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diff --git a/old/68195-0.txt b/old/68195-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 82f2842..0000000 --- a/old/68195-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5095 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of A happy half-century and other essays, -by Agnes Repplier - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: A happy half-century and other essays - -Author: Agnes Repplier - -Release Date: May 29, 2022 [eBook #68195] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Charlene Taylor, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The - Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY AND -OTHER ESSAYS *** - - - - - - A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY - AND OTHER ESSAYS - - - - - A - HAPPY HALF-CENTURY - _AND OTHER ESSAYS_ - - BY - AGNES REPPLIER, LITT. D. - - [Illustration] - - BOSTON AND NEW YORK - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - - The Riverside Press Cambridge - 1908 - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY AGNES REPPLIER - - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - _Published September 1908_ - - - - - TO - J. WILLIAM WHITE - - - - -PREFACE - - -The half-century, whose more familiar aspects this little book is -designed to illustrate, has spread its boundary lines. Nothing is so -hard to deal with as a period. Nothing is so unmanageable as a date. -People will be born a few years too early; they will live a few years -too long. Events will happen out of time. The closely linked decades -refuse to be separated, and my half-century, that I thought so compact, -widened imperceptibly while I wrote. - -I have filled my canvas with trivial things, with intimate details, -with what now seem the insignificant aspects of life. But the -insignificant aspects of life concern us mightily while we live; and -it is by their help that we understand the insignificant people who -are sometimes reckoned of importance. A hundred years ago many men and -women were reckoned of importance, at whose claims their successors -to-day smile scornfully. Yet they and their work were woven into the -tissue of things, into the warp and woof of social conditions, into the -literary history of England. An hour is not too precious to waste upon -them, however feeble their pretensions. Perhaps some idle reader in the -future will do as much by us. - - A. R. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY 1 - - THE PERILS OF IMMORTALITY 16 - - WHEN LALLA ROOKH WAS YOUNG 32 - - THE CORRESPONDENT 51 - - THE NOVELIST 73 - - ON THE SLOPES OF PARNASSUS 94 - - THE LITERARY LADY 116 - - THE CHILD 138 - - THE EDUCATOR 155 - - THE PIETIST 177 - - THE ACCURSED ANNUAL 196 - - OUR ACCOMPLISHED GREAT-GRANDMOTHER 217 - - THE ALBUM AMICORUM 234 - - -“A Happy Half-Century,” “The Perils of Immortality,” and “The -Correspondent” appeared first in _Harper’s Magazine_, “Our Accomplished -Great-Grandmother” in _Harper’s Bazar_, and “On the Slopes of -Parnassus” in the _Atlantic Monthly_; they are here reprinted by -permission of the publishers of those magazines. - - - - -A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY - - This damn’d unmasculine canting age! - - CHARLES LAMB. - - -There are few of us who do not occasionally wish we had been born in -other days, in days for which we have some secret affinity, and which -shine for us with a mellow light in the deceitful pages of history. -Mr. Austin Dobson, for example, must have sighed more than once to see -Queen Anne on Queen Victoria’s throne; and the Rt. Hon. Cecil Rhodes -must have realized that the reign of Elizabeth was the reign for him. -There is a great deal lost in being born out of date. What freak of -fortune thrust Galileo into the world three centuries too soon, and -held back Richard Burton’s restless soul until he was three centuries -too late? - -For myself, I confess that the last twenty-five years of the eighteenth -century and the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth make up my -chosen period, and that my motive for so choosing is contemptible. -It was not a time distinguished--in England at least--for wit or -wisdom, for public virtues or for private charm; but it _was_ a time -when literary reputations were so cheaply gained that nobody needed -to despair of one. A taste for platitudes, a tinge of Pharisaism, an -appreciation of the commonplace,--and the thing was done. It was in -the latter half of this blissful period that we find that enthusiastic -chronicler, Mrs. Cowley, writing in “Public Characters” of “the proud -preëminence which, in all the varieties of excellence produced by the -pen, the pencil, or the lyre, the ladies of Great Britain have attained -over contemporaries in every other country in Europe.” - -When we search for proofs of this proud preëminence, what do we find? -Roughly speaking, the period begins with Miss Burney, and closes -with Miss Terrier and Miss Jane Porter. It includes--besides Miss -Burney--one star of the first magnitude, Miss Austen (whose light never -dazzled Mrs. Cowley’s eyes), and one mild but steadfast planet, Miss -Edgeworth. The rest of Great Britain’s literary ladies were enjoying -a degree of fame and fortune so utterly disproportionate to their -merits that their toiling successors to-day may be pardoned for wishing -themselves part of that happy sisterhood. Think of being able to find a -market for an interminable essay entitled “Against Inconsistency in our -Expectations”! There lingers in all our hearts a desire to utter moral -platitudes, to dwell lingeringly and lovingly upon the obvious; but -alas! we are not Mrs. Barbaulds, and this is not the year 1780. Foolish -and inconsequent we are permitted to be, but tedious, never! And think -of hearing one’s own brother burst into song, that he might fondly -eulogize our - - Sacred gifts whose meed is deathless praise, - Whose potent charm the enraptured soul can raise. - -There are few things more difficult to conceive than an enthusiastic -brother tunefully entreating his sister to go on enrapturing the world -with her pen. Oh, thrice-favoured Anna Letitia Barbauld, who could warm -even the calm fraternal heart into a glow of sensibility. - -The publication of “Evelina” was the first notable event in our happy -half-century. Its freshness and vivacity charmed all London; and Miss -Burney, like Sheridan, had her applause “dashed in her face, sounded -in her ears,” for the rest of a long and meritorious life. Her second -novel, “Cecilia,” was received with such universal transport, that in -a very moral epilogue of a rather immoral play we find it seriously -commended to the public as an antidote to vice:-- - - Let sweet Cecilia gain your just applause, - Whose every passion yields to nature’s laws. - -Miss Burney, blushing in the royal box, had the satisfaction of hearing -this stately advertisement of her wares. Virtue was not left to be its -own reward in those fruitful and generous years. - -Indeed, the most comfortable characteristic of the period, and the one -which incites our deepest envy, is the universal willingness to accept -a good purpose as a substitute for good work. Even Madame d’Arblay, -shrewd, caustic, and quick-witted, forbears from unkind criticism of -the well-intentioned. She has nothing but praise for Mrs. Barbauld’s -poems, because of “the piety and worth they exhibit”; and she rises to -absolute enthusiasm over the anti-slavery epistle, declaring that its -energy “springs from the real spirit of virtue.” Yet to us the picture -of the depraved and luxurious West Indian ladies--about whom it is -safe to say good Mrs. Barbauld knew very little--seems one of the most -unconsciously humorous things in English verse. - - Lo! where reclined, pale Beauty courts the breeze, - Diffused on sofas of voluptuous ease. - - * * * * * - - With languid tones imperious mandates urge, - With arm recumbent wield the household scourge. - -There are moments when Mrs. Barbauld soars to the inimitable, when -she reaches the highest and happiest effect that absurdity is able to -produce. - - With arm recumbent wield the household scourge - -is one of these inspirations; and another is this pregnant sentence, -which occurs in a chapter of advice to young girls: “An ass is much -better adapted than a horse to show off a lady.” - -To point to Hannah More as a brilliant and bewildering example of -sustained success is to give the most convincing proof that it was a -good thing to be born in the year 1745. Miss More’s reputation was -already established at the dawning of my cherished half-century, and, -for the whole fifty years, her life was a series of social, literary, -and religious triumphs. In her youth, she was mistaken for a wit. In -her old age, she was revered as a saint. In her youth, Garrick called -her “Nine,”--gracefully intimating that she embodied the attributes of -all the Muses. In her old age, an acquaintance wrote to her: “You who -are secure of the approbation of angels may well hold human applause -to be of small consequence.” In her youth, she wrote a play that -everybody went to see. In her old age, she wrote tracts that everybody -bought and distributed. Prelates composed Latin verses in her honour; -and when her “Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World” was -published anonymously, the Bishop of London exclaimed in a kind of -pious transport, “Aut Morus, aut Angelus!” Her tragedy, “Percy,” melted -the heart of London. Men “shed tears in abundance,” and women were -“choked with emotion” over the “affecting circumstances of the Piece.” -Sir William Pepys confessed that “Percy” “broke his heart”; and that he -thought it “a kind of profanation” to wipe his eyes, and go from the -theatre to Lady Harcourt’s assembly. Four thousand copies of the play -were sold in a fortnight; and the Duke of Northumberland sent a special -messenger to Miss More to thank her for the honour she had done his -historic name. - -As a novelist, Hannah was equally successful. Twenty thousand copies of -“Cœlebs in Search of a Wife” were sold in England, and thirty thousand -in America. “The Americans are a very approving people,” acknowledged -the gratified authoress. In Iceland “Cœlebs” was read--so Miss More -says--“with great apparent profit”; while certain very popular tracts, -like “Charles the Footman” and “The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,” -made their edifying way to Moscow, and were found by the missionary -Gericke in the library of the Rajah of Tanjore. “All this and Heaven, -too!” as a reward for being born in 1745. The injustice of the thing -stings us to the soul. Yet it was the unhesitating assumption of -Heaven’s co-partnership which gave to Hannah More the best part of -her earthly prestige, and made her verdicts a little like Protestant -Bulls. When she objected to “Marmion” and “The Lady of the Lake” for -their lack of “practical precept,” these sinless poems were withdrawn -from Evangelical book-shelves. Her biographer, Mr. Thompson, thought -it necessary to apologize for her correspondence with that agreeable -worldling, Horace Walpole, and to assure us that “the fascinations of -Walpole’s false wit must have retired before the bright ascendant of -her pure and prevailing superiority.” As she waxed old, and affluent, -and disputatious, it was deemed well to encourage a timid public with -the reminder that her genius, though “great and commanding,” was -still “lovely and kind.” And when she died, it was recorded that “a -cultivated taste for moral scenery was one of her distinctions”;--as -though Nature herself attended a class of ethics before venturing to -allure too freely the mistress of Barley Wood. - -It is in the contemplation of such sunlight mediocrity that the -hardship of being born too late is felt with crushing force. Why -cannot we write “Letters on the Improvement of the Mind,” and be held, -like Mrs. Chapone, to be an authority on education all the rest of -our lives; and have people entreating us, as they entreated her, to -undertake, at any cost, the intellectual guidance of their daughters? -When we consider all that a modern educator is expected to know--from -bird-calls to metric measures--we sigh over the days which demanded -nothing more difficult than the polite expression of truisms. - -“Our feelings are not given us for our ornament, but to spur us on to -right action. Compassion, for instance, is not impressed upon the human -heart, only to adorn the fair face with tears, and to give an agreeable -languor to the eyes. It is designed to excite our utmost endeavour to -relieve the sufferer.” - -Was it really worth while to say this even in 1775? Is it possible -that young ladies were then in danger of thinking that the office -of compassion was to “adorn a face with tears”? and did they try to -be sorry for the poor and sick, only that their bright eyes might -be softened into languor? Yet we know that Mrs. Chapone’s little -volume was held to have rendered signal service to society. It has -the honour to be one of the books which Miss Lydia Languish lays out -ostentatiously on her table--in company with Fordyce’s sermons--when -she anticipates a visit from Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony. Some -halting verses of the period exalt it as the beacon light of youth; -and Mrs. Delany, writing to her six-year-old niece, counsels the -little girl to read the “Letters” once a year until she is grown up. -“They speak to the heart as well as to the head,” she assures the poor -infant; “and I know no book (next to the Bible) more entertaining and -edifying.” - -Mrs. Montagu gave dinners. The real and very solid foundation of _her_ -reputation was the admirable manner in which she fed her lions. A -mysterious halo of intellectuality surrounded this excellent hostess. -“The female Mæcenas of Hill Street,” Hannah More elegantly termed her, -adding,--to prove that she herself was not unduly influenced by gross -food and drink,--“But what are baubles, when speaking of a Montagu!” -Dr. Johnson praised her conversation,--especially when he wanted to -tease jealous Mrs. Thrale,--but sternly discountenanced her attempts -at authorship. When Sir Joshua Reynolds observed that the “Essay on -the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare” did its authoress honour, Dr. -Johnson retorted contemptuously: “It does _her_ honour, but it would do -honour to nobody else,”--which strikes me as a singularly unpleasant -thing to hear said about one’s literary masterpiece. Like the fabled -Caliph who stood by the Sultan’s throne, translating the flowers of -Persian speech into comprehensible and unflattering truths, so Dr. -Johnson stands undeceived in this pleasant half-century of pretence, -translating its ornate nonsense into language we can too readily -understand. - -But how comfortable and how comforting the pretence must have been, -and how kindly tolerant all the pretenders were to one another! If, -in those happy days, you wrote an essay on “The Harmony of Numbers -and Versification,” you unhesitatingly asked your friends to come and -have it read aloud to them; and your friends--instead of leaving town -next day--came, and listened, and called it a “Miltonic evening.” If, -like Mrs. Montagu, you had a taste for letter-writing, you filled up -innumerable sheets with such breathless egotisms as this:-- - -“I come, a happy guest, to the general feast Nature spreads for all her -children, my spirits dance in the sunbeams, or take a sweet repose in -the shade. I rejoice in the grand chorus of the day, and feel content -in the silent serene of night, while I listen to the morning hymn of -the whole animal creation, I recollect how beautiful it is, sum’d up in -the works of our great poet, Milton, every rivulet murmurs in poetical -cadence, and to the melody of the nightingale I add the harmonious -verses she has inspired in many languages.” - -So highly were these rhapsodies appreciated, and so far were -correspondents from demanding either coherence or punctuation, that -four volumes of Mrs. Montagu’s letters were published after her death; -and we find Miss More praising Mrs. Boscawen because she approached -this standard of excellence: “Mrs. Palk tells me her letters are -hardly inferior to Mrs. Montagu’s.” - -Those were the days to live in, and sensible people made haste to be -born in time. The close of the eighteenth century saw quiet country -families tearing the freshly published “Mysteries of Udolpho” into -a dozen parts, because no one could wait his turn to read the book. -All England held its breath while Emily explored the haunted chambers -of her prison-house. The beginning of the nineteenth century found -Mrs. Opie enthroned as a peerless novel-writer, and the “Edinburgh -Review” praising “Adeline Mowbray, or Mother and Daughter,” as the most -pathetic story in the English language. Indeed, one sensitive gentleman -wrote to its authoress that he had lain awake all night, bathed in -tears, after reading it. About this time, too, we begin to hear “the -mellow tones of Felicia Hemans,” whom Christopher North reverently -admired; and who, we are assured, found her way to all hearts that -were open to “the holy sympathies of religion and virtue.” Murray’s -heart was so open that he paid two hundred guineas for the “Vespers of -Palermo”; and Miss Edgeworth considered that the “Siege of Valencia” -contained the most beautiful poetry she had read for years. Finally -Miss Jane Porter looms darkly on the horizon, with novels five volumes -long. All the Porters worked on a heroic scale. Anna Maria’s stories -were more interminable than Jane’s; and their brother Robert painted -on a single canvas, “The Storming of Seringapatam,” seven hundred -life-sized figures. - -“Thaddeus of Warsaw” and “The Scottish Chiefs” were books familiar -to our infancy. They stretched vastly and vaguely over many tender -years,--stories after the order of Melchisedec, without beginning and -without end. But when our grandmothers were young, and my chosen period -had still years to run, they were read on two continents, and in many -tongues. The King of Würtemberg was so pleased with “Thaddeus” that -he made Miss Porter a “lady of the Chapter of St. Joachim,”--which -sounds both imposing and mysterious. The badge of the order was a gold -cross; and this unusual decoration, coupled with the lady’s habit -of draping herself in flowing veils like one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s -heroines, so confused an honest British public that it was deemed -necessary to explain to agitated Protestants that Miss Porter had no -Popish proclivities, and must not be mistaken for a nun. In our own -country her novels were exceedingly popular, and her American admirers -sent her a rose-wood armchair in token of appreciation and esteem. -It is possible she would have preferred a royalty on her books; but -the armchair was graciously accepted, and a pen-and-ink sketch in an -album of celebrities represents Miss Porter seated majestically on its -cushions, “in the quiet and ladylike occupation of taking a cup of -coffee.” - -And so my happy half-century draws to its appointed end. A new era, -cold, critical, contentious, deprecated the old genial absurdities, -chilled the old sentimental outpourings, questioned the old profitable -pietism. Unfortunates, born a hundred years too late, look back with -wistful eyes upon the golden age which they feel themselves qualified -to adorn. - - - - -THE PERILS OF IMMORTALITY - - Peu de génie, point de grâce. - - -There is no harder fate than to be immortalized as a fool; to have -one’s name--which merits nothing sterner than obliteration--handed -down to generations as an example of silliness, or stupidity, or -presumption; to be enshrined pitilessly in the amber of the “Dunciad”; -to be laughed at forever because of Charles Lamb’s impatient and -inextinguishable raillery. When an industrious young authoress named -Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger--a model of painstaking insignificance--invited -Charles and Mary Lamb to drink tea with her one cold December night, -she little dreamed she was achieving a deathless and unenviable fame; -and that, when her half dozen books should have lapsed into comfortable -oblivion, she herself should never be fortunate enough to be forgotten. -It is a cruel chance which crystallizes the folly of an hour, and makes -it outlive our most serious endeavours. Perhaps we should do well to -consider this painful possibility before hazarding an acquaintance -with the Immortals. - -Miss Benger did more than hazard. She pursued the Immortals with -insensate zeal. She bribed Mrs. Inchbald’s servant-maid into lending -her cap, and apron, and tea-tray; and, so equipped, penetrated into -the inmost sanctuary of that literary lady, who seems to have taken -the intrusion in good part. She was equally adroit in seducing Mary -Lamb--as the Serpent seduced Eve--when Charles Lamb was the ultimate -object of her designs. Coming home to dinner one day, “hungry as a -hunter,” he found to his dismay the two women closeted together, and -trusted he was in time to prevent their exchanging vows of eternal -friendship, though not--as he discovered later--in time to save himself -from an engagement to drink tea with the stranger (“I had never seen -her before, and could not tell who the devil it was that was so -familiar”), the following night. - -What happened is told in a letter to Coleridge; one of the best-known -and one of the longest letters Lamb ever wrote,--he is so brimful of -his grievance. Miss Benger’s lodgings were up two flights of stairs in -East Street. She entertained her guests with tea, coffee, macaroons, -and “much love.” She talked to them, or rather _at_ them, upon purely -literary topics,--as, for example, Miss Hannah More’s “Strictures on -Female Education,” which they had never read. She addressed Mary Lamb -in French,--“possibly having heard that neither Mary nor I understood -French,”--and she favoured them with Miss Seward’s opinion of Pope. She -asked Lamb, who was growing more miserable every minute, if he agreed -with D’Israeli as to the influence of organism upon intellect; and -when he tried to parry the question with a pun upon organ--“which went -off very flat”--she despised him for his feeble flippancy. She advised -Mary to carry home two translations of “Pizarro,” so that she might -compare them _verbatim_ (an offer hastily declined), and she made them -both promise to return the following week--which they never did--to -meet Miss Jane Porter and her sister, “who, it seems, have heard much -of Mr. Coleridge, and wish to meet _us_ because we are _his_ friends.” -It is a _comédie larmoyante_. We sympathize hotly with Lamb when we -read his letter; but there is something piteous in the thought of the -poor little hostess going complacently to bed that night, and never -realizing that she had made her one unhappy flight to fame. - -There were people, strange as it may seem, who liked Miss Benger’s -evenings. Miss Aikin assures us that “her circle of acquaintances -extended with her reputation, and with the knowledge of her excellent -qualities, and she was often enabled to assemble as guests at her -humble tea-table names whose celebrity would have insured attention -in the proudest salons of the metropolis.” Crabb Robinson, who was -a frequent visitor, used to encounter large parties of sentimental -ladies; among them, Miss Porter, Miss Landon, and the “eccentric but -amiable” Miss Wesley,--John Wesley’s niece,--who prided herself upon -being broad-minded enough to have friends of varying religions, and -who, having written two unread novels, remarked complacently to Miss -Edgeworth: “We sisters of the quill ought to know one another.” - -The formidable Lady de Crespigny of Campion Lodge was also Miss -Benger’s condescending friend and patroness, and this august -matron--of insipid mind and imperious temper--was held to sanctify -in some mysterious manner all whom she honoured with her notice. The -praises lavished upon Lady de Crespigny by her contemporaries would -have made Hypatia blush, and Sappho hang her head. Like Mrs. Jarley, -she was the delight of the nobility and gentry. She corresponded, so we -are told, with the _literati_ of England; she published, like a British -Cornelia, her letters of counsel to her son; she was “courted by the -gay and admired by the clever”; and she mingled at Campion Lodge “the -festivity of fashionable parties with the pleasures of intellectual -society, and the comforts of domestic peace.” - -To this array of feminine virtue and feminine authorship, Lamb was -singularly unresponsive. He was not one of the _literati_ honoured -by Lady de Crespigny’s correspondence. He eluded the society of Miss -Porter, though she was held to be handsome,--for a novelist. (“The only -literary lady I ever knew,” writes Miss Mitford, “who didn’t look like -a scarecrow to keep birds from cherries.”) He said unkindly of Miss -Landon that, if she belonged to him, he would lock her up and feed her -on bread and water until she left off writing poetry. And for Miss -Wesley he entertained a cordial animosity, only one degree less lively -than his sentiments towards Miss Benger. Miss Wesley had a lamentable -habit of sending her effusions to be read by reluctant men of letters. -She asked Lamb for Coleridge’s address, which he, to divert the evil -from his own head, cheerfully gave. Coleridge, very angry, reproached -his friend for this disloyal baseness; but Lamb, with the desperate -instinct of self-preservation, refused all promise of amendment. “You -encouraged that mopsey, Miss Wesley, to dance after you,” he wrote -tartly, “in the hope of having her nonsense put into a nonsensical -Anthology. We have pretty well shaken her off by that simple expedient -of referring her to you; but there are more burs in the wind.”... “Of -all God’s creatures,” he cries again, in an excess of ill-humour, “I -detest letters-affecting, authors-hunting ladies.” Alas for Miss Benger -when she hunted hard, and the quarry turned at bay! - -An atmosphere of inexpressible dreariness hangs over the little coterie -of respectable, unilluminated writers, who, to use Lamb’s priceless -phrase, encouraged one another in mediocrity. A vapid propriety, a -mawkish sensibility were their substitutes for real distinction of -character or mind. They read Mary Wollstonecraft’s books, but would -not know the author; and when, years later, Mrs. Gaskell presented -the widowed Mrs. Shelley to Miss Lucy Aikin, that outraged spinster -turned her back upon the erring one, to the profound embarrassment -of her hostess. Of Mrs. Inchbald, we read in “Public Characters” for -1811: “Her moral qualities constitute her principal excellence; and -though useful talents and personal accomplishments, of themselves, form -materials for an agreeable picture, moral character gives the polish -which fascinates the heart.” The conception of goodness then in vogue -is pleasingly illustrated by a passage from one of Miss Elizabeth -Hamilton’s books, which Miss Benger in her biography of that lady (now -lost to fame) quotes appreciatively:-- - -“It was past twelve o’clock. Already had the active and judicious -Harriet performed every domestic task; and, having completely regulated -the family economy for the day, was quietly seated at work with her -aunt and sister, listening to Hume’s ‘History of England,’ as it was -read to her by some orphan girl whom she had herself instructed.” - -So truly ladylike had the feminine mind grown by this time, that the -very language it used was refined to the point of ambiguity. Mrs. -Barbauld writes genteelly of the behaviour of young girls “to the -other half of their species,” as though she could not bear to say, -simply and coarsely, men. So full of content were the little circles -who listened to the “elegant lyric poetess,” Mrs. Hemans, or to “the -female Shakespeare of her age,” Miss Joanna Baillie (we owe both these -phrases to the poet Campbell), that when Crabb Robinson was asked by -Miss Wakefield whether he would like to know Mrs. Barbauld, he cried -enthusiastically: “You might as well ask me whether I should like to -know the Angel Gabriel!” - -In the midst of these sentimentalities and raptures, we catch now -and then forlorn glimpses of the Immortals,--of Wordsworth at a -literary entertainment in the house of Mr. Hoare of Hampstead, sitting -mute and miserable all evening in a corner,--which, as Miss Aikin -truly remarked, was “disappointing and provoking;” of Lamb carried -by the indefatigable Crabb Robinson to call on Mrs. Barbauld. This -visit appears to have been a distinct failure. Lamb’s one recorded -observation was that Gilbert Wakefield had a peevish face,--an awkward -remark, as Wakefield’s daughter sat close at hand and listening. -“Lamb,” writes Mr. Robinson, “was vexed, but got out of the scrape -tolerably well,”--having had, indeed, plenty of former experiences to -help him on the way. - -There is a delightful passage in Miss Jane Porter’s diary which -describes at length an evening spent at the house of Mrs. Fenwick, “the -amiable authoress of ‘Secrecy.’” (Everybody was the amiable authoress -of something. It was a day, like our own, given over to the worship of -ink.) The company consisted of Miss Porter and her sister Maria, Miss -Benger and her brother, the poet Campbell, and his nephew, a young -man barely twenty years of age. The lion of the little party was of -course the poet, who endeared himself to Mrs. Fenwick’s heart by his -attentions to her son, “a beautiful boy of six.” - -“This child’s innocence and caresses,” writes Miss Porter gushingly, -“seemed to unbend the lovely feelings of Campbell’s heart. Every -restraint but those which the guardian angels of tender infancy -acknowledge was thrown aside. I never saw Man in a more interesting -point of view. I felt how much I esteemed the author of the ‘Pleasures -of Hope.’ When we returned home, we walked. It was a charming summer -night. The moon shone brightly. Maria leaned on Campbell’s arm. I did -the same by Benger’s. Campbell made some observations on _pedantic_ -women. I did not like it, being anxious for the respect of this man. -I was jealous about how nearly he might think _we_ resembled that -character. When the Bengers parted from us, Campbell observed my -abstraction, and with sincerity I confessed the cause. I know not what -were his replies; but they were so gratifying, so endearing, so marked -with truth, that when we arrived at the door, and he shook us by the -hand, as a sign of adieu immediately prior to his next day’s journey to -Scotland, we parted with evident marks of being all in tears.” - -It is rather disappointing, after this outburst of emotion, to find -Campbell, in a letter to his sister, describing Miss Porter in language -of chilling moderation: “Among the company was Miss Jane Porter, whose -talents my _nephew_ adores. She is a pleasing woman, and made quite a -conquest of him.” - -Miss Benger was only one of the many aspirants to literary honours -whose futile endeavours vexed and affronted Charles Lamb. In reality -she burdened him far less than others who, like Miss Betham and Miss -Stoddart, succeeded in sending him their verses for criticism, or who -begged him to forward the effusions to Southey,--an office he gladly -fulfilled. Perhaps Miss Benger’s vivacity jarred upon his taste. He was -fastidious about the gayety of women. Madame de Staël considered her -one of the most interesting persons she had met in England; but the -approval of this “impudent clever” Frenchwoman would have been the -least possible recommendation to Lamb. If he had known how hard had -been Miss Benger’s struggles, and how scanty her rewards, he might have -forgiven her that sad perversity which kept her toiling in the field -of letters. She had had the misfortune to be a precocious child, and -had written at the age of thirteen a poem called “The Female Geniad,” -which was dedicated to Lady de Crespigny, and published under the -patronage of that honoured dame. Youthful prodigies were then much in -favour. Miss Mitford comments very sensibly upon them, being filled -with pity for one Mary Anne Browne, “a fine tall girl of fourteen, and -a full-fledged authoress,” who was extravagantly courted and caressed -one season, and cruelly ignored the next. The “Female Geniad” sealed -Miss Benger’s fate. When one has written a poem at thirteen, and that -poem has been printed and praised, there is nothing for it but to keep -on writing until Death mercifully removes the obligation. - -It is needless to say that the drama--which then, as now, was the -goal of every author’s ambition--first fired Miss Benger’s zeal. When -we think of Miss Hannah More as a successful playwright, it is hard to -understand how any one could fail; yet fail Miss Benger did, although -we are assured by her biographer that “her genius appeared in many ways -well adapted to the stage.” She next wrote a mercilessly long poem upon -the abolition of the slave-trade (which was read only by anti-slavery -agitators), and two novels,--“Marian,” and “Valsinore: or, the Heart -and the Fancy.” Of these we are told that “their excellences were such -as genius only can reach”; and if they also missed their mark, it must -have been because--as Miss Aikin delicately insinuates--“no judicious -reader could fail to perceive that the artist was superior to the -work.” This is always unfortunate. It is the work, and not the artist, -which is offered for sale in the market-place. Miss Benger’s work is -not much worse than a great deal which did sell, and she possessed -at least the grace of an unflinching and courageous perseverance. -Deliberately, and without aptitude or training, she began to write -history, and in this most difficult of all fields won for herself a -hearing. Her “Life of Anne Boleyn,” and her “Memoirs of Mary, Queen -of Scots,” were read in many an English schoolroom; their propriety -and Protestantism making them acceptable to the anxious parental mind. -A single sentence from “Anne Boleyn” will suffice to show the ease -of Miss Benger’s mental attitude, and the comfortable nature of her -views:-- - -“It would be ungrateful to forget that the mother of Queen Elizabeth -was the early and zealous advocate of the Reformation, and that, by -her efforts to dispel the gloom of ignorance and superstition, she -conferred on the English people a benefit of which, in the present -advanced state of knowledge and civilization, it would be difficult to -conceive or to appreciate the real value and importance.” - -The “active and judicious Harriet” would have listened to this with as -much complacence as to Hume. - -In “La Belle Assemblée” for April, 1823, there is an engraving -of Miss Smirke’s portrait of Miss Benger. She is painted in an -imposing turban, with tight little curls, and an air of formidable -sprightliness. It was this sprightliness which was so much admired. -“Wound up by a cup of coffee,” she would talk for hours, and her -friends really seem to have liked it. “Her lively imagination,” -writes Miss Aikin, “and the flow of eloquence it inspired, aided by -one of the most melodious of voices, lent an inexpressible charm to -her conversation, which was heightened by an intuitive discernment of -character, rare in itself, and still more so in combination with such -fertility of fancy and ardency of feeling.” - -This leaves little to be desired. It is not at all like the Miss -Benger of Lamb’s letter, with her vapid pretensions and her stupid -insolence. Unhappily, we see through Lamb’s eyes, and we cannot see -through Miss Aikin’s. Of one thing only I feel sure. Had Miss Benger, -instead of airing her trivial acquirements, told Lamb that when she was -a little girl, bookless and penniless, at Chatham, she used to read -the open volumes in the booksellers’ windows, and go back again and -again, hoping that the leaves might be turned, she would have touched -a responsive chord in his heart. Who does not remember his exquisite -sympathy for “street-readers,” and his unlikely story of Martin B----, -who “got through two volumes of ‘Clarissa,’” in this desultory fashion. -Had he but known of the shabby, eager child, staring wistfully at the -coveted books, he would never have written the most amusing of his -letters, and Miss Benger’s name would be to-day unknown. - - - - -WHEN LALLA ROOKH WAS YOUNG - - And give you, mixed with western sentimentalism, - Some glimpses of the finest orientalism. - - -“Stick to the East,” wrote Byron to Moore, in 1813. “The oracle, Staël, -told me it was the only poetic policy. The North, South, and West have -all been exhausted; but from the East we have nothing but Southey’s -unsaleables, and these he has contrived to spoil by adopting only their -most outrageous fictions. His personages don’t interest us, and yours -will. You will have no competitors; and, if you had, you ought to be -glad of it. The little I have done in that way is merely a ‘voice in -the wilderness’ for you; and if it has had any success, that also will -prove that the public are orientalizing, and pave the way for you.” - -There is something admirably business-like in this advice. Byron, who -four months before had sold the “Giaour” and the “Bride of Abydos” to -Murray for a thousand guineas, was beginning to realize the commercial -value of poetry; and, like a true man of affairs, knew what it meant -to corner a poetic market. He was generous enough to give Moore the -tip, and to hold out a helping hand as well; for he sent him six -volumes of Castellan’s “Mœurs des Ottomans,” and three volumes of -Toderini’s “De la Littérature des Turcs.” The orientalism afforded by -text-books was the kind that England loved. - -From the publication of “Lalla Rookh” in 1817 to the publication of -Thackeray’s “Our Street” in 1847, Byron’s far-sighted policy continued -to bear golden fruit. For thirty years Caliphs and Deevs, Brahmins -and Circassians, rioted through English verse; mosques and seraglios -were the stage properties of English fiction; the bowers of Rochnabed, -the Lake of Cashmere, became as familiar as Richmond and the Thames -to English readers. Some feeble washings of this great tidal wave -crossed the estranging sea, to tint the pages of the New York “Mirror,” -and kindred journals in the United States. Harems and slave-markets, -with beautiful Georgians and sad, slender Arab girls, thrilled our -grandmothers’ kind hearts. Tales of Moorish Lochinvars, who snatch -away the fair daughters--or perhaps the fair wives--of powerful rajahs, -captivated their imaginations. Gazelles trot like poodles through these -stories, and lend colour to their robust Saxon atmosphere. In one, a -neglected “favourite” wins back her lord’s affection by the help of a -slave-girl’s amulet; and the inconstant Moslem, entering the harem, -exclaims, “Beshrew me that I ever thought another fair!”--which sounds -like a penitent Tudor. - - A Persian’s Heaven is easily made, - ’Tis but black eyes and lemonade; - -and our oriental literature was compounded of the same simple -ingredients. When the New York “Mirror,” under the guidance of the -versatile Mr. Willis, tried to be impassioned and sensuous, it dropped -into such wanton lines as these to a “Sultana”:-- - - She came,--soft leaning on her favourite’s arm, - She came, warm panting from the sultry hours, - To rove mid fragrant shades of orange bowers, - A veil light shadowing each voluptuous charm. - -And for this must Lord Byron stand responsible. - -The happy experiment of grafting Turkish roses upon English boxwood -led up to some curious complications, not the least of which was the -necessity of stiffening the moral fibre of the Orient--which was -esteemed to be but lax--until it could bear itself in seemly fashion -before English eyes. The England of 1817 was not, like the England of -1908, prepared to give critical attention to the decadent. It presented -a solid front of denial to habits and ideas which had not received the -sanction of British custom; which had not, through national adoption, -become part of the established order of the universe. The line of -demarcation between Providence and the constitution was lightly drawn. -Jeffrey, a self-constituted arbiter of tastes and morals, assured -his nervous countrymen that, although Moore’s verse was glowing, his -principles were sound. - -“The characters and sentiments of ‘Lalla Rookh’ belong to the poetry -of rational, honourable, considerate, and humane Europe; and not to -the childishness, cruelty, and profligacy of Asia. So far as we have -yet seen, there is no sound sense, firmness of purpose, or principled -goodness, except among the natives of Europe and their genuine -descendants.” - -Starting with this magnificent assumption, it became a delicate and a -difficult task to unite the customs of the East with the “principled -goodness” of the West; the “sound sense” of the Briton with the fervour -and fanaticism of the Turk. Jeffrey held that Moore had effected this -alliance in the most tactful manner, and had thereby “redeemed the -character of oriental poetry”; just as Mr. Thomas Haynes Bayly, ten -years later, “reclaimed festive song from vulgarity.” More carping -critics, however, worried their readers a good deal on this point; and -the nonconformist conscience cherished uneasy doubts as to Hafed’s -irregular courtship and Nourmahal’s marriage lines. From across the sea -came the accusing voice of young Mr. Channing in the “North American,” -proclaiming that “harlotry has found in Moore a bard to smooth her -coarseness and veil her effrontery, to give her languor for modesty, -and affectation for virtue.” The English “Monthly Review,” less open -to alarm, confessed with a sigh “a depressing regret that, with the -exception of ‘Paradise and the Peri,’ no great moral effect is either -attained or attempted by ‘Lalla Rookh.’ To what purpose all this -sweetness and delicacy of thought and language, all this labour and -profusion of Oriental learning? What head is set right in one erroneous -notion, what heart is softened in one obdurate feeling, by this -luxurious quarto?” - -It is a lamentable truth that Anacreon exhibits none of Dante’s -spiritual depth, and that la reine Margot fell short of Queen -Victoria’s fireside qualities. Nothing could make a moralist of Moore. -The light-hearted creature was a model of kindness, of courage, of -conjugal fidelity; but--reversing the common rule of life--he preached -none of the virtues that he practised. His pathetic attempts to adjust -his tales to the established conventions of society failed signally -of their purpose. Even Byron wrote him that little Allegra (as yet -unfamiliar with her alphabet) should not be permitted to read “Lalla -Rookh”; partly because it wasn’t proper, and partly--which was prettily -said--lest she should discover “that there was a better poet than -Papa.” It was reserved for Moore’s followers to present their verses -and stories in the chastened form acceptable to English drawing-rooms, -and permitted to English youth. “La Belle Assemblée” published in -1819 an Eastern tale called “Jahia and Meimoune,” in which the lovers -converse like the virtuous characters in “Camilla.” Jahia becomes the -guest of an infamous sheik, who intoxicates him with a sherbet composed -of “sugar, musk, and amber,” and presents him with five thousand -sequins and a beautiful Circassian slave. When he is left alone with -this damsel, she addresses him thus: “I feel interested in you, and -present circumstances will save me from the charge of immodesty, when -I say that I also love you. This love inspires me with fresh horror at -the crimes that are here committed.” - -Jahia protests that he respectfully returns her passion, and that his -intentions are of an honourable character, whereupon the circumspect -maiden rejoins: “Since such are your sentiments, I will perish with you -if I fail in delivering you”; and conducts him, through a tangle of -adventures, to safety. Jahia then places Meimoune under the chaperonage -of his mother until their wedding day; after which we are happy to -know that “they passed their lives in the enjoyment of every comfort -attending on domestic felicity. If their lot was not splendid or -magnificent, they were rich in mutual affection; and they experienced -that fortunate medium which, far removed from indigence, aspires not to -the accumulation of immense wealth, and laughs at the unenvied load of -pomp and splendour, which it neither seeks, nor desires to obtain.” - -It is to be hoped that many obdurate hearts were softened, and many -erroneous notions were set right by the influence of a story like -this. In the “Monthly Museum” an endless narrative poem, “Abdallah,” -stretched its slow length along from number to number, blooming with -fresh moral sentiments on every page; while from an arid wilderness of -Moorish love songs, and Persian love songs, and Circassian love songs, -and Hindu love songs, I quote this “Arabian” love song, peerless amid -its peers:-- - - Thy hair is black as the starless sky, - And clasps thy neck as it loved its home; - Yet it moves at the sound of thy faintest sigh, - Like the snake that lies on the white sea-foam. - - I love thee, Ibla. Thou art bright - As the white snow on the hills afar; - Thy face is sweet as the moon by night, - And thine eye like the clear and rolling star. - - But the snow is poor and withers soon, - While thou art firm and rich in hope; - And never (like thine) from the face of the moon - Flamed the dark eye of the antelope. - -The truth and accuracy of this last observation should commend the poem -to all lovers of nature. - -It is the custom in these days of morbid accuracy to laugh at the -second-hand knowledge which Moore so proudly and so innocently -displayed. Even Mr. Saintsbury says some unkind things about the notes -to “Lalla Rookh,”--scraps of twentieth-hand knowledge, _he_ calls -them,--while pleasantly recording his affection for the poem itself, an -affection based upon the reasonable ground of childish recollections. -In the well-ordered home of his infancy, none but “Sunday books” might -be read on Sundays in nursery or schoolroom. “But this severity -was tempered by one of those easements often occurring in a world, -which, if not the best, is certainly not the worst of all possible -worlds. For the convenience of servants, or for some other reason, the -children were much more in the drawing-room on Sundays than on any -other day; and it was an unwritten rule that any book that lived in -the drawing-room was fit Sunday reading. The consequence was that from -the time I could read until childish things were put away, I used to -spend a considerable part of the first day of the week in reading and -re-reading a collection of books, four of which were Scott’s poems, -‘Lalla Rookh,’ ‘The Essays of Elia,’ and Southey’s ‘Doctor.’ Therefore -it may be that I rank ‘Lalla Rookh’ too high.” - -Blessed memories, and thrice blessed influences of childhood! But if -“Lalla Rookh,” like “Vathek,” was written to be the joy of imaginative -little boys and girls (alas for those who now replace it with “Allan -in Alaska,” and “Little Cora on the Continent”), the notes to “Lalla -Rookh” were, to my infant mind, even more enthralling than the poem. -There was a sketchiness about them, a detachment from time and -circumstance--I always hated being told the whole of everything--which -led me day after day into fresh fields of conjecture. The nymph who -was encircled by a rainbow, and bore a radiant son; the scimitars that -were so dazzling they made the warriors wink; the sacred well which -reflected the moon at midday; and the great embassy that was sent -“from some port of the Indies”--a welcome vagueness of geography--to -recover a monkey’s tooth, snatched away by some equally nameless -conqueror;--what child could fail to love such floating stars of -erudition? - -Our great-grandfathers were profoundly impressed by Moore’s text-book -acquirements. The “Monthly Review” quoted a solid page of the notes -to dazzle British readers, who confessed themselves amazed to find a -fellow countryman so much “at home” in Persia and Arabia. Blackwood -authoritatively announced that Moore was familiar, not only “with the -grandest regions of the human soul,”--which is expected of a poet,--but -also with the remotest boundaries of the East; and that in every tone -and hue and form he was “purely and intensely Asiatic.” “The carping -criticism of paltry tastes and limited understandings faded before -that burst of admiration with which all enlightened spirits hailed the -beauty and magnificence of ‘Lalla Rookh.’” - -Few people care to confess to “paltry tastes” and “limited -understandings.” They would rather join in any general acclamation. -“Browning’s poetry obscure!” I once heard a lecturer say with scorn. -“Let us ask ourselves, ‘Obscure to whom?’ No doubt a great many things -are obscure to long-tailed Brazilian apes.” After which his audience, -with one accord, admitted that it understood “Sordello.” So when -Jeffrey--great umpire of games whose rules he never knew--informed -the British public that there was not in “Lalla Rookh” “a simile, -a description, a name, a trait of history, or allusion of romance -that does not indicate entire familiarity with the life, nature, and -learning of the East,” the public contentedly took his word for it. -When he remarked that “the dazzling splendours, the breathing odours” -of Araby were without doubt Moore’s “native element,” the public, -whose native element was neither splendid nor sweet-smelling, envied -the Irishman his softer joys. “Lalla Rookh” might be “voluptuous” (a -word we find in every review of the period), but its orientalism was -beyond dispute. Did not Mrs. Skinner tell Moore that she had, when in -India, translated the prose interludes into Bengali, for the benefit -of her moonshee, and that the man was amazed at the accuracy of the -costumes? Did not the nephew of the Persian ambassador in Paris tell -Mr. Stretch, who told Moore, that “Lalla Rookh” had been translated -into Persian; that the songs--particularly “Bendemeer’s Stream”--were -sung “everywhere”; and that the happy natives could hardly believe the -whole work had not been taken originally from a Persian manuscript? - - I’m told, dear Moore, your lays are sung - (Can it be true, you lucky man?) - By moonlight, in the Persian tongue, - Along the streets of Ispahan. - -And not of Ispahan only; for in the winter of 1821 the Berlin court -presented “Lalla Rookh” with such splendour, such wealth of detail, -and such titled actors, that Moore’s heart was melted and his head -was turned (as any other heart would have been melted, and any other -head would have been turned) by the reports thereof. A Grand Duchess -of Russia took the part of Lalla Rookh; the Duke of Cumberland was -Aurungzebe; and a beautiful young sister of Prince Radzivil enchanted -all beholders as the Peri. “Nothing else was talked about in Berlin” -(it must have been a limited conversation); the King of Prussia had -a set of engravings made of the noble actors in their costumes; and -the Crown Prince sent word to Moore that he slept always with a copy -of “Lalla Rookh” under his pillow, which was foolish, but flattering. -Hardly had the echoes of this royal fête died away, when Spontini -brought out in Berlin his opera “The Feast of Roses,” and Moore’s -triumph in Prussia was complete. Byron, infinitely amused at the -success of his own good advice, wrote to the happy poet: “Your Berlin -drama is an honour unknown since the days of Elkanah Settle, whose -‘Empress of Morocco’ was presented by the court ladies, which was, as -Johnson remarks, ‘the last blast of inflammation to poor Dryden.’” - -Who shall say that this comparison is without its dash of malice? There -is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we -have spurred them on their way. - -If the English court did not lend itself with much gayety or grace -to dramatic entertainments, English society was quick to respond -to the delights of a modified orientalism. That is to say, it sang -melting songs about bulbuls and Shiraz wine; wore ravishing Turkish -costumes whenever it had a chance (like the beautiful Mrs. Winkworth -in the charades at Gaunt House); and covered its locks--if they were -feminine locks--with turbans of portentous size and splendour. When -Mrs. Fitzherbert, aged seventy-three, gave a fancy dress ball, so many -of her guests appeared as Turks, and Georgians, and sultanas, that it -was hard to believe that Brighton, and not Stamboul, was the scene of -the festivity. At an earlier entertainment, “a rural breakfast and -promenade,” given by Mrs. Hobart at her villa near Fulham, and “graced -by the presence of royalty,” the leading attraction was Mrs. Bristow, -who represented Queen Nourjahad in the “Garden of Roses.” “Draped in -all the magnificence of Eastern grandeur, Mrs. Bristow was seated in -the larger drawing-room (which was very beautifully fitted up with -cushions in the Indian style), smoking her hookah amidst all sorts -of the choicest perfumes. Mrs. Bristow was very profuse with otto of -roses, drops of which were thrown about the ladies’ dresses. The whole -house was scented with the delicious fragrance.” - -The “European Magazine,” the “Monthly Museum,” all the dim old -periodicals published in the early part of the last century for -feminine readers, teem with such “society notes.” From them, too, we -learn that by 1823 turbans of “rainbow striped gauze frosted with gold” -were in universal demand; while “black velvet turbans, enormously -large, and worn very much on one side,” must have given a rakish -appearance to stout British matrons. “La Belle Assemblée” describes for -us with tender enthusiasm a ravishing turban, “in the Turkish style,” -worn in the winter of 1823 at the theatre and at evening parties. This -masterpiece was of “pink oriental crêpe, beautifully folded in front, -and richly ornamented with pearls. The folds are fastened on the left -side, just above the ear, with a Turkish scimitar of pearls; and on the -right side are tassels of pearls, surmounted by a crescent and a star.” - -Here we have Lady Jane or Lady Amelia transformed at once into young -Nourmahal; and, to aid the illusion, a “Circassian corset” was devised, -free from encroaching steel or whalebone, and warranted to give its -English wearers the “flowing and luxurious lines” admired in the -overfed inmates of the harem. When the passion for orientalism began -to subside in London, remote rural districts caught and prolonged the -infection. I have sympathized all my life with the innocent ambition -of Miss Matty Jenkyns to possess a sea-green turban, like the one worn -by Queen Adelaide; and have never been able to forgive that ruthlessly -sensible Mary Smith--the chronicler of Cranford--for taking her a -“neat middle-aged cap” instead. “I was most particularly anxious to -prevent her from disfiguring her small gentle mousy face with a great -Saracen’s head turban,” says the judicious Miss Smith with a smirk of -self-commendation; and poor Miss Matty--the cap being bought--has to -bow to this arbiter of fate. How much we all suffer in life from the -discretion of our families and friends! - -Thackeray laughed the dim ghost of “Lalla Rookh” out of England. He -mocked at the turbans, and at the old ladies who wore them; at the -vapid love songs, and at the young ladies who sang them. - - I am a little brown bulbul. Come and listen in the moonlight. Praise - be to Allah! I am a merry bard. - -He derided the “breathing odours of Araby,” and the Eastern travellers -who imported this exotic atmosphere into Grosvenor Square. Yonng -Bedwin Sands, who has “lived under tents,” who has published a quarto, -ornamented with his own portrait in various oriental costumes, and -who goes about accompanied by a black servant of most unprepossessing -appearance, “just like another Brian de Bois Guilbert,” is only a -degree less ridiculous than Clarence Bulbul, who gives Miss Tokely a -piece of the sack in which an indiscreet Zuleika was drowned, and -whose servant says to callers: “Mon maître est au divan,” or “Monsieur -trouvera Monsieur dans son sérail.... He has coffee and pipes for -everybody. I should like you to have seen the face of old Bowly, his -college tutor, called upon to sit cross-legged on a divan, a little -cup of bitter black mocha put into his hand, and a large amber-muzzled -pipe stuck into his mouth before he could say it was a fine day. Bowly -almost thought he had compromised his principles by consenting so far -to this Turkish manner.” Bulbul’s sure and simple method of commending -himself to young ladies is by telling them they remind him of a girl -he knew in Circassia,--Ameena, the sister of Schamyle Bey. “Do you -know, Miss Pim,” he thoughtfully observes, “that you would fetch twenty -thousand piastres in the market at Constantinople?” Whereupon Miss -Pim is filled with embarrassed elation. An English girl, conscious -of being in no great demand at home, was naturally flattered as well -as fluttered by the thought of having market value elsewhere. And -perhaps this feminine instinct was at the root of “Lalla Rookh’s” long -popularity in England. - - - - -THE CORRESPONDENT - - Correspondences are like small-clothes before the invention of - suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.--SYDNEY SMITH to MRS. - CROWE. - - -In this lamentable admission, in this blunt and revolutionary -sentiment, we hear the first clear striking of a modern note, the -first gasping protest against the limitless demands of letter-writing. -When Sydney Smith was a little boy, it was not impossible to keep a -correspondence up; it was impossible to let it go. He was ten years -old when Sir William Pepys copied out long portions of Mrs. Montagu’s -letters, and left them as a legacy to his heirs. He was twelve years -old when Miss Anna Seward--the “Swan of Lichfield”--copied thirteen -pages of description which the Rev. Thomas Sedgwick Whalley had -written her from Switzerland, and sent them to her friend, Mr. William -Hayley. She called this “snatching him to the Continent by Whalleyan -magic.” What Mr. Hayley called it we do not know; but he had his -revenge, for the impartial “Swan” copied eight verses of an “impromptu” -which Mr. Hayley had written upon her, and sent them in turn to Mr. -Whalley;--thus making each friend a scourge to the other, and widening -the network of correspondence which had enmeshed the world. - -It is impossible not to feel a trifle envious of Mr. Whalley, who -looms before us as the most petted and accomplished of clerical -bores, of “literary and chess-playing divines.” He was but twenty-six -when the kind-hearted Bishop of Ely presented him with the living of -Hagworthingham, stipulating that he should not take up his residence -there,--the neighbourhood of the Lincolnshire fens being considered an -unhealthy one. Mr. Whalley cheerfully complied with this condition; -and for fifty years the duties were discharged by curates, who -could not afford good health; while the rector spent his winters -in Europe, and his summers at Mendip Lodge. He was of an amorous -disposition,--“sentimentally pathetic,” Miss Burney calls him,--and -married three times, two of his wives being women of fortune. He -lived in good society, and beyond his means, like a gentleman; was -painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds (who has very delicately and maliciously -accentuated his resemblance to the tiny spaniel he holds in his arms); -and died of old age, in the comfortable assurance that he had lost -nothing the world could give. A voluminous correspondence--afterwards -published in two volumes--afforded scope for that clerical diffuseness -which should have found its legitimate outlet in the Hagworthingham -pulpit. - -The Rev. Augustus Jessup has recorded a passionate admiration for -Cicero’s letters, on the ground that they never describe scenery; but -Mr. Whalley’s letters seldom do anything else. He wrote to Miss Sophia -Weston a description of Vaucluse, which fills three closely printed -pages. Miss Weston copied every word, and sent it to Miss Seward, who -copied every word of her copy, and sent it to the long-suffering Mr. -Hayley, with the remark that Mr. Whalley and Petrarch were “kindred -spirits.” Later on this kinship was made pleasantly manifest by the -publication of “Edwy and Edilda,” which is described as a “domestic -epic,” and which Mr. Whalley’s friends considered to be a moral -bulwark as well as an epoch-making poem. Indeed, we find Miss Seward -imploring him to republish it, on the extraordinary ground that it will -add to his happiness in heaven to know that the fruits of his industry -“continue to inspire virtuous pleasure through passing generations.” -It is animating to contemplate the celestial choirs congratulating -the angel Whalley at intervals on the “virtuous pleasure” inspired by -“Edwy and Edilda.” “This,” says Mr. Kenwigs, “is an ewent at which Evin -itself looks down.” - -There was no escape from the letter-writer who, a hundred or a hundred -and twenty-five years ago, captured a coveted correspondent. It would -have been as easy to shake off an octopus or a boa-constrictor. Miss -Seward opened her attack upon Sir Walter Scott, whom she had never -seen, with a long and passionate letter, lamenting the death of a -friend whom Scott had never seen. She conjured him not to answer this -letter, because she was “dead to the world.” Scott gladly obeyed, -content that the lady should be at least dead to him, which was the -last possibility she contemplated. Before twelve months were out they -were in brisk correspondence, an acquaintance was established, and when -she died in earnest, some years later, he found himself one of her -literary executors, and twelve quarto manuscript volumes of her letters -waiting to be published. These Scott wisely refused to touch; but he -edited her poems,--a task he much disliked,--wrote the epitaph on her -monument in Lichfield Cathedral, and kindly maintained that, although -her sentimentality appalled him, and her enthusiasm chilled his soul, -she was a talented and pleasing person. - -The most formidable thing about the letters of this period--apart from -their length--is their eloquence. It bubbles and seethes over every -page. Miss Seward, writing to Mrs. Knowles in 1789 upon the dawning of -the French Revolution, of which she understood no more than a canary, -pipes an ecstatic trill. “So France has dipped her lilies in the living -stream of American freedom, and bids her sons be slaves no longer. In -such a contest the vital sluices must be wastefully opened; but few -English hearts I hope there are that do not wish victory may sit upon -the swords that freedom has unsheathed.” It sounds so exactly like the -Americans in “Martin Chuzzlewit” that one doubts whether Mr. Jefferson -Brick or the Honourable Elijah Pogram really uttered the sentiment; -while surely to Mrs. Hominy, and not to the Lichfield Swan, must be -credited this beautiful passage about a middle-aged but newly married -couple: “The berries of holly, with which Hymen formed that garland, -blush through the snows of time, and dispute the prize of happiness -with the roses of youth;--and they are certainly less subject to the -blights of expectation and palling fancy.” - -It is hard to conceive of a time when letters like these were sacredly -treasured by the recipients (our best friend, the waste-paper basket, -seems to have been then unknown); when the writers thereof bequeathed -them as a legacy to the world; and when the public--being under no -compulsion--bought six volumes of them as a contribution to English -literature. It is hard to think of a girl of twenty-one writing to an -intimate friend as Elizabeth Robinson, afterwards the “great” Mrs. -Montagu, wrote to the young Duchess of Portland, who appears to have -ventured upon a hope that they were having a mild winter in Kent. - -“I am obliged to your Grace for your good wishes of fair weather; -sunshine gilds every object, but, alas! December is but cloudy weather, -how few seasons boast many days of calm! April, which is the blooming -youth of the year, is as famous for hasty showers as for gentle -sunshine. May, June, and July have too much heat and violence, the -Autumn withers the Summer’s gayety, and in the Winter the hopeful -blossoms of Spring and fair fruits of Summer are decayed, and storms -and clouds arise.” - -After these obvious truths, for which the almanac stands responsible, -Miss Robinson proceeds to compare human life to the changing year, -winding up at the close of a dozen pages: “Happy and worthy are those -few whose youth is not impetuous, nor their age sullen; they indeed -should be esteemed, and their happy influence courted.” - -Twenty-one, and ripe for moral platitudes! What wonder that we find the -same lady, when crowned with years and honours, writing to the son of -her friend, Lord Lyttelton, a remorselessly long letter of precept and -good counsel, which that young gentleman (being afterwards known as the -wicked Lord Lyttelton) seems never to have taken to heart. - -“The morning of life, like the morning of the day, should be dedicated -to business. Give it therefore, dear Mr. Lyttelton, to strenuous -exertion and labour of mind, before the indolence of the meridian hour, -or the unabated fervour of the exhausted day, renders you unfit for -severe application.” - -“Unabated fervour of the exhausted day” is a phrase to be commended. -We remember with awe that Mrs. Montagu was the brightest star in the -chaste firmament of female intellect;--“the first woman for literary -knowledge in England,” wrote Mrs. Thrale; “and, if in England, I hope I -may say in the world.” We hope so, indeed. None but a libertine would -doubt it. And no one less contumelious than Dr. Johnson ever questioned -Mrs. Montagu’s supremacy. She was, according to her great-grandniece, -Miss Climenson, “adored by men,” while “purest of the pure”; which -was equally pleasant for herself and for Mr. Montagu. She wrote more -letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her -day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, nearly blinded himself -in deciphering the two volumes of undated correspondence which were -printed in 1810. Two more followed in 1813, after which the gallant -Baron either died at his post or was smitten with despair; for -sixty-eight cases of letters lay undisturbed for the best part of a -century, when they passed into Miss Climenson’s hands. This intrepid -lady received them--so she says--with “unbounded joy”; and has already -published two fat volumes, with the promise of several others in the -near future. “Les morts n’écrivent point,” said Madame de Maintenon -hopefully; but of what benefit is this inactivity, when we still -continue to receive their letters? - -Miss Elizabeth Carter, called by courtesy Mrs. Carter, was the most -vigorous of Mrs. Montagu’s correspondents. Although a lady of learning, -who read Greek and had dipped into Hebrew, she was far too “humble and -unambitious” to claim an acquaintance with the exalted mistress of -Montagu House; but that patroness of literature treated her with such -true condescension that they were soon on the happiest terms. When Mrs. -Montagu writes to Miss Carter that she has seen the splendid coronation -of George III, Miss Carter hastens to remind her that such splendour is -for majesty alone. - -“High rank and power require every external aid of pomp and éclat that -may awe and astonish spectators by the ideas of the magnificent and -sublime; while the ornaments of more equal conditions should be adapted -to the quiet tenour of general life, and be content to charm and engage -by the gentler graces of the beautiful and pleasing.” - -Mrs. Montagu _was_ fond of display. All her friends admitted, and -some deplored the fact. But surely there was no likelihood of -her appropriating the coronation services as a feature for the -entertainments at Portman Square. - -Advice, however, was the order of the day. As the excellent Mrs. -Chapone wrote to Sir William Pepys: “It is a dangerous commerce for -friends to praise each other’s Virtues, instead of reminding each other -of duties and of failings.” Yet a too robust candour carried perils of -its own, for Miss Seward having written to her “beloved Sophia Weston” -with “an ingenuousness which I thought necessary for her welfare, but -which her high spirits would not brook,” Sophia was so unaffectedly -angry that twelve years of soothing silence followed. - -Another wonderful thing about the letter-writers, especially the female -letter-writers, of this engaging period is the wealth of hyperbole in -which they rioted. Nothing is told in plain terms. Tropes, metaphors, -and similes adorn every page; and the supreme elegance of the language -is rivalled only by the elusiveness of the idea, which is lost in an -eddy of words. Marriage is always alluded to as the “hymeneal torch,” -or the “hymeneal chain,” or “hymeneal emancipation from parental care.” -Birds are “feathered muses,” and a heart is a “vital urn.” When Mrs. -Montagu writes to Mr. Gilbert West, that “miracle of the Moral World,” -to condole with him on his gout, she laments that his “writing hand, -first dedicated to the Muses, then with maturer judgment consecrated -to the Nymphs of Solyma, should be led captive by the cruel foe.” If -Mr. West chanced not to know who or what the Nymphs of Solyma were, he -had the intelligent pleasure of finding out. Miss Seward describes Mrs. -Tighe’s sprightly charms as “Aonian inspiration added to the cestus -of Venus”; and speaks of the elderly “ladies of Llangollen” as, “in -all but the voluptuous sense, Armidas of its bowers.” Duelling is to -her “the murderous punctilio of Luciferian honour.” A Scotch gentleman -who writes verse is “a Cambrian Orpheus”; a Lichfield gentleman who -sketches is “our Lichfield Claude”; and a budding clerical writer is -“our young sacerdotal Marcellus.” When the “Swan” wished to apprise -Scott of Dr. Darwin’s death, it never occurred to her to write, as -we in this dull age should do: “Dr. Darwin died last night,” or, -“Poor Dr. Darwin died last night.” She wrote: “A bright luminary -in this neighbourhood recently shot from his sphere with awful and -deplorable suddenness”;--thus pricking Sir Walter’s imagination to -the wonder point before descending to facts. Even the rain and snow -were never spoken of in the plain language of the Weather Bureau; -and the elements had a set of allegories all their own. Miss Carter -would have scorned to take a walk by the sea. She “chased the ebbing -Neptune.” Mrs. Chapone was not blown by the wind. She was “buffeted -by Eolus and his sons.” Miss Seward does not hope that Mr. Whalley’s -rheumatism is better; but that he has overcome “the malinfluence of -marine damps, and the monotonous murmuring of boundless waters.” -Perhaps the most triumphant instance on record of sustained metaphor -is Madame d’Arblay’s account of Mrs. Montagu’s yearly dinner to the -London chimney-sweeps, in which the word sweep is never once used, so -that the editor was actually compelled to add a footnote to explain -what the lady meant. The boys are “jetty objects,” “degraded outcasts -from society,” and “sooty little agents of our most blessed luxury.” -They are “hapless artificers who perform the most abject offices of -any authorized calling”; they are “active guardians of our blazing -hearth”; but plain chimney-sweeps, never! Madame d’Arblay would have -perished at the stake before using so vulgar and obvious a term. - -How was this mass of correspondence preserved? How did it happen that -the letters were never torn up, or made into spills,--the common fate -of all such missives when I was a little girl. Granted that Miss Carter -treasured Mrs. Montagu’s letters (she declared fervidly she could never -be so barbarous as to destroy one), and that Mrs. Montagu treasured -Miss Carter’s. Granted that Miss Weston treasured Mr. Whalley’s, and -that Mr. Whalley treasured Miss Weston’s. Granted that Miss Seward -provided against all contingencies by copying her own letters into -fat blank books before they were mailed, elaborating her spineless -sentences, and omitting everything she deemed too trivial or too -domestic for the public ear. But is it likely that young Lyttelton at -Oxford laid sacredly away Mrs. Montagu’s pages of good counsel, or -that young Franks at Cambridge preserved the ponderous dissertations -of Sir William Pepys? Sir William was a Baronet, a Master in Chancery, -and--unlike his famous ancestor--a most respectable and exemplary -gentleman. His innocent ambition was to be on terms of intimacy with -the literary lights of his day. He knew and ardently admired Dr. -Johnson, who in return detested him cordially. He knew and revered, “in -unison with the rest of the world,” Miss Hannah More. He corresponded -at great length with lesser lights,--with Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs. -Hartley, and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall. He wrote endless commentaries on -Homer and Virgil to young Franks, and reams of good advice to his -little son at Eton. There is something pathetic in his regret that the -limitations of life will not permit him to be as verbose as he would -like. “I could write for an hour,” he assures poor Franks, “upon that -most delightful of all passages, the Lion deprived of its Young; but -the few minutes one can catch amidst the Noise, hurry and confusion of -an Assize town will not admit of any Classical discussions. But was I -in the calm retirement of your Study at Acton, I have much to say to -you, to which I can only allude.” - -The publication of scores and scores of such letters, all written -to one unresponsive young man at Cambridge (who is repeatedly -reproached for not answering them), makes us wonder afresh who kept the -correspondence; and the problem is deepened by the appearance of Sir -William’s letters to his son. This is the way the first one begins:-- - - “MY DEAR BOY,--I cannot let a Post escape me without giving you the - Pleasure of knowing how much you have gladdened the Hearts of two - as affectionate Parents as ever lived; when you tell us that the - Principles of Religion begin already to exert their efficacy in - making you look down with contempt on the wretched grovelling Vices - with which you are surrounded, you make the most delightful Return - you can ever make for our Parental Care and Affection; you make Us - at Peace with Ourselves; and enable us to hope that our dear Boy - will Persevere in that Path which will ensure the greatest Share of - Comfort here, and a certainty of everlasting Happiness hereafter.” - -I am disposed to think that Sir William made a fair copy of this letter -and of others like it, and laid them aside as models of parental -exhortation. Whether young Pepys was a little prig, or a particularly -accomplished little scamp (and both possibilities are open to -consideration), it seems equally unlikely that an Eton boy’s desk would -have proved a safe repository for such ample and admirable discourses. - -The publication of Cowper’s letters in 1803 and 1804 struck a chill -into the hearts of accomplished and erudite correspondents. Poor Miss -Seward never rallied from the shock of their “commonness,” and of -their popularity. Here was a man who wrote about beggars and postmen, -about cats and kittens, about buttered toast and the kitchen table. -Here was a man who actually looked at things before he described them -(which was a startling innovation); who called the wind the wind, and -buttercups buttercups, and a hedgehog a hedgehog. Miss Seward honestly -despised Cowper’s letters. She said they were without “imagination or -eloquence,” without “discriminative criticism,” without “characteristic -investigation.” Investigating the relations between the family cat and -an intrusive viper was, from her point of view, unworthy the dignity -of an author. Cowper’s love of detail, his terrestrial turn of mind, -his humour, and his veracity were disconcerting in an artificial age. -When Miss Carter took a country walk, she did not stoop to observe -the trivial things she saw. Apparently she never saw anything. What -she described were the sentiments and emotions awakened in her by a -featureless principle called Nature. Even the ocean--which is too big -to be overlooked--started her on a train of moral reflections, in which -she passed easily from the grandeur of the elements to the brevity -of life, and the paltriness of earthly ambitions. “How vast are the -capacities of the soul, and how little and contemptible its aims and -pursuits.” With this original remark, the editor of the letters (a -nephew and a clergyman) was so delighted that he added a pious comment -of his own. - -“If such be the case, how strong and conclusive is the argument deduced -from it, that the soul must be destined to another state more suitable -to its views and powers. It is much to be lamented that Mrs. Carter did -not pursue this line of thought any further.” - -People who bought nine volumes of a correspondence like this were -expected, as the editor warns them, to derive from it “moral, literary, -and religious improvement.” It was in every way worthy of a lady who -had translated Epictetus, and who had the “great” Mrs. Montagu for a -friend. But, as Miss Seward pathetically remarked, “any well-educated -person, with talents not above the common level, produces every day -letters as well worth attention as most of Cowper’s, especially as -to diction.” The perverseness of the public in buying, in reading, -in praising these letters, filled her with pained bewilderment. Not -even the writer’s sincere and sad piety, his tendency to moralize, and -the transparent innocence of his life could reconcile her to plain -transcripts from nature, or to such an unaffecting incident as this:-- - -“A neighbour of mine in Silver End keeps an ass; the ass lives on the -other side of the garden wall, and I am writing in the greenhouse. It -happens that he is this morning most musically disposed; either cheered -by the fine weather, or by some new tune which he has just acquired, -or by finding his voice more harmonious than usual. It would be cruel -to mortify so fine a singer, therefore I do not tell him that he -interrupts and hinders me; but I venture to tell you so, and to plead -his performance in excuse of my abrupt conclusion.” - -Here is not only the “common” diction which Miss Seward condemned, but -a very common casualty, which she would have naturally deemed beneath -notice. Cowper wrote a great deal about animals, and always with fine -and humorous appreciation. He sought relief from the hidden torment of -his soul in the contemplation of creatures who fill their place in life -without morals, and without misgivings. We know what safe companions -they were for him when we read his account of his hares, of his kitten -dancing on her hind legs,--“an exercise which she performs with all -the grace imaginable,”--and of his goldfinches amorously kissing each -other between the cage wires. When Miss Seward bent her mind to “the -lower orders of creation,” she did not describe them at all; she gave -them the benefit of that “discriminative criticism” which she felt that -Cowper lacked. Here, for example, is her thoughtful analysis of man’s -loyal servitor, the dog:-- - -“That a dog is a noble, grateful, faithful animal we must all be -conscious, and deserves a portion of man’s tenderness and care;--yet, -from its utter incapacity of more than glimpses of rationality, -there is a degree of insanity, as well as of impoliteness to his -acquaintance, and of unkindness to his friends, in lavishing so much -more of his attention in the first instance, and of affection in the -latter, upon it than upon them.” - -It sounds like a parody on a great living master of complex prose. -By its side, Cowper’s description of Beau is certainly open to the -reproach of plainness. - -“My dog is a spaniel. Till Miss Gunning begged him, he was the property -of a farmer, and had been accustomed to lie in the chimney corner among -the embers till the hair was singed from his back, and nothing was -left of his tail but the gristle. Allowing for these disadvantages, -he is really handsome; and when nature shall have furnished him with -a new coat, a gift which, in consideration of the ragged condition -of his old one, it is hoped she will not long delay, he will then be -unrivalled in personal endowments by any dog in this country.” - -No wonder the Lichfield Swan was daunted by the inconceivable -popularity of such letters. No wonder Miss Hannah More preferred -Akenside to Cowper. What had these eloquent ladies to do with quiet -observation, with sober felicity of phrase, with “the style of honest -men”! - - - - -THE NOVELIST - - Soft Sensibility, sweet Beauty’s soul! - Keeps her coy state, and animates the whole. - - HAYLEY. - - -Readers of Miss Burney’s Diary will remember her maidenly confusion -when Colonel Fairly (the Honourable Stephen Digby) recommends to -her a novel called “Original Love-Letters between a Lady of Quality -and a Person of Inferior Station.” The authoress of “Evelina” and -“Cecilia”--then thirty-six years of age--is embarrassed by the glaring -impropriety of this title. In vain Colonel Fairly assures her that -the book contains “nothing but good sense, moral reflections, and -refined ideas, clothed in the most expressive and elegant language.” -Fanny, though longing to read a work of such estimable character, -cannot consent to borrow, or even discuss, anything so compromising -as love-letters; and, with her customary coyness, murmurs a few words -of denial. Colonel Fairly, however, is not easily daunted. Three days -later he actually brings the volume to that virginal bower, and asks -permission to read portions of it aloud, excusing his audacity with the -solemn assurance that there was no person, not even his own daughter, -in whose hands he would hesitate to place it. “It was now impossible -to avoid saying that I should like to hear it,” confesses Miss Burney. -“I should seem else to doubt either his taste or his delicacy, while -I have the highest opinion of both.” So the book is produced, and -the fair listener, bending over her needlework to hide her blushes, -acknowledges it to be “moral, elegant, feeling, and rational,” while -lamenting that the unhappy nature of its title makes its presence a -source of embarrassment. - -This edifying little anecdote sheds light upon a palmy period of -propriety. Miss Burney’s self-consciousness, her superhuman diffidence, -and the “delicious confusion” which overwhelmed her upon the most -insignificant occasions, were beacon lights to her “sisters of -Parnassus,” to the less distinguished women who followed her brilliant -lead. The passion for novel-reading was asserting itself for the first -time in the history of the world as a dominant note of femininity. The -sentimentalities of fiction expanded to meet the woman’s standard, to -satisfy her irrational demands. “If the story-teller had always had -mere men for an audience,” says an acute English critic, “there would -have been no romance; nothing but the improving fable, or the indecent -anecdote.” It was the woman who, as Miss Seward sorrowfully observed, -sucked the “sweet poison” which the novelist administered; it was the -woman who stooped conspicuously to the “reigning folly” of the day. - -The particular occasion of this outbreak on Miss Seward’s part was the -extraordinary success of a novel, now long forgotten by the world, but -which in its time rivalled in popularity “Evelina,” and the well-loved -“Mysteries of Udolpho.” Its plaintive name is “Emmeline; or the Orphan -of the Castle,” and its authoress, Charlotte Smith, was a woman of -courage, character, and good ability; also of a cheerful temperament, -which we should never have surmised from her works. It is said that -her son owed his advancement in the East India Company solely to the -admiration felt for “Emmeline,” which was being read as assiduously in -Bengal as in London. Sir Walter Scott, always the gentlest of critics, -held that it belonged to the “highest branch of fictitious narrative.” -The Queen, who considered it a masterpiece, lent it to Miss Burney, who -in turn gave it to Colonel Fairly, who ventured to observe that it was -not “piquant,” and asked for a “Rambler” instead. - -“Emmeline” is _not_ piquant. Its heroine has more tears than Niobe. -“Formed of the softest elements, and with a mind calculated for select -friendship and domestic happiness,” it is her misfortune to be loved -by all the men she meets. The “interesting languor” of a countenance -habitually “wet with tears” proves their undoing. Her “deep convulsive -sobs” charm them more than the laughter of other maidens. When the -orphan leaves the castle for the first time, she weeps bitterly -for an hour; when she converses with her uncle, she can “no longer -command her tears, sobs obliged her to cease speaking”; and when he -urges upon her the advantages of a worldly marriage, she--as if that -were possible--“wept more than before.” When Delamere, maddened by -rejection, carries her off in a post-chaise (a delightful frontispiece -illustrates this episode), “a shower of tears fell from her eyes”; and -even a rescue fails to raise her spirits. Her response to Godolphin’s -tenderest approaches is to “wipe away the involuntary betrayers of her -emotion”; and when he exclaims in a transport: “Enchanting softness! -Is then the safety of Godolphin so dear to that angelic bosom?” she -answers him with “audible sobs.” - -The other characters in the book are nearly as tearful. When Delamere -is not striking his forehead with his clenched fist, he is weeping at -Emmeline’s feet. The repentant Fitz-Edward lays his head on a chair, -and weeps “like a woman.” Lady Adelina, who has stooped to folly, -naturally sheds many tears, and writes an “Ode to Despair”; while -Emmeline from time to time gives “vent to a full heart” by weeping -over Lady Adelina’s infant. Godolphin sobs loudly when he sees his -frail sister; and when he meets Lord Westhaven after an absence of -four years, “the manly eyes of both brothers were filled with tears.” -We wonder how Scott, whose heroines cry so little and whose heroes -never cry at all, stood all this weeping; and, when we remember the -perfunctory nature of Sir Walter’s love scenes,--wedged in any way -among more important matters,--we wonder still more how he endured the -ravings of Delamere, or the melancholy verses with which Godolphin from -time to time soothes his despondent soul. - - In deep depression sunk, the enfeebled mind - Will to the deaf cold elements complain; - And tell the embosomed grief, however vain, - To sullen surges and the viewless wind. - -It was not, however, the mournfulness of “Emmeline” which displeased -Miss Seward, but rather the occasional intrusion of “low characters”; -of those underbred and unimpassioned persons who--as in Miss Burney’s -and Miss Ferrier’s novels--are naturally and almost cheerfully vulgar. -That Mr. William Hayley, author of “The Triumphs of Temper,” and her -own most ardent admirer, should tune his inconstant lyre in praise -of Mrs. Smith was more than Miss Seward could bear. “My very foes -acquit me of harbouring one grain of envy in my bosom,” she writes -him feelingly; “yet it is surely by no means inconsistent with that -exemption to feel a little indignant, and to enter one’s protest, -when compositions of mere mediocrity are extolled far above those of -real genius.” She then proceeds to point out the “indelicacy” of Lady -Adelina’s fall from grace, and the use of “kitchen phrases,” such as -“she grew white at the intelligence.” “White instead of pale,” comments -Miss Seward severely, “I have often heard servants say, but never a -gentleman or a gentlewoman.” If Mr. Hayley desires to read novels, -she urges upon him the charms of another popular heroine, Caroline de -Lichtfield, in whom he will find “simplicity, wit, pathos, and the -most exalted generosity”; and the history of whose adventures “makes -curiosity gasp, admiration kindle, and pity dissolve.” - -Caroline, “the gay child of Artless Nonchalance,” is at least a more -cheerful young person than the Orphan. Her story, translated from -the French of Madame de Montolieu, was widely read in England and on -the Continent; and Miss Seward tells us that its author was indebted -“to the merits and graces of these volumes for a transition from -incompetence to the comforts of wealth; from the unprotected dependence -of waning virginity to the social pleasures of wedded friendship.” -In plain words, we are given to understand that a rich and elderly -German widower read the book, sought an acquaintance with the writer, -and married her. “Hymen,” exclaims Miss Seward, “passed by the fane -of Cytherea and the shrine of Plutus, to light his torch at the altar -of genius”;--which beautiful burst of eloquence makes it painful to -add the chilling truth, and say that “Caroline de Lichtfield” was -written six years after its author’s marriage with M. de Montolieu, -who was a Swiss, and her second husband. She espoused her first, M. de -Crousaz, when she was eighteen, and still comfortably remote from the -terrors of waning virginity. Accurate information was not, however, a -distinguishing characteristic of the day. Sir Walter Scott, writing -some years later of Madame de Montolieu, ignores both marriages -altogether, and calls her Mademoiselle. - -No rich reward lay in wait for poor Charlotte Smith, whose husband -was systematically impecunious, and whose large family of children -were supported wholly by her pen. “Emmeline, or the Orphan of the -Castle” was followed by “Ethelinda, or the Recluse of the Lake,” and -that by “The Old Manor House,” which was esteemed her masterpiece. Its -heroine bears the interesting name of Monimia; and when she marries -her Orlando, “every subsequent hour of their lives was marked by some -act of benevolence,”--a breathless and philanthropic career. By this -time the false-hearted Hayley had so far transferred to Mrs. Smith -the homage due to Miss Seward that he was rewarded with the painful -privilege of reading “The Old Manor House” in manuscript,--a privilege -reserved in those days for tried and patient friends. The poet had -himself dallied a little with fiction, having written, “solely to -promote the interests of religion,” a novel called “The Young Widow,” -which no one appears to have read, except perhaps the Archbishop of -Canterbury, to whom its author sent a copy. - -In purity of motive Mr. Hayley was rivalled only by Mrs. Brunton, -whose two novels, “Self-Control” and “Discipline,” were designed “to -procure admission for the religion of a sound mind and of the Bible -where it cannot find access in any other form.” Mrs. Brunton was -perhaps the most commended novelist of her time. The inexorable titles -of her stories secured for them a place upon the guarded book-shelves -of the young. Many a demure English girl must have blessed these -deluding titles, just as, forty years later, many an English boy -blessed the inspiration which had impelled George Borrow to misname -his immortal book “The Bible in Spain.” When the wife of a clergyman -undertook to write a novel in the interests of religion and the -Scriptures; when she called it “Discipline,” and drew up a stately -apology for employing fiction as a medium for the lessons she meant -to convey, what parent could refuse to be beguiled? There is nothing -trivial in Mrs. Brunton’s conception of a good novel, in the standard -she proposes to the world. - -“Let the admirable construction of fable in ‘Tom Jones’ be employed to -unfold characters like Miss Edgeworth’s; let it lead to a moral like -Richardson’s; let it be told with the elegance of Rousseau, and with -the simplicity of Goldsmith; let it be all this, and Milton need not -have been ashamed of the work.” - -How far “Discipline” and “Self-Control” approach this composite -standard of perfection it would be invidious to ask; but they -accomplished a miracle of their own in being both popular and -permitted, in pleasing the frivolous, and edifying the devout. -Dedicated to Miss Joanna Baillie, sanctioned by Miss Hannah More, -they stood above reproach, though not without a flavour of depravity. -Mrs. Brunton’s outlook upon life was singularly uncomplicated. All -her women of fashion are heartless and inane. All her men of fashion -cherish dishonourable designs upon female youth and innocence. Indeed -the strenuous efforts of Laura, in “Self-Control,” to preserve her -virginity may be thought a trifle explicit for very youthful readers. -We find her in the first chapter--she is seventeen--fainting at the -feet of her lover, who has just revealed the unworthy nature of his -intentions; and we follow her through a series of swoons to the last -pages, where she “sinks senseless” into--of all vessels!--a canoe; -and is carried many miles down a Canadian river in a state of nicely -balanced unconsciousness. Her self-control (the crowning virtue which -gives its title to the book) is so marked that when she dismisses -Hargrave on probation, and then meets him accidentally in a London -print-shop after a four months’ absence, she “neither screamed nor -fainted”; only “trembled violently, and leant against the counter -to recover strength and composure.” It is not until he turns, and, -“regardless of the inquisitive looks of the spectators, clasped her -to his breast,” that “her head sunk upon his shoulder, and she lost -all consciousness.” As for her heroic behaviour when the same Hargrave -(having lapsed from grace) shoots the virtuous De Courcy in Lady -Pelham’s summer-house, it must be described in the author’s own words. -No others could do it justice. - -“To the plants which their beauty had recommended to Lady Pelham, Laura -had added a few of which the usefulness was known to her. Agaric of -the oak was of the number; and she had often applied it where many a -hand less fair would have shrunk from the task. Nor did she hesitate -now. The ball had entered near the neck; and the feminine, the delicate -Laura herself disengaged the wound from its covering; the feeling, the -tender Laura herself performed an office from which false sensibility -would have recoiled in horror.” - -Is it possible that anybody except Miss Burney could have shrunk -modestly from the sight of a lover’s neck, especially when it had -a bullet in it? Could a sense of decorum be more overwhelmingly -expressed? Yet the same novel which held up to our youthful -great-grandmothers this unapproachable standard of propriety presented -to their consideration the most intimate details of libertinism. There -was then, as now, no escape from the moralist’s devastating disclosures. - -One characteristic is common to all these faded romances, which in -their time were read with far more fervour and sympathy than are -their successors to-day. This is the undying and undeviating nature -of their heroes’ affections. Written by ladies who took no count of -man’s proverbial inconstancy, they express a touching belief in the -supremacy of feminine charms. A heroine of seventeen (she is seldom -older), with ringlets, and a “faltering timidity,” inflames both the -virtuous and the profligate with such imperishable passions, that -when triumphant morality leads her to the altar, defeated vice cannot -survive her loss. Her suitors, reversing the enviable experience of Ben -Bolt,-- - - weep with delight when she gives them a smile, - And tremble with fear at her frown. - -They grow faint with rapture when they enter her presence, and, -when she repels their advances, they signify their disappointment -by gnashing their teeth, and beating their heads against the wall. -Rejection cannot alienate their faithful hearts; years and absence -cannot chill their fervour. They belong to a race of men who, if they -ever existed at all, are now as extinct as the mastodon. - -It was Miss Jane Porter who successfully transferred to a conquering -hero that exquisite sensibility of soul which had erstwhile belonged -to the conquering heroine,--to the Emmelines and Adelinas of fiction. -Dipping her pen “in the tears of Poland,” she conveyed the glittering -drops to the eyes of “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” whence they gush in -rills,--like those of the Prisoner of Chillon’s brother. Thaddeus is of -such exalted virtue that strangers in London address him as “excellent -young gentleman,” and his friends speak of him as “incomparable -young man.” He rescues children from horses’ hoofs and from burning -buildings. He nurses them through small-pox, and leaves their bedsides -in the most casual manner, to mingle in crowds and go to the play. -He saves women from insult on the streets. He is kind even to “that -poor slandered and abused animal, the cat,”--which is certainly to -his credit. Wrapped in a sable cloak, wearing “hearse-like plumes” on -his hat, a star upon his breast, and a sabre by his side, he moves -with Hamlet’s melancholy grace through the five hundred pages of the -story. “His unrestrained and elegant conversation acquired new pathos -from the anguish that was driven back to his heart: like the beds of -rivers which infuse their own nature with the current, his hidden grief -imparted an indescribable interest and charm to all his sentiments and -actions.” - -What wonder that such a youth is passionately loved by all the women -who cross his path, but whom he regards for the most part with “that -lofty tranquillity which is inseparable from high rank when it is -accompanied by virtue.” In vain Miss Euphemia Dundas writes him amorous -notes, and entraps him into embarrassing situations. In vain Lady -Sara Roos--married, I regret to say--pursues him to his lodgings, and -wrings “her snowy arms” while she confesses the hopeless nature of her -infatuation. The irreproachable Thaddeus replaces her tenderly but -firmly on a sofa, and as soon as possible sends her home in a cab. It -is only when the “orphan heiress,” Miss Beaufort, makes her appearance -on the scene, “a large Turkish shawl enveloping her fine form, a modest -grace observable in every limb,” that the exile’s haughty soul succumbs -to love. Miss Beaufort has been admirably brought up by her aunt, -Lady Somerset, who is a person of great distinction, and who gives -“conversaziones,” as famous in their way as Mrs. Proudie’s.--“There -the young Mary Beaufort listened to pious divines of every Christian -persuasion. There she gathered wisdom from real philosophers; and, in -the society of our best living poets, cherished an enthusiasm for all -that is great and good. On these evenings, Sir Robert Somerset’s house -reminded the visitor of what he had read or imagined of the School of -Athens.” - -Never do hero and heroine approach each other with such spasms of -modesty as Thaddeus and Miss Beaufort. Their hearts expand with -emotion, but their mutual sense of propriety keeps them remote from all -vulgar understandings. In vain “Mary’s rosy lips seemed to breathe balm -while she spoke.” In vain “her beautiful eyes shone with benevolence.” -The exile, standing proudly aloof, watches with bitter composure the -attentions of more frivolous suitors. “His arms were folded, his hat -pulled over his forehead; and his long dark eye-lashes shading his -downcast eyes imparted a dejection to his whole air, which wrapped her -weeping heart round and round with regretful pangs.” What with his -lashes, and his hidden griefs, the majesty of his mournful moods, and -the pleasing pensiveness of his lighter ones, Thaddeus so far eclipses -his English rivals that they may be pardoned for wishing he had kept -his charms in Poland. Who that has read the matchless paragraph which -describes the first unveiling of the hero’s symmetrical leg can forget -the sensation it produces? - -“Owing to the warmth of the weather, Thaddeus came out this morning -without boots; and it being the first time the exquisite proportion -of his limb had been seen by any of the present company excepting -Euphemia” (why had Euphemia been so favoured?), “Lascelles, bursting -with an emotion which he would not call envy, measured the count’s fine -leg with his scornful eye.” - -When Thaddeus at last expresses his attachment for Miss Beaufort, he -does so kneeling respectfully in her uncle’s presence, and in these -well-chosen words: “Dearest Miss Beaufort, may I indulge myself in the -idea that I am blessed with your esteem?” Whereupon Mary whispers to -Sir Robert: “Pray, Sir, desire him to rise. I am already sufficiently -overwhelmed!” and the solemn deed is done. - -“Thaddeus of Warsaw” may be called the “Last of the Heroes,” and take -rank with the “Last of the Mohicans,” the “Last of the Barons,” the -“Last of the Cavaliers,” and all the finalities of fiction. With him -died that noble race who expressed our great-grandmothers’ artless -ideals of perfection. Seventy years later, D’Israeli made a desperate -effort to revive a pale phantom of departed glory in “Lothair,” that -nursling of the gods, who is emphatically a hero, and nothing more. -“London,” we are gravely told, “was at Lothair’s feet.” He is at once -the hope of United Italy, and the bulwark of the English Establishment. -He is--at twenty-two--the pivot of fashionable, political, and clerical -diplomacy. He is beloved by the female aristocracy of Great Britain; -and mysterious ladies, whose lofty souls stoop to no conventionalities, -die happy with his kisses on their lips. Five hundred mounted gentlemen -compose his simple country escort, and the coat of his groom of the -chambers is made in Saville Row. What more could a hero want? What more -could be lavished upon him by the most indulgent of authors? Yet who -shall compare Lothair to the noble Thaddeus nodding his hearse-like -plumes,--Thaddeus dedicated to the “urbanity of the brave,” and -embalmed in the tears of Poland? The inscrutable creator of Lothair -presented his puppet to a mocking world; but all England and much of -the Continent dilated with correct emotions when Thaddeus, “uniting -to the courage of a man the sensibility of a woman, and the exalted -goodness of an angel” (I quote from an appreciative critic), knelt at -Miss Beaufort’s feet. - -Ten years later “Pride and Prejudice” made its unobtrusive appearance, -and was read by that “saving remnant” to whom is confided the -intellectual welfare of their land. Mrs. Elwood, the biographer of -England’s “Literary Ladies,” tells us, in the few careless pages -which she deems sufficient for Miss Austen’s novels, that there _are_ -people who think these stories “worthy of ranking with those of Madame -d’Arblay and Miss Edgeworth”; but that in their author’s estimation -(and, by inference, in her own), “they took up a much more humble -station.” Yet, tolerant even of such inferiority, Mrs. Elwood bids -us remember that although “the character of Emma is perhaps too -manœuvring and too plotting to be perfectly amiable,” that of Catherine -Morland “will not suffer greatly even from a comparison with Miss -Burney’s interesting Evelina”; and that “although one is occasionally -annoyed by the underbred personages of Miss Austen’s novels, the -annoyance is only such as we should feel if we were actually in their -company.” - -It was thus that our genteel great-grandmothers, enamoured of lofty -merit and of refined sensibility, regarded Elizabeth Bennet’s -relations. - - - - -ON THE SLOPES OF PARNASSUS - - Perhaps no man ever thought a line superfluous when he wrote it. We - are seldom tiresome to ourselves.--DR. JOHNSON. - - -It is commonly believed that the extinction of verse--of verse in the -bulk, which is the way in which our great-grandfathers consumed it--is -due to the vitality of the novel. People, we are told, read rhyme -and metre with docility, only because they wanted to hear a story, -only because there was no other way in which they could get plenty of -sentiment and romance. As soon as the novel supplied them with all -the sentiment they wanted, as soon as it told them the story in plain -prose, they turned their backs upon poetry forever. - -There is a transparent inadequacy in this solution of a problem which -still confronts the patient reader of buried masterpieces. Novels were -plenty when Mr. William Hayley’s “Triumphs of Temper” went through -twelve editions, and when Dr. Darwin’s “Botanic Garden” was received -with deferential delight. But could any dearth of fiction persuade us -now to read the “Botanic Garden”? Were we shipwrecked in company with -the “Triumphs of Temper,” would we ever finish the first canto? Novels -stood on every English book-shelf when Fox read “Madoc” aloud at night -to his friends, and they stayed up, so he says, an hour after their -bedtime to hear it. Could that miracle be worked to-day? Sir Walter -Scott, with indestructible amiability, reread “Madoc” to please Miss -Seward, who, having “steeped” her own eyes “in transports of tears and -sympathy,” wrote to him that it carried “a master-key to every bosom -which common good sense and anything resembling a human heart inhabit.” -Scott, unwilling to resign all pretensions to a human heart, tried hard -to share the Swan’s emotions, and failed. “I cannot feel quite the -interest I would like to do,” he patiently confessed. - -If Southey’s poems were not read as Scott’s and Moore’s and Byron’s -were read (give us another Byron, and we will read him with forty -thousand novels knocking at our doors!); if they were not paid for -out of the miraculous depths of Murray’s Fortunatus’s purse, they -nevertheless enjoyed a solid reputation of their own. They are -mentioned in all the letters of the period (save and except Lord -Byron’s ribald pages) with carefully measured praise, and they enabled -their author to accept the laureateship on self-respecting terms. They -are at least, as Sir Leslie Stephen reminds us, more readable than -Glover’s “Leonidas,” or Wilkie’s “Epigoniad,” and they are shorter, -too. Yet the “Leonidas,” an epic in nine books, went through four -editions; whereupon its elate author expanded it into twelve books; and -the public, undaunted, kept on buying it for years. The “Epigoniad” -is also in nine books. It is on record that Hume, who seldom dallied -with the poets, read all nine, and praised them warmly. Mr. Wilkie was -christened the “Scottish Homer,” and he bore that modest title until -his death. It was the golden age of epics. The ultimatum of the modern -publisher, “No poet need apply!” had not yet blighted the hopes and -dimmed the lustre of genius. “Everybody thinks he can write verse,” -observed Sir Walter mournfully, when called upon for the hundredth -time to help a budding aspirant to fame. - -With so many competitors in the field, it was uncommonly astute in -Mr. Hayley to address himself exclusively to that sex which poets -and orators call “fair.” There is a formal playfulness, a ponderous -vivacity about the “Triumphs of Temper,” which made it especially -welcome to women. In the preface of the first edition the author -gallantly laid his laurels at their feet, observing modestly that it -was his desire, however “ineffectual,” “to unite the sportive wildness -of Ariosto and the more serious sublime painting of Dante with some -portion of the enchanting elegance, the refined imagination, and the -moral graces of Pope; and to do this, if possible, without violating -those rules of propriety which Mr. Cambridge has illustrated, by -example as well as by precept, in the ‘Scribleriad,’ and in his -sensible preface to that elegant and learned poem.” - -Accustomed as we are to the confusions of literary perspective, -this grouping of Dante, Ariosto, and Mr. Cambridge does seem a -trifle foreshortened. But our ancestors had none of that sensitive -shrinking from comparisons which is so characteristic of our timid and -thin-skinned generation. They did not edge off from the immortals, -afraid to breathe their names lest it be held lèse-majesté; they used -them as the common currency of criticism. Why should not Mr. Hayley -have challenged a contrast with Dante and Ariosto, when Miss Seward -assured her little world--which was also Mr. Hayley’s world--that -he had the “wit and ease” of Prior, a “more varied versification” -than Pope, and “the fire and the invention of Dryden, without any -of Dryden’s absurdity”? Why should he have questioned her judgment, -when she wrote to him that Cowper’s “Task” would “please and instruct -the race of common readers,” who could not rise to the beauties of -Akenside, or Mason, or Milton, or of his (Mr. Hayley’s) “exquisite -‘Triumphs of Temper’”? There was a time, indeed, when she sorrowed lest -his “inventive, classical, and elegant muse” should be “deplorably -infected” by the growing influence of Wordsworth; but, that peril past, -he rose again, the bright particular star of a wide feminine horizon. - -Mr. Hayley’s didacticism is admirably adapted to his readers. The men -of the eighteenth century were not expected to keep their tempers; -it was the sweet prerogative of wives and daughters to smooth the -roughened current of family life. Accordingly the heroine of the -“Triumphs,” being bullied by her father, a fine old gentleman of the -Squire Western type, maintains a superhuman cheerfulness, gives up the -ball for which she is already dressed, wreathes her countenance in -smiles, and - - with sportive ease, - Prest her Piano-forte’s favourite keys. - -The men of the eighteenth century were all hard drinkers. Therefore Mr. -Hayley conjures the “gentle fair” to avoid even the mild debauchery of -siruped fruits,-- - - For the sly fiend, of every art possest, - Steals on th’ affection of her female guest; - And, by her soft address, seducing each, - Eager she plies them with a brandy peach. - They with keen lip the luscious fruit devour, - But swiftly feel its peace-destroying power. - Quick through each vein new tides of frenzy roll, - All evil passions kindle in the soul; - Drive from each feature every cheerful grace, - And glare ferocious in the sallow face; - The wounded nerves in furious conflict tear, - Then sink in blank dejection and despair. - -All this combustle, to use Gray’s favourite word, about a brandy peach! -But women have ever loved to hear their little errors magnified. In the -matter of poets, preachers and confessors, they are sure to choose the -denunciatory. - -Dr. Darwin, as became a scientist and a sceptic, addressed his -ponderous “Botanic Garden” to male readers. It is true that he offers -much good advice to women, urging upon them especially those duties and -devotions from which he, as a man, was exempt. It is true also that -when he first contemplated writing his epic, he asked Miss Seward--so, -at least, she said--to be his collaborator; an honour which she -modestly declined, as not “strictly proper for a female pen.” But the -peculiar solidity, the encyclopædic qualities of this masterpiece, -fitted it for such grave students as Mr. Edgeworth, who loved to -be amply instructed. It is a poem replete with information, and -information of that disconnected order in which the Edgeworthian soul -took true delight. We are told, not only about flowers and vegetables, -but about electric fishes, and the salt mines of Poland; about Dr. -Franklin’s lightning rod, and Mrs. Damer’s bust of the Duchess of -Devonshire; about the treatment of paralytics, and the mechanism of the -common pump. We pass from the death of General Wolfe at Quebec to the -equally lamented demise of a lady botanist at Derby. We turn from the -contemplation of Hannibal crossing the Alps to consider the charities -of a benevolent young woman named Jones. - - Sound, Nymphs of Helicon! the trump of Fame, - And teach Hibernian echoes Jones’s name; - Bind round her polished brow the civic bay, - And drag the fair Philanthropist to day. - -Pagan divinities disport themselves on one page, and Christian -saints on another. St. Anthony preaches, not to the little fishes of -the brooks and streams, but to the monsters of the deep,--sharks, -porpoises, whales, seals and dolphins, that assemble in a sort of -aquatic camp-meeting on the shores of the Adriatic, and “get religion” -in the true revivalist spirit. - - The listening shoals the quick contagion feel, - Pant on the floods, inebriate with their zeal; - Ope their wide jaws, and bow their slimy heads, - And dash with frantic fins their foamy beds. - -For a freethinker, Dr. Darwin is curiously literal in his treatment -of hagiology and the Scriptures. His Nebuchadnezzar (introduced as an -illustration of the “Loves of the Plants”) is not a bestialized mortal, -but a veritable beast, like one of Circe’s swine, only less easily -classified in natural history. - - Long eagle plumes his arching neck invest, - Steal round his arms and clasp his sharpened breast; - Dark brindled hairs in bristling ranks behind, - Rise o’er his back and rustle in the wind; - Clothe his lank sides, his shrivelled limbs surround, - And human hands with talons print the ground. - Lolls his red tongue, and from the reedy side - Of slow Euphrates laps the muddy tide. - Silent, in shining troups, the Courtier throng - Pursue their monarch as he crawls along; - E’en Beauty pleads in vain with smiles and tears, - Not Flattery’s self can pierce his pendant ears. - -The picture of the embarrassed courtiers promenading slowly after this -royal phenomenon, and of the lovely inconsiderates proffering their -vain allurements, is so ludicrous as to be painful. Even Miss Seward, -who held that the “Botanic Garden” combined “the sublimity of Michael -Angelo, the correctness and elegance of Raphael, with the glow of -Titian,” was shocked by Nebuchadnezzar’s pendant ears, and admitted -that the passage was likely to provoke inconsiderate laughter. - -The first part of Dr. Darwin’s poem, “The Economy of Vegetation,” was -warmly praised by critics and reviewers. Its name alone secured for it -esteem. A few steadfast souls, like Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, refused to -accept even vegetation from a sceptic’s hands; but it was generally -conceded that the poet had “entwined the Parnassian laurel with the -balm of Pharmacy” in a very creditable manner. The last four cantos, -however,--indiscreetly entitled “The Loves of the Plants,”--awakened -grave concern. They were held unfit for female youth, which, being -then taught driblets of science in a guarded and muffled fashion, was -not supposed to know that flowers had any sex, much less that they -practised polygamy. The glaring indiscretion of their behaviour in -the “Botanic Garden,” their seraglios, their amorous embraces and -involuntary libertinism, offended British decorum, and, what was -worse, exposed the poem to Canning’s pungent ridicule. When the “Loves -of the Triangles” appeared in the “Anti-Jacobin,” all England--except -Whigs and patriots who never laughed at Canning’s jokes--was moved to -inextinguishable mirth. The mock seriousness of the introduction and -argument, the “horrid industry” of the notes, the contrast between -the pensiveness of the Cycloid and the innocent playfulness of the -Pendulum, the solemn headshake over the licentious disposition of -Optics, and the description of the three Curves that requite the -passion of the Rectangle, all burlesque with unfeeling delight Dr. -Darwin’s ornate pedantry. - - Let shrill Acoustics tune the tiny lyre, - With Euclid sage fair Algebra conspire; - Let Hydrostatics, simpering as they go, - Lead the light Naiads on fantastic toe. - -The indignant poet, frigidly vain, and immaculately free from any -taint of humour, was as much scandalized as hurt by this light-hearted -mockery. Being a dictator in his own little circle at Derby, he was -naturally disposed to consider the “Anti-Jacobin” a menace to genius -and to patriotism. His criticisms and his prescriptions had hitherto -been received with equal submission. When he told his friends that -Akenside was a better poet than Milton,--“more polished, pure, and -dignified,” they listened with respect. When he told his patients -to eat acid fruits with plenty of sugar and cream, they obeyed -with alacrity. He had a taste for inventions, and first made Mr. -Edgeworth’s acquaintance by showing him an ingenious carriage of his -own contrivance, which was designed to facilitate the movements of the -horse, and enable it to turn with ease. The fact that Dr. Darwin was -three times thrown from this vehicle, and that the third accident lamed -him for life, in no way disconcerted the inventor or his friends, who -loved mechanism for its own sake, and apart from any given results. Dr. -Darwin defined a fool as one who never in his life tried an experiment. -So did Mr. Day, of “Sandford and Merton” fame, who experimented in the -training of animals, and was killed by an active young colt that had -failed to grasp the system. - -The “Botanic Garden” was translated into French, Italian, and -Portuguese, to the great relief of Miss Seward, who hated to think -that the immortality of such a work depended upon the preservation -of a single tongue. “Should that tongue perish,” she wrote proudly, -“translations would at least retain all the host of beauties which do -not depend upon felicities of verbal expression.” - -If the interminable epics which were so popular in these halcyon days -had condescended to the telling of stories, we might believe that they -were read, or at least occasionally read, as a substitute for prose -fiction. But the truth is that most of them are solid treatises on -morality, or agriculture, or therapeutics, cast into the blankest of -blank verse, and valued, presumably, for the sake of the information -they conveyed. Their very titles savour of statement rather than of -inspiration. Nobody in search of romance would take up Dr. Grainger’s -“Sugar Cane,” or Dyer’s “Fleece,” or the Rev. Richard Polwhele’s -“English Orator.” Nobody desiring to be idly amused would read the -“Vales of Weaver,” or a long didactic poem on “The Influence of Local -Attachment.” It was not because he felt himself to be a poet that Dr. -Grainger wrote the “Sugar Cane” in verse, but because that was the form -most acceptable to the public. The ever famous line, - - “Now Muse, let’s sing of rats!” - -which made merry Sir Joshua Reynolds and his friends, is indicative of -the good doctor’s struggles to employ an uncongenial medium. He wanted -to tell his readers how to farm successfully in the West Indies; how -to keep well in a treacherous climate; what food to eat, what drugs -to take, how to look after the physical condition of negro servants, -and guard them from prevalent maladies. These were matters on which -the author was qualified to speak, and on which he does speak with -all a physician’s frankness; but they do not lend themselves to lofty -strains. Whole pages of the “Sugar Cane” read like prescriptions and -dietaries done into verse. It is as difficult to sing with dignity -about a disordered stomach as about rats and cockroaches; and Dr. -Grainger’s determination to leave nothing untold leads him to dwell -with much feeling, but little grace, on all the disadvantages of the -tropics. - - Musquitoes, sand-flies, seek the sheltered roof, - And with fell rage the stranger guest assail, - Nor spare the sportive child; from their retreats - Cockroaches crawl displeasingly abroad. - -The truthfulness and sobriety of this last line deserve commendation. -Cockroaches in the open _are_ displeasing to sensitive souls; and a -footnote, half a page long, tells us everything we could possibly -desire--or fear--to know about these insects. As an example of Dr. -Grainger’s thoroughness in the treatment of such themes, I quote with -delight his approved method of poisoning alligators. - - With Misnian arsenic, deleterious bane, - Pound up the ripe cassada’s well-rasped root, - And form in pellets; these profusely spread - Round the Cane-groves where skulk the vermin-breed. - They, greedy, and unweeting of the bait, - Crowd to the inviting cates, and swift devour - Their palatable Death; for soon they seek - The neighbouring spring; and drink, and swell, and die. - -Then follow some very sensible remarks about the unwholesomeness of the -water in which the dead alligators are decomposing,--remarks which Mr. -Kipling has unconsciously parodied:-- - - But ’e gets into the drinking casks, and then o’ course we dies. - -The wonderful thing about the “Sugar Cane” is that it was read;--nay, -more, that it was read aloud at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and -though the audience laughed, it listened. Dodsley published the poem in -handsome style; a second edition was called for; it was reprinted in -Jamaica, and pirated (what were the pirates thinking about!) in 1766. -Even Dr. Johnson wrote a friendly notice in the London “Chronicle,” -though he always maintained that the poet might just as well have sung -the beauties of a parsley-bed or of a cabbage garden. He took the same -high ground when Boswell called his attention to Dyer’s “Fleece.”--“The -subject, Sir, cannot be made poetical. How can a man write poetically -of serges and druggets?” - -It was not for the sake of sentiment or story that the English public -read “The Fleece.” Nor could it have been for practical guidance; for -farmers, even in 1757, must have had some musty almanacs, some plain -prose manuals to advise them. They could never have waited to learn -from an epic poem that - - the coughing pest - From their green pastures sweeps whole flocks away, - -or that - - Sheep also pleurisies and dropsies know, - -or that - - The infectious scab, arising from extremes - Of want or surfeit, is by water cured - Of lime, or sodden stave-acre, or oil - Dispersive of Norwegian tar. - -Did the British woolen-drapers of the period require to be told in -verse about - - Cheyney, and bayse, and serge, and alepine, - Tammy, and crape, and the long countless list - Of woolen webs. - -Surely they knew more about their own dry-goods than did Mr. Dyer. Is -it possible that British parsons read Mr. Polwhele’s “English Orator” -for the sake of his somewhat confused advice to preachers?-- - - Meantime thy Style familiar, that alludes - With pleasing Retrospect to recent Scenes - Or Incidents amidst thy Flock, fresh graved - On Memory, shall recall their scattered Thoughts, - And interest every Bosom. With the Voice - Of condescending Gentleness address - Thy kindred People. - -It was Miss Seward’s opinion that the neglect of Mr. Polwhele’s “poetic -writings” was a disgrace to literary England, from which we conclude -that the reverend author outwore the patience of his readers. “Mature -in dulness from his earliest years,” he had wisely adopted a profession -which gave his qualities room for expansion. What his congregation must -have suffered when he addressed it with “condescending gentleness,” we -hardly like to think; but free-born Englishmen, who were so fortunate -as not to hear him, refused to make good their loss by reading the -“English Orator,” even after it had been revised by a bishop. Miss -Seward praised it highly; in return for which devotion she was hailed -as a “Parnassian sister” in six benedictory stanzas. - - Still gratitude her stores among, - Shall bid the plausive poet sing; - And, if the last of all the throng - That rise on the poetic wing, - Yet not regardless of his destined way, - If Seward’s envied sanction stamps the lay. - -The Swan, indeed, was never without admirers. Her “Louisa; a Poetical -Novel in four Epistles,” was favourably noticed; Dr. Johnson praised -her ode on the death of Captain Cook; and no contributor to the Bath -Easton vase received more myrtle wreaths than she did. “Warble” was the -word commonly used by partial critics in extolling her verse. “Long may -she continue to warble as heretofore, in such numbers as few even of -our favourite bards would be shy to own.” Scott sorrowfully admitted -to Miss Baillie that he found these warblings--of which he was the -reluctant editor--“execrable”; and that the despair which filled his -soul on receiving Miss Seward’s letters gave him a lifelong horror -of sentiment; but for once it is impossible to sympathize with Sir -Walter’s sufferings. If he had never praised the verses, he would never -have been called upon to edit them; and James Ballantyne would have -been saved the printing of an unsalable book. There is no lie so little -worth the telling as that which is spoken in pure kindness to spare a -wholesome pang. - -It was, however, the pleasant custom of the time to commend and -encourage female poets, as we commend and encourage a child’s unsteady -footsteps. The generous Hayley welcomed with open arms these fair -competitors for fame. - - The bards of Britain with unjaundiced eyes - Will glory to behold such rivals rise. - -He ardently flattered Miss Seward, and for Miss Hannah More his -enthusiasm knew no bounds. - - But with a magical control, - Thy spirit-moving strain - Dispels the languor of the soul, - Annihilating pain. - -“Spirit-moving” seems the last epithet in the world to apply to Miss -More’s strains; but there is no doubt that the public believed her -to be as good a poet as a preacher, and that it supported her high -estimate of her own powers. After a visit to another lambent flame, -Mrs. Barbauld, she writes with irresistible gravity: - -“Mrs. B. and I have found out that we feel as little envy and malice -towards each other, as though we had neither of us attempted to ‘build -the lofty rhyme’; although she says this is what the envious and the -malicious can never be brought to believe.” - -Think of the author of “The Search after Happiness” and the author of -“A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Wilberforce” loudly refusing to envy each -other’s eminence! There is nothing like it in the strife-laden annals -of fame. - -Finally there stepped into the arena that charming embodiment of -the female muse, Mrs. Hemans; and the manly heart of Protestant -England warmed into homage at her shrine. From the days she “first -carolled forth her poetic talents under the animating influence of -an affectionate and admiring circle,” to the days when she faded -gracefully out of life, her “half-etherealized spirit” rousing itself -to dictate a last “Sabbath Sonnet,” she was crowned and garlanded -with bays. In the first place, she was fair to see,--Fletcher’s bust -shows real loveliness; and it was Christopher North’s opinion that “no -really ugly woman ever wrote a truly beautiful poem the length of her -little finger.” In the second place, she was sincerely pious; and the -Ettrick Shepherd reflected the opinion of his day when he said that -“without religion, a woman’s just an even-down deevil.” The appealing -helplessness of Mrs. Hemans’s gentle and affectionate nature, the -narrowness of her sympathies, and the limitations of her art were all -equally acceptable to critics like Gifford and Jeffrey, who held strict -views as to the rounding of a woman’s circle. Even Byron heartily -approved of a pious and pretty woman writing pious and pretty poems. -Even Wordsworth flung her lordly words of praise. Even Shelley wrote -her letters so eager and ardent that her very sensible mamma, Mrs. -Browne, requested him to cease. And as for Scott, though he confessed -she was too poetical for his taste, he gave her always the honest -friendship she deserved. It was to her he said, when some tourists left -them hurriedly at Newark Tower: “Ah, Mrs. Hemans, they little know what -two lions they are running away from.” It was to her he said, when she -was leaving Abbotsford: “There are some whom we meet, and should like -ever after to claim as kith and kin; and you are of this number.” - -Who would not gladly have written “The Siege of Valencia” and “The -Vespers of Palermo,” to have heard Sir Walter say these words? - - - - -THE LITERARY LADY - - Out-pensioners of Parnassus.--HORACE WALPOLE. - - -In this overrated century of progress, when women have few favours -shown them, but are asked to do their work or acknowledge their -deficiencies, the thoughtful mind turns disconsolately back to those -urbane days when every tottering step they took was patronized and -praised. It must have been very pleasant to be able to publish -“Paraphrases and Imitations of Horace,” without knowing a word of -Latin. Latin is a difficult language to study, and much useful time -may be wasted in acquiring it; therefore Miss Anna Seward eschewed -the tedious process which most translators deem essential. Yet her -paraphrases were held to have caught the true Horatian spirit; and -critics praised them all the more indulgently because of their author’s -feminine attitude to the classics. “Over the lyre of Horace,” she wrote -elegantly to Mr. Repton, “I throw an unfettered hand.” - -It may be said that critics were invariably indulgent to female -writers (listen to Christopher North purring over Mrs. Hemans!) until -they stepped, like Charlotte Brontë, from their appointed spheres, and -hotly challenged the competition of the world. This was a disagreeable -and a disconcerting thing for them to do. Nobody could patronize “Jane -Eyre,” and none of the pleasant things which were habitually murmured -about “female excellence and talent” seemed to fit this firebrand of a -book. Had Charlotte Brontë taken to heart Mrs. King’s “justly approved -work” on “The Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper upon Domestic -Happiness,” she would not have shocked and pained the sensitive -reviewer of the “Quarterly.” - -It was in imitation of that beacon light, Miss Hannah More, that -Mrs. King wrote her famous treatise. It was in imitation of Miss -Hannah More that Mrs. Trimmer (abhorred by Lamb) wrote “The Servant’s -Friend,” “Help to the Unlearned,” and the “Charity School Spelling -Book,”--works which have passed out of the hands of men, but whose -titles survive to fill us with wonder and admiration. Was there ever -a time when the unlearned frankly recognized their ignorance, and when -a mistress ventured to give her housemaids a “Servant’s Friend”? Was -spelling in the charity schools different from spelling elsewhere, or -were charity-school children taught a limited vocabulary, from which -all words of rank had been eliminated? Those were days when the upper -classes were affable and condescending, when the rural poor--if not -intoxicated--curtsied and invoked blessings on their benefactors all -day long, and when benevolent ladies told the village politicians -what it was well for them to know. But even at this restful period, -a “Charity School Spelling Book” seems ill calculated to inspire the -youthful student with enthusiasm. - -Mrs. Trimmer’s attitude to the public was marked by that refined -diffidence which was considered becoming in a female. Her biographer -assures us that she never coveted literary distinction, although her -name was celebrated “wherever Christianity was established, and the -English language was spoken.” Royalty took her by the hand, and bishops -expressed their overwhelming sense of obligation. We sigh to think -how many ladies became famous against their wills a hundred and fifty -years ago, and how hard it is now to raise our aspiring heads. There -was Miss ---- or, as she preferred to be called, Mrs. ---- Carter, who -read Greek, and translated Epictetus, who was admired by “the great, -the gay, the good, and the learned”; yet who could with difficulty be -persuaded to bear the burden of her own eminence. It was the opinion of -her friends that Miss Carter had conferred a good deal of distinction -upon Epictetus by her translation,--by setting, as Dr. Young elegantly -phrased it, this Pagan jewel in gold. We find Mrs. Montagu writing -to this effect, and expressing in round terms her sense of the -philosopher’s obligation. “Might not such an honour from a fair hand -make even an Epictetus proud, without being censured for it? Nor let -Mrs. Carter’s amiable modesty become blameable by taking offence at the -truth, but stand the shock of applause which she has brought upon her -own head.” - -It was very comforting to receive letters like this, to be called -upon to brace one’s self against the shock of applause, instead of -against the chilly douche of disparagement. Miss Carter retorted, as in -duty bound, by imploring her friend to employ her splendid abilities -upon some epoch-making work,--some work which, while it entertained -the world, “would be applauded by angels, and registered in Heaven.” -Perhaps the uncertainty of angelic readers daunted even Mrs. Montagu, -for she never responded to this and many similar appeals; but suffered -her literary reputation to rest secure on her defence of Shakespeare, -and three papers contributed to Lord Lyttelton’s “Dialogues of the -Dead.” Why, indeed, should she have laboured further, when, to the end -of her long and honoured life, men spoke of her “transcendent talents,” -her “magnificent attainments”? Had she written a history of the world, -she could not have been more reverently praised. Lord Lyttelton, -transported with pride at having so distinguished a collaborator, wrote -to her that the French translation of the “Dialogues” was as well -done as “the poverty of the French tongue would permit”; and added -unctuously, “but such eloquence as yours must lose by being translated -into _any_ other language. Your form and manner would seduce Apollo -himself on his throne of criticism on Parnassus.” - -Lord Lyttelton was perhaps more remarkable for amiability than for -judgment; but Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, who wrote good letters himself, -ardently admired Mrs. Montagu’s, and pronounced her “the Madame du -Deffand of the English capital.” Cowper meekly admitted that she stood -at the head “of all that is called learned,” and that every critic -“veiled his bonnet before her superior judgment.” Even Dr. Johnson, -though he despised the “Dialogues,” and protested to the end of his -life that Shakespeare stood in no need of Mrs. Montagu’s championship, -acknowledged that the lady was well informed and intelligent. -“Conversing with her,” he said, “you may find variety in one”; and this -charming phrase stands now as the most generous interpretation of her -fame. It is something we can credit amid the bewildering nonsense which -was talked and written about a woman whose hospitality dazzled society, -and whose assertiveness dominated her friends. - -There were other literary ladies belonging to this charmed circle -whose reputations rested on frailer foundations. Mrs. Montagu _did_ -write the essay on Shakespeare and the three dialogues. Miss Carter -_did_ translate Epictetus. Mrs. Chapone _did_ write “Letters on the -Improvement of the Mind,” which so gratified George the Third and -Queen Charlotte that they entreated her to compose a second volume; -and she _did_ dally a little with verse, for one of her odes was -prefixed--Heaven knows why!--to Miss Carter’s “Epictetus”; and the -Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, even little Prince William, were -all familiar with this masterpiece. There never was a lady more -popular with a reigning house, and, when we dip into her pages, we -know the reason why. A firm insistence upon admitted truths, a loving -presentation of the obvious, a generous championship of those sweet -commonplaces we all deem dignified and safe, made her especially -pleasing to good King George and his consort. Even her letters are -models of sapiency. “Tho’ I meet with no absolutely perfect character,” -she writes to Sir William Pepys, “yet where I find a good disposition, -improved by good principles and virtuous habits, I feel a moral -assurance that I shall not find any flagrant vices in the same person, -and that I shall never see him fall into any very criminal action.” - -The breadth and tolerance of this admission must have startled her -correspondent, seasoned though he was to intellectual audacity. Nor was -Mrs. Chapone lacking in the gentle art of self-advancement; for, when -about to publish a volume of “Miscellanies,” she requested Sir William -to write an essay on “Affection and Simplicity,” or “Enthusiasm and -Indifference,” and permit her to print it as her own. “If your ideas -suit my way of thinking,” she tells him encouragingly, “I can cool -them down to my manner of writing, for we must not have a hotchpotch -of Styles; and if, for any reason, I should not be able to make use of -them, you will still have had the benefit of having written them, and -may peaceably possess your own property.” - -There are many ways of asking a favour; but to assume that you are -granting the favour that you ask shows spirit and invention. Had Mrs. -Chapone written nothing but this model of all begging letters, she -would be worthy to take high rank among the literary ladies of Great -Britain. - -It is more difficult to establish the claim of Mrs. Boscawen, who looms -nebulously on the horizon as the wife of an admiral, and the friend of -Miss Hannah More, from whom she received flowing compliments in the -“Bas Bleu.” - - Each art of conversation knowing, - High-bred, elegant Boscawen. - -We are told that this lady was “distinguished by the strength of her -understanding, the poignancy of her humour, and the brilliancy of -her wit”; but there does not survive the mildest joke, the smallest -word of wisdom to illustrate these qualities. Then there was Mrs. -Schimmelpenninck, whose name alone was a guarantee of immortality; -and the “sprightly and pleasing Mrs. Ironmonger”; and Miss Lee, -who could repeat the whole of Miss Burney’s “Cecilia” (a shocking -accomplishment); and the vivacious Miss Monckton, whom Johnson called -a dunce; and Miss Elizabeth Hamilton, a useful person, “equally -competent to form the minds and manners of the daughters of a nobleman, -and to reform the simple but idle habits of the peasantry”; and Mrs. -Bennet, whose letters--so Miss Seward tells us--“breathed Ciceronean -spirit and eloquence,” and whose poems revealed “the terse neatness, -humour, and gayety of Swift,” which makes it doubly distressful that -neither letters nor poems have survived. Above all, there was the -mysterious “Sylph,” who glides--sylphlike--through a misty atmosphere -of conjecture and adulation; and about whom we feel some of the fond -solicitude expressed over and over again by the letter-writers of this -engaging period. - -Translated into prose, the Sylph becomes Mrs. Agmondesham Vesey,-- - - Vesey, of verse the judge and friend,-- - -a fatuous deaf lady, with a taste for literary society, and a talent -for arranging chairs. She it was who first gathered the “Blues” -together, placing them in little groups--generally back to back--and -flitting so rapidly from one group to another, her ear-trumpet hung -around her neck, that she never heard more than a few broken sentences -of conversation. She had what Miss Hannah More amiably called “plastic -genius,” which meant that she fidgeted perpetually; and what Miss -Carter termed “a delightful spirit of innocent irregularity,” which -meant that she was inconsequent to the danger point. “She united,” -said Madame d’Arblay, “the unguardedness of childhood to a Hibernian -bewilderment of ideas which cast her incessantly into some burlesque -situation.” But her kind-heartedness (she proposed having her -drawing-room gravelled, so that a lame friend could walk on it without -slipping) made even her absurdities lovable, and her most fantastic -behaviour was tolerated as proof of her aerial essence. “There is -nothing of mere vulgar mortality about our Sylph,” wrote Miss Carter -proudly. - -It was in accordance with this pleasing illusion that, when Mrs. -Vesey took a sea voyage, her friends spoke of her as though she were -a mermaid, disporting herself in, instead of on, the ocean. They not -only held “the uproar of a stormy sea to be as well adapted to the -sublime of her imagination as the soft murmur of a gliding stream to -the gentleness of her temper” (so much might at a pinch be said about -any of us); but we find Miss Carter writing to Mrs. Montagu in this -perplexing strain:-- - -“I fancy our Sylph has not yet left the coral groves and submarine -palaces in which she would meet with so many of her fellow nymphs on -her way to England. I think if she had landed, we should have had some -information about it, either from herself or from somebody else who -knows her consequence to us.” - -The poor Sylph seems to have had rather a hard time of it after the -death of the Honourable Agmondesham, who relished his wife’s vagaries -so little, or feared them so much, that he left the bulk of his estate -to his nephew, a respectable young man with no unearthly qualities. -The heir, however, behaved generously to his widowed aunt, giving her -an income large enough to permit her to live with comfort, and to keep -her coach. Miss Carter was decidedly of the opinion that Mr. Vesey made -such a “detestable” will because he was lacking in sound religious -principles, and she expressed in plain terms her displeasure with her -friend for mourning persistently over the loss of one who “so little -deserved her tears.” But the Sylph, lonely, middle-aged, and deaf, -realized perhaps that her little day was over. Mrs. Montagu’s profuse -hospitality had supplanted “the biscuit’s ample sacrifice.” People no -longer cared to sit back to back, talking platitudes through long and -hungry evenings. The “innocent irregularity” deepened into melancholy, -into madness; and the Sylph, a piteous mockery of her old sweet foolish -self, faded away, dissolving like Niobe in tears. - -It may be noted that the mission of the literary lady throughout all -these happy years was to elevate and refine. Her attitude towards -matters of the intellect was one of obtrusive humility. It is recorded -that “an accomplished and elegant female writer” (the name, alas! -withheld) requested Sir William Pepys to mark all the passages in -Madame de Staël’s works which he considered “above her comprehension.” -Sir William “with ready wit” declined this invidious task; but agreed -to mark all he deemed “worthy of her attention.” We hardly know what -to admire the most in a story like this;--the lady’s modesty, Sir -William’s tact, or the revelation it affords of infinite leisure. When -we remember the relentless copiousness of Madame de Staël’s books, we -wonder if the amiable annotator lived long enough to finish his task. - -In matters of morality, however, the female pen was held to be a -bulwark of Great Britain. The ambition to prove that--albeit a -woman--one may be on terms of literary intimacy with the seven deadly -sins (“Je ne suis qu’un pauvre diable de perruquier, mais je ne crois -pas en Dieu plus que les autres”) had not yet dawned upon the feminine -horizon. The literary lady accepted with enthusiasm the limitations -of her sex, and turned them to practical account; she laid with them -the foundations of her fame. Mrs. Montagu, an astute woman of the -world, recognized in what we should now call an enfeebling propriety -her most valuable asset. It sanctified her attack upon Voltaire, it -enabled her to snub Dr. Johnson, and it made her, in the opinion of -her friends, the natural and worthy opponent of Lord Chesterfield. She -was entreated to come to the rescue of British morality by denouncing -that nobleman’s “profligate” letters; and we find the Rev. Montagu -Pennington lamenting years afterwards her refusal “to apply her wit and -genius to counteract the mischief which Lord Chesterfield’s volumes had -done.” - -Miss Hannah More’s dazzling renown rested on the same solid support. -She was so strong morally that to have cavilled at her intellectual -feebleness would have been deemed profane. Her advice (she spent the -best part of eighty-eight years in offering it) was so estimable that -its general inadequacy was never ascertained. Rich people begged her -to advise the poor. Great people begged her to advise the humble. -Satisfied people begged her to advise the discontented. Sir William -Pepys wrote to her in 1792, imploring her to avert from England the -threatened dangers of radicalism and a division of land by writing a -dialogue “between two persons of the lowest order,” in which should -be set forth the discomforts of land ownership, and the advantages -of labouring for small wages at trades. This simple and childlike -scheme would, in Sir William’s opinion, go far towards making English -workmen contented with their lot, and might eventually save the country -from the terrible bloodshed of France. Was ever higher tribute paid -to sustained and triumphant propriety? Look at Mary Wollstonecraft -vindicating the rights of woman in sordid poverty, in tears and shame; -and look at Hannah More, an object of pious pilgrimage at Cowslip -Green. Her sisters were awestruck at finding themselves the guardians -of such preëminence. Miss Seward eloquently addressed them as - - sweet satellites that gently bear - Your lesser radiance round this beamy star; - -and, being the humblest sisters ever known, they seemed to have liked -the appellation. They guarded their luminary from common contact with -mankind; they spoke of her as “she” (like Mr. Rider Haggard’s heroine), -and they explained to visitors how good and great she was, and what a -condescension it would be on her part to see them, when two peeresses -and a bishop had been turned away the day before. “It is an exquisite -pleasure,” wrote Miss Carter enthusiastically, “to find distinguished -talents and sublime virtue placed in such an advantageous situation”; -and the modern reader is reminded against his will of the lively old -actress who sighed out to the painter Mulready her unavailing regrets -over a misspent life. “Ah, Mulready, if I had only been virtuous, it -would have been pounds and pounds in my pocket.” - -“Harmonious virgins,” sneered Horace Walpole, “whose thoughts and -phrases are like their gowns, old remnants cut and turned”; and it -is painful to know that in these ribald words he is alluding to the -Swan of Lichfield, and to the “glowing daughter of Apollo,” Miss Helen -Maria Williams. The Swan probably never did have her gowns cut and -turned, for she was a well-to-do lady with an income of four hundred -pounds; and she lived very grandly in the bishop’s palace at Lichfield, -where her father (“an angel, but an ass,” according to Coleridge) had -been for many years a canon. But Apollo having, after the fashion of -gods, bequeathed nothing to his glowing daughter but the gift of song, -Miss Williams might occasionally have been glad of a gown to turn. -Her juvenile poem “Edwin and Eltruda” enriched her in fame only; but -“Peru,” being published by subscription (blessed days when friends -could be turned into subscribers!), must have been fairly remunerative; -and we hear of its author in London giving “literary breakfasts,” a -popular but depressing form of entertainment. If ever literature be -“alien to the natural man,” it is at the breakfast hour. Miss Williams -subsequently went to Paris, and became an ardent revolutionist, -greatly to the distress of poor Miss Seward, whose enthusiasm for the -cause of freedom had suffered a decline, and who kept imploring her -friend to come home. “Fly, my dear Helen, that land of carnage!” she -wrote beseechingly. But Helen couldn’t fly, being then imprisoned by -the ungrateful revolutionists, who seemed unable, or unwilling, to -distinguish friends from foes. She had moreover by that time allied -herself to Mr. John Hurford Stone, a gentleman of the strictest -religious views, but without moral prejudices, who abandoned his lawful -wife for Apollo’s offspring, and who, as a consequence, preferred -living on the Continent. Therefore Miss Williams fell forever from the -bright circle of literary stars; and Lady Morgan, who met her years -afterwards in Paris, had nothing more interesting to record than that -she had grown “immensely fat,”--an unpoetic and unworthy thing to do. -“For when corpulence, which is a gift of evil, cometh upon age, then -are vanished the days of romance and of stirring deeds.” - -Yet sentiment, if not romance, clung illusively to the literary lady, -even when she surrendered nothing to persuasion. Strange shadowy -stories of courtship are told with pathetic simplicity. Miss Carter, -“when she had nearly attained the mature age of thirty,” was wooed -by a nameless gentleman of unexceptionable character, whom “she was -induced eventually to refuse, in consequence of his having written -some verses, of the nature of which she disapproved.” Whether these -verses were improper (perish the thought!) or merely ill-advised, we -shall never know; but as the rejected suitor “expressed ever after a -strong sense of Miss Carter’s handsome behaviour to him,” there seems -to have been on his part something perilously akin to acquiescence. “I -wonder,” says the wise Elizabeth Bennet, “who first discovered the -efficacy of poetry in driving away love.” It is a pleasure to turn from -such uncertainties to the firm outlines and providential issues of -Miss Hannah More’s early attachment. When the wealthy Mr. Turner, who -had wooed and won the lady, manifested an unworthy reluctance to marry -her, she consented to receive, in lieu of his heart and hand, an income -of two hundred pounds a year, which enabled her to give up teaching, -and commence author at the age of twenty-two. The wedding day had been -fixed, the wedding dress was made, but the wedding bells were never -rung, and the couple--like the lovers in the story-books--lived happily -ever after. The only measure of retaliation which Miss More permitted -herself was to send Mr. Turner a copy of every book and of every tract -she wrote; while that gentleman was often heard to say, when the tracts -came thick and fast, that Providence had overruled his desire to make -so admirable a lady his wife, because she was destined for higher -things. - -It was reserved for the Lichfield Swan to work the miracle of -miracles, and rob love of inconstancy. She was but eighteen when she -inspired a passion “as fervent as it was lasting” in the breast of -Colonel Taylor, mentioned by discreet biographers as Colonel T. The -young man being without income, Mr. Seward, who was not altogether -an ass, declined the alliance; and when, four years later, a timely -inheritance permitted a renewal of the suit, Miss Seward had wearied of -her lover. Colonel Taylor accordingly married another young woman; but -the remembrance of the Swan, and an unfortunate habit he had acquired -of openly bewailing her loss, “clouded with gloom the first years of -their married life.” The patient Mrs. Taylor became in time so deeply -interested in the object of her husband’s devotion that she opened a -correspondence with Miss Seward,--who was the champion letter-writer -of England,--repeatedly sought to make her acquaintance, and “with -melancholy enthusiasm was induced to invest her with all the charms -imagination could devise, or which had been lavished upon her by -description.” - -This state of affairs lasted thirty years, at the end of which time -Colonel Taylor formed the desperate resolution of going to Lichfield, -and seeing his beloved one again. He went, he handed the parlour-maid -a prosaic card; and while Miss Seward--a stoutish, middle-aged, lame -lady--was adjusting her cap and kerchief, he strode into the hall, cast -one impassioned glance up the stairway, and rapidly left the house. -When asked by his wife why he had not stayed, he answered solemnly: -“The gratification must have been followed by pain and regret that -would have punished the temerity of the attempt. I had no sooner -entered the house than I became sensible of the perilous state of my -feelings, and fled with precipitation.” - -And the Swan was fifty-two! Well may we sigh over the days when the -Literary Lady not only was petted and praised, not only was the bulwark -of Church and State; but when she accomplished the impossible, and -kindled in man’s inconstant heart an inextinguishable flame. - - - - -THE CHILD - - I was not initiated into any rudiments ’till near four years of - age.--JOHN EVELYN. - - -The courage of mothers is proverbial. There is no danger which they -will not brave in behalf of their offspring. But I have always thought -that, for sheer foolhardiness, no one ever approached the English lady -who asked Dr. Johnson to read her young daughter’s translation from -Horace. He did read it, because the gods provided no escape; and he -told his experience to Miss Reynolds, who said soothingly, “And how -was it, Sir?” “Why, very well for a young Miss’s verses,” was the -contemptuous reply. “That is to say, as compared with excellence, -nothing; but very well for the person who wrote them. I am vexed at -being shown verses in that manner.” - -The fashion of focussing attention upon children had not in Dr. -Johnson’s day assumed the fell proportions which, a few years later, -practically extinguished childhood. It is true that he objected to -Mr. Bennet Langton’s connubial felicity, because the children were -“too much about”; and that he betrayed an unworthy impatience when the -ten little Langtons recited fables, or said their alphabets in Hebrew -for his delectation. It is true also that he answered with pardonable -rudeness when asked what was the best way to begin a little boy’s -education. He said it mattered no more how it was begun, that is, -what the child was taught first, than it mattered which of his little -legs he first thrust into his breeches,--a callous speech, painful to -parents’ ears. Dr. Johnson had been dead four years when Mrs. Hartley, -daughter of Dr. David Hartley of Bath, wrote to Sir William Pepys:-- - -“Education is the rage of the times. Everybody tries to make their -children more wonderful than any children of their acquaintance. The -poor little things are so crammed with knowledge that there is scant -time for them to obtain by exercise, and play, and _vacancy of mind_, -that strength of body which is much more necessary in childhood than -learning.” - -I am glad this letter went to Sir William, who was himself determined -that his children should not, at any rate, be less wonderful than -other people’s bantlings. When his eldest son had reached the mature -age of six, we find him writing to Miss Hannah More and Mrs. Chapone, -asking what books he shall give the poor infant to read, and explaining -to these august ladies his own theories of education. Mrs. Chapone, -with an enthusiasm worthy of Mrs. Blimber, replies that she sympathizes -with the rare delight it must be to him to teach little William Latin; -and that she feels jealous for the younger children, who, being yet -in the nursery, are denied their brother’s privileges. When the boy -is ten, Sir William reads to him “The Faerie Queene,” and finds -that he grasps “the beauty of the description and the force of the -allegory.” At eleven he has “an animated relish for Ovid and Virgil.” -And the more the happy father has to tell about the precocity of his -child, the more Mrs. Chapone stimulates and confounds him with tales -of other children’s prowess. When she hears that the “sweet Boy” is -to be introduced, at five, to the English classics, she writes at -once about a little girl, who, when “rather younger than he is” (the -bitterness of that!), “had several parts of Milton by heart.” These -“she understood so well as to apply to her Mother the speech of the -Elder Brother in ‘Comus,’ when she saw her uneasy for want of a letter -from the Dean; and began of her own accord with - - ‘Peace, Mother, be not over exquisite - To cast the fashion of uncertain evils’”;-- - -advice which would have exasperated a normal parent to the boxing point. - -There were few normal parents left, however, at this period, to stem -the tide of infantile precocity. Child-study was dawning as a new and -fascinating pursuit upon the English world; and the babes of Britain -responded nobly to the demands made upon their incapacity. Miss Anna -Seward lisped Milton at three, “recited poetical passages, with eyes -brimming with delight,” at five, and versified her favourite psalms at -nine. Her father, who viewed these alarming symptoms with delight, was -so ill-advised as to offer her, when she was ten, a whole half-crown, -if she would write a poem on Spring; whereupon she “swiftly penned” -twenty-five lines, which have been preserved to an ungrateful world, -and which shadow forth the painful prolixity of future days. At four -years of age, little Hannah More was already composing verses with -ominous ease. At five, she “struck mute” the respected clergyman of -the parish by her exhaustive knowledge of the catechism. At eight, -we are told her talents “were of such a manifestly superior order -that her father did not scruple to combine with the study of Latin -some elementary instruction in mathematics; a fact which her readers -might very naturally infer from the clear and logical cast of her -argumentative writings.” - -It is not altogether easy to trace the connection between Miss More’s -early sums and her argumentative writings; but, as an illustration of -her logical mind, I may venture to quote a “characteristic” anecdote, -reverently told by her biographer, Mr. Thompson. A young lady, -whose sketches showed an unusual degree of talent, was visiting in -Bristol; and her work was warmly admired by Miss Mary, Miss Sally, -Miss Elizabeth, and Miss Patty More. Hannah alone withheld all word -of commendation, sitting in stony silence whenever the drawings were -produced; until one day she found the artist hard at work, putting a -new binding on a petticoat. _Then_, “fixing her brilliant eyes with -an expression of entire approbation upon the girl, she said: ‘Now, my -dear, that I find you can employ yourself usefully, I will no longer -forbear to express my admiration of your drawings.’” - -Only an early familiarity with the multiplication table could have made -so ruthless a logician. - -If Dr. Johnson, being childless, found other people’s children in -his way, how fared the bachelors and spinsters who, as time went on, -were confronted by a host of infant prodigies; who heard little Anna -Letitia Aikin--afterwards Mrs. Barbauld--read “as well as most women” -at two and a half years of age; and little Anna Maria Porter declaim -Shakespeare “with precision of emphasis and firmness of voice” at -five; and little Alphonso Hayley recite a Greek ode at six. We wonder -if anybody ever went twice to homes that harboured childhood; and we -sympathize with Miss Ferrier’s bitterness of soul, when she describes a -family dinner at which Eliza’s sampler and Alexander’s copy-book are -handed round to the guests, and Anthony stands up and repeats “My name -is Norval” from beginning to end, and William Pitt is prevailed upon to -sing the whole of “God save the King.” It was also a pleasant fashion -of the time to write eulogies on one’s kith and kin. Sisters celebrated -their brothers’ talents in affectionate verse, and fathers confided to -the world what marvellous children they had. Even Dr. Burney, a man of -sense, poetizes thus on his daughter Susan:-- - - Nor did her intellectual powers require - The usual aid of labour to inspire - Her soul with prudence, wisdom, and a taste - Unerring in refinement, sound and chaste. - -This was fortunate for Susan, as most young people of the period were -compelled to labour hard. There was a ghastly pretence on the part -of parents that children loved their tasks, and that to keep them -employed was to keep them happy. Sir William Pepys persuaded himself -without much difficulty that little William, who had weak eyes and -nervous headaches, relished Ovid and Virgil. A wonderful and terrible -letter written in 1786 by the Baroness de Bode, an Englishwoman -married to a German and living at Deux-Ponts, lays bare the process by -which ordinary children were converted into the required miracles of -precocity. Her eldest boys, aged eight and nine, appear to have been -the principal victims. The business of their tutor was to see that they -were “fully employed,” and this is an account of their day. - -“In their walks he [the tutor] teaches them natural history and botany, -not dryly as a task, but practically, which amuses them very much. In -their hours of study come drawing, writing, reading, and summing. Their -lesson in writing consists of a theme which they are to translate into -three languages, and sometimes into Latin, for they learn that a little -also. The boys learn Latin as a recreation, and not as a task, as is -the custom in England. Perhaps _one or two hours a day_ is at most all -that is given to that study. ’Tis certainly not so dry a study, when -learnt like modern languages. We have bought them the whole of the -Classical Authors, so that they can instruct themselves if they will; -between ninety and a hundred volumes in large octavo. You would be -surprised,--even Charles Auguste, who is only five, reads German well, -and French tolerably. They all write very good hands, both in Roman and -German texts. Clem and Harry shall write you a letter in English, and -send you a specimen of their drawing. Harry (the second) writes musick, -too. He is a charming boy, improves very much in all his studies, plays -very prettily indeed upon the harpsichord, and plays, too, all tunes -by ear. Clem will, I think, play well on the violin; but ’tis more -difficult in the beginning than the harpsichord. He is at this moment -taking his lesson, the master accompanying him on the pianoforte; and -when Henry plays that, the master accompanies on the violin, which -forms them both, and pleases them at the same time. In the evening -their tutor generally recounts to them very minutely some anecdote from -history, which imprints it on the memory, amuses them, and hurts no -eyes.” - -There is nothing like it on record except the rule of life which -Frederick William the First drew up for little Prince Fritz, when that -unfortunate child was nine years old, and which disposed of his day, -hour by hour, and minute by minute. But then Frederick William--a -truth-teller if a tyrant--made no idle pretence of pleasing and amusing -his son. The unpardonable thing about the Baroness de Bode is her -smiling assurance that one or two hours of Latin a day afforded a -pleasant pastime for children of eight and nine. - -This was, however, the accepted theory of education. It is faithfully -reflected in all the letters and literature of the time. When Miss -More’s redoubtable “Cœlebs” asks Lucilla Stanley’s little sister why -she is crowned with woodbine, the child replies: “Oh, sir, it is -because it is my birthday. I am eight years old to-day. I gave up all -my gilt books with pictures this day twelvemonth; and to-day I give -up all my story-books, and I am now going to read such books as men -and women read.” Whereupon the little girl’s father--that model father -whose wisdom flowers into many chapters of counsel--explains that he -makes the renouncing of baby books a kind of epoch in his daughters’ -lives; and that by thus distinctly marking the period, he wards off -any return to the immature pleasures of childhood. “We have in our -domestic plan several of these artificial divisions of life. These -little celebrations are eras that we use as marking-posts from which we -set out on some new course.” - -Yet the “gilt books,” so ruthlessly discarded at eight years of age, -were not all of an infantile character. For half a century these famous -little volumes, bound in Dutch gilt paper--whence their name--found -their way into every English nursery, and provided amusement and -instruction for every English child. They varied from the “histories” -of Goody Two-Shoes and Miss Sally Spellwell to the “histories” of Tom -Jones and Clarissa Harlowe, “abridged for the amusement of youth”; and -from “The Seven Champions of Christendom” to “The First Principles -of Religion, and the Existence of a Deity; Explained in a Series -of Conversations, Adapted to the Capacity of the Infant Mind.” The -capacity of the infant mind at the close of the eighteenth century must -have been something very different from the capacity of the infant mind -to-day. In a gilt-book dialogue (1792) I find a father asking his tiny -son: “Dick, have you got ten lines of Ovid by heart?” - -“Yes, Papa, and I’ve wrote my exercise.” - -“Very well, then, you shall ride with me. The boy who does a little at -seven years old, will do a great deal when he is fourteen.” - -This was poor encouragement for Dick, who had already tasted the sweets -of application. It was better worth while for Miss Sally Spellwell to -reach the perfection which her name implies, for _she_ was adopted by -a rich old lady with a marriageable son,--“a young Gentleman of such -purity of Morals and good Understanding as is not everywhere to be -found.” In the breast of this paragon “strange emotions arise” at sight -of the well-informed orphan; his mother, who sets a proper value on -orthography, gives her full consent to their union; and we are swept -from the contemplation of samplers and hornbooks to the triumphant -conclusion: “Miss Sally Spellwell now rides in her coach and six.” Then -follows the unmistakable moral:-- - - If Virtue, Learning, Goodness are your Aim, - Each pretty Miss may hope to do the same; - -an anticipation which must have spurred many a female child to -diligence. There was no ill-advised questioning of values in our -great-grandmothers’ day to disturb this point of view. As the excellent -Mrs. West observed in her “Letters to a young Lady,” a book sanctioned -by bishops, and dedicated to the Queen: “We unquestionably were created -to be the wedded mates of man. Nature intended that man should sue, and -woman coyly yield.” - -The most appalling thing about the precocious young people of this -period was the ease with which they slipped into print. Publishers were -not then the adamantine race whose province it is now to blight the -hopes of youth. They beamed with benevolence when the first fruits of -genius were confided to their hands. Bishop Thirlwall’s first fruits, -his “Primitiæ,” were published when he was eleven years old, with a -preface telling the public what a wonderful boy little Connop was;--how -he studied Latin at three, and read Greek with ease and fluency at -four, and wrote with distinction at seven. It is true that the parent -Thirlwall appears to have paid the costs, to have launched his son’s -“slender bark” upon seas which proved to be stormless. It is true also -that the bishop suffered acutely in later years from this youthful -production, and destroyed every copy he could find. But there was no -proud and wealthy father to back young Richard Polwhele, who managed, -when he was a schoolboy in Cornwall, to get his first volume of verse -published anonymously. It was called “The Fate of Llewellyn,” and was -consistently bad, though no worse, on the whole, than his maturer -efforts. The title-page stated modestly that the writer was “a young -gentleman of Truro School”; whereupon an ill-disposed critic in the -“Monthly Review” intimated that the master of Truro School would do -well to keep his young gentlemen out of print. Dr. Cardew, the said -master, retorted hotly that the book had been published without his -knowledge, and evinced a lack of appreciation, which makes us fear that -his talented pupil had a bad half-hour at his hands. - -Miss Anna Maria Porter--she who delighted “critical audiences” by -reciting Shakespeare at five--published her “Artless Tales” at -fifteen; and Mrs. Hemans was younger still when her “Blossoms of -Spring” bloomed sweetly upon English soil. Some of the “Blossoms” had -been written before she was ten. The volume was a “fashionable quarto,” -was dedicated to that hardy annual, the Prince Regent, and appears to -have been read by adults. It is recorded that an unkind notice sent the -little girl crying to bed; but as her “England and Spain; or Valour -and Patriotism” was published nine months later, and as at eighteen -she “beamed forth with a strength and brilliancy that must have shamed -her reviewer,” we cannot feel that her poetic development was very -seriously retarded. - -And what of the marvellous children whose subsequent histories have -been lost to the world? What of the two young prodigies of Lichfield, -“Aonian flowers of early beauty and intelligence,” who startled Miss -Seward and her friends by their “shining poetic talents,” and then -lapsed into restful obscurity? What of the wonderful little girl (ten -years old) whom Miss Burney saw at Tunbridge Wells; who sang “like -an angel,” conversed like “an informed, cultivated, and sagacious -woman,” played, danced, acted with all the grace of a comédienne, wept -tears of emotion without disfiguring her pretty face, and, when asked -if she read the novels of the day (what a question!), replied with a -sigh: “But too often! I wish I did not.” Miss Burney and Mrs. Thrale -were so impressed--as well they might be--by this little Selina Birch, -that they speculated long and fondly upon the destiny reserved for one -who so easily eclipsed the other miraculous children of this highly -miraculous age. - -“Doubtful as it is whether we shall ever see the sweet Syren again,” -writes Miss Burney, “nothing, as Mrs. Thrale said to her” (this, too, -was well advised), “can be more certain than that we shall hear of her -again, let her go whither she will. Charmed as we all were, we agreed -that to have the care of her would be distraction. ‘She seems the girl -in the world,’ Mrs. Thrale wisely said, ‘to attain the highest reach -of human perfection as a man’s mistress. As such she would be a second -Cleopatra, and have the world at her command.’ - -“Poor thing! I hope to Heaven she will escape such sovereignty and such -honours!” - -She did escape scot-free. Whoever married--let us hope he married--Miss -Birch, was no Mark Antony to draw fame to her feet. His very name -is unknown to the world. Perhaps, as “Mrs.--Something--Rogers,” she -illustrated in her respectable middle age that beneficent process by -which Nature frustrates the educator, and converts the infant Cleopatra -or the infant Hypatia into the rotund matron, of whom she stands -permanently in need. - - - - -THE EDUCATOR - - The Schoolmaster is abroad.--LORD BROUGHAM. - - -It is recorded that Boswell once said to Dr. Johnson, “If you had had -children, would you have taught them anything?” and that Dr. Johnson, -out of the fulness of his wisdom, made reply: “I hope that I should -have willingly lived on bread and water to obtain instruction for them; -but I would not have set their future friendship to hazard for the -sake of thrusting into their heads knowledge of things for which they -might have neither taste nor necessity. You teach your daughters the -diameters of the planets, and wonder, when you have done it, that they -do not delight in your company.” - -It is the irony of circumstance that Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb -should have been childless, for they were the two eminent Englishmen -who, for the best part of a century, respected the independence of -childhood. They were the two eminent Englishmen who could have been -trusted to let their children alone. Lamb was nine years old when Dr. -Johnson died. He was twenty-seven when he hurled his impotent anathemas -at the heads of “the cursed Barbauld crew,” “blights and blasts of all -that is human in man and child.” By that time the educator’s hand lay -heavy on schoolroom and nursery. In France, Rousseau and Mme. de Genlis -had succeeded in interesting parents so profoundly in their children -that French babies led a _vie de parade_. Their toilets and their -meals were as open to the public as were the toilets and the meals of -royalty. Their bassinettes appeared in salons, and in private boxes -at the playhouse; and it was an inspiring sight to behold a French -mother fulfilling her sacred office while she enjoyed the spectacle -on the stage. In England, the Edgeworths and Mr. Day had projected a -system of education which isolated children from common currents of -life, placed them at variance with the accepted usages of society, -and denied them that wholesome neglect which is an important factor -in self-development. The Edgeworthian child became the pivot of the -household, which revolved warily around him, instructing him whenever -it had the ghost of a chance, and guarding him from the four winds -of heaven. He was not permitted to remain ignorant upon any subject, -however remote from his requirements; but all information came filtered -through the parental mind, so that the one thing he never knew was the -world of childish beliefs and happenings. Intercourse with servants was -prohibited; and it is pleasant to record that Miss Edgeworth found even -Mrs. Barbauld a dangerous guide, because little Charles of the “Early -Lessons” asks his nurse to dress him in the mornings. Such a personal -appeal, showing that Charles was on speaking terms with the domestics, -was something which, in Miss Edgeworth’s opinion, no child should ever -read; and she praises the solicitude of a mother who blotted out this, -and all similar passages, before confiding the book to her infant son. -He might--who knows?--have been so far corrupted as to ask his own -nurse to button him up the next day. - -Another parent, still more highly commended, found something to erase -in _all_ her children’s books; and Miss Edgeworth describes with -grave complacency this pathetic little library, scored, blotted, and -mutilated, before being placed on the nursery shelves. The volumes -were, she admits, hopelessly disfigured; “but shall the education of a -family be sacrificed to the beauty of a page? Few books can safely be -given to children without the previous use of the pen, the pencil, and -the scissors. These, in their corrected state, have sometimes a few -words erased, sometimes half a page. Sometimes many pages are cut out.” - -Even now one feels a pang of pity for the little children who, more -than a hundred years ago, were stopped midway in a story by the -absence of half a dozen pages. Even now one wonders how much furtive -curiosity was awakened by this process of elimination. To hover -perpetually on the brink of the concealed and the forbidden does not -seem a wholesome situation; and a careful perusal of that condemned -classic, “Bluebeard,” might have awakened this excellent mother to -the risks she ran. There can be no heavier handicap to any child than -a superhumanly wise and watchful custodian, whether the custody be -parental, or relegated to some phœnix of a tutor like Mr. Barlow, or -that cock-sure experimentalist who mounts guard over “Émile,” teaching -him with elaborate artifice the simplest things of life. We know how -Tommy Merton fell from grace when separated from Mr. Barlow; but what -_would_ have become of Émile if “Jean Jacques” had providentially -broken his neck? What would have become of little Caroline and Mary -in Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Original Stories,” if Mrs. Mason--who is -Mr. Barlow in petticoats--had ceased for a short time “regulating the -affections and forming the minds” of her helpless charges? All these -young people are so scrutinized, directed, and controlled, that their -personal responsibility has been minimized to the danger point. In the -name of nature, in the name of democracy, in the name of morality, they -are pushed aside from the blessed fellowship of childhood, and from the -beaten paths of life. - -That Mary Wollstonecraft should have written the most priggish little -book of her day is one of those pleasant ironies which relieves the -tenseness of our pity for her fate. Its publication is the only -incident of her life which permits the shadow of a smile; and even here -our amusement is tempered by sympathy for the poor innocents who were -compelled to read the “Original Stories,” and to whom even Blake’s -charming illustrations must have brought scant relief. The plan of the -work is one common to most juvenile fiction of the period. Caroline -and Mary, being motherless, are placed under the care of Mrs. Mason, a -lady of obtrusive wisdom and goodness, who shadows their infant lives, -moralizes over every insignificant episode, and praises herself with -honest assiduity. If Caroline is afraid of thunderstorms, Mrs. Mason -explains that _she_ fears no tempest, because “a mind is never truly -great until the love of virtue overcomes the fear of death.” If Mary -behaves rudely to a visitor, Mrs. Mason contrasts her pupil’s conduct -with her own. “I have accustomed myself to think of others, and what -they will suffer on all occasions,” she observes; “and this loathness -to offend, or even to hurt the feelings of another, is an instantaneous -spring which actuates my conduct, and makes me kindly affected to -everything that breathes.... Perhaps the greatest pleasure I have -ever received has arisen from the habitual exercise of charity in its -various branches.” - -The stories with which this monitress illustrates her precepts are -drawn from the edifying annals of the neighbourhood, which is rich -in examples of vice and virtue. On the one hand we have the pious -Mrs. Trueman, the curate’s wife, who lives in a rose-covered cottage, -furnished with books and musical instruments; and on the other, we have -“the profligate Lord Sly,” and Miss Jane Fretful, who begins by kicking -the furniture when she is in a temper, and ends by alienating all her -friends (including her doctor), and dying unloved and unlamented. -How far her mother should be held responsible for this excess of -peevishness, when she rashly married a gentleman named Fretful, is -not made clear; but all the characters in the book live nobly, or -ignobly, up to their patronymics. When Mary neglects to wash her -face--apparently that was all she ever washed--or brush her teeth in -the mornings, Mrs. Mason for some time only hints her displeasure, -“not wishing to burden her with precepts”; and waits for a “glaring -example” to show the little girl the unloveliness of permanent dirt. -This example is soon afforded by Mrs. Dowdy, who comes opportunely to -visit them, and whose reluctance to perform even the simple ablutions -common to the period is as resolute as Slovenly Peter’s. - -In the matter of tuition, Mrs. Mason is comparatively lenient. Caroline -and Mary, though warned that “idleness must always be intolerable, -because it is only an irksome consciousness of existence” (words -which happily have no meaning for childhood), are, on the whole, -less saturated with knowledge than Miss Edgeworth’s Harry and Lucy; -and Harry and Lucy lead rollicking lives by contrast with “Edwin and -Henry,” or “Anna and Louisa,” or any other little pair of heroes and -heroines. Edwin and Henry are particularly ill used, for they are -supposed to be enjoying a holiday with their father, “the worthy Mr. -Friendly,” who makes “every domestic incident, the vegetable world, -sickness and death, a real source of instruction to his beloved -offspring.” How glad those boys must have been to get back to school! -Yet they court disaster by asking so many questions. All the children -in our great-grandmothers’ story-books ask questions. All lay -themselves open to attack. If they drink a cup of chocolate, they want -to know what it is made of, and where cocoanuts grow. If they have a -pudding for dinner, they are far more eager to learn about sago and the -East Indies than to eat it. They put intelligent queries concerning the -slave-trade, and make remarks that might be quoted in Parliament; yet -they are as ignorant of the common things of life as though new-born -into the world. In a book called “Summer Rambles, or Conversations -Instructive and Amusing, for the Use of Children,” published in 1801, -a little girl says to her mother: “Vegetables? I do not know what they -are. Will you tell me?” And the mother graciously responds: “Yes, with -a great deal of pleasure. Peas, beans, potatoes, carrots, turnips, and -cabbages are vegetables.” - -At least the good lady’s information was correct as far as it went, -which was not always the case. The talented governess in “Little -Truths” warns her pupils not to swallow young frogs out of bravado, -lest perchance they should mistake and swallow a toad, which would -poison them; and in a “History of Birds and Beasts,” intended for very -young children, we find, underneath a woodcut of a porcupine, this -unwarranted and irrelevant assertion:-- - - This creature shoots his pointed quills, - And beasts destroys, and men; - But more the ravenous lawyer kills - With his half-quill, the pen. - -It was thus that natural history was taught in the year 1767. - -The publication in 1798 of Mr. Edgeworth’s “Practical Education” (Miss -Edgeworth was responsible for some of the chapters) gave a profound -impetus to child-study. Little boys and girls were dragged from the -obscure haven of the nursery, from their hornbooks, and the casual -slappings of nursery-maids, to be taught and tested in the light of -day. The process appears to have been deeply engrossing. Irregular -instruction, object lessons, and experimental play afforded scant -respite to parent or to child. “Square and circular bits of wood, -balls, cubes, and triangles” were Mr. Edgeworth’s first substitutes -for toys; to be followed by “card, pasteboard, substantial but not -sharp-pointed scissors, wire, gum, and wax.” It took an active mother -to superintend this home kindergarten, to see that the baby did not -poke the triangle into its eye, and to relieve Tommy at intervals -from his coating of gum and wax. When we read further that “children -are very fond of attempting experiments in dyeing, and are very -curious about vegetable dyes,” we gain a fearful insight into parental -pleasures and responsibilities a hundred years ago. - -Text-book knowledge was frowned upon by the Edgeworths. We know how the -“good French governess” laughs at her clever pupil who has studied the -“Tablet of Memory,” and who can say when potatoes were first brought -into England, and when hair powder was first used, and when the first -white paper was made. The new theory of education banished the “Tablet -of Memory,” and made it incumbent upon parent or teacher to impart -in conversation such facts concerning potatoes, powder, and paper -as she desired her pupils to know. If books were used, they were of -the deceptive order, which purposed to be friendly and entertaining. -A London bookseller actually proposed to Godwin “a delightful work -for children,” which was to be called “A Tour through Papa’s House.” -The object of this precious volume was to explain casually how and -where Papa’s furniture was made, his carpets were woven, his curtains -dyed, his kitchen pots and pans called into existence. Even Godwin, -who was not a bubbling fountain of humour, saw the absurdity of such -a book; and recommended in its place “Robinson Crusoe,” “if weeded -of its Methodism” (alas! poor Robinson!), “The Seven Champions of -Christendom,” and “The Arabian Nights.” - -The one great obstacle in the educator’s path (it has not yet been -wholly levelled) was the proper apportioning of knowledge between -boys and girls. It was hard to speed the male child up the stony -heights of erudition; but it was harder still to check the female -child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind -her brother. In 1774 a few rash innovators conceived the project of -an advanced school for girls; one that should approach from afar -a college standard, and teach with thoroughness what it taught at -all; one that might be trusted to broaden the intelligence of women, -without lessening their much-prized femininity. It was even proposed -that Mrs. Barbauld, who was esteemed a very learned lady, should take -charge of such an establishment; but the plan met with no approbation -at her hands. In the first place she held that fifteen was not an age -for school-life and study, because then “the empire of the passions -is coming on”; and in the second place there was nothing she so -strongly discountenanced as thoroughness in a girl’s education. On -this point she had no doubts, and no reserves. “Young ladies,” she -wrote, “ought to have only such a general tincture of knowledge as to -make them agreeable companions to a man of sense, and to enable them -to find rational entertainment for a solitary hour. They should gain -these accomplishments in a quiet and unobserved manner. The thefts of -knowledge in our sex are connived at, only while carefully concealed; -and, if displayed, are punished with disgrace. The best way for women -to acquire knowledge is from conversation with a father, a brother, or -a friend; and by such a course of reading as they may recommend.” - -There was no danger that an education conducted on these lines would -result in an undue development of intelligence, would lift the young -lady above “her own mild and chastened sphere.” In justice to Mrs. -Barbauld we must admit that she but echoed the sentiments of her day. -“Girls,” said Miss Hannah More, “should be led to distrust their own -judgments.” They should be taught to give up their opinions, and to -avoid disputes, “even if they know they are right.” The one fact -impressed upon the female child was her secondary place in the scheme -of creation; the one virtue she was taught to affect was delicacy; the -one vice permitted to her weakness was dissimulation. Even her play was -not like her brother’s play,--a reckless abandonment to high spirits; -it was play within the conscious limits of propriety. In one of Mrs. -Trimmer’s books, a model mother hesitates to allow her eleven-year-old -daughter to climb three rounds of a ladder, and look into a robin’s -nest, four feet from the ground. It was not a genteel thing for a -little girl to do. Even her schoolbooks were not like her brother’s -schoolbooks. They were carefully adapted to her limitations. Mr. Thomas -Gisborne, who wrote a much-admired work entitled “An Enquiry into the -Duties of the Female Sex,” was of the opinion that geography might -be taught to girls without reserve; but that they should learn only -“select parts” of natural history, and, in the way of science, only a -few “popular and amusing facts.” A “Young Lady’s Guide to Astronomy” -was something vastly different from the comprehensive system imparted -to her brother. - -In a very able and subtle little book called “A Father’s Legacy to his -Daughters,” by Dr. John Gregory of Edinburgh,-- - - He whom each virtue fired, each grace refined, - Friend, teacher, pattern, darling of mankind![1] - ---we find much earnest counsel on this subject. Dr. Gregory was an -affectionate parent. He grudged his daughters no material and no -intellectual advantage; but he was well aware that by too great -liberality he imperilled their worldly prospects. Therefore, although -he desired them to be well read and well informed, he bade them never -to betray their knowledge to the world. Therefore, although he desired -them to be strong and vigorous,--to walk, to ride, to live much in -the open air,--he bade them never to make a boast of their endurance. -Rude health, no less than scholarship, was the exclusive prerogative -of men. His deliberate purpose was to make them rational creatures, -taking clear and temperate views of life; but he warned them all the -more earnestly against the dangerous indulgence of seeming wiser than -their neighbours. “Be even cautious in displaying your good sense,” -writes this astute and anxious father. “It will be thought you assume -a superiority over the rest of your company. But if you happen to have -any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially from men, who are -apt to look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great parts -and cultivated understanding.” - -This is plain speaking. And it must be remembered that “learning” was -not in 1774, nor for many years afterwards, the comprehensive word it -is to-day. A young lady who could translate a page of Cicero was held -to be learned to the point of pedantry. What reader of “Cœlebs”--if -“Cœlebs” still boasts a reader--can forget that agitating moment when, -through the inadvertence of a child, it is revealed to the breakfast -table that Lucilla Stanley studies Latin every morning with her father. -Overpowered by the intelligence, Cœlebs casts “a timid eye” upon his -mistress, who is covered with confusion. She puts the sugar into the -cream jug, and the tea into the sugar basin; and finally, unable to -bear the mingled awe and admiration awakened by this disclosure of -her scholarship, she slips out of the room, followed by her younger -sister, and commiserated by her father, who knows what a shock her -native delicacy has received. Had the fair Lucilla admitted herself -to be an expert tight-rope dancer, she could hardly have created more -consternation. - -No wonder Dr. Gregory counselled his daughters to silence. Lovers -less generous than Cœlebs might well have been alienated by such -disqualifications. “Oh, how lovely is a maid’s ignorance!” sighs -Rousseau, contemplating with rapture the many things that Sophie -does not know. “Happy the man who is destined to teach her. She will -never aspire to be the tutor of her husband, but will be content to -remain his pupil. She will not endeavour to mould his tastes, but will -relinquish her own. She will be more estimable to him than if she were -learned. It will be his pleasure to enlighten her.” - -This was a well-established point of view, and English Sophies were -trained to meet it with becoming deference. They heard no idle prating -about an equality which has never existed, and which never can exist. -“Had a third order been necessary,” said an eighteenth-century -schoolmistress to her pupils, “doubtless one would have been created, -a midway kind of being.” In default of such a connecting link, any -impious attempt to bridge the chasm between the sexes met with the -failure it deserved. When Mrs. Knowles, a Quaker lady, not destitute -of self-esteem, observed to Boswell that she hoped men and women would -be equal in another world, that gentleman replied with spirit: “Madam, -you are too ambitious. _We_ might as well desire to be equal with the -angels.” - -The dissimulation which Dr. Gregory urged upon his daughters, and which -is the safeguard of all misplaced intelligence, extended to matters -more vital than Latin and astronomy. He warned them, as they valued -their earthly happiness, never to make a confidante of a married woman, -“especially if she lives happily with her husband”; and never to reveal -to their own husbands the excess of their wifely affection. “Do not -discover to any man the full extent of your love, no, not although you -marry him. _That_ sufficiently shows your preference, which is all he -is entitled to know. If he has delicacy, he will ask for no stronger -proof of your affection, for your sake; if he has sense, he will not -ask it, for his own. Violent love cannot subsist, at least cannot be -expressed, for any time together on both sides. Nature in this case has -laid the reserve on you.” In the passivity of women, no less than in -their refined duplicity, did this acute observer recognize the secret -strength of sex. - -A vastly different counsellor of youth was Mrs. West, who wrote a -volume of “Letters to a Young Lady” (the young lady was Miss Maunsell, -and she died after reading them), which were held to embody the -soundest morality of the day. Mrs. West is as dull as Dr. Gregory -is penetrating, as verbose as he is laconic, as obvious as he is -individual. She devotes many agitated pages to theology, and many more -to irrefutable, though one hopes unnecessary, arguments in behalf of -female virtue. But she also advises a careful submission, a belittling -insincerity, as woman’s best safeguards in life. It is not only a -wife’s duty to tolerate her husband’s follies, but it is the part of -wisdom to conceal from him any knowledge of his derelictions. Bad he -may be; but it is necessary to his comfort to believe that his wife -thinks him good. “The lordly nature of man so strongly revolts from -the suspicion of inferiority,” explains this excellent monitress, -“that a susceptible husband can never feel easy in the society of -his wife when he knows that she is acquainted with his vices, though -he is well assured that her prudence, generosity, and affection will -prevent her from being a severe accuser.” One is reminded of the old -French gentleman who said he was aware that he cheated at cards, but he -disliked any allusion to the subject. - -To be “easy” in a wife’s society, to relax spiritually as well as -mentally, and to be immune from criticism;--these were the privileges -which men demanded, and which well-trained women were ready to accord. -In 1808 the “Belle Assemblée” printed a model letter, which purported -to come from a young wife whose husband had deserted her and her child -for the more lively society of his mistress. It expressed in pathetic -language the sentiments then deemed correct,--sentiments which embodied -the patience of Griselda, without her acquiescence in fate. The wife -tells her husband that she has retired to the country for economy, and -to avoid scandalous gossip; that by careful management she is able to -live on the pittance he has given her; that “little Emily” is working -a pair of ruffles for him; that his presence would make their poor -cottage seem a palace. “Pardon my interrupting you,” she winds up with -ostentatious meekness. “I mean to give you satisfaction. Though I am -deeply wronged by your error, I am not resentful. I wish you all the -happiness of which you are capable, and am your once loved and still -affectionate, Emilia.” - -That last sentence is not without dignity, and certainly not without -its sting. One doubts whether Emilia’s husband, for all her promises -and protestations, could ever again have felt perfectly “easy” in his -wife’s society. He probably therefore stayed away, and soothed his soul -elsewhere. “We can with tranquillity forgive in ourselves the sins of -which no one accuses us.” - - - - -THE PIETIST - - They go the fairest way to Heaven that would serve God without a - Hell.--_Religio Medici._ - - -“How cutting it is to be the means of bringing children into the world -to be the subjects of the Kingdom of Darkness, to dwell with Divils and -Damned Spirits.” - -In this temper of pardonable regret the mother of William Godwin -wrote to her erring son; and while the maternal point of view -deserves consideration (no parent could be expected to relish such a -prospect), the letter is noteworthy as being one of the few written -to Godwin, or about Godwin, which forces us to sympathize with the -philosopher. The boy who was reproved for picking up the family cat on -Sunday--“demeaning myself with such profaneness on the Lord’s day”--was -little likely to find his religion “all pure profit.” His account -of the books he read as a child, and of his precocious and unctuous -piety, is probably over-emphasized for the sake of colour; but the -Evangelical literature of his day, whether designed for young people or -for adults, was of a melancholy and discouraging character. The “Pious -Deaths of Many Godly Children” (sad monitor of the Godwin nursery) -appears to have been read off the face of the earth; but there have -descended to us sundry volumes of a like character, which even now stab -us with pity for the little readers long since laid in their graves. -The most frivolous occupation of the good boy in these old story-books -is searching the Bible, “with mamma’s permission,” for texts in which -David “praises God for the weather.” More serious-minded children weep -floods of tears because they are “lost sinners.” In a book of “Sermons -for the Very Young,” published by the Vicar of Walthamstow in the -beginning of the last century, we find the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah -selected as an appropriate theme for infancy, and its lessons driven -home with all the force of a direct personal application. “Think, -little child, of the fearful story. The wrath of God is upon them. Do -they now repent of their sins? It is all too late. Do they cry for -mercy? There is none to hear them.... Your heart, little child, is -full of sin. You think of what is not right, and then you wish it, and -that is sin.... Ah, what shall sinners do when the last day comes upon -them? What will they think when God shall punish them forever?” - -Children brought up on these lines passed swiftly from one form of -hysteria to another, from self-exaltation and the assurance of grace -to fears which had no easement. There is nothing more terrible in -literature than Borrow’s account of the Welsh preacher who believed -that when he was a child of seven he had committed the unpardonable -sin, and whose whole life was shadowed by fear. At the same time that -little William Godwin was composing beautiful death-bed speeches for -the possible edification of his parents and neighbours, we find Miss -Elizabeth Carter writing to Mrs. Montagu about her own nephew, who -realized, at seven years of age, how much he and all creatures stood in -need of pardon; and who, being ill, pitifully entreated his father to -pray that his sins might be forgiven. Commenting upon which incident, -the reverent Montagu Pennington, who edited Miss Carter’s letters, -bids us remember that it reflects more credit on the parents who -brought their child up with so just a sense of religion than it does on -the poor infant himself. “Innocence,” says the inflexible Mr. Stanley, -in “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,” “can never be pleaded as a ground of -acceptance, because the thing does not exist.” - -With the dawning of the nineteenth century came the controversial -novel; and to understand its popularity we have but to glance at -the books which preceded it, and compared to which it presented an -animated and contentious aspect. One must needs have read “Elements of -Morality” at ten, and “Strictures on Female Education” at fifteen, to -be able to relish “Father Clement” at twenty. Sedate young women, whose -lightest available literature was “Cœlebs,” or “Hints towards forming -the Character of a Princess,” and who had been presented on successive -birthdays with Mrs. Chapone’s “Letters on the Improvement of the Mind,” -and Mrs. West’s “Letters to a Young Lady,” and Miss Hamilton’s “Letters -to the Daughter of a Nobleman,” found a natural relief in studying -the dangers of dissent, or the secret machinations of the Jesuits. -Many a dull hour was quickened into pleasurable apprehension of -Jesuitical intrigues, from the days when Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, -stoutly refused to take cinchona--a form of quinine--because it -was then known as Jesuit’s bark, and might be trusted to poison a -British constitution, to the days when Sir William Pepys wrote in all -seriousness to Hannah More: “You surprise me by saying that your good -Archbishop has been in danger from the Jesuits; but I believe they are -concealed in places where they are less likely to be found than in -Ireland.” - -Just what they were going to do to the good Archbishop does not appear, -for Sir William at this point abruptly abandons the prelate to tell the -story of a Norwich butcher, who for some mysterious and unexplained -reason was hiding from the inquisitors of Lisbon. No dignitary was too -high, no orphan child too low to be the objects of a Popish plot. Miss -Carter writes to Mrs. Montagu, in 1775, about a little foundling whom -Mrs. Chapone had placed at service with some country neighbours. - -“She behaves very prettily, and with great affection to the people -with whom she is living,” says Miss Carter. “One of the reasons she -assigns for her fondness is that they give her enough food, which she -represents as a deficient article in the workhouse; and says that on -Fridays particularly she never had any dinner. _Surely the parish -officers have not made a Papist the mistress!_ If this is not the case, -the loss of one dinner in a week is of no great consequence.” - -To the poor hungry child it was probably of much greater consequence -than the theological bias of the matron. Nor does a dinnerless Friday -appear the surest way to win youthful converts to the fold. But -devout ladies who had read Canon Seward’s celebrated tract on the -“Comparison between Paganism and Popery” (in which he found little to -choose between them) were well on their guard against the insidious -advances of Rome. “When I had no religion at all,” confesses Cowper -to Lady Hesketh, “I had yet a terrible dread of the Pope.” The worst -to be apprehended from Methodists was their lamentable tendency to -enthusiasm, and their ill-advised meddling with the poor. It is true -that a farmer of Cheddar told Miss Patty More that a Methodist minister -had once preached under his mother’s best apple tree, and that the -sensitive tree had never borne another apple; but this was an extreme -case. The Cheddar vestry resolved to protect their orchards from blight -by stoning the next preacher who invaded the parish, and their example -was followed with more or less fervour throughout England. In a quiet -letter written from Margate (1768), by the Rev. John Lyon, we find this -casual allusion to the process:-- - -“We had a Methodist preacher hold forth last night. I came home just as -he had finished. I believe the poor man fared badly, for I saw, as I -passed, eggs, stones, etc., fly pretty thick.” - -It was all in the day’s work. The Rev. Lyon, who was a scholar and -an antiquarian, and who wrote an exhaustive history of Dover, had no -further interest in matters obviously aloof from his consideration. - -This simple and robust treatment, so quieting to the nerves of the -practitioners, was unserviceable for Papists, who did not preach in -the open; and a great deal of suppressed irritation found no better -outlet than print. It appears to have been a difficult matter in -those days to write upon any subject without reverting sooner or -later to the misdeeds of Rome. Miss Seward pauses in her praise of -Blair’s sermons to lament the “boastful egotism” of St. Gregory of -Nazianzus, who seems tolerably remote; and Mr. John Dyer, when wrapped -in peaceful contemplation of the British wool-market, suddenly and -fervently denounces the “black clouds” of bigotry, and the “fiery -bolts of superstition,” which lay desolate “Papal realms.” In vain Mr. -Edgeworth, stooping from his high estate, counselled serenity of mind, -and that calm tolerance born of a godlike certitude; in vain he urged -the benignant attitude of infallibility. “The absurdities of Popery are -so manifest,” he wrote, “that to be hated they need but to be seen. But -for the peace and prosperity of this country, the misguided Catholic -should not be rendered odious; he should rather be pointed out as an -object of compassion. His ignorance should not be imputed to him as a -crime; nor should it be presupposed that his life cannot be right, -whose tenets are erroneous. Thank God that I am a Protestant! should be -a mental thanksgiving, not a public taunt.” - -Mr. Edgeworth was nearly seventy when the famous “Protestant’s Manual; -or, Papacy Unveiled” (endeared forever to our hearts by its association -with Mrs. Varden and Miggs), bowled over these pleasant and peaceful -arguments. There was no mawkish charity about the “Manual,” which -made its way into every corner of England, stood for twenty years -on thousands of British book-shelves, and was given as a reward to -children so unfortunate as to be meritorious. It sold for a shilling -(nine shillings a dozen when purchased for distribution), so Mrs. -Varden’s two post-octavo volumes must have been a special edition. -Reviewers recommended it earnestly to parents and teachers; and it -was deemed indispensable to all who desired “to preserve the rising -generation from the wiles of Papacy and the snares of priestcraft. -They will be rendered sensible of the evils and probable consequences -of Catholic emancipation; and be confirmed in those opinions, civil, -political, and religious, which have hitherto constituted the happiness -and formed the strength of their native country.” - -This was a strong appeal. A universal uneasiness prevailed, manifesting -itself in hostility to innovations, however innocent and orthodox. -Miss Hannah More’s Sunday Schools were stoutly opposed, as savouring -of Methodism (a religion she disliked), and of radicalism, for which -she had all the natural horror of a well-to-do, middle-class Christian. -Even Mrs. West, an oppressively pious writer, misdoubted the influence -of Sunday Schools, for the simple reason that it was difficult to keep -the lower orders from learning more than was good for them. “Hard toil -and humble diligence are indispensably needful to the community,” -said this excellent lady. “Writing and accounts appear superfluous -instructions in the humblest walks of life; and, when imparted to -servants, have the general effect of making them ambitious, and -disgusted with the servile offices which they are required to perform.” - -Humility was a virtue consecrated to the poor, to the rural poor -especially; and what with Methodism on the one hand, and the jarring -echoes of the French Revolution on the other, the British ploughman -was obviously growing less humble every day. Crabbe, who cherished no -illusions, painted him in colours grim enough to fill the reader with -despair; but Miss More entertained a feminine conviction that Bibles -and flannel waistcoats fulfilled his earthly needs. In all her stories -and tracts the villagers are as artificial as the happy peasantry of -an old-fashioned opera. They group themselves deferentially around the -squire and the rector; they wear costumes of uncompromising rusticity; -and they sing a chorus of praise to the kind young ladies who have -brought them a bowl of soup. It is curious to turn from this atmosphere -of abasement, from perpetual curtsies and the lowliest of lowly -virtues, to the journal of the painter Haydon, who was a sincerely -pious man, yet who cannot restrain his wonder and admiration at seeing -the Duke of Wellington behave respectfully in church. That a person so -august should stand when the congregation stood, and kneel when the -congregation knelt, seemed to Haydon an immense condescension. “Here -was the greatest hero in the world,” he writes ecstatically, “who had -conquered the greatest genius, prostrating his heart and being before -his God in his venerable age, and praying for His mercy.” - -It is the most naïve impression on record. That the Duke and the Duke’s -scullion might perchance stand equidistant from the Almighty was an -idea which failed to present itself to Haydon’s ardent mind. - -The pious fiction put forward in the interest of dissent was more -impressive, more emotional, more belligerent, and, in some odd way, -more human than “Cœlebs,” or “The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain.” Miss -Grace Kennedy’s stories are as absurd as Miss More’s, and--though -the thing may sound incredible--much duller; but they give one an -impression of painful earnestness, and of that heavy atmosphere -engendered by too close a contemplation of Hell. A pious Christian -lady, with local standards, a narrow intelligence, and a comprehensive -ignorance of life, is not by election a novelist. Neither do polemics -lend themselves with elasticity to the varying demands of fiction. -There are, in fact, few things less calculated to instruct the -intellect or to enlarge the heart than the perusal of controversial -novels. - -But Miss Kennedy had at least the striking quality of temerity. She was -not afraid of being ridiculous. She was undaunted in her ignorance. -And she was on fire with all the bitter ardour of the separatist. Miss -More, on the contrary, entertained a judicial mistrust for fervour, -fanaticism, the rush of ardent hopes and fears and transports, for all -those vehement emotions which are apt to be disconcerting to ladies -of settled views and incomes. Her model Christian, Candidus, “avoids -enthusiasm as naturally as a wise man avoids folly, or as a sober man -shuns extravagance. He laments when he encounters a real enthusiast, -because he knows that, even if honest, he is pernicious.” In the -same guarded spirit, Mrs. Montagu praises the benevolence of Lady -Bab Montagu and Mrs. Scott, who had the village girls taught plain -sewing and the catechism. “These good works are often performed by -the Methodist ladies in the heat of enthusiasm; but, thank God! my -sister’s is a calm and rational piety.” “Surtout point de zèle,” was -the dignified motto of the day. - -There is none of this chill sobriety about Miss Kennedy’s Bible -Christians, who, a hundred years ago, preached to a listening world. -They are aflame with a zeal which knows no doubts and recognizes no -forbearance. Their methods are akin to those of the irrepressible -Miss J----, who undertook, Bible in hand, the conversion of that -pious gentleman, the Duke of Wellington; or of Miss Lewis, who went -to Constantinople to convert that equally pious gentleman, the -Sultan. Miss Kennedy’s heroes and heroines stand ready to convert the -world. They would delight in expounding the Scriptures to the Pope -and the Patriarch of Constantinople. Controversy affords their only -conversation. Dogma of the most unrelenting kind is their only food -for thought. Piety provides their only avenue for emotions. Elderly -bankers weep profusely over their beloved pastor’s eloquence, and -fashionable ladies melt into tears at the inspiring sight of a village -Sunday School. Young gentlemen, when off on a holiday, take with -them “no companion but a Bible”; and the lowest reach of worldliness -is laid bare when an unconverted mother asks her daughter if she can -sing something more cheerful than a hymn. Conformity to the Church of -England is denounced with unsparing warmth; and the Church of Rome is -honoured by having a whole novel, the once famous “Father Clement,” -devoted to its permanent downfall. - -Dr. Greenhill, who has written a sympathetic notice of Miss Kennedy in -the “Dictionary of National Biography,” considers that “Father Clement” -was composed “with an evident wish to state fairly the doctrines and -practices of the Roman Catholic Church, even while the authoress -strongly disapproves of them”;--a point of view which compels us to -believe that the biographer spared himself (and who shall blame him?) -the reading of this melancholy tale. That George Eliot, who spared -herself nothing, was well acquainted with its context, is evidenced -by the conversation of the ladies who, in “Janet’s Repentance,” meet -to cover and label the books of the Paddiford Lending Library. Miss -Pratt, the autocrat of the circle, observes that the story of “Father -Clement” is, in itself, a library on the errors of Romanism, whereupon -old Mrs. Linnet very sensibly replies: “One ’ud think there didn’t want -much to drive people away from a religion as makes ’em walk barefoot -over stone floors, like that girl in ‘Father Clement,’ sending the -blood up to the head frightful. Anybody might see that was an unnat’ral -creed.” - -So they might; and a more unnatural creed than Father Clement’s -Catholicism was never devised for the extinction of man’s flickering -reason. Only the mental debility of the Clarenham family can account -for their holding such views long enough to admit of their being -converted from them by the Montagus. Only the militant spirit of the -Clarenham chaplain and the Montagu chaplain makes possible several -hundred pages of polemics. Montagu Bibles run the blockade, are -discovered in the hands of truth-seeking Clarenhams, and are hurled -back upon the spiritual assailants. The determination of Father Dennis -that the Scriptures shall be quoted in Latin only (a practice which is -scholarly but inconvenient), and the determination of Edward Montagu -“not to speak Latin in the presence of ladies,” embarrass social -intercourse. Catherine Clarenham, the young person who walks barefooted -over stone floors, has been so blighted by this pious exercise that -she cannot, at twenty, translate the Pater Noster or Ave Maria into -English, and remains a melancholy illustration of Latinity. When young -Basil Clarenham shows symptoms of yielding to Montagu arguments, and -begins to want a Bible of his own, he is spirited away to Rome, and -confined in a monastery of the Inquisition, where he spends his time -reading “books forbidden by the Inquisitors,” and especially “a New -Testament with the prohibitory mark of the Holy Office upon it,” which -the weak-minded monks have amiably placed at his disposal. Indeed, the -monastery library, to which the captive is made kindly welcome, seems -to have been well stocked with interdicted literature; and, after -browsing in these pastures for several tranquil months, Basil tells -his astonished hosts that their books have taught him that “the Romish -Church is the most corrupt of all churches professing Christianity.” -Having accomplished this unexpected but happy result, the Inquisition -exacts from him a solemn vow that he will never reveal its secrets, -and sends him back to England, where he loses no time in becoming an -excellent Protestant. His sister Maria follows his example (her virtues -have pointed steadfastly to this conclusion); but Catherine enters a -convent, full of stone floors and idolatrous images, where she becomes -a “tool” of the Jesuits, and says her prayers in Latin until she dies. - -No wonder “Father Clement” went through twelve editions, and made its -authoress as famous in her day as the authoress of “Elsie Dinsmore” is -in ours. No wonder the Paddiford Lending Library revered its sterling -worth. And no wonder it provoked from Catholics reprisals which Dr. -Greenhill stigmatizes as “flippant.” To-day it lives by virtue of half -a dozen mocking lines in George Eliot’s least-read story: but for a -hundred years its progeny has infested the earth,--a crooked progeny, -like Peer Gynt’s, which can never be straightened into sincerity, or -softened into good-will. “For first the Church of Rome condemneth -us, we likewise them,” observes Sir Thomas Browne with equanimity; -“and thus we go to Heaven against each others’ wills, conceits, and -opinions.” - - - - -THE ACCURSED ANNUAL - - Why, by dabbling in those accursed Annuals, I have become a by-word - of infamy all over the kingdom.--CHARLES LAMB. - - -The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and -books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it -seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses, -which catered indulgently to hungry scholars and to noble patrons; -and we can see it in another generation separating “Waverley” and -“The Corsair,” which everybody knew by heart, from the gorgeous -“Annual” (bound in Lord Palmerston’s cast-off waistcoats, hinted -Thackeray), which formed a decorative feature of well-appointed English -drawing-rooms. The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable -book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter -of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other -is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles -which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers. - -The wave of sentimentality which submerged England when the -clear-headed, hard-hearted eighteenth century had done its appointed -work, and lay a-dying, the prodigious advance in gentility from the -days of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to the days of the Countess of -Blessington, found their natural expression in letters. It was a period -of emotions which were not too deep for words, and of decorum which -measured goodness by conventionalities. Turn where we will, we see -a tear in every eye, or a simper of self-complacency on every lip. -Moore wept when he beheld a balloon ascension at Tivoli, because he -had not seen a balloon since he was a little boy. The excellent Mr. -Hall explained in his “Memories of a Long Life” that, owing to Lady -Blessington’s anomalous position with Count D’Orsay, “Mrs. Hall never -accompanied me to her evenings, though she was a frequent day caller.” -Criticism was controlled by politics, and sweetened by gallantry. The -Whig and Tory reviewers supported their respective candidates to fame, -and softened their masculine sternness to affability when Mrs. Hemans -or Miss Landon, “the Sappho of the age,” contributed their glowing -numbers to the world. Miss Landon having breathed a poetic sigh in the -“Amulet” for 1832, a reviewer in “Fraser’s” magnanimously observed: -“This gentle and fair young lady, so undeservedly neglected by critics, -we mean to take under our special protection.” Could it ever have -lain within the power of any woman, even a poetess, to merit such -condescension as this? - -Of a society so organized, the Christmas annual was an appropriate and -ornamental feature. It was costly,--a guinea or a guinea and a half -being the usual subscription. It was richly bound in crimson silk or -pea-green levant; Solomon in all his glory was less magnificent. It was -as free from stimulus as eau sucrée. It was always genteel, and not -infrequently aristocratic,--having been known to rise in happy years to -the schoolboy verses of a royal duke. It was made, like Peter Pindar’s -razors, to sell, and it was bought to be given away; at which point -its career of usefulness was closed. Its languishing steel engravings -of Corfu, Ayesha, The Suliote Mother, and The Wounded Brigand, may -have beguiled a few heavy moments after dinner; and perhaps little -children in frilled pantalets and laced slippers peeped between the -gorgeous covers, to marvel at the Sultana’s pearls, or ask in innocence -who was the dying Haidee. Death, we may remark, was always a prominent -feature of annuals. Their artists and poets vied with one another in -the selection of mortuary subjects. Charles Lamb was first “hooked into -the ‘Gem’” with some lines on the editor’s dead infant. From a partial -list, extending over a dozen years, I cull this funeral wreath:-- - - The Dying Child. _Poem._ - - The Orphans. _Steel engraving._ - - The Orphan’s Tears. _Poem._ - - The Gypsy’s Grave. _Steel engraving._ - - The Lonely Grave. _Poem._ - - On a Child’s Grave. _Poem._ - - The Dying Mother to her Infant. _Poem._ - -Blithesome reading for the Christmas-tide! - -The annual was as orthodox as it was aristocratic. “The Shepherd of -Salisbury Plain” was not more edifying. “The Washerwoman of Finchley -Common” was less conspicuously virtuous. Here in “The Winter’s Wreath” -is a long poem in blank verse, by a nameless clergyman, on “The -Efficacy of Religion.” Here in the “Amulet,” Mrs. Hemans, “leading -the way as she deserves to do” (I quote from the “Monthly Review”), -“clothes in her own pure and fascinating language the invitations which -angels whisper into mortal ears.” And here in the “Forget-Me-Not,” -Leontine hurls mild defiance at the spirit of doubt:-- - - Thou sceptic of the hardened brow, - Attend to Nature’s cry! - Her sacred essence breathes the glow - O’er that thou wouldst deny; - ---an argument which would have carried conviction to Huxley’s soul, had -he been more than eight years old when it was written. Poor Coleridge, -always in need of a guinea or two, was bidden to write some descriptive -lines for the “Keepsake,” on an engraving by Parris of the Garden of -Boccaccio; a delightful picture of nine ladies and three gentlemen -picnicking in a park, with arcades as tall as aqueducts, a fountain -as vast as Niagara, and butterflies twice the size of the rabbits. -Coleridge, exempt by nature from an unserviceable sense of humour, -executed this commission in three pages of painstaking verse, and was -severely censured for mentioning “in terms not sufficiently guarded, -one of the most impure and mischievous books that could find its way -into the hands of an innocent female.” - -The system of first securing an illustration, and then ordering a poem -to match it, seemed right and reasonable to the editor of the annual, -who paid a great deal for his engravings, and little or nothing for his -poetry. Sometimes the poet was not even granted a sight of the picture -he was expected to describe. We find Lady Blessington writing to Dr. -William Beattie,--the best-natured man of his day,--requesting “three -or four stanzas” for an annual called “Buds and Blossoms,” which was -to contain portraits of the children of noble families. The particular -“buds” whose unfolding he was asked to immortalize were the three sons -of the Duke of Buccleuch; and it was gently hinted that “an allusion -to the family would add interest to the subject”;--in plain words, -that a little well-timed flattery might be trusted to expand the sales. -Another year the same unblushing petitioner was even more hardy in her -demand. - -“Will you write me a page of verse for the portrait of Miss Forester? -The young lady is seated with a little dog on her lap, which she looks -at rather pensively. She is fair, with light hair, and is in mourning.” - -Here is an inspiration for a poet. A picture, which he has not seen, of -a young lady in mourning looking pensively at a little dog! And poor -Beattie was never paid a cent for these effusions. His sole rewards -were a few words of thanks, and Lady Blessington’s cards for parties he -was too ill to attend. - -More business-like poets made a specialty of fitting pictures with -verses, as a tailor fits customers with coats. A certain Mr. Harvey, -otherwise lost to fame, was held to be unrivalled in this art. For many -years his “chaste and classic pen” supplied the annuals with flowing -stanzas, equally adapted to the timorous taste of editors, and to -the limitations of the “innocent females” for whom the volumes were -predestined. “Mr. Harvey embodies in two or three lines the expression -of a whole picture,” says an enthusiastic reviewer, “and at the same -time turns his inscription into a little gem of poetry.” As a specimen -gem, I quote one of four verses accompanying an engraving called -Morning Dreams,--a young woman reclining on a couch, and simpering -vapidly at the curtains:-- - - She has been dreaming, and her thoughts are still - On their far journey in the land of dreams; - The forms we call--but may not chase--at will, - And sweet low voices, soft as distant streams. - -This is a fair sample of the verse supplied for Christmas annuals, -which, however “chaste and classic,” was surely never intended to be -read. It is only right, however, to remember that Thackeray’s “Piscator -and Piscatrix” was written at Lady Blessington’s behest, to accompany -Wattier’s engraving of The Happy Anglers; and that Thackeray told -Locker he was so much pleased with this picture, and so engrossed with -his own poem, that he forgot to shave for the two whole days he was -working at it. To write “good occasional verse,” by which he meant -verse begged or ordered for some such desperate emergency as Lady -Blessington’s, was, in his eyes, an intellectual feat. It represented -difficulties overcome, like those wonderful old Italian frescoes fitted -so harmoniously into unaccommodating spaces. Nothing can be more -charming than “Piscator and Piscatrix,” and nothing can be more insipid -than the engraving which inspired the lively rhymes: - - As on this pictured page I look, - This pretty tale of line and hook, - As though it were a novel-book, - Amuses and engages: - I know them both, the boy and girl, - She is the daughter of an Earl, - The lad (that has his hair in curl) - My lord the County’s page is. - - A pleasant place for such a pair! - The fields lie basking in the glare; - No breath of wind the heavy air - Of lazy summer quickens. - Hard by you see the castle tall, - The village nestles round the wall, - As round about the hen, its small - Young progeny of chickens. - -The verses may be read in any edition of Thackeray’s ballads; but when -we have hunted up the “pictured page” in a mouldy old “Keepsake,” and -see an expressionless girl, a featureless boy, an indistinguishable -castle, and no village, we are tempted to agree with Charles Lamb, who -swore that he liked poems to explain pictures, and not pictures to -illustrate poems. “Your woodcut is a rueful _lignum mortis_.” - -There was a not unnatural ambition on the part of publishers and -editors to secure for their annuals one or two names of repute, with -which to leaven the mass of mediocrity. It mattered little if the -distinguished writer conscientiously contributed the feeblest offspring -of his pen; that was a reasonable reckoning,--distinguished writers -do the same to-day; but it mattered a great deal if, as too often -happened, he broke his word, and failed to contribute anything. Then -the unhappy editor was compelled to publish some such apologetic note -as this, from the “Amulet” of 1833. “The first sheet of the ‘Amulet’ -was reserved for my friend Mr. Bulwer, who had kindly tendered me his -assistance; but, in consequence of various unavoidable circumstances” -(a pleasure trip on the Rhine), “he has been compelled to postpone -his aid until next year.” On such occasions, the “reserved” pages -were filled by some veteran annualist, like Mr. Alaric Attila Watts, -editor of the “Literary Souvenir”; or perhaps Mr. Thomas Haynes Bailey, -he who wrote “I’d be a Butterfly,” and “Gaily the Troubadour,” was -persuaded to warble some such appropriate sentiment as this in the -“Forget-Me-Not”:-- - - It is a book we christen thus, - Less fleeting than the flower; - And ’twill recall the past to us - With talismanic power; - -which was a true word spoken in rhyme. Nothing recalls that faded past, -with its simpering sentimentality, its reposeful ethics, its shut-in -standards, and its differentiation of the masculine and feminine -intellects, like the yellow pages of an annual. - -Tom Moore, favourite of gods and men, was singled out by publishers as -the lode-star of their destinies, as the poet who could be best trusted -to impart to the “Amethyst” or the “Talisman” (how like Pullman cars -they sound!) that “elegant lightness” which befitted its mission in -life. His accounts of the repeated attacks made on his virtue, and the -repeated repulses he administered, fill by no means the least amusing -pages of his journal. The first attempt was made by Orne, who, in -1826, proposed that Moore should edit a new annual on the plan of the -“Souvenir”; and who assured the poet--always as deep in difficulties -as Micawber--that, if the enterprise proved successful, it would yield -him from five hundred to a thousand pounds a year. Moore, dazzled but -not duped, declined the task; and the following summer, the engraver -Heath made him a similar proposition, but on more assured terms. Heath -was then preparing to launch upon the world of fashion his gorgeous -“Keepsake”--“the toy-shop of literature,” Lockhart called it; and he -offered Moore, first five hundred, and then seven hundred pounds a -year, if he would accept the editorship. Seven hundred pounds loomed -large in the poet’s fancy, but pride forbade the bargain. The author of -“Lalla Rookh” could not consent to bow his laurelled head, and pilot -the feeble Fatimas and Zelicas, the noble infants in coral necklets, -and the still nobler ladies with pearl pendants on their brows, into -the safe harbour of boudoir and drawing-room. He made this clear to -Heath, who, nothing daunted, set off at once for Abbotsford, and laid -his proposals at the feet of Sir Walter Scott, adding to his bribe -another hundred pounds. - -Scott, the last man in Christendom to have undertaken such an office, -or to have succeeded in it, softened his refusal with a good-natured -promise to contribute to the “Keepsake” when it was launched. He was -not nervous about his literary standing, and he had no sensitive fear -of lowering it by journeyman’s work. “I have neither the right nor -the wish,” he wrote once to Murray, “to be considered above a common -labourer in the trenches.” Moore, however, was far from sharing -this modest unconcern. When Reynolds, on whom the editorship of the -“Keepsake” finally devolved, asked him for some verses, he peremptorily -declined. Then began a system of pursuit and escape, of assault and -repulse, which casts the temptations of St. Anthony into the shade. -“By day and night,” so Moore declares, Reynolds was “after” him, -always increasing the magnitude of his bribe. At last he forced a check -for a hundred pounds into the poet’s empty pocket (for all the world -like a scene in Caran d’Ache’s “Histoire d’un Chèque”), imploring in -return a hundred lines of verse. But Moore’s virtue--or his vanity--was -impregnable. “The task was but light, and the money would have been -convenient,” he confesses; “but I forced it back on him again. The fact -is, it is my _name_ brings these offers, and my name would suffer by -accepting them.” - -One might suppose that the baffled tempter would now have permanently -withdrawn, save that the strength of tempters lies in their never -knowing when they are beaten. Three years later, Heath renewed the -attack, proposing that Moore should furnish _all_ the letter-press, -prose and verse, of the “Keepsake” for 1832, receiving in payment -the generous sum of one thousand pounds. Strange to say, Moore took -rather kindly to this appalling suggestion, admitted he liked it -better than its predecessors, and consented to think the matter over -for a fortnight. In the end, however, he adhered to his original -determination to hold himself virgin of annuals; and refused the -thousand pounds, which would have paid all his debts, only to fall, as -fall men must, a victim to female blandishments. He was cajoled into -writing some lines for the “Casket,” edited by Mrs. Blencoe; and had -afterwards the pleasure of discovering that the astute lady had added -to her list of attractions another old poem of his, which, to avoid -sameness, she obligingly credited to Lord Byron;--enough to make that -ill-used poet turn uneasily in his grave. - -Charles Lamb’s detestation of annuals dates naturally enough from the -hour he was first seduced into becoming a contributor; and every time -he lapsed from virtue, his rage blazed out afresh. When his ill-timed -sympathy for a bereaved parent--and that parent an editor--landed -him in the pages of the “Gem,” he wrote to Barton in an access of -ill-humour which could find no phrases sharp enough to feed it. - -“I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates, the names of -contributors poked up into your eyes in the first page, and whistled -through all the covers of magazines, the bare-faced sort of emulation, -the immodest candidateship, brought into so little space; in short I -detest to appear in an annual.... Don’t think I set up for being proud -on this point; I like a bit of flattery tickling my vanity as well as -any one. But these pompous masquerades without masks (naked names or -faces) I hate. So there’s a bit of my mind.” - -“Frippery,” “frumpery,” “show and emptiness,” are the mildest epithets -at Lamb’s command, as often as he laments his repeated falls from -grace; and a few years before his death, when that “dumb soporifical -good-for-nothingness” (curse of the Enfield lanes) weighted his pen, -and dulled the lively processes of his brain, he writes with poignant -melancholy:-- - -“I cannot scribble a long letter. I am, when not on foot, very -desolate, and take no interest in anything, scarce hate anything but -annuals.” It is the last expression of a just antipathy, an instinctive -clinging to something which can be reasonably hated to the end. - -The most pretentious and the most aristocratic of the annuals was the -ever famous “Book of Beauty,” edited for many years by the Countess -of Blessington. Resting on a solid foundation of personal vanity (a -superstructure never known to fail), it reached a heroic measure of -success, and yielded an income which permitted the charming woman who -conducted it to live as far beyond her means as any leader of the -fashionable world in London. It was estimated that Lady Blessington -earned by the “gorgeous inanities” she edited, and by the vapid tales -she wrote, an income of from two thousand to three thousand pounds; -but she would never have been paid so well for her work had she not -supported her social position by an expenditure of twice that sum. -Charles Greville, who spares no scorn he can heap upon her editorial -methods, declares that she attained her ends “by puffing and stuffing, -and untiring industry, by practising on the vanity of some and the -good-nature of others. And though I never met with any one who had read -her books, except the ‘Conversations with Byron,’ which are too good to -be hers, they are unquestionably a source of considerable profit, and -she takes her place confidently and complacently as one of the literary -celebrities of her day.” - -Greville’s instinctive unkindness leaves him often wide of the mark, -but on this occasion we can only say that he might have spoken his -truths more humanely. If Lady Blessington helped to create the demand -which she supplied, if she turned her friendships to account, and -made of hospitality a means to an end (a line of conduct not unknown -to-day), she worked with unsparing diligence, and with a sort of -desperate courage for over twenty years. Rival Books of Beauty were -launched upon a surfeited market, but she maintained her precedence. -For ten years she edited the “Keepsake,” and made it a source of -revenue, until the unhappy bankruptcy and death of Heath. In her -annuals we breathe the pure air of ducal households, and consort with -the peeresses of England, turning condescendingly now and then to -contemplate a rusticity so obviously artificial, it can be trusted -never to offend. That her standard of art (she had no standard of -letters) was acceptable to the British public is proved by the -rapturous praise of critics and reviewers. Thackeray, indeed, professed -to think the sumptuous ladies, who loll and languish in the pages of -the year-book, underclad and indecorous; but this was in the spirit -of hypercriticism. Hear rather how a writer in “Fraser’s Magazine” -describes in a voice trembling with emotion the opulent charms of one -of the Countess of Blessington’s “Beauties”:-- - -“There leans the tall and imperial form of the enchantress, with -raven tresses surmounted by the cachemire of sparkling red; while -her ringlets flow in exuberant waves over the full-formed neck; and -barbaric pearls, each one worth a king’s ransom, rest in marvellous -contrast with her dark and mysterious loveliness.” - -“Here’s richness!” to quote our friend Mr. Squeers. Here’s something of -which it is hard to think a public could ever tire. Yet sixteen years -later, when the Countess of Blessington died in poverty and exile, but -full of courage to the end, the “Examiner” tepidly observed that the -probable extinction of the year-book “would be the least of the sad -regrets attending her loss.” - -For between 1823 and 1850 three hundred annuals had been published in -England, and the end was very near. Exhausted nature was crying for -release. It is terrible to find an able and honest writer like Miss -Mitford editing a preposterous volume called the “Iris,” of inhuman -bulk and superhuman inanity; a book which she well knew could never, -under any press of circumstances, be read by mortal man or woman. -There were annuals to meet every demand, and to please every class -of purchaser. Comic annuals for those who hoped to laugh; a “Botanic -Annual” for girls who took country walks with their governess; an -“Oriental Annual” for readers of Byron and Moore; a “Landscape -Annual” for lovers of nature; “The Christian Keepsake” for ladies of -serious minds; and “The Protestant Annual” for those who feared that -Christianity might possibly embrace the Romish Church. There were -five annuals for English children; from one of which, “The Juvenile -Keepsake,” I quote these lines, so admirably adapted to the childish -mind. Newton is supposed to speak them in his study:-- - - Pure and ethereal essence, fairest light, - Come hither, and before my watchful eyes - Disclose thy hidden nature, and unbind - Thy mystic, fine-attenuated parts; - That so, intently marking, I the source - May learn of colours, Nature’s matchless gifts. - -There are three pages of this poem, all in the same simple language, -from which it is fair to infer that the child’s annual, like its -grown-up neighbour, was made to be bought, not read. - - - - -OUR ACCOMPLISHED GREAT-GRANDMOTHER - - Next to mere idleness, I think knotting is to be reckoned in the - scale of insignificance.--DR. JOHNSON. - - -Readers of Dickens (which ought to mean all men and women who have -mastered the English alphabet) will remember how that estimable -schoolmistress, Miss Monflathers, elucidated Dr. Watts’s masterpiece, -which had been quoted somewhat rashly by a teacher. “‘The little busy -bee,’” said Miss Monflathers, drawing herself up, “is applicable only -to genteel children. - - In books, or work, or healthful play, - -is quite right as far as they are concerned; and the work means -painting on velvet, fancy needlework, or embroidery.” - -It also meant, in the good Miss Monflathers’s day, making filigree -baskets that would not hold anything, Ionic temples of Bristol-board, -shell flowers, and paper landscapes. It meant pricking pictures with -pins, taking “impressions” of butterflies’ wings on sheets of gummed -paper, and messing with strange, mysterious compounds called diaphanie -and potichomanie, by means of which a harmless glass tumbler or a -respectable window-pane could be turned into an object of desolation. -Indeed, when the genteel young ladies of this period were not reading -“Merit opposed to Fascination; exemplified in the story of Eugenio,” -or “An Essay on the Refined Felicity which may arise from the Marriage -Contract,” they were cultivating what were then called “ornamental -arts,” but which later on became known as “accomplishments.” “It is -amazing to me,” says that most amiable of sub-heroes, Mr. Bingley, “how -young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all -are. They paint tables, cover screens, and net purses. I scarcely know -any one who cannot do all this; and I am sure I never heard a young -lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was -very accomplished.” - -We leave the unamiable Mr. Darcy snorting at his friend’s remark, to -consider the paucity of Mr. Bingley’s list. Tables, screens, and -purses represent but the first beginnings of that misdirected energy -which for the best part of a century embellished English homes. The -truly accomplished young lady in Miss More’s “Cœlebs” paints flowers -and shells, draws ruins, gilds and varnishes wood, is an adept in Japan -work, and stands ready to begin modelling, etching, and engraving. The -great principle of ornamental art was the reproduction of an object--of -any object--in an alien material. The less adapted this material was -to its purpose, the greater the difficulties it presented to the -artist, the more precious became the monstrous masterpiece. To take a -plain sheet of paper and draw a design upon it was ignominious in its -simplicity; but to construct the same design out of paper spirals, -rolling up some five hundred slips with uniform tightness, setting -them on end, side by side, and painting or gilding the tops,--that was -a feat of which any young lady might be proud. It was so uncommonly -hard to do, it ought to have been impossible. Cutting paper with -fine sharp scissors and a knife was taught in schools (probably in -Miss Monflathers’s school, though Dickens does not mention it) as -a fashionable pastime. The “white design”--animals, landscape, or -marine--was printed on a black background, which was cut away with -great dexterity, the spaces being small and intricate. When all the -black paper had been removed, the flimsy tracery was pasted on a piece -of coloured paper, thus presenting--after hours of patient labour--much -the same appearance that it had in the beginning. It was then glassed, -framed, and presented to appreciative parents, as a proof of their -daughter’s industry and taste. - -The most famous work of art ever made out of paper was probably -the celebrated “herbal” of Mrs. Delany,--Mrs. Delany whom Burke -pronounced “the model of an accomplished gentlewoman.” She acquired -her accomplishments at an age when most people seek to relinquish -theirs,--having learned to draw when she was thirty, to paint when -she was forty, and to write verse when she was eighty-two. She also -“excelled in embroidery and shell-work”; and when Miss Burney made -her first visit to St. James’s Place, she found Mrs. Delany’s walls -covered with “ornaments of her own execution of striking elegance, -in cuttings and variegated stained papers.” The herbal, however, was -the crowning achievement of her life. It contained nearly a thousand -plants, made of thin strips of coloured paper, pasted layer over layer -with the utmost nicety upon a black background, and producing an effect -“richer than painting.” - - Cold Winter views amid his realms of snow - Delany’s vegetable statues blow; - Smoothes his stern brow, delays his hoary wing, - And eyes with wonder all the blooms of Spring. - -The flowers were copied accurately from nature, and florists all over -the kingdom vied with one another in sending Mrs. Delany rare and -beautiful specimens. The Queen ardently admired this herbal, and the -King, who regarded it with veneration not untinged by awe, expressed -his feelings by giving its creator a house at Windsor, and settling -upon her an annuity of three hundred pounds. Yet Miss Seward complained -that although England “teemed with genius,” George III was “no Cæsar -Augustus,” to encourage and patronize the arts. To the best of his -ability, he did. His conception of genius and art may not have tallied -with that of Augustus; but when an old lady made paper flowers to -perfection, he gave her a royal reward. - -Mrs. Delany’s example was followed in court circles, and in the humbler -walks of life. Shell-work, which was one of her accomplishments, became -the rage. Her illustrious friend, the Duchess of Portland, “made shell -frames and feather designs, adorned grottoes, and collected endless -objects in the animal and vegetable kingdom.” Young ladies of taste -made flowers out of shells, dyeing the white ones with Brazil wood, and -varnishing them with gum arabic. A rose of red shells, with a heart -of knotted yellow silk, was almost as much admired as a picture of -birds with their feathers pasted on the paper. This last triumph of -realism presented a host of difficulties to the perpetrator. When the -bill and legs of the bird had been painted in water colours on heavy -Bristol-board, the space for its body was covered with a paste of gum -arabic as thick as a shilling. This paste was kept “tacky or clammy” -to hold the feathers, which were stripped off the poor little dead -bird, and stuck on the prepared surface, the quills being cut down -with a knife. Weights were used to keep the feathers in place, the -result being that most of them adhered to the lead instead of to the -Bristol-board, and came off discouragingly when the work was nearly -done. As a combination of art and nature, the bird picture had no rival -except the butterfly picture, where the clipped wings of butterflies -were laid between two sheets of gummed paper, and the “impressions” -thus taken, reinforced with a little gilding, were attached to a -painted body. It may be observed that the quality of mercy was then -a good deal strained. Mrs. Montagu’s famous “feather-room,” in her -house on Portman Square, was ornamented with hangings made by herself -from the plumage of hundreds of birds, every attainable variety being -represented; yet no one of her friends, not even the sainted Hannah -More, ever breathed a sigh of regret over the merry little lives that -were wasted for its meretricious decorations. - -Much time and ingenuity were devoted by industrious young people to -the making of baskets, and no material, however unexpected, came amiss -to their patient hands. Allspice berries, steeped in brandy to soften -them and strung on wire, were very popular; and rice baskets had a -chaste simplicity of their own. These last were made of pasteboard, -lined with silk or paper, the grains of rice being gummed on in solid -diamond-shaped designs. If the decoration appeared a trifle monotonous, -as well it might, it was diversified with coloured glass beads. -Indeed, we are assured that “baskets of this description may be very -elegantly ornamented with groups of small shells, little artificial -bouquets, crystals, and the fine feathers from the heads of birds of -beautiful plumage”;--with anything, in short, that could be pasted -on and persuaded to stick. When the supply of glue gave out, wafer -baskets--wafers required only moistening--or alum baskets (made of wire -wrapped round with worsted, and steeped in a solution of alum, which -was coloured yellow with saffron or purple with logwood) were held in -the highest estimation. The modern mind, with its puny resources, is -bewildered by the multiplicity of materials which seem to have lain -scattered around the domestic hearth a hundred years ago. There is a -famous old receipt for “silvering paper without silver,” a process -designed to be economical, but which requires so many messy and alien -ingredients, like “Indian glue,” and “Muscovy talc,” and “Venice -turpentine,” and “Japan size,” and “Chinese varnish,” that mere silver -seems by comparison a cheap and common thing. Young ladies whose thrift -equalled their ingenuity made their own varnish by boiling isinglass in -a quart of brandy,--a lamentable waste of supplies. - -Genteel parcels were always wrapped in silver paper. We remember how -Miss Edgeworth’s Rosamond tries in vain to make one sheet cover the -famous “filigree basket,” which was her birthday present to her Cousin -Bell, and which pointed its own moral by falling to pieces before it -was presented. Rosamond’s father derides this basket because he is -implored not to grasp it by its myrtle-wreathed handle. “But what is -the use of the handle,” he asks, in the conclusive, irritating fashion -of the Edgeworthian parent, “if we are not to take hold of it? And -pray is this the thing you have been about all week? I have seen you -dabbling with paste and rags, and could not conceive what you were -doing.” - -Rosamond’s half-guinea--her godmother’s gift--is spent buying filigree -paper, and medallions, and a “frost ground” for this basket, and she is -ruthlessly shamed by its unstable character; whereas Laura, who gives -her money secretly to a little lace-maker, has her generosity revealed -at exactly the proper moment, and is admired and praised by all the -company. Apart from Miss Edgeworth’s conception of life, as made up of -well-adjusted punishments and rewards, a half-guinea does seem a good -deal to spend on filigree paper; but then a single sheet of gold paper -cost six shillings, unless gilded at home, after the following process, -which was highly commended for economy:-- - -“Take yellow ochre, grind it with rain-water, and lay a ground with it -all over the paper, which should be fine wove. When dry, take the white -of an egg and about a quarter of an ounce of sugar candy, and beat -them together until the sugar candy is dissolved. Then strike it all -over the ground with a varnish brush, and immediately lay on the gold -leaf, pressing it down with a piece of fine cotton. When dry, polish it -with a dog’s tooth or agate. A sheet of this paper may be prepared for -eighteen pence.” - -No wonder little Rosamond was unequal to such labour, and her -half-guinea was squandered in extravagant purchases. Miss Edgeworth, -trained in her father’s theory that children should be always -occupied, was a good deal distressed by the fruits of their industry. -The “chatting girls cutting up silk and gold paper,” whom Miss -Austen watched with unconcern, would have fretted Miss Edgeworth’s -soul, unless she knew that sensible needle-cases, pin-cushions, and -work-bags were in process of construction. Yet the celebrated “rational -toy-shop,” with its hand-looms instead of dolls, and its machines for -drawing in perspective instead of tin soldiers and Noah’s arks, stood -responsible for the inutilities she scorned. And what of the charitable -lady in “Lazy Lawrence,” who is “making a grotto,” and buying shells -and fossils for its decoration? Even a filigree basket, which had at -least the grace of impermanence, seems desirable by comparison with a -grotto. It will be remembered also that Madame de Rosier, the “Good -French Governess,” traces her lost son, that “promising young man of -fourteen,” by means of a box he has made out of refuse bits of shell -thrown aside in a London restaurant; while the son in turn discovers a -faithful family servant through the medium of a painted pasteboard dog, -which the equally ingenious domestic has exposed for sale in a shop. It -was a good thing in Miss Edgeworth’s day to cultivate the “ornamental -arts,” were it only for the reunion of families. - -Pasteboard, a most ungrateful and unyielding material, was the basis -of so many household decorations that a little volume, published in -the beginning of the last century, is devoted exclusively to its -possibilities. This book, which went through repeated editions, is -called “The Art of Working in Pasteboard upon Scientific Principles”; -and it gives minute directions for making boxes, baskets, tea-trays, -caddies,--even candlesticks, and “an inkstand in the shape of a castle -with a tower,”--a baffling architectural design. What patience and -ingenuity must have been expended upon this pasteboard castle, which -had a wing for the ink well, a wing for the sand box, five circular -steps leading up to the principal entrance, a terrace which was a -drawer, a balcony surrounded by a “crenelled screen,” a tower to hold -the quills, a vaulted cupola which lifted like a lid, and a lantern -with a “quadrilateral pyramid” for its roof, surmounted by a real pea -or a glass bead as the final bit of decoration. There is a drawing of -this edifice, which is as imposing as its dimensions will permit; and -there are four pages of mysterious instructions which make the reader -feel as though he were studying architecture by correspondence. - -Far more difficult of accomplishment, and far more useless when -accomplished,--for they could not even hold pens and ink,--were the -Grecian temples and Gothic towers, made of pasteboard covered with -marbled paper, and designed as “elegant ornaments for the mantelpiece.” -A small Ionic temple requires ten pages of directions. It is built of -“the best Bristol-board, except the shafts of the pillars and some -of the decorations, which are made of royal drawing-paper”; and its -manufacturers are implored not to spare time, trouble, or material, -if they would attain to anything so classic. “The art of working in -pasteboard,” says the preface of this engaging little book, “may -be carried to a high degree of usefulness and perfection, and may -eventually be productive of substantial benefits to young persons of -both sexes, who wisely devote their leisure hours to pleasing, quiet, -and useful recreations, preferably to frivolous, noisy, and expensive -amusements.” - -A pleasing, quiet, and useful recreation which wasted nothing but -eyesight,--and that nobody valued,--was pricking pictures with pins. -The broad lines and heavy shadows were pricked with stout pins, the -fine lines and high lights with little ones, while a toothed wheel, -sharply pointed, was used for large spaces and simple decorative -designs. This was an ambitious field of art, much of the work being -of a microscopic delicacy. The folds of a lady’s dress could be -pricked in such film-like waves that only close scrutiny revealed the -thousand tiny holes of which its billowy softness was composed. The -cleanness and dryness of pins commend them to our taste after a long -contemplation of varnish and glue pots; of “poonah work,” which was a -sticky sort of stencilling; of “Japan work,” in which embossed figures -were made of “gum-water, thickened to a proper consistence with equal -parts of bole ammoniac and whiting”; of “Chinese enamel,” which was a -base imitation of ebony inlaid with ivory; and of “potichomanie,” which -converted a piece of English glass into something that “not one in a -hundred could tell from French china.” We sympathize with the refined -editor of the “Monthly Museum,” who recommends knotting to his female -readers, not only because it had the sanction of a queen, - - Who, when she rode in coach abroad, - Was always knotting threads; - -but because of its “pure nature” and “innocent simplicity.” “I cannot -but think,” says this true friend of my sex, “that shirts and smocks -are unfit for any lady of delicacy to handle; but the shuttle is an -easy flowing object, to which the eye may remove with propriety and -grace.” - -Grace was never overlooked in our great-grandmother’s day, but took -rank as an important factor in education. A London schoolmistress, -offering in 1815 some advice as to the music “best fitted for ladies,” -confesses that it is hard to decide between the “wide range” of the -pianoforte and the harp-player’s “elegance of position,” which gives to -her instrument “no small powers of rivalry.” Sentiment was interwoven -with every accomplishment. Tender mottoes, like those which Miss -Euphemia Dundas entreats Thaddeus of Warsaw to design for her, were -painted upon boxes and hand-screens. Who can forget the white leather -“souvenir,” adorned with the words “Toujours cher,” which Miss Euphemia -presses upon Thaddeus, and which that attractive but virtuous exile -is modestly reluctant to accept. A velvet bracelet embroidered with -forget-me-nots symbolized friendship. A handkerchief, designed as a -gift from a young girl to her betrothed, had a celestial sphere worked -in one corner, to indicate the purity of their flame; a bouquet of -buds and blossoms in another, to mark the pleasures and the brevity of -life; and, in a third, Cupid playing with a spaniel, “as an emblem of -the most passionate fidelity.” Even samplers, which represented the -first step in the pursuit of accomplishments, had their emblematic -designs no less than their moral axioms. The village schoolmistress, -whom Miss Mitford knew and loved, complained that all her pupils -wanted to work samplers instead of learning to sew; and that all their -mothers valued these works of art more than they did the neatest of -caps and aprons. The sampler stood for gentility as well as industry. -It reflected credit on the family as well as on the child. At the -bottom of a faded canvas, worked more than a hundred years ago, and now -hanging in a great museum of art, is this inspiring verse:-- - - I have done this that you may see - What care my parents took of me. - And when I’m dead and in my grave, - This piece of work I trust you’ll save. - -If the little girl who embodied her high hopes in the painful precision -of cross-stitch could but know of their splendid fulfilment! - - - - -THE ALBUM AMICORUM - - She kept an album too, at home, - Well stocked with all an album’s glories, - Paintings of butterflies and Rome, - Patterns for trimmings, Persian stories. - - PRAED. - - -Modern authors who object to being asked for their autographs, and who -complain piteously of the persecutions they endure in this regard, -would do well to consider what they have gained by being born in an age -when commercialism has supplanted compliment. Had they been their own -great-grandfathers, they would have been expected to present to their -female friends the verses they now sell to magazines. They would have -written a few playful and affectionate lines every time they dined -out, and have paid for a week’s hospitality with sentimental tributes -to their hostess. And not their hostess only. Her budding daughters -would have looked for some recognition of their charms, and her infant -son would have presented a theme too obvious for disregard. It is -recorded that when Campbell spent two days at the country seat of Mr. -James Craig, the Misses Craig kept him busy most of that time composing -verses for their albums,--a pleasant way of entertaining a poet guest. -On another occasion he writes to Mrs. Arkwright, lamenting, though with -much good-humour, the importunities of mothers. “Mrs. Grahame has a -plot upon me that I should write a poem upon her boy, three years old. -Oh, such a boy! But in the way of writing lines on lovely children, I -am engaged three deep, and dare not promise.” - -It seems that parents not only petitioned for these poetic windfalls, -but pressed their claims hard. Campbell, one of the most amiable of -men, yielded in time to this demand, as he had yielded to many others, -and sent to little Master Grahame some verses of singular ineptitude. - - Sweet bud of life! thy future doom - Is present to my eyes, - And joyously I see thee bloom - In Fortune’s fairest skies. - - One day that breast, scarce conscious now, - Shall burn with patriot flame; - And, fraught with love, that little brow - Shall wear the wreath of fame. - -There are many more stanzas, but these are enough to make us wonder -why parents did not let the poet alone. Perhaps, if they had, he would -have volunteered his services. We know that when young Fanny Kemble -showed him her nosegay at a ball, and asked how she should keep the -flowers from fading, he answered hardily: “Give them to me, and I will -immortalize them,”--an enviable assurance of renown. - -Album verses date from the old easy days, when rhyming was regarded -as a gentlemanly accomplishment rather than as a means of livelihood. -Titled authors, poets wealthy and well-born--for there were always -such--naturally addressed themselves to the ladies of their -acquaintance. They could say with Lord Chesterfield that they thanked -Heaven they did not have to live by their brains. It was a theory, -long and fondly cherished, that poetry was not common merchandise, to -be bought and sold like meal and malt; that it was, as Burns admirably -said, either above price or worth nothing at all. Later on, when -poets became excellent men of business, when Byron had been seduced -by Murray’s generosity, when Moore drove his wonderful bargains, and -poetic narrative was the best-selling commodity in the market, we hear -a rising murmur of protest against the uncommercial exactions of the -album. Sonneteers who could sell their wares for hard cash no longer -felt repaid by a word of flattery. Even the myrtle wreaths which -crowned the victors of the Bath Easton contests appeared but slender -compensation, save in Miss Seward’s eyes, or in Mrs. Hayley’s. When -Mrs. Hayley went to Bath in 1781, and witnessed the solemn ceremonies -inaugurated by Lady Miller; when she saw the laurels, and myrtles, -and fluttering ribbons, her soul was fired with longing, and she set -to work to persuade her husband that the Bath Easton prize was not -wholly beneath his notice. The author of “The Triumphs of Temper” -was naturally fearful of lowering his dignity by sporting with minor -poets; and there was much wifely artifice in her assumption that such -playfulness on his part would be recognized as true condescension. -“If you should feel disposed to honour this slight amusement with a -light composition, I am persuaded you will oblige very highly.” The -responsive Hayley was not unwilling to oblige, provided no one would -suspect him of being in earnest. He “scribbled” the desired lines “in -the most rapid manner,” “literally in a morning and a half” (Byron did -not take much longer to write “The Corsair”), and sent them off to -Bath, where they were “admired beyond description,” and won the prize, -so that the gratified Mrs. Hayley appeared that night with the myrtle -wreath woven in her hair. The one famous contributor to the Bath Easton -vase who did _not_ win a prize was Sheridan. He, being entreated to -write for it some verses on “Charity,” complied in these heartless -lines:-- - - THE VASE SPEAKS - - For heaven’s sake bestow on me - A little wit, for that would be - Indeed an act of charity. - -Complimentary addresses--those flowery tributes which seem so ardent -and so facile--were beginning to drag a little, even in Walpole’s -day. He himself was an adept in the art of polite adulation, and wrote -without a blush the obliging comparison between the Princess Amelia and -Venus (greatly to the disparagement of Venus), which the flattered lady -found in the hand of the marble Apollo at Stowe. “All women like all -or any praise,” said Lord Byron, who had reason to know the sex. The -Princess Amelia, stout, sixty, and “strong as a Brunswick lion,” was -pleased to be designated as a “Nymph,” and to be told she had routed -Venus from the field. Walpole also presented to Madame de Boufflers a -“petite gentillesse,” when she visited Strawberry Hill; and it became -the painful duty of the Duc de Nivernois to translate these lines into -French, on the occasion of Miss Pelham’s grand fête at Esher Place. -The task kept him absorbed and preoccupied most of the day, “lagging -behind” while the others made a cheerful tour of the farms, or listened -to the French horns and hautboys on the lawn. Finally, when all the -guests were drinking tea and coffee in the Belvidere, poor Nivernois -was delivered of his verselets, which were received with a polite -semblance of gratification, and for the remaining hours his spirit was -at peace. But it does seem a hard return to exact for hospitality, and -must often have suggested to men of letters the felicity of staying at -home. - -Miss Seward made it her happy boast that the number and the warmth -of Mr. Hayley’s tributes--inserted duly in her album--raised her to -a rivalry with Swift’s Stella, or Prior’s Chloe. “Our four years’ -correspondence has been enriched with a galaxy of little poetic gems -of the first water.” Nor was the lady backward in returning compliment -for compliment. That barter of praise, that exchange of felicitation, -which is both so polite and so profitable, was as well understood by -our sentimental ancestors as it is in this hard-headed age. Indeed, -I am not sure that the Muse did not sometimes calculate more closely -then than she ventures to do to-day. We know that Canon Seward wrote -an elegiac poem on a young nobleman who was held to be dying, but -who--perversely enough--recovered; whereupon the reverend eulogist -changed the name, and transferred his heartfelt lamentations to -another youth whose death was fully assured. In the same business-like -spirit Miss Seward paid back Mr. Hayley flattery for flattery, until -even the slow-witted satirists of the period made merry over this -commerce of applause. - - _Miss Seward._ Pride of Sussex, England’s glory, - Mr. Hayley, is that you? - - _Mr. Hayley._ Ma’am, you carry all before you, - Trust me, Lichfield swan, you do. - - _Miss Seward._ Ode, dramatic, epic, sonnet, - Mr. Hayley, you’re divine! - - _Mr. Hayley._ Ma’am, I’ll give my word upon it, - You yourself are all the Nine. - -Moore, as became a poet of ardent temperament, wrote the most gallant -album verses of his day; for which reason, and because his star of -fame rode high, he endured sharp persecution at the hands of admiring -but covetous friends. Young ladies asked him in the most offhand -manner to “address a poem” to them; and women of rank smiled on him -in ballrooms, and confided to him that they were keeping their albums -virgin of verse until “an introduction to Mr. Moore” should enable them -to request _him_ to write on the opening page. “I fight this off as -well as I can,” he tells Lord Byron, who knew both the relentlessness -of such demands and the compliant nature of his friend. On one occasion -Lady Holland showed Moore some stanzas which Lord Holland had written -in Latin and in English, on the subject of a snuff-box given her by -Napoleon; bidding him imperiously “do something of the kind,” and -adding that she greatly desired a corresponding tribute from Lord -Byron. Moore wisely declined to make any promises for Byron (one doubts -whether the four lines which that nobleman eventually contributed -afforded her ladyship much pleasure), but wrote his own verses before -he was out of bed the next morning, and carried them to Holland House, -expecting to breakfast with its mistress. He found her, however, in -such a captious mood, so out of temper with all her little world, -that, although he sat down to the table, he did not venture to hint -his hunger; and as no one asked him to eat or drink, he slipped off in -half an hour, and sought (his poem still in his pocket) the more genial -hospitality of Rosset’s restaurant. Had all this happened twenty years -earlier, Moore’s self-esteem would have been deeply wounded; but the -poet was by now a man of mark, and could afford to laugh at his own -discomfiture. - -Moore’s album verses may be said to make up in warmth what they lack -in address. Minor poets--minims like William Robert Spencer--surpassed -him easily in adroitness; and sometimes won for themselves slender but -abiding reputations by expressing with consummate ease sentiments they -did not feel. Spencer’s pretty lines beginning,-- - - Too late I stayed,--forgive the crime! - Unheeded flew the hours: - How noiseless falls the foot of time - That only treads on flowers! - ---lines which all our grandmothers had by heart--may still be found in -compilations of English verse. Their dexterous allusions to the diamond -sparks in Time’s hour-glass, and to the bird-of-paradise plumage in his -grey wings, their veiled and graceful flattery, contrast pleasantly -with Moore’s Hibernian boldness, with his offhand demand to be paid in -kisses for his songs-- - - That rosy mouth alone can bring - What makes the bard divine; - Oh, Lady! how my lip would sing, - If once ’twere prest to thine. - -A discreet young woman might have hesitated to show _this_ album page -to friends. - -Byron’s “tributes,” when he paid them, were singularly chill. He may -have buried his heart at Mrs. Spencer Smith’s feet; but the lines -in her album which record this interment are eloquent of a speedy -resurrection. When Lady Blessington demanded some verses, he wrote -them; but he explained with almost insulting lucidity that his heart -was as grey as his head (he was thirty-one), and that he had nothing -warmer than friendship to offer in place of extinguished affections. -Moore must have wearied painfully of albums and of their rapacious -demands; yet to the end of his life he could be harassed into feigning -a poetic passion; but Byron stood at bay. He was a hunted creature, and -the instinct of self-preservation taught him savage methods of escape. - -There are people who, from some delicacy of mental fibre, find it -exceedingly difficult to be rude; and there are people who--like -Charles Lamb--have a curious habit of doing what they do not want to -do, and what they know is not worth doing, for the sake of giving -pleasure to some utterly insignificant acquaintance. The first class -lacks a valuable weapon in life’s warfare. The second class is so -small, and the motives which govern it are so inscrutable, that we are -apt to be exasperated by its amiability. It is easy to sympathize with -Thackeray, who, being badgered to write in an album already graced -by the signatures of several distinguished musicians, said curtly: -“What! among all those fiddlers!” This hardy British superciliousness -commends itself to our sense of humour, no less than to our sense of -self-protection. A great deal has been said, especially by Frenchmen, -about the wisdom of polite denials; but a rough word, spoken in time, -is seldom without weight in England. - -Yet, for a friend, Thackeray found no labour hard. The genial tolerance -of “The Pen and the Album” suggests something akin to affection for -these pillaging little books when the right people owned them,--when -they belonged to “Chesham Place.” Locker tells a pleasant story of -meeting Thackeray in Pall Mall, on his way to Kensington, and offering -to join him in his walk. This offer was declined, Thackeray explaining -that he had some rhymes trotting through his head, and that he was -trying to polish them off in the course of a solitary stroll. A few -days later they met again, and Thackeray said, “I finished those -verses, and they are very nearly being very good. I call them ‘Mrs. -Katherine’s Lantern.’ I did them for Dickens’s daughter.” - -“Very nearly being very good!” This is an author’s modest estimate. -Readers there are who have found them so absolutely good that they -leaven the whole heavy mass of album verse. Shall not a century of -extortion on the one side and debility on the other be forgiven, -because upon one blank page, the property of one thrice fortunate young -woman, were written these lines, fragrant with imperishable sentiment:-- - - When he was young as you are young, - When he was young, and lutes were strung, - And love-lamps in the casement hung. - -But when we turn to Lamb, and find him driving his pen along its -unwilling way, and admitting ruefully that the road was hard, we see -the reverse of the medal, and we resent that inexplicable sweetness of -temper which left him defenceless before marauders. - - My feeble Muse, that fain her best would - Write at command of Frances Westwood, - But feels her wits not in their best mood. - -Why should Frances Westwood have commanded his services? Why should -Frances Brown, “engaged to a Mr. White,” have wrung from him a dozen -lines of what we should now call “copy”? She had no recognizable right -to that copy; but Lamb confided to Mrs. Moxon that he had sent it to -her at twenty-four hours’ notice, because she was going to be married -and start with her husband for India. Also that he had forgotten what -he had written, save only two lines:-- - - May your fame - And fortune, Frances, Whiten with your name! - -of which conceit he was innocently proud. - -Mrs. Moxon (Emma Isola) was herself an old and hardened offender. Her -album, enriched with the spoils of a predatory warfare, travelled far -afield, extorting its tribute of verse. We find Lamb first paying, -as was natural, his own tithes, and then actually aiding and abetting -injustice by sending the book to Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall), with an -irresistible appeal for support. - -“I have another favour to beg, which is the beggarliest of beggings; -a few lines of verse for a young friend’s album (six will be enough). -M. Burney will tell you who I want ’em for. A girl of gold. Six -lines--make ’em eight--signed Barry C----. They need not be very good, -as I chiefly want ’em as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously -obliged by any refuse scraps. We are in the last ages of the world, -when St. Paul prophesied that women should be ‘headstrong lovers of -their own wills, having albums.’ I fled hither to escape the albumean -persecution, and had not been in my new house twenty-four hours when -a daughter of the next house came in with a friend’s album, to beg a -contribution, and, the following day, intimated she had one of her own. -Two more have sprung up since. ‘If I take the wings of the morning, -and fly unto the uttermost parts of the earth, there will albums be.’ -New Holland has albums. The age is to be complied with.” - - * * * * * - -“Ask for this little book a token of remembrance from friends, and from -fellow students, and from wayfarers whom you may never see again. He -who gives you his name and a few kind words, gives you a treasure which -shall keep his memory green.” - -So wrote Goethe--out of the abyss of German sentimentality--in his -son’s album; and the words have a pleasant ring of good fellowship -and unforced fraternity. They are akin to those gracious phrases with -which the French monarchy--“despotism tempered by epigram”--was wont -to designate the taxes that devoured the land. There was a charming -politeness in the assumption that taxes were free gifts, gladly given; -but those who gave them knew. - - - - - The Riverside Press - CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS - U . S . A - - - - -FOOTNOTE: - -[1] Beattie’s _Minstrel_. - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - Archaic or variant spelling has been retained. - - The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is - entered into the public domain. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY AND OTHER -ESSAYS *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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