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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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