best the lank, odd, -reserved youth in whom great possibilities were brewing; thought and -will predominate in this portrait, and it expresses the sincere soul. -It would be idle to criticise the technique of a work disowned by its -author. Hazlitt had, as we know from much testimony, a most interesting -and perplexing face, with the magnificent brow almost belied by -shifting eyes, and the petulance and distrust of the mouth and chin; -but a face prepossessing on the whole from the clear marble of his -complexion,[62] remarkable in a land of ruddy cheeks. His lonely and -peculiar life lent him its own hue; the eager look of one indeed a -sufferer, but with the light full upon him of visions and of dreams: - - “_Chi pallido si fece sotto l’ombra - Sì di Parnaso, o bevve in sua cisterna?_” - -In 1798 Hazlitt had his immortal meeting at Wem with Samuel Taylor -Coleridge. He described himself at this period as “dumb, inarticulate, -helpless, like a worm by the wayside,” striving in vain to put on paper -the thoughts which oppressed him, shedding tears of vexation at his -inability, and feeling happy if in eight years he could write as many -pages. The abiding influence of his First Poet he has acknowledged -in an imperishable chapter. For a long while he still kept in “the -o’erdarkened ways” of Malthus and Tucker, or in the shadow, dear to -him, of Hobbes; but in 1817 the floodgates broke, the pure current -gushed out; and in the _Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays_ we have the -primal pledge of Hazlitt as we know him, “such as had never been before -him, such as will never be again.” From a “dumbness” and diffidence -extreme, he developed into the readiest of writers; his sudden pages, -year after year, transcribed in his slant large hand, went to the -printers rapidly and at first draft. The longer he used his dedicated -pen, the freer, the brighter, the serener it grew. In the fourteen or -fifteen of his books which deal with genius and the conduct of life, -there is, throughout, an indescribable unaffected zest, a self-same -and unwavering certitude of handling. Once he learned his trade, he -gave himself a large field and an easy rein. He never warmed towards -a subject chosen for him. His conversation was non-professional. He -considered a discussion as to the likelihood of the weather’s holding -up for to-morrow as “the end and privilege of a life of study.” - -In London, as soon as he had abandoned painting, he became a -parliamentary reporter, and began to lecture on the English -philosophers and metaphysicians. He furnished his famous dramatic -criticisms to _The Morning Chronicle_, _The Champion_, _The Examiner_, -and _The Times_, and he acted later as home editor of _The Liberal_. -He married, on May-day of 1808, Miss Sarah Stoddart, who owned the -property near Salisbury where he afterwards spent melancholy years -alone. He fulfilled one human duty perfectly, for he loved and reared -his son. A most singular infatuation for the unlovely daughter of his -landlady; a second inauspicious marriage in 1824 with a Mrs. Isabella -Bridgwater; a prolonged journey on the Continent; the failure of -the publishers of his _Life of Napoleon_, which thus in his needful -days brought him no competence; a long illness heroically borne, and -a burial in the parish churchyard of St. Anne’s, under a headstone -raised, in a romantic remorse after an estrangement, by Charles Wells, -the author of _Joseph and his Brethren_,—these round out the meagre -details of Hazlitt’s life. He died in the arms of his son and of his -old friend Charles Lamb,[63] on the 18th of September, 1830, at 6 Frith -Street, Soho. - -His domestic experiences, indeed, had been nearly as extraordinary as -Shelley’s. Sarah Walker, of No. 9 Southampton Buildings, is a sort of -burlesque counterpart of that other “spouse, sister, angel,” Emilia -Viviani. Nothing in literary history is much funnier than Mr. Hazlitt’s -kind assistance to Mrs. Hazlitt in securing her divorce, going to visit -her at Edinburgh, and supplying funds and advice over the teacups, -while the process was pending, unless it be Shelley’s ingenuous -invitation to his deserted young wife to come and dwell forever with -himself and Mary! The silent dramatic withdrawal of the second Mrs. -Hazlitt, the well-to-do relict of a colonel, who is henceforth -swallowed up in complete oblivion, is a feature whose like is missing -in Shelley’s romance. Events in Hazlitt’s path were not many, and his -inner calamities seem somehow subordinated to exterior workings. It is -not too much to say that to the French Revolution and the white heat of -hope it diffused over Europe he owed the renewal of the very impetus -within him: his moral probity, his mental vigor, and his physical -cheer. His measure of men and things was fixed by its standard. Other -enthusiasts wavered and went back to the flesh-pots of Egypt, but not -he. _Et cuncta terrarum subacta præter atrocem animum Catonis._ Towards -the grandest inconsistency this world has seen, he bore himself with a -consistency nothing less than touching. Everywhere, always, as a friend -who understood him well reminds a later generation, “Hazlitt was the -only man of letters in England who dared openly to stand by the French -Revolution, through good and evil report, and who had the magnanimity -never to turn his back upon its child and champion.” The ruin of -Napoleon, and the final news that “the hunter of greatness and of glory -was himself a shade,” meant more to him than the relinquishment of -his early and cherished art, or the fading of the long dream that his -heart “should find a heart to speak to.” On his last autumn afternoon, -he said what no one else would have dared to say for him: “I have had -a happy life.” Such it was, if we are to compute happiness by souls, -and not by the incidents which befall them. What were the things -which atoned to this reformer for the curse of a mind too sentient, -a heart never far from breaking? Over and above all amended and -amending abuses, the memory of the Rembrandts on the walls of Burleigh -House; the waving crest of the Tuderley woods; the sky, the turf, “a -winding road, and a three-hours’ march to dinner”; the impersonator of -Richard III. most to his mind, who lighted the stage, “and fought as -if drunk with wounds”; and the figure (how pastoral and tender!) of -the shepherd-boy bringing a nest for his young mistress’s sky-lark, -“not doomed to dip his wings in the dappled dawn.” What heresy to -the ancients would be this creed of poetic compensation! Montesquieu -adhered to it; but hardly from baffled and impassioned Hazlitt, dying -in his prime, would the avowal have been expected. Yet he had written -almost always, as Jeffrey saw, in “a happy intoxication.” Like the -sundial, in one of the most charming among his miscellaneous essays, he -kept count only of the hours of joy. - -Hazlitt’s erratic levees among coffee-house wits and politicians, his -slack dress, his rich and fitful talk, his beautiful fierce head, go to -make up any accurate impression of the man. Mr. P. G. Patmore has drawn -him for us; a strange portrait from a steady hand: in certain moods -“an effigy of silence,” pale, anxious, emaciated, with an awful look -ever and anon, like the thunder-cloud in a clear heaven, sweeping over -his features with still fury.[64] He was so much at the mercy of an -excitable and extra-sensitive organization that an accidental failure -to return his salute upon the street, or, above all, the gaze of a -servant as he entered a house, plunged him into an excess of wrath and -misery. Full, at other times, of scrupulous good faith and generosity, -he would, under the stress of a fancied hurt, say and write malicious -things about those he most honored. He must have been a general thorn -in the flesh, for he had no tact whatever. “I love Henry,” said one -of Thoreau’s friends, “but I cannot like him.” Shy, splenetic, with -Dryden’s “down look,” readier to give than to exchange, Hazlitt was -a riddle to strangers’ eyes. His deep voice seemed at variance with -his gliding step and his glance, bright but sullen; his hand felt -as if it were the limp, cold fin of a fish, and was an unlooked-for -accompaniment to the fiery soul warring everywhere with darkness, and -drenched in altruism. His habit of excessive tea-drinking, like Dr. -Johnson’s, was to keep down sad thoughts. For sixteen years before he -died, from the day on which he formed his resolution, Hazlitt never -touched spirits of any kind. Profuse of money when he had it, he lacked -heart, says Mr. Patmore, to live well. Wherever he dwelt there was -what Carlyle, in Hunt’s case, called “tinkerdom”; his marriage, and -his residence under the august roof which had been Milton’s,[65] did -not mend matters for him. He covered the walls and mantel-pieces of -London landladies, after the fashion of the French bohemian painters, -with samples of his noblest style; and the savor of yesterday’s potions -of strong tea exhaled into their curtains. Never was there, despite -his confessional attitude, so non-communicative a soul. He never -corresponded with anybody; he never would walk arm in arm with anybody; -he never, perhaps from horror of the “patron” bogie, dedicated a book -to anybody. De Quincey knew a man warmly disposed towards Hazlitt -who learned to shudder and dread daggers when poor Hazlitt, with a -gesture habitual to him, thrust his right hand between the buttons -of his waistcoat! And he once cheerfully requested of a cheerful -colleague: “Write a character of me for the next number. I want to -know why everybody has such a dislike to me.” As a social factor he -was something atrocious.[66] The most humane of men, his suspicions -and shyings cut him off completely from humanity. The base war waged -upon him by the great Tory magazines could not have affected him so -deeply that it changed his demeanor towards his fellows; for he had the -mettle of a paladin, which no invective could break. But, alas! he had -“the canker at the heart,” which is no fosterer of “the rose upon the -cheek.” - -With all this fever and heaviness in Hazlitt’s blood, he had a hearty -laugh, musical to hear. Haydon, in his exaggerated manner, reports an -uncharitable conversation held with him once on the subject of Leigh -Hunt in Italy, during which the two misconstruing critics, in their -great glee, “made more noise than all the coaches, wagons, and carts -outside in Piccadilly.” His smile was singularly grave and sweet. -Mrs. Shelley wrote, on coming back to England, in her widowhood, and -finding him much changed: “His smile brought tears to my eyes; it -was like melancholy sunlight on a ruin.” A man who sincerely laughs -and smiles is somewhat less than half a cynic. If there be any alive -at this late hour who questions the genuineness of Hazlitt’s high -spirits, he may be referred to the essay _On Going a Journey_, with -the pæan about “the gentleman in the parlor,” in the finest emulation -of Cowley; but chiefly and constantly to _The Fight_, with its -lingering De-Foe-like details, sprinkled, not in the least ironically, -with gold-dust of Chaucer and the later poets: the rich-ringing, -unique _Fight_,[67] predecessor of Borrow’s famous burst about the -“all tremendous bruisers” of _Lavengro_; and not to be matched in our -peaceful literature save with the eulogy and epitaph of Jack Cavanagh, -by the same hand. Divers hints have been circulated, within sixty-odd -years, that Mr. Hazlitt was a timid person, also that he had no turn -for jokes. These ingenious calumnies may be trusted to meet the fate of -the Irish pagan fairies, small enough at the start, whose punishment -it is to dwindle ever and ever away, and point a moral to succeeding -generations. Hazlitt’s paradoxes are not of malice prepense, but are -the ebullitions both of pure fun and of the truest philosophy. “The -only way to be reconciled with old friends is to part with them for -good.” “Goldsmith had the satisfaction of good-naturedly relieving -the necessities of others, and of being harassed to death with his -own.” “Captain Burney had you at an advantage by never understanding -you.” Scattered mention of “people who live on their own estates and -on other people’s ideas”; of Jeremy Bentham, who had been translated -into French, “when it was the greatest pity in the world that he -had not been translated into English”; of the Coleridge of prose, -one of whose prefaces is “a masterpiece of its kind, having neither -beginning, middle, nor end”; and even of the “singular animal,” -John Bull himself, since “being the beast he is has made a man of -him”:—these are no ill shots at the sarcastic. Congreve, with all his -quicksilver wit, could not outgo Hazlitt on Thieves, _videlicet_: “Even -a highwayman, in the way of trade, may blow out your brains; but if he -uses foul language at the same time, I should say he was no gentleman!” -Hazlitt’s sense of humor has quality, if not quantity. How was it this -same sense of humor, this fine-grained reticence, which wrote, nay, -printed, in 1823, the piteous and ludicrous canticle of the goddess -Sarah? - -Hazlitt was a great pedestrian from his boyhood on, and, like -Goldsmith, a fair hand at the game of fives, which he played by the -day. Wherever he was, his pocket bulged with a book. It gave him keen -pleasure to set down the hour, the place, the mood, and the weather -of various ecstatic first readings. He became acquainted with _Love -for Love_ in a low wainscoted tavern parlor between Farnham and Alton, -looking out upon a garden of larkspur, with a portrait of Charles -II. crowning the chimney-piece; in his father’s house he fell across -_Tom Jones_, “a child’s Tom Jones, an innocent creature”; he bought -Milton and Burke at Shrewsbury, on the march; he looked up from Mrs. -Inchbald’s _Simple Story_, when its pathos grew too poignant, to -find “a summer shower dropping manna” on his head, and “an old crazy -hand-organ playing _Robin Adair_.” And on April 10, 1798, his twentieth -birthday, he sat down to a volume of the _New Eloïse_, a book which -kept its hold upon him, “at the inn of Llangollen, over a bottle of -sherry and a cold chicken!” The frank epicurean catalogue, as of equal -spiritual and corporeal delight, is worth notice. Do we not know that -Mr. Hazlitt had wood-partridges for supper, in his middle age, at -the Golden Cross, in Rastadt, near Mayence? Yet he failed to record -what book lay by his plate, and distracted his attention from her -who had been a widow, and who was already planning her respectable -exit from his society. Evidence that he was an eater of taste is to -be accumulated eagerly by his partisans, for eating is one of many -engaging human characteristics which establish him as lovable—that is, -posthumously lovable. Barry Cornwall was so jealously tender of his -memory that he would have forbidden any one to write of Hazlitt who -had not known him. As he did not warm miscellaneously to everybody, -it followed that his friends were few. We do not forget which one -of these, during their only difference, thought “to go to his grave -without finding, or expecting to find, such another companion.”[68] - -Hazlitt would have set himself down, by choice, as a metaphysician. -Up to the time when his _Life of Napoleon_ was well in hand, he used -to affirm that the anonymous _Principles of Human Action_, which he -completed at twenty, in the literary style of the azoic age, was his -best work. He was rather proud, too, of the _Characteristics in the -Manner of Rochefoucauld’s Maxims_, his one dreary book, which contains -a couple of inductions worthy of Pascal, some sophistries and hollow -cynicisms not native to Hazlitt’s brain, and a vast number of the very -professorisms which he scouted. Maxims, indeed, are sown broadcast -over his pages, which Alison the historian classified as better to -quote than to read; but they gain by being incidental, and embedded in -the body of his fancies. His vein of original thought comes nowhere -so perfectly into play as in its application to affairs. His pen is -anything but abstruse, - - “Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind.” - -He did not recognize that to display his highest power he needed deeds -and men, and their tangible outcome to be criticised. His preferences -were altogether wed to the past. In his essay on _Envy_ he excuses, -with a wise reflection, his comparative indifference to living writers: -“We try to stifle the sense we have of their merit, not because they -are new or modern, but because we are not sure they will ever be old.” -Or, as Professor Wilson said of him, with tardy but winning kindness: -“In short, if you want Hazlitt’s praise, you must die for it . . . -and it is almost worth dying for.”[69] Yet what an eye he has for the -idiosyncrasy at his elbow, be it in the individual or in the race! -Every contemporary of his, every painter, author, actor, and statesman -of whom he cared to write at all, stands forth under his touch in -delicate and aggressive outlines from which a wind seems to blow -back the mortal draperies, like a figure in a triumphal procession -of Mantegna’s. His manner is essentially pictorial. His sketches of -Cobbett and of Northcote, in _The Spirit of Obligations_; of Johnson, -in _The Periodical Essayists_; of Sir Thomas Browne and Bishop Taylor; -and of Coleridge and Lamb, drawn more than once, with great power, -from the life, will never be excelled. His philippic on _The Spirit -of Monarchy_, or that on _The Regal Character_, is a pure vitriol -flame, to scorch the necks of princes. His comments upon English -and Continental types, if gathered from the necessarily promiscuous -_Notes of a Journey_, would make a most diverting and illuminating -duodecimo; the indictment of the French is especially masterly. _The -Spirit of the Age_, _The Plain Speaker_, the Northcote book, _The -English Comic Writers_, and the noble and little-read _Political -Essays_ are packed with vital personalities. So is _The Characters -of Shakespeare’s Plays_, full of beautiful metaphysical analysis, as -well as of vivifying criticism. This lavish accumulation of material, -never put to use according to modern methods, must appear to some as a -collection of interest awaiting the broom and the hanging committee; -but until the end of time it will be a place of delight for the scholar -and the lover of virtue. Hazlitt’s genius for assortment and sense of -relative values were not developed; he was in no wise a constructive -critic. Mr. R. H. Hutton complained once of Mr. Matthew Arnold that he -ranked his men, but did not portray them. Now Hazlitt, whose search is -all for character, irrespective of the historic position, falls into -the opposite extreme: he portrays his men, but does not rank them. An -attempt to break up into single file the merit which, with him, marches -abreast, he would look upon as a bit of arrogance and rank impiety. -He has nothing to say of the quality which stamps Bavius as the best -elegiac poet between Gray and Tennyson, or of the irony of Mævius, -which would place his dramas, were it not for their loose construction, -next to Molière’s. He does not care a fig for comparisons; or, rather, -he wishes them left to the gods, and to his perceiving reader. -Meanwhile, one face after another shines clear upon the wall, and -breathes enchantment on a passer-by. - -It is very difficult to be severe with William Hazlitt, who was -towards himself so outspokenly severe. Every stricture upon him, as -well as every defence to be urged for it, may be taken out of his own -mouth. Even the _Liber Amoris_, as must always have been discerned, -demonstrates not only his weakness, but his essential uprightness -and innocence. His vindication is written large in _Depth and -Superficiality_, in _The Pleasures of Hating_, in _The Disadvantage of -Intellectual Superiority_. His “true Hamlet” is as faithful a sketch -of the author as is Newman’s celebrated definition of a gentleman. -Hazlitt says a tender word for Dr. Johnson’s prejudices which covers -and explains many of his own. Who can call him irritable, recalling -the splendid exposition of merely selfish content, in the opening -paragraphs of the essay on _Good Nature_? Yet, with all his lofty and -endearing qualities, he had a warped and soured mind, a constitutional -disability to find pleasure in persons or in conditions which were -quiescent. He would have every one as mettlesome and gloomily -vigilant as he was himself. His perfectly proper apostrophe to the -lazy Coleridge at Highgate to “start up in his promised likeness, -and shake the pillared rottenness of the world,” is somewhat comic. -Hazlitt’s nerves never lost their tension; to the last hour of his -last sickness he was ready for a bout. Much of his personal grief -arose from his refusal to respect facts as facts, or to recognize in -existing evil, including the calamitous perfumed figure of Turveydrop -gloriously reigning, what Vernon Lee calls “part of the mechanism -for producing good.” He bit at the quietist in a hundred ways, and -with choice venom. “There are persons who are never very far from the -truth, because the slowness of their faculties will not suffer them to -make much progress in error. These are ‘persons of great judgment.’ -The scales of the mind are pretty sure to remain even when there is -nothing in them.” He was a natural snarler at sunshiny people with full -pockets and feudal ideas, like Sir Walter, who got along with the ogre -What Is, and even asked him to dine. In fact, William Hazlitt hated -a great many things with the utmost enthusiasm, and he was impolite -enough to say so, in and out of season. The Established Church and all -its tenets and traditions were only less monstrous in his eyes than -legendry, mediævalism, and “the shoal of friars.” He knew, from actual -experience, the loyalty and purity of the early Unitarians, and he -praised these with all his heart and tongue. As far as one can make -out, he had not the remotest conception of the breadth and texture -of Christianity as a whole. His theory, for he practised no creed -except the cheap one of universal dissent, was a faint-colored local -Puritanism; and that, as the Merry Monarch (an excellent judge of what -was not what!) reminds us, is “no religion for a gentleman.” But more -than this, Hazlitt had no apprehension of the supernatural in anything; -he was very unspiritual. It is curious to see how he sidles away from -the finer English creatures whom he had to handle. Sidney almost repels -him, and he dismisses Shelley, on one occasion, with an inadequate but -apt allusion to the “hectic flutter” of his verse. Living in a level -country with no outlook upon eternity, and no deep insight into the -human past, nor fully understanding those who had wider vision and more -instructed utterance than his own, it follows that beside such men as -those just named, then as now, Hazlitt has a crude villageous mien. He -had his refined sophistications; chief among them was a surpassing love -of natural beauty. But he relished, on the whole, the beef and beer of -life. The normal was what he wrote of with “gusto”; a word he never -tired of using, and which one must use in speaking of himself. While he -is an admirable arbiter of what is or is not truly intellectual, he is -all at sea when he has to discuss, for instance, emotional poetry, or, -what is yet more difficult to him, poetry purely poetic; its inevitable -touch of the fantastic, the mystical, puts his wits completely to rout. -The stern, lopsided, and magnificent article on Shelley’s _Posthumous -Poems_ in the _Edinburgh Review_ for July, 1824, and his impatience -with Coleridge at his best, perfectly exemplify this limitation. -Despite his partiality for Rousseau and certain of the early Italian -painters, most of the men whose genius he seizes upon and exalts with -unerring success are the men who display, along with enormous acumen -and power, nothing which betokens the morbid and exquisite thing we -have learned to call modern culture. Hazlitt, fortunately for us, -was not over-civilized, had no cinque-cento instincts, and would -have groaned aloud over such hedonism as Mr. Pater’s. Homespun and -manly as he is, who can help feeling that his was but an imperfect -development? that, as Mr. Arnold said so paternally of Byron, “he -did not know enough”? He lacked both mental discipline and moral -governance. He has the wayward and appealing Celtic utterance; the -manner made of largeness and simpleness, all shot and interwoven with -the hues of romanticism. Prodigal that he is, he cannot stoop to build -up his golden piecemeal, or to clinch his generalizations, thrown down -loosely, side by side. Esoteric thrift is not in him, nor the spirit of -co-operation, nor the sweetest of artistic anxieties, that of marching -in line. He has a knight-errant pen; his glad and chivalrous services -to literature resemble those of an outlaw to the commonwealth. Despite -his personal value, he stands detached; he is episodic, and represents -nothing. - - “The earth hath bubbles as the water hath, - And this is of them.” - -He misses the white station of a classic; for the classics have -equipoise, and inter-relationship. But it is great cause for -thankfulness that William Hazlitt cannot be made other than he is. Time -can not take away his height and his red-gold garments, bestow on him -the “smoother head of hair” which Lamb prayed for, and shrivel him into -one of several very wise and weary _précieux_. No: he stalks apart in -state, the splendid Pasha of English letters. - -Hazlitt boasts, and permissibly, of genuine disinterestedness: “If you -wish to see me perfectly calm,” he remarks somewhere, “cheat me in a -bargain, or tread on my toes.”[70] But he cannot promise the same -behavior for a sophism repeated in his presence, or a truth repelled. -In his sixth year he had been taken, with his brother and sister, to -America, and he says that he never afterwards got out of his mouth the -delicious tang of a frost-bitten New England barberry. It is tolerably -sure that the blowy and sunny atmosphere of the young republic of -1783-7 got into him also. Liberalism was his birthright. He flourishes -his fighting colors; he trembles with eagerness to break a lance with -the arch-enemies; he is a champion, from his cradle, against class -privilege, of slaves who know not what they are, nor how to wish for -liberty. But he cannot do all this in the laughing Horatian way; he -cannot keep cool; he cannot mind his object. If he could, he would be -the white devil of debate. There are times when he speaks, as does -Dr. Johnson, out of all reason, because aware of the obstinacy and the -bad faith of his hearers. Morals are too much in his mind, and, after -their wont, they spoil his manners. Like the Caroline Platonist, Henry -More, he “has to cut his way through a crowd of thoughts as through a -wood.” His temper breaks like a rocket, in little lurid smoking stars, -over every ninth page; he lays about him at random; he raises a dust of -side-issues. Hazlitt sometimes reminds one of Burke himself gone off -at half-cock. He will not step circumspectly from light to light, from -security to security. Some of his very best essays, as has been noted, -have either no particular subject, or fail to follow the one they have. -Nor is he any the less attractive if he be heated, if he be swearing - - “By the blood so basely shed - Of the pride of Norfolk’s line,” - -or scornfully settling accounts of his own with the asinine public. -When he is not driven about by his moods, Hazlitt is set upon his fact -alone; which he thinks is the sole concern of a prose-writer. Grace and -force are collateral affairs. “In seeking for truth,” he says proudly, -in words fit to be the epitome of his career, “I sometimes found -beauty.” - -_The Edinburgh Review_, in an article written while Hazlitt was in the -full of his activity, summed up his shortcomings. “There are no great -leading principles of taste to give singleness to his aims, nor any -central points in his mind around which his feelings may revolve and -his imaginations cluster. There is no sufficient distinction between -his intellectual and his imaginative faculties. He confounds the truths -of imagination with those of fact, the processes of argument with -those of feeling, the immunities of intellect with those of virtue.” -Here is an admirable arraignment, which goes to the heart of the -matter. Hazlitt himself corroborates it in a confession of gallant -directness: “I say what I think; I think what I feel.” It is this fatal -confusion which makes his course now rapid and clear, anon clogged with -vagaries, as if his rudder had run into a mesh of sea-weed; it is -this which deflects his judgments, and leads him, in the shrewd phrase -of a modern critic, to praise the right things for the wrong reasons. -Hazlitt’s prejudices are very instructive, even while he bewails -Landor’s or Cobbett’s, and tells you, as it were, with a tear in his -eye, when he has done berating the French, that, after all, they are -Catholics; and as for manners, “Catholics must be allowed to carry it, -all over the world!” His exquisite treatment of Northcote, a winning -old sharper for whom he cared nothing, is all due to his looking like -a Titian portrait. So with the great Duke: Hazlitt hated the sight -of him, “as much for his pasteboard visor of a face as for anything -else.” One of his justifications for adoring Napoleon was, that at a -levee a young English officer named Lovelace drew from him an endearing -recognition: “I perceive, sir, that you bear the name of the hero of -Richardson’s romance.” If you look like a Titian portrait, if you read -and remember Richardson, you may trust a certain author, who knows a -distinction when he sees it, to set you up for the idol of posterity. -Hazlitt thought Mr. Wordsworth’s long and immobile countenance -resembled that of a horse; and it is not impossible that this -conviction, twin-born with that other that Mr. Wordsworth was a mighty -poet, is responsible for various gibes at the august contemporary whose -memory owes so much to his pen in other moods. - -He is the most ingenuous and agreeable egoist we have had since the -seventeenth-century men. It must be remembered how little he was in -touch outwardly with social and civic affairs; how he was content to -be the always young looker-on. There was nothing for him to do but -fall back, under given conditions, upon his own capacious entity. The -automaton called William Hazlitt is to him a toy made to his hand, -to be reached without effort; the digest of all his study and the -applicable test of all his assumptions. He knew himself; he could, and -did, with decorum, approve or chastise himself in open court. “His -life was of humanity the sphere.” His “I” has a strong constituency -in the other twenty-five initials. In this sense, and in our current -cant, Hazlitt is nothing if not subjective, super-personal. His sort of -sentimentalism is an anomaly in Northern literature, even in the age -when nearly every literary Englishman of note was variously engaged -in baring his breast. Whether he would carp or sigh, he will still -hold you by the button, as he held host and guest, master and valet, -to pour into their adjacent ears the mad extravagances of the _Liber -Amoris_. He gets a little tired at his desk, after battling for hours -with the slow and stupid in behalf of the beauty ever-living; he wants -fresh air and a reverie; he must digress or die. And from abstractions -bardic as Carlyle’s, he runs gladly to his own approved self. This very -circumstance, which lends Hazlitt’s pages their curious blur and stain, -is the same which stamps his individuality, and gives those who are -drawn towards him at all an unspeakably hearty relish for his company. -What shall we call it?—the habit, not maudlin in him, of speaking out, -of draining his well of emotion for the benefit of the elect; nay, even -of delicate lyric whimperings, beside which - - “Poore Petrarch’s long-deceasèd woes” - -take on a tinsel glamour. As the dancing-girl carries her jewels, -every one in sight as she moves, so our “Faustus, that was wont to -make the schools ring with _Sic probo_,” steps into the forum jingling -and twinkling with personalia. He is quite aware of the figure he -may cut: he does not stumble into an intimacy with you because he is -absent-minded, or because he is liable to an attack of affectation. He -is as conscious as Poussin’s giants, whom he once described as “seated -on the tops of craggy mountains, playing idly on their Pan’s pipes, and -knowing the beginning and the end of their own story.” Many sentences -of his, from their structure, might be attributed to Coleridge, the -single person from whom Hazlitt admits to have learned anything;[71] -but there is no mistaking his _note émue_: that is as obvious as the -syncopations in a Scotch tune, or the long eyes of Orcagna’s saints. - -He wishes you to know, at every breathing-space, “how ill’s all here -about my heart; but ’tis no matter.” Laying by or taking up an old -print or folio, he loosens some fond confidence to that surprised -novice, the common reader. Like Shelley here, as in a few other -affectionate absurdities, the prince of prose, turning from his proper -affairs, assures you that he, too, is human, hoping, unhappy; he also -has lived in Arcadia. It is in such irrelevancies that he is fully -himself, Hazlitt freed, Hazlitt autobiographic, “his chariot-wheels -hot by driving fast.”[72] Who can forget the parentheses in his advices -to his little son, about the scholar having neither mate nor fellow, -and the god of love clapping his wings upon the river-bank to mock him -as he passes by? Or the noble and moving passage in _The Pleasures of -Painting_, beginning with “My father was willing to sit as long as I -pleased,” and ending with the longing for the revolution of the great -Platonic year, that those times might come over again! He freshens with -his own childhood the garden of larkspur and mignonette at Walworth, -and “the rich notes of the thrush that startle the ear of winter . . . -dear in themselves, and dearer for the sake of what is departed.” You -care not so much for the placid stream by Peterborough as for his own -wistful pilgrimage to the nigh farmhouse gate, where the ten-year-old -Grace Loftus (his much-beloved mother, who survived him) used to gaze -upon the setting sun. And in a choric outburst of praise for Mrs. -Siddons, the splendor seems to culminate less in “her majestic form -rising up against misfortune, an antagonist power to it” (what a truly -Shakespearean breadth is in that description!); less in the sight of -her name on the play-bill, “drawing after it a long trail of Eastern -glory, a joy and felicity unutterable,” than in the widening dream of -the happy lad in the pit, in his sovereign vision “of waning time, of -Persian thrones and them that sat on them”; in the human life which -appeared to him, of a sudden, “far from indifferent,” and in his -“overwhelming and drowning flood of tears.” He can beautify the evening -star itself, this innovator, who records that after a tranced and -busy day at the easel, the day of Austerlitz, he watched it set over -a poor man’s cottage with other thoughts and feelings than he shall -ever have again. There is nothing of _le moi haïssable_ in all this. It -is deliberate naturalism; the rebellion against didactics and “tall -talk,” the milestone of a return, parallel with that of Wordsworth, -to the fearless contemplation of plain and near things. But in a -professing logician, is it not somewhat peculiar? When has even a poet -so centred the universe in his own heart, without offence? - -Hazlitt threw away his brush, as a heroic measure, because he foresaw -but a middling success. Many canvases he cut into shreds, in a fury -of dissatisfaction with himself. Northcote, however, thought his lack -of patience had spoiled a great painter. He was too full of worship -of the masters to make an attentive artisan. The sacrifice, like all -his sacrifices, great or small, left nothing behind but sweetness, -the unclouded love of excellence, and the capacity of rejoicing at -another’s attaining whatever he had missed. But the sense of disparity -between supreme intellectual achievement and that which is only -partial and relative, albeit of equal purity, followed him like a -frenzy. Comparison is yet more difficult in literature than in art, -and Hazlitt could take some satisfaction in the results of his second -ardor. He felt his power most, perhaps, as a critic of the theatre. -English actors owe him an incalculable debt, and their best spirits -are not unmindful of it. He was reasonably assured of the duration and -increase of his fame. Has he not, in one of his headstrong digressions, -called the thoughts in his _Table-Talk_ “founded as rock, free as -air, the tone like an Italian picture?” Even there, however, the -faint-heartedness natural to every true artist troubled him. He went -home in despair from the spectacle of the Indian juggler, “in his -white dress and tightened turban,” tossing the four brass balls. “To -make them revolve round him at certain intervals, like the planets in -their spheres, to make them chase one another like sparkles of fire, or -shoot up like flowers or meteors, to throw them behind his back, and -twine them round his neck like ribbons or like serpents; to do what -appears an impossibility, and to do it with all the ease, the grace, -the carelessness imaginable; to laugh at, to play with the glittering -mockeries, to follow them with his eye as if he could fascinate them -with its lambent fire, or as if he had only to see that they kept time -to the music on the stage—there is something in all this which he who -does not admire may be quite sure he never really admired anything in -the whole course of his life. It is skill surmounting difficulty, and -beauty triumphing over skill. . . . It makes me ashamed of myself. I -ask what there is that I can do as well as this? Nothing.” A third -person must give another answer. The whole passage offers a very -exquisite parallel; for in just such a daring, varied, and magical -way can William Hazlitt write. The astounding result, “which costs -nothing,” is founded, in each case, upon the toil of a lifetime. -Hazlitt’s style is an incredible thing. It is not, like Lamb’s, of one -warp and woof. It soars to the rhetorical sublime, and drops to hard -Saxon slang. It is for all the world, and not only for specialists. Its -range and change incorporate the utmost of many men. The trenchant -sweep, the simplicity and point of Newman at his best, are matched -by the pages on _Cobbett_, on _Fox_, and _On the Regal Character_; -and there is, to choose but one opposite instance, in the paper _On -the Unconsciousness of Genius_, touching Correggio, a fragment of -pure eloquence of a very ornate sort, whose onward bound, glow, and -volley can give Mr. Swinburne’s _Essays and Studies_ a look as of -sails waiting for the wind. The same hand which fills a brief with -epic cadences and invocations overwrought, throws down, often without -an adjective, sentence after sentence of ringing steel: “Fashion is -gentility running away from vulgarity, and afraid of being overtaken -by it.” “It is not the omission of individual circumstance, but the -omission of general truth, which constitutes the little, the deformed, -and the short-lived in art.” The man’s large voice in these aphorisms -is Hazlitt’s unmistakably. If it be not as novel to this generation as -if he were but just entering the lists of authorship, it is because his -fecundating mind has been long enriching at second-hand the libraries -of the English world. He comes forth, like another outrider, Rossetti, -so far behind his heralds and disciples, that his mannered utterance -seems familiar, and an echo of theirs. For it may be said at last, -thanks to the numerous reprints of the last seven years, and thanks -to a few competent critics, whom Mr. Stevenson leads, that Hazlitt’s -robust work is in a fair way to be known and appraised, by a public -which is a little less unworthy of him than his own. His method is -entirely unscientific, and therefore archaic. If we can profit no -longer by him, we can get out of him cheer and delight: and these -profit unto immortality. Meanwhile, what mere “maker of beautiful -English” shall be pitted against him there where he sits, the despair -of a generation of experts, continually tossing the four brass balls? - -It has been said often by shallow reviewers, and is said sometimes -still, that Hazlitt’s style aims at effect; as if an effect must not -be won, without aiming, by a “born man of letters,” as Mr. Saintsbury -described him, “who could not help turning into literature everything -he touched.”[73] The “effect,” under given conditions, is manifest, -unavoidable. Once let Hazlitt speak, as he speaks ever, in the warmth -of conviction, and what an intoxicating music begins!—wild as that of -the gypsies, and with the same magnet-touch on the sober senses: enough -to subvert all “criticism and idle distinction,” and to bring back -those Theban times when the force of a sound, rather than masons and -surveyors, sent the very walls waltzing into their places. - -In the face of diction so joyously clear as his, so sumptuous and -splendid, it is well to endorse Mr. Ruskin, that “no right style -was ever founded save out of a sincere heart.” It can never be -said of William Hazlitt, as Dean Trench well said of those other -“great stylists,” Landor and De Quincey, that he had a lack of moral -earnestness. What he was determined to impress upon his reader, during -the quarter-century while he held a pen, was not that he was knowing, -not that he was worthy of the renown and fortune which passed him by, -but only that he had rectitude and a consuming passion for good. He -declares aloud that his escutcheon has no bar-sinister: he has not -sold himself; he has spoken truth in and out of season; he has honored -the excellent at his own risk and cost; he has fought for a principle -and been slain for it, from his youth up. His sole boast is proven. -In a far deeper sense than Leigh Hunt, for whom he forged the lovely -compliment, he was “the visionary in humanity, the fool of virtue,” and -the captain of those who stood fast, in a hostile day, for ignored and -eternal ideals. The best thing to be said of him, the thing for which, -in Haydon’s phrase, “everybody must love him,” is that he himself loved -justice and hated iniquity. He shared the groaning of the spirit -after mortal welfare with Swift and Fielding, with Shelley and Matthew -Arnold, with Carlyle and Ruskin; he was corroded with cares and desires -not his own. Beside this intense devotedness, what personal flaw will -ultimately show? The host who figure in the Roman martyrology hang all -their claim upon the fact of martyrdom, and, according to canon law, -need not have been saints in their lifetime at all. So with such souls -as his: in the teeth of a thousand acknowledged imperfections in life -or in art, they remain our exemplars. Let them do what they will, at -some one stroke they dignify this earth. It is not Hazlitt, “the born -man of letters” alone, but Hazlitt the born humanist, who bequeaths us, -from his England of coarse misconception and abuse, a memory like a -loadstar, and a name which is a toast to be drunk standing. - - -THE END - -FOOTNOTES: - -[58] The article on _The Fine Arts_ in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ is -signed “W. H.” - -[59] Mrs. Hazlitt the first, it would appear, undertook to verify -her husband’s quotations for him. His favorite metaphor, “Like the -tide which flows on to the Propontic, and knows no ebb,” must have -passed many times under her eye. Any reference to Othello himself, in -the great scene of Act III., would have shown four lines for William -Hazlitt’s explicit one. - -[60] Some of Hazlitt’s comments on women are full of unconscious humor. -In _Great and Little Things_ he admits being snubbed by the fair, and -adds with grandiloquence: “I took a pride in my disgrace, and concluded -that I had elsewhere my inheritance!” - -[61] In the National Portrait Gallery, London. - -[62] _Blackwood’s_, in the charming fashion of the time, repeatedly -refers to Hazlitt’s “pimples”; and Byron credited and supplemented the -allegation. Hazlitt himself says somewhere “that to lay a thing to -a person’s charge from which he is perfectly free, shows spirit and -invention!” The calumny is not worth mention, except as a fair specimen -of the journalistic methods against which literary men had to contend -some eighty years ago. - -[63] Lamb had been his groomsman twenty-two years before, at the Church -of St. Andrew, Holborn, “and like to have been turned out several times -during the ceremony; anything awful makes me laugh!” as he confessed in -a letter to Southey in 1815. - -[64] Orrery had seen this same bitter indignation overwhelm Swift at -times, “so that it is scarcely possible for human features to carry in -them more terror and austerity.” - -[65] At 19 York Street, Westminster. The house, with its tablet “To the -Prince of Poets” set by Hazlitt himself, was destroyed in 1877. - -[66] A snappy unpublished letter to Hunt, sold among the Hazlitt -papers at Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge’s, in the late autumn of 1893, -complains bitterly of kind Basil Montagu, who had once put off a -proffered visit from Hazlitt, on the ground that a party of other -guests was expected. The deterred one was naturally wroth. “Yet after -this, I am not to look at him a little _in abstracto_! This is what has -soured me and made me sick of friendship and acquaintanceship.” Hazlitt -confounded cause and effect. He was unwelcome in general gatherings -where his genius was unappreciated; and we may be sure Montagu -was sorry for it when, in the interests of concord, he held up so -deprecating and inhospitable a hand. But among those who nursed Hazlitt -in his last illness, Basil Montagu was not the least loyal. - -[67] _The Fight_ appeared in the _New Monthly Magazine_ in 1822. It -was itself antedated by _The Fancy_ of John Hamilton Reynolds, Keats’s -friend and Hood’s brother-in-law, which was printed in 1820. The jolly -iambics are as inspired as the essay. “P. C.” is, of course, Pugilistic -Club. - -“Oh, it is life! to see a proud And dauntless man step, full of hopes, -Up to the P. C. stakes and ropes, Throw in his hat, and with a spring -Get gallantly within the ring; Eye the wide crown, and walk awhile -Taking all cheerings with a smile; To see him strip; his well-trained -form, White, glowing, muscular, and warm, All beautiful in conscious -power, Relaxed and quiet, till the hour; His glossy and transparent -frame, In radiant plight to strive for fame! To look upon the clean -shap’d limb In silk and flannel clothèd trim; While round the waist -the kerchief tied Makes the flesh glow in richer pride. ’Tis more than -life to watch him hold His hand forth, tremulous yet bold, Over his -second’s, and to clasp His rival’s in a quiet grasp; To watch the noble -attitude He takes, the crowd in breathless mood; And then to see, with -adamant start, The muscles set, and the great heart Hurl a courageous -splendid light Into the eye, and then—the FIGHT!” - -But this is general: Hazlitt is specific. His particular Fight was the -great one between Neate of Bristol and Tom Hickman the Gasman, Neate -being the victor. On May 20, 1823, Neate met Spring of Hertfordshire -(so translated out of his natural patronymic of Winter), in a contest -for the championship, and Neate himself went under. This latter battle -was mock-heroically celebrated by Maginn in _Blackwood’s_, and Hood’s -casual meteorological simile heaped up honors on the winner: - -“The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name. For why? I find her -breath a bitter blighter, And suffer from her blows as if they came -From Spring the fighter!” - -So that literature may be said to have set close to the ropes in those -days, from first to last. - -[68] Lamb, in “_A Letter to R. Southey, Esq._” - -[69] The man of Martial’s epigram had other “views.” The capital -translation is Dr. Goldwin Smith’s: - -“Vacerra lauds no living poet’s lays, But for departed genius keeps his -praise. I, alas, live; nor deem it worth my while To die, that I may -win Vacerra’s smile.” - -[70] This was the spirit of Henry Fielding on his last voyage, hoisted -aboard among the watermen at Redcliffe, and hearing his emaciated body -made the subject of jeers and laughter. “No man who knew me,” he writes -in his journal, “will think I conceived any personal resentment at this -behavior; but it was a lively picture of that cruelty and inhumanity -in the nature of man which I have often contemplated with concern, and -which leads the mind into a train of very uncomfortable and melancholy -thoughts.” It is a fine passage, and a strong heart, not given to -boasting, penned it. Poor Hazlitt could not bear even an unintentional -slight without imputing diabolical malice to the offender. Yet it was -certainly true that, in his saner hours, he could suffer personal -discomfort in public without flinching, and deplore the habit which -imposed it, rather than the act. - -[71] If Hazlitt conveyed some of his best mannerisms from Coleridge, -not always transmuting them, surely the balance may be said to be -even when one discovers later in Hartley Coleridge such an easy -inherited use of Hazlitt’s “flail of gold” as is exemplified in this -summary of Roger Ascham’s career. “There was a primitive honesty, a -kindly innocence about this good old scholar, which gave a personal -interest to the homeliest details of his life. He had the rare -felicity of passing through the worst of times without persecution and -without dishonor. He lived with princes and princesses, prelates and -diplomatists, without offence as without ambition. Though he enjoyed -the smiles of royalty, his heart was none the worse, and his fortunes -little the better.” - -[72] The quotation is from Coleridge, and it was applied by him to -Dryden. Hazlitt himself unconsciously expanded and spoiled it in his -essay on _Burke_. “The wheels of his imagination did not catch fire -from the rottenness of the material, but from the rapidity of their -motion.” - -[73] The Rev. H. R. Haweis has another characterization of these -breathing and burning pages: “long and tiresome essays by Hazlitt.” -So they are, sure enough, if only you be endowed to think so! Hazlitt -himself gives the diverting fact for what it is worth, that “three -chimney-sweeps meeting three Chinese in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, they -laughed at one another till they were ready to drop down.” - - - - - -MONSIEUR HENRI - - A Foot-note to French History. By LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. - With Portrait and Map. Small 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, - $1 00. - - -A fascinating career, truly, and here most exquisitely chronicled. The -little book, in its ardor of appreciation, vivacity of portraiture, and -grace and spontaneity of style, is a masterpiece of concise narration, -and by those who read it once will be sought with unfailing delight -again and again.—_Boston Beacon._ - -Miss Guiney writes with a love for her subject which makes her fine -discrimination all the finer, and shows an insight into history -all the more admirable for the research which it has compelled. -This tiny volume gives evidence of as thorough study as would -fit out a post-octavo, as some authors understand the writing of -history.—_Evangelist_, N. Y. - -Miss Guiney has written La Rochejaquelein’s life on a small scale, -but with spirit and enthusiasm, and her little book is very -interesting.—_N. Y. Tribune._ - -A spirited, vivid, and felicitously phrased account of that dramatic -side-issue of the French Revolution, the Vendée War. . . . Miss -Guiney’s literary touch is always admirable and, not infrequently, -inspired.—_Hartford Courant._ - - ———— - - PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. - - [Illustration] _For sale by all booksellers, or will be - sent by the publishers, postage prepaid, to any part of - the United States, Canada, or Mexico, receipt of the - price._ - - - - -BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON. - -———— - - HORACE CHASE. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. - JUPITER LIGHTS. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. - EAST ANGELS. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. - ANNE. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. - FOR THE MAJOR. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. - CASTLE NOWHERE. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. - RODMAN THE KEEPER. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. - -———— - -One of the most remarkable qualities of Miss Woolson’s work was its -intense picturesqueness. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at <a -href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> -<p>Title: A Little English Gallery</p> -<p>Author: Louise Imogen Guiney</p> -<p>Release Date: February 21, 2017 [eBook #54219]</p> -<p>Language: English</p> -<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> -<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE ENGLISH GALLERY***</p> -<p> </p> -<h4>E-text prepared by Emmy, MFR,<br /> - and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> - (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> - from page images generously made available by<br /> - Internet Archive<br /> - (<a href="https://archive.org">https://archive.org</a>)</h4> -<p> </p> -<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> - <tr> - <td valign="top"> - Note: - </td> - <td> - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - <a href="https://archive.org/details/littleenggallery00guinrich"> - https://archive.org/details/littleenggallery00guinrich</a> - </td> - </tr> -</table> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pg" /> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<h1 class="faux"> -A LITTLE -ENGLISH GALLERY</h1> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 408px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="408" height="800" alt="cover" /> -</div> -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 357px;"> -<img src="images/i-001.jpg" width="357" height="483" alt="Louise Imogen Guiney portrait" /> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - - -<div class="maintitle"> -A LITTLE<br /> -ENGLISH GALLERY</div> - - -<div class="center"><br /><br /><br />BY<br /> -<span class="author">LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY</span><br /><br /><br /></div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 127px;"> -<img src="images/emblem.jpg" width="127" height="151" alt="emblem" /> -</div> - - -<div class="center"><br /><br />NEW YORK -<big>HARPER AND BROTHERS</big> -MDCCCXCIV -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - - -<div class="copyright"> -Copyright, 1894, by <span class="smcap">Harper & Brothers</span>.<br /> -———<br /> -<i>All rights reserved.</i><br /> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - - -<p class="center"> -<small>TO</small><br /> -<br /> -EDMUND GOSSE<br /> -<br /> -<small>THIS FRIENDLY TRESPASS ON HIS FIELDS</small><br /> -</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - - -<h2>PREFATORY NOTE</h2> - - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> studies in this book are chosen from a -number written at irregular intervals, and from -sheer interest in their subjects, long ago. Portions -of them, or rough drafts of what has since -been wholly remodelled from fresher and fuller -material at first hand, have appeared within five -years in <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, <i>Macmillan’s</i>, -<i>The Catholic World</i>, and <i>Poet-Lore;</i> and thanks -are due the magazines for permission to reprint -them. Yet more cordial thanks, for kind assistance -on biographical points, belong to the -Earl of Powis; the Rev. R. H. Davies, Vicar -of old St. Luke’s, Chelsea; the Rev. T. Vere -Bayne, of Christchurch, and H. E. D. Blakiston, -Esq., of Trinity College, Oxford; T. W. -Lyster, Esq., of the National Library of Ireland; -Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, Esq.; Miss -Langton, of Langton-by-Spilsby; the Vicars of -Dauntsey, Enfield Highway, and Montgomery, -and especially those of High Ercall and Speke; -and the many others in England through whose -courtesy and patience the tracer of these unimportant -sketches has been able to make them -approximately life-like.</p> - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - -<h2>CONTENTS</h2> - - - - -<div class="center"> -<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> -<tr> -<td align="left" colspan="2"><small>CHAP.</small></td> -<td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td align="right">I.</td> -<td align="left">LADY DANVERS (1561-1627)</td> -<td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td align="right">II.</td> -<td align="left">HENRY VAUGHAN (1621-1695)</td> -<td align="right"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td align="right">III.</td> -<td align="left">GEORGE FARQUHAR (1677-1707)</td> -<td align="right"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td align="right">IV.</td> -<td align="left">TOPHAM BEAUCLERK (1739-1780)</td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td align="left"> </td> -<td align="center">AND</td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td align="left"> </td> -<td align="left">BENNET LANGTON (1741-1800)</td> -<td align="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td align="right">V.</td> -<td align="left">WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830)</td> -<td align="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> -</tr> -</table> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2>I<br /> - -LADY DANVERS - -<small>1561-1627</small></h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a><br /><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> - - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-012-drop-m.jpg" width="109" height="105" alt="M" /> -</div> - -<p class="drop-capi">MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD -somewhere devotes a grateful -sentence to the women -who have left a fragrance in -literary history, and whose -loss of long ago can yet inspire men of -to-day with indescribable regret. Lady -Danvers is surely one of these. As John -Donne’s dear friend, and George Herbert’s -mother, she has a double poetic -claim, like her unforgotten contemporary, -Mary Sidney, for whom was made -an everlasting epitaph. If Dr. Donne’s -fraternal fame have not quite the old lustre -of the incomparable Sir Philip’s, it -is, at least, a greater honor to own Herbert -for son than to have perpetuated -the race of Pembroke. Nor is it an inharmonious -thing to remember, in thus -calling up, in order to rival it, the sweet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> -memory of “Sidney’s sister,” that Herbert -and Pembroke have long been, and -are yet, married names.</p> - -<p>Magdalen, the youngest child of Sir -Richard Newport, and of Margaret -Bromley, his wife, herself daughter of -that Bromley who was Privy-Councillor, -Lord Chief-Justice, and executor to Henry -VIII., was born in High Ercall, Salop; -the loss or destruction of parish registers -leaves us but 1561-62 as the probable -date. Of princely stock, with three sisters -and an only brother, and heir to virtue -and affluence, she could look with the -right pride of unfallen blood upon “the -many fair coats the Newports bear” over -their graves at Wroxeter. It was the day -of learned and thoughtful girls; and this -girl seems to have been at home with -book and pen, with lute and viol. She -married, in the flower of her youth, Richard -Herbert, Esquire, of Blache Hall, -Montgomery, black-haired and black-bearded, -as were all his line; a man of -some intellectual training, and of noted -courage, descended from a distinguished -brother of the yet more distinguished Sir<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> -Richard Herbert of Edward IV.’s time, -and from the most ancient rank of Wales -and England. At Eyton in Salop, in -1581, was born their eldest child, Edward, -afterwards Lord Herbert of Cherbury, -a writer who is still the puzzle and -delight of Continental critics. He is said -to have been a beautiful boy, and not -very robust; his first speculation with -his infant tongue was the piercing query: -“How came I into this world?” But his -next brother, Richard, was of another -stamp; and went his frank, flashing, fighting -way through Europe, “with scars of -four-and-twenty wounds upon him, to his -grave” at Bergen-op-Zoom, with William, -the third son, following in his soldierly -footsteps. Charles grew up reserved and -studious, and died, like his paternal uncle, -a dutiful Fellow of New College, Oxford. -The fifth of these Herberts, “a soul composed -of harmonies,” as Cotton said of -him, and destined to make the name beloved -among all readers of English, was -George, the poet, the saintly “parson of -Fuggleston and Bemerton.” Henry, his -junior, with whom George had a sympathy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> -peculiarly warm and long, became in his -manhood Master of the Revels, and held -the office for over fifty years. “You and I -are alone left to brother it,” Lord Herbert -of Cherbury once wrote him, in a mood -more tender than his wont, when all else -of that radiant family had gone into dust. -The youngest of Magdalen Newport’s sons -was Thomas, “a posthumous,” traveller, -sailor, and master of a ship in the war -against Algiers. Elizabeth, Margaret, and -Frances were the daughters, of whom -Izaak Walton says, with satisfaction, that -they lived to be examples of virtue, and -to do good to their generation. None of -them made an illustrious match. Margaret -married a Vaughan. Frances secured -unto herself the patronymic Brown, -and was happily seconded by Elizabeth, -George Herbert’s “dear sick sister,” who -became Mistress Jones. In the south -chancel transept of Montgomery Church, -where Richard Herbert the elder had -been buried three years before, there was -erected in 1600, at his wife’s cost, a large -canopied alabaster altar-tomb, with two -portrait-figures recumbent. All around<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> -it, in the quaint and affectionate boast of -the age, are the small images of these -seven sons and three daughters; “Job’s -number and Job’s distribution,” as she -once remarked, and as her biographers -failed not to repeat after her. But their -kindred ashes are widely sundered, and -“as content with six foot as with the -moles of Adrianus.” This at Montgomery -is the only known representation of -the Lady Magdalen. Her effigy lies at -her husband’s left, the palms folded, the -eyes open, the full hair rolled back from -a low brow, beneath a charming and simple -head-dress. Nothing can be nobler -than the whole look of the face, like her -in her prime, and reminding one of her -son’s loving epithet, “my Juno.” The -short-sighted inscription upon the slab -yet includes her name.</p> - -<p>Never had an army of brilliant and requiring -children a more excellent mother. -“<i>Severa parens</i>,” her gentle George called -her in his scholarly verses; and such she -was, with the mingled sagacity and joyousness -which made up her character. -If we are to believe their own testimony,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> -the leading members of her young family -were of excessively peppery Cymric temperaments, -and worthy to call out that -“manlier part” of her which Dr. Donne, -who had every opportunity of observing -it in play, was so quick to praise. There -is a passage in a letter of Sir Thomas -Lacy, addressed to Edward Herbert, -touching upon “the knowledge I had -how ill you can digest the least indignity.” -“Holy George Herbert” himself, in 1618, -commended to his dear brother Henry -the gospel of self-honoring: “It is the -part of a poor spirit to undervalue himself -and blush.” And physical courage -went hand in hand with this blameless -haughtiness of the Herberts, a pretty collateral -proof of which may be adduced -from a message of Sir Henry Jones to his -brother-in-law, the other Henry just -mentioned, concerning a gift for his little -nephew. “If my cozen, William Herbert -your sonne . . . be ready for the rideing of -a horse, I will provide him with a Welch -nagg that shall be as mettlesome as himself.” -There is no doubt that all this -racial fire was fostered by one woman.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -“Thou my root, and my most firm rock, -O my mother!” George cried, long after -in the <i>Parentalia</i>, aware that he owed to -her his high ideals, and the strength of -character which is born of self-discipline.</p> - -<p>“God gave her,” says one of her two -devoted annalists, who we wish were -not so brief and meagre of detail—“God -gave her such a comeliness as though she -was not proud of it, yet she was so content -with it as not to go about to mend -it by any art.” Her fortune was large, -her benevolence wide-spreading. All the -countryside knew her for the living representative -of the ever-hospitable houses -of Newport and Bromley. “She gave not -on some great days,” continues Dr. Donne, -“or at solemn goings abroad; but as -God’s true almoners, the sun and moon, -that pass on in a continual doing of good; -as she received her daily bread from God, -so daily she distributed it, and imparted -it to others.” In these years of her wifehood -and widowhood at Montgomery -Castle (the “romancy place” dating from -the eleventh century, and ruined, like the -fine old house at High Ercall, during the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> -Civil Wars), and afterwards at Oxford and -London, she reared her happy crew of -boys and girls in an air of generosity -and honor; training them to habits of -hardiness and simplicity, and to the equal -relish of work and play. “Herself with -her whole family (as a church in that -elect lady’s house, to whom John wrote -his second Epistle) did every Sabbath -shut up the day at night with a general, -with a cheerful singing of psalms.” -One may guess at young Richard’s turmoil -in-doors, and at the little Elizabeth’s -soft, patient ways, and think of George -(on Sundays at any rate) as the child of -content, “the contesseration of elegances” -worthy Archdeacon Oley called -him.</p> - -<p>The fair and stately matron moving -over them and among them was not -without her prejudices. “I was once,” -Edward testifies, “in danger of drowning, -learning to swim. My mother, upon -her blessing, charged me never to learn -swimming; telling me, further, that she -had learned of more drowned than saved -by it.” Though the given reason failed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> -to impress him, he adds, the commandment -did; so that the accomplished -Crichton of Cherbury, who understood -alchemy, broke his way through metaphysics, -and rode the Great Horse; the -ambassador, author, and beau, to whom -Ben Jonson sent his greeting:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“What man art thou that art so many men,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">All-virtuous Herbert?”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">even he lacked, on principle, the science -of keeping himself alive in an alien element, -because it had been pronounced -less risky to die outright! It was a pretty -paradox, and one which sets down our -high-minded Magdalen as quite feminine, -quite human.</p> - -<p>Her Edward was matriculated in 1595 -at University College, Oxford,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> for which -he seemed to retain no great partiality; -he bequeathed his books, like a loyal -Welshman, to Jesus College, instead, and -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>his manuscripts to the Bodleian Library. -In 1598, when he was little more than -seventeen, he was wedded to his cousin -Mary Herbert, of St. Gillian in Monmouthshire. -Her age was one-and-twenty; -she was an heiress, enjoined by her -father’s will to marry a Herbert or forfeit -her estates; she was also almost a -philosopher. There was no wild affection -on either side, but the marriage -promised rather well, both persons having -resources; and no real catastrophe -befell either in after-life. Much as she -desired the match for worldly motives, -the chief promoter of it was too solicitous -for her tall dreamer of a son, who -underwent the pleasing peril of having -Queen Bess clap him on the cheek, not -to take the whole weight of conjugal -direction on her own shoulders. Without -undue officiousness, but with the masterly -foresight of a shrewd saint, she -moved to Oxford from Montgomery with -her younger children and their tutors, in -order to handle Mistress Herbert’s husband -during his minority. “She continued -there with him,” says Walton, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> -his <i>Life of George Herbert</i>, “and still -kept him in a moderate awe of herself, -and so much under her own eye as to -see and converse with him daily; but she -managed this power over him without -any such rigid sourness as might make -her company a torment to her child, but -with such a sweetness and compliance -with the recreations and pleasures of -youth as did incline him willingly to -spend much of his time in the company -of his dear and careful mother.”</p> - -<p>It was during this stay that she contracted -the chivalrous friendship which -has embalmed her tranquil memory. Dr. -John Donne (not ordained until 1614, and -indeed not Dr. Donne then at all, but -“Jack Donne,” his profaner self) had been -at Cadiz with Essex, and had wandered -over the face of Europe; and he came -back, accidentally, to Oxford during the -most troubled year of his early prime. It -was no strange place to him,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> who had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> -been, at eleven, the Pico della Mirandola -of Hart Hall, and whose relatives seem -to have resided always in the town. -There and then, however, he cast his -bright eye upon Excellence, and in his -own phrase,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“—dared love that, and say so, too,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And forget the He and She.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>We can do no better than cite a celebrated -and beautiful passage, once more -from Walton: “This amity, begun at this -time and place, was not an amity that -polluted their souls, but an amity made -up of a chain of suitable inclinations and -virtues; an amity like that of St. Chrysostom -to his dear and virtuous Olympias, -whom, in his letters, he calls his saint; or -an amity, indeed, more like that of St. -Hierom to his Paula, whose affection to -her was such that he turned poet in his -old age, and then made her epitaph, wishing -all his body were turned into tongues -that he might declare her just praises to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> -posterity.” How these words remind -one of the sweet historic mention which -Condivi gives to the relations between -Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo! The -little English idyl of friendship and the -great Italian one run parallel in much.</p> - -<p>Donne’s trenchant <i>Satires</i>, some of the -earliest and very best in the language, -were already written, and he was not without -the hint of fame. Born in 1573, he -was but eight years the senior of Edward -Herbert, and not more than a dozen years -the junior of Edward Herbert’s mother. -To her two sons, also, who were to figure -as men of letters, he was sincerely attached -from the first, and had a marked -and lasting influence on their minds. -Donne had the superabundance of mental -power which Mr. Minto has pointed -out as the paradoxical cause of his failure -to become a great poet. He was a three-storied -soul, as the French say: a spirit -of many sides and moods, a life-long dreamer -of good and bad dreams. To his restless, -incisive intelligence his contemporaries, -with Jonson and Carew at their -head, bowed in hyperboles of acclaim.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> -He had a changeful conscience, often -antagonized and often appeased. There -was a strain in him of strong joy, for he -was descended through his mother from -pleasant John Heywood the dramatist, -and from the father of that great and -merry-hearted gentleman, Sir Thomas -More. If ever man needed vitality to -buoy him over sorrows heavy and vast, -it was Donne in his “yeasting youth.” -Thrown, through no fault but his own, -from his old footholds of religion and -occupation, and unable, despite his versatile -and alert genius, to grind a steady -living from the hard mills of the world, -he was in the midst of a bitter plight -when the friends worthy of him found a -heavenly opportunity which they did not -let go by, and made his acceptance of -their favor a rich gift unto themselves. -Foremost among these, besides Lady -Herbert, were Sir Robert Drury of Drury -Lane, and a kinsman, Sir Francis Woolly, -of Pirford, Surrey, fated to die in his youth, -both of whom gave the Donnes, for some -nine consecutive years, the use of their -princely houses. John Donne had been in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> -the service of the Chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, -and lost place and purse by the opposition -to his marriage with his “<i>lectissima -dilectissimaque</i>,” Anne More, who was -Lady Ellesmere’s niece, the daughter of Sir -George More of Loxly, Lieutenant of the -Tower, and probably a distant cousin of -his own. No reverses, however, could beat -the pathetic cheer out of him. “Anne -Donne,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> undone,” was one of his inveterate -teary jests over the state of things -at home. He wrote once, with sickness, -poverty, and despair at his elbow: “If -God should ease us with burials, I know -not how to perform even that. But I -flatter myself that I am dying, too, for I -cannot waste faster than by such griefs.” -Five of his twelve children passed before -their father to the grave, the good domestic -daughter Constance upholding -him always, and keeping the house together. -But just as hope dawned with -his appointment to the Lectureship of -Lincoln’s Inn, heavenward suddenly, with -her youngest-born, in 1617, went his dear -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>and faithful wife, whom he laid to rest in -St. Clement Danes.</p> - -<p>About the time when the remorseful old -queen died disdainfully on her chamber-floor -at Richmond, the necessities of this -family called for daily succors, and with -a simple and noble delicacy they were -supplied. Nor did they cease. Magdalen -Herbert was a “bountiful benefactor,” -Donne “as grateful an acknowledger.” -His first letter to her from Mitcham in -Surrey, dated July 10, 1607, is made up of -terse, tender thanks, in his heart’s own -odd language. He sends her an enclosure -of sonnets and hymns, “lost to us,” says -Walton, movingly, “but doubtless they -were such as they two now sing in -heaven.” Dr. Grosart, with a great show -of justice, claims that the sequence called -<i>La Corona</i>, and familiar to latter-day readers, -are the identical sonnets passed from -one to the other. During this same month -of July we know that, paying a call in his -“London, plaguey London,” and finding -his friend abroad,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Dr. Donne consoled -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>himself by leaving a courtliest message: -“Your memory is a state-cloth and presence -which I reverence, though you be -away;” and went back after to his “sallads -and onions” at Mitcham, or to his -solitary lodgings near Whitehall.</p> - -<p>The attachment, close and deferent -on both sides, was continued without a -breach, and with the intention, at least, -of “almost daily letters.” Thoreau, quoting -Chaucer, so saluted Mrs. Emerson: -“You have helped to keep my life on -loft.” No meaner service than this was -his dear lady’s to John Donne, often heretofore -astray in the slough of doubt and -dissipation; she fed more than his little -children, clothed more than his body, and -fostered anew in him that faith in humanity -which is the well-spring of good -works. He was not a poet of Leigh -Hunt’s innocent temperament, who could -accept benefits gladly and gracefully from -any appreciator; his soul dwelt too remote -and proud in her accustomed citadels. -But this loving help, thrust upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> -him, he took with dignity, and after 1621, -when he was able, in his own person, to -befriend others, he gave back gallantly -to mankind the blessings he once received -from two or three. It was something -for Magdalen Herbert to have saved -a master-name to English letters, and -kept in his unique place the poet, interesting -beyond many, whose fantastic but -real force swayed generations of thinking -and singing men; it was something, -also, to have won in return the words -which were his gold coin of payment. -Nowhere is Donne’s sentiment more genuine, -his workmanship more happy and -less complex, than in the verses dedicated -to her blameless name. They have a lucidity -unsurpassed among the yet straightforward -lyrics of their day. Drayton’s self, -who died in the same year with Donne, -might have addressed to the lady of Eyton -so much of his noble extravagance;</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Queens hereafter shall be glad to live</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">Yet in these eulogies, as in most of the -graver contemporaneous poems of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -sort, there is little personality to be detected; -the homage has rather a floating -outline, an unapproaching music, exquisite -and awed. Donne gives, sometimes, -the large Elizabethan measure:</p> - -<div class="center">“Is there any good which is not she?”</div> - -<p>In the so-called <i>Elegy, The Autumnal</i>, -written on leaving Oxford, he starts off -with a well-known cherishable strophe:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">As I have seen in one autumnal face.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">The entire poem is a monody on the encroachments -of years, and neatly chronological:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“If we love things long-sought, age is a thing</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Which we are fifty years in compassing;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If transitory things, which soon decay,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Age must be loveliest at the latest day.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It strikes the modern ear as maladroit -enough that a woman in her yet sunshiny -forties, and a most comely woman to -boot, should have required prosody’s ingenious -excuses for wrinkles and kindred -damages. Was life so hard as that in -“the spacious days”? Shakespeare, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> -agreement with Horace, had already reminded -his handsome “Will” of the pitiless -and too expeditious hour,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">which also seems, to a nice historical -sense, somewhat staggering. The close -of Donne’s little homily is perfect, and full -of the winning melancholy which was -part of his birthright in art, whenever he -allowed himself direct and homely expression:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 12em;">“May still</span></div> -<div class="verse">My love descend! and journey down the hill,</div> -<div class="verse">Not panting after growing beauties; so</div> -<div class="verse">I shall ebb on with them who homeward go.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">Such was John Donne’s first known tribute -to his friend. She must have been -early and thoroughly familiar with his -manuscripts, which were passed about -freely, Dr. Grosart thinks, prior to 1613, -and which burned what Massinger would -call “no adulterate incense” to herself. -Her bays are to be gleaned off many a -tree, and she must have cast a frequent -influence on Donne’s work, which is not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> -traceable now. He seems to have had -a Crashaw-like devotion to the Christian -saint whose inheritance</p> - -<div class="center">“Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">not unconnected with the fact that some -one else was Magdalen also; never does -he tire of dwelling on the coincidence -and the difference. In one of his quaintly -moralizing songs, he goes seeking a -“true-love” primrose, where but on -Montgomery Hill! for he is hers, by all -chivalrous tokens, as much as he may be. -Again he cites, and almost with humor:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“that perplexing eye</span></div> -<div class="verse">Which equally claims love and reverence.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">And his platonics make their honorable -challenge at the end of some fine lines:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“So much do I love her choice, that I</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Would fain love him that shall be loved of her!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">There was prescience in that couplet. As -early, at least, as 1607-8, the widow’s long -privacy ended, probably while she was at -her “howse at Charing Cross,” watching -over the progress of her son George at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> -Westminster School; and he that was -“loved of her” was the grandson of the -last Lord Latimer of the Nevilles, junior -brother of a nobleman who perished with -Essex in 1602, and brother and heir of -that Sir Henry Danvers who was created -Earl of Danby in 1625 for his services in -Ireland, and who literally left a green -memory as the founder of the pleasant -Physic Gardens at Oxford. The name -of Danvers, the kindly step-father, is one -of the noteworthy omissions of Lord Herbert -of Cherbury’s <i>Autobiography</i>. But -George Herbert was devoted to him, as -his many letters show, and turned to -him, never in vain, during his restless -years at Cambridge; and into his circle -of relatives, with romantic suddenness, -he afterwards married. Sir John Danvers, -of Dauntsey, Wilts, was twenty years -younger than his wife. It is worth while -to quote the very deft and courtly statement -of the case made at the last by Dr. -Donne: “The natural endowments of -her person were such as had their part -in drawing and fixing the affections of -such a person as by his birth and youth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> -and interest in great favors at court, and -legal proximity to great possessions in -the world, might justly have promised -him acceptance in what family soever, -or upon what person soever, he had directed. . . . -He placed them here, neither -diverted thence, nor repented since. For -as the well-tuning of an instrument -makes higher and lower strings of one -sound, so the inequality of their years -was thus reduced to an evenness, that -she had a cheerfulness agreeable to his -youth, and he had a sober staidness conformable -to her more advanced years. -So that I would not consider her at so -much more than forty, nor him at so -much less than thirty, at that time; but -as their persons were made one and their -fortunes made one by marriage, so I -would put their years into one number, -and finding a sixty between them, think -them thirty apiece; for as twins of one -hour they lived.”<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> -<p>In the August of 1607, a masque by -John Marston was given in the now ruined -castle of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, eighteen -miles from Leicester, as an entertainment -devised by Lord Huntingdon -and his young wife, the Lady Elizabeth -Stanley, to welcome her mother, Alice, -Countess-Dowager of Derby,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> “the first -night of her honor’s arrival at the house -of Ashby.” Fourteen noble ladies took -part in the masque, and among them was -“Mris Da’vers.” The name may, perhaps, -be recognized as that of the subject of -this sketch, for Sir John Danvers was not -knighted until the following year; and -it has been so recognized by interested -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>scholars who have searched Nichols’s -<i>Progresses of James I</i>. And yet we cannot -be too sure that we have her before -us, in the wreaths and picturesque draperies -of the amateur stage; for there -was another Mistress Da’vers at court, -whose purported letter, dated February -3, 1613, signed with her confusing Christian -names of “Mary Magdaline,” gave -great trouble, thirty years ago, to the experts -of the Camden Society. Besides, -a letter of the good gossipy Chamberlain, -dated March 3, 1608-9, mentions as if it -were then a piece of fresh news: “Young -Davers is likewise wedded to the widow -Herbert, Sir Edward’s mother, of more -than twice his age.” This would seem -to preclude the possibility of the fair -masquer being the same person.</p> - -<p>The mother of many Herberts, the -“more than forty” bride, was by nature -a home-keeping character. Among the -correspondence relating to Lord Herbert -of Cherbury, privately printed in 1886 by -the Earl of Powis, are a few pages which -give us invaluable glimpses of the London -household. Lady Danvers’s eldest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> -son, who set off upon his travels soon -after her second marriage, and who applied -himself vigorously to the various diversions -of body and mind catalogued in -the <i>Autobiography</i>, found himself often -pinched for money. In such a strait, not -unfamiliar to other fine gentlemen of his -day, he invariably appealed to the services -of the step-father who was his junior, -in England. The latter, writing how -“wee are all some what after the olde -manner, and doe hartely wish you well,” -seems to have busied himself to some -avail, in concert with his brother-in-law, -Sir Francis Newport (the first Lord -Newport), in securing letters of credit to -Milan, Turin, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, -and in explaining at length, in his -long involved sentences, how matters -could be bettered. Whether or not the -absent Knight of the Bath had reason -to suspect Sir John’s disinterested action -when it came to the handling of pounds -and pence, he does not seem, then or -after, to have burdened him with any -great harvest of thanks. But Sir John’s -faithful wife knew how to defend him, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> -a script of May 12, 1615, which may be -quoted precisely as it stands in the Herbert -papers.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> -<div class="unindent"> -“To my best beloved sonn, S’r Edward Herbert, Knight,<br /> - “My deare Sonn,</div> - -<p> it is straunge to me to here -you to complayne of want of care of you in -your absence when my thoughts are seldom removed -from you which must assuredly set me -aworkinge of any thinge may doe you good, & -for writinge the one of us yf not both never -let messenges pass without letter, your stay -abroad is so short in any one place & we so -unhappy in givinge you contentment as our letters -com not to your hands which we are sorry -for. And to tel you further of S’r John Da’vers -Love which I dare sweare is to no man -more, he is & hath beene so careful to keep -you from lake of money now you are abroad as -your Baylife faylinge payment as they continually -doe & pay no man, he goeth to your Merchaunt, -offers him self & all the powers he -can make to supply you as your occasions may -require, mistake him not, but beleeve me there -was never a tenderer hart or a lovinger minde -in any man then is in him towards you who -have power to com’aund him & all that is his.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> -Now for your Baylifs I must tell you they have -not yet payed your brothers all their Anuities -due at Midsom’er past & but half due at -Christmas last and no news of the rest, this yf -advauntage were taken might be preiuditiall to -you and it is ill for your Brothers & very ill -you have such officers.</p> - -<p>“I hope it will bringe you home & that is -all the good can com of this. your sister -Johnes hath long beene sicke & within this -8 dayes hath brought a boy she is so weake as -she is much feared by those aboute her. my -Lady Vachell lyes now adyeinge the bell hath -twice gone for her. your wife & sweet children -are well & herein I send you little Florence -letter to see what comfort you may have -of your deare children, let them, my Dear -sonn, draw you home & affoorde them your -care and me your comfort that desire more to -see you then I desire any thinge ells in the -world, and now I end with my dayly prayer -for your health and safe retorne to Your ever -lovinge mother,</p> - -<div class="sig"> -Magd: Da’vers.</div> - -<p>“I have received the Pattent of your Br: -William, & S’r John hath beene with the ambassatore -who stayes for S’r James Sandaline<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> -his cominge.”</p></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p> -<p>A sympathizing reader, aware of sequences, -may wonder whence Sir John -drew “all the powers he can make”! The -dignified letter, with its undulating syntax -and thrifty punctuation, harmonizes -with all we know of this delightful woman, -who could so reproach what she -deemed a shortcoming, without a touch -of temper. How affectionate is the reference -to the “little Florence” who died -young, and to the other children, sufficiently -precious to all that household, except -to the wool-gathering chevalier their -father, far away! Their innocent faces -peer again through a sweet postscript of -their grand-uncle: (“Dick is here, Ned -and Bettye at Haughmond,”) written in -the winter, from Eyton, to the truant at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -the Hague.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> This same genial Sir Francis -Newport, “imoderately desyring to -see you,” confides to his nephew, during -what he complains of as “a verye drye -and hott time”<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> for Shropshire farmers, -that “mye syster your mother is confident -to take a iourney into these pts this -somer, the rather, I think, because yo’r -brother Vaugh’n is dead & if yo’ have -a willing harte you maye come tyme -enough to acco’pany her heare, & would -not then the companye bee much the -better?” But we fear the little excursion -never came off. Edward Herbert’s next -visit to his home, presumably after a four-years’ -absence, was in 1619; and in May -of that year he accepted the office of -Ambassador to France, and spread his -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>ready wing again to the Continent. And -the <i>Athenæ Oxoniensis</i> will not let us forget -that the too spirited envoy had to be -temporarily recalled in 1621, because he -had “irreverently treated” De Luynes, -the powerful but good-for-nothing Constable -of France. It is not insignificant -that this was the year in which George -Herbert wrote to his mother in one of his -consoling moods, bidding her be of good -cheer, albeit her health and wealth were -gone, and the conduct of her children -was not very satisfying!</p> - -<p>We know that Lady Danvers had the -“honor, love, obedience, troops of friends” -which became her, and that she lost none -of her influence, none of her serene charm. -Her poet was much with her in his advancing -age. In July, 1625, while the -plague was raging in London, Donne reminded -Sir Henry Wotton of the leisure -he enjoyed, golden as Cicero’s, by dating -his letter “from S’r John Davor’s house -at Chelsey, of w’ich house & my Lord -Carlil’s at Hanworth I make up my Tusculum.” -Many a peaceful evening must -they have passed upon the terraces, within<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> -sound of the solemn songs always dear -to both. Visitors yet more illustrious -came there from the city; for the noble -hostess had once the privilege of reviving -the great Lord Bacon,<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> who had fainted -in her garden. We learn, with sympathy, -that “sickness, in the declination -of her years, had opened her to an overflowing -of melancholy; not that she ever -lay under that water, but yet had, sometimes, -some high tides of it.” Death -chose Dr. Donne’s ministering angel before -him, after thirty years of mutual -fealty. Her restless son Edward, now at -home, was already eminent, and wearing -his little Irish title of Baron Castleisland; -her thoughtful Charles was long dead; -her brother, also, was no more; her -daughters were matrons, and dwelling in -prosperity. With but one unfulfilled wish, -that of seeing her favorite George married -and in holy orders,<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> and after a life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> -which left a wake of sunshine behind -it in the world, very patiently and hopefully -Magdalen Newport, Lady Danvers, -entered upon eternity, in the early June of -1627. On the eighth day of the month, -in St. Luke’s, the parish church of Chelsea, -she was buried:</p> - -<div class="center">“Old age with snow-bright hair, and folded palm,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">the final earthly glimpse of her still -traditionally beautiful. On the first of -July her faithful liegeman, now Dean of -St. Paul’s and Vicar of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, -preached her funeral sermon there, -before a crowd of the great ones of London, -the clergy, and the poor. Izaak -Walton’s kind face looked up from a near -pew, whence he saw Dr. Donne’s tears, -and felt his breaking voice, the voice of -one who did not belie his friend, nigh the -end of his own pilgrimage. In present -grief and among graver memories, he had -the true perception not to forget how -joyous she had been. “She died,” he said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> -“without any change of countenance or -posture, without any struggling, any disorder, -. . . and expected that which she hath -received: God’s physic and God’s music, -a Christianly death. . . . She was eyes to -the blind, and feet to the lame, . . . naturally -cheerful and merry, and loving facetiousness -and sharpness of wit.” His -own fund of mirth and strength was fast -going; and a haunting line of his youth,</p> - -<div class="center">“And all my pleasures are like yesterday,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">must have reverted to him many and -many a time. Morbid and persistent -thoughts beset him from this hour, probably, -more than ever, until he had the effigy -of himself, painted as he was, laid in -his failing sight;<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> morbid and persistent -thoughts of the ruin which befalls the -bright bodies of humanity, sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> -surging up in his loneliness, and crowding -out the better vision which yet may -“grace us in the disgrace of death.” His -inward eye was drawn strongly to his -friend’s sepulchre, sealed and sombre before -him, and to what had been her, “going -into dust now almost a month of -days, almost a lunar year . . . which, while -I speak, is mouldering and crumbling into -less and less dust.” But he ended in a -wholesomer strain, subdued and calm: -“This good soul being thus laid down -to sleep in His peace, ‘I charge you, O -daughters of Jerusalem, that ye wake her -not!’”</p> - -<p>The rare little duodecimo which contains -Lady Danvers’s funeral sermon was -printed soon after, “together with other -Commemorations of Her, by her Sonne -G. Herbert,” and offered to the public at -the Golden Lion in Paul’s Churchyard. -The commemorations are in Greek and -Latin. Strangely enough, nowhere is the -sweet and sage poet of <i>The Temple</i> so set -upon his prosody, so given to awkward -pagan conceits, so out of tune with the -ideals of classic diction. But he, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> -tenderly loved his mother, has given to -us, in the <i>Memoriæ Matris Sacrum</i>, several -precious personal fragments, and one -more precious whole picture of daily habits -in the lines beginning <i>Corneliæ sanctæ:</i> -her morning prayer, her bath, and -the plaiting of her glossy hair; her housewifely -cares, her fit replies, her writing to -her friends, her passion for music, her -gentle helpfulness; the long felicity of a -glad and stainless life,</p> - -<div class="center">“Quicquid habet tellus, quicquid et astra, fruens.”</div> - -<p>Dr. Donne died in 1631, whatever was -yet of earth in his spirit healed and chastened -by long pain. His last remembrance -to some he loved was his own -seal of Christ on the Anchor, “engraven -very small on heliotropium stones, and -set in gold, for rings.” Many of those to -whom his heart would have turned, the -“autumnal beauty” scarce second among -them, had preceded him out of England. -But in travelling towards his Maker, he -had that other sacred hope to “ebb on -with them,” and gloriously overtake them, -as he traced the epitaph which covered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> -him in old St. Paul’s: “<i>Hic licet in occiduo -cinere, aspicit eum cujus nomen est -Oriens</i>.” The tie between himself and -her was not unremembered in the next -generation; for we find John Donne the -younger dedicating his father’s posthumous -work to Francis, Lord Newport, and -when making his will, in 1662, bequeathing -also to the same Lord Newport “the -picture of St. Anthony in a round frame.” -And thus, in a revived fragrance, the annals -of true friendship close.</p> - -<p>These rapid, ragged strokes of a pen -make the only possible biography of -Lady Danvers. When Walton wrote of -her, he had the entire correspondence -with Dr. Donne before him.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> “There were -sacred endearments betwixt these two excellent -persons,” he assures us, but disappointingly -hurries on into the highway of -his subject. It is curious that it seems -impossible now to trace these breathing -relics, or others from the same source; -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>for George Herbert, in the second elegy -of the <i>Parentalia</i>, has much to say, and -very sweetly, of the industry of his mother’s -“white right hand,” and of the “many -and most notable letters, flying over all -the world.” Much detail is utterly lost -which men who agree with Prosper -Mérimée that all Thucydides would not -be worth an authentic memoir of Aspasia, -or even of one of the slaves of -Pericles, might be glad to remember. A -copy of a song, a reminiscence of the -glow and stir of the days through which -she moved, a guess through a mist at the -blond head,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> the half-imperious carriage, -the open hand, as she went her ways, like -Dante’s lovely lady, <i>sentendosi laudare</i>,—these -are all we have of the daughter of -England’s golden age. It would be easy, -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>were it also just, to throw a dash of color -into her shadowy history. One would -like to verify the scene at Eyton, while -the news of the coming Armada roused -the lion in Drake, and struck terror into -the Devon towns; and to hear the young -wife, with three lisping Herberts at her -knee, beguile them with mellow contralto -snatches of a Robin Hood ballad, or -with the sweet yesterday’s tale of Zutphen, -where their country’s dearest gave -his cup of water to a dying comrade. A -decade later, before their handsome bluff -father, her other healthful boys stood up -to wrestle, and twang their arrows at -forty paces; or a rosy daughter stole to -his side, and asked him of mishaps in Ireland, -or of the giant laughter bubbling -from the “oracle of Apollo” in a London -street. It is to be believed that one who -watched events through the insurrection -of Essex, through Raleigh’s dramatic trial, -reprieve, and execution, through the national -mourning for the Prince of Wales, -through the fever for colonization, the -savage sea-fights, the great intrigues in -behalf of the Queen of Scots, the religious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> -divisions, the muttering parliamentary -thunders, the stress and heat of the -exciting dawn of the seventeenth century, -was not unmindful of all it meant to be -alive, there and then. Magdalen Newport’s -girlhood fell on Lyly’s <i>Euphues</i>, -fresh from the printers; the <i>Arcadia</i> -made the talk of Oxford, in her prime; -the dusky splendor of Marlowe’s <i>Faustus</i> -was abroad before her second marriage. -She was, surely, aware of Shakespeare, -and of the wonder-folio of 1623; of the -newest delighting madrigals and antiphons -set forth by one Robert Jones, -when every soul in England had the gift -of music; of rascal Robert Greene’s lovable -lyrics, of Wyatt’s, Campion’s, and -Drayton’s. She wrote no verses, indeed, -but her familiars wrote them; her every -step jostled a Muse. We may assume -that no growth nor loss in literary circles -escaped that tender “perplexing eye.” -Perhaps it glistened from a bench, in the -pioneer British theatre, on the actors of -<i>Volpone</i>, and followed silently, behind the -royal group, the first mincings of the first -dear Fool in <i>King Lear</i>, one day-after-Christmas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -at Whitehall. Last of all, for -whim’s sake, how any sociologist would -enjoy having the honest opinion of young -Lady Herbert, or that of little Mistress -Donne, concerning the person they could -but thank and praise! <i>Utinam vivisset -Pepys!</i> It is a cheat of history that it -preserves no clearer tint or trace of this -chosen passer-by. Such, in truth, she -was, and the quiet vanishing name clings -to her: the woman of durable gladness, -happily born and taught, like the soul -whereof Sir Henry Wotton, who must have -known her well, made his immortal song.</p> - -<p>Of the gracious figure of Sir John Danvers -we may be said to lose sight; for he -seems less gracious, as by a Hindoo trick, -as soon as it is written that his wife -departed unto her reward. Comment -on his character is equal comment upon -hers, and adds new force to the classic -episode of a lady philanthropist espousing -a ne’er-do-weel and a featherbrain. -Aubrey, always happy over a little ultra-contemporary -gossip, calls it “a disagreeable -match,” disappointing to the bridegroom’s -kindred; but adds that “he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> -married her for love of her wit.” Now, -wit is an admirable magnet, but it is to -be suspected that there was also, and in -the immediate vicinity, “metal more attractive,” -as Hamlet says. In the Chelsea -parish-books is an entry, the first of its -kind, certifying that Sir John Danvers had -settled his account with “the poore,” a -matter of thirty pounds’ loan (in which -the vicar must have connived), for the -year ending in January of 1628. If the -payment were, by any hap, in advance, it -may have fallen in Lady Danvers’s own -lifetime; and if so, it is quite as likely that -she paid it, with an admonition! Her -“high tides of melancholy,” of whose -true cause she certainly would not have -complained to Dr. Donne, had something -to do with this young spendthrift, -who must have had his wheedling way, -sooner or later, with such of her ample -revenues as were yet extant. Perhaps -Lord Herbert of Cherbury was -both shrewd and charitable, in suppressing -mention of his new relative.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> -longer one looks into the matter, the -less curious seems his unexplained silence -concerning this late graft of a family -hitherto always respectable and always -loyal.</p> - -<p>There are gleams of subsequent private -history in the tell-tale records at Chelsea. -We are not incurably astonished to learn -that as early as May of 1629 was christened -Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John -Danvers and Elizabeth his wife. This -Lady Elizabeth, arriving providentially -with her Dauntsey wealth, having borne -him four children, died, as did his mother, -in 1636; and left him even as she -found him, none too monogamous. In -1648 Sir John Danvers again appeared -at the venerable altars where his first -saint never had a memorial, loving, honoring, -and cherishing a Mrs. Grace Hewes, -Hawes, or Hewet, of Kemerton in Gloucestershire, -and, as it is to be surmised, leading<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> -her tame fortune by a ribbon. His -debts and difficulties, not of one but of -all time, sprout perennially in the registers. -His indefatigable name, oftener -than any rival’s whatsoever, figures as -borrowing and paying interest on a forty-pound -note, which, like a Hydra-head, was -always forthcoming so soon as it was demolished. -This disgraceful business was -the man’s chief concern: for the older -he grew the deeper and deeper he sank -into entanglements, particularly after the -death of the King. It was never doubted, -in his day, but that this was a judgment -on the former Gentleman Usher who affixed -hand and seal to the warrant of his -sovereign’s execution.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> His own family, -it is said, as well as the royalist Herberts -and Newports, dropped his acquaintance; -and who knows whether Mrs. Grace Hewet -was faithful? At his favorite Chelsea, in -the April of 1655, and in about the seventy-fourth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -year of his age, Sir John Danvers -ended his career by more conventional -agencies than the rope and the knife, -which might have befallen him in the -Stuart triumph of the morrow. His manor -fell an immediate forfeit to the crown. -In 1661, the dead republican was attainted, -and all of his estate which was -unprotected was declared regal booty. -The year before his own burial at Dauntsey -he laid there, “to the great grief of -all good men,” the body of his elder son -Henry, who had just attained his majority. -The Earl of Danby had died, “full of honors, -wounds, and days,” in 1643, while this -Henry, his nephew, was still a hopeful -child; and on him alone he had taken -pains to settle his possessions. But Henry, -in turn, was persuaded to bequeath the -major part of them to his father’s ever-gaping -pocket, the remainder reverting -to one of his two surviving sisters. The -third Lady Danvers, who lived until 1678, -had also a son Charles,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> who petitioned -the crown for his paternal rights, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -died in old age, with neither income nor -issue.</p> - -<p>Clarendon quietly indicts Sir John -Danvers as a “proud, formal, weak man,” -such as Cromwell “employed and contemned -at once.” George Bate gives -him a harder character, saying that he -“proved his brother to be a delinquent in -the Rump Parliament, whereby he might -overthrow his will, and so compass the -estate himself. He sided with the sectarian -party, was one of the King’s judges, -and lived afterwards some years in his -sin, without repentance.” But the same -accuser adds the saving fact that Dr. -Thomas Fuller, like Aubrey, was Sir -John’s friend, and, by his desire, preached -many times at Chelsea, “where, I am -sure, he was instructed to repent of his -misguided and wicked consultations in -having to do with the murther of that -just man.” One half surmises that had -the preliminaries of the great struggle -occurred in her time Magdalen Herbert’s -rather austere and advanced standards -of right would have stood it out, despite -her traditions, for the Commons against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> -<i>Carolus Agnus</i>.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> But that would have -been a very different matter from sharing -the feelings of the crude advocates -of revolution and regicide. What -a misconception of her spotless motives -must she have borne, had others -found her in agreement with her vagabond -lord, who treated politics as he -treated the sacrament of matrimony, -purely as a makeshift and a speculation!</p> - -<p>He was no raw-head-and-bloody-bones, -this Roderigo-like Briton who won the -approval of Lord Bacon, and whom George -Wither thanks for “those pleasurable refreshments -often vouchsafed”; and whom -very different men, such as George Herbert -and Walton<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> and peaceable Fuller -loved. He was a comely creature of -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>some parts, a luckless worldling anxious -to feather his own nest, and driven by -timidity and the desire of gain into -treacheries against himself. His short, -thin, and “fayre bodie,” common, as -George Herbert would have us imply, -to all who bore his name, his elegance, -his hospitality, and his devotedness to -his elderly wife, carried him off handsomely -in the eyes of her jealous circle. -His house in Chelsea, commemorated now -by Danvers Street, adjoined that which -had been Sir Thomas More’s, and was presumably -a part of the same estate. All -around it, and due to its master’s genuine -enthusiasm, lay the first Italian garden -planted in England; and there, rolling -towards the Thames, were the long glowing -flower-beds and green orchard-alleys, -which were also the “<i>horti deliciæ dominæ</i>” -recalled thrice in the music of filial -sorrow. This home of Magdalen Danvers -was pulled down, and built over, in -1716. Within its unfallen walls, where -she spent her serene married life, and -where she died, she had time to think, -nevertheless, that she stood, towards evening,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> -in the ways of folly, and that hers -was one of those little incipient domestic -tragedies which must always look amusing, -even to a friend.</p> - - -<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a> Walton confuses this Edward Herbert with a namesake -entered at Queen’s College; and he follows the -erring dates of the <i>Autobiography of Lord Herbert of -Cherbury</i>. The boy’s age is correctly given as fourteen -in the college registers.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a> Donne had been in residence at both Universities, -but took no degree at either, as he had scruples against -accepting the conditions imposed. He was at that time, -and until about 1593, like his parents, a Catholic. His -father was of Welsh descent: a fact which may have -borne its share in attracting him towards the Herberts.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a> Anne Donne, it may be remarked, was also the -name of Cowper’s mother.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a> Sir Richard Baker’s <i>Chronicle</i>, 1684, mentions Dr. -Donne as one of his “heroic Grecians,” and adds, in -the same breath, that he was “a great visitor of ladies.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a> Dr. Donne’s conceit about the ages of his friends is -better handled in the young Cartwright’s</p> - -<div class="center">“Chloe, why wish you that your years,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">a little later. It is not impossible that Cartwright, an -Oxonian and an observer, may have drawn upon Donne’s -report of this very wedding for his charming and ingenious -lyric.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a> This august personage was one of the Spencers of -Althorp. At this time she had been for six years the -wife of her second husband, the Lord Keeper Egerton, -although retaining the magnificent title of her widowhood. -At their estate of Harefield in Middlesex, Milton’s -<i>Arcades</i> was afterwards given, and it will be remembered -what fine compliments to the then aged countess-dowager -figure in its opening verses. Spenser’s <i>Teares of the -Muses</i> had been dedicated to her, in her prime, and she -was the Amaryllis “highest in degree” of his <i>Colin -Clout’s Come Home Again</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7">[7]</a> Sir James Sandelyn, Sandalo, or Sandilands (who -cuts his finest figure as Jacobus Sandilandius in <i>The -Muses’ Welcome</i>) was appointed Maistre d’Hostel to the -beloved and beautiful Princess Elizabeth on her marriage -to Frederic, Count Palatine of the Rhine, afterwards -King of Bohemia, in 1612. As Sir James’s name is down -on the lists of the Exchequer for a gift in 1615, and as his -little son Richard was baptized in Deptford Church two -months after the date of Lady Danvers’s letter, we may -conclude that he came back to England just when the -“ambassatore” expected him.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8">[8]</a> Edward Herbert served as a volunteer in the campaign -of 1614-15 in the Netherlands, under the Prince of -Orange. Richard Herbert, here mentioned, was his eldest -son, a future Cavalier and captain of a troop of horse -in the Civil Wars; Edward was the baby, and “Bettye” -the child Beatrice, destined, like her sister, to a short -life.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9">[9]</a> This 1614-15 was an eccentric and un-English year -throughout. The winter signalized itself by the Great -Snow; “<i>frigus intensum</i>,” as Camden says, “<i>et nix -copiosissima</i>.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10">[10]</a> Lord Bacon dedicated to Edward Herbert, “the father -of English deists,” his very flat translation of the -Psalms! George wrote three Latin poems in his honor, -one being upon the occasion of his death.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11">[11]</a> He was, in July of 1626, ordained deacon, and prebendary -of Layton Ecclesia in Huntingdonshire. Readers -of Walton will remember how his dear mother invited -him to commit simony on that occasion.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12">[12]</a> The standing marble figure in a winding-sheet which -Dr. King had modelled upon this strange painting on wood, -may yet be seen in the south ambulatory of the choir of -St. Paul’s; almost the only relic saved from the old cathedral -which perished in the Great Fire of 1666. It is not -only of unique interest, but of considerable artistic beauty, -and “seems to breathe faintly,” as Sir Henry Wotton said -of it.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13">[13]</a> Dr. Donne’s papers were bequeathed to Dr. Henry -King, the poet-Bishop of Chichester, then residentiary of -St. Paul’s. The “find” were a precious one, if they yet -survive.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14">[14]</a> The half-romantic reference, which occurs more than -once in Donne’s poems, to his own long-dead arm which -still shall keep</p> - -<div class="center">“The bracelet of bright hair about the bone,”—</div> - -<p class="unindent">has it nothing to do with this blond head? <i>Honi soit -qui mal y pense.</i> The internal evidences in <i>The Relic</i>, -with its mention of St. Mary Magdalen, and its boast of -purest friendship, and the roguery of the closing line in -<i>The Funeral</i>, are somewhat strong, nevertheless.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15">[15]</a> The famous <i>Autobiography</i>, indeed, boldly assures -posterity that Lady Herbert, after 1597, “continued unmarried,” -and, in brief, “was the woman Dr. Donne hath -described her.” The acknowledgment of the accuracy of -that funeral sermon, containing, as it does, its very specific -Danvers passages, is in our fearless philosopher’s best -style.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16">[16]</a> There was afterwards, in France, a Gentleman of the -Bedchamber who had other notions. “Gratitude,” said -Thierry to his executioner in the court-yard of the Abbaye—“gratitude -has no opinions. I am leal to my master.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17">[17]</a> An elder Charles, son of the Lady Elizabeth Danvers, -was baptized in 1632, and must have died early.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18">[18]</a> Edward Herbert sided eventually with the Parliament, -which indemnified him for the burning and sacking of -Montgomery Castle.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19">[19]</a> The six very innocent, cheerful, pious ten-syllable -stanzas, attributed in <i>The Complete Angler</i> to “another -angler, Jo. Davors, Esq.,” are not, it is hardly necessary -to add, from our scapegrace’s pen. He ceased to -be “Jo. Davors, Esq.,” when Walton was fourteen years -old.</p></div></div> - - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a><br /><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p> - - -<h2>II<br /> - -HENRY VAUGHAN<br /> - -<small>1621-1695</small></h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a><br /><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p> - - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-064-drop-i.jpg" width="110" height="106" alt="I" /> -</div> - -<p class="drop-capi">IN his own person, Henry -Vaughan left no trace in -society. His life seemed -to slip by like the running -water on which he was forever -gazing and moralizing, and his memory -met early with the fate which he -hardly foresaw. Descended from the royal -chiefs of southern Wales whom Tacitus -mentions, and whose abode, in the day of -Roman domination, was in the district -called Siluria,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> he called himself the Silurist -upon his title-pages; and he keeps -the distinctive name in the humblest of -epitaphs, close by his home in the glorious -valley of the Usk and the little Honddu, -under the shadow of Tretower, the -ruined castle of his race, and of Pen-y-Fan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> -and his kindred peaks. What we -know of him is a sort of pastoral: how -he was born, the son of a poor gentleman, -in 1621, at Newton St. Bridget, in the old -house yet asleep on the road between -Brecon and Crickhowel; how he went -up to Oxford, Laud’s Oxford, with Thomas, -his twin, as a boy of sixteen, to be entered -at Jesus College;<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> how he took his -degree (just where and when no one can -discover), and came back, after a London -revel, to be the village physician, though -he was meant for the law, in what had become -his brother’s parish of Llansantffraed; -to write books full of sequestered -beauty, to watch the most tragic of -wars, to look into the faces of love and -loss, and to spend his thoughtful age on -the bowery banks of the river he had always -known, his <i>Isca parens florum</i>, to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> -which he consecrated many a sweet English -line. And the ripple of the not -unthankful Usk was “distinctly audible -over its pebbles,” as was the Tweed to the -failing sense of Sir Walter, in the room -where Henry Vaughan drew his last -breath, on St. George’s day, April 23, 1695. -He died exactly seventy-nine years after -Shakespeare, exactly one hundred and -fifty-five years before Wordsworth.</p> - -<p>Circumstances had their way with him, -as with most poets. He knew the touch -of disappointment and renunciation, not -only in life, but in his civic hopes and in -his art. He broke his career in twain, -and began over, before he had passed -thirty; and he showed great æsthetic -discretion, as well as disinterestedness, in -replacing his graceful early verses by the -deep dedications of his prime. Religious -faith and meditation seem so much part -of his innermost nature, it is a little difficult -to remember that Vaughan considered -himself a brand snatched from the -burning, a lawless Cavalier brought by -the best of chances to the quiet life, and -the feet of the moral Muse. He suffered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -most of the time between 1643 and 1651 -from a sorely protracted and nearly fatal -illness; and during its progress his wife -and his dearest friends were taken from -him. Nor was the execution of the -King a light event to so sensitive a poet -and so passionate a partisan. Meanwhile -Vaughan read George Herbert, and his -theory of proportional values began to -change. It was a season of transition -and silent crises, when men bared their -breasts to great issues, and when it was -easy for a childlike soul,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Weary of her vain search below, above,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In the first Fair to find the immortal Love.”<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">Vaughan, in his new fervor, did his best -to suppress the numbers written in his -youth, thus clearing the field for what -he afterwards called his “hagiography”; -and a critic may wonder what he found -in his first tiny volume of 1646, or in <i>Olor -Iscanus</i>, to regret or cancel. Every unbaptized -song is “bright only in its own -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>innocence, and kindles nothing but a -generous thought”; and one of them, at -least, has a manly postlude of love and -resolve worthy of the free lyres of Lovelace -and Montrose. Vaughan, unlike -other ardent spirits of his class, had nothing -very gross to be sorry for; if he was, -indeed, one of his own</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“feverish souls,</span></div> -<div class="verse">Sick with a scarf or glove,”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">he had none but noble ravings. Happily, -his very last verses, <i>Thalia Rediviva</i>, -breaking as it were by accident a silence -of twenty-three years, indorse with cheerful -gallantry the accents of his youth. -The turn in his life which brought him -lasting peace, in a world rocking between -the cant of the Parliament and resurgent -audacity and riot, achieved for us a body -of work which, small as it is, has rare interest, -and an out-of-door beauty, as of -the natural dusk, “breathless with adoration,” -which is almost without parallel. -Eternity has been known to spoil a poet -for time, but not in this instance. Never -did religion and art interchange a more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> -fortunate service, outside Italian studios. -Once he had shaken off secular -ambitions, Vaughan’s voice grew at -once freer and more forceful. In him a -marked intellectual gain sprang from an -apparently slight spiritual readjustment, -even as it did, three centuries later, in -one greater than he, John Henry Newman.</p> - -<p>Vaughan’s work is thickly sown with -personalities, but they are so delicate and -involved that there is little profit in detaching -them. What record he made at -the University is not apparent; nor is it -at all sure that so independent and speculative -a mind applied itself gracefully -to the curriculum. He was, in the only -liberal sense, a learned man, full of life-long -curiosity for the fruit of the Eden -Tree. His lines beginning</p> - -<div class="center">“Quite spent with thought I left my cell”</div> - -<p class="unindent">show the acutest thirst for hidden knowledge; -he would “most gladly die,” if -death might buy him intellectual growth. -He looks forward to eternity as to the -unsealing and disclosing of mysteries. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> -makes the soul sing joyously to the -body:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“I that here saw darkly, in a glass,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">But mists and shadows pass,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And by their own weak shine did search the springs</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And source of things,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Shall, with inlighted rays,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Pierce all their ways!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">With an imperious query, he encounters -the host of midnight stars:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“Who circled in</span><br /> -Corruption with this glorious ring?”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>What Vaughan does know is nothing -to him; when he salutes the Bodleian -from his heart, he is thinking how little -honey he has gathered from that vast -hive, and how little it contains, when -measured with what there is to learn -from living and dying. He had small -respect for the sinister sciences among -which the studies of his beloved brother, -a Neo-Platonist, lay. Though he was no -pedant, he dearly loved to get in a slap -against the ignorant whom we have always -with us. At twenty-five, he printed -a good adaptation of the Tenth of Juvenal,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> -and flourished his wit, in the preface, -at the expense of some possible gentle -reader of the parliamentary persuasion -who would “quarrel with antiquitie.” -“These, indeed, may think that they -have slept out so many centuries in this -Satire, and are now awaked; which had -it been still Latin, perhaps their nap had -been everlasting!”</p> - -<p>He was an optimist, proven through -much personal trial; he had sympathy -with the lower animals, and preserved a -humorous deference towards all things -alive, even the leviathan of Holy Writ, -which he affectionately exalts into “the -shipmen’s fear” and “the comely spacious -whale”! Vaughan adored his -friends; he had a unique veneration for -childhood; his adjective for the admirable -and beautiful, whether material -or immaterial, is “dear”; and his mind -dwelt with habitual fondness on what -Sir Thomas Browne (a man after his -own heart) calls “incomprehensibles, and -thoughts of things which thoughts do -but tenderly touch.”</p> - -<p>His occupation as a resident physician<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> -must have fostered his fine eye and ear -for the green earth, and furnished him, -day by day, with musings in sylvan solitudes, -and rides abroad over the fresh -hill-paths. The breath of the mountains -is about his books. An early riser, he -uttered a constant invocation to whomever -would listen, that</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“Manna was not good</span><br /> -After sun-rising; far-day sullies flowers.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">He was hospitable on a limited income.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> -His verses of invitation <i>To his Retired -Friend</i>, which are not without their -thrusts at passing events, have a classic -jollity fit to remind the reader of Randolph’s -ringing ode to Master Anthony -Stafford. Again and again Vaughan reiterates -the Socratic and Horatian song -of content: that he has enough lands -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>and money, that there are a thousand -things he does not want, that he is -blessed in what he has. All this does -not prevent him from recording the phenomenal -ebb-tides of his purse, and from -whimsically synthesizing on “the threadbare, -goldless genealogie” of bards! No -sour zealot in anything, he enjoyed an -evening now and then at the Globe Tavern -in London, where he consumed his -sack with relish, that he might be “possessor -of more soul,” and “after full cups -have dreams poetical.” But he was no -lover of the town. Country life was his -joy and pride; the only thing which -seemed, in his own most vivid phrase, to -“fill his breast with home.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Here something still like Eden looks!<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Honey in woods, juleps in brooks.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>A literary acquaintance, one unrecognized -N. W., congratulates Vaughan that -he is able to “give his Muse the swing -in an hereditary shade.” He translated -with great gusto <i>The Old Man of Verona</i>, -out of Claudian, and Guevara’s <i>Happiness -of Country Life;</i> and he notes with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> -satisfaction that Abraham was of his -rural mind, in “Mamre’s holy grove.” -Vaughan was an angler, need it be added? -Nay, the autocrat of anglers: he -was a salmon-catcher.</p> - -<p>With “the charity which thinketh no -evil,” he loved almost everything, except -the Jesuits, and his ogres the Puritans. -For Vaughan knew where he stood, and -his opinion of Puritanism never varied. -He kept his snarls and satires, for the -most part, hedged within his prose, the -proper ground of the animosities. When -he put on his singing-robes, he tried to -forget, not always with success, his -spites and bigotries. For his life, he -could not help sidelong glances, stings, -strictures between his teeth, thistle-down -hints cast abroad in the neatest of generalities:</p> - -<div class="center">“Who saint themselves, they are no saints!”</div> - -<p class="unindent">The introduction to his <i>Mount of Olives</i> -(whose pages have a soft billowy music -like Jeremy Taylor’s) is nominally inscribed -to “the peaceful, humble, and -pious reader.” That functionary must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> -have found it a trial to preserve his -peaceful and pious abstraction, while the -peaceful and pious author proceeded to -flout the existing government, in a towering -rage, and in very elegant caustic -English. Vaughan was none too godly -to be a thorough hater. He was genially -disposed to the pretensions of every human -creature; he refused to consider his -ancestry and nurture by themselves, as -any guarantee of the justice of his views -or of his superior insight into affairs. -Yet in spite of his enforced Quaker attitude -during the clash of arms, he nursed -in that gentle bosom the heartiest loathing -of democracy, and shared the tastes -of a certain clerk of the Temple “who -never could be brought to write Oliver -with a great O.” It is fortunate that -he did not spoil himself, as Wither did, -upon the wheels of party, for politics -were his most vehement concern. Had -he been richer, as he tells us in a playful -passage, nothing on earth would have -kept him from meddling with national -issues.</p> - -<p>The poets, save the greatest, Milton,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> -his friend Andrew Marvell, and Wither, -rallied in a bright group under the royal -standard. Those among them who did -not fight were commonly supposed, as -was Drummond of Hawthornden, to redeem -their reputation by dying of grief -at the overthrow of the King. Yet -Vaughan did not fight, and Vaughan did -not die of grief. It is so sure that he -suffered some privation, and it may be -imprisonment, for his allegiance, that -shrewd guessers, before now, have -equipped him and placed him in the -ranks of the losing cause, where he might -have had choice company. His generous -erratic brother (a writer of some note, an -alchemist, an Orientalist, a Rosicrucian, -who was ejected from his vicarage in -1654, and died either of the plague, or of -inhaling the fumes of a caldron, at Albury, -in 1665, while the court was at Oxford)<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> -had been a recruit, and a brave -one. But Henry Vaughan explicitly tells -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>us, in his <i>Ad Posteros</i>, and in a prayer in -the second part of <i>Silex Scintillans</i>, that -he had no personal share in the constitutional -struggle, that he shed no blood. -Again he cries, in a third lyric,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 13em;">“O accept</span><br /> -Of his vowed heart, whom Thou hast kept<br /> -From bloody men!”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">This painstaking record of a fact by one -so loyal as he goes far to prove, to an -inductive mind not thoroughly familiar -with his circumstances, that he considered -war the worst of current evils, and was -willing, for this first principle of his philosophy, -to lay himself open to the charge, -not indeed of cowardice (was he not a -Vaughan?), but of lack of appreciation -for the one romantic opportunity of his -life. His withdrawal from the turmoil -which so became his colleagues may seem -to harmonize with his known moral -courage and right sentiment; and fancy -is ready to fasten on him the sad neutrality, -and the passionate “ingemination” -for “peace, peace,” which “took -his sleep from him, and would shortly -break his heart,” such as Clarendon tells<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> -us of in his beautiful passage touching -the young Lord Falkland. But it is -greatly to be feared that Vaughan, despite -all the abstract reasoning which arrays -itself against so babyish and barbarous a -thing as a battle, would have swung himself -into a saddle as readily as any, had -not “God’s finger touched him.” A -comparison of dates will show that he -was bedridden, while his hot heart was -afield with the shouting gentlemen whom -Mr. Browning heard in a vision:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“King Charles! and who’ll do him right, now?<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">King Charles! and who’s ripe for fight, now?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Give a rouse: here’s in Hell’s despite now,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 7em;">King Charles!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">This is the secret of Vaughan’s blood-guiltlessness. -Of course he thanked -Heaven, after, that he was kept clean of -carnage; he would have thanked Heaven -for anything that happened to him. It -was providential that we of posterity lost -a soldier in the Silurist, and gained a -poet. As the great confusion cleared, his -spirit cleared too, and the Vaughan we -know,</p> - -<div class="center">“Delicious, lusty, amiable, fair,”</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> - -<p class="unindent">comes in, like a protesting angel, with -the Commonwealth. Perhaps he lived -long enough to sum up the vanity of -statecraft and the instability of public -choice, driven from tyranny to license, -from absolute monarchy to absolute anarchy; -and to turn once more to his -“loud brook’s incessant fall” as an object -much worthier of a rational man’s -regard. Born while James I. was vain-gloriously -reigning, Henry Vaughan survived -the Civil War, the two Protectorates, -the orgies of the Restoration (which -he did not fail to satirize), and the Revolution -of “Meenie the daughter,” as the -old Scots song slyly calls her. He had -seen the Stuarts in and out, in and out -again, and his seventy-four years, on-lookers -at a tragedy, were not forced to -sit through the dull Georgian farce which -began almost as soon as his grave was -green.</p> - -<p>Moreover, he was thoroughly out of -touch with his surroundings. While all -the world was either devil-may-care or -Calvin-colored, he had for his characteristic -a rapt, inexhaustible joy, buoying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> -him up and sweeping him away. He -might well have said, like Dr. Henry -More, his twin’s rival and challenger in -metaphysics, that he was “most of his -time mad with pleasure.” While</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“every burgess foots</span><br /> -The mortal pavement in eternal boots,”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">Vaughan lay indolently along a bank, -like a shepherd swain, pondering upon -the brood of “green-heads” who denied -miracles to have been or to be, and wishing -the noisy passengers on the highways -of life could be taught the value of</p> - -<div class="center">“A sweet self-privacy in a right soul.”</div> - -<p>His mind turned to paradoxes and inverted -meanings, and the analysis of his -own tenacious dreams, in an England of -pikes and bludgeons and hock-carts and -wassail-cakes. “A proud, humoursome -person,” Anthony à Wood called him. -He was something of a fatalist, inasmuch -as he followed his lonely and straight -path, away from crowds, and felt eager -for nothing but what fell into his open -hands. He strove little, being convinced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> -that temporal advantage is too often -an eternal handicap. “Who breaks his -glass to take more light,” he reminds us, -“makes way for storms unto his rest.” -This passive quality belongs to happy -men, and Vaughan was a very happy -man, thanks to the faith and will which -made him so, although he had known calamity, -and had failed in much. Throughout -his pages one can trace the affecting -struggle between things desired and -things forborne. It is only a brave philosopher -who can afford to pen a stanza -intimate as this:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“O Thou who didst deny to me<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The world’s adored felicity!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Keep still my weak eyes from the shine</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of those gay things which are not Thine.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">He had better possessions than glory under -his hand in the health and peace of -his middle age and in his cheerful home. -He was twice married, and must have -lost his first wife, nameless to us, but most -tenderly mourned, in his twenty-ninth or -thirtieth year. She seems to have been -the mother of five of his six children. -Vaughan was rich in friends. He had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> -known Davenant and Cartwright, but it is -quite characteristic of him that the two -great authors to whom he was especially -attached were Jonson and John Fletcher, -both only a memory at the time of his -first going to London. Of Randolph, -Jonson’s strong “son,” who so beggared -English literature by dying young in -1634, Vaughan sweetly says somewhere -that he will hereafter</p> - -<div class="center">“Look for Randolph in those holy meads.”</div> - -<p class="unindent">Mention of his actual fellow-workers is -very infrequent, nor does he mention the -Shakespeare who had “dwelt on earth -unguessed at,” and who is believed to -have visited the estates of the Vaughans -at Scethrog, and to have picked up the -name of his merry fellow Puck from -goblin traditions of the neighborhood. -Vaughan followed his leisure and his -preference in translating divers works -of meditation, biography, and medicine, -pleasing himself, like Queen Bess, with -naturalizing bits of Boethius, and much -from Plutarch, Ausonius, Severinus, and -Claudian. He did some passages from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -Ovid, but he must have felt sharply the -violence done to the lyric essence in -passing it ever so gently from language -to language, for he lingered over Adrian’s -darling <i>Animula vagula blandula</i>, only -to leave it alone, and to write of it as the -saddest poetry that ever he met with.</p> - -<p>Not the least of Henry Vaughan’s -blessings was his warm friendship with -“the matchless Orinda.”<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> This delightful -Catherine Fowler married, in 1647, -a stanch royalist, Mr. James Philips of -Cardigan Priory, and as his bride, became -what, in the Welsh solitudes, was -considered “neighbor” to Vaughan, her -home being distant from his just fifty -miles as the crow flies. She had been, -in her infancy, a prodigy of Biblical quotation, -like Evelyn’s little Richard, and -grew up to be such another <i>précieuse</i> as -Madame la Comtesse de Lafayette, <i>née</i> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>Lavergne; but we know that she was the -cleverest and comeliest of good women, -and Vaughan’s association with her must -have been a perpetual sunshine to him -and his. She prefixed, after the fashion -of the day, some commendatory verses -to his published work. They are not -only pretty, but they furnish a bit of adequate -criticism. The secular Muse of -the Silurist is, according to Orinda,</p> - -<div class="center">“Truth clothed in wit, and Love in innocence,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">and has, for her birthright, seriousness -and a “charming rigour.” The last two -words might stand for him in the fast-coming -day when nobody will have time -to discuss old poets in anything but technical -terms and epigrams. Orinda, with -her accurate judgment, should have had -a chance to talk to Mr. Thomas Campbell, -who adorned his <i>Specimens</i> with the -one official and truly prepositional phrase -that “Vaughan was one of the harshest -of writers, even of the inferior order of -the school of conceit!”<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p> - -<p>While Henry Vaughan was preparing -for publication the first half of <i>Silex -Scintillans</i> as the token of his arrested -and uplifted youth, Rev. Mr. Thomas -Vaughan, backed by a few other sanguine -Oxonians, and disregardful of his -twin’s exaggerated remorse for the fruits -of his profaner years, brought out the -“formerly written and newly named” -<i>Olor Iscanus</i>, over the author’s head, in -1650, and gave to it a motto from the -Georgics. The preface is in Eugenius -Philalethes’ own gallant style, and offers -a haughty commendation to “beauty from -the light retired.” Perhaps Vaughan’s -earliest and most partial editor felt, like -Thoreau on a certain occasion, that it -were well to make an extreme statement, -if only so he might make an emphatic -one. He chose to supplicate the public -of the Protectorate in this wise: “It was -the glorious Maro that referred his legacies -to the fire, and though princes are -seldom executors, yet there came a Cæsar -to his testament, as if the act of a poet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> -could not be repealed but by a king. I -am not, reader, Augustus Vindex: here is -no royal rescue, but here is a Muse that -deserves it. The author had long ago -condemned these poems to obscurity and -the consumption of that further fate -which attends it. This censure gave -them a gust of death, and they have -partly known that oblivion which our -best labors must come to at last. I present -thee, then, not only with a book, but -with a prey, and, in this kind, the first -recoveries from corruption. Here is a -flame hath been some time extinguished, -thoughts that have been lost and forgot, -but now they break out again like the -Platonic reminiscency. I have not the -author’s approbation to the fact, but I -have law on my side, though never a -sword: I hold it no man’s prerogative -to fire his own house. Thou seest how -saucy I am grown, and if thou dost expect -I should commend what is published, -I must tell thee I cry no Seville oranges; -I will not say ‘Here is fine,’ or ‘cheap’: -that were an injury to the verse itself, -and to the effect it can produce. Read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> -on; and thou wilt find thy spirit engaged, -not by the deserts of what we call -tolerable, but by the commands of a pen -that is above it.” All this is uncritical, -but useful and proper on the part of the -clerical brother, who writes very much as -Lord Edward Herbert might be supposed -to write for George under like conditions; -for he knew, according to an ancient adage, -that there is great folly in pointing -out the shortcomings of a work of art to -eyes uneducated to its beauties. It was -just as well to insist disproportionately -upon the principle at stake, that Henry -Vaughan’s least book was unique and -precious. He was not, like the majority -of the happy lyrists of his time, a writer -by accident; he was strictly a man of -letters, and his sign-manual is large and -plain upon everything which bears his -name. He indites like a Roman, with -evenness and without a superfluous syllable. -One cannot italicize him; every -word is a congested force, packed to -bursting with meaning and insistence; -the utterance of a man who has been -thinking all his life upon his own chosen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> -subjects, and who unerringly despatches -a language about its business, as if he -had just created it. Like Andrew Marvell’s -excellent father, “he never broached -what he had never brewed.” It follows -that his work, to which second editions -were wellnigh unknown, shows scarcely -any variation from itself. It carries with -it a testimony that, such as it stands, it is -the very best its author can do. Its faults -are not slips; they are quite as radical -and congenital as its virtues. Vaughan -(to transfer a fine phrase of Mr. W. T. -Arnold) is “enamoured of perfection,” but -he is fully so before he makes up his -mind to write, and from the first every -stroke of his pen is fatal. It transfixes -a noun or a verb, pins it to the page, and -challenges a reformer to move or replace -it. His modest Muse is as sure as Shakespeare, -as nice as Pope; she is incapable -of scruples and apprehensions, once she -has spoken. What Vaughan says of Cartwright -may well be applied to his own -deliberate grace of diction:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Thou thy thoughts hast drest in such a strain</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">As doth not only speak, but rule and reign.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p> - -<p class="unindent">His verses have the tone of a Vandyck -portrait, with all its firm pensive elegance -and lack of shadow.</p> - -<p>Vaughan has very little quaintness, as -we now understand that word, and none -of the cloudiness and incorrigible grotesqueness -which dominated his Alexandrian -day. He has great temperance; -he keeps his eye upon the end, and -scarcely falls at all into “the fond adulteries -of art,” inversions, unscholarly compound -words, or hard-driven metaphors. -If he be difficult to follow, it is only because -he lives, as it were, in highly oxygenated -air; he is remote and peculiar, -but not eccentric. His conceits are not -monstrous; the worst of them proclaims:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Some love a rose</span></div> -<div class="verse">In hand, some in the skin;</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">But, cross to those,</span></div> -<div class="verse">I would have mine within”;</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">which will bear a comparison with Carew’s -hatched cherubim, or with that -very provincialism of Herbert’s which -describes a rainbow as the lace of Peace’s -coat! Those of Vaughan’s figures not -drawn from the open air, where he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> -happiest, are, indeed, too bold and too -many, and they come from strange corners: -from finance, medicine, mills, the -nursery, and the mechanism of watches -and clocks. In no one instance, however, -does he start wrong, like the great influencer, -Donne, in <i>The Valediction</i>, and -finish by turning such impediments as -“stiff twin-compasses” into images of -memorable beauty. The <i>Encyclopædia -Britannica</i>, like Campbell, finds Vaughan -“untunable,” and so he is very often. -But poets may not always succeed in -metaphysics and in music too. The lute -which has the clearest and most enticing -twang under the laurel boughs is Herrick’s, -and not Donne’s; Mr. Swinburne’s, -and not Mr. Browning’s. It is to be observed -that when Vaughan lets go of his -regrets, his advice, and his growls over -the bad times, he falls into instant melody, -as if in that, and not in a rough impressiveness, -were his real strength. His -blessing for the river Usk flows sweetly -as the tide it hangs upon:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Garlands, and songs, and roundelays,<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And dewy nights, and sunshine days,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The turtle’s voice, joy without fear,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Dwell on thy bosom all the year!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To thee the wind from far shall bring</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The odors of the scattered spring,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And, loaden with the rich arrear,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Spend it in spicy whispers here.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Vaughan played habitually with his -pauses, and unconsciously threw the -metrical stress on syllables and words -least able to bear it; but no sensitive ear -can be otherwise than pleased at the -broken sequence of such lines as</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">“these birds of light make a land glad</span></div> -<div class="verse">Chirping their solemn matins on a tree,”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">and the hesitant symbolism of</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“As if his liquid loose retinue stayed</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Lingering, and were of this steep place afraid.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">The word “perspective,” with the accent -upon the first syllable, was a favorite -with him; and Wordsworth approved of -that usage enough to employ it in the -majestic opening of the sonnet on King’s -College Chapel.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> In short, if Vaughan -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>be “untunable,” it is because he never -learned to distil vowels at the expense or -peril of the message which he believed -himself bound to deliver, even where hearers -were next to none, and which he tried -only to make compact and clear. His -speech has a deep and free harmony of -its own, to those whom abruptness does -not repel; and even critics who turn -from him to the masters of verbal sound -may do him the parting honor of acknowledging -the nature of his limitation.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“A noble error, and but seldom made,<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">When poets are by too much force betrayed!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Vaughan was a born observer, and in -his poetry may be found the pioneer expression -of the nineteenth-century feeling -for landscape. His canvas is not often -large; he had an indifference towards -the exquisite presence of autumn, and an -inland ignorance of the sea. But he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> -could portray depth and distance at a -stroke, as in the buoyant lines:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“It was high spring, and all the way</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Primrosed, and hung with shade,”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">which etches for you the whole winding -lane, roofed and floored with beauty; he -carries a reader over half a continent in -his</p> - -<div class="center">“Paths that are hidden from the vulture’s eyes,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">and suspends him above man’s planet -altogether with his audacious eagle, to -whom “whole seas are narrow spectacles,” -and who</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“in the clear height and upmost air</span><br /> -Doth face the sun, and his dispersèd hair!”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Besides this large vision, Vaughan had -uncommon knowledge how to employ -detail, during the prolonged literary interval -when it was wholly out of fashion. -It has been the lot of the little rhymesters -of all periods to deal with the open -air in a general way, and to embellish -their pages with birds and boughs; but -it takes a true modern poet, under the influence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> -of the Romantic revival, to sum -up perfectly the ravages of wind and -frost:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Where is the pride of summer, the green prime,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">On the mossed elm; three on the naked lime</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree”;</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">and it takes another to give the only -faithful and ideal report of a warbling -which every schoolboy of the race had -heard before him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“That’s the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Lest you should think he never could recapture</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The first fine careless rapture.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">That Vaughan’s pages should furnish this -patient specification is remarkable in a -man whose mind was set upon things invisible. -His gaze is upon the inaccessible -ether, but he seems to detect everything -between himself and heaven. He sighs -over the inattentive rustic, whom, perhaps, -he catches scowling by the pasture-bars -of the wild Welsh downs:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“O that he would hear</span></div> -<div class="verse">The world read to him!”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p> - -<p>Whatever is in that pleasant world he -himself hears and sees; and his interrupted -chronicle is always terse, graphic, -straight from life. He has the inevitable -phrase for every phenomenon, a little -low-comedy phrase, sometimes, such -as Shakespeare and Carew had used before -him:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“Deep snow</span></div> -<div class="verse">Candies our country’s woody brow.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It seems never to have entered the -primitive mind of Vaughan to love, or -serve, art and nature for themselves. His -cue was to walk abroad circumspectly -and with incessant reverence, because in -all things he found God. He marks, at -every few rods in the thickets, “those -low violets of Thine,” and the “breathing -sacrifice” of earth-odors which the -“parched and thirsty isle” gratefully -sends back after a shower.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> His prayer -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>is that he may not forget that physical -beauty is a great symbol, but only a symbol; -a “hid ascent” through “masks and -shadows” to the divine; or, as Mr. Lowell -said in one of his last poems,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 15em;">“a tent</span></div> -<div class="verse">Pitched for an Inmate far more excellent.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>A humanist of the school of Assisi, -Vaughan was full of out-of-door meeknesses -and pieties, nowhere sweeter in -their expression than in this all-embracing -valedictory:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“O knowing, glorious Spirit! when</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thou shalt restore trees, beasts, and men,</span></div> -<div class="center">*****</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Give him among Thy works a place</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Who in them loved and sought Thy face.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">He muses in the garden, at evenfall:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Man is such a marigold</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">As shuts, and hangs the head.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">Clouds, seasons, and the eternal stars are -his playfellows; he apostrophizes our sister -the rainbow, and reminds her of yesterday, -when</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The youthful world’s grey fathers, in one knot,”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p> - -<p class="unindent">lifted anxious looks to her new splendor. -He is familiar with the depression which -comes from boding weather, when</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“a pilgrim’s eye,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Far from relief,</span></div> -<div class="verse">Measures the melancholy sky.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">He has an artist’s feeling, also, for the -wrath of the elements, which inevitably -hurry him on to the consummation</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“When Thou shalt spend Thy sacred store</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of thunders in that heat,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And low as e’er they lay before</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy six-days buildings beat!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“I saw,” he says, suddenly—</p> - -<div class="center">“I saw Eternity the other night”;</div> - -<p class="unindent">and he is perpetually seeing things almost -as startling and as bright: the -“edges and the bordering light” of lost -infancy; the processional grandeur of -old books, which he fearlessly calls</p> - -<div class="center">“The track of fled souls, and their Milky Way”;</div> - -<p class="unindent">and visions of the Judgment, when</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“from the right</span></div> -<div class="verse">The white sheep pass into a whiter light.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p> - -<p class="unindent">Here the figure beautifully forecasts a famous -one of Rossetti’s. Light, indeed, -is Vaughan’s distinctive word, and the favorite -source of his similes and illustrations.</p> - -<p>If Vaughan’s had not been so profoundly -moral a nature, he would have -lacked his picturesque sense of the general, -the continuous. That shibboleth, -“a primrose by the river’s brim,” is to -him all the generations of all the yellow -primroses smiling there since the Druids’ -day, and its mild moonlike ray reflects -the hope and fear and pathos of the mortal -pilgrimage that has seen and saluted -it, age after age. Whatever he meets -upon his walk is drowned and dimmed -in a wide halo of association and sympathy. -His unmistakable accent marks the -opening of a little sermon called <i>The -Timber;</i> a sigh of pity, tender as a child’s, -over the fallen and unlovely logs:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Sure, thou didst flourish once! and many springs</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Passed o’er thy head; many light hearts and wings,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Which now are dead, lodged in thy living towers.”<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p> -<p class="unindent">Leigh Hunt once challenged England -and America<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> to produce anything approaching, -for music and feeling, the -beauty of</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“boughs that shake against the cold,</span></div> -<div class="verse">Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">He forgot the closes of these artless -lines of a minor poet; or he did not know -them.</p> - -<p>Vaughan’s meek reputation began to -renew itself about 1828, when four critics -eminently fitted to appraise his -worth were in their prime; but, curiously -enough, none of these, not even the best -of them, the same Charles Lamb who -said a just and generous word for Wither, -had the satisfaction of rescuing his sunken -name. Lamb’s friend, the good soul -Bernard Barton, seems, however, to have -known and admired his Vaughan.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> -<p>Eight little books, if we count the two -parts of <i>Silex Scintillans</i> as one,<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> enclose -all of the Silurist’s original work. He -began to publish in 1646, and he practically -ceased in 1655, reappearing but in -1678 with <i>Thalia Rediviva</i>, which was -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>not issued under his own supervision. It -is commonly supposed that his verses -were forgotten up to the date (1847) of the -faulty but timely Aldine edition of the -Rev. H. F. Lyte, thrice reprinted and revised -since then, and until the appearance -of Dr. Grosart’s four inestimable quartos; -but Mr. Carew Hazlitt has been fortunate -enough to discover the advertisement of -an eighteenth-century reprint of Vaughan. -As the results of Dr. Grosart’s patient service -to our elder writers are necessarily -semi-private, it may be said with truth -that the real Vaughan is still debarred -from the general reader, who is, indeed, -the identical person least concerned about -that state of affairs. His name is not irrecoverable -nor unfamiliar to scholars.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>His mind, on the whole, might pass for -the product of yesterday; and he, who -needs no glossary, may handsomely cede -the honors of one to Mr. William Morris. -It is at least certain that had Vaughan -lately lifted up his sylvan voice out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> -Brecknockshire, he would not so readily -be accused of having modelled himself -unduly upon George Herbert.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> He has -gone into eclipse behind that gracious -name.</p> - -<p>Henry Vaughan was a child of thirteen -when Herbert, a stranger to him, -died at Bemerton, and he read him first -in the sick-chamber to which the five -years’ distresses of his early manhood -confined him. The reading could not -have been prior to 1647, for <i>Olor Iscanus</i>, -Vaughan’s second volume, was lying -ready for the press that year, as we -know from the date of its dedication to -Lord Kildare Digby. As no novice poet, -therefore, he fell under the spell of a sweet -and elect soul, who was also a lover of -vanquished royalty, a convert who had -looked upon the vanities of the court and -the city, a Welshman born, and not unconnected<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> -with Vaughan’s own ancient -and patrician house. These were slight -coincidences, but they served to strengthen -a forming tie. The Silurist somewhere -thanks Herbert’s “holy ever-living -lines” for checking his blood; and it was, -perhaps, the only service rendered of -which he was conscious. But his endless -iambics and his vague allegorical titles -are cast thoroughly in the manner of Herbert, -and he takes from the same source -the heaped categorical epithets, the didactic -tone, and the introspectiveness -which are his most obvious failings. -Vaughan’s intellectual debt to Herbert -resolves itself into somewhat less than -nothing; for in following him with zeal -to the Missionary College of the Muses, -he lost rather than gained, and he is altogether -delightful and persuasive only -where he is altogether himself. Nevertheless, -a certain spirit of conformity and -filial piety towards Herbert has betrayed -Vaughan into frequent and flagrant imitations. -It seems as if these must have -been voluntary, and rooted in an intention -to enforce the same truths in all but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> -the same words; for the moment Vaughan -breaks into invective, or comes upon his -distinctive topics, such as childhood, natural -beauty (for which Herbert had an -imperfect sense), friendship, early death, -spiritual expectation, he is off and away, -free of any predecessor, thrilling and unforgettable. -Comparisons will not be out of -place here, for Vaughan can bear, and even -invoke them. Dryden said in Jonson’s -praise that he was “a learned plagiary,” and -nobody doubts nowadays that Shakespeare -and Milton were the bandit kings of their -time. There was, indeed, in English letters, -up to Queen Anne’s reign, an open -communism of ideas and idioms astonishing -to look upon; there is less confiscation -at present, because, outside the pale -of the sciences, there is less thinking. -If any one thing can be closer to another, -for instance, than even Drummond’s sonnet -on <i>Sleep</i> is to Sidney’s, it is the dress -of Vaughan’s morality to that of George -Herbert’s. Mr. Simcox is the only critic -who has taken the trouble to contrast -them, and he does so in so random a -fashion as to suggest that his scrutiny,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> -in some cases, has been confined to the -rival titles. It is certain that no other -mind, however bent upon identifications, -can find a likeness between <i>The Quip</i> and -<i>The Queer</i>, or between <i>The Tempest</i> and -<i>Providence</i>. Vaughan’s <i>Mutiny</i>, like <i>The -Collar</i>, ends in a use of the word “child,” -after a scene of strife; and if ever it were -meant to match Herbert’s poem, distinctly -falls behind it, and deals, besides, -with a much weaker rebelliousness. <i>Rules -and Lessons</i> is so unmistakably modelled -upon <i>The Church Porch</i> that it scarcely -calls for comment. Herbert’s admonitions, -however, are continued, but nowhere -repeated; and Vaughan’s succeed -in being poetic, which the others are not. -Beyond these replicas, Vaughan’s structural -genius is in no wise beholden to Herbert’s. -But numerous phrases and turns -of thought descend from the master to -the disciple, undergoing such subtle and -peculiar changes, and given back, as -Coleridge would say, with such “usurious -interest,” that it may well be submitted -whether, in this casual list, every -borrowing, save two, be not a bettering.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> - - -<h3>HERBERT.</h3> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“A throbbing conscience, spurrèd by remorse,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Hath a strange force.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“My thoughts are all a case of knives,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">Wounding my heart</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">With scattered smart.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">“And trust</span></div> -<div class="verse">Half that we have</div> -<div class="verse">Unto an honest faithful grave.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Teach me Thy love to know,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That this new light which now I see</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">May both the work and workman show:</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Then by a sunbeam I will climb to Thee!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“I will go searching, till I find a sun</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Shall stay till we have done,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A willing shiner, that will shine as gladly</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">As frost-nipt suns look sadly.</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Then we will sing and shine all our own day,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">And one another pay;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Till even his beams sing, and my music shine.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<h4>(<i>Of prayer.</i>)</h4> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Heaven in ordinary, man well-drest,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The Milky Way, the bird of Paradise.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Then went I to a garden, and did spy</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">A gallant flower,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The crown-imperial: Sure, said I,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Peace at the root must dwell.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p> - - -<h3>VAUGHAN.</h3> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“A darting conscience, full of stabs and fears.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“And wrap us in imaginary flights</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Wide of a faithful grave.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“That in these masks and shadows I may see</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Thy sacred way,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And by these hid ascents climb to that day</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Which breaks from Thee</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Who art in all things, though invisibly!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“O would I were a bird or star</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Fluttering in woods, or lifted far</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Above this inn</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">And road of sin!</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Then either star or bird would be</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Shining or singing still to Thee!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<h4>(<i>Of books.</i>)</h4> - -<div class="center">“The track of fled souls, and their Milky Way.”</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“I walked the other day to spend my hour</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Into a field,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Where I sometime had seen the soil to yield</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">A gallant flower.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p> - - -<h3>HERBERT.</h3> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“But groans are quick and full of wings,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And all their motions upward be,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And ever as they mount, like larks they sing:</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The note is sad, yet music for a king.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Joys oft are there, and griefs as oft as joys,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">But griefs without a noise;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet speak they louder than distempered fears:</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">What is so shrill as silent tears?”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“At first Thou gavest me milk and sweetnesses,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">I had my wish and way;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">My days were strewed with flowers and happiness;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">There was no month but May.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">“Only a scarf or glove</span></div> -<div class="verse">Doth warm our hands, and make them write of Love.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“I got me flowers to strew Thy way,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">I got me boughs off many a tree;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">But Thou wast up by break of day,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And brought Thy sweets along with Thee.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“O come! for Thou dost know the way:</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Or if to me Thou wilt not move,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Remove me where I need not say,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">‘Drop from above.’”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Sure Thou wilt joy by gaining me</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To fly home like a laden bee.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p> - - -<h3>VAUGHAN.</h3> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“A silent tear can pierce Thy throne</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">When loud joys want a wing;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And sweeter airs stream from a groan</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Than any artèd string.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Follow the cry no more! There is</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">An ancient way,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">All strewed with flowers and happiness,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">And fresh as May!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">“feverish souls</span></div> -<div class="verse">Sick with a scarf or glove.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“I’ll get me up before the sun,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">I’ll cull me boughs off many a tree;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And all alone full early run</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">To gather flowers and welcome Thee.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">My perspective still as they pass;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Or else remove me hence unto that hill</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Where I shall need no glass!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Thy grave, to which my thoughts shall move</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Like bees in storms unto their hive.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p> - -<p>To arraign Vaughan is to vindicate -him. In the too liberal assizes of literature, -an idea becomes the property of -him who best expresses it. Herbert’s -odd and fresh metaphors, his homing -bees and pricks of conscience and silent -tears, the adoring star and the comrade -bird, even his famous female scarf, go -over bodily to the spoiler. In many an -instance something involved and difficult -still characterizes Herbert’s diction; -and it is diverting to watch how the interfering -hand sorts and settles it at one -touch, and sends it, in Mr. Matthew Arnold’s -word, to the “centre.” Vaughan’s -mind, despite its mysticism, was full of despatch -and impetuosity. Like Herbert, -he alludes to himself, more than once, as -“fierce”; and the adjective undoubtedly -belongs to him. There is in Vaughan, -at his height, an imaginative rush and -fire which Herbert never knew, a greater -clarity and conciseness, a far greater restraint, -a keener sense both of color and -form, and so much more deference for -what Mr. Ruskin calls “the peerage of -words,” that the younger man could never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> -have been content to send forth a line -which might mean its opposite, such as -occurs in the fine stanza about glory in -the beautiful <i>Quip</i>. It is only on middle -ground that the better poet and the better -saint collide. Vaughan never could -have written</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“O that I once past changing were</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">or the tranquil confession of faith:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Thy hands made both, and I am there:</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thy power and love, my love and trust</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Make one place everywhere!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">For his best is not Herbert’s best, nor his -worst Herbert’s worst. It is not Vaughan -who reminds us that “filth” lies under a -fair face. He does the “fiercer” thing: -he goes to the Pit’s mouth in a trance, -and “hears them yell.” Herbert’s noblest -and most winning art still has its -stand upon the altar steps of <i>The Temple;</i> -but Vaughan is always on the roof, -under the stars, like a somnambulist, or -actually above and out of sight, “pinnacled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> -dim in the intense inane”; absorbed -in larger and wilder things, and -stretching the spirits of all who try to -follow him. Herbert has had his reward -in the world’s lasting appreciation; and -though Vaughan had a favorable opinion -of his own staying powers, nothing would -have grieved him less than to step aside, -if the choice had lain between him and -his exemplar. Or re-risen, he would cry -loyally to him, as to that other Herbert, -the rector of Llangattock and his old -tutor: “<i>Pars vertat patri, vita posthuma -tibi</i>.”</p> - -<p>Vaughan, then, owed something to Herbert, -although it was by no means the -best which Herbert could give; but he -himself is, what Herbert is not, an ancestor. -He leans forward to touch Cowper -and Keble; and Mr. Churton Collins -has taken the pains to trace him in Tennyson.</p> - -<p>The angels who</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“familiarly confer</span></div> -<div class="verse">Beneath the oak and juniper,”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">invoke an instant thought of the Milton<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> -of the <i>Allegro;</i> and the fragrant winds -which linger by Usk, “loaden with the -rich arrear,” appear to be Milton’s, too. -His austere music first sounded in the -public ear in 1645, one year before Vaughan, -much his junior, began to print. It would -seem very unlikely that a Welsh physician -should be beholden long after to the -manuscripts of the Puritan stripling, close-kept -at Cambridge and Horton; but it -is interesting to find the prototype of -Vaughan’s charming lines about Rachel,</p> - -<div class="center">“the sheep-keeping Syrian maid,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">in the <i>Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester</i>, -dating from 1631.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Vaughan’s -dramatic Fleet Street,</p> - -<div class="center">“Where the loud whip and coach scolds all the way,”</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p> -<p class="unindent">might as well be Swift’s, or Crabbe’s; and -his salutation to the lark,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“And now, as fresh and cheerful as the light,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thy little heart in early hymns doth sing,”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">is like a quotation from some tender sonnet -of Bowles, or from his admirer, the -young Coleridge who instantly outstepped -him. <i>Olor</i>, <i>Silex</i>, and <i>Thalia</i> establish unexpected -relationships with genius the -most remote from them and from each -other. The animated melody of poor -Rochester’s best songs seems deflected -from</p> - -<div class="center">“If I were dead, and in my place,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">addressed to Amoret,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> in the <i>Poems</i> of -1646. The delicate simile,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“As some blind dial, when the day is done,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Can tell us at midnight there was a sun,”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">and</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“But I am sadly loose and stray,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A giddy blast each way.</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O let me not thus range:</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thou canst not change!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p> - -<p class="unindent">(a verse of a poem headed by an extract, -in the Vulgate, from the eighth chapter -to the Romans), come home with a smile -to the lover of Clough. Vaughan was -that dangerous person, an original thinker; -and the consequence is that he compromises -a great many authors who may -never have heard of him. It is admitted -now that we owe to his prophetic lyre -one of the boasts of modern literature. -Dr. Grosart has handled so well the obvious -debt of Wordsworth in <i>The Intimations -of Immortality</i>, and has proven -so conclusively that Vaughan figured in -the library at Rydal Mount, that little -need be said here on that theme. In -<i>Corruption</i>, <i>Childhood</i>, <i>Looking Back</i>, and -<i>The Retreat</i>, most markedly in the first, -lie the whole point and pathos of</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Trailing clouds of glory do we come</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">From Heaven, which is our home.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">Few studies are more fascinating than -that of the liquidation, so to speak, of -Vaughan’s brief, tense, impassioned monodies -into “the mighty waters rolling -evermore” of the great <i>Ode</i>. It is Holinshed’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> -accidental honor that he is lost -in Shakespeare, and incorporated with -him. So with Vaughan: if shorn of his -dues, he still remains illustrious by virtue -of one signal service to Wordsworth, -whom, in the main, he distinctly foreshadows. -Yet it is no unpardonable heresy -to be jealous that the “first sprightly -runnings” of a classic should not be better -known, and to prefer their touching -simplicity to the grandly adult and theory-burdened -lines which everybody quotes. -In the broad range of English letters we -find two persons whose normal mental -habits seem altogether of a piece with -Vaughan’s: a woman of the eighteenth -century, and a philosopher of the nineteenth. -The lovely <i>Petition for an Absolute -Retreat</i>, by Anne, Countess of Winchelsea -(whose genius was the charming -<i>trouvaille</i> of Mr. Edmund Gosse), might -pass for Vaughan’s, in Vaughan’s best -manner; and so might</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Their near camp my spirit knows</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">By signs gracious as rainbows,”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">as indeed the whole of Emerson’s ever-memorable -<i>Forerunners</i>, itself a mate for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> -<i>The Retreat;</i> or rather, had these been -anonymous lyrics of Vaughan’s own day, -it would have been impossible to persuade -a Caroline critic that he could not name -their common author.</p> - -<p>Our poet had a curious fashion of coining -verbs and adjectives out of nouns, and -carried it to such a degree as to challenge -pre-eminence with Keats.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">“O how it bloods</span></div> -<div class="verse">And spirits all my earth!”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">is part and parcel of the young cries of -Endymion. When Vaughan has discovered -something to produce a fresh effect, -he is not the man who will hesitate to -use it; and this mannerism occurs frequently: -“our grass straight russets,” -“angel’d from that sphere,” “the mountained -wave,” “He heavened their walks, -and with his eyes made those wild shades -a Paradise.” A little informality of this -sort sometimes justifies itself, as in the -couplet ending the grim and powerful -<i>Charnel-House:</i></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“But should wild blood swell to a lawless strain,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">One check from thee shall channel it again!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p> - -<p class="unindent">And Henry Vaughan shares also with -Keats, writing three hundred years later, -a defect which he had inherited, together -with many graces, directly from Ben Jonson:<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> -the fashion of crowding the sense -of his text and the pauseless voice of his -reader from the natural breathing-place -at the end of a line into the beginning or -the middle of the next line. More than -any other, except Keats in his first period, -he roughens, without always strengthening, -his rich decasyllabics, by using what -Mr. Gosse has happily classified as the -“overflow.”</p> - -<p>Though the Silurist had in him the possibilities -of a great elegiac poet, and his -laments for his dead are many and memorable, -there is not one sustained masterpiece -among them; nothing to equal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> -or approach, for example, Cowley’s <i>Ode -on the Death of Mr. William Hervey</i>, in -the qualities which abide, and are visited -with the honors of the class-book and -the library shelf. Yet Vaughan’s elegies -are exquisite and endearing; they haunt -one with the conviction that they stop -short of immortality, not because their -author had too little skill, but because, -between his repressed speech and his extreme -emotions, no art could make out -to live. He had a deep heart, such as -deep hearts will always recognize and -reverence:</p> - -<div class="center">“And thy two wings were grief and love.”</div> - -<p class="unindent">In the face of eternity he seems so to -accord with the event which all but destroys -him, that sorrow inexpressible becomes -suddenly unexpressed, and his -funeral music ends in a high enthusiasm -and serenity open to no misconception. -Distance, and the lapse of time, and his -own utter reconciliation to the play of -events make small difference in his utterance -upon the old topic. The thought of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> -his friend, forty years after, is the same -mystical rapture:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“O could I track them! but souls must</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Track one the other;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And now the spirit, not the dust,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Must be thy brother:</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet I have one pearl by whose light</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">All things I see,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And in the heart of death and night,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Find Heaven and thee.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><i>Daphnis</i>, the eclogue to the memory -of Thomas Vaughan, is the only one of -these elegies which, possessing a surplus -of beautiful lines, is not even in the least -satisfying. “R. Hall,” “no woolsack soldier,” -who was slain at the siege of Pontefract, -won from Henry Vaughan a passionate -requiem, which opens with a gush -of agony, “I knew it would be thus!” as -affecting as anything in the early ballads; -and the battle of Rowton Heath took -from him “R. W.,” the comrade of his -youth. But it was in one who bore his -sovereign’s name (hitherto unidentified, -although he is said to have been the subject -of a “public sorrow”) that Vaughan -lost the friend upon whom his whole nature -seemed to lean. The soldier-heart in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> -himself spoke out firmly in the cry he -consecrated <i>To the Pious Memory of C. W.</i> -Its masculine dignity; the pride and soft -triumph which it gathers about it, advancing; -the plain heroic ending which -sweeps away all images of remoteness -and gloom, in</p> - -<div class="center">“Good-morrow to dear Charles! for it is day,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">can be compared to nothing but an <i>agitato</i> -of Schubert’s mounting strings, slowing -to their major chord with a courage -and cheer that bring tears to the eyes. -Vaughan’s tender threnodies would make -a small but precious volume. <i>To the -Pious Memory</i>, with <i>Thou that Knowest -for Whom I Mourn</i>, <i>Silence and Stealth -of Days</i>, <i>Joy of my Life while Left me -Here</i>, <i>I Walked the other Day to spend -my Hour</i>, <i>The Morning Watch</i>, and <i>Beyond -the Veil</i>, are alone enough to give -him rank forever as a genius and a good -man.</p> - -<p>“C. W.’s” death was one of the things -which turned him forever from temporal -pursuits and pleasures. Of his first wife -we can find none but conjectural traces<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> -in his books, for he was shy of using the -beloved name. The sense of those departed -is never far from him. The air -of melancholy recollection, not morbid, -which hangs over his maturer lyrics, is -directly referable to the close-following -calamities which estranged him from the -presence of “the blessèd few,” and sent -him, as he nobly hoped,</p> - -<div class="center">“Home from their dust to empty his own glass.”</div> - -<p class="unindent">His thoughts centred, henceforward, in -their full intensity, on the supernatural -world; nay, if he were irremediably depressed, -not only on the persistence of -resolved matter, by means of which buried -men come forth again in the color of -flowers and the fragrance of the wind, -but even on the physical damp and dark -which confine our mortality. It is the -poet of dawn and of crisp mountain air -who can pack horror on horror into his -nervous quatrains about Death:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“A nest of nights; a gloomy sphere</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Where shadows thicken, and the cloud</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Sits on the sun’s brow all the year,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And nothing moves without a shroud.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p> - -<p class="unindent">This is masterly; but here, again, there is -reserve, the curbing hand of a man who -holds, with Plato, a wilful indulgence in -the “realism” of sadness to be an actual -crime. Vaughan’s dead dwell, indeed, as -his own mind does, in “the world of -light.” As his corporeal sight is always -upon the zenith or the horizon, so his -fancy is far away, with his radiant ideals, -and with the virtue and beauty he has -walked with in the flesh. He takes his -harp to the topmost hill, and sits watching</p> - -<div class="center">“till the white-winged reapers come.”</div> - -<p class="unindent">He thinks of his obscured self, the child -he was, and of “the narrow way” (an -ever-recurrent Scriptural phrase in his -poetry) by which he shall “travel back.” -To leave the body is merely to start -anew and recover strength, and, with it, -the inspiring companionship of which he -is inscrutably deprived.</p> - -<p>Chambers’ <i>Cyclopædia</i> made an epic -blunder, long ago, when it ascribed to -this gentlest of Anglicans a “gloomy sectarianism.” -He, of all religious poets,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -makes the most charming secular reading, -and may well be a favorite with the -heathen for whom Herbert is too decorative, -Crashaw too hectic and intense, -Cowper too fearful, and Faber too fluent; -<i>Lyra Apostolica</i> a treatise, though a glorious -one, on Things which Must be Revived, -and <i>Hymns Ancient and Modern</i> -an exceeding weariness to the spirit. It -is a saw of Dr. Johnson’s that it is impossible -for theology to clothe itself in attractive -numbers; but then Dr. Johnson -was ignorant of Vaughan. It is not in -human nature to refuse to cherish the -“holy, happy, healthy Heaven” which he -has left us (in a graded alliteration which -smacks of the physician rather than of -the “gloomy sectarian”), his very social -“angels talking to a man,” and his bright -saints, hovering and smiling nigh, who</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">“are indeed our pillar-fires</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Seen as we go;</span></div> -<div class="verse">They are the city’s shining spires</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">We travel to.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">Who can resist the earnestness and candor -with which, in a few sessions, he -wrote down the white passion of the last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> -fifty years of his life? No English poet, -unless it be Spenser, has a piety so simple -and manly, so colored with mild thought, -so free from emotional consciousness. -The elect given over to continual polemics -do not count Henry Vaughan as -one of themselves. His double purpose -is to make life pleasant to others and to -praise God; and he considers that he is -accomplishing it when he pens a compliment -to the valley grass, or, like Coleridge, -caresses in some affectionate strophes -the much-abused little ass. All this -liberal sweetness and charity heighten -Vaughan’s poetic quality, as they deepen -the impression of his practical Christianity. -The nimbus is about his laic songs. -When he talks of moss and rocks, it is as -if they were incorporated into the ritual. -He has the genius of prayer, and may be -recognized by “those graces which walk -in a veil and a silence.” He is full of -distinction, and of a sort of golden idiosyncrasy. -Vaughan’s true “note” is—Vaughan. -To read him is like coming -alone to a village church-yard with trees, -where the west is dying, in hues of lilac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> -and rose, behind the low ivied Norman -tower. The south windows are open, the -young choir are within, and the organist, -with many a hushed unconventional interlude -of his own, is rehearsing with -them the psalm of “pleasures for evermore.”</p> - -<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20">[20]</a> Siluria comprised the shires of Monmouth, Hereford, -Glamorgan, Radnor, and Brecon.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21">[21]</a> The Reverend H. F. Lyte, Vaughan’s enthusiastic -editor, best known as the author of <i>Abide with Me</i>, reminds -us that there was another Henry Vaughan of the same -college and the same neighborhood at home—a pleasant -theological person not to be confounded with the poet. It -was probably he, and not the Silurist, who devoted some -verses to Charles the First in the book called <i>Eucharistica -Oxoniensis</i>, 1641.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22">[22]</a> These deep Augustinian lines are Carew’s, gay Carew’s; -and they mark the highest religious expression of -their time.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23">[23]</a> Vaughan apparently enjoyed that privilege of genius, -acquaintance with a London garret, if we may take autobiographically -the fine brag worthy of the tribe of Henri -Mürger:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“I scorn your land,</span></div> -<div class="verse">So far it lies below me; here I see</div> -<div class="verse">How all the sacred stars do circle me.”</div> -</div> -</div></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24">[24]</a> The King lodged at Christchurch, the Queen and -my Lady Castlemaine (together, alas!) at Merton, amid -endless hawking, tennis, boating, basset, and general revelry.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25">[25]</a> Orinda’s own verses, scattered in manuscript among -her friends, were collected and printed without her knowledge, -and much against her desire, in 1663: a piece of -treachery which threw her into a severe indisposition. -She could therefore condole more than enough with -Henry Vaughan. Friends were officious creatures in -those days.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26">[26]</a> This, to say the least, was not “pretty” of Campbell, -who thought so well of the “world’s grey fathers” congregated -to gaze at Vaughan’s <i>Rainbow</i> that he conveyed -them bodily into the foreground of his own.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27">[27]</a> Per´-spective was, of course, the general pronunciation -from Shakespeare to Dr. Johnson, and is used with -great beauty in Dryden’s <i>Ode to the Memory of Mrs. -Anne Killigrew</i>. But it is a characteristic word with -Vaughan, and it was from Vaughan that Wordsworth -took it.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28">[28]</a> Vaughan had a relish for damp weather, the thing -which makes the loveliness of the British isles, and which -the ungrateful islanders are prone to revile. He never -passes a sheet of water without looking upward for the -forming cloud:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“That drowsy lake</span></div> -<div class="verse">From her faint bosom breathed thee!”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29">[29]</a> Sometimes erroneously printed “bowers.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30">[30]</a> It was kind of the ever-kind Hunt to include America -in his enumeration, at a time when the United States were -supposed by his fellow-countrymen to have no literature -at all of their own. The circumstance that his challenge -appeared in the preface to <i>The Book of the Sonnet</i>, which -was edited by Hunt in conjunction with an American, -and published at Boston in 1868, may help to account -for the mannerliness of the reference.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31">[31]</a> In the <i>Letters and Memorials of Archbishop Trench</i>, -vol. ii., p. 57, there is a letter bearing upon this point -from Mr. Frank Millson, dated 1868, which deserves serious -consideration from Vaughan’s forthcoming editors. -“I think,” he writes the Dean, “that your supposition -that the 1655 edition is the same book as the one of 1650, -with a new title-page and additions, can hardly be correct, -though I know that Lyte, the editor of Pickering’s reprint, -thinks as you do. The preface to the 1655 edition -is dated September 30, 1654, and contains this passage” -(not given in the <i>Memorials</i>) “which seems to me to -refer to the fact of a new edition. A comparison of my -two copies shows that the 1650 edition consists of half a -sheet, title and dedication, and 110 pages. The second -edition has title, preface, dedication, motto, the 110 pages -of the first edition, with 84 pages of new matter, and a -table of first lines. A noticeable thing in the arrangement -is that the sheets do not begin with new printer’s -marks, as they might be expected to do if the second -part were simply new matter added to the first volume, -but begin with A, the last sheet of the former volume having -ended with G. I am sorry to trouble you with these -trifling details; but as Vaughan has long been a favorite -author of mine, they have an interest for me, and if they -help to show that he was not neglected by readers of his -own time, I shall be glad.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32">[32]</a> Anthologies and cyclopædias nowadays, especially -since Dr. John Brown and Principal Shairp drew attention -to the Silurist in their pages, are more than likely to -admit him. It was not so always. Winstanley, sharp as -was his eye, let Vaughan escape him in his <i>Lives of the -Poets</i>, published in 1687. He is not in the <i>Theatrum -Poetarum</i>, nor in Johnson’s <i>Lives</i>. He is in neither of -Southey’s collections. Mr. Palgrave allows him, in <i>The -Golden Treasury</i>, but a song and a half; Ellis’s sheaf of -excellent <i>Specimens</i> of 1811 furnishes eighteen lines of a -wedding blessing on the <i>Best and Most Accomplished -Couple</i> apologizing for “their too much quaintness and -conceit”; and in Willmott’s <i>Sacred Poets</i> Vaughan occupies -four pages, as against Crashaw’s thirty-five, Herbert’s -thirty-seven, and Wither’s one hundred and thirty-two. -But Vaughan fares well in Dr. George Macdonald’s -<i>England’s Antiphon</i>, and in Archbishop Trench’s <i>Household -Book</i>. Ward’s <i>English Poets</i>, in the second volume, -has a conventional selection from him, as has, at greater -length, Fields’ and Whipple’s <i>Family Library of British -Poetry</i>. There is a goodly list entered under Vaughan’s -name in Gilfillan’s <i>Less-Known British Poets</i>, all -chosen from his devotional work. Thirty-seven religious -lyrics again adorn the splendid <i>Treasury of Sacred Song</i>. -Vaughan’s secular numbers yet await their proper bays, -although a limited edition of most of them, containing a -bibliography, was printed in 1893 by J. R. Tutin of Hull. -Mr. Saintsbury, in his <i>Seventeenth Century Lyrics</i>, has -a small and very choice group of Vaughan’s songs, and -Professor Palgrave, having to do with him for the third -time, gives him large and cordial honor in the eleventh -volume of <i>Y Cymmrodor</i>. In Emerson’s Parnassus he -appears but once. He had his most graceful and grateful -American tribute when Mr. Lowell, long ago, named him -in passing as “dear Henry Vaughan,” in <i>A Certain Condescension -in Foreigners</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33">[33]</a> In one of his prefaces, Vaughan hits neatly at the -crowd of Herbertists: “These aim more at verse than at -perfection.” Where there are noble resemblances, it is -well to remember that two sides have the right to be heard. -Mrs. Thoreau used to say: “Mr. Emerson imitates Henry!” -And she was at least as accurate as the critics who -annoyed her old age by the reversed statement.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34">[34]</a> Mr. R. H. Stoddard owns a copy of the first edition -of <i>Nieremberg’s Meditations</i>, translated by Vaughan in -1654, and published the following year, which has upon -the title-page an autographic “J. M.” supposed, by every -evidence, to be Milton’s. If it be so, the busy Latin Secretary, -meditating his grand work, must have been, on -his part, a reader and a lover of the man who was almost -his equal at golden phrases.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35">[35]</a> Congreve and Waller employ the same rather too obvious -love-name for their serenaded divinities.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36">[36]</a> Vaughan openly wears jewels which belong to Jonson.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“Go seek thy peace in war:</span></div> -<div class="verse">Who falls for love of God shall rise a star!”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">wrote brave Father Ben; and no Englishman of spirit, -between 1642 and the Restoration, was likely to forget it. -The passage certainly clung to Vaughan’s mind, for he -assimilated it later in a sweet line all for peace:</p> - -<div class="center">“Do thou the works of day, and rise a star.”</div> -</div></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p> - - - - -<h2>III<br /> - -GEORGE FARQUHAR<br /> - -<small>1677-1707</small></h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a><br /><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p> - - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-130-drop-t.jpg" width="101" height="105" alt="T" /> -</div> - -<p class="drop-capi">THERE is a narrow dark Essex -Street West in the city -of Dublin, running between -Fishamble Street and Essex -Gate, at the rear of the Lower -Blind Quay. The older people still bluntly -call it what it was called before 1830: -Smock Alley. On its north side stands -the sufficiently ugly church of SS. Michael -and John. The arched passage -still in use, parallel with the nave of this -church, was the entrance to a theatre on -the same site; what is now the burial -vault was once the pit, full of ruddy and -uproarious faces. The theatre, erected -about 1660, which had a long, stormy and -eventful history, was rebuilt in 1735, and -having been turned into a warehouse, fell -into decay, to be replaced by a building of -another clay. But while it was still itself,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> -it was great and popular, and the lane -between Trinity College and the old -arched passage was choked every night -with the press of jolly youths, who, as -Archbishop King pathetically complained, -appeared to love the play better than -study! Among those who hung about -Smock Alley like a barnacle in the years -1694 and 1695, was a certain George Farquhar, -son of William,<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> a poor Londonderry -clergyman of the Establishment; -a long-faced peculiar lad of mild -mien but high spirits. He had come -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>from the north, under episcopal patronage, -to wear a queer dress among his social -betters, to sweep and scour and carry -tankards of ale to the Fellows in hall; -and incidentally, to imbibe, on his own -part, the lore of all the ages. The major -event in his history is that, instead of sitting -up nights over <i>Isocrates de Pace</i>, -he slipped off to see Robert Wilkes and -the stock company, and to decide that -acting, or, as he afterwards sarcastically -defined it, “tearing his Lungs for a Livelihood,” -was also the thing for him. -Wherefore, at eighteen, either because -his benefactor, Bishop Wiseman of Dromore, -had died, or else, as is not very -credibly reported, because he was cashiered -from his class, Master Farquhar, -cut loose from his old moorings, applied -to Manager Ashbury of the Dublin Theatre, -and to such avail that he was able -presently to make his own appearance -there as no less a personage than Othello. -He had a weak voice and a shy presence; -but the public encouraged him. One of -his first parts was that of Guyomar, Montezuma’s -younger brother, in Dryden’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> -tragedy of <i>The Indian Emperor</i>. In the -fifth act, as soon as he had declaimed to -Vasquez in sounding sing-song:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Friendship with him whose hand did Odmar kill?</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Base as he was, he was my brother still!</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">But since his blood has washed away his guilt,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nature asks thine for that which thou hast spilt,”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">he made, according to stage directions, -a fierce lunge at his too conciliatory foe. -Guyomar had armed himself, inadvertently, -with a genuine sword, and Vasquez -came near enough to being killed -in the flesh. The man eventually recovered; -but it shows of what impressionable -stuff Farquhar was made, that his -mental horror and pain, during that moment -while he believed he had slain a -fellow-creature, should have turned the -course of his life. He left the stage; -nor would he return to it. Some eight -years after, indeed, he visited Dublin -again, and on the old boards played Sir -Harry Wildair for his own benefit; but -this was at a time when he forced himself -to undertake all honorable chances -of money-making, out of his consuming -anxiety for his family.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p> - -<p>Wilkes and his wife returned to London, -and the lad Farquhar went with -them. He obtained a commission in the -army from the Earl of Orrery; he was in -Holland on duty during a part of the -year 1700, and came back to England -with one of her earliest military red coats -on his back, in the train of his much-approved -sovereign, William III. He had -already written, thanks to Wilkes and -his incessant urging, his first two plays, -and had seen them successful at Drury -Lane;<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> he had also overheard with enthusiasm, -at the Mitre Tavern in St. -James’s Market, Mistress Nance Oldfield, -an orphan of sixteen, niece of the -proprietress, reading <i>The Scornful Lady</i> -behind the bar. Captain Vanbrugh was -duly told of Farquhar’s delight and admiration, -and on the strength of them introduced -the girl to Rich, who did few -things so good in his lifetime as when he -put her upon the stage at fifteen shillings -a week. It was not long before this distinguished -actress and generous woman, -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>destined to lend her gayety and beautiful -bearing to the interpretation of Farquhar’s -women, enlivened the town as the -glorious Sylvia of <i>The Recruiting Officer</i>, -who can “gallop all the morning after a -hunting-horn, and all the evening after -a fiddle.”</p> - -<p>“We hear of Farquhar at one time,” -says Leigh Hunt, in a pretty summary, -“in Essex, hare-hunting (not in the style -of a proficient); at another, at Richmond, -sick; and at a third, in Shropshire on a -recruiting party, where he was treated -with great hospitality, and found material -for one of the best of his plays.”</p> - -<p><i>Love and a Bottle</i> inaugurated the vogue -of the Farquhar comedy; and Wilkes, -whose name in London carried favor and -precedence, was the Roebuck of the cast. -Its successors, <i>The Constant Couple</i> (with -a framework transferred and adapted -from its author’s earlier <i>Adventures of -Covent Garden</i>), and its sequel, <i>Sir Harry -Wildair</i>, again championed by the -“friendly and indefatigable” Wilkes, who -impersonated the engaging rakish heroes, -had long runs, and firmly established<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -their author’s fame. In 1702 Farquhar -produced <i>The Inconstant</i> (which he had -perverted from Fletcher’s <i>Wild Goose -Chase</i>, as if a fit setting were sought for -the wonderfully effective last act of his -own devising); and after <i>The Inconstant</i>, -<i>The Twin Rivals</i>. <i>The Stage Coach</i>, a -one-act farce in which he had a collaborator,<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> -dates from 1704, and <i>The Recruiting -Officer</i> from 1706; <i>The Beaux’ -Stratagem</i> was written in the spring -of 1707. This is a working record of -barely nine years; it represents a secure -and continuous artistic advance; and it -should have brought its patient originator -something better than the privilege -of dying young, “broken-hearted,” as -he confessed to Wilkes, “and without a -shilling.”</p> - -<p>Farquhar had but the trifling income -of an officer’s pay on which to support -his wife and his two little daughters. He -seems to have sought no political preferment,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -nor did his numerous patrons put -themselves out to advance him, although -these were the very days when men of -letters were crowded into the public service. -Ever and anon he received fifteen -guineas, then a very handsome sum, for a -play. Perhaps, like his rash gallants, he -had “a head to get money, and a heart to -spend it.” He greatly wished success, for -the sake of those never absent from his -thought; and he complained bitterly -when the French acrobats and rope-dancers -took from <i>The Twin Rivals</i> the -attention of pleasure-seeking Londoners, -much as poor Haydon complained afterwards -of the crowds who surged down -Piccadilly, to behold not his “Christ’s -Entry into Jerusalem” at all, but General -Tom Thumb, holding court under the -same roof.</p> - -<p>When Farquhar’s health was breaking, -and debts began to involve him at last, -it appears that the Earl of Ormonde, -his general, prompted him to sell his -commission in order to liquidate them, -and agreed to give him a captaincy. Or, -as is yet more probable, in view of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> -fact that Farquhar was already known by -the title of captain, he was urged to sell -out of the army, on a given pledge that -preferment of another sort awaited him. -His other industrious devices to secure -support for four having missed fire, he -gladly performed his part of the transaction, -only to experience a fatal delay -on the part of my Lord Ormonde, whose -mind had strayed to larger matters. In -fine, the unkept promise hurt the subaltern -to the heart; he sank, literally -from that hour, of grief and disquietude. -Lintott the stationer, and his old friend -Wilkes stood manfully by him, one with -liberal payment in advance, and one with -affectionate furtherance and gifts; but -Farquhar did not rally. It was to Wilkes, -as everybody knows, that he penned this -most touching testament: “Dear Bob, I -have not anything to leave thee to perpetuate -my memory but two helpless -girls. Look upon them sometimes! and -think of him who was, to the last moment -of his life, thine.” The end came -on or about April 29, 1707, George Farquhar -being just thirty years of age.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> -While he lay dying in Soho, his last and -best comedy was in progress at the new -magnificent Haymarket, and his audiences, -with a barren benevolence not uncharacteristic -of the unthinking human -species, are said to have wept for him. -He was buried in the parish church-yard -of St. Martin-in-the-Fields,<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> where Nell -Gwynne’s contrite ashes lay, and where -her legacied bells tolled for his passing.</p> - -<p>Farquhar’s name is always coupled -with those of Congreve, Wycherley, and -Vanbrugh, although in spirit and also in -point of time he was removed from the -influences which formed them. Many -critics, notably Hazlitt, Macaulay, and -Thackeray, have allowed him least mention -of the four, but he is, in reality, the -best playwright among them; and it is -greatly to the credit of a discreditable -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>period if he be taken as its representative. -He had Vanbrugh’s exuberant -vivacity, Congreve’s grace, Wycherley’s -knack of climax. Wycherley, retiring -into private life when Farquhar was -born, lived to see his exit; Etherege was -then at his zenith; Dryden’s <i>All for -Love</i> was in the printer’s case, and Otway, -almost on the point of his two great -works, was coming home ragged from -Flanders: Otway, whose boyish ventures -on the stage, and whose subsequent soldiering, -Farquhar was so closely to follow.</p> - -<p>Pope, and a gentler observer, Steele, -found Farquhar’s dialogue “low,” and so -it must have sounded between the brave -surviving extravagances of the Jacobean -buskin and the modulated utterances of -<i>Cato</i> and <i>The Revenge</i>. A practical talent -like Farquhar’s was bound to provoke -hard little words from the Popes who -shrank from his spontaneous style, and -the Steeles who could not approve of the -gross themes he had inherited. For sheer -good-breeding, some scenes in <i>The Way -of the World</i> can never be surpassed; -they prove that one cannot hold the stage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> -by talk alone. It is fortunate for Farquhar -that he could not emulate the -exquisitely civilized depravities of Congreve’s -urban Muse. But his dialogue is -not “low” to modern tastes; it has, in -general, a simple, natural zest, infinitely -preferable to the Persian apparatus -of the early eighteenth century. Even -he, however, can rant and deviate into -rhetoric, as soon as his lovers drop upon -one knee. More plainly in Farquhar’s -work than in that of any contemporary, -we mark the glamour of the Caroline -literature fading, and the breath of life -blowing in. An essentially Protestant -nationalism began to settle down upon -England for good and all with William -and Mary, and it brought subtle changes -to bear upon the arts, the trades, the -sports, and the manners of the people. -In Farquhar’s comedies we have the reflex -of a dulling and strengthening age; -the fantasticalities of the last three reigns -are all but gone; the Vandyck dresses -gleam and swish no longer. Speech becomes -more pert and serviceable, in a -vocabulary of lesser range; lives are vulgarizing,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> -that is, humanizing, and getting -closer to common unromantic concerns; -no such delicately unreal creature as Millamant, -all fire and dew and perfumery,—Millamant -who could not suffer to have -her hair done up in papers written in -prose, and who, quite by herself, is a vindication -of what Mr. Allibone is pleased -to call “Lamb’s sophistical and mischievous -essay,”—walks the world of Farquhar. -With him, notwithstanding that the sorry -business to be despatched is the same old -amorous intrigue, come in at once less -license, less affectation, less Gallicism. -He reports from the beginning what he -himself apprehends; his plays are shorthand -notes, albeit timid in character, upon -the transitional and prosaic time. His -company is made up of individuals he -had seen in a thousand lights at the -Spread Eagle and the Rummer; in the -Inner Temple and in St. James’s Park; -in barracks domestic and foreign; and -in his native place, where adventurers, -eloquent in purest Londonderry,<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> stumbled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> -along full of whiskey and ideas. -He anticipates certain phases of Private -Ortheris’s thorough-going love of London, -and figures his exiled Dicky as “just -dead of a consumption, till the sweet -smoke of Cheapside and the dear perfume -of Fleet-ditch” made him a man -again. In this laughing affectionate apprehension<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> -of the local and the temporal -lies Farquhar’s whole strength or weakness. -From the poets of the Restoration -there escapes, most incongruously, -now and then, something which betokens -a sense of natural beauty, or even a recognition -of the divine law; but Farquhar -is not a poet, and this spray from the -deeps is not in him. He perceives nothing -that is not, and opens no crack or -chink where the fancy can air itself for a -moment and</p> - -<div class="center">—“step grandly out into the infinite.”</div> - -<p class="unindent">Such a lack would not be worth remarking -in the debased and insincere writers -who but just preceded him. But from -the very date of his first dealings with -London managers, idealism was abroad, -and a man with affinities for “the things -that are more excellent” need have feared -no longer to divulge them, since the -court and the people, if not the dominant -town gentry, were with him. Farquhar -had neither the full moral illumination -nor the will, though he had the -capacity, to lend a hand to the blessed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> -work waiting for the opportunist. He was -young, he was of provincial nurture; he -was carried away by the theatrical tradition. -Yet his mind was a Medea’s kettle, -out of which everything issued cleaner -and more wholesome. Despite the -prodigious animal spirits of his characters, -they conduct their mad concerns -with sense and moderation; they manage -tacitly to proclaim themselves as temporarily -“on a tear,” as going forth to -angle in angling weather, and as likely to -lead sober citizen lives from to-morrow -on. Under bad old maintained conditions -they develop traits approximately -worthy of the <i>Christian Hero</i>. They -“look before and after.” They are to -be classed as neutrals and nondescripts, -for they have all the swagger of their -lax progenitors, and none of their deviltry. -They belong professionally to -one family, while they bear a tantalizing -resemblance to another. Farquhar -himself, perhaps unaware that partisanship -is better than compromise, -made his bold toss for bays both spiritual -and temporal. Imitating, as novices<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> -will ever do, the art back of him, he -adopted the claim to approbation which -that art never dreamed of. In the very -good preface to <i>The Twin Rivals</i> (which -has always been approved of critics rather -than of audiences), he sets up for a -castigator of vice and folly, and he offers -to appease “the ladies and the clergy,” -as, in some measure apparent to the -more metaphysical among them, he -may have done. His friend, Mr. John -Hopkins, the author of <i>Amasia</i>, invited, -on behalf of <i>The Constant Couple</i>, the -commendation of Collier. That open-minded -censor may have seen with -satisfaction, in the general trend of -Farquhar’s composition, the less and less -dubious day-beams of Augustan decency. -Though Farquhar did not live, like Vanbrugh -and the magnanimous Dryden, to -admit the abuse of a gift, and to deplore -it, he alone, of the minor dramatists, -seems all along to have had a negative -sort of conscience better than none. His -instincts continually get the better not -only of his environment, but of his practice. -Some uneasiness, some misgiving,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> -are at the bottom of his homely materialism. -He thinks it best, on the whole, to -forswear the temptation to be sublime, -and to keep to his cakes and ale; and -for cakes and ale he had an eminent -and inborn talent. What was ably said -of Hogarth, the great exemplar, will cover -all practicians of his school: “He -had an intense feeling for and command -over the impressions of senses and -habit, of character and passion, the serious -and the comic; in a word, of nature -as it fell in with his own observation, or -came into the sphere of his actual experience. -But he had little power beyond -that sphere, or sympathy for that which -existed only in idea. He was ‘conformed -to this world, not transformed.’” Or, -as Leigh Hunt, in his beautiful memoir, -adds, with acuteness, of Farquhar himself: -“He could turn what he had experienced -in common life to the best account, -but he required in all cases the -support of ordinary associations, and could -not project his spirit beyond them.” In -short, Farquhar lacked imagination. He -had insight, however, of another order,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> -which is his praise, and which distinguishes -him from all his fellows: he had -sympathy and charity.</p> - -<p>The major blot on the literature of the -English stage of the period is not its -libertinism, but rather its concomitant -utter heartlessness. “Arrogance” (so, according -to Erasmus, that ascetic scholar -Dean Colet used to remind his clergy) -“is worse than a hundred concubines.” -The slight sporadic touches of tenderness, -of pity, of disinterested generosity, -to be found by patient search in Congreve, -come in boldly with Farquhar, -and boldly overrun his prompter’s books. -Vanbrugh’s scenes stand on nothing but -their biting and extravagant sarcasm. -As Congreve’s characters are indiscriminately -witty, so Vanbrugh’s are universally -and wearisomely cynical, and at the -expense of themselves and all society. -His women in high life have no individuality; -they wear stings of one pattern. -The genial conception of the shrewd, -material Mrs. Amlet, however, in <i>The -Confederacy</i>, is worthy of Farquhar, and -certainly Congreve himself could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> -have bettered her in the execution. -Etherege’s typical Man of Mode is a tissue -of untruth, hardness, and scorn, all -in impeccable attire; a most mournful -spectacle. Thinking of such dainty monsters, -Macaulay let fly his famous invective -against their creators: “Foreheads -of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, -and tongues set on fire of hell!” -George Farquhar may be exempted altogether -from this too-deserved compliment. -There is honest mirth in his -world of fiction, there is dutifulness, -there is true love, there are good women; -there is genuine friendship between -Roebuck and Lovewell, between Trueman -and Hermes Wouldbe, between Aimwell -and Archer, and between the green -Tummas of <i>The Recruiting Officer</i> and -his Costar, whom he cannot leave behind. -Sylvia, Angelica, Constance, Leanthe, -Oriana, Dorinda, free-spoken as they are, -how they shine, and with what morning -freshness, among the tiger-lilies of that -evil garden of the Restoration drama! -These heroines are an innovation, for -they are maids, not wedded wives. As<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> -to the immortal periwigged young bloods -their suitors, they are “real gentlemen,” -as Hazlitt, who loved Farquhar, called -them, “and only pretended impostors;” -or, to quote Farquhar’s latest editor, Mr. -A. C. Ewald, they are “always men and -never yahoos.” Their author had no -interest in “preferring vice, and rendering -virtue dull and despicable.” Their -praise may be negative, but it establishes -a wide wall of difference between them -and the fops and cads with whom they -have been confounded. In their conversations, -glistening with epigram and -irony, malevolence has no part; they -sneer at no virtue, they tamper with -none; and at every turn of a selfish -campaign they find opportunity for honorable -behavior. From the mouths of -these worldlings comes satire, hot and -piping, against worldliness; for Farquhar -is as moralizing, if not as moral, as he -dares be. Some of the least attractive -of them, the most greedy and contriving, -have moments of sweetly whimsical -and optimistic speech. Thus Benjamin -Wouldbe, the plotter against his elder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> -brother in <i>The Twin Rivals</i>, makes his -adieu after the fashion of a true gallant: -“I scorn your beggarly benevolence! -Had my designs succeeded, I -would not have allowed you the weight -of a wafer, and therefore will accept -none.” The same person soars again -into a fine Aurelian speculation: “Show -me that proud stoic that can bear success -and champagne! Philosophy can -support us in hard fortune, but who can -have patience in prosperity?” Over his -men and women in middle life Farquhar -lingers with complacence entirely foreign -to his colleagues, to whom mothers, -guardians, husbands, and other apple-guarding -dragons were uniformly ridiculous -and odious. Justice Balance is as -attractive as a hearth-fire on a December -night; so is Lady Bountiful. Over -Fairbank, the good goldsmith, Farquhar -gets fairly sentimental, and permits -him to drop unaware into decasyllabics, -like the pastoral author of <i>Lorna -Doone</i>. His rogues are merely roguish, -in the softened sense of the word; in his -panorama, though black villains come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> -and go, it is only for an instant, and to -further some one dramatic effect. He -has eulogy for his heroes when they deserve -it, and when they do not you may -trust him to find a compassionate excuse; -as when poor Leanthe feelingly says of -her lover that “his follies are weakly -founded upon the principles of honor, -where the very foundation helps to undermine -the structure.” Even Squire Sullen, -for his lumpishness, is divorced without -derision, and in a peal of harmless -laughter. Farquhar, indeed, is all gentleness, -all kindness. He had the pensive -attitude of the true humorist towards the -world he laughed at; his characters let -slip words too deep for their living auditors. -It is curious that to a Restoration -dramatist, “a nether millstone,” we -should owe a perfect brief description of -ideal married life. In the scene of the -fourth act of <i>Sir Harry Wildair</i>, where -Lady Lurewell, with her “petrifying affectation,” -is trying to tease Sir Harry -out of all endurance on the subject of -his wife (whom he believes to be lost or -dead), and the degree of affection he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> -for her, he makes reply: “My own heart -whispered me her desires, ’cause she herself -was there; no contention ever rose -but the dear strife of who should most -oblige—no noise about authority, for neither -would stoop to command, where -both thought it glory to obey.” This is -meant to be spoken rapidly, and not -without its tantalizing lack of emphasis; -but what a pearl it is, set there in the -superlatively caustic dialogue! English -chivalry and English literature have no -such other golden passage in their rubrics, -unless it be the famous tribute to -the Lady Elizabeth Hastings that “to -love her was a liberal education,” or -Lovelace’s unforgettable song:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“I could not love thee, dear, so much,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Loved I not Honour more!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">The passage takes on a very great accidental -beauty when we remember that it -required courage, in its time and place, -to have written it. It is characteristic -also of Farquhar that it should be introduced, -as it is, on the top wave of a vivacious -and stormy conversation, which immediately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> -sweeps it under, as if in proof -that he understood both his art and his -audience. The conjugal tie, among the -leaders of fashion, was still something -to laugh at and to toy with. Captain -Vanbrugh, from whom nobody need expect -much edification, had put in the -mouth of his Constant, in a play which -was a favorite with Garrick, a bit of -sense and sincerity quoted, as it deserved -to be, by Hunt: “Though marriage be a -lottery in which there are a wondrous -many blanks, yet there is one inestimable -lot in which the only heaven on earth is -written.” And again: “To be capable -of loving one is better than to possess a -thousand.” This was in 1698, and Farquhar -therefore was not first, nor alone, -in daring to speak for the derided idea -of wedlock. Steele was soon to arise as -the very champion of domestic life; and -English wit, since he wrote, has never -subsisted by its mockery of the conditions -which create</p> - -<div class="center">“home-keeping days and household reverences.”</div> - -<p class="unindent">But it was Farquhar who spoke in behalf<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> -of these the most memorable word -of his generation. After that lofty evidence -of what he must be suspected to -have been, it is well to see, as best we -may, what manner of man George Farquhar -was. And first let us take some -extracts from his own account of himself, -“candid and modest,” as Hunt -named it.</p> - -<p>He gives us to understand that he had -an ardent temperament, held in check -by an introspective turn of thought, -by natural bashfulness, and by habits -of consideration for others. The portrait -is drawn from a letter in the <i>Miscellanies</i>, -of “a mind and person generally -dressed in black,” and might have -come bodily, and with charming grace, -from <i>The Spectator</i>. “I have very little -estate but what lies under the circumference -of my hat . . . and should I -by misfortune come to lose my head, I -should not be worth a groat.” “I am -seldom troubled by what the world calls -airs and caprices, and I think it an idiot’s -excuse for a foolish action to say: ‘’Twas -my humor.’” “I cannot cheerfully fix<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> -to any study which bears not a pleasure -in the application.” “Long expectation -makes the blessing always less to me; I -lose the great transport of surprise.” “I -am a very great epicure; for which reason -I hate all pleasure that’s purchased -by excess of pain. I can’t relish the jest -that vexes another. In short, if ever I -do a wilful injury, it must be a very great -one.” “I have many acquaintances, very -few intimates, but no friend; I mean, in -the old romantic way.” “I have no secret -so weighty but that I can bear it in -my own breast.” “I would have my passion, -if not led, at least waited on by my -reason.” This last text, repeated elsewhere -by Farquhar, which is the counterpart -of one in Sir Philip Sidney’s <i>Arcadia</i>, -has interest from the lips of a child -of the “dancing, drinking, and unthinking -time.” Farquhar’s face, in the old -prints, is wonderfully of a piece with -these amiable reports: a handsome, humane, -careworn, melancholy young face, -the negation of the contemporary idea of -the man about town. His constitution, -at its best, was but frail. “You are as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> -dear to me,” he says, pathetically, to his -Penelope, “as my hopes of waking in -health to-morrow morning.”</p> - -<p>A tradition has been received without -question by his many critics and biographers, -that his chief characters, all cast in -the same animated mould, are but incognitos -of himself. Highly-colored projections -of himself, with latent traits exaggerated, -and formed mental restraints -removed, they may indeed be. The public, -which loves identifications, insisted -on finding him revealed in his Archers -and Sir Harrys. Whether or not the -dramatists of the day had universally the -Rembrandtesque whim of painting themselves -into their own foregrounds, they -were obstinately supposed to do so, with -Etherege in Young Bellair, with Otway -in Jaffier. But the real Farquhar</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">—“courteous, facile, sweet,</span></div> -<div class="verse">Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride,”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">with his reserve, his simple dress, his thin, -agreeable voice, his early reputation at -college for uncongeniality, acting in every -emergency whither we can fairly trace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> -him with deliberate high-mindedness, is -far enough from the temper of his restless -and jocund creations. He wished -to remove the impression that he could -have been his own model; for he took -pains to inscribe <i>The Inconstant</i> to his -classmate, Richard Tighe, and to compliment -him upon his kinship with Mirabel, -“a gay, splendid, easy, generous, -fine young gentleman”; the applauded -type, in short, of all that Farquhar’s -heroes set out to be. Again, lest he -should pass for a realist as rabid as -Mademoiselle de Scudéry, who pinioned -three hundred and seventy of her acquaintances -between the covers of <i>Clélie</i>, -Farquhar adds this warning to his enthusiastic -dedication of <i>The Recruiting -Officer</i> “to all friends round the Wrekin”: -“Some little turns of humor that I met -with almost within the shade of that famous -hill gave the rise to this comedy; -and people were apprehensive that, by -the example of some others, I would -make the town merry at the expense of -the country gentleman. But they forgot -that I was to write a comedy, not a libel.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> -He disclaims everywhere, with the same -playful decisiveness, the interpretations -put upon his designs and actions by the -world of overgrown infants which he entertained. -Endowed with courage and -much personal charm, he had small chance -of distinguishing himself upon the field, -and for the most part shone at a garrison -mess; but he had led a not inadventurous -life, in which were incidents of -the most pronounced melodrama, with a -touch of mystery to enhance their value -for the curious. Farquhar had travelled, -and with an open, not an insular mind; -he had, by his own confession, too deep -an acquaintance with wine, and with the -nightingales of Spring Gardens, outsinging -“the chimes at midnight, Master -Shallow”; he had been, in short, though -with “melancholy as his every-day apparel,” -alive and abroad as a private Whig -of the Revolution, shy of ladies’ notice -till it came, and proud of it ever after. -When he printed, in his twenty-first year, -<i>The Adventures of Covent Garden</i>, he -added to it a boy’s bragging motto: <i>Et -quorum pars magna fui</i>. The inference<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> -seems to have clung closer to him than -he found comfortable. He complains, -not without significance, in his prose -essay upon the drama, that the public -think any rôle compounded of “practical -rake and speculative gentleman is, ten to -one, the author’s own character.” With -the incident which furnished its thrilling -closing scenes to <i>The Inconstant</i>, Farquhar -had probably no connection; he -takes pains to state that the hero of it -was the Chevalier de Chastillon, quite as -if he feared another confusion of himself, -as fearless and quick-witted a man, with -the “golden swashbucklers” of his imagination. -The rumor which confounded -them with him has next to nothing to -support it. Fortune, fashion, foolhardiness, -impudence, were not the stars which -shone upon Farquhar’s nativity. Such -exotic and epic virtues as may flourish -under these, such as do adorn the delightful -dandies he depicted, surely belonged -to him in person; and his quiet habit of -living apart and letting the town talk, -fixed to perpetuity the belief that he had -exploited himself vicariously, for good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> -and all, upon the stage. Certain qualities -of his, certain brave truces established -with adverse conditions, force one to consider -him with more attention and respect -than even his brilliant pen invites. -It is something to find him diffident and -studious in a bacchanalian society, and -with such scrupulous sensitiveness that a -mere inadvertence in boyhood forbade -him ever to fence again;<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> but his outstanding -characteristic, the thing which -sets him apart from his brocaded <i>dramatis -personæ</i>, is his known lasting devotion to -the welfare of his family, and his admirable -behavior in relation to his early and -extraordinary marriage.</p> - -<p>In 1702, Farquhar issued a charming -and little-known miscellany, called <i>Love -and Business</i>, “a collection of occasionary -verse and epistolary prose.” The poetic -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>exercises are of small importance; but -the other data (which survive as a hindrance, -rather than as a help, to biographers) -come near being of very definite -value. All manner of futile guesses have -been expended upon the identification of -his Penelope. It is given to no mouser -to name her with certainty; but, despite -the gossip of the greenroom, now as ever -too ready to weave romances about the -name of George Farquhar, internal evidence -is strongly against her having been -Anne Oldfield. Yet this is the supposition -of most of his editors. Commenting -upon one passage touching some villanous -stratagem from which Farquhar says he -was able to rescue a friend in the Low -Countries, a friend with whom he afterwards -condoles upon a robbery she had -undergone, Leigh Hunt adds that this may -have been the woman whom Farquhar -subsequently made his wife. A widow, -whose Christian name was Margaret, but -of whom we know so little else that we -cannot say whether she was English, or -whether her age considerably exceeded -his, conceived a passionate attachment for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> -him, and managed to have it represented -to him from several quarters not only -that she was kindly disposed towards him, -but that it would be well for his opening -career if he should seek her hand, as she -had estates and revenues. Eventually, -after we know not what hesitations natural -to a fastidious temperament, he proposed -to her and was accepted, and it -soon transpired that the bride was quite -as penniless as himself. Hunt does not -follow out his own hint in the matter of -the robbery, though the question, when -carefully considered, has a vital import. -If the victim were indeed the lady whom -Farquhar married later, and if she were -indeed robbed, it should signify that she -must then have been possessed of some -wealth, so that the report given to Farquhar -could not have been, up to that -time at least, a lie. On the other hand, -casuists must decide whether, again in -the event of the victim having been correctly -identified by Hunt, the robbery -itself may not have been an invention -meant, after Farquhar had declared his -allegiance, to quicken his sympathy, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> -to soften the coming revelation that the -robbery could never have resulted, owing -to a defect in the premises! There is -very much else about the <i>Letters</i> which -is confusing and inconsistent. They are -so disconnected, and they vary so in -tone and manner, as to suggest a doubt -whether, if not altogether imaginary, they -could have been meant for any one person. -A lady is announced as having returned -them for publication; she dresses -in mourning, and resides now on the -Continent, now in London or in the -country; her suitor very explicitly states -that he had long solicited in vain the -honor of her hand; and, in the end, with -farewells and an abrupt and unexplained -severing, he gives up the quest, with his -own admission that he has lost her and -that her heart “had no room for him.” -Now that the recipient of this correspondence, -Anne Oldfield or another, -should have returned it for commercial -purposes, not having been won by the -very real passion exhibited in parts of it, -seems somewhat peculiar; but to accept -as fact that Farquhar himself actually<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> -asked these letters back from her, and -printed them as they stood, is, under the -conditions, absurd, and irreconcilable with -our knowledge of his character from other -and prior sources. Hunt further suggests -that the <i>Miscellany</i> was gathered together -in some press of pecuniary trouble; -and its title, indeed, may hint at a whimsical -expectation that Love, being harnessed -and sent abroad to arouse curiosity -among readers, may return in the way -of Business to headquarters. But Farquhar, -in his bachelor days, had a fair income, -and would not have been so likely -to hear the wolf at the door as he was -later, when that sound would awake in -him a dread not ominous to himself alone. -It is possible that the undiscovered register -of his marriage bears the date of -1702 or even of 1701; if it were so, that -might explain the issue of his only book -not in dramatic dress, and the emergency -which called it forth. It is difficult indeed -to suppose, although modern delicacy -in these matters was just then a -somewhat unknown quantity, that we -have between its covers genuine love-letters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> -hot from the pen. Steele, of an August -morning nine years later, inserted in -<i>The Spectator</i> as the communication of a -third person, six of his own notes to his -comely and noble <i>fiancée</i>, Mary Scurlock. -But Farquhar had not Steele’s -earnestness and love of circumstantial -truth, nor his zest for pointing a moral. -Or was this publication the sort of thing -he would be likely, for a not unworthy -purpose, to do? Was he, in reality, a -shade more obtuse and misguided than -Miss Fanny Brawne? Rather let us believe -the <i>Letters</i> a work of fiction, and -only founded largely upon various bygone -moods and incidents of the foregoing -two years, which for one reason -or another might interest buyers. Such -is the description to “dear Sam” of Dryden’s -erratic funeral, which is almost -too keenly rhetorical a summing-up to -have been written the next day, or the -thoughtful and sensible surveys of the -Dutch. The amatory epistles, with their -leaven of reality, are presumably edited -out of all recognition. They make no -defined impression; they do not move<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> -forward; they veil impenetrably the traits -of the person addressed, who is made to -appear as a vanishing unrelenting goddess, -deaf and blind to George Farquhar pleading -his best. Whatever were the facts, -the report of them is chivalrous. Assume -for a moment that his wife stands -behind the whole of this correspondence, -or even behind the latter part of it, and -what seemed to constitute a little betrayal -in the very worst taste turns out to be -an innocent joke. Of course the “lady” -(or one of the ladies) lent the manuscripts -to the printers; of course Farquhar originated, -in order to give color to Mistress -Farquhar’s known pretence of riches, and -their joint subsequent poverty, the magnificent -thieving practised upon the never-thieved -and the unthievable! One -can fancy them both, in their hard chairs -in the bare room, laughing well and long, -between tears of anxious hope that the -more personal element in the <i>Miscellany</i> -might fetch them from the Covent Garden -book-stalls a parcel of fagots and a -dinner.</p> - -<p>Aside from all theorizing, it is pleasant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> -to know that their life together was -a happy one. The consensus of all witnesses, -in the significant absence of any -contrary voice, affirms that Farquhar, -having been trapped, bore himself like -the gentleman he was. Two children -were born to him, to brighten, but also to -sadden, his brief and diligent life. Under -his added anxieties he did his royal best; -he addressed to their mother, from first -to last, no word of reproach for her fraud.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“The secret pleasure of the generous act</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Is the great mind’s great bribe.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">In its fragrance of faith and patience and -self-sacrificing tenderness, their domestic -story can almost rank next after that sacred -one of Charles and Mary Lamb.</p> - -<p>Farquhar’s widow, who had loved him, -appears to have loved his memory.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> -did not survive her husband many years; -for there is reason to suppose she died -before 1719, and in penury. Poor Farquhar -used to declare that the dread that -his family might suffer want was far more -bitter to him than death. Wilkes gave -at his theatre, in the May of 1708, a benefit -for Margaret Farquhar, and twelve -years later he was acting as trustee for -the young girls Mary and Anne Margaret, -whose pension is said by the <i>Encyclopædia -Britannica</i> to have amounted to -thirty pounds; it was obtained through -the exertions of Edmund Challoner, to -whom their father had dedicated his <i>Miscellanies</i>. -Wilkes seems to have again -aided both the orphans when they came -of age. One of them married an humble -tradesman, and died early; the other was -living in 1764, wholly uneducated, and, as -it is said on small authority, as a maid-servant.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> -Farquhar’s elder biographers -and editors, Ware, Genest, Chetwood, and -the rest, writing in this daughter’s lifetime, -were apparently unconscious of her -existence; but the thought of her father’s -child, old, neglected, and in a menial position, -served to anger Leigh Hunt as -late as 1842.</p> - -<p>Fear and forecast of what is only too -likely to befall the helpless, depressed -Farquhar in the April long ago, when he -lay dying of consumption, and when, -with a fortitude which sustained him -under his bitter disappointment, for six -weeks, he wrote and finished his masterly -comedy <i>The Beaux’ Stratagem</i>. As he -drew near the end of the second act he -was told to give up hope; but the second -act closes with the famous rattling -catechism between Cherry and Archer, -and the best bit of verse its author ever -made; and the third starts in with the -hearty sweet laugh—Anne Oldfield’s -laugh—of that “exquisite creature, Mrs. -Sullen.” On a fund of grief, Farquhar -enriched his London with a legacy of -perpetual merriment. The unflagging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> -impetus of his dramas, above and beyond -their very real intrinsic merit, accounts -for their great and yet unforfeited popularity. -They descend to us associated -with the intellectual triumphs of the -most dear and dazzling names upon the -English stage; they move upon the -wings of intelligence and good-nature; -they “give delight, and hurt not.” They -swarm with soldiers, welcome figures -long tacitly prohibited from the boards, -as too painful a reminder of the Civil -Wars. They begin with the clatter of -spurs, the bang of doors, the hubbub -of bantering voices in “a broadside of -damme’s.” Sergeant Kite appears, followed -by a mob on whom he lavishes -his wheedling, inspiriting gibble-gabble; -Roebuck enters in fantastic colloquy -with a beggar; Sir Harry crosses the -road, singing, with footmen after him, -and Vizard meanwhile indicating him to -Standard as “the joy of the playhouse -and the life of the park, Sir Harry Wildair, -newly come from Paris”; <i>The Twin -Rivals</i> opens in a volley of epigrams; -the rise of the curtain in <i>The Beaux’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> -Stratagem</i> discloses sly old Boniface and -the ingenious Cherry calling and running, -running and calling, in a fluster -pregnant of farce and revel. Farquhar’s -pages are not for the closet; they have -little passive charm; to quote from them, -full as they are of familiar saws almost -all his own, is hardly fair. His mother-wit -arises from the ludicrous and unforeseen -predicament, not from vanity and -conscious power; it is integral, not mere -repartee; and it never calls a halt to the -action. As was well said by Charles -Cowden Clarke, “there are no traps for -jests” in Farquhar; “no trains laid to -fire <i>équivoque</i>.” The clear fun, spurting -unannounced in dialogue after dialogue, -in incident after incident; the -incessant Molière-like masquerades; the -thousand little issues depending upon -by-play and transient inspiration; the -narrowing scope and deepening sentiment -of the plot, like a secret given to -the players, to be told fully only to the -audience most in touch with them—these -commend Farquhar’s vivacious rôles to -actors, and make them both difficult<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> -and desirable. With what unction, from -an actor’s lips, falls his manifold and -glowing praise of theatres! What a pretty -picture, a broad wash of rose-purple -and white, he can make of the interior -seen from the wings! “There’s such a -hurry of pleasure to transport us; the -bustle, noise, gallantry, equipage, garters, -feathers, wigs, bows, smiles, ogles, love, -music, and applause!” And again, in -another mood: “The playhouse is the -element of poetry, because the region of -beauty; the ladies, methinks, have a more -inspiring, triumphant air in the boxes -than anywhere else. They sit commanding -on their thrones, with all their subject -slaves about them; their best clothes, -best looks; shining jewels, sparkling eyes; -the treasures of the world in a ring.” -And Mirabel, who is speaking, ends with -an ecstatic sigh: “I could wish that my -whole life long were the first night of a -new play!”</p> - -<p>This is a drop, or a rise, from Congreve -and his aristocratic abstractions. Farquhar, -in his youth, had modelled himself -chiefly upon the comedy of Congreve,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> -and may be said to have perfected -the mechanism which the genius of Congreve -had brought into vogue. He never -attained, nor could attain, Congreve’s -scholarly elegance of proportion and his -consummate diction. But he had the -happiness of being no purely literary -dramatist; he had technical knowledge -and skill. He brought the existing heroes -with their conniving valets, the -buxom equivocal maids, the laughing, -masking, conscienceless fine ladies, out -of their disreputable moonlight into -healthful comic air; and added to them, -in the transfer, a leaven of homely lovableness -which will forever keep his masterpieces -upon the stage.</p> - -<p>Farquhar’s original intellect has a value -only relative; he may be considered as -Goldsmith’s tutor rather than as Congreve’s -disciple. Goldsmith had no small -knowledge of Farquhar, his forerunner by -sixty years as a sizar student of Trinity; -and, like him, he is reported to have been -dropped from his class for a buffoonery. -What friends (<i>Arcades ambo</i>, in both Virgilian -and blameless Byronese) might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> -these two parsons’ sons have been! Scrub, -Squire Sullen’s servant, in <i>The Beaux’ -Stratagem</i>, who “on Saturday draws warrants, -and on Sunday draws beer,” was a -part Goldy once greatly desired to act. -He, too, when he came to write plays, -cast about for conventional types to handle -and improve. Tony and his incomparable -mother would hardly have been, -without their first imperfect apparition -in Wycherley’s powerful (and stolen) -<i>Plain Dealer;</i> and Young Marlow and -Hastings are frank reproductions of -Archer and Aimwell, in a much finer -situation. Miss Hardcastle hopes that in -her cap and apron she may resemble -Cherry. And no one seems to have -traced a celebrated passage in <i>The Vicar -of Wakefield</i> either to my Lady Howdye’s -message to my Lady Allnight repeated -by Archer (who in this same scene introduces -the “topical song” upon the -modern boards), or else to the example -of the manœuvring Bisarre in Act II., -Scene I., of <i>The Inconstant</i>. Surely, -“forms which proceed from simple -enumeration and are exposed to validity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> -from a contradictory instance” supplies -the unique original of the nonsense-rhetoric -which so confounded poor Moses.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> -The talk of Clincher Junior and -Tim, of Kite, Bullock, Scrub, Lyric, and -the unbaptized wench Parly, of the constable -showing the big bed to Hermes -Wouldbe, the talk, that is, of Farquhar’s -common people, shows humor altogether -of what we may call the Goldsmith -order: genial, odd, grotesque paradox, -springing from Irish inconsequence and -love of human kind.</p> - -<p>In the sixth year of Queen Anne, when -Farquhar died, Steele was married to his -“Prue,” and having seen the last of his -three reformatory dramas “damned for -its piety,” sought Joseph Addison’s approval -and collaboration, and fell to designing -<i>The Tatler</i>. Fielding was newborn, -Johnson just out of the cradle,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> -Pope was trying a cunning young hand -at his first <i>Pastorals;</i> Defoe, an alumnus -of Newgate, was beating his way outward -and upward; Swift, yet a Whig, was known -but for his <i>Tale of a Tub</i>. The fresh waters -were rising on all sides to vivify the -sick lowlands of the decadence. The -kingdoms had a forgotten lesson, and -long in the learning, set before them: -to regain, as a basis for legitimate results, -their mental independence and simplicity; -to serve art for art’s sake, and to -achieve, through the reactionary formalism -of the nascent eighteenth century, -freedom and a broad ethic outlook. It -was as if Comedy, in her winning meretricious -perfections, had to die, that English -prose might live. It is enough for -an immature genius of the third order, -born under Charles the Second, to have -vaguely foreshadowed a just and imperative -change. Farquhar certainly does -foreshadow it, albeit with what theologians -might call absence of the necessary -intention.</p> - -<p>He wrote excellent prefaces and prologues. -His <i>Discourse upon Comedy</i>, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> -the <i>Miscellanies</i>, did pioneer work for his -theory, since expounded by more authoritative -critics, and received by the English -world, that the observance or non-observance -of the dramatic unities is at -the will of the wise, and that for guidance -in all such matters playwrights -should look to Shakespeare rather than -to Aristotle. The <i>Discourse</i>, in Farquhar’s -clear, sunny, homespun, forceful -style, does him honor, and should be reprinted. -His best charm is that he cannot -be didactic. His suasion is of the -strongest, but he has the self-consciousness -of all sensitive and analytic minds, -which keeps him free here as elsewhere -from the slightest assumption of despotism. -It is very refreshing, in the face of -that incessant belaboring of the reader -which Lesage was setting as a contemporaneous -fashion, to come across Farquhar’s -gentle good-humored salutatory: -“If you like the author’s book, you have -all the sense he thought you had; if you -dislike it, you have more sense than he -was aware of!” Had he lived longer, or -a little later, we should have found him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> -as well, with his turn for skirmishing -psychology, among the essayists and the -novelists. There were in him a mellowness -and an unction which have their fullest -play in professedly subjective writing. -Farquhar, after all, did not fulfil himself, -for he followed an ill outgoing fashion -in æsthetics rather than further a right -incoming one. No one can help begrudging -him to the period he adorned. -He deserved to flourish on the manlier -morrow, and to hold a historic position -with the regenerators of public taste in -England. “Ah, go hang thyself up, my -brave Crillon, for at Arques we had a -fight, and thou wert <span class="smcap">NOT</span> in it!” One -can fancy Sir Richard Steele forever -quoting that at Captain George Farquhar, -in some roomy club-window in -Paradise.</p> - -<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37">[37]</a> Incipit Annus Academicus Die Julii 9<sup>a</sup> 1694.</p> - - - -<div class="center"> -<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Matriculation entry"> -<tr><td align="center">Die 17a Julii</td><td align="center">Georgius Farquhare Sizator</td><td align="center">filius Gulielmi Farqhare Clerici</td><td align="center">Annos 17</td><td align="center">Natus Londonderry</td><td align="center">ibidem educatus sub magistro Walker</td><td align="center">Eu. Lloyd (college tutor)</td></tr> -</table></div> -<p class="unindent">This matriculation entry from the register of Trinity does -away with our sizar’s presumed father, Rev. John Farquhar, -prebendary of Raphoe. We hear nothing more, -ever after, of the Farquhar family, who henceforth leave -young George to his own profane devices; nor can any -certainty be attached to additional information, sometimes -proffered, that the father had seven children in all, and -held a living of only one hundred and fifty pounds a -year. One other point is fixed by the entry, to wit: if -George Farquhar was seventeen in the July of 1694, he -cannot have been born in 1678.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38">[38]</a> This was the theatre built by Sir Christopher Wren -in 1672.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39">[39]</a> Peter Anthony Motteux, the wild and clever linguist -and dramatist, who made the best English translation of -<i>Don Quixote</i>. <i>The Stage Coach</i>, itself an adaptation, -has little merit beyond its liveliness.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40">[40]</a> The register of burial is dated a month later than -the received date of his death. It reads simply: “23 May, -George Falkwere, M.” The initial is the sapient sexton’s -indication that this was neither a W (woman) nor a -C (child). The spelling of the name betokens its usual -and original pronunciation. The present famous porticoed -church was not built for nineteen years after Farquhar -died.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41">[41]</a> The not altogether foolish censure has been cast upon -the rogue Teague in <i>The Twin Rivals</i> that he speaks an -impossible brogue, which might as well be Welsh. Farquhar -did not succeed in transferring to paper the weird and -unlovely Ulster dialect with which he was familiar in boyhood, -and which had figured already in the third act of <i>Henry -the Fifth</i>, in Jonson’s Irish masque, in Shadwell’s <i>Lancashire -Witches;</i> which was simultaneously being used in -his farce <i>The Committee</i>, by Dryden’s friend Howard, -and which was afterwards to have good corroboration in -Aytoun’s <i>Massacre of the MacPherson</i>. Farquhar employs -it twice elsewhere, passably well in the case of -Torlough Macahone of the parish of Curroughabegley -(the personage who built a mansion-house for himself and -his predecessors after him), and with lamentable flatness in -that of Dugard in his last comedy. Dugard is a rival of -the nursery-maid dear to almanac humorists, who is wont -to exclaim: “Can’t ye tell boi me accint that ’tis Frinch -Oi am!” It was one of Farquhar’s inartistic mistakes that -he made no loving study of this or of anything touching -nearly his own people. His Irishmen, with the exception -of Roebuck, are either rascals or characterless nobodies. -The name Teague, or Teig, which Howard had also employed, -is old and pure North Irish; and no less pleasant -an authority than George Borrow reminds us in the -<i>Romano Lavo-Lil</i> that it is Danish in origin.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42">[42]</a> Dear Dick Steele, in 1701, while Captain of Fusileers, -had a duel thrust upon him; and in parrying, his -sword pierced his man. To his remorse may be ascribed -his hatred of the custom of duelling, expressed afterwards -on every occasion. Steele owed his start in life to James -Butler, Duke of Ormonde, who entered him among the -boys on the Charterhouse foundation. This peer was -grandfather to the man who failed George Farquhar.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43">[43]</a> Mrs. Farquhar published in 1711 an octavo volume -of the <i>Plays, Letters, and Verses</i>. Among the verses figures -a poem of six cantos dedicated to the victorious Earl of -Peterborough, entitled <i>Barcelona</i>. “It was found among -my dear deceased husband’s writings,” says the widow, -in her prefatory note. He was not at the siege, and it -is possible that the six cantos were a manuscript copy -of the effusion of some former comrade. Farquhar was -the author of several songs, one, of highly didactic complexion, -having emanated from him at the reputed age of -ten. Of these, only two are of fair lyrical quality: the -page’s song in <i>Love and a Bottle</i>, and “Tell me, Aurelia, -tell me, pray,” which Robert Southey included in his -collection.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44">[44]</a> <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i> dates from 1766. Almost -twenty years before that, the immortal Partridge had remarked -to Tom Jones, quoting his schoolmaster: “Polly -matete cry town is my daskalon.” Noble nonsense hath -her pedigree. Goldsmith, however, is not so likely to -have taken his cue from Fielding.</p></div></div> - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p> - - - -<h2>IV<br /> - -TOPHAM BEAUCLERK<br /> - -<small>1739-1780</small><br /> - -<small>AND</small><br /> - -BENNET LANGTON<br /> - -<small>1741-1800</small></h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a><br /><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p> - - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-064-drop-i.jpg" width="110" height="106" alt="I" /> -</div> - -<p class="drop-capi">IN Samuel Johnson’s famous -circle nearly every man -stands for himself, full of -definite purpose and power. -But two young men are -there who did nothing of moment, whose -names chime often down the pages of all -his biographies, and to whom the world -must pay honor, if only for the friendship -they took and gave. As Apollo should -be set about with his Graces “tripping -neatly,” so the portentous old apparition -of Johnson seems never so complete and -endearing as when attended by these -two above all things else Johnsonians. -When the Turk’s Head is ajar in Gerrard -Street, in shadow-London; when the -“unclubable” Hawkins strides over the -threshold, and Hogarth goes by the window<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> -with his large nod and smile; when -Chamier is there reading, Goldsmith posing -in purple silk small-clothes, Sir Joshua -fingering his trumpet, Burke and little -brisk Garrick stirring “bishop”<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> in their -glasses, and the king of the hour, distinguished -by his lack of ruffles, is rolling -about in his chair of state, saying something -prodigiously humorous and wise, -it is still Bennet Langton and Topham -Beauclerk who most give the scene its -human genial lustre, standing with laughter -behind him, arm in arm. They were -his favorites, and it is the most adorable -thing about them both that they made -out to like James Boswell, who was jealous -of them. (Perhaps they had apprehended -thoroughly Newman’s fine aphorism -concerning a bore: “You may yield, -or you may flee: you cannot conquer!”) -The rare glimpses we have of their brotherly -lives is through the door which opens -or shuts for Johnson. Between him and -them was deep and enduring affection,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> -and what little is known of them has a -right to be more, for his sake.</p> - -<p>Bennet Langton, born in 1741 in the -very neighborhood famous now as the -birthplace of Tennyson, was the elder son -of the odd and long-descended George -Langton of Langton, and of Diana his -wife, daughter of Edmund Turnor, Esquire, -of Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire. -While a lad in the fen-country, he read -<i>The Rambler</i>, and conceived the purest -enthusiasm for its author. He came to -London, indeed, on the ideal errand of -seeking him out, and, thanks to the kind -apothecary Levett, found the idol of his -imagination at home at No. 17 Gough -Square, Fleet Street. Despite the somewhat -staggering circumstances of Johnson’s -attire,—for the serious boy had -rashly presupposed a stately, fastidious, -and well-mannered figure,—he paid his -vows, and commended himself to his -new friend for once and all. Langton -entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1757, -at the age of sixteen.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> The Doctor, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> -had known him about three years, followed -his career at the university with -interest, writing to Langton’s tutor, then -“dear Tom Warton,” just appointed to -the professorship of poetry held by his -father, and afterwards poet-laureate: “I -see your pupil: his mind is as exalted -as his stature,” and to Langton’s self the -sweet generality: “I love, dear sir, to -think of you.” He even paid his Freshman -a visit, and swam sportively across -a dangerous pool in the Isis, in the teeth -of his warning; and here also, in the Oxford -which was long ago his own “tent -of a night,” he fell across a part of his -destiny in the shape of that strange -bird, Mr. Topham Beauclerk, then a taking -scapegrace of eighteen. The Doctor -must have shaken his head at first, and -wondered at the juxtaposition of this -arrant Lord of Misrule and the “evangelical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> -goodness” of his admirable Langton, -until mollified by the knowledge -that a species of cult for himself, and -ardent perusal of his writings, had first -brought them together. It was a pleasant -thought to him, that of the two young -ribboned heads high in the quadrangle, -bending for the ninth time over <i>The -Reasons Why Advice is Generally Ineffectual</i>, -<i>The Mischief of Unbounded Raillery</i>, -and the jolly satire on <i>Screech-Owls;</i> -or smiling over the shy Verecundulus -and the too-celebrated Misellus who were -part of the author’s machinery for adding -“Christian ardor to virtue, and Christian -confidence to truth.”</p> - -<p>Beauclerk, like Langton, was a critic -and a student; he was well-bred, urbane, -and of excellent natural parts; moreover, -he was a wit, one of the very foremost of -his day, when wits grew in every garden. -An only child, he was born in London in -the December of 1739, and named after -that benevolent Topham of Windsor who -left the manors of Clewer Brocas and -Didworth and a collection of paintings -and drawings to his father, the handsome<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> -wild Lord Sydney Beauclerk, fifth son of -the first Duke of St. Albans, and also, -in his time, a gentleman commoner of -Trinity. Lord Sydney died early, in the -autumn of 1744, and was buried in Westminster -Abbey with his hero-brother Aubrey, -whose epitaph, still to be read there, -Thomson seems to have written. All the -pretty toys and curios passed to Topham -the little boy, under the guardianship -of Lady Beauclerk, his excellent -but literal mother, once Mary Norris of -Speke in Lancashire. His tutor was -named Parker, and must have been a -much-enduring man. Young Beauclerk -grew up, bearing a resemblance in many -ways to Charles II.; and so it befell -that with his aggravating flippancy, his -sharp sense, his quiver full of gibes, his -time-wasting, money-wasting moods, foreign -as Satan and his pomps to those of -his sweet-natured college companion, he -was able to strike Dr. Johnson in his -own political weak spot. A flash of the -liquid Stuart eye was enough to disarm -Johnson at the very moment when he -was calling up his most austere frown;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> -it was enough to turn the vinegar of his -wrath to the honey of kindness. <i>Il ne -nous reste qu’une chose à faire: embrassons-nous!</i> -as the wheedling Prince, at a -crisis, says to Henry Esmond. Johnson, -as everybody knows, was a Jacobite. No -sincerer testimony could he have given to -his inexplicable liking for a royal rogue -than that he allowed Nell Gwynn’s great-grandson -to tease him and tyrannize over -him during an entire lifetime. A choice -spectacle this: Mr. Topham Beauclerk, -on his introduction, literally bewitching -Dr. Samuel Johnson! The stolid moralist -was enraptured with his Jack-o’-lantern -antics; he rejoiced in his manners, his -taste and literary learning; admired him -indiscreetly, rich clothes, equipage, and -all; followed his whims meekly, expostulated -with him almost against his traitorous -impulses, and clung to him to the end -in unbroken fondness and faith.</p> - -<p>Beauclerk had immense gayety and -grace, and the full force given by high -spirits. His accurate, ever-widening -knowledge of books and men, his consummate -culture, and his fearlessness, sat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> -handsomely on one who was regarded by -contemporary old ladies as a mere “macaroni.” -It was a matter of course that he -tried for no degree at college. The mistress -of Streatham Park, who was by no -means his adorer, and who remembered -his chief wickedness in remembering that -“he wished to be accounted wicked,” informs -us in a private jotting since published -that he was “a man of very strict -veracity.” A philosopher and a truth-teller, -whatever his worldly weaknesses, -was sure to be a character within the -range of Johnson’s affections. It was he -who most troubled the good Doctor, he -for whom he suffered in silence, with -whom he wrangled; he whose insuperable -taunting promise, never reaching any -special development, vexed and disheartened -him; yet, perhaps because of these -very things, though Bennet Langton was -infinitely more to his mind, it was Absalom, -once again, whom the old fatherly -heart loved best. Nor was he unrepaid. -None loved him better, in return, -than his “Beau,” the very mirror of the -name, who was wont to pick his way up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> -the grimy Fleet Street courts “with veneration,” -as Boswell records.</p> - -<p>Bennet Langton, as Mr. Forster expresses -it in his noble <i>Life of Goldsmith</i>, was -“an eminent example of the high and humane -class who are content to ‘ring the -bell’ to their friends.” He was a mild -young visionary, scrupulous, tolerant, and -generous in the extreme; modest, contemplative, -averse to dissipation; a perfect -talker and reader, and a perfect listener; -with a face sweet as a child’s, -fading but now, among his kindred, on -the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He -left a gracious memory behind at Oxford, -where his musing bust adorns the old -monastic library of Trinity. He was six -feet six inches tall, slenderly built, and -slightly stooping. “The ladies got about -him in drawing-rooms,” said Edmund -Burke, “like maids about the Maypole!”</p> - -<p>Miss Hawkins, in her <i>Memoirs</i>, names -him as the person with whom Johnson -was certainly seen to the fairest advantage. -His deferent suave manner was -the best foil possible to the Doctor’s extraordinary -explosions. He had supreme<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> -self-command; no one ever saw him angry; -and in most matters of life, as a -genuine contrast to his beloved friend -Beauclerk, he was apt to take things a -shade too seriously. We learn from Mr. -Henry Best, author of some good <i>Personal -and Literary Memorials</i>, that the -advance rumors of the French Revolution -found Langton, in the fullest sense, -an aristocrat; but it was not long before -he became, from conviction, a thorough -Liberal, and so remained, although he -suffered a great unpopularity, owing to -this change, in his native county. He -wrote, in 1760, a little book of essays -entitled <i>Rustics</i>, which never got beyond -the passivity of manuscript. The year -before, under the date of July 28th, -Langton contributed to the pages of -<i>The Idler</i> the paper numbered 67 and -entitled <i>A Scholar’s Journal</i>. It is a -pleasant study of procrastination and of -shifting plans, a gentle bit of humor to -be ranked as autobiographic. There is -an indorsement of Montrose in its heroic -advice to “risk the certainty of little for -the chance of much.” But Langton’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> -graceful academic pen was not destined -to a public career. Perseverance of any -sort was not native to him. He fulfilled -beautifully, adds the vivacious Miss Hawkins, -“the pious injunction of Sir Thomas -Browne, ‘to sit quietly in the soft showers -of Providence,’ and might, without injustice, -be characterized as utterly unfit -for every species of activity.” Yet at -the call of duty, so well was the natural -man dominated by his unclouded will, -he girded himself to any exertion. Wine-drinking -was habitual with him, and he -felt its need to sharpen and rouse his intellect; -“but the idea of Bennet Langton -being what is called ‘overtaken,’” -wrote the same associate whom we have -been quoting, “is too preposterous to be -dwelt on.” She furnishes one illustration -of Langton’s Greek serenity. Talking -to a company, of a chilly forenoon, -in his own house, he paused to remark -that if the fire lacked attention it might -go out: a brief, casual, murmurous interruption. -He resumed his discourse, -breaking off presently, and pleading abstractedly -with eye in air: “Pray ring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> -for coals!” All sat looking at the fire, -and so little solicitous about the impending -catastrophe that presently Langton -was off again on the stream of his softened -eloquence. In a few minutes came -another lull. “Did anybody answer that -bell?” A general negative. “Did anybody -ring that bell?” A sly shaking -of heads. And once more the inspired -monody soared among the clouds, at -last dropping meditatively to the hearthstone: -“Dear, dear, the fire is out!”</p> - -<p>Langton was the centre of a group, -wherever he happened to be, talking delightfully, -and twirling the oblong gold-mounted -snuff-box, which promptly -appeared as sociabilities began: a conspicuous -figure, with his height, his courteous -smile, his mild beauty, and his habit -of crossing his arms over his breast, -or locking his hands together on his -knee. He was a great rider, and could -run like a hound. He had a queerness of -constitution which seemed to leave him -at his lowest ebb every afternoon about -two of the clock, forgetful, weary, confused, -and without an idea in his head;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> -but after a little food, he was himself -again. At dinner-parties he usually rose -fasting, “such was the perpetual flow of -his conversation, and such the incessant -claim made upon him.” A morning call -from Mr. Langton was a thing to suggest -the eternal years; yet we are told that -satiety dwelt not where he was; like -Cowley, “he never oppressed any man’s -parts, or put any man out of countenance.” -He had much the same sense -of humor as Beauclerk had, and his -speech was quite as full of good sense -and direct observation, if not as cutting. -He indicted a fault of Edmund Burke’s -in one extreme stroke: “Burke whisks -the end of his tail in the face of an -arguer!” Johnson, the arch-whisker of -tails, was not to be brought to book; -but Burke’s greatness was of a texture to -bear and enjoy the thrust. It is curious -that Langton was markedly fond of -<i>Hudibras;</i> such a relish indicates, perhaps, -the turn his own wit might have -taken, had it not been held in by too -much second thought.</p> - -<p>Johnson was wont to announce that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> -valued Langton for his piety, his ancient -descent, his amiable behavior, and his -mastery of Greek. “Who in this town -knows anything of Clenardus, sir, but -you and I?” he would say. In the midst -of his talk Langton would fall into the -“vowelled undertone” of the tongue he -loved, correcting himself with a little -wave of the hands, and the apologetic -phrase: “And so it goes on.” “Steeped -to the lips in Greek” he was indeed, -bursting out with a joyous salute to the -moon of Hellas, upon a friend’s doorstep, -or making grotesque Hellene puns, -for his own delight,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> upon the blank leaves -of a pocket-book. Every one familiar -with Johnsoniana will recall the charming -and spirited retort written by Dr. -Barnard, then Dean of Derry, later, Bishop -of Killaloe, which closes:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“If I have thoughts and can’t express ’em,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Gibbon shall teach me how to dress ’em</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">In terms select and terse;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Jones teach me modesty and Greek;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Smith, how to think; Burke, how to speak;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">And Beauclerk, to converse!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p> - -<p class="unindent">In all deference to the illustrious Sir -William Jones, it may be claimed that -“modesty and Greek” were the very -arts in which Langton was a past-master. -But he was an amateur, and a -private scholar, and his name was a -dissyllable; else the Dean might have -tossed at his feet as pretty a compliment -as that given in the last line to -his colleague. It must have gratified -Johnson that Langton refused, at Reynolds’s -dinner-table, “like a sturdy scholar,” -to sign the famous Round Robin -(not signed, either, by Beauclerk) which -besought him to “disgrace the walls of -Westminster with an English inscription.” -And as if to keep Langton firmly -of his own mind on the subject, it was to -him the Doctor confided the Greek quatrain, -sad and proud, which he had dedicated -to Goldsmith’s<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> memory.</p> - -<p>For Bennet Langton Johnson had no -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>criticism but praise. He presented him -with pride to Young and to Richardson, -described him handsomely to Hannah -More, and proceeded to draw his character -for Miss Reynolds, ere she had met -him, with such “energy and fond delight” -as she avowed she never could -forget. What fine ringing metal was -Johnson’s commendation! “He is one -of those to whom Nature has not spread -her volumes, nor uttered her voices, in -vain.” “Earth does not bear a worthier -gentleman.” “I know not who will go -to Heaven if Langton does not.” And -in the sweetest and completest approval -ever put by one mortal upon another: -“<i>Sit anima mea cum Langtono!</i>” Yet -even with this “angel of a man” the Doctor -had one serious and ludicrous quarrel.</p> - -<p>It was the fatal outcome of his uneven -moods that he must needs be disenchanted -at times even with his best beadsmen: -there came days when he would -deny Beauclerk’s good-humor to be anything -but “acid,” Langton’s anything but -“muddy.” He considered it the sole -grave fault of the latter that he was too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> -ready to introduce a religious discussion -into a mixed assembly, where he knew -scarcely any two of the company would -be of the same mind. On Boswell’s suggestion -that this may have been done for -the sake of instructing himself, Johnson -replied angrily that a man had no more -right to take that means of gaining information -than he had to pit two persons -against each other in a duel for the sake -of learning the art of self-defence. Some -indiscretion of this sort on Langton’s -part seems to have alienated the friends -for the first and last time. It was during -their transient bitterness that the Doctor -made the historic apology, across the -table, to Oliver Goldsmith; an incident -which, however beautiful in itself, was a -hard back-handed hit at Langton, standing -by. Croker’s conjecture may be true -that the business which threatened to -break a fealty of some sixteen years’ standing -arose rather from Langton’s settling -his estate by will upon his sisters, whose -tutor he had been. On hearing of it, the -Great Cham grumbled and fumed, politely -applying to the Misses Langton the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> -title of “three dowdies!”<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> and shouting, -in a feudal warmth, that “an ancient estate, -sir! an ancient estate should always -go to males.” In fact, the Doctor behaved -very badly, very sardonically, and -was pleased to lay hold of a post by Temple -Bar one night, and roar aloud over a -piece of possible folly up in Lincolnshire -which concerned him not in the least. -But in due time the breach, whatever its -cause, was healed. The Doctor, in writing -of it, uses one of his balancing sentences: -“Langton is a worthy fellow, -without malice, though not without resentment.” -The two could not keep -apart very long, despite all the unreason -in the world. “Johnson’s quarrels,” Mr. -Forster tells us, “were lovers’ quarrels.” -Another memorable passage-at-arms, -rich in comedy, happened in the course -of one of Johnson’s sicknesses, when, in -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>the cloistral silence of his chamber, he -solemnly implored Bennet Langton, always -the companion who comforted his -sunless hours, to tell him wherein his -life had been faulty. His shy and sagacious -monitor wrote down, as accusation -enough, various Scriptural texts recommending -tolerance, humility, long-suffering, -and other meek ingredients which -were not predominant in the sinner’s social -composition. The penitent earnestly -thanked Langton on taking the paper -from his hand, but presently turned his -short-sighted eyes upon him from the -pillow, and emerging from what his own -verbology would call a “frigorific torpor,” -he exclaimed in a loud, wrathful, suspicious -tone: “What’s your drift, sir?” -“And when I questioned him,” so Johnson -afterwards told his blustering tale—“when -I questioned him as to what occasion -I had given him for such animadversion, -all that he could say amounted -to this: that I sometimes contradicted -people in conversation! Now, what -harm does it do any man to be contradicted?” -To this same paternal young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> -Langton the rebel submitted his Latin -verses; the <i>Poemata</i>, in the shape in -which we possess them, were rigorously -edited by him. And Johnson leaned upon -him in more intimate ways, as he could -never lean upon Beauclerk. To the scrupulous -nature instinctively right he made -comfortable confidences: “Men of harder -minds than ours will do many things -from which you and I would shrink; yet, -sir, they will, perhaps, do more good in -life than we.”</p> - -<p>As to the Honorable Topham Beauclerk, -more volatile than Langton, he had -as steady a “sunshine of cheerfulness” -for his heritage. We find him complaining -to a friend in the July of 1773: “Every -hour adds to my misanthropy; and I -have had a pretty considerable share of -it for some years past.” This incursion -of low spirits was not normal with him. -Johnson, bewailing his own morbid habits -of mind, once said: “Some men, and -very thinking men, too, have not these -vexing thoughts. Sir Joshua Reynolds -is the same all the year round; Beauclerk, -when not ill and in pain, is the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> -same.” Boswell attests that Beauclerk -took more liberties with Johnson than -durst any man alive, and that Johnson -was more disposed to envy Beauclerk’s -talents than those of any one he had -ever known. Born into the freedom of -London, Beauclerk was familiar with Fox, -Selwyn, and Walpole, and with the St. -James men who did not ache to consort -with Johnson; and he was quite their -match in ease and astuteness. He walked -the modish world, where Langton could -not and would not follow; he alternated -the Ship Tavern and the gaming-table -with the court levees; Davies’s shop with -the golden insipidities of the drawing-room; -<i>la comédie</i>, <i>la danse</i>, <i>l’amour même</i>, -with the intellectual tie-wigs of Soho. -It shows something of his spirit that -whereas no member of the Club save -himself was a frequenter of White’s and -Betty’s,<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> or a chosen guest at Strawberry -Hill, yet there was no person of fashion -whom he was not proud to make known -to Doctor Johnson whenever he judged -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>the candidate for so genuine an honor -worthy of it. Some of these encounters -must have been queer and memorable!</p> - -<p>Beauclerk’s unresting sarcasm often -flattened out Boswell and irritated the -Doctor, though Bennet Langton, in his -abandonments of enthusiastic optimism, -was never more than grazed. It is not -to be denied that this spoiled child of -the Club liked to worry Goldsmith, the -maladroit great man who might have -quoted often on such occasions the sad -gibe of Hamlet:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“I’ll be your foil, Laertes: in mine ignorance</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Your skill shall, like a star in the darkest night,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Stick fiery off indeed.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">What a pity that Goldsmith’s <i>Retaliation</i> -was never finished, so as to include his -portrait of Beau! He was “a pestilent -wit,” as Anthony à Wood calls Marvell. -Johnson, shy creature! deplored -Beauclerk’s “predominance over his -company.” The tyranny, however, was -gracefully and decorously exercised, if -we are to believe the unique eulogy that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> -“no man was ever freer, when he was -about to say a good thing, from a look -which expressed that it was coming; nor, -when he had said it, from a look which -expressed that it had come.” Few human -beings have had a finer sense of fun -than Topham Beauclerk. He had an infallible -eye for the values of blunders, -and an incongruity came home to him -like a blessing from above. Life with -him was a night-watch for diverting objects -and ideas. When he was not studying, -he was disporting himself, like the -wits of the Restoration; and he was -equal to all emergencies, as they succeeded -one another. Every specimen -preserved of his talk is perfect of its -kind, and makes us long for a full index. -Pointed his speech was, always, and reminds -one indeed of a foil, but without -the button; a dangerous little weapon, -somewhat unfair, but carried with such -consummate flourish that those whom it -pricks could almost cheer it. “O Lord! -how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk!” -Mrs. Piozzi scribbled once on the margin -of Wraxall’s <i>Memoirs</i>, in an exquisite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> -feminine vindication of poor Beau’s accomplished -tongue.</p> - -<p>He was no disguiser of his own likes -and dislikes. Politics he avoided as -much as possible; but he affected less -concern in public matters than he really -felt. “Consecrate that time to your -friends,” he writes with mock severity to -the ideal Irishman, Lord Charlemont, -“which you spend in endeavoring to -promote the interests of a half-million -of scoundrels.” For his private business -he had least zeal of all; and cites “my -own confounded affairs” as the cause of -his going into Lancashire. Beauclerk -had great tact, boldness, and independence; -his natural scorn of an oppressor -was his modern and democratic quality. -His idleness (for he was as idle by habit -as Langton was by nature) he recognized, -and lightly deprecated. Fastidious -in everything, he made “one hour of conversation -at Elmsley’s”<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> his standard of -enjoyment, and his imagined extreme of -annoyance was “to be clapped on the -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>back by Tom Davies.” What he chose -to call his leisure (again the ancestral -Stuart trait!) he dedicated to the natural -sciences in his beloved laboratory. “I -see Mr. Beauclerk often, both in town -and country,” wrote Goldsmith to Bennet -Langton; “he is now going directly -forward to become a second Boyle, deep -in chemistry and physics.” When there -was some fanciful talk of setting up the -Club as a college, “to draw a wonderful -concourse of students,” Beauclerk, by -unanimous vote, was elected to the professorship -of Natural Philosophy.</p> - -<p>Johnson’s influence on him, potent -though it was, seems to have been negative -enough. It kept him from a few -questionable things, and preserved in him -an outward decorum towards customs -and established institutions; but it failed -to incite him to make of his manifold -talents the “illustrious figure” which -Langton’s eyes discerned in a vain anticipation. -Beauclerk and the great -High Churchman went about much together, -and had amusing experiences. -On such occasions, as in all their familiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> -intercourse, the disciple had the true -salt of the Doctor’s talk, which, as Hazlitt -remarks, was often something quite -unlike “the cumbrous cargo of words” -he kept for professional use. In the late -winter of 1765 the two visited Cambridge, -Beauclerk having a mind to call -upon a friend at Trinity.</p> - -<p>These, as we know, had their many -differences, “like a Spanish great galleon, -and an English man-o’-war”; the one -smooth, sharp, and civil, the other indignantly -dealing with the butt-end of personality. -Boswell gives a long account -of a charming dispute concerning the -murderer of Miss Reay, and the evidence -of his having carried two pistols. Beauclerk -was right; but Johnson, with quite -as solid a sense of virtue, was angry; and -he was soothed at the end only by an -adroit and affectionate reply. “Sir,” -the Doctor began, sternly, at another -time, after listening to some mischievous -waggery, “you never open your mouth -but with the intention to give pain, and -you often give me pain, not from the -power of what you say, but from seeing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> -your intention.” And again, he said to -him whom he had compared to Alexander, -marching in triumph into Babylon: -“You have, sir! a love of folly, and a -scorn of fools; everything you do attests -the one, and everything you say the other.”<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> -Beauclerk could also lecture his -mentor. It was his steadfast counsel -that the Doctor should devote himself -to poetry, and draw in his horns of dogma -and didactics.</p> - -<p>He had, ever ready, some quaint simile -or odd application from the classics; in -the habit of “talking from books,” as the -Doctor called it, he was, however, distanced -by Langton. Referring to that -friend’s habit of sitting or standing against -the fireplace, with one long leg twisted -about the other, “as if fearing to occupy -too much space,” Beauclerk likened him, -for all the world, to the stork in Raphael’s -cartoon of The Miraculous Draught.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> -One of Beauclerk’s happiest hits, and certainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> -his boldest, was made while Johnson -was being congratulated upon his -pension. “How much now it was to be -hoped,” whispered the young blood, in -reference to Falstaff’s celebrated vow, -“that he would purge and live cleanly, as -a gentleman should do!” Johnson seems -to have taken the hint in good-humor, -and actually to have profited by it.</p> - -<p>Very soon after leaving Oxford, Beauclerk -became engaged to a Miss Draycott, -whose family were well known to -that affable blue-stocking, Mrs. Montagu; -but some coldness on his part, some -sensitiveness on hers, broke off the -match. His fortune-hunting parent is -said to have been disappointed, as the -lady owned several lead-mines in her -own right. That same year, with Bennet -Langton for companion part of the -way, Beauclerk, whose health, never robust, -now began to give him anxiety, -set out on a Continental tour. Baretti, -whom he had met at home, received him -most kindly at Milan, thanks to Johnson’s -urgent and friendly letter. By his subsequent -knowledge of Italian popular customs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> -he was able to testify in Baretti’s -favor, when the latter was under arrest -for killing his man in the Haymarket, -and in concert with Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith, -and Johnson, to help him, in a very -interesting case, towards his acquittal. -It was reported to Selwyn that the -handsome gambling Inglese was robbed -at Venice of £10,000! an incident which, -perhaps, shortened his peregrinations. -If the report were accurate, it would -prove that he could have been in no -immediate need of pecuniary rescue -from his leaden sweetheart. It was -Dr. Johnson’s opinion, coinciding with -the opinion of Roger Ascham on the -same general subject, that travel adds -very little to one’s mental forces, and -that Beauclerk might have learned -more in the Academe of “Fleet Street, -sir!”</p> - -<p>Topham Beauclerk married Lady Diana -Spencer, the eldest daughter of the -second Duke of Marlborough, as soon as -she obtained a divorce from her first -husband. This was Frederick, Lord Bolingbroke, -nephew and heir of the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> -owner of that title; a very trying gentleman, -who was the restless “Bully” of -Selwyn’s correspondence; he survived -until 1787. The ceremony took place -March 12, 1768, in St. George’s, Hanover -Square, “by license of the Archbishop -of Canterbury,” both conspirators -being then residents of the parish. -Lady Diana Spencer was born in the -spring of 1734, and was therefore in her -thirty-fifth year, while Beauclerk was but -twenty-nine.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> Johnson was disturbed, -and felt offended at first with the whole -affair; but he never withdrew from the -agreeable society of Beauclerk’s wife. It -is nothing wonderful that the courtship -and honey-moon was signalized -by the forfeit of Beauclerk’s place in -the exacting Club, “for continued inattendance,” -and not regained for a considerable -period. “They are in town, -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>at Topham’s house, and give dinners,” -one of George Selwyn’s gossiping friends -wrote, after the wedding. “Lord Ancram -dined there yesterday, and called -her nothing but Lady Bolingbroke the -whole time!” Let us hope that “Milady -Bully” triumphed over her awkward -guest, and looked, as Earl March -once described her under other difficulties, -“handsomer than ever I saw her, and -not the least abashed;” or as deliberately -easy as when she entertained with her -gay talk the nervous Boswell who awaited -the news of his election or rejection from -the Club. She was a blond goddess, -exceedingly fair to see. In her middle -age she fell under the observant glance -of delightful Fanny Burney, who did not -fail to allow her “pleasing remains of -beauty.”</p> - -<p>The <i>divorcée</i> was fond of and faithful -to her new lord, and no drawback upon his -æsthetic pride, inasmuch as she was an -artist of no mean merit. Horace Walpole -built a room for the reception of -some of her drawings, which he called -his Beauclerk Closet, “not to be shown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> -to all the profane that come to see the -house,” and he always praised them extravagantly. -It is surer critical testimony -in her favor that her name figures -yet in encyclopædias, and that Sir Joshua, -the honest and unbought judge, much -admired her work, which Bartolozzi was -kept busy engraving. It was her series -of illustrations to Bürger’s wild ballad of -<i>Leonora</i> (with the dolly knight, the wooden -monks, the genteel heroine, and the -vigorous spectres) which, long after, helped -to fire the young imagination of Shelley. -It is to be feared that her invaluable portrait -of Samuel Johnson is not, or never -was, extant. “Johnson was confined for -some days in the Isle of Skye,” writes her -rogue of a spouse, “and we hear that he -was obliged to swim over to the mainland, -taking hold of a cow’s tail. . . . Lady Di -has promised to make a drawing of it.” -Sir Joshua’s pretty “Una” is the little -Elizabeth, afterwards Countess of Pembroke, -elder daughter of Lady Di and -Topham Beauclerk, painted the year her -father died.</p> - -<p>The family lived in princely style,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> -both at their “summer quarters” at Muswell -Hill, and on Great Russell Street, -where the library, set in a great garden, -reached, as Walpole mischievously -gauged it, “half-way to Highgate.” -Lady Di, an admirable hostess, proved -herself one of those odd and rare women -who take to their husbands’ old friends. -Selwyn she cordially liked, and her warmest -welcome attended Langton, whom she -would rally for his remissness, when he -failed to come to them at Richmond. -He could reach them so easily! she said; -all he need do was to lay himself at -length, his feet in London and his head -with them, <i>eodem die</i>. This Richmond -home remained her residence during her -widowhood. Walpole mentions a Thames -boat-race in 1791, when he sat in a tent -“just before Lady Di’s windows,” and -gazed upon “a scene that only Richmond, -on earth, can exhibit.” In the church of -the same leafy town her body rests.</p> - -<p>Beauclerk died at his Great Russell -Street house on March 11, 1780. He had -been failing steadily under visitations of -his old trouble since 1777, when he lay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> -sick unto death at Bath, and when his wife -nursed him tenderly into what seemed -to Walpole a miraculous recovery. He -was but forty-one years old, and, for all -his genius, left no more trace behind than -that Persian prince who suddenly disappeared -in the shape of a butterfly, and -whom old Burton calls a “light phantastick -fellow.” His air of boyish promise, -quite unconsciously worn, hoodwinked his -friends into prophecies of his fame. He -did not give events a chance to put immortality -on his “bright, unbowed, insubmissive -head.” Yet he was bitterly -mourned. “I would walk to the extent -of the diameter of the earth to save him,” -cried Johnson, who had loved him for -over twenty years; and again, to Lord -Althorp: “This is a loss, sir, that perhaps -the whole nation could not repair.” -Boswell mentions the Doctor’s April -stroll, at this time, while he was writing -his <i>Lives of the Poets;</i> and tells us how, -returning from a call on the widow of -the companion of his youth, David Garrick, -he leaned over the rails of the -Adelphi Terrace, watching the dark river,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> -and thinking of “two such friends as -cannot be supplied.” “Poor dear Beauclerk!” -Johnson wrote, when his violent -grief had somewhat subsided, “<i>nec, ut -soles, dabis joca!</i> His wit and his folly, -his acuteness and his maliciousness, his -merriment and his reasoning, are alike -over. Such another will not often be -found among mankind.” Beyond this -well-known and characteristic summing-up, -the Doctor made no discoverable -mention, in his correspondence, of his -bereavement, certainly not to the highly-prejudiced -Mrs. Thrale, to whom he wrote -often and gayly in the year of Beauclerk’s -death. Nor shall we know how the catastrophe -affected Bennet Langton; for -all the most interesting papers relating -to him were destroyed when the old Hall -at Langton-by-Spilsby was burned in -1855. On this subject, as on others as -intimate, he stands, perforce, silent.</p> - -<p>Readers may recall a passage in Miss -Burney’s <i>Diary</i> which gives countenance -to an accusation not borne out by any -other testimony, that Beauclerk and his -wife had not lived happily together. Dining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> -at Sir Joshua’s at Richmond, in 1782, -Edmund Burke, sitting next the author -of <i>Evelina</i>, took occasion, on catching -sight of Lady Di’s “pretty white house” -through the trees, to rejoice in the fact -that she was well-housed, moneyed, and -a widow. He added that he had never -enjoyed the good-fortune of another so -keenly as in this blessed instance. Then, -turning to his new acquaintance, as the -least likely to be informed of the matter, -he spoke in his own “strong and marked -expressions” of the singular ill-treatment -Beauclerk had shown his wife, and the -“necessary relief” it must have been to -her when he was called away. The statement -does not seem to have been gainsaid -by any of the company; nor was -Burke liable to a slanderous error. So -severe a comment on Beauclerk, resting, -even as it does, wholly on Miss Burney’s -veracity, ought, in fairness, to be incorporated -into any sketch of the man. On -the other side, it is pleasant to discover -that Beauclerk, in his will, made five days -before the end, bequeathed all he possessed -to his wife, and reverted to her the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> -estates of his children, should they die -under age. There was but one bequest -beyond these, and that was to Thomas -Clarke, the faithful valet. The executors -named were Lady Di and her brother, -Lord Charles Spencer, who had also been -groomsman at the marriage, which, despite -Burke and its own evil beginnings, -it is hard to think of as ill-starred. The -joint guardians of Charles George Beauclerk, -the only son, were to be Bennet -Langton and a Mr. Loyrester, whom -Dr. Johnson speaks of as “Leicester, -Beauclerk’s relation, and a man of good -character;” but the guardianship, provisional -in case of Lady Di’s decease, never -came into force, as she survived, in fullest -harmony with her three children, up -to August 1, 1808, having entered her -seventy-fifth year. Various private legacies -came to Langton, by his old comrade’s -dying wish, the most precious among -them, perhaps, being the fine Reynolds -portrait of Johnson, which had been painted -at Beauclerk’s cost. Under it was inscribed:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“<i>Ingenium ingens</i></span></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Inculto latet hoc sub corpore.</i>”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span></p> - -<p>Langton thoughtfully effaced the lines. -“It was kind of you to take it off,” said -the burly Doctor, with a sigh; and then -(for how could he but recall the contrast -of temperament in the two, as well as the -affectionate context of Horace?), “not -unkind in him to have put it on.” The -collection of thirty thousand glorious -books “<i>pernobilis Angli T. Beauclerk</i>” was -sold at auction. The advertisement alone -is royal reading. There is much amiable -witness to the circumstance that Beauclerk -was not only an admirer but a -buyer of his friends’ works. From some -kind busybody who attended the twenty-ninth -day of the sale, and pencilled his -observations upon the margins of the -catalogue now in the British Museum, -we learn that Goldsmith’s <i>History of the -Earth and Animated Nature</i> (nothing -less!), which was issued, with cuts, in the -year he died, was knocked down to the -vulgar for two and threepence. The -shelves, naturally, were stocked with -Johnsons. Things dear to the bibliophile -were there: innumerable first editions, -black-letter, mediæval manuscript, Elzevirs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> -priceless English and Italian classics, -gathered with real feeling and pride; but -the most vivid personal interest belonged -to the unpretending Lot 3444, otherwise -known to fame as <i>The Rambler</i>, printed -at Edinburgh in 1751; for that was the -young Beauclerk’s own copy, carried with -him to Oxford, and with a fragrance, as -of a last century garden, of the first hearty -friendship of boys. One cannot help -wishing that a sentimental fate left it in -Langton’s own hands.</p> - -<p>Lady Beauclerk, Topham’s mother, -had died in 1766; and he asked to be -buried beside her, or at her feet, in the -old chapel of Garston, near Liverpool: -“an instance of tenderness,” said Johnson, -“which I should hardly have expected.” -There, in the place of his choice, -he rests, without an epitaph.</p> - -<p>After this the Doctor consoled himself -more than ever with Bennet Langton, -and with the atmosphere of love -and reverence which surrounded him in -Langton’s house. He had been of old -the most desired of all guests at the -family seat in Lincolnshire. “Langton,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> -sir!” as he liked to announce, “had a -grant of warren from Henry II.; and -Cardinal Stephen Langton, of King John’s -reign, was of this family.” Peregrine -Langton, Bennet’s uncle, was a man -of simple and benevolent habits, who -brought economy to a science, without -niggardliness, and whom Johnson declared -to be one of those he clung to -at once, both by instinct and reason; -Bennet’s father, learned, good, and unaffected, -the prototype of his learned, -good, and unaffected son, was, however, -a more diverting character. He had -sincerest esteem for Johnson, but looked -askance on him for his liberal views, -and suspected him, indeed, of being a -Papist in secret! He once offered the -Doctor a living of some value in the -neighborhood, with the suggestion that -he should qualify himself for Orders: -a chance gravely refused. Of this exemplary -but rather archaic squire, Johnson, -a dissector of everything he loved, said: -“Sir! he is so exuberant a talker in public -meetings that the gentlemen of his -county are afraid of him. No business<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> -can be done for his declamation.” In -his behalf, too, Johnson produced one of -his most astounding words; for having -understood that both Mr. and Mrs. Langton -were averse to having their portraits -taken, he observed aloud that “a superstitious -reluctance to sit for one’s picture -is among the anfractuosities of the human -mind.”</p> - -<p>Bennet Langton married, on the 24th -of May, 1770, Mary Lloyd, daughter of the -Countess of Haddington, and widow of -John, the eighth Earl of Rothes, the stern -soldier in laced waistcoat and breastplate -beneath, painted by Sir Joshua. It -was a common saying at the time that -everybody was welcome to a Countess -Dowager of Rothes; for it did so happen -that three ladies bearing that title -were all remarried within a few years. -Lady Rothes, although a native of Suffolk, -had acquired from long residence -in Scotland the accent of that country, -which Dr. Johnson bore with magnanimously, -on the consideration that it was -not indigenous. She had a handsome -presence, full of easy dignity, and a naturalness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> -marked enough in the heyday -of Georgian affectation. With a vivacity -very different from Lady Di Beauclerk’s, -she kept herself the spring and centre -of Langton’s tranquil domestic circle: a -more womanly woman historiographers -cannot find. His own charm of character, -after his marriage, slipped more -and more into the underground channels -of home-life, and so coursed on beneficently -in silence. Their children were -no fewer than nine,<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> “not a plain face -nor faulty person among them:” the goddess -daughters six feet in height, and the -three sons so like their Maypole father -that they were able once to amuse the -Parisians by raising their arms to let a -crowd pass. Langton was wont to repeat -with some glee certain jests about -his height, and Dr. Johnson’s nickname -of “Lanky” he took ever with excellent -grace; and when Garrick had leaped -upon a chair to shake hands with him, -in old days, he had knelt, at parting, to -shake hands with Garrick. But the King’s -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>awkward digs at his “long legs” he -found terribly distasteful, nor was he -thereby disposed to agree with the Doctor’s -enthusiastic proclamation, after the -famous interview of 1767, that George III. -was “as fine a gentleman as Charles II.”</p> - -<p>It was his cherished plan to educate -his boys and girls at home, and to give -them a thorough acquaintance with the -learned languages. No social engagements -were to stand in the way of this -prime exigency. He was in great haste -to turn his young brood into Masters and -Mistresses of Arts. Johnson complained -to Miss Burney, as they were both taking -tea at Mrs. Thrale’s, that nothing -would serve Langton but to stand them -up before company, and get them to repeat -a fable or the Hebrew alphabet, supplying -every other word himself, and -blushing with pride at the vicarious learning -of his infants. But another of the -tedious royal jokes, “How does Education -go on?” actually lessened his devotion -to his self-set task, and worried him -like the water-drop in the story, which -fell forever on a criminal’s head until it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> -had drilled his brain. Again, both he -and his wife, even after they had moved -into the retirement of Great George -Street, Westminster, in pursuance of their -design, were far too agreeable and too accessible -to be spared the incursions of society. -In a word, Minerva found her seat -shaken, and her altar-fires not very well -tended, and therefore withdrew. Langton -impressed one axiom on his young -scholars which they never forgot: “Next -best to knowing is to be sensible that -you do not know.” An entirely superfluous -waif of a baby was once left at -the doors of this same many-childrened -house, to be fed, clothed, and petted by -Mr. Bennet Langton and Lady Rothes, -without protest. Dr. Johnson, who made -friends with all children, was especially -attached to their third girl, his god-daughter, -whom he called “pretty Mrs. -Jane,” and “my own little Jenny.” The -very last year of his life her “most humble -servant” sent her a loving letter, -extant yet, and written purposely in a -large round hand as clear as print.</p> - -<p>“Langton’s children are very pretty,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> -Johnson wrote to Boswell in 1777, “and -his lady loses her Scotch.” But again, -during the same year, condescendingly: -“I dined lately with poor dear Langton. -I do not think he goes on well. His table -is rather coarse, and he has his children -too much about him.” Boswell takes -occasion, in reproducing this censure, to -reprehend the custom of introducing the -children after dinner: a parental indulgence -to which he, at least, was not addicted. -The Doctor gave him a mild -nudge on the subject in remarking later: -“I left Langton in London. He has -been down with the militia, and is again -quiet at home, talking to his little people, -as I suppose you do sometimes.” While -Langton was in camp on Warley Common, -in command of the Lincolnshire -troops, Johnson spent with him five delightful -days, admiring his tall captain’s -blossoming energies, and poking about -curiously among the tents. Langton -had fallen, little by little, into a confirmed -extravagance, so that the moral of Uncle -Peregrine’s sagacious living bade fair to -be lost upon him. Boswell had a quarrel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> -with Johnson on the subject of Langton’s -expenditure, during the course of which, -according to his own report, the Laird of -Auchinleck suffered a “horrible shock” -by being told that the best way to drive -Langton out of his costly house would -be to put him (Boswell) into it. The -Doctor was truly concerned, nevertheless, -about his engaging spendthrift; up to -the very end, he would implore him to -keep account-books, even if he had to -omit his Aristophanes. “He complains of -the ill effects of habit,” grumbled the -great moralizer, “and he rests content -upon a confessed indolence. He told his -father himself that he had ‘no turn for -economy!’ but a thief might as well plead -that he had no turn for honesty.” Such -were the hard hits sacred to those Dr. -Johnson most esteemed. It transpires -from his will that, by way of discouragement, -he had lent Langton £750.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p> -<p>In the winter of 1785, Langton came -from the country, and took lodgings in -Fleet Street, in order to sit beside Johnson -as he lay dying, and hold his hand. -Nor was he alone in his pious offices: -the Hooles, Mr. Sestre, and several others -were there, to keep constant vigil. -Miss Burney met Langton in the passage -December 11th, two days before the end: -“He could not,” she wrote in her journal, -“look at me, nor I at him.” But through -the foggy and restless nights when Johnson -tried to cheer himself, like More and -Master William Lilly, by translating into -Latin some epigrams from the <i>Anthologia</i>, -the true Grecian beside him must have -been his chief comfort. One can picture -the old eyes turning to him for sympathy, -perhaps with that same murmured -“Lanky!” on awaking, which Boswell -laughed to hear from him one merry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> -Hebridean morning, twelve years before. -The last summons did not come in Langton’s -presence. Hurrying over to Bolt -Court at eight of the fatal evening, he was -told that all was over three-quarters of -an hour ago. That large soul had gone -away, as Leigh Hunt so beautifully said -of Coleridge, “to an infinitude hardly -wider than his thoughts.” Then Langton, -who was wont to shape his words with -grace and ease, went up-stairs, and tried -to pen a letter to Boswell, which is more -touching than tears: “I am now sitting -in the room where his venerable remains -exhibit a spectacle, the interesting solemnity -of which, difficult as it would be -in any sort to find terms to express, so -to you, my dear sir, whose sensations -will paint it so strongly, it would be of -all men the most superfluous to”—and -there, hopelessly choked and confused, it -broke off.</p> - -<p>Langton bore Johnson’s pall; and he -succeeded him as Professor of Ancient -Literature in the Royal Academy, as Gibbon -had replaced Goldsmith in the chair -of Ancient History. He survived many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> -years, the delight of his company to the -last. He, like others, was given in his -later years to detailing anecdotes of his -great friend, with an approximation to -that friend’s manner. One lady critic, at -least, thought that these explosive imitations -did not become “his own serious -and respectable character.” On December -18, 1801, in Anspach Place, Southampton, -a venerable nook “between the -walls and the sea,” when Wordsworth, -Scott, and Coleridge were yet in their -unheralded prime, when Charles Lamb -was twenty-six, Byron a dreaming boy on -the Cotswold hills, and Keats and Shelley -little fair-eyed children, gentle Bennet -Langton, known to none of these, and -somewhat forgotten as a loiterer from -the march of a glorious yesterday, slipped -out of life. “I am persuaded,” wrote -one who knew him well, “that all his inactivity, -all the repugnance he showed to -putting on the harness of this world’s -toil, arose from the spirituality of his -frame of mind . . . I believe his mind was -in Heaven, wheresoever he corporeally -existed.” He was laid under the chancel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> -of ancient St. Michael’s at Southampton, -with Johnson’s fond benison, “Be my -soul with Langton’s!” inscribed on the -marble tablet above him.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> The Rev. -John Wooll of Midhurst, Joseph Warton’s -editor, was one of the few present -at the funeral ceremony, and he leaves -us to infer that it had a rather neglectful -privacy, not, indeed, out of keeping with -the “godly, righteous, and sober life” it -closed. Langton’s will, drawn up in the -June of 1800, and preserved in Somerset -House, devised to the sole executrix, -his “dear wife,” who outlived him -by nearly twenty years, his real and personal -estate, his books, his wines, his -prints, his horses, and, as a gift particularly -pretty, his right of navigation in the -river Wey. George Langton was separately -provided for, but there were some -£8000 for the eight younger children. -The document is crowded with technical -details, and very long; and the manifest -inference, on the whole, is that the dear -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>squire’s affairs were in a prodigious tangle. -There is no wish expressed concerning -his burial, and, what is more curious, -there are no Christian formulas for the -committal of the <i>animula vagula blandula:</i> -a lack perhaps not to be wondered -at in Beauclerk’s concise testament, but -somewhat notable in the case of a person -who certainly had a soul.</p> - -<p>So went Beauclerk first of the three, -Langton last, with the good ghost still -between them, as he in his homespun, -they in their flowered velvet, had walked -many a year together on this earth. The -old companionship had undergone some -sorry changes ere it fell utterly to dust and -ashes. Its happy prime had been in the -Oxford “Longs,” when the Doctor humored -his lads, and tented under their -roofs, plucking flowers at one house, and -romping with dogs at the other; or in -1764, at the starting of the immortal -Club, when the two of its founders, who -had no valid or pretended claim to -celebrity, perched on the sills like useful -genii, with a mission to overrule sluggish -melancholy, and renew the sparkle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> -in abstracted eyes. How supereminently -they did what they chose to do, and what -vagaries they roused out of Johnson’s profound -hypochondria! Did not Topham -Beauclerk’s mother once have to reprove -that august author for a suggestion to -seize some pleasure-grounds which they -were passing in a carriage? “Putting -such things into young people’s heads!” -said she. Where could the innocent -Beauclerk’s elbow have been at that -moment, contrary to the canons of polite -society, but in the innocent Langton’s -ribs? The gray reprobate, so censured, -explained to Boswell: “Lady Beauclerk -has no notion of a joke, sir! She came -late into life, and has a mighty unpliable -understanding.” Who can forget the -Doctor’s visit to Beauclerk at Windsor, -when, falling into the clutches of that -gamesome and ungodly youth, he was -beguiled from church-going of a fine -Sunday morning, and strolled about outside, -talking and laughing during sermon-time, -and finally spread himself at length -on a mossy tomb, only to be told, with a -giggle and a pleased rub of the hands,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> -that he was as bad as Hogarth’s Idle -Apprentice? Or the other visit in the -north, when, after ceremoniously relieving -his pockets of keys, knife, pencil, and -purse, Samuel Johnson, LL.D., deliberately -rolled down a hill, and landed, betumbled -out of all recognition, at the -bottom? Langton had tried to dissuade -him, for the incline was very steep, and -the candidate scarcely of the requisite -suppleness. “Oh, but I haven’t had a roll -for such a long time!” pleaded his unanswerable -big guest.</p> - -<p>Best of all, we have the history of -that memorable morning when Beauclerk -and Langton, having supped together at -a city tavern, roused Johnson at three -o’clock at his Inner Temple Lane Chambers, -and brought him to the door, fearful -but aggressive, in his shirt and his little -dark wig, and his slippers down at the -heels, armed with a poker. “What! and -is it <span class="smcap">YOU</span>? Faith, I’ll have a frisk with -you, ye young dogs!” We have visions -of the Covent Garden inn, and the great -brimming bowl, with Lord Lansdowne’s -drinking-song for grace; the hucksters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> -and fruiterers staring at the strange central -figure, always sure to gather a mob, -even during the moment he would stand -by a lady’s coach-door in Fleet Street; -the merry boat going its way by oar to -Billingsgate, its mad crew bantering the -watermen on the river; and two of the -roisterers (equally wild, despite a little -chronological disparity of thirty years or -so) scolding the other for hastening off, -on an afternoon appointment, “to dine -with wretched unidea’d girls!” What -golden vagabondism! “I heard of your -frolic t’other night; you’ll be in <i>The -Chronicle!</i> . . . I shall have my old friend -to bail out of the round-house!” said -Garrick. “As for Garrick, sirs,” tittered -the pious Johnson aside to his accomplices, -“he dare not do such a thing. -His wife would not let him!” All this -mirth and whim sweetened the Doctor’s -heavy life. He had other intimates, other -disciples. But these were Gay Heart -and Gentle Heart, who drove his own -blue-devils away with their idolatrous -devotion, and whose bearing towards him -stands ever as the best possible corroboration<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> -of his great and warm nature. -With him and for him, they so fill the -air of the time that to whomsoever has -but thought of them that hour, London -must seem lonely without their idyllic -figures.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">—“Our day is gone:</span></div> -<div class="verse">Clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">There are gods as good for the after-years; -but Odin is down, and his pair of -unreturning birds have flown west and -east.</p> - - -<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45">[45]</a> A popular eighteenth-century beverage, composed of -wine, orange, and sugar.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46">[46]</a> Although Langton is recorded on his college books -as having given the usual £10 for plate, and also as -having paid his caution money in 1757, his name is -not down upon the matriculation lists, possibly because -he failed to appear at the moment the entries were being -made. In what must have been his destined space upon -one of the pages, Dr. Ingram made this note: “Q. Num -Bennet Langton hic inserendus?”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47">[47]</a> A boyish fashion of self-entertainment afterwards in -great favor with Shelley.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48">[48]</a> It is a pleasant thing to remember that it was Langton, -always an appreciator of Goldsmith’s lovable genius, -who suggested “Auburn” as the name for his <i>Deserted -Village</i>. There is a hamlet called Auborne in Lincolnshire.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49">[49]</a> Langton’s sisters are generally spoken of as three in -number. But Burke’s <i>History of the Landed Gentry</i> -mentions but two, Diana and Juliet. There was a younger -brother, Ferne, who died in boyhood, and the floral -name, not unlike a girl’s, may have been responsible for -the confusion.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50">[50]</a> The fruiterer.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51">[51]</a> The bookseller’s.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52">[52]</a> Rochester, in his immortal epigram, had said the -same of King Charles II.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53">[53]</a> This neat descriptive stroke has been attributed also -to Richard Paget.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54">[54]</a> The register of St. George’s betrays a little eager -blunder of Lady Di’s which is amusing. When the officiating -curate asked her to sign, she wrote “Diana Beauclerk,” -and was obliged to cross out the signature—one -knows with what a smile and a flush!—and substitute the -“Diana Spencer” which stands beside it.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55">[55]</a> Miss Hawkins says “ten,” and may have had the -extra adopted child in mind.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56">[56]</a> It is a pity he did not live to read the jolly <i>American -Ballad of Bon Gaultier</i>, which seems to have a sort -of muddled clairvoyant knowledge of this transaction:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Every day the huge Cawana</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Lifted up its monstrous jaws;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And it swallowed Langton Bennet,(!)</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And digested Rufus Dawes.</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Riled, I ween, was Philip Slingsby</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Their untimely deaths to hear;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For one author owed him money,(!)</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And the other loved him dear.”</span></div> -</div> -</div></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57">[57]</a> The church has since been “restored,” and the fine -epitaph is now (1890) “skyed” on the south wall of the -nave.</p></div></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> -<div class="chapter"></div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a><br /><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p> - - - -<h2>V<br /> -WILLIAM HAZLITT<br /> -<small>1778-1830</small></h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a><br /><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p> - - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i-130-drop-t.jpg" width="101" height="105" alt="T" /> -</div> - -<p class="drop-capi">THE titles of William Hazlitt’s -first books bear witness to -the ethic spirit in which he -began life. From his beloved -father, an Irish dissenting -minister, he inherited his unworldliness, -his obstinacy, his love of inexpedient -truth, and his interest in the emancipation -and well-being of his fellow-creatures. -Bred in an air of seriousness and -integrity, the child of twelve announced -by post that he had spent “a very agreeable -day” reading one hundred and sixty -pages of Priestley, and hearing two good -sermons. A year later he appeared, under -a Greek signature, in <i>The Shrewsbury -Chronicle</i>, protesting against sectarian injustice; -an infant herald in the great -modern movement towards fair play. -The roll of the portentous periods must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> -have made his father weep for pride and -diversion. William’s young head was -full of moral philosophy and jurisprudence, -and he had what is the top of -luxury for one of his temperament: perfect -license of mental growth. Alone -with his parents (one of whom was always -a student and a recluse), and for -the most part without the school-fellows -who are likely to adjust the perilous effects -of books, he became choked with -theories, and thought more of the needful -repeal of the Test Act than of his -breakfast. He found his way at fourteen -into the Unitarian College at Hackney, -but eventually broke from his traces, -saving his fatherland from the spectacle -of a unique theologian. During the year -1795 he saw the pictures at Burleigh -House, and began to live. Desultory -but deep study, at home and near home, -took up the time before his first leisurely -choice of a profession. His lonely broodings, -his early love for Miss Railton, his -four enthusiastic months at the Louvre, -his silent friendship with Wordsworth -and with Coleridge; the country walks,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> -the pages and prints, the glad tears of his -youth,—these were the fantastic tutors -which formed him; nor had he ever -much respect for any other kind of training. -The lesson he prized most was the -lesson straight from life and nature. He -comments, tartly enough, on the sophism -that observation in idleness, or the growth -of bodily skill and social address, or the -search for the secret of honorable power -over people, is not in any wise to be accounted -as learning. Montaigne, who -was in Hazlitt’s ancestral line, was of this -mind: “<i>Ce qu’on sçait droictement, on en -dispose sans regarder au patron, sans tourner -les yeulx vers son livre.</i>” Hazlitt insists, -too, that learned men are but “the -cisterns, not the fountain-heads, of knowledge.” -He hated the schoolmaster, and -has said as witty things of him as Mr. -Oscar Wilde. Yet his little portrait-study -of the mere book-worm, in <i>The Conversation -of Authors</i>, has a never-to-be-forgotten -sweetness. His mental nurture was -serviceable; it was of his own choosing; -it fitted him for the work he had to do. -Like Marcus Aurelius, he congratulated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> -himself that he did not squander his -youth “chopping logic and scouring the -heavens.” Hazlitt once entered upon an -<i>Inquiry whether the Fine Arts are promoted -by Academies;</i> the answer, from -him, is readily anticipated.</p> - -<div class="center">“If arts and schools reply,”</div> - -<p class="unindent">he might have added,—and it is a wonder -that he did not,</p> - -<div class="center">“Give arts and schools the lie!”</div> - -<p>Mr. Matthew Arnold made a famous -essay on the same topic, and some readers -recollect distinctly that his verdict, -for England, would be in the affirmative, -whereas it was no such matter. -Now, no man can conceive of Hazlitt -presenting both sides of a case so impartially -as to be misunderstood, especially -upon so vital a subject. He pastured, -he was not trained; and therefore -he would have you and your children’s -children scoff at universities. Indeed, -though the boy’s lack of discipline told -on him all through life, his reader regrets -nothing else which a university<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> -could have given him, except, perhaps, -milder manners. Hazlitt was perfectly -aware that he had too little general -knowledge; but general knowledge he -did not consider so good a tool for his -self-set task in life as a persistent, passionate -study of one or two subjects. -Again, he is pleased to conjecture, with -bluntness, that if he had learned more he -would have thought less. (Perhaps he -was the friend cited by Elia, who gave -up reading to improve his originality! -He was certainly useful to Elia in delicate -and curious ways: a whole vein of -rich eccentricity ready for that sweet -philosopher’s working.) Hear him pronouncing -upon himself at the very end: -“I have, then, given proof of some talent -and more honesty; if there is haste and -want of method, there is no common-place, -nor a line that licks the dust. If -I do not appear to more advantage, I -at least appear such as I am.” Divorce -that remark and the truth of it from -Hazlitt, and there is no Hazlitt left. He -stood for individualism. He wrote from -what was, in the highest degree for his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> -purpose, a full mind, and with that blameless -conscious superiority which a full -mind must needs feel in this empty -world. His whole intellectual stand is -taken on the positive and concrete side -of things. He has a fine barbaric -cocksureness; he dwells not with althoughs -and neverthelesses, like Mr. -Symonds and Mr. Saintsbury. “I am -not one of those,” he says, concerning -Edmund Kean’s first appearance in London, -“who, when they see the sun breaking -from behind a cloud, stop to inquire -whether it is the moon.” And he takes -enormous interest in his own promulgation, -because it is inevitably not only -what he thinks, but what he has long -thought. He delivers an opinion with the -air proper to a host who is master of a -vineyard, and can furnish name and date -to every flagon he unseals.</p> - -<p>None of Hazlitt’s energies went to -waste: he earned his soul early, and how -proud he was of the possession! Retrospection -became his forward horizon. He -was all aglow at the thought of that -beatific yesterday; in his every mood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> -“the years that are fled knock at the -door, and enter.” He struggled no more -thereafter, having fixed his beliefs and -found his voice. He saw no occasion to -change. “As to myself,” he wrote at -fifty, referring to Lamb’s well-known “surfeits -of admiration” concerning some objects -once adored, “as to myself, any one -knows where to have me!” He adds: -“In matters of taste and feeling, one -proof that my conclusions have not been -quite shallow or hasty is the circumstance -of their having been lasting. . . . This continuity -of impression is the only thing on -which I pride myself.” A fine saying in -the <i>Boswell Redivivus</i>, attributed to Opie, -is as clearly expressed elsewhere by Hazlitt’s -self: that a man in his lifetime can -do but one thing; that there is but one -effort and one victory, and all the rest is -as machinery in motion. “What I write -costs me nothing, but it cost me a great -deal twenty years ago. I have added little -to my stock since then, and taken little -from it.” His sensations, latterly, were -“July shoots,” graftings on the old sap. -It is his boast in almost his final essay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> -that his tenacious brain holds fast while -the planets are turning. He can look at -a child’s kite in heaven, to the last, with -the eyes of a child: “It pulls at my heart.”</p> - -<p>His conservative habit, however, seemed -to teach him everything by inference. -In 1821, familiar with none of the elder -dramatists save Shakespeare, he borrowed -their folios, and shut himself up for six -weeks at Winterslow Hut on Salisbury -Plain. He returned to town steeped in -his theme, and with the beautiful and -authoritative <i>Lectures</i> written. Appreciation -of the great Elizabethans is common -enough now; seventy years ago, -propagated by Lamb’s <i>Specimens</i>, 1808, -it was the business only of adventurers -and pioneers. Here is a critic indeed -who, without a suspicion of audacity, -can arise as a stranger to arraign the -<i>Arcadia</i>, and “shake hands with Signor -Orlando Friscobaldo as the oldest -acquaintance” he has! The thing, exceptional -as it was, proves that William -Hazlitt knew his resources. His devoted -friend Patmore attributes his “unpremeditated -art,” terse, profound, original,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> -and always moving at full speed, to two -facts: “first, that he never, by choice, -wrote on any topic or question in which -he did not, for some reason or other, feel -a deep personal interest; and, secondly, -because on all questions on which he did -so feel, he had thought, meditated, and -pondered, in the silence and solitude of -his own heart, for years and years before -he ever contemplated doing more than -thinking of them.” Unlike a distinguished -historian, who, according to Horace -Walpole, “never understood anything -until he had written of it,” Hazlitt brought -to his every task a mind violently made -up, and a vocation for special pleading -which nothing could withstand.</p> - -<p>Sure as he is, he means to be nobody’s -hired guide: a resolve for which the general -reader cannot be too grateful. In -wilful and mellow study of what chance -threw in his way his strength grew, and -his limitations with it. It is small wonder -that he hated schoolmasters, and the -public which expected of him schoolmaster -platitudes. He had a pride of intellect -not unlike Rousseau’s, and he seems to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> -have had ever in mind Rousseau’s cardinal -declaration that if he were no better -than other men, he was at least different -from them. Hazlitt defined his own -functions with proper haughtiness, in the -amusing apology of <i>Capacity and Genius</i>. -“I was once applied to, in a delicate -emergency, to write an article on a difficult -subject for an encyclopædia; and -was advised to take time, and give it a -systematic and scientific form; to avail -myself of all the knowledge that was to -be obtained upon the subject, and arrange -it with clearness and method. I made -answer that, as to the first, I <i>had</i> taken -time to do all that I ever pretended to -do, as I had thought incessantly on different -matters for twenty years of my -life; that I had no particular knowledge -of the subject in question, and no head -for arrangement; that the utmost I could -do, in such a case, would be, when a systematic -and scientific article was prepared, -to write marginal notes upon it, -to insert a remark or illustration of my -own (not to be found in former encyclopædias!) -or to suggest a better definition<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> -than had been offered in the text.”<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> Such -independence nobly became him, and -none the less because it kept him poor. -But in the course of time, he had to work, -and keep on working, under wretched -disadvantages. He had spurts of revolt, -after long experience of compulsory composition; -his darling wish in 1822 (confided -to his wife, of all persons) being -that he “could marry some woman with a -good fortune, that he might not be under -the necessity of writing another line!”</p> - -<p>There was in him absolutely nothing -of the antiquary and the scholar, as the -modern world understands those most -serviceable gentlemen. He was a “surveyor,” -as he said, erroneously, of Bacon. -He was continuously drawn into the byway, -and ever in search of the accidental, -the occult; he lusted, like Sir Thomas -Browne, to find the great meanings of -minor things. The “pompous big-wigs” -of his day, as Thackeray called them, -hated his informality, his boldly novel -methods, his vivacity and enthusiasm. -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>He had, within proscribed bounds, an -exquisite and affectionate curiosity, like -that of the Renaissance. “The invention -of a fable is to me the most enviable exertion -of human genius: it is the discovery -of a truth to which there is no clew, -and which, when once found out, can -never be forgotten.” “If the world were -good for nothing else, it would be a fine -subject for speculation.” It is his deliberate -dictum that it were “worth a life” -to sit down by an Italian wayside, and -work out the reason why the Italian supremacy -in art has always been along the -line of color, not along the line of form.</p> - -<p>He depended so entirely upon his memory -that those who knew him best say -that he never took notes, neither in gallery, -library, nor theatre; yet his inaccuracies -are few and slight,<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> and he must -have secured by this habit a prodigious -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>freedom and luxury in the act of writing. -He would rather stumble than walk according -to rule; and he was so pleasantly -beguiled with some of his own images -(that, for instance, of immortality the -bride of the youthful spirit, and of the -procession of camels seen across the distance -of three thousand years) that he -reiterates them upon every fit occasion. -He cites, twice and thrice, the same passages -from the Elizabethans. He is a -masterly quoter, and lingers like a suitor -upon the borders of old poesy. His infallibility, -like the Pope’s, is of narrow -scope and nicely defined. When he -steps beyond his accustomed tracks, -which is seldom, his vagaries are entertaining. -You may account for his declaration -that Thomas Warton’s sonnets -rank as the very best in the language, by -reflecting that he dealt not in sonnets -and knew nothing of them; if he prefer -<i>Hercules Raging</i> to any other Greek tragedy, -it is collateral proof that he was no -wide-travelled Grecian, nor even Euripideian; -when he gives his distinguished -preference to Shakespeare’s Helena, there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> -is small need of adding that Mr. Hazlitt, -albeit with an affectionate friendship for -Mary Lamb, with a mother, a sister, a -dynasty of sweethearts, and two wives, -was notoriously unlearned in women.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p> - -<p>The events of his life count for so little -that they are hardly worth recording. -He was born into a high-principled and -intelligent family, at Mitre Lane, Maidstone, -Kent, on the 10th of April, in the -year 1778. His infancy was passed there -and in Ireland, his boyhood in New England -and in Shropshire. Prior to a long -visit to Paris, where he made some noble -copies of Titian, he came in 1802 to -Bloomsbury, where his elder brother -John, an advanced Liberal in politics and -an excellent miniature-painter, had a studio; -and here he worked at art for several -joyous years, finally abandoning it -for literature. The portraits he painted, -utterly lacking in grace, are fraught with -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>power and meaning; few of these are -extant, thanks to the fading and cracking -pigments of the modern schools. -The old Manchester woman in shadow, -done in 1803, and the head of his father, -dating from a twelvemonth later (two -things to which Hazlitt makes memorable -reference in his essays), are no longer -distinguishable, save to a very patient -eye, upon the blackened canvases in his -grandson’s possession. The picture of -the child Hartley Coleridge, begun at the -Lakes in 1802, has perished from the -damp; that of Charles Lamb in the Venetian -doublet survives since 1804, in its -serious and primitive browns,<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> as the -best-known example of an English artist -not in the catalogues. Its historic value, -however, is not superior to that of two -portraits of Hazlitt himself: one a study -in strong light and shade, with a wreath -upon the head, now very much time-eaten; -and another representing him at -about the age of twenty-five, with a three-quarters -front face looking over the right -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>shoulder, which appeals to the spectator -like spoken truth. It is all but void of -the beauty characterizing the striking -Bewick head (especially as retouched and -reproduced in Mr. Alexander Ireland’s -valuable book of 1889, which is a sort of -Hazlitt anthology), and characterizing, no -less, John Hazlitt’s charming miniatures -of William at five and at thirteen; therefore -it can deal in no self-flattery. Fortunately, -we have from the hand which -knew him best the lank, odd, reserved -youth in whom great possibilities were -brewing; thought and will predominate -in this portrait, and it expresses the sincere -soul. It would be idle to criticise -the technique of a work disowned by its -author. Hazlitt had, as we know from -much testimony, a most interesting and -perplexing face, with the magnificent -brow almost belied by shifting eyes, and -the petulance and distrust of the mouth -and chin; but a face prepossessing on -the whole from the clear marble of his -complexion,<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> remarkable in a land of -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>ruddy cheeks. His lonely and peculiar -life lent him its own hue; the eager look -of one indeed a sufferer, but with the -light full upon him of visions and of -dreams:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“<i>Chi pallido si fece sotto l’ombra</i></div> -<div class="verse"><i>Sì di Parnaso, o bevve in sua cisterna?</i>”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In 1798 Hazlitt had his immortal meeting -at Wem with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. -He described himself at this period -as “dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like -a worm by the wayside,” striving in vain -to put on paper the thoughts which oppressed -him, shedding tears of vexation -at his inability, and feeling happy if in -eight years he could write as many pages. -The abiding influence of his First Poet -he has acknowledged in an imperishable -chapter. For a long while he still kept -in “the o’erdarkened ways” of Malthus -and Tucker, or in the shadow, dear to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> -him, of Hobbes; but in 1817 the floodgates -broke, the pure current gushed out; -and in the <i>Characters of Shakespeare’s -Plays</i> we have the primal pledge of Hazlitt -as we know him, “such as had never -been before him, such as will never be -again.” From a “dumbness” and diffidence -extreme, he developed into the -readiest of writers; his sudden pages, -year after year, transcribed in his slant -large hand, went to the printers rapidly -and at first draft. The longer he used -his dedicated pen, the freer, the brighter, -the serener it grew. In the fourteen or -fifteen of his books which deal with genius -and the conduct of life, there is, -throughout, an indescribable unaffected -zest, a self-same and unwavering certitude -of handling. Once he learned his -trade, he gave himself a large field and -an easy rein. He never warmed towards -a subject chosen for him. His conversation -was non-professional. He considered -a discussion as to the likelihood of -the weather’s holding up for to-morrow -as “the end and privilege of a life of -study.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p> - -<p>In London, as soon as he had abandoned -painting, he became a parliamentary -reporter, and began to lecture on -the English philosophers and metaphysicians. -He furnished his famous dramatic -criticisms to <i>The Morning Chronicle</i>, -<i>The Champion</i>, <i>The Examiner</i>, and -<i>The Times</i>, and he acted later as home -editor of <i>The Liberal</i>. He married, on -May-day of 1808, Miss Sarah Stoddart, -who owned the property near Salisbury -where he afterwards spent melancholy -years alone. He fulfilled one human duty -perfectly, for he loved and reared his son. -A most singular infatuation for the unlovely -daughter of his landlady; a second -inauspicious marriage in 1824 with -a Mrs. Isabella Bridgwater; a prolonged -journey on the Continent; the failure of -the publishers of his <i>Life of Napoleon</i>, -which thus in his needful days brought -him no competence; a long illness heroically -borne, and a burial in the parish -churchyard of St. Anne’s, under a headstone -raised, in a romantic remorse after -an estrangement, by Charles Wells, the -author of <i>Joseph and his Brethren</i>,—these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> -round out the meagre details of Hazlitt’s -life. He died in the arms of his son and -of his old friend Charles Lamb,<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> on the -18th of September, 1830, at 6 Frith -Street, Soho.</p> - -<p>His domestic experiences, indeed, had -been nearly as extraordinary as Shelley’s. -Sarah Walker, of No. 9 Southampton -Buildings, is a sort of burlesque counterpart -of that other “spouse, sister, angel,” -Emilia Viviani. Nothing in literary history -is much funnier than Mr. Hazlitt’s -kind assistance to Mrs. Hazlitt in securing -her divorce, going to visit her at -Edinburgh, and supplying funds and advice -over the teacups, while the process -was pending, unless it be Shelley’s ingenuous -invitation to his deserted young -wife to come and dwell forever with -himself and Mary! The silent dramatic -withdrawal of the second Mrs. Hazlitt, -the well-to-do relict of a colonel, who is -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>henceforth swallowed up in complete oblivion, -is a feature whose like is missing -in Shelley’s romance. Events in Hazlitt’s -path were not many, and his inner calamities -seem somehow subordinated to -exterior workings. It is not too much -to say that to the French Revolution and -the white heat of hope it diffused over -Europe he owed the renewal of the very -impetus within him: his moral probity, -his mental vigor, and his physical cheer. -His measure of men and things was fixed -by its standard. Other enthusiasts wavered -and went back to the flesh-pots of -Egypt, but not he. <i>Et cuncta terrarum -subacta præter atrocem animum Catonis.</i> -Towards the grandest inconsistency this -world has seen, he bore himself with a -consistency nothing less than touching. -Everywhere, always, as a friend who understood -him well reminds a later generation, -“Hazlitt was the only man of -letters in England who dared openly to -stand by the French Revolution, through -good and evil report, and who had the -magnanimity never to turn his back upon -its child and champion.” The ruin of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> -Napoleon, and the final news that “the -hunter of greatness and of glory was himself -a shade,” meant more to him than -the relinquishment of his early and cherished -art, or the fading of the long dream -that his heart “should find a heart to -speak to.” On his last autumn afternoon, -he said what no one else would -have dared to say for him: “I have had -a happy life.” Such it was, if we are to -compute happiness by souls, and not by -the incidents which befall them. What -were the things which atoned to this reformer -for the curse of a mind too sentient, -a heart never far from breaking? -Over and above all amended and amending -abuses, the memory of the Rembrandts -on the walls of Burleigh House; -the waving crest of the Tuderley woods; -the sky, the turf, “a winding road, and -a three-hours’ march to dinner”; the -impersonator of Richard III. most to -his mind, who lighted the stage, “and -fought as if drunk with wounds”; and -the figure (how pastoral and tender!) -of the shepherd-boy bringing a nest -for his young mistress’s sky-lark, “not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> -doomed to dip his wings in the dappled -dawn.” What heresy to the ancients -would be this creed of poetic -compensation! Montesquieu adhered to -it; but hardly from baffled and impassioned -Hazlitt, dying in his prime, would -the avowal have been expected. Yet he -had written almost always, as Jeffrey saw, -in “a happy intoxication.” Like the sundial, -in one of the most charming among -his miscellaneous essays, he kept count -only of the hours of joy.</p> - -<p>Hazlitt’s erratic levees among coffee-house -wits and politicians, his slack dress, -his rich and fitful talk, his beautiful fierce -head, go to make up any accurate impression -of the man. Mr. P. G. Patmore -has drawn him for us; a strange portrait -from a steady hand: in certain moods -“an effigy of silence,” pale, anxious, emaciated, -with an awful look ever and anon, -like the thunder-cloud in a clear heaven, -sweeping over his features with still -fury.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> He was so much at the mercy of -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>an excitable and extra-sensitive organization -that an accidental failure to return -his salute upon the street, or, above -all, the gaze of a servant as he entered -a house, plunged him into an excess of -wrath and misery. Full, at other times, -of scrupulous good faith and generosity, -he would, under the stress of a fancied -hurt, say and write malicious things about -those he most honored. He must have -been a general thorn in the flesh, for he -had no tact whatever. “I love Henry,” -said one of Thoreau’s friends, “but I cannot -like him.” Shy, splenetic, with Dryden’s -“down look,” readier to give than -to exchange, Hazlitt was a riddle to strangers’ -eyes. His deep voice seemed at -variance with his gliding step and his -glance, bright but sullen; his hand felt -as if it were the limp, cold fin of a fish, -and was an unlooked-for accompaniment -to the fiery soul warring everywhere with -darkness, and drenched in altruism. His -habit of excessive tea-drinking, like Dr. -Johnson’s, was to keep down sad thoughts. -For sixteen years before he died, from -the day on which he formed his resolution,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> -Hazlitt never touched spirits of any -kind. Profuse of money when he had it, -he lacked heart, says Mr. Patmore, to live -well. Wherever he dwelt there was what -Carlyle, in Hunt’s case, called “tinkerdom”; -his marriage, and his residence -under the august roof which had been -Milton’s,<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> did not mend matters for him. -He covered the walls and mantel-pieces -of London landladies, after the fashion -of the French bohemian painters, with -samples of his noblest style; and the -savor of yesterday’s potions of strong tea -exhaled into their curtains. Never was -there, despite his confessional attitude, so -non-communicative a soul. He never -corresponded with anybody; he never -would walk arm in arm with anybody; -he never, perhaps from horror of the -“patron” bogie, dedicated a book to anybody. -De Quincey knew a man warmly -disposed towards Hazlitt who learned to -shudder and dread daggers when poor -Hazlitt, with a gesture habitual to him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> -thrust his right hand between the buttons -of his waistcoat! And he once -cheerfully requested of a cheerful colleague: -“Write a character of me for the -next number. I want to know why everybody -has such a dislike to me.” As -a social factor he was something atrocious.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> -The most humane of men, his -suspicions and shyings cut him off completely -from humanity. The base war -waged upon him by the great Tory magazines -could not have affected him so -deeply that it changed his demeanor -towards his fellows; for he had the mettle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> -of a paladin, which no invective could -break. But, alas! he had “the canker -at the heart,” which is no fosterer of -“the rose upon the cheek.”</p> - -<p>With all this fever and heaviness in -Hazlitt’s blood, he had a hearty laugh, -musical to hear. Haydon, in his exaggerated -manner, reports an uncharitable -conversation held with him once on the -subject of Leigh Hunt in Italy, during -which the two misconstruing critics, in -their great glee, “made more noise than -all the coaches, wagons, and carts outside -in Piccadilly.” His smile was singularly -grave and sweet. Mrs. Shelley wrote, on -coming back to England, in her widowhood, -and finding him much changed: -“His smile brought tears to my eyes; it -was like melancholy sunlight on a ruin.” -A man who sincerely laughs and smiles -is somewhat less than half a cynic. If -there be any alive at this late hour who -questions the genuineness of Hazlitt’s -high spirits, he may be referred to the -essay <i>On Going a Journey</i>, with the pæan -about “the gentleman in the parlor,” in -the finest emulation of Cowley; but chiefly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> -and constantly to <i>The Fight</i>, with its -lingering De-Foe-like details, sprinkled, -not in the least ironically, with gold-dust -of Chaucer and the later poets: the -rich-ringing, unique <i>Fight</i>,<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> predecessor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> -of Borrow’s famous burst about the “all -tremendous bruisers” of <i>Lavengro;</i> and -not to be matched in our peaceful literature -save with the eulogy and epitaph of -Jack Cavanagh, by the same hand. Divers -hints have been circulated, within -sixty-odd years, that Mr. Hazlitt was a -timid person, also that he had no turn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> -for jokes. These ingenious calumnies -may be trusted to meet the fate of the -Irish pagan fairies, small enough at the -start, whose punishment it is to dwindle -ever and ever away, and point a moral -to succeeding generations. Hazlitt’s -paradoxes are not of malice prepense, -but are the ebullitions both of pure -fun and of the truest philosophy. “The -only way to be reconciled with old -friends is to part with them for good.” -“Goldsmith had the satisfaction of -good-naturedly relieving the necessities -of others, and of being harassed to -death with his own.” “Captain Burney -had you at an advantage by never -understanding you.” Scattered mention -of “people who live on their own estates -and on other people’s ideas”; of Jeremy -Bentham, who had been translated into -French, “when it was the greatest pity -in the world that he had not been translated -into English”; of the Coleridge of -prose, one of whose prefaces is “a masterpiece -of its kind, having neither beginning, -middle, nor end”; and even of the -“singular animal,” John Bull himself,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> -since “being the beast he is has made -a man of him”:—these are no ill shots -at the sarcastic. Congreve, with all his -quicksilver wit, could not outgo Hazlitt -on Thieves, <i>videlicet:</i> “Even a highwayman, -in the way of trade, may blow -out your brains; but if he uses foul language -at the same time, I should say -he was no gentleman!” Hazlitt’s sense -of humor has quality, if not quantity. -How was it this same sense of humor, -this fine-grained reticence, which -wrote, nay, printed, in 1823, the piteous -and ludicrous canticle of the goddess -Sarah?</p> - -<p>Hazlitt was a great pedestrian from his -boyhood on, and, like Goldsmith, a fair -hand at the game of fives, which he played -by the day. Wherever he was, his pocket -bulged with a book. It gave him keen -pleasure to set down the hour, the place, -the mood, and the weather of various -ecstatic first readings. He became acquainted -with <i>Love for Love</i> in a low -wainscoted tavern parlor between Farnham -and Alton, looking out upon a garden -of larkspur, with a portrait of Charles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> -II. crowning the chimney-piece; in his -father’s house he fell across <i>Tom Jones</i>, -“a child’s Tom Jones, an innocent creature”; -he bought Milton and Burke at -Shrewsbury, on the march; he looked up -from Mrs. Inchbald’s <i>Simple Story</i>, when -its pathos grew too poignant, to find “a -summer shower dropping manna” on his -head, and “an old crazy hand-organ playing -<i>Robin Adair</i>.” And on April 10, 1798, -his twentieth birthday, he sat down to a -volume of the <i>New Eloïse</i>, a book which -kept its hold upon him, “at the inn of -Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a -cold chicken!” The frank epicurean catalogue, -as of equal spiritual and corporeal -delight, is worth notice. Do we not -know that Mr. Hazlitt had wood-partridges -for supper, in his middle age, at -the Golden Cross, in Rastadt, near Mayence? -Yet he failed to record what book -lay by his plate, and distracted his attention -from her who had been a widow, and -who was already planning her respectable -exit from his society. Evidence that -he was an eater of taste is to be accumulated -eagerly by his partisans, for eating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> -is one of many engaging human -characteristics which establish him as -lovable—that is, posthumously lovable. -Barry Cornwall was so jealously tender -of his memory that he would have forbidden -any one to write of Hazlitt who -had not known him. As he did not warm -miscellaneously to everybody, it followed -that his friends were few. We do not -forget which one of these, during their -only difference, thought “to go to his -grave without finding, or expecting to -find, such another companion.”<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p> - -<p>Hazlitt would have set himself down, -by choice, as a metaphysician. Up to the -time when his <i>Life of Napoleon</i> was well -in hand, he used to affirm that the anonymous -<i>Principles of Human Action</i>, which -he completed at twenty, in the literary -style of the azoic age, was his best work. -He was rather proud, too, of the <i>Characteristics -in the Manner of Rochefoucauld’s -Maxims</i>, his one dreary book, -which contains a couple of inductions -worthy of Pascal, some sophistries and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> -hollow cynicisms not native to Hazlitt’s -brain, and a vast number of the very professorisms -which he scouted. Maxims, -indeed, are sown broadcast over his pages, -which Alison the historian classified as -better to quote than to read; but they -gain by being incidental, and embedded -in the body of his fancies. His vein of -original thought comes nowhere so perfectly -into play as in its application to -affairs. His pen is anything but abstruse,</p> - -<div class="center">“Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind.”</div> - -<p class="unindent">He did not recognize that to display his -highest power he needed deeds and men, -and their tangible outcome to be criticised. -His preferences were altogether -wed to the past. In his essay on <i>Envy</i> -he excuses, with a wise reflection, his -comparative indifference to living writers: -“We try to stifle the sense we have -of their merit, not because they are new -or modern, but because we are not sure -they will ever be old.” Or, as Professor -Wilson said of him, with tardy but winning -kindness: “In short, if you want<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> -Hazlitt’s praise, you must die for it . . . -and it is almost worth dying for.”<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> Yet -what an eye he has for the idiosyncrasy -at his elbow, be it in the individual or -in the race! Every contemporary of his, -every painter, author, actor, and statesman -of whom he cared to write at all, -stands forth under his touch in delicate -and aggressive outlines from which a wind -seems to blow back the mortal draperies, -like a figure in a triumphal procession -of Mantegna’s. His manner is essentially -pictorial. His sketches of Cobbett and -of Northcote, in <i>The Spirit of Obligations;</i> -of Johnson, in <i>The Periodical Essayists;</i> -of Sir Thomas Browne and Bishop -Taylor; and of Coleridge and Lamb, -drawn more than once, with great power, -from the life, will never be excelled. His -philippic on <i>The Spirit of Monarchy</i>, or -that on <i>The Regal Character</i>, is a pure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> -vitriol flame, to scorch the necks of -princes. His comments upon English -and Continental types, if gathered from -the necessarily promiscuous <i>Notes of a -Journey</i>, would make a most diverting and -illuminating duodecimo; the indictment -of the French is especially masterly. <i>The -Spirit of the Age</i>, <i>The Plain Speaker</i>, -the Northcote book, <i>The English Comic -Writers</i>, and the noble and little-read -<i>Political Essays</i> are packed with vital personalities. -So is <i>The Characters of Shakespeare’s -Plays</i>, full of beautiful metaphysical -analysis, as well as of vivifying -criticism. This lavish accumulation of -material, never put to use according to -modern methods, must appear to some -as a collection of interest awaiting the -broom and the hanging committee; but -until the end of time it will be a place of -delight for the scholar and the lover of -virtue. Hazlitt’s genius for assortment -and sense of relative values were not developed; -he was in no wise a constructive -critic. Mr. R. H. Hutton complained -once of Mr. Matthew Arnold that he -ranked his men, but did not portray them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> -Now Hazlitt, whose search is all for character, -irrespective of the historic position, -falls into the opposite extreme: he portrays -his men, but does not rank them. An -attempt to break up into single file the -merit which, with him, marches abreast, -he would look upon as a bit of arrogance -and rank impiety. He has nothing to -say of the quality which stamps Bavius -as the best elegiac poet between Gray -and Tennyson, or of the irony of Mævius, -which would place his dramas, were it -not for their loose construction, next to -Molière’s. He does not care a fig for comparisons; -or, rather, he wishes them left -to the gods, and to his perceiving reader. -Meanwhile, one face after another -shines clear upon the wall, and breathes -enchantment on a passer-by.</p> - -<p>It is very difficult to be severe with -William Hazlitt, who was towards himself -so outspokenly severe. Every stricture -upon him, as well as every defence to -be urged for it, may be taken out of his -own mouth. Even the <i>Liber Amoris</i>, as -must always have been discerned, demonstrates -not only his weakness, but his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> -essential uprightness and innocence. His -vindication is written large in <i>Depth and -Superficiality</i>, in <i>The Pleasures of Hating</i>, -in <i>The Disadvantage of Intellectual -Superiority</i>. His “true Hamlet” is as -faithful a sketch of the author as is Newman’s -celebrated definition of a gentleman. -Hazlitt says a tender word for Dr. -Johnson’s prejudices which covers and -explains many of his own. Who can call -him irritable, recalling the splendid exposition -of merely selfish content, in -the opening paragraphs of the essay on -<i>Good Nature?</i> Yet, with all his lofty and -endearing qualities, he had a warped and -soured mind, a constitutional disability to -find pleasure in persons or in conditions -which were quiescent. He would have -every one as mettlesome and gloomily -vigilant as he was himself. His perfectly -proper apostrophe to the lazy Coleridge -at Highgate to “start up in his promised -likeness, and shake the pillared rottenness -of the world,” is somewhat comic. Hazlitt’s -nerves never lost their tension; to -the last hour of his last sickness he was -ready for a bout. Much of his personal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> -grief arose from his refusal to respect -facts as facts, or to recognize in existing -evil, including the calamitous perfumed -figure of Turveydrop gloriously reigning, -what Vernon Lee calls “part of the mechanism -for producing good.” He bit at -the quietist in a hundred ways, and -with choice venom. “There are persons -who are never very far from the truth, -because the slowness of their faculties -will not suffer them to make much progress -in error. These are ‘persons of great -judgment.’ The scales of the mind are -pretty sure to remain even when there -is nothing in them.” He was a natural -snarler at sunshiny people with full pockets -and feudal ideas, like Sir Walter, who -got along with the ogre What Is, and -even asked him to dine. In fact, William -Hazlitt hated a great many things with -the utmost enthusiasm, and he was impolite -enough to say so, in and out of -season. The Established Church and all -its tenets and traditions were only less -monstrous in his eyes than legendry, mediævalism, -and “the shoal of friars.” He -knew, from actual experience, the loyalty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> -and purity of the early Unitarians, and -he praised these with all his heart and -tongue. As far as one can make out, he -had not the remotest conception of the -breadth and texture of Christianity as a -whole. His theory, for he practised no -creed except the cheap one of universal -dissent, was a faint-colored local Puritanism; -and that, as the Merry Monarch -(an excellent judge of what was not -what!) reminds us, is “no religion for a -gentleman.” But more than this, Hazlitt -had no apprehension of the supernatural -in anything; he was very unspiritual. -It is curious to see how he sidles -away from the finer English creatures -whom he had to handle. Sidney almost -repels him, and he dismisses Shelley, on -one occasion, with an inadequate but apt -allusion to the “hectic flutter” of his -verse. Living in a level country with no -outlook upon eternity, and no deep insight -into the human past, nor fully understanding -those who had wider vision -and more instructed utterance than his -own, it follows that beside such men as -those just named, then as now, Hazlitt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> -has a crude villageous mien. He had -his refined sophistications; chief among -them was a surpassing love of natural -beauty. But he relished, on the whole, -the beef and beer of life. The normal was -what he wrote of with “gusto”; a word -he never tired of using, and which one -must use in speaking of himself. While -he is an admirable arbiter of what is or is -not truly intellectual, he is all at sea when -he has to discuss, for instance, emotional -poetry, or, what is yet more difficult to -him, poetry purely poetic; its inevitable -touch of the fantastic, the mystical, puts -his wits completely to rout. The stern, -lopsided, and magnificent article on Shelley’s -<i>Posthumous Poems</i> in the <i>Edinburgh -Review</i> for July, 1824, and his impatience -with Coleridge at his best, perfectly exemplify -this limitation. Despite his partiality -for Rousseau and certain of the early -Italian painters, most of the men whose -genius he seizes upon and exalts with -unerring success are the men who display, -along with enormous acumen and -power, nothing which betokens the morbid -and exquisite thing we have learned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> -to call modern culture. Hazlitt, fortunately -for us, was not over-civilized, had -no cinque-cento instincts, and would -have groaned aloud over such hedonism -as Mr. Pater’s. Homespun and manly as -he is, who can help feeling that his was -but an imperfect development? that, as -Mr. Arnold said so paternally of Byron, -“he did not know enough”? He lacked -both mental discipline and moral governance. -He has the wayward and appealing -Celtic utterance; the manner -made of largeness and simpleness, all -shot and interwoven with the hues of -romanticism. Prodigal that he is, he -cannot stoop to build up his golden -piecemeal, or to clinch his generalizations, -thrown down loosely, side by side. Esoteric -thrift is not in him, nor the spirit -of co-operation, nor the sweetest of artistic -anxieties, that of marching in line. -He has a knight-errant pen; his glad and -chivalrous services to literature resemble -those of an outlaw to the commonwealth. -Despite his personal value, he stands detached; -he is episodic, and represents -nothing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“The earth hath bubbles as the water hath,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And this is of them.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">He misses the white station of a classic; -for the classics have equipoise, and inter-relationship. -But it is great cause for -thankfulness that William Hazlitt cannot -be made other than he is. Time can -not take away his height and his red-gold -garments, bestow on him the “smoother -head of hair” which Lamb prayed for, -and shrivel him into one of several very -wise and weary <i>précieux</i>. No: he stalks -apart in state, the splendid Pasha of English -letters.</p> - -<p>Hazlitt boasts, and permissibly, of genuine -disinterestedness: “If you wish to -see me perfectly calm,” he remarks somewhere, -“cheat me in a bargain, or tread -on my toes.”<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> But he cannot promise -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>the same behavior for a sophism repeated -in his presence, or a truth repelled. In -his sixth year he had been taken, with -his brother and sister, to America, and -he says that he never afterwards got -out of his mouth the delicious tang of a -frost-bitten New England barberry. It -is tolerably sure that the blowy and -sunny atmosphere of the young republic -of 1783-7 got into him also. Liberalism -was his birthright. He flourishes his -fighting colors; he trembles with eagerness -to break a lance with the arch-enemies; -he is a champion, from his cradle, -against class privilege, of slaves who know -not what they are, nor how to wish for -liberty. But he cannot do all this in the -laughing Horatian way; he cannot keep -cool; he cannot mind his object. If he -could, he would be the white devil of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> -debate. There are times when he speaks, -as does Dr. Johnson, out of all reason, -because aware of the obstinacy and the -bad faith of his hearers. Morals are too -much in his mind, and, after their wont, -they spoil his manners. Like the Caroline -Platonist, Henry More, he “has to -cut his way through a crowd of thoughts -as through a wood.” His temper breaks -like a rocket, in little lurid smoking stars, -over every ninth page; he lays about -him at random; he raises a dust of side-issues. -Hazlitt sometimes reminds one -of Burke himself gone off at half-cock. -He will not step circumspectly from light -to light, from security to security. Some -of his very best essays, as has been noted, -have either no particular subject, or fail -to follow the one they have. Nor is he -any the less attractive if he be heated, -if he be swearing</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“By the blood so basely shed</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of the pride of Norfolk’s line,”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">or scornfully settling accounts of his own -with the asinine public. When he is not -driven about by his moods, Hazlitt is set<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> -upon his fact alone; which he thinks is -the sole concern of a prose-writer. Grace -and force are collateral affairs. “In seeking -for truth,” he says proudly, in words -fit to be the epitome of his career, “I -sometimes found beauty.”</p> - -<p><i>The Edinburgh Review</i>, in an article -written while Hazlitt was in the full of -his activity, summed up his shortcomings. -“There are no great leading principles -of taste to give singleness to his aims, -nor any central points in his mind around -which his feelings may revolve and his -imaginations cluster. There is no sufficient -distinction between his intellectual -and his imaginative faculties. He confounds -the truths of imagination with -those of fact, the processes of argument -with those of feeling, the immunities of -intellect with those of virtue.” Here is -an admirable arraignment, which goes -to the heart of the matter. Hazlitt himself -corroborates it in a confession of -gallant directness: “I say what I think; -I think what I feel.” It is this fatal -confusion which makes his course now -rapid and clear, anon clogged with vagaries,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> -as if his rudder had run into a -mesh of sea-weed; it is this which deflects -his judgments, and leads him, in -the shrewd phrase of a modern critic, to -praise the right things for the wrong -reasons. Hazlitt’s prejudices are very -instructive, even while he bewails Landor’s -or Cobbett’s, and tells you, as it -were, with a tear in his eye, when he has -done berating the French, that, after all, -they are Catholics; and as for manners, -“Catholics must be allowed to carry it, -all over the world!” His exquisite treatment -of Northcote, a winning old sharper -for whom he cared nothing, is all due -to his looking like a Titian portrait. So -with the great Duke: Hazlitt hated the -sight of him, “as much for his pasteboard -visor of a face as for anything -else.” One of his justifications for adoring -Napoleon was, that at a levee a young -English officer named Lovelace drew from -him an endearing recognition: “I perceive, -sir, that you bear the name of the -hero of Richardson’s romance.” If you -look like a Titian portrait, if you read and -remember Richardson, you may trust a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> -certain author, who knows a distinction -when he sees it, to set you up for the -idol of posterity. Hazlitt thought Mr. -Wordsworth’s long and immobile countenance -resembled that of a horse; and -it is not impossible that this conviction, -twin-born with that other that Mr. -Wordsworth was a mighty poet, is responsible -for various gibes at the august -contemporary whose memory owes so -much to his pen in other moods.</p> - -<p>He is the most ingenuous and agreeable -egoist we have had since the seventeenth-century -men. It must be remembered -how little he was in touch -outwardly with social and civic affairs; -how he was content to be the always -young looker-on. There was nothing for -him to do but fall back, under given conditions, -upon his own capacious entity. -The automaton called William Hazlitt is -to him a toy made to his hand, to be -reached without effort; the digest of all -his study and the applicable test of all -his assumptions. He knew himself; he -could, and did, with decorum, approve or -chastise himself in open court. “His<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> -life was of humanity the sphere.” His -“I” has a strong constituency in the -other twenty-five initials. In this sense, -and in our current cant, Hazlitt is nothing -if not subjective, super-personal. His -sort of sentimentalism is an anomaly -in Northern literature, even in the age -when nearly every literary Englishman of -note was variously engaged in baring his -breast. Whether he would carp or sigh, -he will still hold you by the button, as he -held host and guest, master and valet, -to pour into their adjacent ears the mad -extravagances of the <i>Liber Amoris</i>. He -gets a little tired at his desk, after battling -for hours with the slow and stupid -in behalf of the beauty ever-living; -he wants fresh air and a reverie; he must -digress or die. And from abstractions -bardic as Carlyle’s, he runs gladly to his -own approved self. This very circumstance, -which lends Hazlitt’s pages their -curious blur and stain, is the same which -stamps his individuality, and gives those -who are drawn towards him at all an unspeakably -hearty relish for his company. -What shall we call it?—the habit, not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> -maudlin in him, of speaking out, of -draining his well of emotion for the -benefit of the elect; nay, even of delicate -lyric whimperings, beside which</p> - -<div class="center">“Poore Petrarch’s long-deceasèd woes”</div> - -<p class="unindent">take on a tinsel glamour. As the dancing-girl -carries her jewels, every one in sight -as she moves, so our “Faustus, that was -wont to make the schools ring with <i>Sic -probo</i>,” steps into the forum jingling and -twinkling with personalia. He is quite -aware of the figure he may cut: he does -not stumble into an intimacy with you -because he is absent-minded, or because -he is liable to an attack of affectation. -He is as conscious as Poussin’s giants, -whom he once described as “seated on -the tops of craggy mountains, playing -idly on their Pan’s pipes, and knowing -the beginning and the end of their own -story.” Many sentences of his, from their -structure, might be attributed to Coleridge, -the single person from whom Hazlitt -admits to have learned anything;<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> -but there is no mistaking his <i>note émue:</i> -that is as obvious as the syncopations in -a Scotch tune, or the long eyes of Orcagna’s -saints.</p> - -<p>He wishes you to know, at every -breathing-space, “how ill’s all here about -my heart; but ’tis no matter.” Laying -by or taking up an old print or folio, he -loosens some fond confidence to that -surprised novice, the common reader. -Like Shelley here, as in a few other affectionate -absurdities, the prince of prose, -turning from his proper affairs, assures -you that he, too, is human, hoping, unhappy; -he also has lived in Arcadia. It -is in such irrelevancies that he is fully -himself, Hazlitt freed, Hazlitt autobiographic,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> -“his chariot-wheels hot by driving -fast.”<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> Who can forget the parentheses -in his advices to his little son, -about the scholar having neither mate -nor fellow, and the god of love clapping -his wings upon the river-bank to mock -him as he passes by? Or the noble and -moving passage in <i>The Pleasures of -Painting</i>, beginning with “My father was -willing to sit as long as I pleased,” and -ending with the longing for the revolution -of the great Platonic year, that those -times might come over again! He freshens -with his own childhood the garden -of larkspur and mignonette at Walworth, -and “the rich notes of the thrush that -startle the ear of winter . . . dear in themselves, -and dearer for the sake of what is -departed.” You care not so much for -the placid stream by Peterborough as for -his own wistful pilgrimage to the nigh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> -farmhouse gate, where the ten-year-old -Grace Loftus (his much-beloved mother, -who survived him) used to gaze upon the -setting sun. And in a choric outburst -of praise for Mrs. Siddons, the splendor -seems to culminate less in “her majestic -form rising up against misfortune, an -antagonist power to it” (what a truly -Shakespearean breadth is in that description!); -less in the sight of her name -on the play-bill, “drawing after it a long -trail of Eastern glory, a joy and felicity -unutterable,” than in the widening dream -of the happy lad in the pit, in his sovereign -vision “of waning time, of Persian -thrones and them that sat on them”; in -the human life which appeared to him, -of a sudden, “far from indifferent,” and -in his “overwhelming and drowning flood -of tears.” He can beautify the evening -star itself, this innovator, who records -that after a tranced and busy day at the -easel, the day of Austerlitz, he watched -it set over a poor man’s cottage with -other thoughts and feelings than he shall -ever have again. There is nothing of -<i>le moi haïssable</i> in all this. It is deliberate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> -naturalism; the rebellion against -didactics and “tall talk,” the milestone -of a return, parallel with that of Wordsworth, -to the fearless contemplation of -plain and near things. But in a professing -logician, is it not somewhat peculiar? -When has even a poet so centred the -universe in his own heart, without offence?</p> - -<p>Hazlitt threw away his brush, as a -heroic measure, because he foresaw but -a middling success. Many canvases he -cut into shreds, in a fury of dissatisfaction -with himself. Northcote, however, -thought his lack of patience had spoiled -a great painter. He was too full of worship -of the masters to make an attentive -artisan. The sacrifice, like all his sacrifices, -great or small, left nothing behind -but sweetness, the unclouded love of excellence, -and the capacity of rejoicing -at another’s attaining whatever he had -missed. But the sense of disparity between -supreme intellectual achievement -and that which is only partial and relative, -albeit of equal purity, followed him -like a frenzy. Comparison is yet more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> -difficult in literature than in art, and Hazlitt -could take some satisfaction in the -results of his second ardor. He felt his -power most, perhaps, as a critic of the -theatre. English actors owe him an incalculable -debt, and their best spirits are -not unmindful of it. He was reasonably -assured of the duration and increase of -his fame. Has he not, in one of his headstrong -digressions, called the thoughts -in his <i>Table-Talk</i> “founded as rock, -free as air, the tone like an Italian picture?” -Even there, however, the faint-heartedness -natural to every true artist -troubled him. He went home in despair -from the spectacle of the Indian juggler, -“in his white dress and tightened turban,” -tossing the four brass balls. “To -make them revolve round him at certain -intervals, like the planets in their spheres, -to make them chase one another like -sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers -or meteors, to throw them behind his -back, and twine them round his neck -like ribbons or like serpents; to do what -appears an impossibility, and to do it -with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> -imaginable; to laugh at, to play -with the glittering mockeries, to follow -them with his eye as if he could fascinate -them with its lambent fire, or as if he had -only to see that they kept time to the -music on the stage—there is something -in all this which he who does not admire -may be quite sure he never really admired -anything in the whole course of -his life. It is skill surmounting difficulty, -and beauty triumphing over skill. . . . It -makes me ashamed of myself. I ask -what there is that I can do as well as -this? Nothing.” A third person must -give another answer. The whole passage -offers a very exquisite parallel; for in -just such a daring, varied, and magical -way can William Hazlitt write. The astounding -result, “which costs nothing,” -is founded, in each case, upon the toil of -a lifetime. Hazlitt’s style is an incredible -thing. It is not, like Lamb’s, of one -warp and woof. It soars to the rhetorical -sublime, and drops to hard Saxon -slang. It is for all the world, and not -only for specialists. Its range and change -incorporate the utmost of many men.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> -The trenchant sweep, the simplicity and -point of Newman at his best, are -matched by the pages on <i>Cobbett</i>, on -<i>Fox</i>, and <i>On the Regal Character;</i> and -there is, to choose but one opposite -instance, in the paper <i>On the Unconsciousness -of Genius</i>, touching Correggio, -a fragment of pure eloquence of a -very ornate sort, whose onward bound, -glow, and volley can give Mr. Swinburne’s -<i>Essays and Studies</i> a look as of sails waiting -for the wind. The same hand which -fills a brief with epic cadences and invocations -overwrought, throws down, often -without an adjective, sentence after sentence -of ringing steel: “Fashion is gentility -running away from vulgarity, and -afraid of being overtaken by it.” “It is not -the omission of individual circumstance, -but the omission of general truth, which -constitutes the little, the deformed, and -the short-lived in art.” The man’s large -voice in these aphorisms is Hazlitt’s unmistakably. -If it be not as novel to this -generation as if he were but just entering -the lists of authorship, it is because -his fecundating mind has been long enriching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> -at second-hand the libraries of -the English world. He comes forth, like -another outrider, Rossetti, so far behind -his heralds and disciples, that his mannered -utterance seems familiar, and an -echo of theirs. For it may be said at -last, thanks to the numerous reprints of -the last seven years, and thanks to a few -competent critics, whom Mr. Stevenson -leads, that Hazlitt’s robust work is in a -fair way to be known and appraised, by a -public which is a little less unworthy of -him than his own. His method is entirely -unscientific, and therefore archaic. -If we can profit no longer by him, we can -get out of him cheer and delight: and -these profit unto immortality. Meanwhile, -what mere “maker of beautiful -English” shall be pitted against him -there where he sits, the despair of a generation -of experts, continually tossing the -four brass balls?</p> - -<p>It has been said often by shallow reviewers, -and is said sometimes still, that -Hazlitt’s style aims at effect; as if an -effect must not be won, without aiming, -by a “born man of letters,” as Mr. Saintsbury<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> -described him, “who could not -help turning into literature everything -he touched.”<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> The “effect,” under given -conditions, is manifest, unavoidable. Once -let Hazlitt speak, as he speaks ever, in the -warmth of conviction, and what an intoxicating -music begins!—wild as that of the -gypsies, and with the same magnet-touch -on the sober senses: enough to subvert -all “criticism and idle distinction,” and -to bring back those Theban times when -the force of a sound, rather than masons -and surveyors, sent the very walls waltzing -into their places.</p> - -<p>In the face of diction so joyously clear -as his, so sumptuous and splendid, it -is well to endorse Mr. Ruskin, that -“no right style was ever founded save -out of a sincere heart.” It can never -be said of William Hazlitt, as Dean -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>Trench well said of those other “great -stylists,” Landor and De Quincey, that -he had a lack of moral earnestness. -What he was determined to impress -upon his reader, during the quarter-century -while he held a pen, was not -that he was knowing, not that he was -worthy of the renown and fortune which -passed him by, but only that he had rectitude -and a consuming passion for good. -He declares aloud that his escutcheon -has no bar-sinister: he has not sold himself; -he has spoken truth in and out of -season; he has honored the excellent at -his own risk and cost; he has fought for -a principle and been slain for it, from his -youth up. His sole boast is proven. In -a far deeper sense than Leigh Hunt, for -whom he forged the lovely compliment, -he was “the visionary in humanity, the -fool of virtue,” and the captain of those -who stood fast, in a hostile day, for ignored -and eternal ideals. The best thing -to be said of him, the thing for which, -in Haydon’s phrase, “everybody must -love him,” is that he himself loved justice -and hated iniquity. He shared the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> -groaning of the spirit after mortal welfare -with Swift and Fielding, with Shelley -and Matthew Arnold, with Carlyle -and Ruskin; he was corroded with cares -and desires not his own. Beside this -intense devotedness, what personal flaw -will ultimately show? The host who -figure in the Roman martyrology hang -all their claim upon the fact of martyrdom, -and, according to canon law, -need not have been saints in their lifetime -at all. So with such souls as his: -in the teeth of a thousand acknowledged -imperfections in life or in art, -they remain our exemplars. Let them -do what they will, at some one stroke -they dignify this earth. It is not Hazlitt, -“the born man of letters” alone, -but Hazlitt the born humanist, who bequeaths -us, from his England of coarse -misconception and abuse, a memory like -a loadstar, and a name which is a toast -to be drunk standing.</p> - - -<div class="center"><small>THE END</small><br /><br /></div> - -<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58">[58]</a> The article on <i>The Fine Arts</i> in the <i>Encyclopædia -Britannica</i> is signed “W. H.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59">[59]</a> Mrs. Hazlitt the first, it would appear, undertook to -verify her husband’s quotations for him. His favorite -metaphor, “Like the tide which flows on to the Propontic, -and knows no ebb,” must have passed many times under -her eye. Any reference to Othello himself, in the great -scene of Act III., would have shown four lines for William -Hazlitt’s explicit one.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60">[60]</a> Some of Hazlitt’s comments on women are full of unconscious -humor. In <i>Great and Little Things</i> he admits -being snubbed by the fair, and adds with grandiloquence: -“I took a pride in my disgrace, and concluded that I had -elsewhere my inheritance!”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61">[61]</a> In the National Portrait Gallery, London.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62">[62]</a> <i>Blackwood’s</i>, in the charming fashion of the time, -repeatedly refers to Hazlitt’s “pimples”; and Byron -credited and supplemented the allegation. Hazlitt himself -says somewhere “that to lay a thing to a person’s -charge from which he is perfectly free, shows spirit and -invention!” The calumny is not worth mention, except -as a fair specimen of the journalistic methods against which -literary men had to contend some eighty years ago.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63">[63]</a> Lamb had been his groomsman twenty-two years before, -at the Church of St. Andrew, Holborn, “and like to -have been turned out several times during the ceremony; -anything awful makes me laugh!” as he confessed in a -letter to Southey in 1815.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64">[64]</a> Orrery had seen this same bitter indignation overwhelm -Swift at times, “so that it is scarcely possible for -human features to carry in them more terror and austerity.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65">[65]</a> At 19 York Street, Westminster. The house, with -its tablet “To the Prince of Poets” set by Hazlitt himself, -was destroyed in 1877.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66">[66]</a> A snappy unpublished letter to Hunt, sold among -the Hazlitt papers at Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge’s, in -the late autumn of 1893, complains bitterly of kind Basil -Montagu, who had once put off a proffered visit from -Hazlitt, on the ground that a party of other guests was -expected. The deterred one was naturally wroth. “Yet -after this, I am not to look at him a little <i>in abstracto!</i> -This is what has soured me and made me sick of friendship -and acquaintanceship.” Hazlitt confounded cause -and effect. He was unwelcome in general gatherings -where his genius was unappreciated; and we may be sure -Montagu was sorry for it when, in the interests of concord, -he held up so deprecating and inhospitable a hand. But -among those who nursed Hazlitt in his last illness, Basil -Montagu was not the least loyal.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67">[67]</a> <i>The Fight</i> appeared in the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i> -in 1822. It was itself antedated by <i>The Fancy</i> of -John Hamilton Reynolds, Keats’s friend and Hood’s -brother-in-law, which was printed in 1820. The jolly -iambics are as inspired as the essay. “P. C.” is, of -course, Pugilistic Club.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Oh, it is life! to see a proud</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And dauntless man step, full of hopes,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Up to the P. C. stakes and ropes,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Throw in his hat, and with a spring</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Get gallantly within the ring;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Eye the wide crown, and walk awhile</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Taking all cheerings with a smile;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To see him strip; his well-trained form,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">White, glowing, muscular, and warm,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">All beautiful in conscious power,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Relaxed and quiet, till the hour;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His glossy and transparent frame,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In radiant plight to strive for fame!</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To look upon the clean shap’d limb</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In silk and flannel clothèd trim;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">While round the waist the kerchief tied</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Makes the flesh glow in richer pride.</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">’Tis more than life to watch him hold</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His hand forth, tremulous yet bold,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Over his second’s, and to clasp</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His rival’s in a quiet grasp;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To watch the noble attitude</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He takes, the crowd in breathless mood;</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And then to see, with adamant start,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The muscles set, and the great heart</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Hurl a courageous splendid light</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Into the eye, and then—the <span class="smcap">Fight</span>!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">But this is general: Hazlitt is specific. His particular -Fight was the great one between Neate of Bristol and -Tom Hickman the Gasman, Neate being the victor. On -May 20, 1823, Neate met Spring of Hertfordshire (so -translated out of his natural patronymic of Winter), in a -contest for the championship, and Neate himself went -under. This latter battle was mock-heroically celebrated -by Maginn in <i>Blackwood’s</i>, and Hood’s casual meteorological -simile heaped up honors on the winner:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name.</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">For why? I find her breath a bitter blighter,</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And suffer from her blows as if they came</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">From Spring the fighter!”</span></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="unindent">So that literature may be said to have set close to the -ropes in those days, from first to last.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68">[68]</a> Lamb, in “<i>A Letter to R. Southey, Esq.</i>”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69">[69]</a> The man of Martial’s epigram had other “views.” -The capital translation is Dr. Goldwin Smith’s:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> - <div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Vacerra lauds no living poet’s lays,</div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">But for departed genius keeps his praise.</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I, alas, live; nor deem it worth my while</span></div> -<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To die, that I may win Vacerra’s smile.”</span></div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70">[70]</a> This was the spirit of Henry Fielding on his last -voyage, hoisted aboard among the watermen at Redcliffe, -and hearing his emaciated body made the subject of jeers -and laughter. “No man who knew me,” he writes in -his journal, “will think I conceived any personal resentment -at this behavior; but it was a lively picture of that -cruelty and inhumanity in the nature of man which I -have often contemplated with concern, and which leads -the mind into a train of very uncomfortable and melancholy -thoughts.” It is a fine passage, and a strong heart, -not given to boasting, penned it. Poor Hazlitt could not -bear even an unintentional slight without imputing diabolical -malice to the offender. Yet it was certainly true -that, in his saner hours, he could suffer personal discomfort -in public without flinching, and deplore the habit -which imposed it, rather than the act.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71">[71]</a> If Hazlitt conveyed some of his best mannerisms -from Coleridge, not always transmuting them, surely the -balance may be said to be even when one discovers later -in Hartley Coleridge such an easy inherited use of Hazlitt’s -“flail of gold” as is exemplified in this summary of -Roger Ascham’s career. “There was a primitive honesty, -a kindly innocence about this good old scholar, -which gave a personal interest to the homeliest details of -his life. He had the rare felicity of passing through the -worst of times without persecution and without dishonor. -He lived with princes and princesses, prelates and diplomatists, -without offence as without ambition. Though he -enjoyed the smiles of royalty, his heart was none the -worse, and his fortunes little the better.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72">[72]</a> The quotation is from Coleridge, and it was applied -by him to Dryden. Hazlitt himself unconsciously expanded -and spoiled it in his essay on <i>Burke</i>. “The -wheels of his imagination did not catch fire from the rottenness -of the material, but from the rapidity of their -motion.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73">[73]</a> The Rev. H. R. Haweis has another characterization -of these breathing and burning pages: “long and tiresome -essays by Hazlitt.” So they are, sure enough, if only -you be endowed to think so! Hazlitt himself gives the -diverting fact for what it is worth, that “three chimney-sweeps -meeting three Chinese in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, -they laughed at one another till they were ready to drop -down.”</p></div></div> - - - - -<hr class="full" /> -<div class="adtitle1">MONSIEUR HENRI</div> - -<div class="hangsection"> - -<p>A Foot-note to French History. By <span class="smcap">Louise -Imogen Guiney</span>. With Portrait and Map. -Small 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00.</p></div> - - -<p>A fascinating career, truly, and here most -exquisitely chronicled. 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