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diff --git a/old/7dlbr10.txt b/old/7dlbr10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ca42ca5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7dlbr10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4613 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of De Libris: Prose and Verse, by Austin Dobson + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: De Libris: Prose and Verse + +Author: Austin Dobson + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9979] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on November 7, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE LIBRIS: PROSE AND VERSE *** + + + + +Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Sjaani and the Online Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +DE LIBRIS PROSE & VERSE + +BY AUSTIN DOBSON + + + +Vt Mel Os, sic Cor Melos afficit, & reficit. _Deuteromelia_. + +A mixture of a _Song_ doth ever adde Pleasure. BACON (_adapted_). + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1908 + + +_Copyright 1908 by The Macmillan Company_ + + + + +_PROLOGUE_ + +_LECTOR BENEVOLE!_--FOR SO +THEY USED TO CALL YOU, YEARS AGO,-- +I CAN'T PRETEND TO MAKE YOU READ +THE PAGES THAT TO THIS SUCCEED; +NOR COULD I--IF I WOULD--EXCUSE +THE WAYWARD PROMPTINGS OF THE MUSE +AT WHOSE COMMAND I WROTE THEM DOWN. + +I HAVE NO HOPE TO "PLEASE THE TOWN." +I DID BUT THINK SOME FRIENDLY SOUL +(NOT ILL-ADVISED, UPON THE WHOLE!) +MIGHT LIKE THEM; AND "TO INTERPOSE +A LITTLE EASE," BETWEEN THE PROSE, +SLIPPED IN THE SCRAPS OF VERSE, THAT THUS +THINGS MIGHT BE LESS MONOTONOUS. + +THEN, _LECTOR,_ BE _BENEVOLUS!_ + + + + +[_The Author desires to express his thanks to Lord Northcliffe, Messrs. +Macmillan and Co., Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., Mr. William Heinemann, +and Messrs. Virtue and Co., for kind permission to reprint those pieces +in this volume concerning which no specific arrangements were made on +their first appearance in type._] + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Prologue +On Some Books And Their Associations +An Epistle To An Editor +Bramston's "Man Of Taste" +The Passionate Printer To His Love +M. Rouquet On The Arts +The Friend Of Humanity And The Rhymer +The Parent's Assistant +A Pleasant Invective Against Printing +Two Modern Book Illustrators--I. Kate Greenaway +A Song Of The Greenaway Child +Two Modern Book Illustrators--Ii. Mr. Hugh Thomson +Horatian Ode On The Tercentenary Of "Don Quixote" +The Books Of Samuel Rogers +Pepys' "Diary" +A French Critic On Bath +A Welcome From The "Johnson Club" +Thackeray's "Esmond" +A Miltonic Exercise +Fresh Facts About Fielding +The Happy Printer +Cross Readings--And Caleb Whitefoord +The Last Proof +General Index + + + + +_ILLUSTRATIONS_ + + +* THE OTTER HUNT IN THE "COMPLEAT ANGLER." From an unpublished +pen-drawing by Mr. Hugh Thomson _Frontispiece_ + +*GROUP OF CHILDREN. From the original pen-drawing by Kate Greenaway for +_The Library,_ 1881 + +*PENCIL-SKETCHES, by the same (No. 1) + +*PENCIL-SKETCH, by the same (No. 2) + +*PENCIL-SKETCHES, by the same (No. 3) + +*PENCIL-SKETCH, by the same (No. 4) + +THE BROWN BOOK-PLATE. From the original design by Mr. Hugh Thomson in +the possession of Mr. Ernest Brown + +*SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY AT THE ASSIZES. From a first rough pencil-sketch, +by the same, for _Days with Sir Roger de Coverley,_ 1886 + +PEN-SKETCHES, by the same, on the Half-Title of the _Ballad of Beau +Brocade,_ 1892. From the originals in the possession of Mr. A. +T.A. Dobson + +*PEN-SKETCH (TRIPLET), by the same, on a Flyleaf of _Peg Woffington,_ +1899 + +EVELINA AND THE BRANGHTONS, by the same. From the Cranford _Evelina,_ +1903 + +LADY CASTLEWOOD AND HER SON, by the same. From the Cranford _Esmond_, +1905 + +MERCERY LANE, CANTERBURY, by the same. From the original pencil-drawing +for _Highways and Byways in Kent_, 1907 + +_The originals of the illustrations preceded by an asterisk are in the +possession of the Author._ + + + + +ON SOME BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS + + +New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best +deckle-edged Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with +backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be +no more to us than the constrained and uneasy acquaintances of +yesterday. Friends they may become to-morrow, the day after,--perhaps +"hunc in annum et plures" But for the time being they have neither part +nor lot in our past of retrospect and suggestion. Of what we were, of +what we like or liked, they know nothing; and we--if that be +possible--know even less of them. Whether familiarity will breed +contempt, or whether they will come home to our business and +bosom,--these are things that lie on the lap of the Fates. + +But it is to be observed that the associations of old books, as of new +books, are not always exclusively connected with their text or +format,--are sometimes, as a matter of fact, independent of both. Often +they are memorable to us by length of tenure, by propinquity,--even by +their patience under neglect. We may never read them; and yet by reason +of some wholly external and accidental characteristic, it would be a +wrench to part with them if the moment of separation--the inevitable +hour--should arrive at last. Here, to give an instance in point, is a +stained and battered French folio, with patched corners,--Mons. N. +Renouard's translation of the _Metamorphoses d'Ovide_, 1637, "_enrichies +de figures a chacune Fable_" (very odd figures some of them are!) and to +be bought "_chez Pierre Billaine, rue Sainct Iacques, a la Bonne-Foy, +deuant S. Yues_." It has held no honoured place upon the shelves; it has +even resided au rez-de-chaussee,--that is to say, upon the floor; but it +is not less dear,-- not less desirable. For at the back of the +"Dedication to the King" (Lewis XIII. to wit), is scrawled in a +slanting, irregular hand: "_Pour mademoiselle de mons Son tres humble et +tres obeissant Serviteur St. Andre._" Between the fourth and fifth word, +some one, in a smaller writing of later date, has added "_par_" and +after "St. Andre," the signature "_Vandeuvre_." In these irrelevant (and +unsolicited) interpolations, I take no interest. But who was Mlle. de +Mons? As Frederick Locker sings: + + Did She live yesterday or ages back? + What colour were the eyes when bright and waking? + And were your ringlets fair, or brown, or black, + Poor little Head! that long has done with aching![1] + +"Ages back" she certainly did _not_ live, for the book is dated "1637," +and "yesterday" is absurd. But that her eyes were bright,--nay, that +they were particularly lively and vivacious, even as they are in the +sanguine sketches of Antoine Watteau a hundred years afterwards, I am +"confidous"--as Mrs. Slipslop would say. For my theory (in reality a +foregone conclusion which I shrink from dispersing by any practical +resolvent) is, that Mile. de Mons was some delightful +seventeenth--century French child, to whom the big volume had been +presented as a picture-book. I can imagine the alert, strait-corseted +little figure, with ribboned hair, eagerly craning across the tall +folio; and following curiously with her finger the legends under the +copper "figures,"--"Narcisse en fleur," "Ascalaphe en hibou," "Jason +endormant le dragon,"--and so forth, with much the same wonder that the +Sinne-Beelden of Jacob Cats must have stirred in the little Dutchwomen +of Middelburg. There can be no Mlle. de Mons but this,--and for me she +can never grow old! + +Note: + +[1] This quatrain has the distinction of having been touched upon by +Thackeray. When Mr. Locker's manuscript went to the Cornhill Magazine +in 1860, it ran thus: + + Did she live yesterday, or ages sped? + What colour were the eyes when bright and waking? + And were your ringlets fair? Poor little head! + --Poor little heart! that long has done with aching. + + +Sometimes it comes to pass that the association is of a more far-fetched +and fanciful kind. In the great Ovid it lies in an inscription: in my +next case it is "another-guess" matter. The folio this time is the +_Sylva Sylvarum_ of the "Right Hon. Francis Lo. Verulam. Viscount St. +Alban," of whom some people still prefer to speak as Lord Bacon. 'Tis +only the "sixt Edition"; but it was to be bought at the Great Turk's +Head, "next to the Mytre Tauerne" (not the modern pretender, be it +observed!), which is in itself a feature of interest. A former +possessor, from his notes, appears to have been largely preoccupied with +that ignoble clinging to life which so exercised Matthew Arnold, for +they relate chiefly to laxative simples for medicine; and he comforts +himself, in April, 1695, by transcribing Bacon's reflection that "a Life +led in _Religion_ and in _Holy Exercises_" conduces to longevity,--an +aphorism which, however useful as an argument for length of days, is a +rather remote reason for religion. But what to me is always most +seductive in the book is, that to this edition (not copy, of course) of +1651 Master Izaak Walton, when he came, in his _Compleat Angler_ of +1653, to discuss such abstract questions as the transmission of sound +under water, and the ages of carp and pike, must probably have referred. +He often mentions "Sir Francis Bacon's" _History of Life and Death_, +which is included in the volume. No doubt it would be more reasonable +and more "congruous" that Bacon's book should suggest Bacon. But there +it is. That illogical "succession of ideas" which puzzled my Uncle Toby, +invariably recalls to me, not the imposing folio to be purchased "next +to the Mytre Tauerne" in Fleet Street, but the unpretentious +eighteenpenny octavo which, two years later, was on sale at Richard +Marriot's in St. Dunstan's churchyard hard by, and did no more than +borrow its erudition from the riches of the Baconian storehouse. + +Life, and its prolongation, is again the theme of the next book (also +mentioned, by the way, in Walton) which I take up, though unhappily it +has no inscription. It is a little old calf-clad copy of Lewis Cornaro's +_Sure and Certain Methods of attaining a Long and Healthful Life_, 4th +ed., 24mo, 1727; and was bought at the Bewick sale of February, 1884, as +having once belonged to Robert Elliot Bewick, only son of the famous old +Newcastle wood-engraver. As will be shown later, it is easy to be misled +in these matters, but I cannot help believing that this volume, which +looks as if it had been re-bound, is the one Thomas Bewick mentions in +his _Memoir_ as having been his companion in those speculative +wanderings over the Town Moor or the Elswick Fields, when, as an +apprentice, he planned his future _a la_ Franklin, and devised schemes +for his conduct in life. In attaining Cornaro's tale of years he did not +succeed; though he seems to have faithfully practised the periods of +abstinence enjoined (but probably not observed) by another of the "noble +Venetian's" professed admirers, Mr. Addison of the _Spectator_. + +If I have admitted a momentary misgiving as to the authenticity of the +foregoing relic of the "father of white line," there can be none about +the next item to which I now come. Once, on a Westminster bookstall, +long since disappeared, I found a copy of a seventh edition of the +_Pursuits of Literature_ of T.J. Mathias, Queen Charlotte's Treasurer's +Clerk. Brutally cut down by the binder, that _durus arator_ had +unexpectedly spared a solitary page for its manuscript comment, which +was thoughtfully turned up and folded in. It was a note to this couplet +in Mathias, his Dialogue II.:-- + + From Bewick's magick wood throw borrow'd rays + O'er many a page in gorgeous Bulmer's blaze,-- + +"gorgeous Bulmer" (the epithet is over-coloured!) being the William +Bulmer who, in 1795, issued the _Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell_. "I" +(says the writer of the note) "was chiefly instrumental to this +ingenious artist's [Bewick's] excellence in this art. I first initiated +his master, Mr. Ra. Beilby (of Newcastle) into the art, and his first +essay was the execution of the cuts in my Treatise on Mensuration, +printed in 4to, 1770. Soon after I recommended the same artist to +execute the cuts to Dr. Horsley's edition of the works of Newton. +Accordingly Mr. B. had the job, who put them into the hands of his +assistant, Mr. Bewick, who executed them as his first work in wood, and +that in a most elegant manner, tho' spoiled in the printing by John +Nichols, the Black-letter printer. C.H. 1798." + +"C.H." is Dr. Charles Hutton, the Woolwich mathematician. His note is a +little in the vaunting vein of that "founder of fortun's," the excellent +Uncle Pumblechook of _Great Expectations_, for his services scarcely +amounted to "initiating" Bewick or his master into the art of engraving +on wood. Moreover, his memory must have failed him, for Bewick, and not +Beilby, did the majority of the cuts to the _Mensuration_, including a +much-praised diagram of the tower of St. Nicholas Church at Newcastle, +afterwards a familiar object in the younger man's designs and +tail-pieces. Be this as it may, Dr. Hutton's note was surely worth +rescuing from the ruthless binder's plough. + +Between the work of Thomas Bewick and the work of Samuel Pepys, it is +idle to attempt any ingenious connecting link, save the fact that they +both wrote autobiographically. The "Pepys" in question here, however, is +not the famous _Diary_, but the Secretary to the Admiralty's "only other +acknowledged work," namely, the privately printed _Memoires Relating to +the State of the Royal Navy of England, for Ten Years, 1690_; and this +copy may undoubtedly lay claim to exceptional interest. For not only +does it comprise those manuscript corrections in the author's +handwriting, which Dr. Tanner reproduced in his excellent Clarendon +Press reprint of last year, but it includes the two portrait plates by +Robert White after Kneller. The larger is bound in as a frontispiece; +the smaller (the ex-libris) is inserted at the beginning. The main +attraction of the book to me, however, is its previous owners--one +especially. My immediate predecessor was a well-known collector, +Professor Edward Solly, at whose sale in 1886 I bought it; and he in his +turn had acquired it in 1877, at Dr. Rimbault's sale. Probably what drew +us all to the little volume was not so much its disclosure of the +lamentable state of the Caroline navy, and of the monstrous toadstools +that flourished so freely in the ill-ventilated holds of His Majesty's +ships-of-war, as the fact that it had once belonged to that brave old +philanthropist, Captain Thomas Coram of the Foundling Hospital. To him +it was presented in March, 1724, by one C. Jackson; and he afterwards +handed it on to a Mr. Mills. Pasted at the end is Coram's autograph +letter, dated "June 10th, 1746." "To Mr. Mills These. Worthy Sir I +happend to find among my few Books, Mr. Pepys his memoires, w'ch I +thought might be acceptable to you & therefore pray you to accept of it. +I am w'th much Respect Sir your most humble Ser't. THOMAS CORAM." + +At the Foundling Hospital is a magnificent full-length of Coram, with +curling white locks and kindly, weather-beaten face, from the brush of +his friend and admirer, William Hogarth. It is to Hogarth and his +fellow-Governor at the Foundling, John Wilkes, that my next jotting +relates. These strange colleagues in charity afterwards--as is well +known--quarrelled bitterly over politics. Hogarth caricatured Wilkes in +the _Times_: Wilkes replied by a _North Briton_ article (No. 17) so +scurrilous and malignant that Hogarth was stung into rejoining with that +famous squint-eyed semblance of his former crony, which has handed him +down to posterity more securely than the portraits of Zoffany and +Earlom. Wilkes's action upon this was to reprint his article with the +addition of a bulbous-nosed woodcut of Hogarth "from the Life." These +facts lent interest to an entry which for years had been familiar to me +in the Sale Catalogue of Mr. H.P. Standly, and which ran thus: "The +NORTH BRITON, No. 17, with a PORTRAIT of HOGARTH in WOOD; _and a severe +critique on some of his works: in Ireland's handwriting_ is the +following--'_This paper was given to me by Mrs. Hogarth, Aug. 1782, and +is the identical North Briton purchased by Hogarth, and carried in his +pocket many days to show his friends_.'" The Ireland referred to (as +will presently appear) was Samuel Ireland of the _Graphic +Illustrations_. When, in 1892, dispersed items of the famous Joly +collection began to appear sporadically in the second-hand catalogues, I +found in that of a well-known London bookseller an entry plainly +describing this one, and proclaiming that it came "from the celebrated +collection of Mr. Standly, of St. Neots." Unfortunately, the scrap of +paper connecting it with Mrs. Hogarth's present to Ireland had been +destroyed. Nevertheless, I secured my prize, had it fittingly bound up +with the original number which accompanied it; and here and there, in +writing about Hogarth, bragged consequentially about my fortunate +acquisition. Then came a day--a day to be marked with a black +stone!--when in the British Museum Print Room, and looking through the +"--Collection," for the moment deposited there, I came upon _another_ +copy of the _North Briton_, bearing in Samuel Ireland's writing a +notification to the effect that it was the Identical No. 17, etc., etc. +Now which is the right one? Is either the right one? I inspect mine +distrustfully. It is soiled, and has evidently been folded; it is +scribbled with calculations; it has all the aspect of a _venerable +vetuste_. That it came from the Standly collection, I am convinced. But +that other pretender in the (now dispersed) "--Collection"? And was +not Samuel Ireland (_nomen invisum_!) the, if not fraudulent, at least +too-credulous father of one William Henry Ireland, who, at eighteen, +wrote _Vortigern and Rowena_, and palmed it off as genuine Shakespeare? +I fear me--I much fear me--that, in the words of the American showman, +I have been "weeping over the wrong grave." + +To prolong these vagrant adversaria would not be difficult. Here, for +example, dated 1779, are the _Coplas_ of the poet Don Jorge Manrique, +which, having no Spanish, I am constrained to study in the renderings of +Longfellow. Don Jorge was a Spaniard of the Spaniards, Commendador of +Montizon, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Captain of a company in the +Guards of Castile, and withal a valiant _soldado_, who died of a wound +received in battle. But the attraction of my volume is, that, at the +foot of the title-page, in beautiful neat script, appear the words, +"Robert Southey. Paris. 17 May 1817,"--being the year in which Southey +stayed at Como with Walter Savage Landor. Here are the _Works_ of +mock-heroic John Philips, 1720, whose _Blenheim_ the Tories pitted +against Addison's _Campaign_, and whose _Splendid Shilling_ still shines +lucidly among eighteenth-century parodies. This copy bears--also on the +title-page--the autograph of James Thomson, not yet the author of _The +Seasons_; and includes the book-plate of Lord Prestongrange,--that +"Lord Advocate Grant" of whom you may read in the _Kidnapped_ of +"R.L.S." Here again is an edition (the first) of Hazlitt's _Lectures on +the English Comic Writers_, annotated copiously in MS. by a contemporary +reader who was certainly not an admirer; and upon whom W.H.'s +cockneyisms, Gallicisms, egotisms, and "_ille_-isms" generally, seem to +have had the effect of a red rag upon an inveterately insular bull. "A +very ingenious but pert, dogmatical, and Prejudiced Writer" is his +uncomplimentary addition to the author's name. Then here is Cunningham's +_Goldsmith_ of 1854, vol. i., castigated with equal energy by that +Alaric Alexander Watts,[2] of whose egregious strictures upon Wordsworth +we read not long since in the _Cornhill Magazine_, and who will not +allow Goldsmith to say, in the _Haunch of Venison_, "the porter and +eatables followed behind." "They could scarcely have followed +before,"--he objects, in the very accents of Boeotia. Nor will he pass +"the hollow-sounding bittern" of the _Deserted Village_. A barrel may +sound hollow, but not a bird--this wiseacre acquaints us. + +Note: + +[2] So he was christened. But Lockhart chose to insist that his +second pre-name should properly be "Attila," and thenceforth he was +spoken of in this way. + + +Had the gifted author of _Lyrics of the Heart_ never heard of rhetorical +figures? But he is not Goldsmith's only hyper-critic. Charles Fox, who +admired _The Traveller_, thought Olivia's famous song in the _Vicar_ +"foolish," and added that "folly" was a bad rhyme to "melancholy."[3] He +must have forgotten Milton's:-- + + Bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, + Most musicall, most melancholy! + +Or he might have gone to the other camp, and remembered Pope on Mrs. +Howard:-- + + Not warp'd by Passion, aw'd by Rumour, + Not grave thro' Pride,, or gay thro' Folly, + An equal Mixture of good Humour, + And sensible soft Melancholy. + +Note: + +[3] _Recollections_, by Samuel Rogers, 2nd ed., 1859, 43. + + + + +AN EPISTLE TO AN EDITOR + + +"Jamais les arbres verts n'ont essaye d'etre bleus."-- +THEOPHILE GAUTIER. + + +"A new Review!" You make me tremble +(Though as to that, I can dissemble +Till I hear more). But is it "new"? +And will it be a _real_ Review?-- +I mean, a Court wherein the scales +Weigh equally both him that fails, +And him that hits the mark?--a place +Where the accus'd can plead his case, +If wrong'd? All this I need to know +Before I (arrogant!) say "Go." + +"We, that are very old" (the phrase +Is STEELE'S, not mine!), in former days, +Have seen so many "new Reviews" +Arise, arraign, absolve, abuse;-- +Proclaim their mission to the top +(Where there's still room!), then slowly drop, + +Shrink down, fade out, and _sans_ preferment, +Depart to their obscure interment;-- +We should be pardon'd if we doubt +That a new venture _can_ hold out. + +It _will_, you say. Then don't be "new"; +Be "old." The Old is still the True. +Nature (said GAUTIER) never tries +To alter her accustom'd dyes; +And all your novelties at best +Are ancient puppets, newly drest. +What you must do, is not to shrink +From speaking out the thing you think; +And blaming where 'tis right to blame, +Despite tradition and a Name. +Yet don't expand a trifling blot, +Or ban the book for what it's not +(That is the poor device of those +Who cavil where they can't oppose!); +Moreover (this is _very_ old!), +Be courteous--even when you scold! + +Blame I put first, but not at heart. +You must give Praise the foremost part;-- +Praise that to those who write is breath +Of Life, if just; if unjust, Death. +Praise then the things that men revere; +Praise what they love, not what they fear; +Praise too the young; praise those who try; +Praise those who fail, but by and by +May do good work. Those who succeed, +You'll praise perforce,--so there's no need +To speak of that. And as to each, +See you keep measure in your speech;-- +See that your praise be so exprest +That the best man shall get the best; +Nor fail of the fit word you meant +Because your epithets are spent. +Remember that our language gives +No limitless superlatives; +And SHAKESPEARE, HOMER, _should_ have more +Than the last knocker at the door! + +"We, that are very old!"--May this +Excuse the hint you find amiss. +My thoughts, I feel, are what to-day +Men call _vieux jeu_. Well!--"let them say." +The Old, at least, we know: the New +(A changing Shape that all pursue!) +Has been,--may be, a fraud. +--But there! +Wind to your sail! _Vogue la galere!_ + + + +BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE" + +Were you to inquire respectfully of the infallible critic (if such +indeed there be!) for the source of the aphorism, "Music has charms to +soothe a savage beast," he would probably "down" you contemptuously in +the Johnsonian fashion by replying that you had "just enough of learning +to misquote";--that the last word was notoriously "breast" and not +"beast";--and that the line, as Macaulay's, and every Board School-boy +besides must be abundantly aware, is to be found in Congreve's tragedy +of _The Mourning Bride_. But he would be wrong; and, in fact, would only +be confirming the real author's contention that "Sure, of all +blockheads, _Scholars_ are the worst." For, whether connected with +Congreve or not, the words are correctly given; and they occur in the +Rev. James Bramston's satire, _The Man of Taste_, 1733, running in a +couplet as follows:-- + + Musick has charms to sooth a savage beast, + And therefore proper at a Sheriff's feast. + +Moreover, according to the handbooks, this is not the only passage from +a rather obscure original which has held its own. "Without +black-velvet-britches, what is man?"--is another (a speculation which +might have commended itself to Don Quixote);[4] while _The Art of +Politicks_, also by Bramston, contains a third:-- + + What's not destroy'd by Time's devouring Hand? + Where's _Troy_, and where's the _May-Pole_ in the _Strand_? + +Polonius would perhaps object against a "devouring hand." But the +survival of--at least--three fairly current citations from a practically +forgotten minor Georgian satirist would certainly seem to warrant a few +words upon the writer himself, and his chief performance in verse. + +The Rev. James Bramston was born in 1694 or 1695 at Skreens, near +Chelmsford, in Essex, his father, Francis Bramston, being the fourth son +of Sir Moundeford Bramston, Master in Chancery, whose father again was +Sir John Bramston, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, generally +known as "the elder."[5]James Bramston was admitted to Westminster +School in 1708. In 1713 he became a scholar at Christ Church, Oxford, +proceeding B.A. in 1717, and M.A. in 1720. In 1723 he was made Vicar of +Lurgashall, and in 1725 of Harting, both of which Sussex livings he held +until his death in March 1744, ten weeks before the death of Pope. His +first published verses (1715) were on Dr. Radcliffe. In 1729 he printed +_The Art of Politicks_, one of the many contemporary imitations of the +_Ars Poetica_; and in 1733 _The Man of Taste_. He also wrote a mediocre +variation on the _Splendid Shilling_ of John Philips, entitled _The +Crooked Sixpence_, 1743. Beyond a statement in Dallaway's _Sussex_ that +"he [Bramston] was a man of original humour, the fame and proofs of +whose colloquial wit are still remembered"; and the supplementary +information that, as incumbent of Lurgashall, he received an annual +_modus_ of a fat buck and doe from the neighbouring Park of Petworth, +nothing more seems to have been recorded of him. + +Notes: + +[4] Whose _grand tenue_ or holiday wear--Cervantes tells us--was "a +doublet of fine cloth and _velvet breeches_ and shoes to match." (ch. 1). + +[5] Sir John Bramston, the younger, was the author of the "watery +incoherent _Autobiography_"--as Carlyle calls it--published by the Camden +Society in 1845. + + +_The Crooked Sixpence_ is, at best, an imitation of an imitation; and as +a Miltonic _pastiche_ does not excel that of Philips, or rival the more +serious _Lewesdon Hill_ of Crowe. _The Art of Politicks_, in its turn, +would need a fairly long commentary to make what is only moderately +interesting moderately intelligible, while eighteenth-century copies of +Horace's letter to the Pisos are "plentiful as blackberries." But _The +Man of Taste_, based, as it is, on the presentment of a never extinct +type, the connoisseur against nature, is still worthy of passing notice. + +In the sub-title of the poem, it is declared to be "Occasion'd by an +Epistle of Mr. Pope's on that Subject" [i.e. "Taste"]. This was what is +now known as No. 4 of the _Moral Essays_, "On the Use of Riches." But +its first title In 1731 was "Of Taste"; and this was subsequently +altered to "Of False Taste." It was addressed to Pope's friend, Richard +Boyle, Earl of Burlington; and, under the style of "Timon's Villa," +employed, for its chief illustration of wasteful and vacuous +magnificence, the ostentatious seat which James Brydges, first Duke of +Chandos, had erected at Canons, near Edgware. The story of Pope's +epistle does not belong to this place. But in the print of _The Man of +Taste_, William Hogarth, gratifying concurrently a personal antipathy, +promptly attacked Pope, Burlington, and his own _bete noire_, +Burlington's architect, William Kent. Pope, to whom Burlington acts as +hodman, is depicted whitewashing Burlington Gate, Piccadilly, which is +labelled "Taste," and over which rises Kent's statue, subserviently +supported at the angles of the pediment by Raphael and Michelangelo. In +his task, the poet, a deformed figure in a tye-wig, bountifully +bespatters the passers-by, particularly the chariot of the Duke of +Chandos. The satire was not very brilliant or ingenious; but its meaning +was clear. Pope was prudent enough to make no reply; though, as Mr. G.S. +Layard shows in his _Suppressed Plates_, it seems that the print was, or +was sought to be, called in by those concerned. Bramston's poem, which +succeeded in 1733, does not enter into the quarrel, it may be because of +the anger aroused by the pictorial reply. But if--as announced on its +title-page,--it was suggested by Pope's epistle, it would also seem to +have borrowed its name from Hogarth's caricature. + +It was first issued in folio by Pope's publisher, Lawton Gilliver of +Fleet Street, and has a frontispiece engraved by Gerard Vandergucht. +This depicts a wide-skirted, effeminate-looking personage, carrying a +long cane with a head fantastically carved, and surrounded by various +objects of art. In the background rises what is apparently intended for +the temple of a formal garden; and behind this again, a winged ass +capers skittishly upon the summit of Mount Helicon. As might be +anticipated, the poem is in the heroic measure of Pope. But though many +of its couplets are compact and pointed, Bramston has not yet learned +from his model the art of varying his pausation, and the period closes +his second line with the monotony of a minute gun. Another defect, +noticed by Warton, is that the speaker throughout is made to profess the +errors satirised, and to be the unabashed mouthpiece of his own fatuity, +"Mine," say the concluding lines,-- + + Mine are the gallant Schemes of Politesse, + For books, and buildings, politicks, and dress. + This is _True Taste_, and whoso likes it not, + Is blockhead, coxcomb, puppy, fool, and sot. + +One is insensibly reminded of a quotation from P.L. Courier, made in the +_Cornhill_ many years since by the once famous "Jacob Omnium" when +replying controversially to the author of _Ionica_, "_Je vois_"--says +Courier, after recapitulating a string of abusive epithets hurled at him +by his opponent--"_je vois ce qu'il veut dire: il entend que lui et moi +sont d'avis different; et c'est la sa maniere de s'exprimer_." It was +also the manner of our Man of Taste. + +The second line of the above quotation from Bramston gives us four of +the things upon which his hero lays down the law. Let us see what he +says about literature. As a professing critic he prefers books +with notes:-- + + Tho' _Blackmore's_ works my soul with raptures fill, + With notes by _Bently_ they'd be better still. + +Swift he detests--not of course for detestable qualities, but because he +is so universally admired. In poetry he holds by rhyme as opposed to +blank verse:-- + + Verse without rhyme I never could endure, + Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure. + To him as Nature, when he ceas'd to see, + _Milton's_ an _universal Blank_ to me ... + _Thompson _[_sic_] write blank, but know that for that reason + These lines shall live, when thine are out of season. + Rhyme binds and beautifies the Poet's lays + As _London_ Ladies owe their shape to stays. + +In this the Man of Taste is obviously following the reigning fashion. +But if we may assume Bramston himself to approve what his hero condemns, +he must have been in advance of his age, for blank verse had but sparse +advocates at this time, or for some time to come. Neither Gray, nor +Johnson, nor Goldsmith were ever reconciled to what the last of them +styles "this unharmonious measure." Goldsmith, in particular, would +probably have been in exact agreement with the couplet as to the +controlling powers of rhyme. "If rhymes, therefore," he writes, in the +_Enquiry into Polite Learning_,[6] "be more difficult [than blank +verse], for that very reason, I would have our poets write in rhyme. +Such a restriction upon the thought of a good poet, often lifts and +encreases the vehemence of every sentiment; for fancy, like a fountain, +plays highest by diminishing the aperture."[7] + +Notes: + +[6] Ed. 1759, p. 151. + +[7] Montaigne has a somewhat similar illustration: "As _Cleanthes_ The +Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is said, that as the voice +being forciblie pent in the narrow gullet of a trumpet, at last issueth +forth more strong and shriller, so me seemes, that a sentence cunningly +and closely couched in measure-keeping Posie, darts it selfe forth more +furiously, and wounds me even to the quicke". +(_Essayes_, bk. i. ch. xxv. (Florio's translation). + + +The Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is Colley Cibber, who, +however, deserves the laurel he wears, not for _The Careless Husband_, +his best comedy, but for his Epilogues and other Plays. + + It pleases me, that _Pope_ unlaurell'd goes, + While _Cibber_ wears the Bays for Play-house Prose, + So _Britain's_ Monarch once uncover'd sate, + While _Bradshaw_ bully'd in a broad-brimmed hat,-- + +a reminiscence of King Charles's trial which might have been added to +Bramston stock quotations. The productions of "Curll's chaste press" are +also this connoisseur's favourite reading,--the lives of players in +particular, probably on the now obsolete grounds set forth in Carlyie's +essay on Scott.[8] Among these the memoirs of Cibber's "Lady Betty +Modish," Mrs. Oldfield, then lately dead, and buried in Westminster +Abbey, are not obscurely indicated. + +Note: + +[8] "It has been said. 'There are no English lives worth reading except +those of Players, who by the nature of the case have bidden Respectability +good-day.'" + +In morals our friend--as might be expected _circa_ l730--is a +Freethinker and Deist. Tindal is his text-book: his breviary the _Fable +of the Bees_;-- + + T' Improve In Morals _Mandevil_ I read, + And _Tyndal's_ Scruples are my settled Creed. + I travell'd early, and I soon saw through + Religion all, e'er I was twenty-two. + Shame, Pain, or Poverty shall I endure, + When ropes or opium can my ease procure? + When money's gone, and I no debts can pay, + Self-murder is an honourable way. + As _Pasaran_ directs I'd end my life, + And kill myself, my daughter, and my wife. + +He would, of course, have done nothing of the kind; nor, for the matter +of that, did his Piedmontese preceptor.[9] + +Note: + +[9] Count Passeran was a freethinking nobleman who wrote _A +Philosophical Discourse on Death_, in which he defended suicide, though +he refrained from resorting to it himself. Pope refers to him in the +_Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue i. 124:-- + + If Blount despatch'd himself, he play'd the man, + And so may'st thou, illustrious Passeran! + + +_Nil admirari_ is the motto of the Man of Taste in Building, where he is +naturally at home. He can see no symmetry in the Banqueting House, or in +St. Paul's Covent Garden, or even in St. Paul's itself. + + Sure wretched _Wren_ was taught by bungling _Jones_, + To murder mortar, and disfigure stones! + +"Substantial" Vanbrugh he likes-=chiefly because his work would make +"such noble ruins." Cost is his sole criterion, and here he, too, seems +to glance obliquely at Canons:-- + + _Dorick, Ionick,_ shall not there be found, + But it shall cost me threescore thousand pound. + +But this was moderate, as the Edgware "folly" reached L250,000. In +Gardening he follows the latest whim for landscape. Here is his +burlesque of the principles of Bridgeman and Batty Langley:-- + + Does it not merit the beholder's praise, + What's high to sink? and what is low to raise? + Slopes shall ascend where once a green-house stood, + And in my horse-pond I will plant a wood. + Let misers dread the hoarded gold to waste, + Expence and alteration show a _Taste_. + +As a connoisseur of Painting this enlightened virtuoso is given over to +Hogarth's hated dealers in the Black Masters:-- + + In curious paintings I'm exceeding nice, + And know their several beauties by their _Price_. + _Auctions_ and _Sales_ I constantly attend, + But chuse my pictures by a _skilful Friend_, + Originals and copies much the same, + The picture's value is the _painter's name_.[10] + +Of Sculpture he says-- + + In spite of _Addison_ and ancient _Rome_, + Sir _Cloudesly Shovel's_ is my fav'rite tomb.[11] + How oft have I with admiration stood, + To view some City-magistrate in wood? + I gaze with pleasure on a Lord May'r's head + Cast with propriety in gilded lead,-- + +the allusion being obviously to Cheere's manufactory of such popular +garden decorations at Hyde Park Corner. + +Notes: + +[10]: See _post_, "M. Ronquet on the Arts," p. 51. + +[11]: "Sir _Cloudesly Shovel's_ Monument has very often given me great +Offence: Instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the +distinguishing Character of that plain, gallant Man, he is represented +on his Tomb [in Westminster Abbey] by the Figure of a Beau, dressed in a +long Perriwig, and reposing himself upon Velvet Cushions under a Canopy +of State" (_Spectator_, March 30, 1711). + + +In Coins and Medals, true to his instinct for liking the worst the best, +he prefers the modern to the antique. In Music, with Hogarth's Rake two +years later, he is all for that "Dagon of the nobility and gentry," +imported song:-- + + Without _Italian_, or without an ear, + To _Bononcini's_ musick I adhere;-- + +though he confesses to a partiality for the bagpipe on the ground that +your true Briton "loves a grumbling noise," and he favours organs and +the popular oratorios. But his "top talent is a bill of fare":-- + + Sir Loins and rumps of beef offend my eyes,[12] + Pleas'd with frogs fricass[e]ed, and coxcomb-pies. + Dishes I chuse though little, yet genteel, + _Snails_[13] the first course, and _Peepers_[14] crown the meal. + Pigs heads with hair on, much my fancy please, + I love young colly-flowers if stew'd in cheese, + And give ten guineas for a pint of peas! + No tatling servants to my table come, + My Grace is _Silence_, and my waiter _Dumb_. + +He is not without his aspirations. + + Could I the _priviledge_ of _Peer_ procure, + The rich I'd bully, and oppress the poor. + To _give_ is wrong, but it is wronger still, + On any terms to _pay_ a tradesman's bill. + I'd make the insolent Mechanicks stay, + And keep my ready-money all for _play_. + I'd try if any pleasure could be found + In _tossing-up_ for twenty thousand pound. + Had I whole Counties, I to _White's_ would go, + And set lands, woods, and rivers at a throw. + But should I meet with an unlucky run, + And at a throw be gloriously undone; + My _debts of honour_ I'd discharge the first, + Let all my _lawful creditors_ be curst. + +Notes: + +[12] As they did those of Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs." "I hate your +immense loads of meat ... extreme disgusting to those who are in the +least acquainted with high life" (_Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. +241). + +[13]: The edible or Roman snail (_Helix pomatia_) is still +known to continental cuisines--and gipsy camps. It was introduced into +England as an epicure's dish in the seventeenth century. + +[14]: Young chickens. + + +Here he perfectly exemplifies that connexion between connoisseurship and +play which Fielding discovers in Book xiii. of _Tom Jones_.[15] An +anecdote of C.J. Fox aptly exhibits the final couplet in action, and +proves that fifty years later, at least, the same convenient code was in +operation. Fox once won about eight thousand pounds at cards. Thereupon +an eager creditor promptly presented himself, and pressed for payment. +"Impossible, Sir," replied Fox," I must first discharge my debts of +honour." The creditor expostulated. "Well, Sir, give me your bond." The +bond was delivered to Fox, who tore it up and flung the pieces into the +fire. "Now, Sir," said he, "my debt to you is a debt of honour," and +immediately paid him.[16] + +Notes: + +[15] "But the science of gaming is that which above all others +employs their thoughts [i.e. the thoughts of the 'young gentlemen of our +times']. These are the studies of their graver hours, while for their +amusements they have the vast circle of connoisseurship, painting, +music, statuary, and natural philosophy, or rather _unnatural_, which +deals in the wonderful, and knows nothing of nature, except her monsters +and imperfections" (ch. v.). + +[16] _Table Talk of Samuel Rogers_ [by Dyce], 1856, p. 73. + + +But we must abridge our levies on Pope's imitator. In Dress the Man of +Taste's aim seems to have been to emulate his own footman, and at this +point comes in the already quoted reference to velvet +"inexpressibles"--(a word which, the reader may be interested to learn, +is as old as 1793). His "pleasures," as might be expected, like those of +Goldsmith's Switzers, "are but low"-- + + To boon companions I my time would give, + With players, pimps, and parasites I'd live. + I would with _Jockeys_ from _Newmarket_ dine, + And to _Rough-riders_ give my choicest wine ... + My ev'nings all I would with _sharpers_ spend, + And make the _Thief-catcher_ my bosom friend. + In _Fig_, the Prize-fighter, by day delight, + And sup with _Colly Cibber_ ev'ry night. + +At which point--and probably in his cups--we leave our misguided fine +gentleman of 1733, doubtless a fair sample of many of his class under +the second George, and not wholly unknown under that monarch's +successors--even to this hour. _Le jour va passer; mais la folie ne +passera pas!_ + +A parting quotation may serve to illustrate one of those changes of +pronunciation which have taken place in so many English words. Speaking +of his villa, or country-box, the Man of Taste says-- + + Pots o'er the door I'll place like Cits balconies, + Which _Bently_ calls the _Gardens of Adonis_. + +To make this a peg for a dissertation on the jars of lettuce and fennel +grown by the Greeks for the annual Adonis festivals, is needless. But it +may be noted that Bramston, with those of his day,--Swift +excepted,--scans the "o" in balcony long, a practice which continued far +into the nineteenth century. "Contemplate," said Rogers, "is bad enough; +but balcony makes me sick."[17] And even in 1857, two years after +Rogers's death, the late Frederick Locker, writing of _Piccadilly_, +speaks of "Old Q's" well-known window in that thoroughfare as +"Primrose balcony." + +Note: + +[17:]_Table Talk_, 1856, p. 248. + + + + +THE PASSIONATE PRINTER TO HIS LOVE + + +(_Whose name is Amanda._) + +With Apologies to the Shade of Christopher Marlowe. + + +Come live with me and be my Dear; + And till that happy bond shall lapse, +I'll set your Poutings in _Brevier_,[l8] + Your Praises in the largest CAPS. + +There's _Diamond_--'tis for your Eyes; + There's _Ruby_--that will match your Lips; +_Pearl_, for your Teeth; and _Minion_-size. + To suit your dainty Finger-tips. + +In _Nonpareil_ I'll put your Face; + In _Rubric_ shall your Blushes rise; +There is no _Bourgeois_ in _your_ Case; + Your _Form_ can never need "_Revise_." + +Your Cheek seems "_Ready for the Press_"; + Your Laugh as _Clarendon_ is clear; +There's more distinction in your Dress + Than in the oldest _Elzevir_. + +So with me live, and with me die; + And may no "FINIS" e'er intrude +To break into mere "_Printers' Pie_" + The Type of our Beatitude! + +(ERRATUM.--If my suit you flout, + And choose some happier Youth to wed, +'Tis but to cross AMANDA out, + And read another name instead.) + +Note: + +[18] "Pronounced Bre-veer" (Printers' Vocabulary). + + + + +M. ROUQUET ON THE ARTS + + +M. Rouquet's book is a rare duodecimo of some two hundred pages, bound +in sheep, which, in the copy before us, has reached that particular +stage of disintegration when the scarfskin, without much persuasion, +peels away in long strips. Its title is--_L'Etat des Arts, en +Angleterre. Par M. Rouquet, de l'Academie Royale de Peinture & de +Sculpture_; and it is "_imprime a Paris_" though it was to be obtained +from John Nourse, "_Libraire dans le_ Strand, _proche_ Temple-barr"--a +well-known importer of foreign books, and one of Henry Fielding's +publishers. The date is 1755, being the twenty-eighth year of the reign +of His Majesty King George the Second--a reign not generally regarded as +favourable to art of any kind. In what month of 1755 the little volume +was first put forth does not appear; but it must have been before +October, when Nourse issued an English version. There is a dedication, +in the approved French fashion, to the Marquis de Marigny, "_Directeur & +Ordonnateur General de ses Batimens, Jardins, Arts, Academies & +Manufactures_" to Lewis the Fifteenth, above which is a delicate +headpiece by M. Charles-Nicolas Cochin (the greatest of the family), +where a couple of that artist's well-nourished _amorini_, insecurely +attached to festoons, distribute palms and laurels in vacuity under a +coroneted oval displaying fishes. For Monsieur Abel-Francois Poisson, +Marquis de Marigny et de Menars, was the younger brother of +Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the celebrated Marquise de Pompadour. +Cochin's etching is dated "1754"; and the "Approbation" at the end of +the volume bears his signature in his capacity of _Censeur_. + +Of the "M. Rouquet" of the title-page biography tells us little; but it +may be well, before speaking of his book, to bring that little together. +He was a Swiss Protestant of French extraction, born at Geneva in 1702. +His Christian names were Jean-Andre; and he had come to England from his +native land towards the close of the reign of George the First. Many of +his restless compatriots also sought these favoured shores. Labelye, who +rose from a barber's shop to be the architect of London Bridge; Liotard, +once regarded as a rival of Reynolds; Michael Moser, eventually Keeper +of the Royal Academy, had all migrated from the "stormy mansions" where, +in the words of Goldsmith's philosophic Wanderer-- + + Winter ling'ring chills the lap of May. + +Like Moser, Rouquet was a chaser and an enameller. He lodged on the +south side of Leicester Fields, in a house afterwards the residence of +another Switzer of the same craft, that miserable Theodore Gardelle, who +in 1761 murdered his landlady, Mrs. King. Of Rouquet's activities as an +artist in England there are scant particulars. The ordinary authorities +affirm that he imitated and rivalled the popular miniaturist and +enameller, Christian Zincke, who retired from practice in 1746; and he +is loosely described as "the companion of Hogarth, Garrick, Foote, and +the wits of the day." Of his relations with Foote and Garrick there is +scant record; but with Hogarth, his near neighbour in the Fields, he was +certainly well acquainted, since in 1746 he prepared explanations in +French for a number of Hogarth's prints. These took the form of letters +to a friend at Paris, and are supposed to have been, if not actually +inspired, at least approved by the painter. They usually accompanied all +the sets of Hogarth's engravings which went abroad; and, according to +George Steevens, it was Hogarth's intention ultimately to have them +translated and enlarged. Rouquet followed these a little later by a +separate description of "The March to Finchley," designed specially for +the edification of Marshal Foucquet de Belle-Isle, who, when the former +letters had been written, was a prisoner of war at Windsor. In a brief +introduction to this last, the author, hitherto unnamed, is spoken of as +"_Mr. Rouquet, connu par ses Outrages d'Email_." + +After thirty years' sojourn in this country, Rouquet transferred himself +to Paris. At what precise date he did this is not stated, but by a +letter to Hogarth from the French capital, printed by John Ireland, the +original of which is in the British Museum, he was there, and had been +there several months, in March 1753. The letter gives a highly +favourable account of its writer's fortunes. Business is "coming in very +smartly," he says. He has been excellently received, and is "perpetualy +imploy'd." There is far more encouragement for modern enterprise in +Paris than there is in London; and some of his utterances must have +rejoiced the soul of his correspondent. As this, for instance--"The +humbug _virtu_ is much more out of fashon here than in England, free +thinking upon that & other topicks is more common here than amongst you +if possible, old pictures & old stories fare's alike, a dark picture is +become a damn'd picture." On this account, he inquires anxiously as to +the publication of his friend's forthcoming _Analysis_; he has been +raising expectations about it, and he wishes to be the first to +introduce it into France. From other sources we learn that (perhaps +owing to his relations with Belle-Isle, who had been released in 1745) +he had been taken up by Marigny, and also by Cochin, then keeper of the +King's Drawings, and soon to be Secretary to the Academy, of which +Rouquet himself, by express order of Lewis the Fifteenth, was made a +member. Finally, as in the case of Cochin, apartments were assigned to +him in the Louvre. Whether he ever returned to this country is doubtful; +but, as we have seen, the _Etat des Arts_ was printed at Paris in 1755. +That it was suggested--or "commanded"--by Mme. de Pompadour's +connoisseur brother, to whom it was inscribed, is a not unreasonable +supposition. + +In any case, M. Rouquet's definition of the "Arts" is a generous one, +almost as wide as Marigny's powers, already sufficiently set forth at +the outset of this paper. For not only--as in duty bound--does he treat +of Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Engraving, but he also has +chapters on Printing, Porcelain, Gold-and Silver-smiths' Work, Jewelry, +Music, Declamation, Auctions, Shop-fronts, Cooking, and even on Medicine +and Surgery. Oddly enough, he says nothing of one notable art with which +Marigny was especially identified, that "art of creating landscape"--as +Walpole happily calls Gardening--which, in this not very "shining +period," entered upon a fresh development under Bridgeman and William +Kent. Although primarily a Londoner, one would think that M. Rouquet +must certainly have had some experience, if not of the efforts of the +innovators, at least of the very Batavian performances of Messrs. London +and Wise of Brompton; or that he should have found at Nonsuch or +Theobalds--at Moor Park or Hampton Court--the pretext for some of his +pages--if only to ridicule those "verdant sculptures" at which Pope, who +played no small part in the new movement, had laughed in the _Guardian_; +or those fantastic "coats of arms and mottoes in yew, box and holly" +over which Walpole also made merry long after in the famous essay so +neatly done into French by his friend the Duc de Nivernais. M. Rouquet's +curious reticence in this matter cannot have been owing to any +consideration for Hogarth's old enemy, William Kent, for Kent had been +dead seven years when the _Etat des Arts_ made its appearance. + +If, for lack of space, we elect to pass by certain preliminary +reflections which the _Monthly Review_ rather unkindly dismisses as a +"tedious jumble," M. Rouquet's first subject is History Painting, a +branch of the art which, under George the Second, attained to no great +excellence. For this M. Rouquet gives three main reasons, the first +being that afterwards advanced by Hogarth and Reynolds, namely,--the +practical exclusion, in Protestant countries, of pictures from churches. +A second cause was the restriction of chamber decorations to portraits +and engravings; and a third, the craze of the connoisseur for Hogarth's +hated "Black Masters," the productions of defunct foreigners. And this +naturally brings about the following digression, quite in Hogarth's own +way, against that contemporary charlatan, the picture-dealer:--"English +painters have an obstacle to overcome, which equally impedes the +progress of their talents and of their fortune. They have to contend +with a class of men whose business it is to sell pictures; and as, for +these persons, traffic in the works of living, and above all of native +artists, would be impossible, they make a point of decrying them, and, +as far as they can, of confirming amateurs with whom they have to deal +in the ridiculous idea that the older a picture is the more valuable it +becomes. See, say they (speaking of some modern effort), it still shines +with that ignoble freshness which is to be found in nature; Time will +have to indue it with his learned smoke--with that sacred cloud which +must some day hide it from the profane eyes of the vulgar in order to +reveal to the initiated alone the mysterious beauties of a venerable +antiquity." + +These words are quite in the spirit of Hogarth's later "Time smoking a +Picture." As a matter of fact, they are reproduced almost textually from +the writer's letter of five years earlier on the "March to Finchley." To +return, however, to History Painting. According to Rouquet, its leading +exponent[19] under George the Second was Francis Hayman of the "large +noses and shambling legs," now known chiefly as a crony of Hogarth, and +a facile but ineffectual illustrator of Shakespeare and Cervantes. In +1754, however, his pictures of _See-Saw, Hot Cockles, Blind Man's Buff_, +and the like, for the supper-boxes at Vauxhall Gardens, with Sayer's +prints therefrom, had made his name familiar, although he had not yet +painted those more elaborate compositions in the large room next the +rotunda, over which Fanny Burney's "Holborn Beau," Mr, Smith, comes to +such terrible grief in ch. xlvi. of _Evelina_. But he had contributed a +"Finding of Moses" to the New Foundling Hospital, which is still to be +seen in the Court Room there, in company with three other pictures +executed concurrently for the remaining compartments, Joseph Highmore's +"Hagar and Ishmael," James Wills's "Suffer little Children," and +Hogarth's "Moses brought to Pharaoh's Daughter"--the best of the four, +as well as the most successful of Hogarth's historical pieces. All +these, then recently installed, are mentioned by Rouquet. + +Note: + +[19] This is confirmed by Arthur Murphy: "Every Thing is put out +of Hand by this excellent Artist with the utmost Grace and Delicacy, and +his History-Pieces have, besides their beautiful Colouring, the most +lively Expression of Character" (_Gray's Inn Journal, February +9, 1754_). + + +It will be observed that he says nothing about Hogarth's earlier and +more ambitious efforts in the "Grand Style," the "Pool of Bethesda" and +the "Good Samaritan" at St. Bartholomew's, nor of the "Paul before +Felix," also lately added to Lincoln's Inn Hall--omissions which must +have sadly exercised the "author" of those monumental works when he came +to read his Swiss friend's little treatise. Nor, for the matter of that, +does M. Rouquet, when he treats of portrait, refer to Hogarth's +masterpiece in this kind, the full-length of Captain Coram at the +Foundling. On the other hand, he says a great deal about Hogarth which +has no very obvious connection with History Painting. He discusses the +_Analysis_ and the serpentine Line of Beauty with far more insight than +many of its author's contemporaries; refers feelingly to the Act by +which in 1735 the painter had so effectively cornered the pirates; and +finally defines his satirical pictures succinctly as follows:--"M. +Hogarth has given to England a new class of pictures. They contain a +great number of figures, usually seven or eight inches high. These +remarkable performances are, strictly speaking, the history of certain +vices, to a foreign eye often a little overcharged, but always full of +wit and novelty. He understands in his compositions how to make pleasant +pretext for satirising the ridiculous and the vicious, by firm and +significant strokes, all of which are prompted by a lively, fertile and +judicious imagination." + +From History Painting to Portrait in Oil, the title given by M. Rouquet +to his next chapter, transition is easy. Some of the artists mentioned +above were also portrait painters. Besides Captain Coram, for example, +Hogarth had already executed that admirable likeness of himself which is +now at Trafalgar Square, and which Rouquet must often have seen in its +home at Leicester Fields. Highmore too had certainly at this date +painted more than one successful portrait of Samuel Richardson, the +novelist; and even Hayman had made essay in this direction with the +picture of Lord Orford, now in the National Portrait Gallery. A good +many of the painters of the last reign must also, during Rouquet's +residence in England, have been alive and active, _e.g._ Jervas, Dahl, +Aikman, Thornhill and Richardson. But M. Rouquet devotes most of his +pages in this respect to Kneller, whose not altogether beneficent +influence long survived him. Strangely enough, Rouquet does not mention +that egregious and fashionable face-painter, Sir Joshua's master, Thomas +Hudson, whose "fair tied-wigs, blue velvet coats, and white satin +waistcoats" (all executed by his assistants) reigned undisputed until he +was eclipsed by his greater pupil. The two artists in portraiture +selected by Rouquet for special notice are Allan Ramsay and the younger +Vanloo (Jean Baptiste). Both were no doubt far above their predecessors; +but Ramsay would specially appeal to Rouquet by his continental +training, and Vanloo by his French manner and the superior variety of +his attitudes.[20] The only other name Rouquet recalls is that of the +drapery-painter Joseph Vanhaken; and we suspect it is to Rouquet that we +owe the pleasant anecdote of the two painters who, for the sum of L800 a +year, pre-empted his exclusive and inestimable services, to the +wholesale discomfiture of their brethren of the brush. The rest shall be +told in Rouquet's words:--"The best [artists] were no longer able to +paint a hand, a coat, a background; they were forced to learn, which +meant additional labour--what a misfortune! Henceforth there arrived no +more to Vanhaken from different quarters of London, nor by coach from +the most remote towns of England, canvases of all sizes, where one or +more heads were painted, under which the painter who forwarded them had +been careful to add, pleasantly enough, the description of the figures, +stout or slim, great or small, which were to be appended. Nothing could +be more absurd than this arrangement; but it would exist still--if +Vanhaken existed."[21] + +Note: + +[20] Another French writer, the Abbe le Blanc, gives a depressing account +of English portraits before Vanloo came to England: "At some distance one +might easily mistake a dozen of them for twelve copies of the same original. +Some have the head turned to the left, others to the right; and this is the +most sensible difference to be observed between them. Moreover, excepting +the face, you find in all the same neck, the same arms, the same flesh, the +same attitude; and to say all, you observe no more life than design in +those pretended portraits. Properly speaking, they [the artists] are not +painters, they know how to lay colours on the canvas; but they know not how +to animate it" (_Letters on the English and French Nations, 1747_, i. 160). + +[21] He died in 1749.] + +_"La peinture a l'huile, C'est bien difficile; Mais c'est beaucoup plus +beau Que la peinture a l'eau."_ About _la peinture a l'eau_, M. Rouquet +says very little, in all probability because the English Water Colour +School, which, with the advance of topographic art, grew so rapidly in +the second half of the century, was yet to come. He refers, however, +with approval to the _gouaches_ of Joseph Goupy, Lady Burlington's +drawing-master, perhaps better known to posterity by his (or her +ladyship's) caricature of Handel as the "Charming Brute." (Caricature, +by the way, is a branch of Georgian Art which M. Rouquet neglects.) As +regards landscape and animal painting, he "abides in generalities"; but +he must have been acquainted with the sea pieces of Monamy, and +Hogarth's and Walpole's friend Samuel Scott; and should, one would +think, have known of the horses and dogs of Wootton and Seymour. Upon +Enamel he might be expected to enlarge, although he mentions but one +master, his own model, Zincke, who carried the art of portrait in this +way much farther than any predecessor. Moreover, like Petitot, he made +discoveries which he was wise enough to keep to himself. +"It is most humiliating," says Rouquet, "for the genius of painting that +it can sometimes exist alone. M. Zincke left no pupil." Seeing that +Rouquet is also accused of jealously guarding his own contributions to +the perfection of his art, the words are--as Diderot says--remarkable. + +With Sculpture, chiefly employed at this date for mortuary purposes, he +has less opportunity of being indefinite, since there were but three +notabilities, Scheemakers, Rysbrack, and Roubillac,--all foreigners. Of +these Scheemakers, whom Chesterfield regarded as a mere stone-cutter, +and who did the Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey, is certainly the least +considerable. Next come Rysbrack, whom Walpole and Rouquet would put +highest, the latter apparently because Rysbrack had been spoken of +contemptuously by the Abbe le Blanc. But the first is assuredly +Roubillac, whose monument to Mrs. Nightingale, however, belongs to a +later date than the _Etat des Arts_, though he had already achieved the +masterly figure of Eloquence on the Argyll monument. The only other +sculptor referred to by Rouquet is Gabriel Cibber, whose statues of +Madness and Melancholy, long at Bedlam, and now at South Kensington, +certainly deserve his praise. But Cibber died in 1700, and belongs to +the Caroline epoch. He no doubt owes his place in the _Etat des Arts_ to +the fact that he had been abused in the already-mentioned _Letters on +the English and French Nations_. + +At this point we may turn M. Rouquet's pages more rapidly. It is not +necessary to linger over his account of Silk Stuffs, more excellent in +his opinion by their material than their make up. Under Medallists he +commends the clever medals of great men by his compatriot, Anthony +Dassier; under Printing he refers to that liberty of the Press which, in +England, amounted to impunity. "A few too thinly disguised blasphemies; +a few too rash reflections upon the Government, a few defamatory +libels--are the sole things which, at the present time, are not +allowed." And this brings about the following lively and very accurate +description of the eighteenth-century newspaper:--"One of the most +notable peculiarities which liberty of the Press produces in England, is +the swarm of fugitive sheets and half-sheets which one sees break forth +every morning, except Sunday, covering all the coffee-house tables. +Twenty of these different papers, under different titles, appear each +day; some contain a moral or philosophical discourse; the majority of +the rest offer political, and frequently seditious, comments on some +party question. In them is to be found the news of Europe, England, +London, and the day before. Their authors profess to be familiar with +the most secret deliberations of the Cabinet, which they make public. If +a fire occurs in a chimney or elsewhere; if a theft or a murder has +taken place; if any one commits suicide from _ennui_ or despair, the +public is informed thereof on the morning after with the utmost amount +of detail. After these articles come advertisements of all sorts, and in +very great numbers. In addition to those of different things which it is +desired to let, sell or purchase, there are some that are amusing. If a +man's wife runs away he declares that he will not be liable for any +debts she may contract; and as a matter of fact, this precaution, +according to the custom of the country, is essential if he desires to +secure himself from doing so. He threatens with all the rigour of the +law those who dare to give his wife an asylum. Another publishes the +particulars of his fortune, his age and his position, and adds that he +is prepared to unite himself to any woman whose circumstances are such +as he requires and describes; he further gives the address where +communications must be sent for the negotiation and conclusion of the +business. There are other notices which describe a woman who has been +seen at the play or elsewhere, and announces that some one has +determined to marry her. If any one has a dream which seems to him to +predict that a certain number will be lucky in the lottery, he proclaims +that fact, and offers a consideration to the possessor of the number if +he cares to dispose of it." + +After these come the advertisements of the Quack Doctors. Of the account +of belles-lettres in 1754, two years after _Amelia_ and in the actual +year of _Sir Charles Grandison_, M. Rouquet's report is not +flattering:--"The presses of England, made celebrated by so many +masterpieces of wit and science, now scarcely print anything but +miserable and insipid romances, repulsive volumes, frigid and tedious +letters, where the most tasteless puerility passes for wit and genius, +and an inflamed imagination exerts itself under the pretext of forming +manners." It is possible that the last lines are aimed at Richardson; +certainly they describe the post-Richardsonian novel. But that the +passage does not in any part refer to Fielding is clear from the fact +that the writer presently praises _Joseph Andrews_, coupling it with +_Gil Blas_. + +Mezzotint, Gem-cutting, Chasing (which serves to bring in M. Rouquet's +countryman, Moser), Jewelry, China, (_i.e._ Chelsea ware) are all +successfully treated with more or less minuteness, while, under +Architecture, are described the eighteenth-century house, and the new +bridge at Westminster of another Swiss, Labelye, who is not named: "The +architect is a foreigner," says Rouquet, who considered he had been +inadequately rewarded. "It must be confessed (he adds drily) that in +England this is a lifelong disqualification." From Architecture the +writer passes to the oratory of the Senate, the Pulpit and the Stage. In +the last case exception is made for "_le celebre M. Garic_," whose only +teacher is declared to be Nature. As regards the rest, M. Rouquet thus +describes the prevailing style:--"The declamation of the English stage +is turgid, full of affectation, and perpetually pompous. Among other +peculiarities, it frequently admits a sort of dolorous exclamation,--a +certain long-drawn tone of voice, so woeful and so lugubrious that it is +impossible not to be depressed by it." This reads like a recollection of +Quin in the Horatio of Rowe's _Fair Penitent_. + +Upon Cookery M. Rouquet is edifying; and concerning the +eighteenth-century physician, with his tye-wig and gilt-head cane, +sprightly and not unmalicious. But we must now confine ourselves to +quoting a few detached passages from this discursive chronicle. The +description of Ranelagh (in the chapter on Music) is too lengthy to +reproduce. Here is that of the older Vauxhall:--"The Vauxhall concert +takes place in a garden singularly decorated. The Director of Amusements +in this garden [Jonathan Tyers] gains and spends successively +considerable annual sums. He was born for such enterprises. At once +spirited and tasteful, he shrinks from no expense where the amusement of +the public is concerned, and the public, in its turn, repays him +liberally. Every year he adds some fresh decoration, some new and +exceptional scene. Sculpture, Painting, Music, bestir themselves +periodically to render this resort more agreeable by the variety of +their different productions: in this way opportunities of relaxation are +infinite in England, above all at London; and thus Music plays a +prominent part. The English take their pleasure without amusing +themselves, or amuse themselves without enjoyment, except at table, and +there only up to the point when sleep supervenes to the fumes of wine +and tobacco." + +Elsewhere M. Rouquet, like M. le Blanc before him, is loud in his +denunciation of the pitiful practices of Vails-giving, which blocks the +vestibule of every English house with an army of servants "ranged in +line, according to their rank," and ready "to receive, or rather exact, +the contribution of every guest." The excellent Jonas Hanway wrote a +pamphlet reprehending this objectionable custom. Hogarth steadily set +his face against it; but Reynolds is reported to have given his man L100 +a year for the door. Here, from another place, is a description of one +of those popular auctions, at which, in the _Marriage A-la-Mode_, my +Lady Squanderfieid purchases the _bric-a-brac_ of Sir Timothy Babyhouse, +The scene is probably Cock's in the Piazza at Covent Garden:--"Nothing +is so diverting as this kind of sale--the number of those assembled, the +diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer +himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the +spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what +he openly depreciates; or--to spread a dangerous snare--pretending to +secure with avidity a picture which already belongs to him. There, some +are tempted to buy; and some repent of having bought. There, out of +pique and bravado, another shall pay fifty louis for an article which he +would not have thought worth five and twenty, had he not been ashamed to +draw back when the eyes of a crowded company were upon him. There, you +may see a woman of condition turn pale at the mere thought of losing a +paltry pagoda which she does not want, and, in any other circumstances, +would never have desired." + +A closing word as to M. Rouquet himself. The _Etat des Arts_ was duly +noticed by the critics--contemptuously by the _Monthly Review_, and +sympathetically by the _Gentleman's_ and the _Scots Magazine_. In 1755, +the year to which it belongs, its author put forth another work--_L'Art +Nouveau de la Peinture en Fromage ou en Ramequin_ [toasted cheese], +_invente pour suivre le louable projet de trouver graduellement des +facons de peindre inferieures a celles qui existent_. This, as its title +imports, is a skit, levelled at the recent _Histoire et Secret de la +Peinture en Cire_ of Diderot, who nevertheless refers to Rouquet under +_Email_, in the _Dictionnaire Encyclapedique_, as "_un homme habile_." +He seems, however (like "_la_ _peinture a l'huile_)," to have been +somewhat "_difficile_"; and as we have said, his discoveries (for he had +that useful element in enamel-work, considerable chemical knowledge), +like Zincke's, perished with him. Several of his portraits, notably +those of Cochin and Marigny, were exhibited at the Paris Salons. Whether +he was overparted, or overworked, in the Pompadour atmosphere; or +whether he succumbed to the "continual headache" of which he speaks in +his letter to Hogarth, his health gradually declined. In the last year +of his life, his reason gave way; and when he died in 1759, it was as an +inmate of Charenton. + + + + +THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE RHYMER + + +"Emam tua carmina sanus?"--MARTIAL. + +F. OF H. I want a verse. It gives you little pains;-- + You just sit down, and draw upon your brains. + + Come, now, be amiable. + +R. To hear you talk, + You'd make it easier to fly than walk. + You seem to think that rhyming is a thing + You can produce if you but touch a spring; + + That fancy, fervour, passion--and what not, + + Are just a case of "penny in the slot." + You should reflect that no evasive bird + Is half so shy as is your fittest word; + And even similes, however wrought, + Like hares, before you cook them, must be caught;-- + + Impromptus, too, require elaboration, + And (unlike eggs) grow fresh by incubation; + Then,--as to epigrams,.. + +F. of H. Nay, nay, I've done. + I did but make petition. You make fun. + +R. Stay. I am grave. Forgive me if I ramble: + But, then, a negative needs some preamble + To break the blow. I feel with you, in truth, + These complex miseries of Age and Youth; + I feel with you--and none can feel it more + Than I--this burning Problem of the Poor; + The Want that grinds, the Mystery of Pain, + The Hearts that sink, and never rise again;-- + How shall I set this to some careless screed, + Or jigging stave, when Help is what you need, + Help, Help,--more Help? + +F. of H. I fancied that with ease + You'd scribble off some verses that might please, + And so give help to us. + +R. Why then--TAKE THESE! + + + + +THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT + + +One of the things that perplexes the dreamer--for, in spite of the +realists, there are dreamers still--is the almost complete extinction of +the early editions of certain popular works. The pompous, respectable, +full-wigged folios, with their long lists of subscribers, and their +magniloquent dedications, find their permanent abiding-places in +noblemen's collections, where, unless--with the _Chrysostom_ in Pope's +verses--they are used for the smoothing of bands or the pressing of +flowers, no one ever disturbs their drowsy diuturnity. Their bulk makes +them sacred: like the regimental big drum, they are too large to be +mislaid. But where are all the first copies of that little octavo of 246 +pages, price eighteenpence, "Printed by T. Maxey for Rich. Marriot, in +S. Dunstans Church-yard, Fleetstreet" in 1653, which constitutes the +_editio princeps_ of Walton's _Angler_. Probably they were worn out in +the pockets of Honest Izaak's "brothers of the Angle," or left to bake +and cockle in the sunny corners of wasp-haunted alehouse windows, or +dropped in the deep grass by some casual owner, more careful for flies +and caddis-worms, or possibly for the contents of a leathern bottle, +than all the "choicely-good" madrigals of Maudlin the milkmaid. In any +case, there are very few of the little tomes, with their quaint +"coppers" of fishes, in existence now, nor is it silver that pays for +them. And that other eighteenpenny book, put forth by "_Nath. Ponder_ at +the _Peacock_ in the _Poultrey_ near _Cornhil_" five and twenty years +later,--_The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That which is to +come_,--why is it that there are only five known copies, none quite +perfect, now extant, of which the best sold not long since for more than +L1400? Of these five, the first that came to light had been preserved +owing to its having taken sanctuary, almost upon publication, in a great +library, where it was forgotten. But the others that passed over Mr. +Ponder's counter in the Poultry,--were they all lost, thumbed and +dog's-eared out of being? They are gone,--that is all you can say; and +gone apparently beyond reach of recovery. + +These remarks,--which scarcely rise to the dignity of reflections--have +been suggested by the difficulty which the writer has experienced in +obtaining particulars as to the earliest form of the _Parent's +Assistant_. As a matter of course, children's books are more liable to +disappear than any others. They are sooner torn, soiled, dismembered, +disintegratedsooner find their way to that mysterious unlocated limbo of +lost things, which engulfs so much. Yet one scarcely expected that even +the British Museum would not have possessed a copy of the first issue of +Miss Edgeworth's book. Such, however, seems to be the case. According to +the catalogue, there is nothing earlier at Bloomsbury than a portion of +the second edition; and from the inexplicit and conjectural manner in +which most of the author's biographers speak of the work, it can +scarcely--outside private collections--be very easily accessible. +Fortunately the old _Monthly Review_ for September, 1796, with most +exemplary forethought for posterity, gives, as a heading to its notice, +a precise and very categorical account of the first impression. _The +Parent's Assistant; or, Stories for Children_ was, it appears, published +in two parts, making three small duodecimo volumes. The price, bound, +was six shillings. There was no author's name; but it was said to be "by +E.M." (i.e. Edgeworth, Maria), and the publisher was Cowper's Dissenter +publisher, Joseph Johnson of No. 72, St. Paul's Churchyard. Part I. +contained "The Little Dog Trusty; or, The Liar and the Boy of Truth"; +"The Orange Man; or, the Honest Boy and the Thief"; "Lazy Lawrence"; +"Tarleton"; and "The False Key"; Part II., "The Purple Jar," "The +Bracelets," "Mademoiselle Panache," "The Birthday Present," "Old Poz," +and "The Mimic." In the same year, 1796, a second edition appeared, +apparently with, some supplementary stories, e.g.: "Barring Out," and in +1800 came a third edition in six volumes. In this the text was increased +by "Simple Susan," "The Little Merchants," "The Basket Woman," "The +White Pigeon," "The Orphans," "Waste Not, Want Not," "Forgive and +Forget," and "Eton Montem." One story, "The Purple Jar" at the beginning +of Part II. of the first edition, was withdrawn, and afterwards included +in another series, while the stories entitled respectively "Little Dog +Trusty" and "The Orange Man" have disappeared from the collection, +probably for the reason given in one of the first prefaces, namely, that +they "were written for a much earlier age than any of the others, and +with such a perfect simplicity of expression as, to many, may appear +insipid and ridiculous." The six volumes of the third edition came out +successively on the first day of the first six months of 1800. The +Monthly Reviewer of the first edition, it may be added, was highly +laudatory; and his commendations show that the early critics of the +author were fully alive to her distinctive qualities, "The moral and +prudential lessons of these volumes," says the writer, "are judiciously +chosen; and the stories are invented with great ingenuity, and are +happily contrived to excite curiosity and awaken feeling without the aid +of improbable fiction or extravagant adventure. The language is varied +in its degree of simplicity, to suit the pieces to different ages, but +is throughout neat and correct; and, without the least approach towards +vulgarity or meanness, it is adapted with peculiar felicity to the +understandings of children. The author's taste, in this class of +writing, appears to have been formed on the best models; and the work +will not discredit a place on the same shelf with Berquin's _Child's +Friend_, Mrs. Barbauld's _Lessons for Children_, and Dr. Aikin's +_Evenings at Home_. The story of 'Lazy Lawrence'"--the notice goes +on--"is one of the best lectures on industry which we have ever read. +"The _Critical Review_, which also gave a short account of the _Parent's +Assistant_ in its number for January 1797, does not rehearse the +contents. But it confirms the title, etc., adding that the price, in +boards, was 4s. 6d.; and its praise, though brief, is very much to the +point. "The present production is particularly sensible and judicious; +the stories are well written, simple, and affecting; calculated, not +only for moral improvement, but to exercise the best affections of the +human heart." + +With one of the books mentioned by the _Monthly Review_--_Evenings at +Home_--Miss Edgeworth was fully prepared, at all events as regards +format, to associate herself. "The stories," she says in a letter to her +cousin, Miss Sophy Ruxton, "are printed and bound the same size as +_Evenings at Home_, and I am afraid you will dislike the title." Her +father had sent the book to press as the _Parent's Friend_, a name no +doubt suggested by the _Ami des Enfants_ of Berquin; but "Mr. Johnson +[the publisher]," continues Miss Edgeworth, "has degraded it into _The +Parent's Assistant_, which I dislike particularly, from association with +an old book of arithmetic called The _Tutor's Assistant_." The ground of +objection is not very formidable; but the _Parent's Assistant_ is +certainly an infelicitous name. From some other of the author's letters +we are able to trace the gradual growth of the work. Mr. Edgeworth, her +father, an utilitarian of much restless energy, and many projects, was +greatly interested in education,--or, as he would have termed it, +practical education,--and long before this date, as early, indeed, as +May 1780, he had desired his daughter, while she was still a girl at a +London school, to write him a tale about the length of a _Spectator_; +upon the topic of "Generosity," to be taken from history or romance. +This was her first essay in fiction; and it was pronounced by the judge +to whom it was submitted,--in competition with a rival production by a +young gentleman from Oxford,--to be an excellent story, and extremely +well written, although with this commendation was coupled the somewhat +damaging inquiry,--"But where's the Generosity?" The question cannot be +answered now, as the manuscript has not been preserved, though the +inconvenient query, we are told, became a kind of personal proverb with +the young author, who was wont to add that this first effort contained +"a sentence of inextricable confusion between a saddle, a man, and his +horse." This was a defect from which she must have speedily freed +herself, since her style, as her first reviewer allowed, is +conspicuously direct and clear. Accuracy in speaking and writing had, +indeed, been early impressed upon her. Her father's doctrinaire ally and +co-disciplinarian, Mr. Thomas Day, later the author of _Sandford and +Merton_, and apparently the first person of whom it is affirmed that "he +talked like a book," had been indefatigable in bringing this home to his +young friend, when she visited him in her London school-days. Not +content alone to dose her copiously with Bishop Berkeley's Tar +Water--the chosen beverage of Young and Richardson--he was unwearied in +ministering to her understanding. "His severe reasoning and +uncompromising love of truth awakened her powers, and the questions he +put to her, the necessity of perfect accuracy in her answers, suited the +bent of her mind. Though such strictness was not always agreeable, she +even then perceived its advantages, and in after life was deeply +grateful to Mr. Day."[22] + +Note: + +[22] _Maria Edgeworth_, by Helen Zimmern, 1888, p. 13. + + +The training she underwent from the inexorable Mr, Day was continued by +her father when she quitted school, and moved with her family to the +parental seat at Edgeworthstown in Ireland. Mr. Edgeworth, whose +principles were as rigorous as those of his friend, devoted himself +early to initiating her into business habits. He taught her to copy +letters, to keep accounts, to receive rents, and, in short, to act as +his agent and factotum. She frequently accompanied him in the many +disputes and difficulties which arose with his Irish tenantry; and, +apart from the insight which this must have afforded her into the +character and idiosyncrasies of the people, she no doubt very early +acquired that exact knowledge of leases and legacies and dishonest +factors which is a noticeable feature even of her children's books.[23] +It is some time, however, before we hear of any successor to +"Generosity"; but, in 1782, her father, with a view to provide her with +an occupation for her leisure, proposed to her to prepare a translation +of the _Adele et Theodore_ of Madame de Genlis, those letters upon +education by which that gentle and multifarious moralist acquired--to +use her own words--at once "the suffrages of the public, and the +irreconcilable hatred of all the so-called philosophers and their +partisans." At first there had been no definite thought of print in Mr, +Edgeworth's mind. But as the work progressed, the idea gathered +strength; and he began to prepare his daughter's manuscript for the +press. Then, unhappily, when the first volume was finished, Holcroft's +complete translation appeared, and made the labour needless. Yet it was +not without profit. It had been excellent practice in aiding Miss +Edgeworth's faculty of expression, and increasing her vocabulary--to say +nothing of the influence which the portraiture of individuals and the +satire of reigning follies which are the secondary characteristics of +Madame de Genlis's most well-known work, may have had on her own +subsequent efforts as a novelist. Meanwhile her mentor, Mr. Day, was +delighted at the interruption of her task. He possessed, to the full, +that rooted antipathy to feminine authorship of which we find so many +traces in Miss Burney's novels and elsewhere; and he wrote to +congratulate Mr. Edgeworth on having escaped the disgrace of having a +translating daughter. At this time, as already stated, he himself had +not become the author of _Sandford and Merton_, which, as a matter of +fact, owed its inception to the Edgeworths, being at first simply +intended as a short story to be inserted in the _Harry and Lucy_ Mr. +Edgeworth wrote in conjunction with his second wife, Honora Sneyd. As +regards the question of publication, both Maria and her father, although +sensible of Mr. Day's prejudices, appear to have deferred to his +arguments. Nor were these even lost to the public, for we are informed +that, in Miss Edgeworth's first book, ten years later, the _Letters to +Literary Ladies,_ she employed and embodied much that he had advanced. +But for the present, she continued to write--though solely for her +private amusement--essays, little stories, and dramatic sketches. One of +these last must have been "Old Poz," a pleasant study of a country +justice and a _gazza ladra_, which appeared in Part II. of the first +issue of the _Parent's Assistant_, and which, we are told, was acted by +the Edgeworth children in a little theatre erected in the dining-room +for the purpose. According to her sisters, it was Miss Edgeworth's +practice first to write her stories on a slate, and then to read them +out. If they were approved, she transcribed them fairly. "Her writing +for children"--says one of her biographers--"was a natural outgrowth of +a practical study of their wants and fancies; and her constant care of +the younger children gave her exactly the opportunity required to +observe the development of mind incident to the age and capacity of +several little brothers and sisters." According to her own account, her +first critic was her father. "Whenever I thought of writing anything, I +always told him [my father] my first rough plans; and always, with the +instinct of a good critic, he used to fix immediately upon that which +would best answer the purpose.--'_Sketch that, and shew it to +me._'--These words, from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to +inspire me with hope of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I +was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate on it in the sketch; but +to this he always objected--'I don't want any of your painting--none of +your drapery!--I can imagine all that--let me see the bare skeleton.'" + +Note: + +[23] Cf. "Attorney Case" in the story of "Simple Susan." + + +Of the first issue of the _Parent's Assistant_ in 1796, a sufficient +account has already been given. In the "Preface" the practical intention +of several of the stories is explicitly set forth. "Lazy Lawrence," we +are told, illustrates the advantages of industry, and demonstrates that +people feel cheerful and happy whilst they are employed; while +"Tarleton" represents "the danger and the folly of that weakness of +mind, and that easiness to be led, which too often pass for good +nature"; "The False Key" points out some of the evils to which a +well-educated boy, on first going to service, is exposed from the +profligacy of his fellow-servants; "The Mimic," the drawback of vulgar +acquaintances; "Barring Out," the errors to which a high spirit and the +love of party are apt to lead, and so forth. In the final paragraph +stress is laid upon what every fresh reader must at once recognise as +the supreme merit of the stories, namely, their dramatic faculty, or (in +the actual words of the "Preface"), their art of "keeping alive hope and +fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy."[24] The plausibility +of invention, the amount of ingenious contrivance and of clever +expedient in these professedly nursery stories, is indeed extraordinary; +and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which--to use Dr. Johnson's +words concerning _She Stoops to Conquer_--"the incidents are so prepared +as not to seem improbable." There is no better example of this than the +admirable tale of "The Mimic," in which the most unlooked-for +occurrences succeed each other in the most natural way, while the +disappearance at the end of the little sweep, who has levanted up the +chimney in Frederick's new blue coat and buff waistcoat, is a +master-stroke. Everybody has forgotten everything about him until the +precise moment when he is needed to supply the fitting surprise of the +finish,--a surprise which is only to be compared to that other +revelation in _The Rose and the Ring_ of Thackeray, where the long-lost +and obnoxious porter at Valoroso's palace, having been turned by the +Fairy Blackstick into a door knocker for his insolence, is restored to +the sorrowing Servants' Hall exactly when his services are again +required in the capacity of Mrs. Gruffanuffs husband. But in Miss +Edgeworth's little fable there is no fairy agency. "Fairies were not +much in her line," says Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, "but +philanthropic manufacturers, liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in +travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to +distribute rewards or to point a moral." + +Note: + +[24] The "Preface to Parents"--Miss Emily Lawless suggests to me--was +probably by Mr. Edgeworth. + + +Although, by their sub-title, these stories are avowedly composed for +children, they are almost as attractive to grown-up readers. This is +partly owing to their narrative skill, partly also to the clear +characterisation, which already betrays the coming author of _Castle +Rackrent_ and _Belinda_ and _Patronage_--the last, under its first name +of _The Freeman Family_, being already partly written, although many +years were still to pass before it saw the light in 1814. Readers, wise +after the event, might fairly claim to have foreseen from some of the +personages in the _Parent's Assistant_ that the author, however sedulous +to describe "such situations only ... as children can easily imagine," +was not able entirely to resist tempting specimens of human nature like +the bibulous Mr. Corkscrew, the burglar butler in "The False Key," or +Mrs. Pomfret, the housekeeper of the same story, whose prejudices +against the _Villaintropic_ Society, and its unholy dealing with the +"_drugs and refuges_" of humanity, are quite in the style of the Mrs. +Slipslop of a great artist whose works one would scarcely have expected +to encounter among the paper-backed and grey-boarded volumes which lined +the shelves at Edgeworthstown. Mrs. Theresa Tattle, again, in "The +Mimic," is a type which requires but little to fit it for a subordinate +part in a novel, as is also Lady Diana Sweepstakes in "Waste not, Want +not." In more than one case, we seem to detect an actual portrait. Mr. +Somerville of Somerville ("The White Pigeon"), to whom that "little +town" belonged,--who had done so much "to inspire his tenantry with a +taste for order and domestic happiness, and took every means in his +power to encourage industrious, well-behaved people to settle in his +neighbourhood,"--can certainly be none other than the father of the +writer of the _Parent's Assistant_, the busy and beneficent, but surely +eccentric, Mr. Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown. + +When, in 1849, the first two volumes of Macaulay's _History_ were +issued, Miss Edgeworth, then in her eighty-third winter, was greatly +delighted to find her name, coupled with a compliment to one of her +characters, enshrined in a note to chap. vi. But her gratification was +qualified by the fact that she could discover no similar reference to +her friend, Sir Walter Scott. The generous "twinge of pain," to which +she confesses, was intelligible. Scott had always admired her genius, +and she admired his. In the "General Preface" to the _Waverley Novels_, +twenty years before, he had gone so far as to say that, without hoping +to emulate "the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact" of +Miss Edgeworth, he had attempted to do for his own country what she had +done for hers; and it is clear, from other sources, that this was no +mere form of words. And he never wavered in his admiration. In his last +years, not many months before his death, when he had almost forgotten +her name, he was still talking kindly of her work. Speaking to Mrs. John +Davy of Miss Austen and Miss Ferrier, he said: "And there's that Irish +lady, too--but I forget everybody's name now" ... "she's _very_ clever, +and best in the little touches too. I'm sure in that children's story, +where the little girl parts with her lamb, and the little boy brings it +back to her again, there's nothing for it but just to put down the book +and cry."[25] The reference is to "Simple Susan," the longest and +prettiest tale in the _Parent's Assistant_. + +Note: + +[25] Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, ch. lxxxi. _ad finem_. + + +Another anecdote pleasantly connects the same book with a popular work +of a later writer. Readers of _Cranford_ will recall the feud between +the Johnson-loving Miss Jenkyns of that story and its _Pickwick_-loving +Captain Brown. The Captain--as is well-known--met his death by a railway +accident, just after he had been studying the last monthly "green +covers" of Dickens. Years later, the assumed narrator of _Cranford_ +visits Miss Jenkyns, then faliing into senility. She still vaunts _The +Rambler_; still maunders vaguely of the "strange old book, with the +queer name, poor Captain Brown was killed for reading-that book by Mr. +Boz, you know--_Old Poz_; when I was a girl--but that's a long time +ago--I acted Lucy in _Old Poz_." There can be no mistake. Lucy is the +justice's daughter in Miss Edgeworth's little chamber-drama. + + + + +A PLEASANT INVECTIVE AGAINST PRINTING + +"Flee fro the PREES, and dwelle with sothfastnesse."--CHAUCER, _Balade +de Bon Conseil_. + + +The Press is too much with us, small and great: +We are undone of chatter and _on dit_, +Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee, +Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date, +Babble of booklets, bicker of debate, +Aspect of A., and attitude of B.-- +A waste of words that drive us like a sea, +Mere derelict of Ourselves, and helpless freight! + +"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!" +Some region unapproachable of Print, +Where never cablegram could gain access, +And telephones were not, nor any hint +Of tidings new or old, but Man might pipe +His soul to Nature,--careless of the Type! + + + + +TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS + + +I. KATE GREENAWAY + +In the world of pictorial recollection there are many territories, the +natives of which you may recognise by their characteristics as surely as +Ophelia recognises her true-love by his cockle-hat and sandal shoon. +There is the land of grave gestures and courteous inclinations, of +dignified leave-takings and decorous greetings; where the ladies (like +Richardson's Pamela) don the most charming round-eared caps and frilled +_negliges_; where the gentlemen sport ruffles and bag-wigs and spotless +silk stockings, and invariably exhibit shapely calves above their silver +shoe-buckles; where you may come in St. James's Park upon a portly +personage with a star, taking an alfresco pinch of snuff after that +leisurely style in which a pinch of snuff should be taken, so as not to +endanger a lace cravat or a canary-coloured vest; where you may seat +yourself on a bench by Rosamond's Pond in company with a tremulous mask +who is evidently expecting the arrival of a "pretty fellow"; or happen +suddenly, in a secluded side-walk, upon a damsel in muslin and a dark +hat, who is hurriedly scrawling a _poulet_, not without obvious signs of +perturbation. But whatever the denizens of this country are doing, they +are always elegant and always graceful, always appropriately grouped +against their fitting background of high-ceiled rooms and striped +hangings, or among the urns and fish-tanks of their sombre-shrubbed +gardens. This is the land of STOTHARD. + +In the adjoining country there is a larger sense of colour--a fuller +pulse of life. This is the region of delightful dogs and horses and +domestic animals of all sorts; of crimson-faced hosts and buxom +ale-wives; of the most winsome and black-eyed milkmaids and the most +devoted lovers and their lasses; of the most headlong and horn-blowing +huntsmen--a land where Madam Blaize forgathers with the impeccable +worthy who caused the death of the Mad Dog; where John Gilpin takes the +Babes in the Wood _en croupe_; and the bewitchingest Queen of Hearts +coquets the Great Panjandrum himself "with the little round button at +top"--a land, in short, of the most kindly and light-hearted fancies, of +the freshest and breeziest and healthiest types--which is the land of +CALDECOTT. + +Finally, there is a third country, a country inhabited almost +exclusively by the sweetest little child-figures that have ever been +invented, in the quaintest and prettiest costumes, always happy, always +gravely playful,--and nearly always playing; always set in the most +attractive framework of flower-knots, or blossoming orchards, or +red-roofed cottages with dormer windows. Everywhere there are green +fields, and daisies, and daffodils, and pearly skies of spring, in which +a kite is often flying. No children are quite like the dwellers in this +land; they are so gentle, so unaffected in their affectation, so easily +pleased, so trustful and so confiding. And this is GREENAWAY-land. + +It is sixty years since Thomas Stothard died, and only fifteen since +Randolph Caldecott closed his too brief career.[26] And now Kate +Greenaway, who loved the art of both, and in her own gentle way +possessed something of the qualities of each, has herself passed away. +It will rest with other pens to record her personal characteristics, and +to relate the story of her life. I who write this was privileged to know +her a little, and to receive from her frequent presents of her books; +but I should shrink from anything approaching a description of the +quiet, unpretentious, almost homely little lady, whom it was always a +pleasure to meet and to talk with. If I here permit myself to recall one +or two incidents of our intercourse, it is solely because they bear +either upon her amiable disposition or her art. I remember that once, +during a country walk in Sussex, she gave me a long account of her +childhood, which I wish I could repeat in detail. But I know that she +told me that she had been brought up in just such a neighbourhood of +thatched roofs and "grey old gardens" as she depicts in her drawings; +and that in some of the houses, it was her particular and unfailing +delight to turn over ancient chests and wardrobes filled with the +flowered frocks and capes of the Jane Austen period. As is well known, +she corresponded frequently with Ruskin, and possessed numbers of his +letters. In his latter years, it had been her practice to write to him +periodically--I believe she said once a week. He had long ceased, +probably from ill-health, to answer her letters; but she continued to +write punctually lest he should miss the little budget of chit-chat to +which he had grown accustomed. At another time--in a pleasant +country-house which contained many examples of her art--and where she +was putting the last touches to a delicately tinted child-angel in the +margin of a Bible--I ventured to say, "Why do your children always ...?" +But it is needless to complete the query; the answer alone is important. +She looked at me reflectively, and said, after a pause, "Because I +see it so." + +Note: + +[26] This was written in 1902. + + +Answers not dissimilar have been given before by other artists in like +case. But it was this rigid fidelity to her individual vision and +personal conviction which constituted her strength. There are always +stupid, well-meaning busybodies in the world, who go about making +question of the sonneteer why he does not attempt something epic and +homicidal, or worrying the carver of cherry-stones to try his hand at a +Colossus; but though they disturb and discompose, they luckily do no +material harm. They did no material harm to Kate Greenaway. She yielded, +no doubt, to pressure put upon her to try figures on a larger scale; to +illustrate books, which was not her strong point, as it only put fetters +upon her fancy; but, in the main, she courageously preserved the even +tenor of her way, which was to people the artistic demesne she +administered with the tiny figures which no one else could make more +captivating, or clothe more adroitly. It may be doubted whether the +collector will set much store by Bret Harte's _Queen of the Pirate Isle_ +or the _Pied Piper of Hamelin_, suitable at first sight as is the +latter, with its child-element, to her inventive idiosyncrasy. But he +will revel in the dainty scenes of "Almanacks" (1883 to 1895, and 1897); +in the charming Birthday Book of 1880; in _Mother Goose, A Day in a +Child's Life, Little Ann, Marigold Garden_ and the rest, of which the +grace is perennial, though the popularity for the moment may have waned. + +I have an idea that _Mother Goose; or, the Old Nursery Rhymes_, 1881, +was one of Miss Greenaway's favourites, although it may have been +displaced in her own mind by subsequent successes. Nothing can certainly +be more deftly-tinted than the design of the "old woman who lived under +a hill," and peeled apples; nothing more seductive, in infantile +attitude, than the little boy and girl, who, with their arms around each +other, stand watching the black-cat in the plum-tree. Then there is +Daffy-down-dilly, who has come up to town, with "a yellow petticoat and +a green gown," in which attire, aided by a straw hat tied under her +chin, she manages to look exceedingly attractive, as she passes in front +of the white house with the pink roof and the red shutters and the green +palings. One of the most beautiful pictures in this gallery is the dear +little "Ten-o'-clock Scholar" in his worked smock, as, trailing his +blue-and-white school-bag behind him, he creeps unwillingly to his +lessons at the most picturesque timbered cottage you can imagine. +Another absolutely delightful portrait is that of "Little Tom Tucker," +in sky-blue suit and frilled collar, singing, with his hands behind him, +as if he never could grow old. And there is not one of these little +compositions that is without its charm of colour and accessory--blue +plates on the dresser in the background, the parterres of a formal +garden with old-fashioned flowers, quaint dwellings with their gates and +grass-work, odd corners of countryside and village street, and all, +generally, in the clear air or sunlight. For in this favoured +Greenaway-realm, as in the island-valley of Avilion there + + falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, + Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies + Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns. + +To _Mother Goose_ followed _A Day in a Child's Life_, also 1881, and +_Little Ann_, 1883. The former of these contained various songs set to +music by Mr. Myles B. Foster, the organist of the Foundling Hospital, +and accompanied by designs on rather a larger scale than those in +_Mother Goose_. It also included a larger proportion of the floral +decorations which were among the artist's chief gifts. Foxgloves and +buttercups, tulips and roses, are flung about the pages of the book; and +there are many pictures, notably one of a little green-coated figure +perched upon a five-barred gate, which repeat the triumphs of its +predecessor. In _Little Ann and other Poems_, which is dedicated to the +four children of the artist's friend, the late Frederick Locker-Lampson, +she illustrated a selection from the verses for "Infant Minds" of Jane +and Ann Taylor, daughters of that Isaac Taylor of Ongar, who was first a +line engraver and afterwards an Independent Minister.[27] The +dedication contains a charming row of tiny portraits of the +Locker-Lampson family. These illustrations may seem to contradict what +has been said as to Miss Greenaway's ability to interpret the +conceptions of others. But this particular task left her perfectly free +to "go her own gait," and to embroider the text which, in this case, was +little more than a pretext for her pencil. + +Note: + +[27] Since this paper was written, the _Original Poems and Others_, of Ann +and Jane Taylor, with illustrations by F.D. Bedford, and a most interesting +"Introduction" by Mr. E.V. Lucas, have been issued by Messrs. Wells, +Gardner, Darton and Co. + + +In _Marigold Garden_, 1885, Miss Greenaway became her own poet; and next +to _Mother Goose_, this is probably her most important effort. The +flowers are as entrancing as ever; and the verse makes one wish that the +writer had written more. The "Genteel Family" and "Little Phillis" are +excellent nursery pieces; and there is almost a Blake-like note about +"The Sun Door." + + They saw it rise in the morning, + They saw it set at night, + And they longed to go and see it, + Ah! if they only might. + + The little soft white clouds heard them, + And stepped from out of the blue; + And each laid a little child softly + Upon its bosom of dew. + + And they carried them higher and higher, + And they nothing knew any more, + Until they were standing waiting, + In front of the round gold door. + + And they knocked, and called, and entreated + Whoever should be within; + But all to no purpose, for no one + Would hearken to let them in. + +"_La rime n'est pas riche_" nor is the technique thoroughly assured; but +the thought is poetical. Here is another, "In an Apple-Tree," which +reads like a child variation of that haunting "Mimnermus in Church" of +the author of Ionica:-- + + In September, when the apples are red, + To Belinda I said, + "Would you like to go away + To Heaven, or stay + Here in this orchard full of trees + All your life? "And she said," If you please + I'll stay here--where I know, + And the flowers grow." + +In another vein is the bright little "Child's Song":-- + + The King and the Queen were riding + Upon a Summer's day, + And a Blackbird flew above them, + To hear what they did say. + + The King said he liked apples, + The Queen said she liked pears; + And what shall we do to the Blackbird + Who listens unawares? + +But, as a rule, it must be admitted of her poetry that, while nearly +always poetic in its impulse, it is often halting and inarticulate in +its expression. A few words may be added in regard to the mere facts of +Miss Greenaway's career. She was born at 1 Cavendish Street, Hoxton, on +the 17th March, 1846, her father being Mr. John Greenaway, a draughtsman +on wood, who contributed much to the earlier issues of the _Illustrated +London News_ and _Punch_. Annual visits to a farm-house at Rolleston in +Nottinghamshire--the country residence already referred to--nourished +and confirmed her love of nature. Very early she showed a distinct bias +towards colour and design of an original kind. She studied at different +places, and at South Kensington. Here both she and Lady Butler "would +bribe the porter to lock them in when the day's work was done, so that +they might labour on for some while more." Her master at Kensington was +Richard Burchett, who, forty years ago, was a prominent figure in the +art-schools, a well instructed painter, and a teacher exceptionally +equipped with all the learning of his craft. Mr. Burchett thought highly +of Miss Greenaway's abilities; and she worked under him for several +years with exemplary perseverance and industry. She subsequently studied +in the Slade School under Professor Legros. + +Her first essays in the way of design took the form of Christmas cards, +then beginning their now somewhat flagging career, and she exhibited +pictures at the Dudley Gallery for some years in succession, beginning +with 1868. In 1877 she contributed to the Royal Academy a water colour +entitled "Musing," and in 1889 was elected a member of the Royal +Institute of Painters in Water Colours. + +By this date, as will be gathered from what has preceded, Miss Greenaway +had made her mark as a producer of children's books, since, in addition +to the volumes already specially mentioned, she had issued _Under the +Window_ (her earliest success), _The Language of Flowers, Kate +Greenaway's Painting Book, The Book of Games, King Pepito_ and other +works. Her last "Almanack," which was published by Messrs Dent and Co., +appeared in 1897. In 1891, the Fine Arts Society exhibited some 150 of +her original drawings--an exhibition which was deservedly successful, +and was followed by others.[28] As Slade Professor at Oxford, Ruskin, +always her fervent admirer, gave her unstinted eulogium; and in France +her designs aroused the greatest admiration. The _Debats_ had a leading +article on her death; and the clever author of _L'Art du Rire_, M. +Arsene Alexandre, who had already written appreciatively of her gifts as +a "_paysagiste_," and as a "_maitresse en l'art du sourire, du jolt +sourire_ _d'enfant inginu et gaiement candide_" devoted a column in the +_Figaro_ to her merits. + +Note: + +[28] Among other things these exhibitions revealed the great superiority +of the original designs to the reproductions with which the public are +familiar--excellent as these are in their way. Probably, if Miss +Greenaway's work were now repeated by the latest form of three-colour +process, she would be less an "inheritor"--in this respect--"of unfulfilled +renown." + + +It has been noted that, in her later years, Miss Greenaway's popularity +was scarcely maintained. It would perhaps be more exact to say that it +somewhat fell off with the fickle crowd who follow a reigning fashion, +and who unfortunately help to swell the units of a paying community. To +the last she gave of her best; but it is the misfortune of distinctive +and original work, that, while the public resents versatility in its +favourites, it wearies unreasonably of what had pleased it at +first--especially if the note be made tedious by imitation. Miss +Greenaway's old vogue was in some measure revived by her too-early death +on the 6th November 1901; but, in any case, she is sure of attention +from the connoisseur of the future. Those who collect Stothard and +Caldecott (and they are many!) cannot afford to neglect either _Marigold +Garden_ or _Mother Goose_.[29] + +Note: + +[29] Since the above article appeared in the _Art Journal_, from +which it is here substantially reproduced, Messrs. M.H, Spieimann and +G.S. Layard have (1905) devoted a sumptuous and exhaustive volume to +Miss Greenaway and her art. To this truly beautiful and sympathetic book +I can but refer those of her admirers who are not yet acquainted +with it. + + + + +A SONG OF THE GREENAWAY CHILD + + +As I went a-walking on _Lavender Hill_, +O, I met a Darling in frock and frill; +And she looked at me shyly, with eyes of blue, +"Are you going a-walking? Then take me too!" + +So we strolled to the field where the cowslips grow, +And we played--and we played, for an hour or so; +Then we climbed to the top of the old park wall, +And the Darling she threaded a cowslip ball. + +Then we played again, till I said--"My Dear, +This pain in my side, it has grown severe; +I ought to have mentioned I'm past three-score, +And I fear that I scarcely can play any more!" + +But the Darling she answered,-"O no! O no! +You must play--you must play.--I sha'n't let you go!" + +--And I woke with a start and a sigh of despair, +And I found myself safe in my Grandfather's-chair! + + + + +TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS + + +II. MR HUGH THOMSON + +In virtue of certain gentle and caressing qualities of style, Douglas +Jerrold conferred on one of his contributors--Miss Eliza Meteyard--the +pseudonym of "Silverpen." It is in the silver-pensive key that one would +wish to write of Mr. HUGH THOMSON. There is nothing in his work of +elemental strife,--of social problem,--of passion torn to tatters. He +leads you by no _terribile via_,--over no "burning Marle." You cannot +conceive him as the illustrator of _Paradise Lost_, of Dante's +_Inferno_--even of Dore's _Wandering Jew_. But when, after turning over +some dozens of his designs, you take stock of your impressions, you +discover that your memory is packed with pleasant fancies. You have been +among "blown fields" and "flowerful closes"; you have passed quaint +roadside-inns and picturesque cottages; you are familiar with the +cheery, ever-changing idyll of the highway and the bustle of animal +life; with horses that really gallop, and dogs that really bark; with +charming male and female figures in the most attractive old-world +attire; with happy laughter and artless waggeries; with a hundred +intimate details of English domesticity that are pushed just far enough +back to lose the hardness of their outline in a softening haze of +retrospect. There has been nothing more tragic in your travels than a +sprained ankle or an interrupted affair of honour; nothing more +blood-curdling than a dream of a dragoon officer knocked out of his +saddle by a brickbat. Your flesh has never been made to creep: but the +cockles of your heart have been warmed. Mechanically, you raise your +hand to lift away your optimistic spectacles. But they are not there. +The optimism is in the pictures. + +It must be more than a quarter of a century since Mr. Hugh Thomson, +arriving from Coleraine in all the ardour of one-and-twenty, invaded the +strongholds of English illustration. He came at a fortunate moment. +After a few hesitating and tentative attempts upon the newspapers, he +obtained an introduction to Mr. Comyns Carr, then engaged in +establishing the _English Illustrated Magazine_ for Messrs. Macmillan. +His recommendation was a scrap-book of minutely elaborated designs for +_Vanity Fair_, which he had done (like Reynolds) "out of pure idleness." +Mr. Carr, then, as always, a discriminating critic, with a keen eye to +possibilities, was not slow to detect, among much artistic recollection, +something more than uncertain promise; and although he had already +Randolph Caldecott and Mr. Harry Furniss on his staff, he at once gave +Mr. Thomson a commission for the magazine. The earliest picture from his +hand which appeared was a fancy representation of the Parade at Bath for +a paper in June, 1884, by the late H. D. Traill; and he also illustrated +(in part) papers on Drawing Room Dances, on Cricket (by Mr. Andrew +Lang), and on Covent Garden. But graphic and vividly naturalistic as +were his pictures of modern life, his native bias towards imaginary +eighteenth century subjects (perhaps prompted by boyish studies of +Hogarth in the old Dublin _Penny Magazine_), was already abundantly +manifest. He promptly drifted into what was eventually to become his +first illustrated book, a series of compositions from the _Spectator_. +These were published in 1886 as a little quarto, entitled _Days with Sir +Roger de Coverley_. + +It was a "temerarious" task to attempt to revive the types which, from +the days of Harrison's _Essayists_, had occupied so many of the earlier +illustrators. But the attempt was fully justified by its success. One +has but to glance at the head-piece to the first paper, where Sir Roger +and "Mr. Spectator" have alighted from the jolting, springless, +heavy-wheeled old coach as the tired horses toil uphill, to recognise at +once that here is an artist _en pays de connaissance_, who may fairly be +trusted, in the best sense, to "illustrate" his subject. Whatever one's +predilections for previous presentments, it is impossible to resist Sir +Roger (young, slim, and handsome), carving the perverse widow's name +upon a tree-trunk; or Sir Roger at bowls, or riding to hounds, or +listening--with grave courtesy--to Will Wimble's long-winded and +circumstantial account of the taking of the historic jack. Nor is the +conception less happy of that amorous fine-gentleman ancestor of the +Coverleys who first made love by squeezing the hand; or of that other +Knight of the Shire who so narrowly escaped being killed in the Civil +Wars because he was sent out of the field upon a private message, the +day before Cromwell's "crowning mercy,"--the battle of Worcester. But +the varied embodiments of these, and of Mrs. Betty Arable ("the great +fortune"), of Ephraim the Quaker, and the rest, are not all. The figures +are set in their fitting environment; they ride their own horses, hallo +to their own dogs, and eat and drink in their own dark-panelled rooms +that look out on the pleached alleys of their ancient gardens. They live +and move in their own passed-away atmosphere of association; and a +faithful effort has moreover been made to realise each separate scene +with strict relation to its text. + +All of the "Coverley" series came out in the _English Illustrated_. So +also did the designs for the next book, the _Coaching Days and Coaching +Ways_ of Mr. Outram Tristram, 1888. Here Mr. Thomson had a topographical +collaborator, Mr. Herbert Railton, who did the major part of the very +effective drawings in this kind. But Mr. Thomson's contributions may +fairly be said to have exhausted the "romance" of the road. Inns and +inn-yards, hosts and ostlers and chambermaids, stage-coachmen, +toll-keepers, mail-coaches struggling in snow-drifts, mail-coaches held +up by highwaymen, overturns, elopements, cast shoes, snapped poles, lost +linch-pins,--all the episodes and moving accidents of bygone travel on +the high road have abundant illustration, till the pages seem almost to +reek of the stableyard, or ring with the horn.[30] And here it may be +noted, as a peculiarity of Mr. Thomson's conscientious horse-drawing, +that he depicts, not the ideal, but the actual animal. His steeds are +not "faultless monsters" like the Dauphin's palfrey in _Henry the +Fifth_. They are "all sorts and conditions" of horses; and--if truth +required it--would disclose as many sand-cracks as Rocinante, or as many +equine defects (from wind-gall to the bolts) as those imputed to that +unhappy "Blackberry" sold by the Vicar of Wakefield at Welbridge Fair to +Mr, Ephraini Jenkinson. + +Note: + +[30] Sometimes a literary or historical picture creeps into the text. +Such are "Swift and Bolingbroke at Backlebury" (p. 30); "Charles +II. recognised by the Ostler" (p. 144), and "Barry Lyndon cracks a +Bottle" (p. 116). _Barry Lyndon_ with its picaresque note and Irish +background, would seem an excellent contribution to the "Cranford" +series. Why does not Mr. Thomson try his hand at it? He has illustrated +_Esmond_, and the _Great Haggarty Diamond_. + + +The _Vicar of Wakefield_--as it happens--was Mr. Thomson's next +enterprise; and it is, in many respects, a most memorable one. It came +out in December, 1890, having occupied him for nearly two years. He took +exceptional pains to study and realise the several types for himself, +and to ensure correctness of costume. From the first introductory +procession of the Primrose family at the head of chapter i. to the +awkward merriment of the two Miss Flamboroughs at the close, there is +scarcely a page which has not some stroke of quiet fun, some graceful +attitude, or some ingenious contrivance in composition. Considering that +from Wenham's edition of 1780, nearly every illustrator of repute had +tried his hand at Goldsmith's masterpiece in fiction,--that he had been +attempted without humour by Stothard, without lightness by +Mulready,[31]--that he had been made comic by Cruikshank, and vulgarised +by Rowiandson,--it was certainly to Mr. Thomson's credit that he had +approached his task with so much refinement, reverence and originality. +If the book has a blemish, it is to be mentioned only because the +artist, by his later practice, seems to have recognised it himself. For +the purposes of process reproduction, the drawings were somewhat loaded +and overworked. + +Note: + +[31]: Mulready's illustrations of 1843 are here referred to, net his +pictures. + + +This was not chargeable against the next volumes to be chronicled. Mrs. +Gaskell's _Cranford_, 1891, and Miss Mitford's _Our Village_, 1893, are +still regarded by many as the artist's happiest efforts. I say "still," +because Mr. Thomson is only now in what Victor Hugo called the youth of +old age (as opposed to the old age of youth); and it would be premature +to assume that a talent so alert to multiply and diversify its efforts, +had already attained the summit of its achievement. But in these two +books he had certain unquestionable advantages. One obviously would be, +that his audience were not already preoccupied by former illustrations; +and he was consequently free to invent his own personages and follow his +own fertile fancy, without recalling to that implacable and Gorgonising +organ, the "Public Eye," any earlier pictorial conceptions. Another +thing in his favour was, that in either case, the very definite, and not +very complex types surrendered themselves readily to artistic +embodiment. "It almost illustrated itself,"--he told an interviewer +concerning _Cranford_; "the characters were so exquisitely and +distinctly realised." Every one has known some like them; and the +delightful Knutsford ladies (for "Cranford" was "Knutsford"), the +"Boz"--loving Captain Brown and Mr. Holbrook, Peter and his father, and +even Martha the maid, with their _mise en scene_ of card-tables and +crackle-china, and pattens and reticules, are part of the memories of +our childhood. The same may be said of _Our Village_, except that the +breath of Nature blows more freely through it than through the quiet +Cheshire market-town; and there is a larger preponderance of those +"charming glimpses of rural life" of which Lady Ritchie speaks +admiringly in her sympathetic preface. And with regard to the "bits of +scenery"--as Mr. Thomson himself calls them--it may be noted that one of +the Manchester papers, speaking of _Cranford_, praised the artist's +intimate knowledge of the locality,--a locality he had never seen. Most +of his backgrounds were from sketches made on Wimbledon Common, near +which--until he moved for a space to the ancient Cinque Port of Seaford +in Sussex--he lived for the first years of his London life. + +In strict order of time, Mr. Thomson's next important effort should have +preceded the books of Miss Mitford and Mrs. Gaskell. The novels of Jane +Austen--to which we now come--if not the artist's high-water mark, are +certainly remarkable as a _tour de force_. To contrive some forty page +illustrations for each of Miss Austen's admirable, but--from an +illustrator's standpoint--not very palpitating productions,--with a +scene usually confined to the dining-room or parlour,--with next to no +animals, and with rare opportunities for landscape accessory,--was an +"adventure"--in Cervantic phrase--which might well have given pause to a +designer of less fertility and resource. But besides the figures there +was the furniture; and acute admirers have pointed out that a nice +discretion is exhibited in graduating the appointments of Longbourn and +Netherfield Park,--of Rosings and Hunsford. But what is perhaps more +worthy of remark is the artist's persistent attempt to give +individuality, as well as grace, to his dramatis persona;. The +unspeakable Mr. Collins, Mr. Bennet, the horsy Mr. John Thorpe, Mrs. +Jennings and Mrs. Norris, the Eltons--are all carefully discriminated. +Nothing can well be better than Mr. Woodhouse, with his "almost +immaterial legs" drawn securely out of the range of a too-fierce fire, +chatting placidly to Miss Bates upon the merits of water-gruel; nothing +more in keeping than the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, "in +the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind" of her indignation, +superciliously pausing to patronise the capabilities of the Longbourn +reception rooms. Not less happy is the dumbfounded astonishment of Mrs. +Bennet at her toilet, when she hears--to her stupefaction--that her +daughter Elizabeth is to be mistress of Pemberley and ten thousand a +year. This last is a head-piece; and it may be observed, as an +additional difficulty in this group of novels, that, owing to the +circumstances of publication, only in one of the books. _Pride and +Prejudice_, was Mr, Thomson free to decorate the chapters with those +ingenious _entetes_ and _culs-de-lampe_ of which he so eminently +possesses the secret.[32] + +Note: + +[32] That eloquence of subsidiary detail, which has had so many +exponents in English art from Hogarth onwards, is one of Mr. Thomson's +most striking characteristics. The reader will find it exemplified in +the beautiful book-plate at page 111, which, by the courtesy of its +owner, Mr. Ernest Brown, I am permitted to reproduce. + + +By this time his reputation had long been firmly established. To the +Jane Austen volumes succeeded other numbers of the so-called "Cranford" +series, to which, in 1894, Mr. Thomson had already added, under the +title of _Coridon's Song and other Verses_, a fresh ingathering of +old-time minstrelsy from the pages of the _English Illustrated_. Many of +the drawings for these, though of necessity reduced for publication in +book form, are in his most delightful and winning manner,--notably +perhaps (if one must choose!) the martial ballad of that "Captain of +Militia, Sir Bilberry Diddle," who + + --dreamt, Fame reports, that he cut all the throats + Of the French as they landed in flat-bottomed boats + +--or rather were going to land any time during the Seven Years' War. +Excellent, too, are John Gay's ambling _Journey to Exeter_., the +_Angler's Song_ from Walton (which gives its name to the collection), +and Fielding's rollicking "A-hunting we will go." Other "Cranford" +books, which now followed, were James Lane Allen's _Kentucky Cardinal_, +1901; Fanny Burney's _Evelina_, 1903; Thackeray's _Esmond_, 1905; and +two of George Eliot's novels--_Scenes of Clerical Life_, 1906, and +_Silas Marner_, 1907. In 1899 Mr. Thomson had also undertaken another +book for George Allen, an edition of Reade's _Peg Woffington_,--a task +in which he took the keenest delight, particularly in the burlesque +character of Triplet. These were all in the old pen-work; but some of +the designs for _Silas Marner_ were lightly and tastefully coloured. +This was a plan the author had adopted, with good effect, not only in a +special edition of _Cranford_ (1898), but for some of his original +drawings which came into the market after exhibition. Nothing can be +more seductive than a Hugh Thomson pen-sketch, when delicately tinted in +sky-blue, _rose-Du Barry_, and apple-green (the _vert-pomme_ dear--as +Gautier says--to the soft moderns)--a treatment which lends them a +subdued but indefinable distinction, as of old china with a pedigree, +and fully justifies the amiable enthusiasm of the phrase-maker who +described their inventor as the "Charles Lamb of illustration." + +From the above enumeration certain omissions have of necessity been +made. Besides the books mentioned, Mr. Thomson has contrived to prepare +for newspapers and magazines many closely-studied sketches of +contemporary manners. Some of the best of his work in this way is to be +found in the late Mrs. E.T. Cook's _Highways and Byways of London Life_, +1902. For the _Highways and Byways_ series, he has also illustrated, +wholly or in part, volumes on Ireland, North Wales, Devon, Cornwall and +Yorkshire. The last volume, Kent, 1907, is entirely decorated by +himself. In this instance, his drawings throughout are in pencil, and he +is his own topographer. It is a remarkable departure, both in manner and +theme, though Mr. Thomson's liking for landscape has always been +pronounced. "I would desire above all things," he told an interviewer, +"to pass my time in painting landscape. Landscape pictures always +attract me, and the grand examples, Gainsboroughs, Claudes, Cromes, and +Turners, to be seen any day in our National Gallery, are a source of +never-failing yearning and delight." The original drawings for the Kent +book are of great beauty; and singularly dexterous in the varied methods +by which the effect is produced. The artist is now at work on the county +of Surrey. It is earnest of his versatility that, in 1904, he +illustrated for Messrs. Wells, Darton and Co., with conspicuous success, +a modernised prose version of certain of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, +as well as _Tales from Maria Edgeworth_, 1903; and he also executed, in +1892 and 1895,[33] some charming designs to selections from the verses of +the present writer, who has long enjoyed the privilege of his friendship. + +Personal traits do not come within the province of this paper, or it +would be pleasant to dwell upon Mr. Thomson's modesty, his untiring +industry, and his devotion to his art. But in regard to that art, it may +be observed that to characterise it solely as "packing the memory with +pleasant fancies" may suffice for an exordium, but is inadequate as a +final appreciation. Let me therefore note down, as they occur to me, +some of his more prominent pictorial characteristics. With three of the +artists mentioned in this and the preceding paper, he has obvious +affinities, while, in a sense, he includes them all. If he does not +excel Stothard in the gift of grace, he does in range and variety; and +he more than rivals him in composition. He has not, like Miss Greenaway, +endowed the art-world with a special type of childhood; but his children +are always lifelike and engaging. (Compare, at a venture, the boy +soldiers whom Frank Castlewood is drilling in chapter xi. of _Esmond_, +or the delightful little fellow who is throwing up his arms in chapter +ix. of _Emma_.) As regards dogs and horses and the rest, his colleague, +Mr, Joseph Pennell, an expert critic, and a most accomplished artist, +holds that he has "long since surpassed" Randolph Caldecott.[34] I doubt +whether Mr. Thomson himself would concur with his eulogist in this. But +he has assuredly followed Caldecott close; and in opulence of +production, which--as Macaulay insisted--should always count, has +naturally exceeded that gifted, but shortlived, designer. If, pursuing +an ancient practice, one were to attempt to label Mr. Thomson with a +special distinction apart from, and in addition to, his other merits, I +should be inclined to designate him the "Master of the +Vignette,"--taking that word in its primary sense as including +head-pieces, tail-pieces and initial letters. In this department, no +draughtsman I can call to mind has ever shown greater fertility of +invention, so much playful fancy, so much grace, so much kindly humour, +and such a sane and wholesome spirit of fun. + +Notes: + +[33] _The Ballad of Beau Brocade_, and _The Story of Rosina_. + +[34] _Pen-Drawing and Pen-Draughtsmen, 2nd ed. 1894, p. 358._ + + + + +HORATIAN ODE + +ON THE TERCENTENARY OF + +"DON QUIXOTE" + +_(Published at Madrid, by Francisco de Robles, January 1605)_ + +"Para mi sola nacio don Quixote, y yo para el."--CERVANTES. + + +Advents we greet of great and small; + Much we extol that may not live; + Yet to the new-born Type we give + No care at all! + +This year,[35]--three centuries past,--by age + More maimed than by LEPANTO'S fight,-- + This year CERVANTES gave to light + His matchless page, + +Whence first outrode th' immortal Pair,-- + The half-crazed Hero and his hind,-- + To make sad laughter for mankind; + And whence they fare + +Throughout all Fiction still, where chance + Allies Life's dulness with its dreams-- + Allies what is, with what but seems,-- + Fact and Romance:-- + +O Knight of fire and Squire of earth!-- + O changing give-and-take between + The aim too high, the aim too mean, + I hail your birth,-- + +Three centuries past,--in sunburned SPAIN, + And hang, on Time's PANTHEON wall, + My votive tablet to recall + That lasting gain! + +Note: + +[35] _I.e._ January 1905. + + + + +THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS + + +One common grave, according to Garrick, covers the actor and his art. +The same may be said of the raconteur. Oral tradition, or even his own +writings, may preserve his precise words; but his peculiarities of voice +or action, his tricks of utterance and intonation,--all the collateral +details which serve to lend distinction or piquancy to the +performance--perish irrecoverably. The glorified gramophone of the +future may perhaps rectify this for a new generation; and give us, +without mechanical drawback, the authentic accents of speakers dead and +gone; but it can never perpetuate the dramatic accompaniment of gesture +and expression. If, as always, there are exceptions to this rule, they +are necessarily evanescent. Now and then, it may be, some clever mimic +will recall the manner of a passed-away predecessor; and he may even +contrive to hand it on, more or less effectually, to a disciple. But the +reproduction is of brief duration; and it is speedily effaced or +transformed. + +In this way it is, however, that we get our most satisfactory idea of +the once famous table-talker, Samuel Rogers. Charles Dickens, who sent +Rogers several of his books; who dedicated _Master Humphrey's Clock_ to +him; and who frequently assisted at the famous breakfasts in St. James's +Place, was accustomed--rather cruelly, it may be thought--to take off +his host's very characteristic way of telling a story; and it is, +moreover, affirmed by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald[36] that, in the famous +Readings, "the strangely obtuse and owl-like expression, and the slow, +husky croak" of Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the "Trial from _Pickwick_" +were carefully copied from the author of the _Pleasures of Memory_, That +Dickens used thus to amuse his friends is confirmed by the autobiography +of the late Frederick Locker,[37] who perfectly remembered the old man, +to see whom he had been carried, as a boy, by his father. He had also +heard Dickens repeat one of Rogers's stock anecdotes (it was that of the +duel in a dark room, where the more considerate combatant, firing up the +chimney, brings down his adversary);[38]--and he speaks of Dickens as +mimicking Rogers's "calm, low-pitched, drawling voice and dry biting +manner very comically."[39] At the same time, it must be remembered that +these reminiscences relate to Rogers in his old age. He was over seventy +when Dickens published his first book, _Sketches by Boz_; and, though it +is possible that Rogers's voice was always rather sepulchral, and his +enunciation unusually deliberate and monotonous, he had nevertheless, as +Locker says, "made story-telling a fine art." Continued practice had +given him the utmost economy of words; and as far as brevity and point +are concerned, his method left nothing to be desired. Many of his best +efforts are still to be found in the volume of _Table-Talk_ edited for +Moxon in 1856 by the Rev. Alexander Dyce; or preferably, as actually +written down by Rogers himself in the delightful _Recollections_ issued +three years later by his nephew and executor, William Sharpe. + +Notes: + +[36] _Recreations of a Literary Man_, 1882, p. 137. + +[37] _My Confidences_, by Frederick Locker-Lampson, 1896, pp. 98 +and 325. + +[38] The duellists were an Englishman and a Frenchman; and +Rogers was in the habit of adding as a postscript: "When I tell that in +Paris, I always put the Englishman up the chimney!" + +[39] It may be added that Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, himself no mean +mime, may be sometimes persuaded to imitate Dickens imitating Rogers. + + +But although the two things are often intimately connected, the "books," +and not the "stories" of Rogers, are the subject of the present paper. +After this, it sounds paradoxical to have to admit that his reputation +as a connoisseur far overshadowed his reputation as a bibliophile. When, +in December 1855, he died, his pictures and curios,--his "articles of +virtue and bigotry" as a modern Malaprop would have styled +them,--attracted far more attention than the not very numerous volumes +forming his library.[40] What people flocked to see at the tiny +treasure-house overlooking the Green Park,[41] which its nonagenarian +owner had occupied for more than fifty years, were the "Puck" and +"Strawberry Girl" of Sir Joshua, the Titians, Giorgiones, and Guidos,[42] +the Poussins and Claudes, the drawings of Raphael and Duerer and Lucas +van Leyden, the cabinet decorated by Stothard, the chimney-piece carved +by Flaxman; the miniatures and bronzes and Etruscan vases,--all the +"infinite riches in a little room," which crowded No. 22 from garret to +basement. These were the rarities that filled the columns of the papers +and the voices of the quidnuncs when in 1856 they came to the hammer. +But although the Press of that day takes careful count of these things, +it makes little reference to the sale of the "books" of the banker-bard +who spent some L15,000 on the embellishments of his _Italy_ and his +_Poems_; and although Dr. Burney says that Rogers's library included +"the best editions of the best authors in most languages," he had +clearly no widespread reputation as a book-collector pure and simple. +Nevertheless he loved his books,--that is, he loved the books he read. +And, as far as can be ascertained, he anticipated the late Master of +Balliol, since he read only the books he liked. Nor was he ever diverted +from his predilections by mere fashion or novelty. "He followed Bacon's +maxim"--says one who knew him--"to read much, not many things: _multum +legere, non multa_. He used to say, 'When a new book comes out, I read +an old one.'"[43] + +Notes: + +[40] The prices obtained confirm this. Thetotaisum realised was +L45,188:14:3. Of this the books represented no more than L1415:5. + +[41] This--with its triple range of bow-windows, from one of +which Rogers used to watch his favourite sunsets--is now the residence +of Lord Northcliffe. + +[42] Three of these--the "_Noli me tangere_" of Titian, Giorgione's +"Knight in Armour," and Guide's "_Ecce Homo_"--are now in the National +Gallery, to which they were bequeathed by Rogers. + +[43] _Edinburgh Review_, vol. civ. p. 105, by Abraham Hayward. + + +The general Rogers-sale at Christie's took place in the spring of 1856, +and twelve days had been absorbed before the books were reached. Their +sale took six days more--_i.e._ from May 12 to May 19. As might be +expected from Rogers's traditional position in the literary world, the +catalogue contains many presentation copies. What, at first sight, would +seem the earliest, is the _Works_ of Edward Moore, 1796, 2 vols. But if +this be the fabulist and editor of the _World_, it can scarcely have +been received from the writer, since, in 1796, Moore had been dead for +nearly forty years. With Bloomfield's poems of 1802, l. p., we are on +surer ground, for Rogers, like Capel Lofft, had been kind to the author +of _The Farmer's Boy_, and had done his best to obtain him a pension. +Another early tribute, subsequently followed by the _Tales of the Hall_, +was Crabbe's Borough, which he sent to Rogers in 1810, in response to +polite overtures made to him by the poet. This was the beginning of a +lasting friendship, of no small import to Crabbe, as it at once admitted +him to Rogers's circle, an advantage of which there are many traces in +Crabbe's journal. Next comes Madame de Stael's much proscribed _De +l'Allamagne_ (the Paris edition); and from its date, 1813, it must have +been presented to Rogers when its irrepressible author was in England. +She often dined or breakfasted at St. James's Place, where (according to +Byron), she out-talked Whitbread, confounded Sir Humphry Davy, and was +herself well "_ironed_"[44] by Sheridan. Rogers considered _Corinne_ to +be her best novel, and _Delphine_ a terrible falling-off. The Germany he +found "very fatiguing." "She writes her works four or five times over, +correcting them only in that way"--he says. "The end of a chapter [is] +always the most obscure, as she ends with an epigram,"[45] Another early +presentation copy is the second edition of Bowles's _Missionary_, 1815. +According to Rogers, who claims to have suggested the poem, it was to +have been inscribed to him. But somehow or other, the book got dedicated +to noble lord who--Rogers adds drily--never, either by word or letter, +made any acknowledgment of the homage.[46] It is not impossible that +there is some confusion of recollection here, or Rogers is misreported +by Dyce. The first anonymous edition of the _Missionary_, 1813, had _no_ +dedication; and the second was inscribed to the Marquess of Lansdowne +because he had been prominent among those who recognised the merit of +its predecessor. + +Notes: + +[44] Perhaps a remembrance of Mrs Slipslop's "_ironing_." + +[45] Clayden's _Rogers and his Contemporaries_, 1889, i. 225. As +an epigrammatist himself, Rogers might have been more indulgent to a +_consoeur_. Here is one of Madame de Stael's "ends of chapters":--"_La +monotonie, dans la retraite, tranquillise l'ame; la monotonie, dans le +grand monde, fatigue l'esprit_" (ch. viii.). But he evidently found her +rather overpowering. + +[46] Table-Talk, 1856, p. 258. + + +Several of Scott's poems, with Rogers's autograph, and Scott's card, +appear in the catalogue; and, in 1812, Byron, who a year after inscribed +the _Giaour_ to Rogers, sent him the first two cantos of _Childe +Harold._ In 1838, Moore presents _Lalla Rookh_, with Heath's plates, a +work which, upon its first appearance, twenty years earlier, had been +dedicated to Rogers. In 1839 Charles Dickens followed with _Nicholas +Nickleby_, succeeded a year later by _Master Humphrey's Clock_ (1840-1), +also dedicated to Rogers in recognition, not only of his poetical merit, +but of his "active sympathy with the poorest and humblest of his kind." +Rogers was fond of "Little Nell"; and in the Preface to _Barnaby Rudge_, +Dickens gracefully acknowledged that "for a beautiful thought" in the +seventy-second chapter of the _Old Curiosity Shop_, he was indebted to +Rogers's Ginevra in the _Italy_:-- + + And long might'st thou have seen + An old man wandering _as in quest of something,_ + Something he could not find--he knew not what. + +The _American Notes_, 1842, was a further offering from Dickens. Among +other gifts may be noted Wordsworth's _Poems_, 1827-35; Campbell's +_Pilgrim of Glencoe_, 1842; Longfellow's _Ballads and Voices of the +Night_, 1840-2; Macaulay's _Lays_ and Tennyson's _Poems_, 1842; and +lastly, Hazlitt's _Criticisms on Art_, 1844, and Carlyle's _Letters and +Speeches of Cromwell_, 1846. Brougham's philosophical novel of _Albert +Lunel; or, the Chateau of Languedoc_, 3 vols, 1844, figures in the +catalogue as "withdrawn." It had been suppressed "for private reasons" +upon the eve of publication; and this particular copy being annotated by +Rogers (to whom it was inscribed) those concerned were no doubt all the +more anxious that it should not get abroad. Inspection of the reprint of +1872 shows, however, that want of interest was its chief error. A +reviewer of 1858 roundly calls it "feeble" and "commonplace"; and it +could hardly have increased its writer's reputation. Indeed, by some, it +was not supposed to be from his Lordship's pen at all. Rogers, it may be +added, frequently annotated his books. His copies of Pope, Gray and +Scott had many _marginalia_. Clarke's and Fox's histories of James II. +were also works which he decorated in this way. + +As already hinted, not very many bibliographical curiosities are +included in the St. James's Place collection; and to look for +Shakespeare quartos or folios, for example, would be idle. Ordinary +editions of Shakespeare, such as Johnson's and Theobald's; +Shakespeariana, such as Mrs. Montagu's _Essay_ and Ayscough's +_Index_,--these are there of course. If the list also takes in Thomas +Caldecott's _Hamlet_, and _As you like it_ (1832), that is, first, +because the volume is a presentation copy; and secondly, because +Caldecott's colleague in his frustrate enterprise was Crowe, Rogers's +Miltonic friend, hereafter mentioned. Rogers's own feeling for +Shakespeare was cold and hypercritical; and he was in the habit of +endorsing with emphasis Ben Jonson's aspiration that the master had +blotted a good many of his too-facile lines. Nevertheless, it is +possible to pick out a few exceptional volumes from Mr. Christie's +record. Among the earliest comes a copy of Garth's _Dispensary_, 1703, +which certainly boasts an illustrious pedigree. Pope, who received it +from the author, had carefully corrected it in several places; and in +1744 bequeathed it to Warburton. Warburton, in his turn, handed it on to +Mason, from whom it descended to Lord St. Helens, by whom, again, +shortly before his death (1815), it was presented to Rogers. To Pope's +corrections, which Garth adopted, Mason had added a comment. What made +the volume of further interest was, that it contained Lord Dorchester's +receipt for his subscription to Pope's _Homer_; and, inserted at the +end, a full-length portrait of Pope; viz., that engraved in Warton's +edition of 1797, as sketched in pen-and-ink by William Hoare of Bath. +Another interesting item is the quarto first edition (the first three +books) of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, Ponsonbie, 1590: and a third, the +_Paradise Lost_ of Milton in ten books, the original text of 1667 (with +the 1669 title-page and the Argument and Address to the Reader)--both +bequeathed to Rogers by W, Jackson of Edinburgh. (One of the stock +exhibits at "Memory Hall"--as 22 St. James's Place was playfully called +by some of the owner's friends--was Milton's receipt to Symmons the +printer for the five pounds he received for his epic. This, framed and +glazeds hung, according to Lady Eastlake, on one of the doors.[47]) A +fourth rare book was William Bonham's black-letter Chaucer, a folio +which had been copiously annotated in MS. by Home Tooke, who gave it to +Rogers. It moreover contained, at folio 221, the record of Tooke's +arrest at Wimbledon on 16th May, 1794, and subsequent committal on the +19th to the Tower, for alleged high treason.[48] Further _notabilia_ in +this category were the Duke of Marlborough's _Hypnerotomachie_ of +Poliphilus, Paris, 1554, and also the Aldine edition of 1499; the very +rare 1572 issue of Camoens's _Lusiads_; Holbein's _Dance of Death_, the +Lyons issues of 1538 and 1547; first editions of Bewick's _Birds_ and +_Quadrupeds_; Le Sueur's _Life of St. Bruno_, with the autograph of Sir +Joshua Reynolds, and a rare quarto (1516) of Boccaccio's _Decameron_. + +Notes: + +[47] It was, no doubt, identical with the "Original Articles of +Agreement" (Add. MSS. 18,861) between Milton and Samuel Symmons, +printer, dated 27th April, 1667, presented by Rogers in 1852 to the +British Museum. Besides the above-mentioned L5 down, there were to be +three further payments of L5 each on the sale of three editions, each of +1300 copies. The second edition appeared in 1674, the year of the +author's death. + +[48] He was acquitted. His notes, in pencil, and relating chiefly to his +_Diversions of Parley_, were actually written in the Tower. Rogers, who +was present at the trial in November, mentioned, according to Dyce, a +curious incident bearing upon a now obsolete custom referred to by +Goldsmith and others. As usual, the prisoner's dock, in view of possible +jail-fever, was strewn with sweet-smelling herbs-fennel, rosemary and the +like. Tooke indignantly swept them away. Another of several characteristic +anecdotes told by Rogers of Tooke is as follows:--Being asked once at +college what his father was, he replied, "A Turkey Merchant." Tooke _pere_ +was a poulterer in Clare Market. + + +But the mere recapitulation of titles readily grows tedious, even to the +elect; and I turn to some of the volumes with which, from references in +the _Table-Talk_ and _Recollections_, their owner might seem to be more +intimately connected. Foremost among these--one would think--should come +his own productions. Most of these, no doubt, are included under the +auctioneers' heading of "Works and Illustrations." In the "Library" +proper, however, there are few traces of them. There is a quarto copy of +the unfortunate _Columbus_, with Stothard's sketches; and there is the +choice little _Pleasures of Memory_ of 1810, with Luke Clennell's +admirable cuts in _facsimile_ from the same artist's pen-and-ink,--a +volume which, come what may, will always hold its own in the annals of +book-illustration. That there were more than one of these latter may be +an accident. Rogers, nevertheless, like many book-lovers, must have +indulged in duplicates. According to Hayward, once at breakfast, when +some one quoted Gray's irresponsible outburst concerning the novels of +Marivaux and Crebillon _le fils_, Rogers asked his guests, three in +number, whether they were familiar with Marivaux's _Vie de Marianne_, a +book which he himself confesses to have read through six times, and +which French critics still hold, on inconclusive evidence, to have been +the "only begetter" of Richardson's _Pamela_ and the sentimental novel. +None of the trio knew anything about it. "Then I will lend you each a +copy," rejoined Rogers; and the volumes were immediately produced, +doubtless by that faithful and indefatigable factotum, Edmund Paine, of +whom his master was wont to affirm that he would not only find any book +_in_ the house, but _out_ of it as well. What is more (unless it be +assumed that the poet's stock was larger still), one, at least, of the +three copies must have been returned, since there is a copy in the +catalogue. As might be expected in the admirer of Marivaux's heroine, +the list is also rich in Jean-Jacques, whose "_gout vif pour les +dejeuners_," this Amphitryon often extolled, quoting with approval +Rousseau's opinion that "_C'est le temps de la journee ou nous sommes le +plus tranquilles, ou nous causons le plus a noire aise._" Another of his +favourite authors was Manzoni, whose _Promessi Sposi_ he was inclined to +think he would rather have written than all Scott's novels; and he never +tired of reading Louis Racine's _Memoires_ of his father, 1747,--that +"_filon de l'or pur du dix-septieme siecle_"--as Villemain calls +it--"_qui se prolonge dans l'age suivant._" Some of Rogers's likings +sound strange enough nowadays. With Campbell, he delighted in Cowper's +_Homer_, which he assiduously studied, and infinitely preferred to that +of Pope. Into Chapman's it must be assumed that he had not +looked--certainly he has left no sonnet on the subject. Milton was +perhaps his best-loved bard. "When I was travelling in Italy (he says), +I made two authors my constant study for versification,--Milton _and +Crowe_" (The italics are ours.) It is an odd collocation; but not +unintelligible. William Crowe, the now forgotten Public Orator of +Oxford, and author of _Lewesdon Hill_, was an intimate friend; a writer +on versification; and, last but not least, a very respectable echo of +the Miltonic note, as the following, from a passage dealing with the +loss in 1786 of the _Halsewell_ East Indiaman off the coast of Dorset, +sufficiently testifies:-- + + The richliest-laden ship + Of spicy Ternate, or that annual sent + To the Philippines o'er the southern main + From Acapulco, carrying massy gold, + Were poor to this;--freighted with hopeful Youth + And Beauty, and high Courage undismay'd + By mortal terrors, and paternal Love, etc., etc. + +It is not improbable that Rogers caught the mould of his blank verse +from the copy rather than from the model. In the matter of style--as +Flaubert has said--the second-bests are often the better teachers. More +is to be learned from La Fontaine and Gautier than from Moliere and +Victor Hugo. + +Many art-books, many books addressed specially to the connoisseur, as +well as most of those invaluable volumes no gentleman's library should +be without, found their places on Rogers's hospitable shelves. Of such, +it is needless to speak; nor, in this place, is it necessary to deal +with his finished and amiable, but not very vigorous or vital poetry. A +parting word may, however, be devoted to the poet himself. Although, +during his lifetime, and particularly towards its close, his weak voice +and singularly blanched appearance exposed him perpetually to a kind of +brutal personality now happily tabooed, it cannot be pretended that, +either in age or youth, he was an attractive-looking man. In these +cases, as in that of Goldsmith, a measure of burlesque sometimes +provides a surer criterion than academic portraiture. The bust of the +sculptor-caricaturist, Danton, is of course what even Hogarth would have +classed as _outre_[49]; but there is reason for believing that Maclise's +sketch in _Fraser_ of the obtrusively bald, cadaverous and wizened +figure in its arm-chair, which gave such a shudder of premonition to +Goethe, and which Maginn, reflecting the popular voice, declared to be a +mortal likeness--"painted to the very death"--was more like the original +than his pictures by Lawrence and Hoppner. One can comprehend, too, that +the person whom nature had so ungenerously endowed, might be perfectly +capable of retorting to rudeness, or the still-smarting recollection of +rudeness, with those weapons of mordant wit and acrid epigram which are +not unfrequently the protective compensation of physical shortcomings. +But this conceded, there are numberless anecdotes which testify to +Rogers's cultivated taste and real good breeding, to his genuine +benevolence, to his almost sentimental craving for appreciation and +affection. In a paper on his books, it is permissible to end with +a bookish anecdote. One of his favourite memories, much repeated in his +latter days, was that of Cowley's laconic Will,--"I give my body to the +earth, and my soul to my Maker." Lady Eastlake shall tell the +rest:--"This ... proved on one occasion too much for one of the party, +and in an incautious moment a flippant young lady exclaimed, 'But, Mr. +Rogers, what of Cowley's _property_?' An ominous silence ensued, broken +only by a _sotto voce_ from the late Mrs. Procter: 'Well, my dear, you +have put your foot in it; no more invitations for you in a hurry,' But +she did the kind old man, then above ninety, wrong. The culprit +continued to receive the same invitations and the same welcome."[50] + +Note: + +[49] Rogers's own copy of this, which (it may be added), he held +in horror, now belongs to Mr. Edmund Gosse. Lord Londonderry has a +number of Danton's busts. + +[50] _Quarterly Review_, vol. 167, p. 512. + + + + +PEPYS' "DIARY" + +To One who asked why he wrote it. + + +You ask me what was his intent? + In truth, I'm not a German; +'Tis plain though that he neither meant + A Lecture nor a Sermon. + +But there it is,--the thing's a Fact. + I find no other reason +But that some scribbling itch attacked + Him in and out of season, + +To write what no one else should read, + With this for second meaning, +To "cleanse his bosom" (and indeed + It sometimes wanted cleaning); + +To speak, as 'twere, his private mind, + Unhindered by repression, +To make his motley life a kind, + Of Midas' ears confession; + +And thus outgrew this work _per se_,-- + This queer, kaleidoscopic, +Delightful, blabbing, vivid, free + Hotch-pot of daily topic. + +So artless in its vanity, + So fleeting, so eternal, +So packed with "poor Humanity"-- + We know as Pepys' his journal.[51] + +Note: + +[51] Written for the Pepys' Dinner at Magdalene College, Cambridge, +February 23rd, 1905. + + + + +A FRENCH CRITIC ON BATH + + +Among other pleasant premonitions of the present _entente cordiale_ +between France and England is the increased attention which, for some +time past, our friends of Outre Manche have been devoting to our +literature. That this is wholly of recent growth, is not, of course, to +be inferred. It must be nearly five-and-forty years since M. Hippolyte +Taine issued his logical and orderly _Histoire de la Litterature +Anglaise_; while other isolated efforts of insight and importance--such +as the _Laurence Sterne_ of M. Paul Stapfer, and the excellent _Le +Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au XVIII^e Siecle_ of the +late M. Alexandre Beljame of the Sorbonne--are already of distant date. +But during the last two decades the appearance of similar productions +has been more recurrent and more marked. From one eminent writer +alone--M. J.-J. Jusserand--we have received an entire series of studies +of exceptional charm, variety, and accomplishment. M. Felix Rabbe has +given us a sympathetic analysis of Shelley; M. Auguste +Angellier,--himself a poet of individuality and distinction,--what has +been rightly described as a "splendid work" on Burns;[52] while M. Emile +Legouis, in a minute examination of "The Prelude," has contrasted and +compared the orthodox Wordsworth of maturity with the juvenile +semi-atheist of Coleridge. Travelling farther afield, M. W. Thomas has +devoted an exhaustive volume to Young of the _Night Thoughts_; M. Leon +Morel, another to Thomson; and, incidentally, a flood of fresh light has +been thrown upon the birth and growth of the English Novel by the +admirable _Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les Origines du Cosmopolitisme +Litteraire_ of the late Joseph Texte--an investigation unquestionably of +the ripest scholarship, and the most extended research. And now once +more there are signs that French lucidity and French precision are about +to enter upon other conquests; and we have M. Barbeau's study of a +famous old English watering-place[53]--appropriately dedicated, as is +another of the books already mentioned, to M. Beljame.[54] + +Notes: + +[52] A volume of _Pages Choisies de Auguste Angellier, Prose et +Vers_, with an Introduction by M. Legouis, has recently (1908) been +issued by the Clarendon Press. It contains lengthy extracts from M. +Angellier's study of Burns. + +[53:]_Une Ville d'Eaux anglaise au XVIIIe Siecle, La Societe Elegante +et Litteraire a Bath sous la Reine Anne et sous les Georges_. Par A. +Barbeau. Paris, Picard, 1904. + +[54] The list grows apace. To the above, among others, must now +be added M. Rene Huchon's brilliant little essay on Mrs. Montagu, and +his elaborate study of Crabbe, to say nothing of M. Jules Derocquigny's +Lamb, M. Jules Douady's Hazlitt, and M. Joseph Aynard's Coleridge. + + +At first sight, topography, even when combined with social sketches, may +seem less suited to a foreigner and an outsider than it would be to a +resident and a native. In the attitude of the latter to the land in +which he lives or has been born, there is always an inherent something +of the soil for which even trained powers of comparison, and a special +perceptive faculty, are but imperfect substitutes. On the other hand, +the visitor from over-sea is, in many respects, better placed for +observation than the inhabitant. He enjoys not a little--it has been +often said--of the position of posterity. He takes in more at a glance; +he leaves out less; he is disturbed by no apprehensions of explaining +what is obvious, or discovering what is known. As a consequence, he sets +down much which, from long familiarity, an indigenous critic would be +disposed to discard, although it might not be, in itself, either +uninteresting or superfluous. And if, instead of dealing with the +present and actual, his concern is with history and the past, his +external standpoint becomes a strength rather than a weakness. He can +survey his subject with a detachment which is wholly favourable to his +project; and he can give it, with less difficulty than another, the +advantages of scientific treatment and an artistic setting. Finally, if +his theme have definite limits--as for instance an appreciable +beginning, middle, and end--he must be held to be exceptionally +fortunate. And this, either from happy guessing, or sheer good luck, is +M. Barbeau's case. All these conditions are present in the annals of the +once popular pleasure-resort of which he has elected to tell the story. +It arose gradually; it grew through a century of unexampled prosperity; +it sank again to the level of a county-town. If it should ever arise +again,--and it is by no means a _ville morte_,--it will be in an +entirely different way. The particular Bath of the eighteenth +century--the Bath of Queen Anne and the Georges, of Nash and Fielding +and Sheridan, of Anstey and Mrs. Siddons, of Wesley and Lady Huntingdon, +of Quin and Gainsborough and Lawrence and a hundred others--is no more. +It is a case of _Fuit Ilium_. It has gone for ever; and can never be +revived in the old circumstances. To borrow an apposite expression from +M. Texte, it is an organism whose evolution has accomplished its course. + +M. Barbeau's task, then, is very definitely mapped-out and +circumscribed. But he is far too good a craftsman to do no more than +give a mere panorama of that daily Bath programme which King Nash and +his dynasty ordained and established. He goes back to the origins; to +the legend of King Lear's leper-father; to the _Diary_ of the +too-much-neglected Celia Fiennes; to Pepys[55] and Grammont's Memoirs; to +the days when hapless Catherine of Braganza, with the baleful "_belle_ +Stewart" in her train, made fruitless pilgrimage to Bladud's spring as a +remedy against sterility. He sketches, with due acknowledgments to +Goldsmith's unique little book, the biography of that archquack, +_poseur_, and very clever organiser, Mr. Richard Nash, the first real +Master of the Ceremonies; and he gives a full account of his followers +and successors. He also minutely relates the story of Sheridan's +marriage to his beautiful "St. Cecilia," Elizabeth Ann Linley. A +separate and very interesting chapter is allotted to Lady Huntingdon and +the Methodists, not without levies from the remarkable _Spiritual +Quixote_ of that Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, of whom an excellent +account was given not long since in Mr. W. H. Hutton's suggestive +_Burford Papers_. Other chapters are occupied with Bath and its _belles +lettres_; with "Squire Allworthy" of Prior Park and his literary guests, +Pope, Warburton, Fielding and his sister, etc.; with the historic +Frascati vase of Lady Miller at Batheaston, which stirred the ridicule +of Horace Walpole, and is still, it is said, to be seen in a local park. +The dosing pages treat of Bath--musical, artistic, scientific--of its +gradual transformation as a health resort--of its eventual and +foredoomed decline and fall as the one fashionable watering-place, +supreme and single, for Great Britain and Ireland. + +Note: + +[55] Oddly enough--if M. Barbeau's index is to be trusted, and +it is an unusually good one,--he makes no reference to Evelyn's visit to +Bath. But Evelyn went there in June, 1654, bathed in the Cross Bath, +criticised the "_facciata_" of the Abbey Church, complained of the +"narrow, uneven and unpleasant streets," and inter-visited with the +company frequenting the place for health. "Among the rest of the idle +diversions of the town," he says, "one musician was famous for acting a +changeling [idiot or half-wit], which indeed he personated strangely." +(_Diary_, Globe edn., 1908, p. 174.) + + +But it is needless to prolong analysis. One's only wonder--as usual +after the event--is that what has been done so well had never been +thought of before. For while M. Barbeau is to be congratulated upon the +happy task he has undertaken, we may also congratulate ourselves that he +has performed it so effectively. His material is admirably arranged. He +has supported it by copious notes; and he has backed it up by an +impressive bibliography of authorities ancient and modern. This is +something; but it is not all[56]. He has done much more than this. He has +contrived that, in his picturesque and learned pages, the old "Queen of +the West" shall live again, with its circling terraces, its grey stone +houses and ill-paved streets, its crush of chairs and chariots, its +throng of smirking, self-satisfied prom-enaders. + +Note: + +[56] To the English version (Heinemann, 1904) an eighteenth-century map +of Bath, and a number of interesting views and portraits have been added. + + +One seems to see the clumsy stage-coaches depositing their touzled and +tumbled inmates, in their rough rocklows and quaint travelling headgear, +at the "Bear" or the "White Hart," after a jolting two or three days' +journey from Oxford or London, not without the usual experiences, real +and imaginary, of suspicious-looking horsemen at Hounslow, or masked +"gentlemen of the pad" on Claverton Down. One hears the peal of +five-and-twenty bells which greets the arrival of visitors of +importance; and notes the obsequious and venal town-waits who follow +them to their lodgings in Gay Street or Milsom Street or the +Parades,--where they will, no doubt, be promptly attended by the Master +of the Ceremonies, "as fine as fivepence," and a very pretty, +sweet-smelling gentleman, to be sure, whether his name be Wade or +Derrick. Next day will probably discover them in chip hats and flannel, +duly equipped with wooden bowls and bouquets, at the King's Bath, where, +through a steaming atmosphere, you may survey their artless manoeuvres +(as does Lydia Melford in _Humphry Clinker_) from the windows of the +Pump Room, to which rallying-place they will presently repair to drink +the waters, in a medley of notables and notorieties, members of +Parliament, chaplains and led-captains, Noblemen with ribbons and stars, +dove-coloured Quakers, Duchesses, quacks, fortune-hunters, lackeys, +lank-haired Methodists, Bishops, and boarding-school misses. Ferdinand +Count Fathom will be there, as well as my Lord Ogleby; Lady Bellaston +(and Mr. Thomas Jones); Geoffry Wildgoose and Tugwell the cobbler; +Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble; the caustic Mrs. Selwyn and the blushing +Miss Anville. Be certain, too, that, sooner or later, you will encounter +Mrs, Candour and Lady Sneerwell, Sir Benjamin Backbite and his uncle, +Mr. Crabtree, for this is their main haunt and region--in fact, they +were born here. You may follow this worshipful and piebald procession to +the Public Breakfasts in the Spring Gardens, to the Toy-shops behind the +Church, to the Coffee-houses in Westgate Street, to the Reading Rooms on +the Walks, where, in Mr. James Leake's parlour at the back--if you are +lucky--you may behold the celebrated Mr. Ralph Allen of Prior Park, +talking either to Mr. Henry Fielding or to Mr. Leake's brother-in-law, +Mr. Samuel Richardson, but never--if we are correctly informed--to both +of them together. Or you may run against Mr. Christopher Anstey of the +over-praised _Guide_, walking arm-in-arm with another Bathonian, Mr. +Melmoth, whose version of Pliny was once held to surpass its original. +At the Abbey--where there are daily morning services--you shall listen +to the silver periods of Bishop Kurd, whom his admirers call fondly "the +Beauty of Holiness"; at St. James's you can attend the full-blown +lectures, "more unctuous than ever he preached," of Bishop Beilby +Porteus; or you may succeed in procuring a card for a select hearing, at +Edgar Buildings, of Lady Huntingdon's eloquent chaplain, Mr. Whitefield. +With the gathering shades of even, you may pass, if so minded, to +Palmer's Theatre in Orchard Street, and follow Mrs. Siddons acting +Belvidera in Otway's _Venice Preserv'd_ to the Pierre of that forgotten +Mr. Lee whom Fanny Burney put next to Garrick; or you may join the +enraptured audience whom Mrs. Jordan is delighting with her favourite +part of Priscilla Tomboy in _The Romp_. You may assist at the concerts +of Signer Venanzio Rauzzini and Monsieur La Motte; you may take part in +a long minuet or country dance at the Upper or Lower Assembly Rooms, +which Bunbury will caricature; you may even lose a few pieces at the +green tables; and, should you return home late enough, may watch a +couple of stout chairmen at the door of the "Three Tuns" in Stall +Street, hoisting that seasoned toper, Mr. James Quin, into a sedan after +his evening's quantum of claret. What you do to-day, you will do +to-morrow, if the bad air of the Pump Room has not given you a headache, +or the waters a touch of vertigo; and you will continue to do it for a +month or six weeks, when the lumbering vehicle with the leathern straps +and crane-necked springs will carry you back again over the deplorable +roads ("so _sidelum_ and _jumblum_," one traveller calls them) to your +town-house, or your country-box, or your city-shop or chambers, as the +case may be. Here, in due course, you will begin to meditate upon your +next excursion to THE BATH, provided always that you have not dipped +your estate at "E.O.", or been ruined by milliners' bills;--that your +son has not gone northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter +been married at Charicombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish +peer. For all these things--however painful the admission--were, +according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means infrequent +accompaniment or sequel of an unguarded sojourn at the old jigging, +card-playing, scandal-loving, pleasure-seeking city in the loop of "the +soft-flowing Avon." + +It is an inordinate paragraph, outraging all known rules of composition! +But then--How seductive a subject is eighteenth-century Bath!--and how +rich in memories is M. Barbeau's book! + + + + +A WELCOME FROM THE "JOHNSON CLUB" + +To William John Courthope, _March 12, 1903_ + + +When Pope came back from Trojan wars once more, +He found a Bard, to meet him on the shore, +And hail his advent with a strain as clear +As e'er was sung by BYRON or by FRERE.[57] + +You, SIR, have travelled from no distant clime, +Yet would JOHN GAY could welcome you in rhyme; +And by some fable not too coldly penned, +Teach how with judgment one may praise a Friend. + +There is no need that I should tell in words +Your prowess from _The Paradise of Birds_;[58] +No need to show how surely you have traced +The Life in Poetry, the Law in Taste;[59] +Or mark with what unwearied strength you wear +The weight that WARTON found too great to bear.[60] +There Is no need for this or that. My plan +Is less to laud the Matter than the Man. + +This is my brief. We recognise in you +The mind judicial, the untroubled view; +The critic who, without pedantic pose, +Takes his firm foothold on the thing he knows; +Who, free alike from passion or pretence, +Holds the good rule of calm and common sense; +And be the subject or perplexed or plain,-- +Clear or confusing,--is throughout urbane, +Patient, persuasive, logical, precise, +And only hard to vanity and vice. + +More I could add, but brevity is best;-- +These are our claims to honour you as Guest. + +Notes: + +[57] _Alexander Pope: his Safe Return from Troy. A Congratulatory Poem +on his Completing his Translation of Homer's Iliad._ (In _ottava rima_.) +By Mr. Gay, 1720(?). Frere's burlesque, _Monks and Giants_--it will be +remembered--set the tune to Byron's _Beppo_. + +[58] _The Paradise of Birds_, 1870. + +[59] _Life in Poetry, Law in Taste_, two series of Lectures +delivered in Oxford, 1895-1900. 1901. + +[60] _A History of English Poetry_. 1895 (in progress). + + + + +THACKERY'S "ESMOND" + + +At this date, Thackeray's _Esmond_ has passed from the domain of +criticism into that securer region where the classics, if they do not +actually "slumber out their immortality," are at least preserved from +profane intrusion. This "noble story"[61]--as it was called by one of its +earliest admirers--is no longer, in any sense, a book "under review." +The painful student of the past may still, indeed, with tape and +compass, question its details and proportions; or the quick-fingered +professor of paradox, jauntily turning it upside-down, rejoice in the +results of his perverse dexterity; but certain things are now +established in regard to it, which cannot be gainsaid, even by those who +assume the superfluous office of anatomising the accepted. In the first +place, if _Esmond_ be not the author's greatest work (and there are +those who, like the late Anthony Trollope, would willingly give it that +rank), it is unquestionably his greatest work in its particular kind, +for its sequel, _The Virginians_, however admirable in detached +passages, is desultory and invertebrate, while _Denis Duval_, of which +the promise was "great, remains unfinished. With _Vanity Fair_, the +author's masterpiece in another manner, _Esmond_ cannot properly be +compared, because an imitation of the past can never compete in +verisimilitude or on any satisfactory terms with a contemporary picture. +Nevertheless, in its successful reproduction of the tone of a bygone +epoch, lies _Esmond's_ second and incontestable claim to length of days. +Athough fifty years and more have passed since it was published, it is +still unrivalled as the typical example of that class of historical +fiction, which, dealing indiscriminately with characters real and +feigned, develops them both with equal familiarity, treating them each +from within, and investing them impartially with a common atmosphere of +illusion. No modern novel has done this in the same way, nor with the +same good fortune, as Esmond; and there is nothing more to be said on +this score. Even if--as always--later researches should have revised our +conception of certain of the real personages, the value of the book as +an imaginative _tour de force_ is unimpaired. Little remains therefore +for the gleaner of to-day save bibliographical jottings, and neglected +notes on its first appearance. + +Note: + +[61] "Never could I have believed that Thackeray, great as his abilities +are, could have written so noble a story as _Esmond_."--WALTER SAVAGE +LANDOR, August 1856. + + +In Thackeray's work, the place of _The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., a +Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Q. Anne. Written by Himself_--lies +midway between his four other principal books, _Vanity Fair, Pendennis, +The Newcomes_, and _The Virginians_; and its position serves, in a +measure, to explain its origin. In 1848, after much tentative and +miscellaneous production, of which the value had been but imperfectly +appreciated, the author found his fame with the yellow numbers of +_Vanity Fair_. Two years later, adopting the same serial form, came +_Pendennis_. _Vanity Fair_ had been the condensation of a life's +experience; and excellent as _Pendennis_ would have seemed from any +inferior hand, its readers could not disguise from themselves that, +though showing no falling off in other respects, it drew to some extent +upon the old material. No one was readier than Thackeray to listen to a +whisper of this kind, or more willing to believe that--as he afterwards +told his friend Elwin concerning _The Newcomes_--"he had exhausted all +the types of character with which he was familiar." Accordingly he +began, for the time, to turn his thoughts in fresh directions; and in +the year that followed the publication of _Pendennis_, prepared and +delivered in England and Scotland a series of _Lectures upon the English +Humourists of the Eighteenth Century_. With the success of these came +the prompting for a new work of fiction,--not to be contemporary, and +not to be issued in parts. His studies for the _Humourists_ had +saturated him with the spirit of a time to which--witness his novelette +of _Barry Lyndon_--he had always been attracted; and when Mr. George +Smith called on him with a proposal that he should write a new story for +L1000, he was already well in hand with _Esmond_,--an effort in which, +if it were not possible to invent new puppets, it was at least possible +to provide fresh costumes and a change of background. Begun in 1851, +_Esmond_ progressed rapidly, and by the end of May 1852 it was +completed. Owing to the limited stock of old-cut type in which it was +set up, its three volumes passed but slowly through the press; and it +was eventually issued at the end of the following October, upon the eve +of the author's departure to lecture in America. In fact, he was waiting +on the pier for the tender which was to convey him to the steamer, when +he received his bound copies from the publisher. + +Mr. Eyre Crowe, A.R.A., who accompanied Thackeray to the United States, +and had for some time previously been acting as his "factotum and +amanuensis," has recorded several interesting details with regard to the +writing of _Esmond_, To most readers it will be matter of surprise, and +it is certainly a noteworthy testimony to the author's powers, that this +attempt to revive the language and atmosphere of a vanished era was in +great part dictated. It has even been said that, like _Pendennis_, it +was _all_ dictated; but this it seems is a mistake, for, as we shall see +presently, part of the manuscript was prepared by the author himself. As +he warmed to his work, however, he often reverted to the method of oral +composition which had always been most congenial to him, and which +explains the easy colloquialism of his style. Much of the "copy" was +taken down by Mr. Crowe in a first-floor bedroom of No. 16 Young Street, +Kensington, the still-existent house where Vanity Fair had been written; +at the Bedford Hotel in Covent Garden; at the round table in the +Athenasum library, and elsewhere. "I write better anywhere than at +home,"--Thackeray told Elwin,--"and I write less at home than anywhere." +Sometimes author and scribe would betake themselves to the British +Museum, to look up points in connection with Marlborough's battles, or +to rummage Jacob Tonson's Gazettes for the official accounts of +Wynendael and Oudenarde. The British Museum, indeed, was another of +_Esmond's_ birthplaces. By favour of Sir Antonio Panizzi, Thackeray and +his assistant, surrounded by their authorities, were accommodated in one +of the secluded galleries. "I sat down,"--says Mr. Crowe--"and wrote to +dictation the scathing sentences about the great Marlborough, the +denouncing of Cadogan, etc., etc. As a curious instance of literary +contagion, it may be here stated that I got quite bitten, with the +expressed anger at their misdeeds against General Webb, Thackeray's +kinsman and ancestor; and that I then looked upon Secretary Cardonnel's +conduct with perfect loathing. I was quite delighted to find his +meannesses justly pilloried in _Esmond's_ pages." What rendered the +situation more piquant,--Mr. Crowe adds,--all this took place on the +site of old Montague House, where, as Steele's "Prue" says to St. John +in the novel," you wretches go and fight duels."[62] + +Note: + +[62] _With Thackeray in America_, 1893, p. 4. + + +Those who are willing to make a pilgrimage to Cambridge, may, if they +please, inspect the very passages which aroused the enthusiam of +Thackeray's secretary. In a special case in the Library of Trinity +College, not far from those which enclose the manuscripts of Tennyson +and Milton, is the original and only manuscript of _Esmond_, being in +fact the identical "copy" which was despatched to the press of Messrs. +Bradbury and Evans at Whitefriars. It makes two large quarto volumes, +and was presented to the College (Esmond's College!) in 1888 by the +author's son-in-law, the late Sir Leslie Stephen. It still bears in +pencil the names of the different compositors who set up the type. Much +of it is in Thackeray's own small, slightly-slanted, but oftener upright +hand, and many pages have hardly any corrections.[63] His custom was to +write on half-sheets of a rather large notepaper, and some idea may be +gathered of the neat, minute, and regular script, when it is added that +the lines usually contain twelve to fifteen words, and that there are +frequently as many as thirty-three of these lines to a page. Some of the +rest of the "copy" is in the handwriting of the author's daughter, now +Lady Ritchie; but a considerable portion was penned by Mr. Eyre Crowe. +The oft-quoted passage in book ii. chap. vi. about "bringing your +sheaves with you," was written by Thackeray himself almost as it stands; +so was the sham _Spectator_, hereafter mentioned, and most of the +chapter headed "General Webb wins the Battle of Wynendael." But the +splendid closing scene,--"August 1st, 1714,"--is almost wholly in the +hand of Mr. Crowe. It is certainly a remarkable fact that work at this +level should have been thus improvised, and that nothing, as we are +credibly informed, should have been before committed to paper.[64] + +When _Esmond_ first made its appearance in October 1852, it was not +without distinguished and even formidable competitors. _Bleak House_ had +reached its eighth number; and Bulwer was running _My Novel in +Blackwood_. In _Fraser_, Kingsley was bringing out _Hypatia_; and Whyte +Melville was preluding with _Digby Grand_. Charlotte Bronte must have +been getting ready _Villette_ for the press; and Tennyson--undeterred by +the fact that his hero had already been "dirged" by the indefatigable +Tupper--was busy with his _Ode on the Death of the Duke of +Wellington_.[65] The critics of the time were possibly embarrassed with +this wealth of talent, for they were not, at the outset, immoderately +enthusiastic over the new arrival. The _Athenaeum_ was by no means +laudatory. _Esmond_ "harped upon the same string"; "wanted vital heat"; +"touched no fresh fount of thought"; "introduced no novel forms of +life"; and so forth. But the _Spectator_, in a charming greeting from +George Brimley (since included in his _Essays_), placed the book, as a +work of art, even above _Vanity Fair_ and _Pendennis_; the "serious and +orthodox" _Examiner_, then under John Forster, was politely judicial; +the _Daily News_ friendly; and the _Morning Advertiser_ enraptured. The +book, this last declared, was the "beau-ideal of historical romance." On +December 4 a second edition was announced. Then, on the 22nd, came the +_Times_. Whether the _Times_ remembered and resented a certain +delightfully contemptuous "Essay on Thunder and Small Beer," with which +Thackeray retorted to its notice of _The Kickkburys on the Rhine_ (a +thing hard to believe!) or whether it did not,--its report of _Esmond_ +was distinctly hostile. In three columns, it commended little but the +character of Marlborough, and the writer's "incomparably easy and +unforced style." Thackeray thought that it had "absolutely stopped" the +sale. But this seems inconsistent with the fact that the publisher sent +him a supplementary cheque for L250 on account of _Esmond's_ success. + +Notes: + +[63] One is reminded of the accounts of Scott's "copy." "Page +after page the writing runs on exactly as you read it in print"--says +Mr. Mowbray Morris. "I was looking not long ago at the manuscript of +_Kenilworth_ in the British Museum, and examined the end with particular +care, thinking that the wonderful scene of Amy Robsart's death must +surely have cost him some labour. They were the cleanest pages in the +volume: I do not think there was a sentence altered or added in the +whole chapter" (Lecture at Eton, _Macmillan's Magazine_ (1889), lx. +pp. 158-9). + +[64] "The sentences"--Mr. Crowe told a member of the Athenaeum, +when speaking of his task--"came out glibly as he [Thackeray] paced the +room." This is the more singular when contrasted with the slow +elaboration of the Balzac and Flaubert school. No doubt Thackeray must +often have arranged in his mind precisely much that he meant to say. +Such seems indeed to have been his habit. The late Mr. Lockcer-Lampson +informed the writer of this paper that once, when he met the author of +Esmond in the Green Park, Thackeray gently begged to be allowed to walk +alone, as he had some verses In his head which he was finishing. They +were those which afterwards appeared in the _Cornhill_ for January 1867, +under the title of _Mrs. Katherine's Lantern_. + +[65] The Duke died 14th Sept. 1852. + + +Another reason which may have tended to slacken--not to stop--the sale, +is also suggested by the author himself. This was the growing popularity +of _My Novel_ and _Villette_. And Miss Bronte's book calls to mind the +fact that she was among the earliest readers of _Esmond_, the first two +volumes of which were sent to her in manuscript by George Smith, She +read it, she tells him, with "as much ire and sorrow as gratitude and +admiration," marvelling at its mastery of reconstruction,--hating its +satire,--its injustice to women. How could Lady Castlewood peep through +a keyhole, listen at a door, and be jealous of a boy and a milkmaid! +There was too much political and religious intrigue--she thought. +Nevertheless she said (this was in February 1852, speaking of vol. i.) +the author might "yet make it the best he had ever written." In March +she had seen the second volume. The character of Marlborough (here she +anticipated the _Times_) was a "masterly piece of writing." But there +was "too little story." The final volume, by her own request, she +received in print. It possessed, in her opinion, the "most sparkle, +impetus, and interest." "I hold," she wrote to Mr. Smith, "that a work +of fiction ought to be a work of creation: that the _real_ should be +sparingly introduced in pages dedicated to the _ideal_" In a later +letter she gives high praise to the complex conception of Beatrix, +traversing incidentally the absurd accusation of one of the papers that +she resembled. Blanche Amory [the _Athenaeum_ and _Examiner_, it may be +noted, regarded her as "another Becky"]. "To me," Miss Bronte exclaims, +"they are about as identical as a weasel and a royal tigress of Bengal; +both the latter are quadrupeds, both the former women." These frank +comments of a fervent but thoroughly honest admirer, are of genuine +interest. When the book was published, Thackeray himself sent her a copy +with his "grateful regards," and it must have been of this that she +wrote to Mr. Smith on November 3,--"Colonel Henry Esmond is just +arrived. He looks very antique and distinguished in his Queen Anne's +garb; the periwig, sword, lace, and ruffles are very well represented by +the old _Spectator_ type."[66] + +Note: + +[66] Mr. Clement Shorter's _Charlotte Bronte and her Circle_, +1896, p. 403; and Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, 1900, pp. 561 +et seq. + + +One of the points on which Miss Bronte does not touch,--at all events +does not touch in those portions of her correspondence which have been +printed,--is the marriage with which _Esmond_ closes. Upon this event it +would have been highly instructive to have had her views, especially as +it appears to have greatly exercised her contemporaries, the first +reviewers. It was the gravamen of the _Times_ indictment; to the critic +of _Fraser_ it was highly objectionable; and the _Examiner_ regarded it +as "incredible." Why it was "incredible" that a man should marry a woman +seven years older than himself, to whom he had already proposed once in +vol. ii., and of whose youthful appearance we are continually reminded +("she looks the sister of her daughter" says the old Dowager at +Chelsea), is certainly not superficially obvious. Nor was it obvious to +Lady Castlewood's children, "Mother's in love with you,--yes, I think +mother's in love with you," says downright Frank Esmond; the only +impediment in his eyes being the bar sinister, as yet unremoved. And +Miss Beatrix herself, in vol. iii., is even more roundly explicit. "As +for you," she tells Esmond, "you want a woman to bring your slippers and +cap, and to sit at your feet, and cry 'O caro! O bravo!' whilst you read +your Shakespeares, and Miltons, and stuff" [which shows that she herself +had read Swift's _Grand Question Debated_]. "Mamma would have been the +wife for you, had you been a little older, though you look ten years +older than she does," "You do, you glum-faced, blue-bearded, little old +man!" adds this very imperious and free-spoken young lady. The situation +is, no doubt, at times extremely difficult, and naturally requires +consummate skill in the treatment. But if these things and others +signify anything to an intelligent reader, they signify that the author, +if he had not his end steadily in view, knew perfectly well that his +story was tending in one direction. There will probably always be some +diversity of opinion in the matter; but the majority of us have accepted +Thackeray's solution, and have dropped out of sight that hint of +undesirable rivalry, which so troubled the precisians of the early +Victorian age. To those who read _Esmond_ now, noting carefully the +almost imperceptible transformation of the motives on either side, as +developed by the evolution of the story, the union of the hero and +heroine at the end must appear not only credible but preordained. And +that the gradual progress towards this foregone conclusion is handled +with unfailing tact and skill, there can surely be no question.[67] + +Note: + +[67} Thackeray's own explanation was more characteristic than +convincing. "Why did you"--said once to him impetuous Mrs. John Brown of +Edinburgh--"Why did you make Esmond marry that old woman?" "My dear +lady," he replied, "it was not I who married them. They married +themselves." (Dr. _John Brmon_, by the late John Taylor Brown, 1903, +pp. 96-7.) + + +Of the historical portraits in the book, the interest has, perhaps, at +this date, a little paled. Not that they are one whit less vigorously +alive than when the author first put them in motion; but they have +suffered from the very attention which _Esmond_ and _The Humourists_ +have directed to the study of the originals. The picture of Marlborough +is still as effective as when it was first proclaimed to be good enough +for the brush of Saint-Simon. But Thackeray himself confessed to a +family prejudice against the hero of Blenheim, and later artists have +considerably readjusted the likeness. Nor in all probability would the +latest biographer of Bolingbroke endorse _that_ presentment. In the +purely literary figures, Thackeray naturally followed the _Lectures_, +and is consequently open to the same criticisms as have been offered on +those performances. The Swift of _The Humourists_, modelled on Macaulay, +was never accepted from the first; and it has not been accepted in the +novel, or by subsequent writers from Forster onwards.[68] Addison has +been less studied; and his likeness has consequently been less +questioned. Concerning Steele there has been rather more discussion. +That Thackeray's sketch is very vivid, very human, and in most +essentials, hard to disprove, must be granted. But it is obviously +conceived under the domination of the "poor Dick" of Addison, and dwells +far too persistently upon Steele's frailer and more fallible aspect. No +one would believe that the flushed personage in the full-bottomed +periwig, who hiccups Addison's _Campaign_ in the Haymarket garret, or +the fuddled victim of "Prue's" curtain lecture at Hampton, ranked, at +the date of the story, far higher than Addison as a writer, and that he +was, in spite of his faults, not only a kindly gentleman and scholar, +but a philanthropist, a staunch patriot, and a consistent politician. +Probably the author of _Esmond_ considered that, in a mixed character, +to be introduced incidentally, and exhibited naturally "in the quotidian +undress and relaxation of his mind" (as Lamb says), anything like +biographical big drum should be deprecated. This is, at least, the +impression left on us by an anecdote told by Elwin. He says that +Thackeray, talking to him once about _The Virginians_, which was then +appearing, announced that he meant, among other people, to bring in +Goldsmith, "representing him as he really was, a little, shabby, mean, +shuffling Irishman." These are given as Thackeray's actual words. If so, +they do not show the side of Goldsmith which is shown in the last +lecture of _The Humourists._[69] + +Notes: + +[68] Thackeray heartily disliked Swift, and said so. "As for +Swift, you haven't made me alter my opinion"--he replied to Hannay's +remonstrances. This feeling was intensified by the belief that Swift, as +a clergyman, was insincere. "Of course,"--he wrote in September, 1851, +in a letter now in the British Museum,--"any man is welcome to believe +as he likes for me _except_ a parson; and I can't help looking upon +Swift and Sterne as a couple of traitors and renegades ... with a +scornful pity for them in spite of all their genius and greatness." + +[69] _Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters_, 1902, i. 187. The +intention was never carried out. In _The King over the Water_, 1908, +Miss A. Shield and Mr. Andrew Lang have recently examined another +portrait in _Esmond_,--that of the Chevalier de St. George,--not without +injury to its historical veracity. In these matters, Mr. Lang--like Rob +Roy--is on his native heath; and it is only necessary to refer the +reader to this highly interesting study. + + +But although, with our rectified information, we may except against the +picture of Steele as a man, we can scarcely cavil at the reproduction of +his manner as a writer. Even when Thackeray was a boy at Charterhouse, +his imitative faculty had been exceptional; and he displayed it +triumphantly in his maturity by those _Novels by Eminent Hands_ in which +the authors chosen are at once caricatured and criticised. The thing is +more than the gift of parody; it amounts (as Mr. Frederic Harrison has +rightly said) to positive forgery. It is present in all his works, in +stray letters and detached passages. + +In its simplest form it is to be found in the stiff, circumstantial +report of the seconds in the duel at Boulogne in _Denis Duval_; and in +the missive in barbarous French of the Dowager Viscountess +Castlewood[70]--a letter which only requires the sprawling, childish +script to make it an exact facsimile of one of the epistolary efforts of +that "baby-faced" Caroline beauty who was accustomed to sign herself "L +duchesse de Portsmout." It is better still in the letter from Walpole to +General Conway in chap. xl. of _The Virginians_, which is perfect, even +to the indifferent pun of sleepy (and overrated) George Selwyn. But the +crown and top of these _pastiches_ is certainly the delightful paper, +which pretends to be No. 341 of the _Spectator_ for All Fools' Day, +1712, in which Colonel Esmond treats "Mistress Jocasta-Beatrix," to +what, in the parlance of the time, was decidedly a "bite."[71] Here +Thackeray has borrowed not only Steele's voice, but his very trick of +speech. It is, however, a fresh instance of the "tangled web we weave, +When first we practise to deceive," that although this +pseudo-_Spectator_ is stated to have been printed "exactly as those +famous journals were printed" for eighteenth-century breakfast-tables, +it could hardly, owing to one microscopic detail, have deceived the +contemporary elect. For Mr, Esmond, to his very apposite Latin epigraph, +unluckily appended an English translation,--a concession to the country +gentlemen from which both Addison and Steele deliberately abstained, +holding that their distinctive mottoes were (in Addison's own phrase) +"words to the wise," of no concern to unlearned persons.[72] + +Notes: + +[70] _Esmond_, Book ii, chap, ii. + +[71] _Ib_. Book iii, chap, iii. + +[72] _Spectator_, No. 221, November 13, 1711. + + +This very minute trifle emphasises the pitfalls of would-be perfect +imitation. But it also serves to bring us finally to the vocabulary of +_Esmond_. As to this, extravagant pretensions have sometimes been +advanced. It has been asserted, for instance, by a high journalistic +authority, that "no man, woman, or child in _Esmond_, ever says anything +that he or she might not have said in the reign of Queen Anne." This is +one of those extreme utterances in which enthusiasm, losing its head, +invites contradiction. Thackeray professedly "copied the language of +Queen Anne,"--he says so in his dedication to Lord Ashburton; but he +himself would certainly never have put forward so comprehensive a claim +as the above. There is no doubt a story that he challenged Mr. Lowell +(who was his fellow-passenger to America on the _Canada_) to point out +in _Esmond_ a word which had not been used in the early eighteenth +century; and that the author of _The Biglow Papers_ promptly discovered +such a word. But even if the anecdote be not well-invented, the +invitation must have been more jest than earnest. For none knew better +than Thackeray that these barren triumphs of wording belong to ingenuity +rather than genius, being exercises altogether in the taste of the +Persian poet who left out all the A's (as well as the poetry) in his +verses, or of that other French funambulist whose sonnet in honour of +Anne de Montaut was an acrostic, a mesostic, a St. Andrew's Cross, a +lozenge,--everything, in short, but a sonnet. What Thackeray endeavoured +after when "copying the language of Queen Anne," and succeeded in +attaining, was the spirit and tone of the time. It was not pedantic +philology at which he aimed, though he did not disdain occasional +picturesque archaisms, such as "yatches" for "yachts," or despise the +artful aid of terminal k's, long s's, and old-cut type. Consequently, as +was years ago pointed out by Fitzedward Hall (whose manifest prejudice +against Thackeray as a writer should not blind us in a matter of fact), +it is not difficult to detect many expressions in the memoirs of Queen +Anne's Colonel which could never have been employed until Her Majesty +had long been "quietly inurned." What is more,--if we mistake not,--the +author of _Esmond_ sometimes refrained from using an actual +eighteenth-century word, even in a quotation, when his instinct told him +it was not expedient to do so. In the original of that well-known +anecdote of Steele beside his father's coffin, In _Tatler_ No. 181, +reproduced in book i. chap. vi. of the novel, Steele says, "My mother +catched me in her arms." "Catched" is good enough eighteenth-century for +Johnson and Walpole. But Thackeray made it "caught," and "caught" it +remains to this day both in _Esmond_ and _The Humourists_. + + + + +A MILTONIC EXERCISE + +(TERCENTENARY, 1608-1908) + +"Stops of various Quills."--LYCIDAS. + + + What need of votive Verse + To strew thy _Laureat Herse_ +With that mix'd _Flora_ of th' _Aonian Hill_? + Or _Mincian_ vocall Reed, + That _Cam_ and _Isis_ breed, +When thine own Words are burning in us still? + + _Bard, Prophet, Archimage!_ + In this Cash-cradled Age, +We grate our scrannel Musick, and we dote: + Where is the Strain unknown, + Through Bronze or Silver blown, +That thrill'd the Welkin with thy woven Note? + + Yes,--"we are selfish Men": + Yet would we once again +Might see _Sabrina_ braid her amber Tire; + + Or watch the _Comus_ Crew + Sweep down the Glade; or view +Strange-streamer'd Craft from _Javan_ or _Gadire_! + + Or could we catch once more, + High up, the Clang and Roar +Of Angel Conflict,--Angel Overthrow; + Or, with a World begun, + Behold the young-ray'd Sun +Flame in the Groves where the _Four Rivers_ go! + + Ay me, I fondly dream! + Only the Storm-bird's Scream +Foretells of Tempest in the Days to come; + Nowhere is heard up-climb + The lofty lyric Rhyme, +And the "God-gifted Organ-voice" is dumb.[73] + +Note: + +[73] Written, by request, for the celebration at Christ's College, +Cambridge, July 10, 1908. + + + + +FRESH FACTS ABOUT FIELDING + + +The general reader, as a rule, is but moderately interested in minor +rectifications. Secure in a conventional preference of the spirit to the +letter, he professes to be indifferent whether the grandmother of an +exalted personage was a "Hugginson" or a "Blenkinsop"; and he is equally +careless as to the correct Christian names of his cousins and his aunts. +In the main, the general reader is wise in his generation. But with the +painful biographer, toiling in the immeasurable sand of thankless +research, often foot-sore and dry of throat, these trivialities assume +exaggerated proportions; and to those who remind him--as in a cynical +age he is sure to be reminded--of the infinitesimal value of his +hard-gotten grains of information, he can only reply mournfully, if +unconvincingly, that fact is fact--even in matters of mustard-seed. With +this prelude, I propose to set down one or two minute points concerning +Henry Fielding, not yet comprised in any existing records of his +career.[74] + +Note: + +[74] Since this was published in April 1907, they have been +embodied in an Appendix to my "Men of Letters" _Fielding_; and used, to +some extent, for a fresh edition of the _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_ +("World's Classics"). + + +The first relates to the exact period of his residence at Leyden +University. His earliest biographer, Arthur Murphy, writing in 1762, is +more explicit than usual on this topic. "He [Fielding]," says Murphy, +"went from Eton to Leyden, and there continued to show an eager thirst +for knowledge, and to study the civilians with a remarkable application +for about two years, when, remittances failing, he was obliged to return +to London, not then quite twenty years old" [_i.e._ before 22nd April, +1727]. In 1883, like my predecessors, I adopted this statement, for the +sufficient reason that I had nothing better to put in its place. And +Murphy should have been well-informed. He had known Fielding personally; +he was employed by Fielding's publisher; and he could, one would +imagine, have readily obtained accurate data from Fielding's surviving +sister, Sarah, who was only three years younger than her brother, of +whose short life (he died at forty-eight) she could scarcely have +forgotten the particulars. Murphy's story, moreover, exactly fitted in +with the fact, only definitely made known in June 1883, that Fielding, +as a youth of eighteen, had endeavoured, in November 1725, to abduct or +carry off his first love, Miss Sarah Andrew of Lyme Regis. Although the +lady was promptly married to a son of one of her fluttered guardians, +nothing seemed more reasonable than to assume that the disappointed +lover (one is sure he was never an heiress-hunter!) was despatched to +the Dutch University to keep him out of mischief.[75] But in once more +examining Mr. Keightley's posthumous papers, kindly placed at my +disposal by his nephew, Mr. Alfred C. Lyster, I found a reference to an +un-noted article in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for November, 1863 (from +internal evidence I believe it to have been written by James Hannay), +entitled "A Scotchman in Holland." Visiting Leyden, the writer was +permitted to inspect the University Album; and he found, under 1728, the +following:--"_Henricus Fielding, Anglus, Ann. 20. Stud. Lit._", coupled +with the further detail that he "was living at the 'Hotel of Antwerp.'" +Except in the item of "_Stud. Lit._", this did not seem to conflict +materially with Murphy's account, as Fielding was nominally twenty from +1727 to 1728, and small discrepancies must be allowed for. + +Note: + +[75] "Men of Letters" _Fielding_, 1907, Appendix I. + + +Twenty years later, a fresh version of the record came to light. At +their tercentenary festival in 1875, tne Leyden University printed a +list of their students from their foundation to that year. From this Mr. +Edward Peacock, F.S.A., compiled in 1883, for the Index Society, an +_Index to English-Speaking Students who have graduated at Leyden +University_; and at p. 35 appears _Fielding, Henricus, Anglus_, 16 +Mart. 1728, 915 (the last being the column number of the list). This +added a month-date, and made Fielding a graduate. Then, two years ago, +came yet a third rendering. Mr. A.E.H. Swaen, writing in _The Modern +Language Review_ for July 1906, printed the inscription in the Album as +follows; "Febr. 16. 1728: Rectore Johanne Wesselio, Henricus Fielding, +Anglus. 20, L." Mr. Swaen construed this to mean that, on the date named +(which, it may be observed, is not Mr. Peacock's date), Fielding, "aged +twenty, was _entered_ as _litterarum studiosus_ at Leyden." In this case +it would follow that his residence in Holland should have come after +February 16th, 1728; and Mr. Swaen went on to conjecture that, "as his +[Fielding's] first play, _Love in Several Masques_, was staged at Drury +Lane in February, 1728, and his next play, _The Temple Beau_, was +produced in January, 1730, it is not improbable that his residence in +Holland filled up the interval or part of it. Did the profits of the +play [he proceeded] perhaps cover part of his travelling expenses?" + +The new complications imported into the question by this fresh aspect of +it, will be at once apparent. Up to 1875 there had been but one Fielding +on the Leyden books; so that all these differing accounts were +variations from a single source. In this difficulty, I was fortunate +enough to enlist the sympathy of Mr. Frederic Harrison, who most kindly +undertook to make inquiries on my behalf at Leyden University itself. In +reply to certain definite queries drawn up by me, he obtained from the +distinguished scholar and Professor of History, Dr. Pieter Blok, the +following authoritative particulars. The exact words in the original +_Album Academicum_ are:--"16 Martii 1728 Henricus Fielding, Anglus, +annor. 20 Litt. Stud." He was then staying at the "Casteel van +Antwerpen"--as related by "A Scotchman in Holland." His name only occurs +again in the yearly _recensiones_ under February 22nd, 1729, as +"Henricus Fieldingh," when he was domiciled with one Jan Oson. He must +consequently have left Leyden before February 8th, 1730, February 8th +being the birthday of the University, after which all students have to +be annually registered. The entry in the Album (as Mr. Swaen affirmed) +is an _admission_ entry; there are no leaving entries. As regards +"studying the civilians," Fielding might, in those days, Dr. Blok +explains, have had private lessons from the professors; but he could not +have studied in the University without being on the books. To sum up: +After producing _Love in Several Masques_ at Drury Lane, probably on +February 12th, I728,[76] Fielding was admitted a "Litt. Stud." at Leyden +University on March 16th; was still there in February 1729; and left +before February 8th, 1730. Murphy is therefore at fault in almost every +particular. Fielding did _not_ go from Eton to Leyden; he did _not_ make +any recognised study of the civilians, "with remarkable application" or +otherwise; and he did _not_ return to London before he was twenty. But +it is by no means improbable that the _causa causans_ or main reason for +his coming home was the failure of remittances. + +Note: + +[76] _Genest_, iii. 209. + + +Another recently established fact is also more or less connected with +"Mur.--" as Johnson called him. In his "Essay" of 1762, he gave a +highly-coloured account of Fielding's first marriage, and of the +promptitude with which, assisted by yellow liveries and a pack of +hounds, he managed to make duck and drake of his wife's little fortune. +This account has now been "simply riddled in its details" (as Mr. +Saintsbury puts it) by successive biographers, the last destructive +critic being the late Sir Leslie Stephen, who plausibly suggested that +the "yellow liveries" (not the family liveries, be it noted!) were +simply a confused recollection of the fantastic pranks of that other and +earlier Beau Fielding (Steele's "Orlando the Fair"), who married the +Duchess of Cleveland in 1705, and was also a Justice of the Peace for +Westminster. One thing was wanting to the readjustment of the narrative, +and that was the precise date of Fielding's marriage to the beautiful +Miss Cradock of Salisbury, the original both of Sophia Western and +Amelia Booth. By good fortune this has now been ascertained. Lawrence +gave the date as 1735; and Keightley suggested the spring of that year. +This, as Swift would say, was near the mark, although confirmation has +been slow in coming. In June 1906, Mr. Thomas S. Bush, of Bath, +announced in _The Bath Chronicle_ that the desired information was to be +found (not in the Salisbury registers which had been fruitlessly +consulted, but) at the tiny church of St. Mary, Charlcombe, a secluded +parish about one and a half miles north of Bath. Here is the +record:--"November y'e 28, 1734. Henry Fielding of y'e Parish of St. +James in Bath, Esq., and Charlotte Cradock, of y'e same Parish, +spinster, were married by virtue of a licence from y'e Court of Wells." +All lovers of Fielding owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Bush, whose +researches, in addition, disclosed the fact that Sarah Fielding, the +novelist's third sister (as we shall see presently), was buried, not in +Bath Abbey, where Dr. John Hoadly raised a memorial to her, but "in y'e +entrance of the Chancel [of Charlcombe Church] close to y'e Rector's +seat," April 14th, 1768.[77] Mr. Bush's revelation, it may be added, was +made in connection with another record of the visits of the novelist to +the old Queen of the West, a tablet erected in June 1906 to Fielding and +his sister on the wall of Yew Cottage, now renovated as Widcombe Lodge, +Widcombe, Bath, where they once resided. + +Note: + +[77] Sarah Fielding's epitaph in Bath Abbey is often said to have been +written by Bishop Benjamin Hoadly. In this case, it must have been +anticipatory (like Dr. Primrose's on his Deborah), for the Bishop died +in 1761. + + +In the last case I have to mention, it is but fair to Murphy to admit +that he seems to have been better informed than those who have succeeded +him. Richardson writes of being "well acquainted" with four of +Fielding's sisters, and both Lawrence and Keightley refer to a Catherine +and an Ursula, of whom Keightley, after prolonged enquiries, could +obtain no tidings. With the help of Colonel W.F. Prideaux, and the kind +offices of Mr. Samuel Martin of the Hammersmith Free Library, this +matter has now been set at rest. In 1887 Sir Leslie Stephen had +suggested to me that Catherine and Ursula were most probably born at +Sharpham Park, before the Fieldings moved to East Stour. This must have +been the case, though Keightley had failed to establish it. At all +events, Catherine and Ursula must have existed, for they both died in +1750, The Hammersmith Registers at Fulham record the following +burials:-- + +1750 July 9th, Mrs. Catherine Feilding (_sic_) +1750 Nov. 12th, Mrs. Ursula Fielding +1750 [--1] Feb'y. 24th, Mrs. Beatrice Fielding +1753 May 10th, Louisa, d. of Henry Fielding, Esq. + +The first three, with Sarah, make up the "Four Worthy Sisters" of the +reprehensible author of that "truly coarse-titled _Tom Jones_" +concerning which Richardson wrote shudderingly in August 1749 to his +young friends, Astraea and Minerva Hill. The final entry relating to +Fielding's little daughter, Louisa, born December 3rd, 1752, makes it +probable that, in May, 1753, he was staying in the house at Hammersmith, +then occupied by his sole surviving sister, Sarah. In the following year +(October 8th) he himself died at Lisbon. There is no better short +appreciation of his work than Lowell's lapidary lines for the Shire Hall +at Taunton,--the epigraph to the bust by Miss Margaret Thomas: + + He looked on naked nature unashamed, + And saw the Sphinx, now bestial, now divine, + In change and re-change; he nor praised nor blamed, + But drew her as he saw with fearless line. + Did he good service? God must judge, not we! + Manly he was, and generous and sincere; + English in all, of genius blithely free: + Who loves a Man may see his image here. + + + + +THE HAPPY PRINTER + +"_Hoc est vivere._"--MARTIAL. + + +The Printer's is a happy lot: + Alone of all professions, +No fateful smudges ever blot + His earliest "impressions." + +The outgrowth of his youthful ken + No cold obstruction fetters; +He quickly learns the "types" of men, + And all the world of "letters." + +With "forms" he scorns to compromise; + For him no "rule" has terrors; +The "slips" he makes he can "revise"-- + They are but "printers' errors." + +From doubtful questions of the "Press" + He wisely holds aloof; +In all polemics, more or less, + His argument is "proof." + +Save in their "case," with High and Low, + Small need has he to grapple! +Without dissent he still can go + To his accustomed "Chapel,"[78] + +From ills that others scape or shirk, + He rarely fails to rally; +For him, his most "composing" work + Is labour of the "galley." + +Though ways be foul, and days are dim, + He makes no lamentation; +The primal "fount" of woe to him + Is--want of occupation: + +And when, at last, Time finds him grey + With over-close attention, +He solves the problem of the day, + And gets an Old Age pension. + +Note: + +[78] This, derived, it is said, from Caxton's connection with +Westminster Abbey, is the name given to the meetings held by printers to +consider trade affairs, appeals, etc, (Printers' Vocabulary). + + + + + +CROSS READINGS--AND CALEB WHITEFOORD + +Towards the close of the year 1766--not many months after the +publication of the Vicat of Wakefield--there appeared in Mr. Henry +Sampson Woodfall's _Public Advertiser_, and other newspapers, a letter +addressed "To the Printer," and signed "PAPYRIUS CURSOR." The name was a +real Roman name; but in its burlesque applicability to the theme of the +communication, it was as felicitous as Thackeray's "MANLIUS +PENNIALINUS," or that "APOLLONIUS CURIUS" from whom Hood fabled to have +borrowed the legend of "Lycus the Centaur." The writer of the letter +lamented--as others have done before and since--the barren fertility of +the news sheets of his day. There was, he contended, some diversion and +diversity in card-playing. But as for the papers, the unconnected +occurrences and miscellaneous advertisements, the abrupt transitions +from article to article, without the slightest connection between one +paragraph and another--so overburdened and confused the memory that when +one was questioned, it was impossible to give even a tolerable account +of what one had read. The mind became a jumble of "politics, religion, +picking of pockets, puffs, casualties, deaths, marriages, bankruptcies, +preferments, resignations, executions, lottery tickets, India bonds, +Scotch pebbles, Canada bills, French chicken gloves, auctioneers, and +quack doctors," of all of which, particularly as the pages contained +three columns, the bewildered reader could retain little or nothing. +(One may perhaps pause for a moment to wonder, seeing that Papyrius +could contrive to extract so much mental perplexity from Cowper's "folio +of four pages"--he speaks specifically of this form,--what he would have +done with _Lloyd's_, or a modern American Sunday paper!) Coming later to +the point of his epistle, he goes on to explain that he has hit upon a +method (as to which, be it added, he was not, as he thought, the +originator[79]) of making this heterogeneous mass afford, like cards, a +"_variety_ of entertainment." + +Note: + +[79] As a matter of fact, he had been anticipated by a paper, No. 49 of +"little Harrison's" spurious _Tatler_, vol. v., where the writer reads a +newspaper "in a direct Line" ... "without Regard to the Distinction of +Columns,"--which is precisely the proposal of Papyrius. + + +By reading the afore-mentioned three columns horizontally and _onwards_, +instead of vertically and _downwards_ "in the old trite vulgar way," it +was contended that much mirth might observingly be distilled from the +most unhopeful material, as "_blind Chance_" frequently brought about the +oddest conjunctions, and not seldom compelled _sub juga aenea_ persons +and things the most dissimilar and discordant. He then went on to give a +number of examples in point, of which we select a few. This was the +artless humour of it:-- + + "Yesterday Dr. Jones preached at St. James's, +and performed it with ease in less than 16 Minutes." + "Their R.H. the Dukes of York and Gloucester +were bound over to their good behaviour." + "At noon her R.H. the Princess Dowager was +married to Mr. Jenkins, an eminent Taylor." + "Friday a poor blind man fell into a saw-pit, +to which he was conducted by Sir Clement Cottrell."[80] + "A certain Commoner will be created a Peer. +N.B.--No greater reward will be offered." + "John Wilkes, Esq., set out for France, +being charged with returning from transportation." + "Last night a most terrible fire broke out, +and the evening concluded with the utmost Festivity." + "Yesterday the new Lord Mayor was sworn in, +and afterwards toss'd and gored several Persons." + "On Tuesday an address was presented; +it happily miss'd fire, and the villain made off, +when the honour of knighthood was conferred on him +to the great joy of that noble family." + "Escaped from the New Gaol, Terence M'Dermot. +If he will return, he will be kindly received." + "Colds caught at this season are +The Companion to the Playhouse." + "Ready to sail to the West Indies, +the Canterbury Flying Machine in one day." + "To be sold to the best Bidder, +My Seat in Parliament being vacated." + "I have long laboured under a complaint +For ready money only," + "Notice is hereby given, +and no Notice taken." + +Note: + +[80] Master of the Ceremonies.] + + +And so forth, fully justifying the writer's motto from Cicero, _De +Finibus_: "_Fortuitu Concursu hoc fieri, mirum est._" It may seem that +the mirthful element is not overpowering. But "gentle Dulness ever loves +a joke"; and in 1766 this one, in modern parlance, "caught on." "Cross +readings" had, moreover, one popular advantage: like the Limericks of +Edward Lear, they were easily imitated. What is not so intelligible is, +that they seem to have fascinated many people who were assuredly not +dull. Even Johnson condescended to commend the aptness of the pseudonym, +and to speak of the performance as "ingenious and diverting." Horace +Walpole, writing to Montagu in December 1766, professes to have laughed +over them till he cried. It was "the newest piece of humour," he +declared, "except the _Bath Guide_ [Anstey's], that he had seen of many +years"; and Goldsmith--Goldsmith, who has been charged with want of +sympathy for rival humourists--is reported by Northcote to have even +gone so far as to say, in a transport of enthusiasm, that "it would have +given him more pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the +works he had ever published of his own,"--which, of course, must be +classed with "Dr. Minor's" unconsidered speeches. + +"_Bien heureux_"--to use Voltaire's phrase--is he who can laugh much at +these things now. As Goldsmith himself would have agreed, the jests of +one age are not the jests of another. But it is a little curious that, +by one of those freaks of circumstance, or "fortuitous concourses," +there is to-day generally included among the very works of Goldsmith +above referred to something which, in the opinion of many, is +conjectured to have been really the production of the ingenious compiler +of the "Cross Readings." That compiler was one Caleb Whitefoord, a +well-educated Scotch wine-merchant and picture-buyer, whose portrait +figures in Wilkie's "Letter of Introduction." The friend of Benjamin +Franklin, who had been his next-door neighbour at Craven Street, he +became, in later years, something of a diplomatist, since in 1782-83 he +was employed by the Shelburne administration in the Paris negotiation +for the Treaty of Versailles. But at the date of the "Cross Readings" he +was mainly what Burke, speaking contemptuously of his status as a +plenipotentiary, styled a "_diseur de bons mots_"; and he was for this +reason included among those "most distinguished Wits of the Metropolis," +who, following Garrick's lead in 1774, diverted themselves at the St. +James's Coffee-house by composing the epitaphs on Goldsmith which gave +rise to the incomparable gallery entitled _Retaliation_. In the first +four editions of that posthumous poem there is no mention of Whitefoord, +who, either at, or soon after the first meeting above referred to, had +written an epitaph on Goldsmith, two-thirds of which are declared to be +"unfit for publication."[81] But when the fourth edition of _Retaliation_ +had been printed, an epitaph on Whitefoord was forwarded to the +publisher, George Kearsly, by "a friend of the late Doctor Goldsmith," +with an intimation that it was a transcript of an original in "the +Doctor's own handwriting." "It is a striking proof of Doctor Goldsmith's +good-nature," said the sender, glancing, we may suppose, at Whitefoord's +performance. "I saw this sheet of paper in the Doctor's room, five or +six days before he died; and, as I had got all the other Epitaphs, I +asked him if I might take it. "_In truth you may, my Boy_ (replied he), +_for it will be of no use to me where I am going_." + +Note: + +[81] Hewins's _Whitefoord Papers_, 1898, p. xxvii. ff., where the first +four lines of twelve are given. They run-- + + Noll Goldsmith lies here, as famous for writing + As his namesake old Noll was for praying and fighting, + In friends he was rich, tho' not loaded with Pelf; + He spoke well of them, and thought well of himself. + + +The lines--there are twenty-eight of them--speak of Whitefoord as, among +other things, a + + Rare compound of oddity, frolic and fun! + Who relish'd a joke, and rejoic'd in a pun;[82] + Whose temper was generous, open, sincere; + A stranger to flatt'ry, a stranger to fear; + Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will, + Whose daily _bons mots_ half a column would fill; + A Scotchman, from pride and from prejudice free, + A scholar, yet surely no pedant was he. + + What pity, alas! that so lib'ral a mind + Should so long be to news-paper-essays confin'd! + Who perhaps to the summit of science could soar, + Yet content "if the table he set on a roar"; + Whose talents to fill any station were fit, + Yet happy if _Woodfall_ confess'd him a wit. + +Note: + +[82] "Mr, W."--says a note to the fifth edition--"is so notorious a +punster, that Doctor Goldsmith used to say, it was impossible to keep +him company, without being infected with the _itch_ of _punning_." Yet +Johnson endured him, and apparently liked him, though he had the +additional disqualification of being a North Briton. + + +The "servile herd" of "tame imitators"--the "news-paper witlings" and +"pert scribbling folks"--were further requested to visit his tomb-- + + To deck it, bring with you festoons of the vine, + And copious libations bestow on his shrine; + Then strew all around it (you can do no less) + _Cross-readings, Ship-news_, and _Mistakes_ of the _Press_. + +It is not recorded that Kearsly ever saw this in Goldsmith's "own +handwriting"; the sender's name has never been made known; and--as above +observed--it has been more than suspected that Whitefoord concocted it +himself, or procured its concoction. As J.T. Smith points out in +_Nollekens and his Times_, 1828, i, 337-8, Whitefoord was scarcely +important enough to deserve a far longer epitaph than those bestowed on +Burke and Reynolds; and Goldsmith, it may be added--as we know In the +case of Beattie and Voltaire--was not in the habit of confusing small +men with great. Moreover, the lines would (as intimated by the person +who sent them to Kearsly) be an extraordinarily generous return for an +epitaph "unfit for publication," by which, it is stated, Goldsmith had +been greatly disturbed. Prior had his misgivings, particularly in +respect to the words attributed to Goldsmith on his death-bed; and +Forster allows that to him the story of the so-called "Postscript" has +"a somewhat doubtful look." To which we unhesitatingly say--ditto. + +Whitefoord, it seems, was in the habit of printing his "Cross Readings" +on small single sheets, and circulating them among his friends. +"Rainy-Day Smith" had a specimen of these. In one of Whitefoord's +letters he professes to claim that his _jeux d'esprit_ contained more +than met the eye. "I have always," he wrote, "endeavour'd to make such +changes [of Ministry] a matter of _Laughter_ [rather] than of serious +concern to the People, by turning them into horse Races, Ship News, &c, +and these Pieces have generally succeeded beyond my most sanguine +Expectations, altho' they were not season'd with private Scandal or +personal Abuse, of which our good neighbours of South Britain are realy +too fond." In Debrett's _New Foundling Hospital for Wit_, new edition, +1784, there are several of his productions, including a letter to +Woodfall "On the Errors of the Press," of which the following may serve +as a sample: "I have known you turn a matter of hearsay, into a matter +of heresy; Damon into a daemon; a delicious girl, into a delirious girl; +the comic muse, into a comic mouse; a Jewish Rabbi, into a Jewish +Rabbit; and when a correspondent, lamenting the corruption of the times, +exclaimed 'O Mores!' you made him cry, 'O Moses!'" And here is an +extract from another paper which explains the aforegoing reference to +"horse Races": "1763--Spring Meeting... Mr. Wilkes's horse, LIBERTY, +rode by himself, took the lead at starting; but being pushed hard by Mr. +Bishop's black gelding, PRIVILEGE, fell down at the Devil's Ditch, and +was no where." The "Ship News" is on the same pattern. "_August_ 25 +[1765] We hear that his Majesty's Ship _Newcastle_ will soon have a new +figure-head, the old one being almost worn out." + + + + +THE LAST PROOF + + +AN EPILOGUE TO ANY BOOK + +"_Hic Finis chartaeque viaeque._" + +"FINIS at last--the end, the End, the END! +No more of paragraphs to prune or mend; +No more blue pencil, with its ruthless line, +To blot the phrase 'particularly fine'; +No more of 'slips,' and 'galleys,' and 'revises,' +Of words 'transmogrified,' and 'wild surmises'; +No more of _n_'s that masquerade as _u_'s, +No nice perplexities of _p_'s and _q_'s; +No more mishaps of _ante_ and of _post_, +That most mislead when they should help the most; +No more of 'friend' as 'fiend,' and 'warm' as 'worm'; +No more negations where we would affirm; +No more of those mysterious freaks of fate +That make us bless when we should execrate; +No more of those last blunders that remain +Where we no more can set them right again; + +No more apologies for doubtful data; +No more fresh facts that figure as Errata; +No more, in short, O TYPE, of wayward lore +From thy most _un_-Pierian fount--NO MORE!" + +So spoke PAPYRIUS. Yet his hand meanwhile +Went vaguely seeking for the vacant file, +Late stored with long array of notes, but now +Bare-wired and barren as a leafless bough;-- +And even as he spoke, his mind began +Again to scheme, to purpose and to plan. + +There is no end to Labour 'neath the sun; +There is no end of labouring--but One; +And though we "twitch (or not) our Mantle blue," +"To-morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new." + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's De Libris: Prose and Verse, by Austin Dobson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE LIBRIS: PROSE AND VERSE *** + +This file should be named 7dlbr10.txt or 7dlbr10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7dlbr11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7dlbr10a.txt + +Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Sjaani and the Online Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: De Libris: Prose and Verse + +Author: Austin Dobson + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9979] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on November 7, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE LIBRIS: PROSE AND VERSE *** + + + + +Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Sjaani and the Online Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +DE LIBRIS PROSE & VERSE + +BY AUSTIN DOBSON + + + +Vt Mel Os, sic Cor Melos afficit, & reficit. _Deuteromelia_. + +A mixture of a _Song_ doth ever adde Pleasure. BACON (_adapted_). + +MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1908 + + +_Copyright 1908 by The Macmillan Company_ + + + + +_PROLOGUE_ + +_LECTOR BENEVOLE!_--FOR SO +THEY USED TO CALL YOU, YEARS AGO,-- +I CAN'T PRETEND TO MAKE YOU READ +THE PAGES THAT TO THIS SUCCEED; +NOR COULD I--IF I WOULD--EXCUSE +THE WAYWARD PROMPTINGS OF THE MUSE +AT WHOSE COMMAND I WROTE THEM DOWN. + +I HAVE NO HOPE TO "PLEASE THE TOWN." +I DID BUT THINK SOME FRIENDLY SOUL +(NOT ILL-ADVISED, UPON THE WHOLE!) +MIGHT LIKE THEM; AND "TO INTERPOSE +A LITTLE EASE," BETWEEN THE PROSE, +SLIPPED IN THE SCRAPS OF VERSE, THAT THUS +THINGS MIGHT BE LESS MONOTONOUS. + +THEN, _LECTOR,_ BE _BENEVOLUS!_ + + + + +[_The Author desires to express his thanks to Lord Northcliffe, Messrs. +Macmillan and Co., Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., Mr. William Heinemann, +and Messrs. Virtue and Co., for kind permission to reprint those pieces +in this volume concerning which no specific arrangements were made on +their first appearance in type._] + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Prologue +On Some Books And Their Associations +An Epistle To An Editor +Bramston's "Man Of Taste" +The Passionate Printer To His Love +M. Rouquet On The Arts +The Friend Of Humanity And The Rhymer +The Parent's Assistant +A Pleasant Invective Against Printing +Two Modern Book Illustrators--I. Kate Greenaway +A Song Of The Greenaway Child +Two Modern Book Illustrators--Ii. Mr. Hugh Thomson +Horatian Ode On The Tercentenary Of "Don Quixote" +The Books Of Samuel Rogers +Pepys' "Diary" +A French Critic On Bath +A Welcome From The "Johnson Club" +Thackeray's "Esmond" +A Miltonic Exercise +Fresh Facts About Fielding +The Happy Printer +Cross Readings--And Caleb Whitefoord +The Last Proof +General Index + + + + +_ILLUSTRATIONS_ + + +* THE OTTER HUNT IN THE "COMPLEAT ANGLER." From an unpublished +pen-drawing by Mr. Hugh Thomson _Frontispiece_ + +*GROUP OF CHILDREN. From the original pen-drawing by Kate Greenaway for +_The Library,_ 1881 + +*PENCIL-SKETCHES, by the same (No. 1) + +*PENCIL-SKETCH, by the same (No. 2) + +*PENCIL-SKETCHES, by the same (No. 3) + +*PENCIL-SKETCH, by the same (No. 4) + +THE BROWN BOOK-PLATE. From the original design by Mr. Hugh Thomson in +the possession of Mr. Ernest Brown + +*SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY AT THE ASSIZES. From a first rough pencil-sketch, +by the same, for _Days with Sir Roger de Coverley,_ 1886 + +PEN-SKETCHES, by the same, on the Half-Title of the _Ballad of Beau +Brocade,_ 1892. From the originals in the possession of Mr. A. +T.A. Dobson + +*PEN-SKETCH (TRIPLET), by the same, on a Flyleaf of _Peg Woffington,_ +1899 + +EVELINA AND THE BRANGHTONS, by the same. From the Cranford _Evelina,_ +1903 + +LADY CASTLEWOOD AND HER SON, by the same. From the Cranford _Esmond_, +1905 + +MERCERY LANE, CANTERBURY, by the same. From the original pencil-drawing +for _Highways and Byways in Kent_, 1907 + +_The originals of the illustrations preceded by an asterisk are in the +possession of the Author._ + + + + +ON SOME BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS + + +New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best +deckle-edged Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with +backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be +no more to us than the constrained and uneasy acquaintances of +yesterday. Friends they may become to-morrow, the day after,--perhaps +"hunc in annum et plures" But for the time being they have neither part +nor lot in our past of retrospect and suggestion. Of what we were, of +what we like or liked, they know nothing; and we--if that be +possible--know even less of them. Whether familiarity will breed +contempt, or whether they will come home to our business and +bosom,--these are things that lie on the lap of the Fates. + +But it is to be observed that the associations of old books, as of new +books, are not always exclusively connected with their text or +format,--are sometimes, as a matter of fact, independent of both. Often +they are memorable to us by length of tenure, by propinquity,--even by +their patience under neglect. We may never read them; and yet by reason +of some wholly external and accidental characteristic, it would be a +wrench to part with them if the moment of separation--the inevitable +hour--should arrive at last. Here, to give an instance in point, is a +stained and battered French folio, with patched corners,--Mons. N. +Renouard's translation of the _Metamorphoses d'Ovide_, 1637, "_enrichies +de figures à chacune Fable_" (very odd figures some of them are!) and to +be bought "_chez Pierre Billaine, ruë Sainct Iacques, à la Bonne-Foy, +deuant S. Yues_." It has held no honoured place upon the shelves; it has +even resided au rez-de-chaussée,--that is to say, upon the floor; but it +is not less dear,-- not less desirable. For at the back of the +"Dedication to the King" (Lewis XIII. to wit), is scrawled in a +slanting, irregular hand: "_Pour mademoiselle de mons Son tres humble et +tres obeissant Serviteur St. André._" Between the fourth and fifth word, +some one, in a smaller writing of later date, has added "_par_" and +after "St. André," the signature "_Vandeuvre_." In these irrelevant (and +unsolicited) interpolations, I take no interest. But who was Mlle. de +Mons? As Frederick Locker sings: + + Did She live yesterday or ages back? + What colour were the eyes when bright and waking? + And were your ringlets fair, or brown, or black, + Poor little Head! that long has done with aching![1] + +"Ages back" she certainly did _not_ live, for the book is dated "1637," +and "yesterday" is absurd. But that her eyes were bright,--nay, that +they were particularly lively and vivacious, even as they are in the +sanguine sketches of Antoine Watteau a hundred years afterwards, I am +"confidous"--as Mrs. Slipslop would say. For my theory (in reality a +foregone conclusion which I shrink from dispersing by any practical +resolvent) is, that Mile. de Mons was some delightful +seventeenth--century French child, to whom the big volume had been +presented as a picture-book. I can imagine the alert, strait-corseted +little figure, with ribboned hair, eagerly craning across the tall +folio; and following curiously with her finger the legends under the +copper "figures,"--"Narcisse en fleur," "Ascalaphe en hibou," "Jason +endormant le dragon,"--and so forth, with much the same wonder that the +Sinne-Beelden of Jacob Cats must have stirred in the little Dutchwomen +of Middelburg. There can be no Mlle. de Mons but this,--and for me she +can never grow old! + +Note: + +[1] This quatrain has the distinction of having been touched upon by +Thackeray. When Mr. Locker's manuscript went to the Cornhill Magazine +in 1860, it ran thus: + + Did she live yesterday, or ages sped? + What colour were the eyes when bright and waking? + And were your ringlets fair? Poor little head! + --Poor little heart! that long has done with aching. + + +Sometimes it comes to pass that the association is of a more far-fetched +and fanciful kind. In the great Ovid it lies in an inscription: in my +next case it is "another-guess" matter. The folio this time is the +_Sylva Sylvarum_ of the "Right Hon. Francis Lo. Verulam. Viscount St. +Alban," of whom some people still prefer to speak as Lord Bacon. 'Tis +only the "sixt Edition"; but it was to be bought at the Great Turk's +Head, "next to the Mytre Tauerne" (not the modern pretender, be it +observed!), which is in itself a feature of interest. A former +possessor, from his notes, appears to have been largely preoccupied with +that ignoble clinging to life which so exercised Matthew Arnold, for +they relate chiefly to laxative simples for medicine; and he comforts +himself, in April, 1695, by transcribing Bacon's reflection that "a Life +led in _Religion_ and in _Holy Exercises_" conduces to longevity,--an +aphorism which, however useful as an argument for length of days, is a +rather remote reason for religion. But what to me is always most +seductive in the book is, that to this edition (not copy, of course) of +1651 Master Izaak Walton, when he came, in his _Compleat Angler_ of +1653, to discuss such abstract questions as the transmission of sound +under water, and the ages of carp and pike, must probably have referred. +He often mentions "Sir Francis Bacon's" _History of Life and Death_, +which is included in the volume. No doubt it would be more reasonable +and more "congruous" that Bacon's book should suggest Bacon. But there +it is. That illogical "succession of ideas" which puzzled my Uncle Toby, +invariably recalls to me, not the imposing folio to be purchased "next +to the Mytre Tauerne" in Fleet Street, but the unpretentious +eighteenpenny octavo which, two years later, was on sale at Richard +Marriot's in St. Dunstan's churchyard hard by, and did no more than +borrow its erudition from the riches of the Baconian storehouse. + +Life, and its prolongation, is again the theme of the next book (also +mentioned, by the way, in Walton) which I take up, though unhappily it +has no inscription. It is a little old calf-clad copy of Lewis Cornaro's +_Sure and Certain Methods of attaining a Long and Healthful Life_, 4th +ed., 24mo, 1727; and was bought at the Bewick sale of February, 1884, as +having once belonged to Robert Elliot Bewick, only son of the famous old +Newcastle wood-engraver. As will be shown later, it is easy to be misled +in these matters, but I cannot help believing that this volume, which +looks as if it had been re-bound, is the one Thomas Bewick mentions in +his _Memoir_ as having been his companion in those speculative +wanderings over the Town Moor or the Elswick Fields, when, as an +apprentice, he planned his future _à la_ Franklin, and devised schemes +for his conduct in life. In attaining Cornaro's tale of years he did not +succeed; though he seems to have faithfully practised the periods of +abstinence enjoined (but probably not observed) by another of the "noble +Venetian's" professed admirers, Mr. Addison of the _Spectator_. + +If I have admitted a momentary misgiving as to the authenticity of the +foregoing relic of the "father of white line," there can be none about +the next item to which I now come. Once, on a Westminster bookstall, +long since disappeared, I found a copy of a seventh edition of the +_Pursuits of Literature_ of T.J. Mathias, Queen Charlotte's Treasurer's +Clerk. Brutally cut down by the binder, that _durus arator_ had +unexpectedly spared a solitary page for its manuscript comment, which +was thoughtfully turned up and folded in. It was a note to this couplet +in Mathias, his Dialogue II.:-- + + From Bewick's magick wood throw borrow'd rays + O'er many a page in gorgeous Bulmer's blaze,-- + +"gorgeous Bulmer" (the epithet is over-coloured!) being the William +Bulmer who, in 1795, issued the _Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell_. "I" +(says the writer of the note) "was chiefly instrumental to this +ingenious artist's [Bewick's] excellence in this art. I first initiated +his master, Mr. Ra. Beilby (of Newcastle) into the art, and his first +essay was the execution of the cuts in my Treatise on Mensuration, +printed in 4to, 1770. Soon after I recommended the same artist to +execute the cuts to Dr. Horsley's edition of the works of Newton. +Accordingly Mr. B. had the job, who put them into the hands of his +assistant, Mr. Bewick, who executed them as his first work in wood, and +that in a most elegant manner, tho' spoiled in the printing by John +Nichols, the Black-letter printer. C.H. 1798." + +"C.H." is Dr. Charles Hutton, the Woolwich mathematician. His note is a +little in the vaunting vein of that "founder of fortun's," the excellent +Uncle Pumblechook of _Great Expectations_, for his services scarcely +amounted to "initiating" Bewick or his master into the art of engraving +on wood. Moreover, his memory must have failed him, for Bewick, and not +Beilby, did the majority of the cuts to the _Mensuration_, including a +much-praised diagram of the tower of St. Nicholas Church at Newcastle, +afterwards a familiar object in the younger man's designs and +tail-pieces. Be this as it may, Dr. Hutton's note was surely worth +rescuing from the ruthless binder's plough. + +Between the work of Thomas Bewick and the work of Samuel Pepys, it is +idle to attempt any ingenious connecting link, save the fact that they +both wrote autobiographically. The "Pepys" in question here, however, is +not the famous _Diary_, but the Secretary to the Admiralty's "only other +acknowledged work," namely, the privately printed _Memoires Relating to +the State of the Royal Navy of England, for Ten Years, 1690_; and this +copy may undoubtedly lay claim to exceptional interest. For not only +does it comprise those manuscript corrections in the author's +handwriting, which Dr. Tanner reproduced in his excellent Clarendon +Press reprint of last year, but it includes the two portrait plates by +Robert White after Kneller. The larger is bound in as a frontispiece; +the smaller (the ex-libris) is inserted at the beginning. The main +attraction of the book to me, however, is its previous owners--one +especially. My immediate predecessor was a well-known collector, +Professor Edward Solly, at whose sale in 1886 I bought it; and he in his +turn had acquired it in 1877, at Dr. Rimbault's sale. Probably what drew +us all to the little volume was not so much its disclosure of the +lamentable state of the Caroline navy, and of the monstrous toadstools +that flourished so freely in the ill-ventilated holds of His Majesty's +ships-of-war, as the fact that it had once belonged to that brave old +philanthropist, Captain Thomas Coram of the Foundling Hospital. To him +it was presented in March, 1724, by one C. Jackson; and he afterwards +handed it on to a Mr. Mills. Pasted at the end is Coram's autograph +letter, dated "June 10th, 1746." "To Mr. Mills These. Worthy Sir I +happend to find among my few Books, Mr. Pepys his memoires, w'ch I +thought might be acceptable to you & therefore pray you to accept of it. +I am w'th much Respect Sir your most humble Ser't. THOMAS CORAM." + +At the Foundling Hospital is a magnificent full-length of Coram, with +curling white locks and kindly, weather-beaten face, from the brush of +his friend and admirer, William Hogarth. It is to Hogarth and his +fellow-Governor at the Foundling, John Wilkes, that my next jotting +relates. These strange colleagues in charity afterwards--as is well +known--quarrelled bitterly over politics. Hogarth caricatured Wilkes in +the _Times_: Wilkes replied by a _North Briton_ article (No. 17) so +scurrilous and malignant that Hogarth was stung into rejoining with that +famous squint-eyed semblance of his former crony, which has handed him +down to posterity more securely than the portraits of Zoffany and +Earlom. Wilkes's action upon this was to reprint his article with the +addition of a bulbous-nosed woodcut of Hogarth "from the Life." These +facts lent interest to an entry which for years had been familiar to me +in the Sale Catalogue of Mr. H.P. Standly, and which ran thus: "The +NORTH BRITON, No. 17, with a PORTRAIT of HOGARTH in WOOD; _and a severe +critique on some of his works: in Ireland's handwriting_ is the +following--'_This paper was given to me by Mrs. Hogarth, Aug. 1782, and +is the identical North Briton purchased by Hogarth, and carried in his +pocket many days to show his friends_.'" The Ireland referred to (as +will presently appear) was Samuel Ireland of the _Graphic +Illustrations_. When, in 1892, dispersed items of the famous Joly +collection began to appear sporadically in the second-hand catalogues, I +found in that of a well-known London bookseller an entry plainly +describing this one, and proclaiming that it came "from the celebrated +collection of Mr. Standly, of St. Neots." Unfortunately, the scrap of +paper connecting it with Mrs. Hogarth's present to Ireland had been +destroyed. Nevertheless, I secured my prize, had it fittingly bound up +with the original number which accompanied it; and here and there, in +writing about Hogarth, bragged consequentially about my fortunate +acquisition. Then came a day--a day to be marked with a black +stone!--when in the British Museum Print Room, and looking through the +"--Collection," for the moment deposited there, I came upon _another_ +copy of the _North Briton_, bearing in Samuel Ireland's writing a +notification to the effect that it was the Identical No. 17, etc., etc. +Now which is the right one? Is either the right one? I inspect mine +distrustfully. It is soiled, and has evidently been folded; it is +scribbled with calculations; it has all the aspect of a _vénérable +vétusté_. That it came from the Standly collection, I am convinced. But +that other pretender in the (now dispersed) "--Collection"? And was +not Samuel Ireland (_nomen invisum_!) the, if not fraudulent, at least +too-credulous father of one William Henry Ireland, who, at eighteen, +wrote _Vortigern and Rowena_, and palmed it off as genuine Shakespeare? +I fear me--I much fear me--that, in the words of the American showman, +I have been "weeping over the wrong grave." + +To prolong these vagrant adversaria would not be difficult. Here, for +example, dated 1779, are the _Coplas_ of the poet Don Jorge Manrique, +which, having no Spanish, I am constrained to study in the renderings of +Longfellow. Don Jorge was a Spaniard of the Spaniards, Commendador of +Montizon, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Captain of a company in the +Guards of Castile, and withal a valiant _soldado_, who died of a wound +received in battle. But the attraction of my volume is, that, at the +foot of the title-page, in beautiful neat script, appear the words, +"Robert Southey. Paris. 17 May 1817,"--being the year in which Southey +stayed at Como with Walter Savage Landor. Here are the _Works_ of +mock-heroic John Philips, 1720, whose _Blenheim_ the Tories pitted +against Addison's _Campaign_, and whose _Splendid Shilling_ still shines +lucidly among eighteenth-century parodies. This copy bears--also on the +title-page--the autograph of James Thomson, not yet the author of _The +Seasons_; and includes the book-plate of Lord Prestongrange,--that +"Lord Advocate Grant" of whom you may read in the _Kidnapped_ of +"R.L.S." Here again is an edition (the first) of Hazlitt's _Lectures on +the English Comic Writers_, annotated copiously in MS. by a contemporary +reader who was certainly not an admirer; and upon whom W.H.'s +cockneyisms, Gallicisms, egotisms, and "_ille_-isms" generally, seem to +have had the effect of a red rag upon an inveterately insular bull. "A +very ingenious but pert, dogmatical, and Prejudiced Writer" is his +uncomplimentary addition to the author's name. Then here is Cunningham's +_Goldsmith_ of 1854, vol. i., castigated with equal energy by that +Alaric Alexander Watts,[2] of whose egregious strictures upon Wordsworth +we read not long since in the _Cornhill Magazine_, and who will not +allow Goldsmith to say, in the _Haunch of Venison_, "the porter and +eatables followed behind." "They could scarcely have followed +before,"--he objects, in the very accents of Boeotia. Nor will he pass +"the hollow-sounding bittern" of the _Deserted Village_. A barrel may +sound hollow, but not a bird--this wiseacre acquaints us. + +Note: + +[2] So he was christened. But Lockhart chose to insist that his +second pre-name should properly be "Attila," and thenceforth he was +spoken of in this way. + + +Had the gifted author of _Lyrics of the Heart_ never heard of rhetorical +figures? But he is not Goldsmith's only hyper-critic. Charles Fox, who +admired _The Traveller_, thought Olivia's famous song in the _Vicar_ +"foolish," and added that "folly" was a bad rhyme to "melancholy."[3] He +must have forgotten Milton's:-- + + Bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, + Most musicall, most melancholy! + +Or he might have gone to the other camp, and remembered Pope on Mrs. +Howard:-- + + Not warp'd by Passion, aw'd by Rumour, + Not grave thro' Pride,, or gay thro' Folly, + An equal Mixture of good Humour, + And sensible soft Melancholy. + +Note: + +[3] _Recollections_, by Samuel Rogers, 2nd ed., 1859, 43. + + + + +AN EPISTLE TO AN EDITOR + + +"Jamais les arbres verts n'ont essayé d'être bleus."-- +THÉOPHILE GAUTIER. + + +"A new Review!" You make me tremble +(Though as to that, I can dissemble +Till I hear more). But is it "new"? +And will it be a _real_ Review?-- +I mean, a Court wherein the scales +Weigh equally both him that fails, +And him that hits the mark?--a place +Where the accus'd can plead his case, +If wrong'd? All this I need to know +Before I (arrogant!) say "Go." + +"We, that are very old" (the phrase +Is STEELE'S, not mine!), in former days, +Have seen so many "new Reviews" +Arise, arraign, absolve, abuse;-- +Proclaim their mission to the top +(Where there's still room!), then slowly drop, + +Shrink down, fade out, and _sans_ preferment, +Depart to their obscure interment;-- +We should be pardon'd if we doubt +That a new venture _can_ hold out. + +It _will_, you say. Then don't be "new"; +Be "old." The Old is still the True. +Nature (said GAUTIER) never tries +To alter her accustom'd dyes; +And all your novelties at best +Are ancient puppets, newly drest. +What you must do, is not to shrink +From speaking out the thing you think; +And blaming where 'tis right to blame, +Despite tradition and a Name. +Yet don't expand a trifling blot, +Or ban the book for what it's not +(That is the poor device of those +Who cavil where they can't oppose!); +Moreover (this is _very_ old!), +Be courteous--even when you scold! + +Blame I put first, but not at heart. +You must give Praise the foremost part;-- +Praise that to those who write is breath +Of Life, if just; if unjust, Death. +Praise then the things that men revere; +Praise what they love, not what they fear; +Praise too the young; praise those who try; +Praise those who fail, but by and by +May do good work. Those who succeed, +You'll praise perforce,--so there's no need +To speak of that. And as to each, +See you keep measure in your speech;-- +See that your praise be so exprest +That the best man shall get the best; +Nor fail of the fit word you meant +Because your epithets are spent. +Remember that our language gives +No limitless superlatives; +And SHAKESPEARE, HOMER, _should_ have more +Than the last knocker at the door! + +"We, that are very old!"--May this +Excuse the hint you find amiss. +My thoughts, I feel, are what to-day +Men call _vieux jeu_. Well!--"let them say." +The Old, at least, we know: the New +(A changing Shape that all pursue!) +Has been,--may be, a fraud. +--But there! +Wind to your sail! _Vogue la galère!_ + + + +BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE" + +Were you to inquire respectfully of the infallible critic (if such +indeed there be!) for the source of the aphorism, "Music has charms to +soothe a savage beast," he would probably "down" you contemptuously in +the Johnsonian fashion by replying that you had "just enough of learning +to misquote";--that the last word was notoriously "breast" and not +"beast";--and that the line, as Macaulay's, and every Board School-boy +besides must be abundantly aware, is to be found in Congreve's tragedy +of _The Mourning Bride_. But he would be wrong; and, in fact, would only +be confirming the real author's contention that "Sure, of all +blockheads, _Scholars_ are the worst." For, whether connected with +Congreve or not, the words are correctly given; and they occur in the +Rev. James Bramston's satire, _The Man of Taste_, 1733, running in a +couplet as follows:-- + + Musick has charms to sooth a savage beast, + And therefore proper at a Sheriff's feast. + +Moreover, according to the handbooks, this is not the only passage from +a rather obscure original which has held its own. "Without +black-velvet-britches, what is man?"--is another (a speculation which +might have commended itself to Don Quixote);[4] while _The Art of +Politicks_, also by Bramston, contains a third:-- + + What's not destroy'd by Time's devouring Hand? + Where's _Troy_, and where's the _May-Pole_ in the _Strand_? + +Polonius would perhaps object against a "devouring hand." But the +survival of--at least--three fairly current citations from a practically +forgotten minor Georgian satirist would certainly seem to warrant a few +words upon the writer himself, and his chief performance in verse. + +The Rev. James Bramston was born in 1694 or 1695 at Skreens, near +Chelmsford, in Essex, his father, Francis Bramston, being the fourth son +of Sir Moundeford Bramston, Master in Chancery, whose father again was +Sir John Bramston, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, generally +known as "the elder."[5]James Bramston was admitted to Westminster +School in 1708. In 1713 he became a scholar at Christ Church, Oxford, +proceeding B.A. in 1717, and M.A. in 1720. In 1723 he was made Vicar of +Lurgashall, and in 1725 of Harting, both of which Sussex livings he held +until his death in March 1744, ten weeks before the death of Pope. His +first published verses (1715) were on Dr. Radcliffe. In 1729 he printed +_The Art of Politicks_, one of the many contemporary imitations of the +_Ars Poetica_; and in 1733 _The Man of Taste_. He also wrote a mediocre +variation on the _Splendid Shilling_ of John Philips, entitled _The +Crooked Sixpence_, 1743. Beyond a statement in Dallaway's _Sussex_ that +"he [Bramston] was a man of original humour, the fame and proofs of +whose colloquial wit are still remembered"; and the supplementary +information that, as incumbent of Lurgashall, he received an annual +_modus_ of a fat buck and doe from the neighbouring Park of Petworth, +nothing more seems to have been recorded of him. + +Notes: + +[4] Whose _grand tenue_ or holiday wear--Cervantes tells us--was "a +doublet of fine cloth and _velvet breeches_ and shoes to match." (ch. 1). + +[5] Sir John Bramston, the younger, was the author of the "watery +incoherent _Autobiography_"--as Carlyle calls it--published by the Camden +Society in 1845. + + +_The Crooked Sixpence_ is, at best, an imitation of an imitation; and as +a Miltonic _pastiche_ does not excel that of Philips, or rival the more +serious _Lewesdon Hill_ of Crowe. _The Art of Politicks_, in its turn, +would need a fairly long commentary to make what is only moderately +interesting moderately intelligible, while eighteenth-century copies of +Horace's letter to the Pisos are "plentiful as blackberries." But _The +Man of Taste_, based, as it is, on the presentment of a never extinct +type, the connoisseur against nature, is still worthy of passing notice. + +In the sub-title of the poem, it is declared to be "Occasion'd by an +Epistle of Mr. Pope's on that Subject" [i.e. "Taste"]. This was what is +now known as No. 4 of the _Moral Essays_, "On the Use of Riches." But +its first title In 1731 was "Of Taste"; and this was subsequently +altered to "Of False Taste." It was addressed to Pope's friend, Richard +Boyle, Earl of Burlington; and, under the style of "Timon's Villa," +employed, for its chief illustration of wasteful and vacuous +magnificence, the ostentatious seat which James Brydges, first Duke of +Chandos, had erected at Canons, near Edgware. The story of Pope's +epistle does not belong to this place. But in the print of _The Man of +Taste_, William Hogarth, gratifying concurrently a personal antipathy, +promptly attacked Pope, Burlington, and his own _bête noire_, +Burlington's architect, William Kent. Pope, to whom Burlington acts as +hodman, is depicted whitewashing Burlington Gate, Piccadilly, which is +labelled "Taste," and over which rises Kent's statue, subserviently +supported at the angles of the pediment by Raphael and Michelangelo. In +his task, the poet, a deformed figure in a tye-wig, bountifully +bespatters the passers-by, particularly the chariot of the Duke of +Chandos. The satire was not very brilliant or ingenious; but its meaning +was clear. Pope was prudent enough to make no reply; though, as Mr. G.S. +Layard shows in his _Suppressed Plates_, it seems that the print was, or +was sought to be, called in by those concerned. Bramston's poem, which +succeeded in 1733, does not enter into the quarrel, it may be because of +the anger aroused by the pictorial reply. But if--as announced on its +title-page,--it was suggested by Pope's epistle, it would also seem to +have borrowed its name from Hogarth's caricature. + +It was first issued in folio by Pope's publisher, Lawton Gilliver of +Fleet Street, and has a frontispiece engraved by Gerard Vandergucht. +This depicts a wide-skirted, effeminate-looking personage, carrying a +long cane with a head fantastically carved, and surrounded by various +objects of art. In the background rises what is apparently intended for +the temple of a formal garden; and behind this again, a winged ass +capers skittishly upon the summit of Mount Helicon. As might be +anticipated, the poem is in the heroic measure of Pope. But though many +of its couplets are compact and pointed, Bramston has not yet learned +from his model the art of varying his pausation, and the period closes +his second line with the monotony of a minute gun. Another defect, +noticed by Warton, is that the speaker throughout is made to profess the +errors satirised, and to be the unabashed mouthpiece of his own fatuity, +"Mine," say the concluding lines,-- + + Mine are the gallant Schemes of Politesse, + For books, and buildings, politicks, and dress. + This is _True Taste_, and whoso likes it not, + Is blockhead, coxcomb, puppy, fool, and sot. + +One is insensibly reminded of a quotation from P.L. Courier, made in the +_Cornhill_ many years since by the once famous "Jacob Omnium" when +replying controversially to the author of _Ionica_, "_Je vois_"--says +Courier, after recapitulating a string of abusive epithets hurled at him +by his opponent--"_je vois ce qu'il veut dire: il entend que lui et moi +sont d'avis different; et c'est là sa manière de s'exprimer_." It was +also the manner of our Man of Taste. + +The second line of the above quotation from Bramston gives us four of +the things upon which his hero lays down the law. Let us see what he +says about literature. As a professing critic he prefers books +with notes:-- + + Tho' _Blackmore's_ works my soul with raptures fill, + With notes by _Bently_ they'd be better still. + +Swift he detests--not of course for detestable qualities, but because he +is so universally admired. In poetry he holds by rhyme as opposed to +blank verse:-- + + Verse without rhyme I never could endure, + Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure. + To him as Nature, when he ceas'd to see, + _Milton's_ an _universal Blank_ to me ... + _Thompson _[_sic_] write blank, but know that for that reason + These lines shall live, when thine are out of season. + Rhyme binds and beautifies the Poet's lays + As _London_ Ladies owe their shape to stays. + +In this the Man of Taste is obviously following the reigning fashion. +But if we may assume Bramston himself to approve what his hero condemns, +he must have been in advance of his age, for blank verse had but sparse +advocates at this time, or for some time to come. Neither Gray, nor +Johnson, nor Goldsmith were ever reconciled to what the last of them +styles "this unharmonious measure." Goldsmith, in particular, would +probably have been in exact agreement with the couplet as to the +controlling powers of rhyme. "If rhymes, therefore," he writes, in the +_Enquiry into Polite Learning_,[6] "be more difficult [than blank +verse], for that very reason, I would have our poets write in rhyme. +Such a restriction upon the thought of a good poet, often lifts and +encreases the vehemence of every sentiment; for fancy, like a fountain, +plays highest by diminishing the aperture."[7] + +Notes: + +[6] Ed. 1759, p. 151. + +[7] Montaigne has a somewhat similar illustration: "As _Cleanthes_ The +Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is said, that as the voice +being forciblie pent in the narrow gullet of a trumpet, at last issueth +forth more strong and shriller, so me seemes, that a sentence cunningly +and closely couched in measure-keeping Posie, darts it selfe forth more +furiously, and wounds me even to the quicke". +(_Essayes_, bk. i. ch. xxv. (Florio's translation). + + +The Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is Colley Cibber, who, +however, deserves the laurel he wears, not for _The Careless Husband_, +his best comedy, but for his Epilogues and other Plays. + + It pleases me, that _Pope_ unlaurell'd goes, + While _Cibber_ wears the Bays for Play-house Prose, + So _Britain's_ Monarch once uncover'd sate, + While _Bradshaw_ bully'd in a broad-brimmed hat,-- + +a reminiscence of King Charles's trial which might have been added to +Bramston stock quotations. The productions of "Curll's chaste press" are +also this connoisseur's favourite reading,--the lives of players in +particular, probably on the now obsolete grounds set forth in Carlyie's +essay on Scott.[8] Among these the memoirs of Cibber's "Lady Betty +Modish," Mrs. Oldfield, then lately dead, and buried in Westminster +Abbey, are not obscurely indicated. + +Note: + +[8] "It has been said. 'There are no English lives worth reading except +those of Players, who by the nature of the case have bidden Respectability +good-day.'" + +In morals our friend--as might be expected _circa_ l730--is a +Freethinker and Deist. Tindal is his text-book: his breviary the _Fable +of the Bees_;-- + + T' Improve In Morals _Mandevil_ I read, + And _Tyndal's_ Scruples are my settled Creed. + I travell'd early, and I soon saw through + Religion all, e'er I was twenty-two. + Shame, Pain, or Poverty shall I endure, + When ropes or opium can my ease procure? + When money's gone, and I no debts can pay, + Self-murder is an honourable way. + As _Pasaran_ directs I'd end my life, + And kill myself, my daughter, and my wife. + +He would, of course, have done nothing of the kind; nor, for the matter +of that, did his Piedmontese preceptor.[9] + +Note: + +[9] Count Passeran was a freethinking nobleman who wrote _A +Philosophical Discourse on Death_, in which he defended suicide, though +he refrained from resorting to it himself. Pope refers to him in the +_Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue i. 124:-- + + If Blount despatch'd himself, he play'd the man, + And so may'st thou, illustrious Passeran! + + +_Nil admirari_ is the motto of the Man of Taste in Building, where he is +naturally at home. He can see no symmetry in the Banqueting House, or in +St. Paul's Covent Garden, or even in St. Paul's itself. + + Sure wretched _Wren_ was taught by bungling _Jones_, + To murder mortar, and disfigure stones! + +"Substantial" Vanbrugh he likes-=chiefly because his work would make +"such noble ruins." Cost is his sole criterion, and here he, too, seems +to glance obliquely at Canons:-- + + _Dorick, Ionick,_ shall not there be found, + But it shall cost me threescore thousand pound. + +But this was moderate, as the Edgware "folly" reached £250,000. In +Gardening he follows the latest whim for landscape. Here is his +burlesque of the principles of Bridgeman and Batty Langley:-- + + Does it not merit the beholder's praise, + What's high to sink? and what is low to raise? + Slopes shall ascend where once a green-house stood, + And in my horse-pond I will plant a wood. + Let misers dread the hoarded gold to waste, + Expence and alteration show a _Taste_. + +As a connoisseur of Painting this enlightened virtuoso is given over to +Hogarth's hated dealers in the Black Masters:-- + + In curious paintings I'm exceeding nice, + And know their several beauties by their _Price_. + _Auctions_ and _Sales_ I constantly attend, + But chuse my pictures by a _skilful Friend_, + Originals and copies much the same, + The picture's value is the _painter's name_.[10] + +Of Sculpture he says-- + + In spite of _Addison_ and ancient _Rome_, + Sir _Cloudesly Shovel's_ is my fav'rite tomb.[11] + How oft have I with admiration stood, + To view some City-magistrate in wood? + I gaze with pleasure on a Lord May'r's head + Cast with propriety in gilded lead,-- + +the allusion being obviously to Cheere's manufactory of such popular +garden decorations at Hyde Park Corner. + +Notes: + +[10]: See _post_, "M. Ronquet on the Arts," p. 51. + +[11]: "Sir _Cloudesly Shovel's_ Monument has very often given me great +Offence: Instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the +distinguishing Character of that plain, gallant Man, he is represented +on his Tomb [in Westminster Abbey] by the Figure of a Beau, dressed in a +long Perriwig, and reposing himself upon Velvet Cushions under a Canopy +of State" (_Spectator_, March 30, 1711). + + +In Coins and Medals, true to his instinct for liking the worst the best, +he prefers the modern to the antique. In Music, with Hogarth's Rake two +years later, he is all for that "Dagon of the nobility and gentry," +imported song:-- + + Without _Italian_, or without an ear, + To _Bononcini's_ musick I adhere;-- + +though he confesses to a partiality for the bagpipe on the ground that +your true Briton "loves a grumbling noise," and he favours organs and +the popular oratorios. But his "top talent is a bill of fare":-- + + Sir Loins and rumps of beef offend my eyes,[12] + Pleas'd with frogs fricass[e]ed, and coxcomb-pies. + Dishes I chuse though little, yet genteel, + _Snails_[13] the first course, and _Peepers_[14] crown the meal. + Pigs heads with hair on, much my fancy please, + I love young colly-flowers if stew'd in cheese, + And give ten guineas for a pint of peas! + No tatling servants to my table come, + My Grace is _Silence_, and my waiter _Dumb_. + +He is not without his aspirations. + + Could I the _priviledge_ of _Peer_ procure, + The rich I'd bully, and oppress the poor. + To _give_ is wrong, but it is wronger still, + On any terms to _pay_ a tradesman's bill. + I'd make the insolent Mechanicks stay, + And keep my ready-money all for _play_. + I'd try if any pleasure could be found + In _tossing-up_ for twenty thousand pound. + Had I whole Counties, I to _White's_ would go, + And set lands, woods, and rivers at a throw. + But should I meet with an unlucky run, + And at a throw be gloriously undone; + My _debts of honour_ I'd discharge the first, + Let all my _lawful creditors_ be curst. + +Notes: + +[12] As they did those of Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs." "I hate your +immense loads of meat ... extreme disgusting to those who are in the +least acquainted with high life" (_Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. +241). + +[13]: The edible or Roman snail (_Helix pomatia_) is still +known to continental cuisines--and gipsy camps. It was introduced into +England as an epicure's dish in the seventeenth century. + +[14]: Young chickens. + + +Here he perfectly exemplifies that connexion between connoisseurship and +play which Fielding discovers in Book xiii. of _Tom Jones_.[15] An +anecdote of C.J. Fox aptly exhibits the final couplet in action, and +proves that fifty years later, at least, the same convenient code was in +operation. Fox once won about eight thousand pounds at cards. Thereupon +an eager creditor promptly presented himself, and pressed for payment. +"Impossible, Sir," replied Fox," I must first discharge my debts of +honour." The creditor expostulated. "Well, Sir, give me your bond." The +bond was delivered to Fox, who tore it up and flung the pieces into the +fire. "Now, Sir," said he, "my debt to you is a debt of honour," and +immediately paid him.[16] + +Notes: + +[15] "But the science of gaming is that which above all others +employs their thoughts [i.e. the thoughts of the 'young gentlemen of our +times']. These are the studies of their graver hours, while for their +amusements they have the vast circle of connoisseurship, painting, +music, statuary, and natural philosophy, or rather _unnatural_, which +deals in the wonderful, and knows nothing of nature, except her monsters +and imperfections" (ch. v.). + +[16] _Table Talk of Samuel Rogers_ [by Dyce], 1856, p. 73. + + +But we must abridge our levies on Pope's imitator. In Dress the Man of +Taste's aim seems to have been to emulate his own footman, and at this +point comes in the already quoted reference to velvet +"inexpressibles"--(a word which, the reader may be interested to learn, +is as old as 1793). His "pleasures," as might be expected, like those of +Goldsmith's Switzers, "are but low"-- + + To boon companions I my time would give, + With players, pimps, and parasites I'd live. + I would with _Jockeys_ from _Newmarket_ dine, + And to _Rough-riders_ give my choicest wine ... + My ev'nings all I would with _sharpers_ spend, + And make the _Thief-catcher_ my bosom friend. + In _Fig_, the Prize-fighter, by day delight, + And sup with _Colly Cibber_ ev'ry night. + +At which point--and probably in his cups--we leave our misguided fine +gentleman of 1733, doubtless a fair sample of many of his class under +the second George, and not wholly unknown under that monarch's +successors--even to this hour. _Le jour va passer; mais la folie ne +passera pas!_ + +A parting quotation may serve to illustrate one of those changes of +pronunciation which have taken place in so many English words. Speaking +of his villa, or country-box, the Man of Taste says-- + + Pots o'er the door I'll place like Cits balconies, + Which _Bently_ calls the _Gardens of Adonis_. + +To make this a peg for a dissertation on the jars of lettuce and fennel +grown by the Greeks for the annual Adonis festivals, is needless. But it +may be noted that Bramston, with those of his day,--Swift +excepted,--scans the "o" in balcony long, a practice which continued far +into the nineteenth century. "Cóntemplate," said Rogers, "is bad enough; +but balcony makes me sick."[17] And even in 1857, two years after +Rogers's death, the late Frederick Locker, writing of _Piccadilly_, +speaks of "Old Q's" well-known window in that thoroughfare as +"Primrose balcony." + +Note: + +[17:]_Table Talk_, 1856, p. 248. + + + + +THE PASSIONATE PRINTER TO HIS LOVE + + +(_Whose name is Amanda._) + +With Apologies to the Shade of Christopher Marlowe. + + +Come live with me and be my Dear; + And till that happy bond shall lapse, +I'll set your Poutings in _Brevier_,[l8] + Your Praises in the largest CAPS. + +There's _Diamond_--'tis for your Eyes; + There's _Ruby_--that will match your Lips; +_Pearl_, for your Teeth; and _Minion_-size. + To suit your dainty Finger-tips. + +In _Nonpareil_ I'll put your Face; + In _Rubric_ shall your Blushes rise; +There is no _Bourgeois_ in _your_ Case; + Your _Form_ can never need "_Revise_." + +Your Cheek seems "_Ready for the Press_"; + Your Laugh as _Clarendon_ is clear; +There's more distinction in your Dress + Than in the oldest _Elzevir_. + +So with me live, and with me die; + And may no "FINIS" e'er intrude +To break into mere "_Printers' Pie_" + The Type of our Beatitude! + +(ERRATUM.--If my suit you flout, + And choose some happier Youth to wed, +'Tis but to cross AMANDA out, + And read another name instead.) + +Note: + +[18] "Pronounced Bre-veer" (Printers' Vocabulary). + + + + +M. ROUQUET ON THE ARTS + + +M. Rouquet's book is a rare duodecimo of some two hundred pages, bound +in sheep, which, in the copy before us, has reached that particular +stage of disintegration when the scarfskin, without much persuasion, +peels away in long strips. Its title is--_L'État des Arts, en +Angleterre. Par M. Rouquet, de l'Académie Royale de Peinture & de +Sculpture_; and it is "_imprime à Paris_" though it was to be obtained +from John Nourse, "_Libraire dans le_ Strand, _proche_ Temple-barr"--a +well-known importer of foreign books, and one of Henry Fielding's +publishers. The date is 1755, being the twenty-eighth year of the reign +of His Majesty King George the Second--a reign not generally regarded as +favourable to art of any kind. In what month of 1755 the little volume +was first put forth does not appear; but it must have been before +October, when Nourse issued an English version. There is a dedication, +in the approved French fashion, to the Marquis de Marigny, "_Directeur & +Ordonnateur Général de ses Bâtimens, Jardins, Arts, Académies & +Manufactures_" to Lewis the Fifteenth, above which is a delicate +headpiece by M. Charles-Nicolas Cochin (the greatest of the family), +where a couple of that artist's well-nourished _amorini_, insecurely +attached to festoons, distribute palms and laurels in vacuity under a +coroneted oval displaying fishes. For Monsieur Abel-François Poisson, +Marquis de Marigny et de Ménars, was the younger brother of +Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the celebrated Marquise de Pompadour. +Cochin's etching is dated "1754"; and the "Approbation" at the end of +the volume bears his signature in his capacity of _Censeur_. + +Of the "M. Rouquet" of the title-page biography tells us little; but it +may be well, before speaking of his book, to bring that little together. +He was a Swiss Protestant of French extraction, born at Geneva in 1702. +His Christian names were Jean-André; and he had come to England from his +native land towards the close of the reign of George the First. Many of +his restless compatriots also sought these favoured shores. Labelye, who +rose from a barber's shop to be the architect of London Bridge; Liotard, +once regarded as a rival of Reynolds; Michael Moser, eventually Keeper +of the Royal Academy, had all migrated from the "stormy mansions" where, +in the words of Goldsmith's philosophic Wanderer-- + + Winter ling'ring chills the lap of May. + +Like Moser, Rouquet was a chaser and an enameller. He lodged on the +south side of Leicester Fields, in a house afterwards the residence of +another Switzer of the same craft, that miserable Theodore Gardelle, who +in 1761 murdered his landlady, Mrs. King. Of Rouquet's activities as an +artist in England there are scant particulars. The ordinary authorities +affirm that he imitated and rivalled the popular miniaturist and +enameller, Christian Zincke, who retired from practice in 1746; and he +is loosely described as "the companion of Hogarth, Garrick, Foote, and +the wits of the day." Of his relations with Foote and Garrick there is +scant record; but with Hogarth, his near neighbour in the Fields, he was +certainly well acquainted, since in 1746 he prepared explanations in +French for a number of Hogarth's prints. These took the form of letters +to a friend at Paris, and are supposed to have been, if not actually +inspired, at least approved by the painter. They usually accompanied all +the sets of Hogarth's engravings which went abroad; and, according to +George Steevens, it was Hogarth's intention ultimately to have them +translated and enlarged. Rouquet followed these a little later by a +separate description of "The March to Finchley," designed specially for +the edification of Marshal Foucquet de Belle-Isle, who, when the former +letters had been written, was a prisoner of war at Windsor. In a brief +introduction to this last, the author, hitherto unnamed, is spoken of as +"_Mr. Rouquet, connu par ses Outrages d'Émail_." + +After thirty years' sojourn in this country, Rouquet transferred himself +to Paris. At what precise date he did this is not stated, but by a +letter to Hogarth from the French capital, printed by John Ireland, the +original of which is in the British Museum, he was there, and had been +there several months, in March 1753. The letter gives a highly +favourable account of its writer's fortunes. Business is "coming in very +smartly," he says. He has been excellently received, and is "perpetualy +imploy'd." There is far more encouragement for modern enterprise in +Paris than there is in London; and some of his utterances must have +rejoiced the soul of his correspondent. As this, for instance--"The +humbug _virtu_ is much more out of fashon here than in England, free +thinking upon that & other topicks is more common here than amongst you +if possible, old pictures & old stories fare's alike, a dark picture is +become a damn'd picture." On this account, he inquires anxiously as to +the publication of his friend's forthcoming _Analysis_; he has been +raising expectations about it, and he wishes to be the first to +introduce it into France. From other sources we learn that (perhaps +owing to his relations with Belle-Isle, who had been released in 1745) +he had been taken up by Marigny, and also by Cochin, then keeper of the +King's Drawings, and soon to be Secretary to the Academy, of which +Rouquet himself, by express order of Lewis the Fifteenth, was made a +member. Finally, as in the case of Cochin, apartments were assigned to +him in the Louvre. Whether he ever returned to this country is doubtful; +but, as we have seen, the _État des Arts_ was printed at Paris in 1755. +That it was suggested--or "commanded"--by Mme. de Pompadour's +connoisseur brother, to whom it was inscribed, is a not unreasonable +supposition. + +In any case, M. Rouquet's definition of the "Arts" is a generous one, +almost as wide as Marigny's powers, already sufficiently set forth at +the outset of this paper. For not only--as in duty bound--does he treat +of Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Engraving, but he also has +chapters on Printing, Porcelain, Gold-and Silver-smiths' Work, Jewelry, +Music, Declamation, Auctions, Shop-fronts, Cooking, and even on Medicine +and Surgery. Oddly enough, he says nothing of one notable art with which +Marigny was especially identified, that "art of creating landscape"--as +Walpole happily calls Gardening--which, in this not very "shining +period," entered upon a fresh development under Bridgeman and William +Kent. Although primarily a Londoner, one would think that M. Rouquet +must certainly have had some experience, if not of the efforts of the +innovators, at least of the very Batavian performances of Messrs. London +and Wise of Brompton; or that he should have found at Nonsuch or +Theobalds--at Moor Park or Hampton Court--the pretext for some of his +pages--if only to ridicule those "verdant sculptures" at which Pope, who +played no small part in the new movement, had laughed in the _Guardian_; +or those fantastic "coats of arms and mottoes in yew, box and holly" +over which Walpole also made merry long after in the famous essay so +neatly done into French by his friend the Duc de Nivernais. M. Rouquet's +curious reticence in this matter cannot have been owing to any +consideration for Hogarth's old enemy, William Kent, for Kent had been +dead seven years when the _État des Arts_ made its appearance. + +If, for lack of space, we elect to pass by certain preliminary +reflections which the _Monthly Review_ rather unkindly dismisses as a +"tedious jumble," M. Rouquet's first subject is History Painting, a +branch of the art which, under George the Second, attained to no great +excellence. For this M. Rouquet gives three main reasons, the first +being that afterwards advanced by Hogarth and Reynolds, namely,--the +practical exclusion, in Protestant countries, of pictures from churches. +A second cause was the restriction of chamber decorations to portraits +and engravings; and a third, the craze of the connoisseur for Hogarth's +hated "Black Masters," the productions of defunct foreigners. And this +naturally brings about the following digression, quite in Hogarth's own +way, against that contemporary charlatan, the picture-dealer:--"English +painters have an obstacle to overcome, which equally impedes the +progress of their talents and of their fortune. They have to contend +with a class of men whose business it is to sell pictures; and as, for +these persons, traffic in the works of living, and above all of native +artists, would be impossible, they make a point of decrying them, and, +as far as they can, of confirming amateurs with whom they have to deal +in the ridiculous idea that the older a picture is the more valuable it +becomes. See, say they (speaking of some modern effort), it still shines +with that ignoble freshness which is to be found in nature; Time will +have to indue it with his learned smoke--with that sacred cloud which +must some day hide it from the profane eyes of the vulgar in order to +reveal to the initiated alone the mysterious beauties of a venerable +antiquity." + +These words are quite in the spirit of Hogarth's later "Time smoking a +Picture." As a matter of fact, they are reproduced almost textually from +the writer's letter of five years earlier on the "March to Finchley." To +return, however, to History Painting. According to Rouquet, its leading +exponent[19] under George the Second was Francis Hayman of the "large +noses and shambling legs," now known chiefly as a crony of Hogarth, and +a facile but ineffectual illustrator of Shakespeare and Cervantes. In +1754, however, his pictures of _See-Saw, Hot Cockles, Blind Man's Buff_, +and the like, for the supper-boxes at Vauxhall Gardens, with Sayer's +prints therefrom, had made his name familiar, although he had not yet +painted those more elaborate compositions in the large room next the +rotunda, over which Fanny Burney's "Holborn Beau," Mr, Smith, comes to +such terrible grief in ch. xlvi. of _Evelina_. But he had contributed a +"Finding of Moses" to the New Foundling Hospital, which is still to be +seen in the Court Room there, in company with three other pictures +executed concurrently for the remaining compartments, Joseph Highmore's +"Hagar and Ishmael," James Wills's "Suffer little Children," and +Hogarth's "Moses brought to Pharaoh's Daughter"--the best of the four, +as well as the most successful of Hogarth's historical pieces. All +these, then recently installed, are mentioned by Rouquet. + +Note: + +[19] This is confirmed by Arthur Murphy: "Every Thing is put out +of Hand by this excellent Artist with the utmost Grace and Delicacy, and +his History-Pieces have, besides their beautiful Colouring, the most +lively Expression of Character" (_Gray's Inn Journal, February +9, 1754_). + + +It will be observed that he says nothing about Hogarth's earlier and +more ambitious efforts in the "Grand Style," the "Pool of Bethesda" and +the "Good Samaritan" at St. Bartholomew's, nor of the "Paul before +Felix," also lately added to Lincoln's Inn Hall--omissions which must +have sadly exercised the "author" of those monumental works when he came +to read his Swiss friend's little treatise. Nor, for the matter of that, +does M. Rouquet, when he treats of portrait, refer to Hogarth's +masterpiece in this kind, the full-length of Captain Coram at the +Foundling. On the other hand, he says a great deal about Hogarth which +has no very obvious connection with History Painting. He discusses the +_Analysis_ and the serpentine Line of Beauty with far more insight than +many of its author's contemporaries; refers feelingly to the Act by +which in 1735 the painter had so effectively cornered the pirates; and +finally defines his satirical pictures succinctly as follows:--"M. +Hogarth has given to England a new class of pictures. They contain a +great number of figures, usually seven or eight inches high. These +remarkable performances are, strictly speaking, the history of certain +vices, to a foreign eye often a little overcharged, but always full of +wit and novelty. He understands in his compositions how to make pleasant +pretext for satirising the ridiculous and the vicious, by firm and +significant strokes, all of which are prompted by a lively, fertile and +judicious imagination." + +From History Painting to Portrait in Oil, the title given by M. Rouquet +to his next chapter, transition is easy. Some of the artists mentioned +above were also portrait painters. Besides Captain Coram, for example, +Hogarth had already executed that admirable likeness of himself which is +now at Trafalgar Square, and which Rouquet must often have seen in its +home at Leicester Fields. Highmore too had certainly at this date +painted more than one successful portrait of Samuel Richardson, the +novelist; and even Hayman had made essay in this direction with the +picture of Lord Orford, now in the National Portrait Gallery. A good +many of the painters of the last reign must also, during Rouquet's +residence in England, have been alive and active, _e.g._ Jervas, Dahl, +Aikman, Thornhill and Richardson. But M. Rouquet devotes most of his +pages in this respect to Kneller, whose not altogether beneficent +influence long survived him. Strangely enough, Rouquet does not mention +that egregious and fashionable face-painter, Sir Joshua's master, Thomas +Hudson, whose "fair tied-wigs, blue velvet coats, and white satin +waistcoats" (all executed by his assistants) reigned undisputed until he +was eclipsed by his greater pupil. The two artists in portraiture +selected by Rouquet for special notice are Allan Ramsay and the younger +Vanloo (Jean Baptiste). Both were no doubt far above their predecessors; +but Ramsay would specially appeal to Rouquet by his continental +training, and Vanloo by his French manner and the superior variety of +his attitudes.[20] The only other name Rouquet recalls is that of the +drapery-painter Joseph Vanhaken; and we suspect it is to Rouquet that we +owe the pleasant anecdote of the two painters who, for the sum of £800 a +year, pre-empted his exclusive and inestimable services, to the +wholesale discomfiture of their brethren of the brush. The rest shall be +told in Rouquet's words:--"The best [artists] were no longer able to +paint a hand, a coat, a background; they were forced to learn, which +meant additional labour--what a misfortune! Henceforth there arrived no +more to Vanhaken from different quarters of London, nor by coach from +the most remote towns of England, canvases of all sizes, where one or +more heads were painted, under which the painter who forwarded them had +been careful to add, pleasantly enough, the description of the figures, +stout or slim, great or small, which were to be appended. Nothing could +be more absurd than this arrangement; but it would exist still--if +Vanhaken existed."[21] + +Note: + +[20] Another French writer, the Abbé le Blanc, gives a depressing account +of English portraits before Vanloo came to England: "At some distance one +might easily mistake a dozen of them for twelve copies of the same original. +Some have the head turned to the left, others to the right; and this is the +most sensible difference to be observed between them. Moreover, excepting +the face, you find in all the same neck, the same arms, the same flesh, the +same attitude; and to say all, you observe no more life than design in +those pretended portraits. Properly speaking, they [the artists] are not +painters, they know how to lay colours on the canvas; but they know not how +to animate it" (_Letters on the English and French Nations, 1747_, i. 160). + +[21] He died in 1749.] + +_"La peinture à l'huile, C'est bien difficile; Mais c'est beaucoup plus +beau Que la peinture à l'eau."_ About _la peinture à l'eau_, M. Rouquet +says very little, in all probability because the English Water Colour +School, which, with the advance of topographic art, grew so rapidly in +the second half of the century, was yet to come. He refers, however, +with approval to the _gouaches_ of Joseph Goupy, Lady Burlington's +drawing-master, perhaps better known to posterity by his (or her +ladyship's) caricature of Handel as the "Charming Brute." (Caricature, +by the way, is a branch of Georgian Art which M. Rouquet neglects.) As +regards landscape and animal painting, he "abides in generalities"; but +he must have been acquainted with the sea pieces of Monamy, and +Hogarth's and Walpole's friend Samuel Scott; and should, one would +think, have known of the horses and dogs of Wootton and Seymour. Upon +Enamel he might be expected to enlarge, although he mentions but one +master, his own model, Zincke, who carried the art of portrait in this +way much farther than any predecessor. Moreover, like Petitot, he made +discoveries which he was wise enough to keep to himself. +"It is most humiliating," says Rouquet, "for the genius of painting that +it can sometimes exist alone. M. Zincke left no pupil." Seeing that +Rouquet is also accused of jealously guarding his own contributions to +the perfection of his art, the words are--as Diderot says--remarkable. + +With Sculpture, chiefly employed at this date for mortuary purposes, he +has less opportunity of being indefinite, since there were but three +notabilities, Scheemakers, Rysbrack, and Roubillac,--all foreigners. Of +these Scheemakers, whom Chesterfield regarded as a mere stone-cutter, +and who did the Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey, is certainly the least +considerable. Next come Rysbrack, whom Walpole and Rouquet would put +highest, the latter apparently because Rysbrack had been spoken of +contemptuously by the Abbé le Blanc. But the first is assuredly +Roubillac, whose monument to Mrs. Nightingale, however, belongs to a +later date than the _État des Arts_, though he had already achieved the +masterly figure of Eloquence on the Argyll monument. The only other +sculptor referred to by Rouquet is Gabriel Cibber, whose statues of +Madness and Melancholy, long at Bedlam, and now at South Kensington, +certainly deserve his praise. But Cibber died in 1700, and belongs to +the Caroline epoch. He no doubt owes his place in the _État des Arts_ to +the fact that he had been abused in the already-mentioned _Letters on +the English and French Nations_. + +At this point we may turn M. Rouquet's pages more rapidly. It is not +necessary to linger over his account of Silk Stuffs, more excellent in +his opinion by their material than their make up. Under Medallists he +commends the clever medals of great men by his compatriot, Anthony +Dassier; under Printing he refers to that liberty of the Press which, in +England, amounted to impunity. "A few too thinly disguised blasphemies; +a few too rash reflections upon the Government, a few defamatory +libels--are the sole things which, at the present time, are not +allowed." And this brings about the following lively and very accurate +description of the eighteenth-century newspaper:--"One of the most +notable peculiarities which liberty of the Press produces in England, is +the swarm of fugitive sheets and half-sheets which one sees break forth +every morning, except Sunday, covering all the coffee-house tables. +Twenty of these different papers, under different titles, appear each +day; some contain a moral or philosophical discourse; the majority of +the rest offer political, and frequently seditious, comments on some +party question. In them is to be found the news of Europe, England, +London, and the day before. Their authors profess to be familiar with +the most secret deliberations of the Cabinet, which they make public. If +a fire occurs in a chimney or elsewhere; if a theft or a murder has +taken place; if any one commits suicide from _ennui_ or despair, the +public is informed thereof on the morning after with the utmost amount +of detail. After these articles come advertisements of all sorts, and in +very great numbers. In addition to those of different things which it is +desired to let, sell or purchase, there are some that are amusing. If a +man's wife runs away he declares that he will not be liable for any +debts she may contract; and as a matter of fact, this precaution, +according to the custom of the country, is essential if he desires to +secure himself from doing so. He threatens with all the rigour of the +law those who dare to give his wife an asylum. Another publishes the +particulars of his fortune, his age and his position, and adds that he +is prepared to unite himself to any woman whose circumstances are such +as he requires and describes; he further gives the address where +communications must be sent for the negotiation and conclusion of the +business. There are other notices which describe a woman who has been +seen at the play or elsewhere, and announces that some one has +determined to marry her. If any one has a dream which seems to him to +predict that a certain number will be lucky in the lottery, he proclaims +that fact, and offers a consideration to the possessor of the number if +he cares to dispose of it." + +After these come the advertisements of the Quack Doctors. Of the account +of belles-lettres in 1754, two years after _Amelia_ and in the actual +year of _Sir Charles Grandison_, M. Rouquet's report is not +flattering:--"The presses of England, made celebrated by so many +masterpieces of wit and science, now scarcely print anything but +miserable and insipid romances, repulsive volumes, frigid and tedious +letters, where the most tasteless puerility passes for wit and genius, +and an inflamed imagination exerts itself under the pretext of forming +manners." It is possible that the last lines are aimed at Richardson; +certainly they describe the post-Richardsonian novel. But that the +passage does not in any part refer to Fielding is clear from the fact +that the writer presently praises _Joseph Andrews_, coupling it with +_Gil Blas_. + +Mezzotint, Gem-cutting, Chasing (which serves to bring in M. Rouquet's +countryman, Moser), Jewelry, China, (_i.e._ Chelsea ware) are all +successfully treated with more or less minuteness, while, under +Architecture, are described the eighteenth-century house, and the new +bridge at Westminster of another Swiss, Labelye, who is not named: "The +architect is a foreigner," says Rouquet, who considered he had been +inadequately rewarded. "It must be confessed (he adds drily) that in +England this is a lifelong disqualification." From Architecture the +writer passes to the oratory of the Senate, the Pulpit and the Stage. In +the last case exception is made for "_le célébre M. Garic_," whose only +teacher is declared to be Nature. As regards the rest, M. Rouquet thus +describes the prevailing style:--"The declamation of the English stage +is turgid, full of affectation, and perpetually pompous. Among other +peculiarities, it frequently admits a sort of dolorous exclamation,--a +certain long-drawn tone of voice, so woeful and so lugubrious that it is +impossible not to be depressed by it." This reads like a recollection of +Quin in the Horatio of Rowe's _Fair Penitent_. + +Upon Cookery M. Rouquet is edifying; and concerning the +eighteenth-century physician, with his tye-wig and gilt-head cane, +sprightly and not unmalicious. But we must now confine ourselves to +quoting a few detached passages from this discursive chronicle. The +description of Ranelagh (in the chapter on Music) is too lengthy to +reproduce. Here is that of the older Vauxhall:--"The Vauxhall concert +takes place in a garden singularly decorated. The Director of Amusements +in this garden [Jonathan Tyers] gains and spends successively +considerable annual sums. He was born for such enterprises. At once +spirited and tasteful, he shrinks from no expense where the amusement of +the public is concerned, and the public, in its turn, repays him +liberally. Every year he adds some fresh decoration, some new and +exceptional scene. Sculpture, Painting, Music, bestir themselves +periodically to render this resort more agreeable by the variety of +their different productions: in this way opportunities of relaxation are +infinite in England, above all at London; and thus Music plays a +prominent part. The English take their pleasure without amusing +themselves, or amuse themselves without enjoyment, except at table, and +there only up to the point when sleep supervenes to the fumes of wine +and tobacco." + +Elsewhere M. Rouquet, like M. le Blanc before him, is loud in his +denunciation of the pitiful practices of Vails-giving, which blocks the +vestibule of every English house with an army of servants "ranged in +line, according to their rank," and ready "to receive, or rather exact, +the contribution of every guest." The excellent Jonas Hanway wrote a +pamphlet reprehending this objectionable custom. Hogarth steadily set +his face against it; but Reynolds is reported to have given his man £100 +a year for the door. Here, from another place, is a description of one +of those popular auctions, at which, in the _Marriage À-la-Mode_, my +Lady Squanderfieid purchases the _bric-à-brac_ of Sir Timothy Babyhouse, +The scene is probably Cock's in the Piazza at Covent Garden:--"Nothing +is so diverting as this kind of sale--the number of those assembled, the +diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer +himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the +spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what +he openly depreciates; or--to spread a dangerous snare--pretending to +secure with avidity a picture which already belongs to him. There, some +are tempted to buy; and some repent of having bought. There, out of +pique and bravado, another shall pay fifty louis for an article which he +would not have thought worth five and twenty, had he not been ashamed to +draw back when the eyes of a crowded company were upon him. There, you +may see a woman of condition turn pale at the mere thought of losing a +paltry pagoda which she does not want, and, in any other circumstances, +would never have desired." + +A closing word as to M. Rouquet himself. The _État des Arts_ was duly +noticed by the critics--contemptuously by the _Monthly Review_, and +sympathetically by the _Gentleman's_ and the _Scots Magazine_. In 1755, +the year to which it belongs, its author put forth another work--_L'Art +Nouveau de la Peinture en Fromage ou en Ramequin_ [toasted cheese], +_inventé pour suivre le louable projet de trouver graduellement des +facons de peindre inférieures à celles qui existent_. This, as its title +imports, is a skit, levelled at the recent _Histoire et Secret de la +Peinture en Cire_ of Diderot, who nevertheless refers to Rouquet under +_Émail_, in the _Dictionnaire Encyclapédique_, as "_un homme habile_." +He seems, however (like "_la_ _peinture à l'huile_)," to have been +somewhat "_difficile_"; and as we have said, his discoveries (for he had +that useful element in enamel-work, considerable chemical knowledge), +like Zincke's, perished with him. Several of his portraits, notably +those of Cochin and Marigny, were exhibited at the Paris Salons. Whether +he was overparted, or overworked, in the Pompadour atmosphere; or +whether he succumbed to the "continual headache" of which he speaks in +his letter to Hogarth, his health gradually declined. In the last year +of his life, his reason gave way; and when he died in 1759, it was as an +inmate of Charenton. + + + + +THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE RHYMER + + +"Emam tua carmína sanus?"--MARTIAL. + +F. OF H. I want a verse. It gives you little pains;-- + You just sit down, and draw upon your brains. + + Come, now, be amiable. + +R. To hear you talk, + You'd make it easier to fly than walk. + You seem to think that rhyming is a thing + You can produce if you but touch a spring; + + That fancy, fervour, passion--and what not, + + Are just a case of "penny in the slot." + You should reflect that no evasive bird + Is half so shy as is your fittest word; + And even similes, however wrought, + Like hares, before you cook them, must be caught;-- + + Impromptus, too, require elaboration, + And (unlike eggs) grow fresh by incubation; + Then,--as to epigrams,.. + +F. of H. Nay, nay, I've done. + I did but make petition. You make fun. + +R. Stay. I am grave. Forgive me if I ramble: + But, then, a negative needs some preamble + To break the blow. I feel with you, in truth, + These complex miseries of Age and Youth; + I feel with you--and none can feel it more + Than I--this burning Problem of the Poor; + The Want that grinds, the Mystery of Pain, + The Hearts that sink, and never rise again;-- + How shall I set this to some careless screed, + Or jigging stave, when Help is what you need, + Help, Help,--more Help? + +F. of H. I fancied that with ease + You'd scribble off some verses that might please, + And so give help to us. + +R. Why then--TAKE THESE! + + + + +THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT + + +One of the things that perplexes the dreamer--for, in spite of the +realists, there are dreamers still--is the almost complete extinction of +the early editions of certain popular works. The pompous, respectable, +full-wigged folios, with their long lists of subscribers, and their +magniloquent dedications, find their permanent abiding-places in +noblemen's collections, where, unless--with the _Chrysostom_ in Pope's +verses--they are used for the smoothing of bands or the pressing of +flowers, no one ever disturbs their drowsy diuturnity. Their bulk makes +them sacred: like the regimental big drum, they are too large to be +mislaid. But where are all the first copies of that little octavo of 246 +pages, price eighteenpence, "Printed by T. Maxey for Rich. Marriot, in +S. Dunstans Church-yard, Fleetstreet" in 1653, which constitutes the +_editio princeps_ of Walton's _Angler_. Probably they were worn out in +the pockets of Honest Izaak's "brothers of the Angle," or left to bake +and cockle in the sunny corners of wasp-haunted alehouse windows, or +dropped in the deep grass by some casual owner, more careful for flies +and caddis-worms, or possibly for the contents of a leathern bottle, +than all the "choicely-good" madrigals of Maudlin the milkmaid. In any +case, there are very few of the little tomes, with their quaint +"coppers" of fishes, in existence now, nor is it silver that pays for +them. And that other eighteenpenny book, put forth by "_Nath. Ponder_ at +the _Peacock_ in the _Poultrey_ near _Cornhil_" five and twenty years +later,--_The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That which is to +come_,--why is it that there are only five known copies, none quite +perfect, now extant, of which the best sold not long since for more than +£1400? Of these five, the first that came to light had been preserved +owing to its having taken sanctuary, almost upon publication, in a great +library, where it was forgotten. But the others that passed over Mr. +Ponder's counter in the Poultry,--were they all lost, thumbed and +dog's-eared out of being? They are gone,--that is all you can say; and +gone apparently beyond reach of recovery. + +These remarks,--which scarcely rise to the dignity of reflections--have +been suggested by the difficulty which the writer has experienced in +obtaining particulars as to the earliest form of the _Parent's +Assistant_. As a matter of course, children's books are more liable to +disappear than any others. They are sooner torn, soiled, dismembered, +disintegratedsooner find their way to that mysterious unlocated limbo of +lost things, which engulfs so much. Yet one scarcely expected that even +the British Museum would not have possessed a copy of the first issue of +Miss Edgeworth's book. Such, however, seems to be the case. According to +the catalogue, there is nothing earlier at Bloomsbury than a portion of +the second edition; and from the inexplicit and conjectural manner in +which most of the author's biographers speak of the work, it can +scarcely--outside private collections--be very easily accessible. +Fortunately the old _Monthly Review_ for September, 1796, with most +exemplary forethought for posterity, gives, as a heading to its notice, +a precise and very categorical account of the first impression. _The +Parent's Assistant; or, Stories for Children_ was, it appears, published +in two parts, making three small duodecimo volumes. The price, bound, +was six shillings. There was no author's name; but it was said to be "by +E.M." (i.e. Edgeworth, Maria), and the publisher was Cowper's Dissenter +publisher, Joseph Johnson of No. 72, St. Paul's Churchyard. Part I. +contained "The Little Dog Trusty; or, The Liar and the Boy of Truth"; +"The Orange Man; or, the Honest Boy and the Thief"; "Lazy Lawrence"; +"Tarleton"; and "The False Key"; Part II., "The Purple Jar," "The +Bracelets," "Mademoiselle Panache," "The Birthday Present," "Old Poz," +and "The Mimic." In the same year, 1796, a second edition appeared, +apparently with, some supplementary stories, e.g.: "Barring Out," and in +1800 came a third edition in six volumes. In this the text was increased +by "Simple Susan," "The Little Merchants," "The Basket Woman," "The +White Pigeon," "The Orphans," "Waste Not, Want Not," "Forgive and +Forget," and "Eton Montem." One story, "The Purple Jar" at the beginning +of Part II. of the first edition, was withdrawn, and afterwards included +in another series, while the stories entitled respectively "Little Dog +Trusty" and "The Orange Man" have disappeared from the collection, +probably for the reason given in one of the first prefaces, namely, that +they "were written for a much earlier age than any of the others, and +with such a perfect simplicity of expression as, to many, may appear +insipid and ridiculous." The six volumes of the third edition came out +successively on the first day of the first six months of 1800. The +Monthly Reviewer of the first edition, it may be added, was highly +laudatory; and his commendations show that the early critics of the +author were fully alive to her distinctive qualities, "The moral and +prudential lessons of these volumes," says the writer, "are judiciously +chosen; and the stories are invented with great ingenuity, and are +happily contrived to excite curiosity and awaken feeling without the aid +of improbable fiction or extravagant adventure. The language is varied +in its degree of simplicity, to suit the pieces to different ages, but +is throughout neat and correct; and, without the least approach towards +vulgarity or meanness, it is adapted with peculiar felicity to the +understandings of children. The author's taste, in this class of +writing, appears to have been formed on the best models; and the work +will not discredit a place on the same shelf with Berquin's _Child's +Friend_, Mrs. Barbauld's _Lessons for Children_, and Dr. Aikin's +_Evenings at Home_. The story of 'Lazy Lawrence'"--the notice goes +on--"is one of the best lectures on industry which we have ever read. +"The _Critical Review_, which also gave a short account of the _Parent's +Assistant_ in its number for January 1797, does not rehearse the +contents. But it confirms the title, etc., adding that the price, in +boards, was 4s. 6d.; and its praise, though brief, is very much to the +point. "The present production is particularly sensible and judicious; +the stories are well written, simple, and affecting; calculated, not +only for moral improvement, but to exercise the best affections of the +human heart." + +With one of the books mentioned by the _Monthly Review_--_Evenings at +Home_--Miss Edgeworth was fully prepared, at all events as regards +format, to associate herself. "The stories," she says in a letter to her +cousin, Miss Sophy Ruxton, "are printed and bound the same size as +_Evenings at Home_, and I am afraid you will dislike the title." Her +father had sent the book to press as the _Parent's Friend_, a name no +doubt suggested by the _Ami des Enfants_ of Berquin; but "Mr. Johnson +[the publisher]," continues Miss Edgeworth, "has degraded it into _The +Parent's Assistant_, which I dislike particularly, from association with +an old book of arithmetic called The _Tutor's Assistant_." The ground of +objection is not very formidable; but the _Parent's Assistant_ is +certainly an infelicitous name. From some other of the author's letters +we are able to trace the gradual growth of the work. Mr. Edgeworth, her +father, an utilitarian of much restless energy, and many projects, was +greatly interested in education,--or, as he would have termed it, +practical education,--and long before this date, as early, indeed, as +May 1780, he had desired his daughter, while she was still a girl at a +London school, to write him a tale about the length of a _Spectator_; +upon the topic of "Generosity," to be taken from history or romance. +This was her first essay in fiction; and it was pronounced by the judge +to whom it was submitted,--in competition with a rival production by a +young gentleman from Oxford,--to be an excellent story, and extremely +well written, although with this commendation was coupled the somewhat +damaging inquiry,--"But where's the Generosity?" The question cannot be +answered now, as the manuscript has not been preserved, though the +inconvenient query, we are told, became a kind of personal proverb with +the young author, who was wont to add that this first effort contained +"a sentence of inextricable confusion between a saddle, a man, and his +horse." This was a defect from which she must have speedily freed +herself, since her style, as her first reviewer allowed, is +conspicuously direct and clear. Accuracy in speaking and writing had, +indeed, been early impressed upon her. Her father's doctrinaire ally and +co-disciplinarian, Mr. Thomas Day, later the author of _Sandford and +Merton_, and apparently the first person of whom it is affirmed that "he +talked like a book," had been indefatigable in bringing this home to his +young friend, when she visited him in her London school-days. Not +content alone to dose her copiously with Bishop Berkeley's Tar +Water--the chosen beverage of Young and Richardson--he was unwearied in +ministering to her understanding. "His severe reasoning and +uncompromising love of truth awakened her powers, and the questions he +put to her, the necessity of perfect accuracy in her answers, suited the +bent of her mind. Though such strictness was not always agreeable, she +even then perceived its advantages, and in after life was deeply +grateful to Mr. Day."[22] + +Note: + +[22] _Maria Edgeworth_, by Helen Zimmern, 1888, p. 13. + + +The training she underwent from the inexorable Mr, Day was continued by +her father when she quitted school, and moved with her family to the +parental seat at Edgeworthstown in Ireland. Mr. Edgeworth, whose +principles were as rigorous as those of his friend, devoted himself +early to initiating her into business habits. He taught her to copy +letters, to keep accounts, to receive rents, and, in short, to act as +his agent and factotum. She frequently accompanied him in the many +disputes and difficulties which arose with his Irish tenantry; and, +apart from the insight which this must have afforded her into the +character and idiosyncrasies of the people, she no doubt very early +acquired that exact knowledge of leases and legacies and dishonest +factors which is a noticeable feature even of her children's books.[23] +It is some time, however, before we hear of any successor to +"Generosity"; but, in 1782, her father, with a view to provide her with +an occupation for her leisure, proposed to her to prepare a translation +of the _Adèle et Théodore_ of Madame de Genlis, those letters upon +education by which that gentle and multifarious moralist acquired--to +use her own words--at once "the suffrages of the public, and the +irreconcilable hatred of all the so-called philosophers and their +partisans." At first there had been no definite thought of print in Mr, +Edgeworth's mind. But as the work progressed, the idea gathered +strength; and he began to prepare his daughter's manuscript for the +press. Then, unhappily, when the first volume was finished, Holcroft's +complete translation appeared, and made the labour needless. Yet it was +not without profit. It had been excellent practice in aiding Miss +Edgeworth's faculty of expression, and increasing her vocabulary--to say +nothing of the influence which the portraiture of individuals and the +satire of reigning follies which are the secondary characteristics of +Madame de Genlis's most well-known work, may have had on her own +subsequent efforts as a novelist. Meanwhile her mentor, Mr. Day, was +delighted at the interruption of her task. He possessed, to the full, +that rooted antipathy to feminine authorship of which we find so many +traces in Miss Burney's novels and elsewhere; and he wrote to +congratulate Mr. Edgeworth on having escaped the disgrace of having a +translating daughter. At this time, as already stated, he himself had +not become the author of _Sandford and Merton_, which, as a matter of +fact, owed its inception to the Edgeworths, being at first simply +intended as a short story to be inserted in the _Harry and Lucy_ Mr. +Edgeworth wrote in conjunction with his second wife, Honora Sneyd. As +regards the question of publication, both Maria and her father, although +sensible of Mr. Day's prejudices, appear to have deferred to his +arguments. Nor were these even lost to the public, for we are informed +that, in Miss Edgeworth's first book, ten years later, the _Letters to +Literary Ladies,_ she employed and embodied much that he had advanced. +But for the present, she continued to write--though solely for her +private amusement--essays, little stories, and dramatic sketches. One of +these last must have been "Old Poz," a pleasant study of a country +justice and a _gazza ladra_, which appeared in Part II. of the first +issue of the _Parent's Assistant_, and which, we are told, was acted by +the Edgeworth children in a little theatre erected in the dining-room +for the purpose. According to her sisters, it was Miss Edgeworth's +practice first to write her stories on a slate, and then to read them +out. If they were approved, she transcribed them fairly. "Her writing +for children"--says one of her biographers--"was a natural outgrowth of +a practical study of their wants and fancies; and her constant care of +the younger children gave her exactly the opportunity required to +observe the development of mind incident to the age and capacity of +several little brothers and sisters." According to her own account, her +first critic was her father. "Whenever I thought of writing anything, I +always told him [my father] my first rough plans; and always, with the +instinct of a good critic, he used to fix immediately upon that which +would best answer the purpose.--'_Sketch that, and shew it to +me._'--These words, from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to +inspire me with hope of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I +was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate on it in the sketch; but +to this he always objected--'I don't want any of your painting--none of +your drapery!--I can imagine all that--let me see the bare skeleton.'" + +Note: + +[23] Cf. "Attorney Case" in the story of "Simple Susan." + + +Of the first issue of the _Parent's Assistant_ in 1796, a sufficient +account has already been given. In the "Preface" the practical intention +of several of the stories is explicitly set forth. "Lazy Lawrence," we +are told, illustrates the advantages of industry, and demonstrates that +people feel cheerful and happy whilst they are employed; while +"Tarleton" represents "the danger and the folly of that weakness of +mind, and that easiness to be led, which too often pass for good +nature"; "The False Key" points out some of the evils to which a +well-educated boy, on first going to service, is exposed from the +profligacy of his fellow-servants; "The Mimic," the drawback of vulgar +acquaintances; "Barring Out," the errors to which a high spirit and the +love of party are apt to lead, and so forth. In the final paragraph +stress is laid upon what every fresh reader must at once recognise as +the supreme merit of the stories, namely, their dramatic faculty, or (in +the actual words of the "Preface"), their art of "keeping alive hope and +fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy."[24] The plausibility +of invention, the amount of ingenious contrivance and of clever +expedient in these professedly nursery stories, is indeed extraordinary; +and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which--to use Dr. Johnson's +words concerning _She Stoops to Conquer_--"the incidents are so prepared +as not to seem improbable." There is no better example of this than the +admirable tale of "The Mimic," in which the most unlooked-for +occurrences succeed each other in the most natural way, while the +disappearance at the end of the little sweep, who has levanted up the +chimney in Frederick's new blue coat and buff waistcoat, is a +master-stroke. Everybody has forgotten everything about him until the +precise moment when he is needed to supply the fitting surprise of the +finish,--a surprise which is only to be compared to that other +revelation in _The Rose and the Ring_ of Thackeray, where the long-lost +and obnoxious porter at Valoroso's palace, having been turned by the +Fairy Blackstick into a door knocker for his insolence, is restored to +the sorrowing Servants' Hall exactly when his services are again +required in the capacity of Mrs. Gruffanuffs husband. But in Miss +Edgeworth's little fable there is no fairy agency. "Fairies were not +much in her line," says Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, "but +philanthropic manufacturers, liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in +travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to +distribute rewards or to point a moral." + +Note: + +[24] The "Preface to Parents"--Miss Emily Lawless suggests to me--was +probably by Mr. Edgeworth. + + +Although, by their sub-title, these stories are avowedly composed for +children, they are almost as attractive to grown-up readers. This is +partly owing to their narrative skill, partly also to the clear +characterisation, which already betrays the coming author of _Castle +Rackrent_ and _Belinda_ and _Patronage_--the last, under its first name +of _The Freeman Family_, being already partly written, although many +years were still to pass before it saw the light in 1814. Readers, wise +after the event, might fairly claim to have foreseen from some of the +personages in the _Parent's Assistant_ that the author, however sedulous +to describe "such situations only ... as children can easily imagine," +was not able entirely to resist tempting specimens of human nature like +the bibulous Mr. Corkscrew, the burglar butler in "The False Key," or +Mrs. Pomfret, the housekeeper of the same story, whose prejudices +against the _Villaintropic_ Society, and its unholy dealing with the +"_drugs and refuges_" of humanity, are quite in the style of the Mrs. +Slipslop of a great artist whose works one would scarcely have expected +to encounter among the paper-backed and grey-boarded volumes which lined +the shelves at Edgeworthstown. Mrs. Theresa Tattle, again, in "The +Mimic," is a type which requires but little to fit it for a subordinate +part in a novel, as is also Lady Diana Sweepstakes in "Waste not, Want +not." In more than one case, we seem to detect an actual portrait. Mr. +Somerville of Somerville ("The White Pigeon"), to whom that "little +town" belonged,--who had done so much "to inspire his tenantry with a +taste for order and domestic happiness, and took every means in his +power to encourage industrious, well-behaved people to settle in his +neighbourhood,"--can certainly be none other than the father of the +writer of the _Parent's Assistant_, the busy and beneficent, but surely +eccentric, Mr. Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown. + +When, in 1849, the first two volumes of Macaulay's _History_ were +issued, Miss Edgeworth, then in her eighty-third winter, was greatly +delighted to find her name, coupled with a compliment to one of her +characters, enshrined in a note to chap. vi. But her gratification was +qualified by the fact that she could discover no similar reference to +her friend, Sir Walter Scott. The generous "twinge of pain," to which +she confesses, was intelligible. Scott had always admired her genius, +and she admired his. In the "General Preface" to the _Waverley Novels_, +twenty years before, he had gone so far as to say that, without hoping +to emulate "the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact" of +Miss Edgeworth, he had attempted to do for his own country what she had +done for hers; and it is clear, from other sources, that this was no +mere form of words. And he never wavered in his admiration. In his last +years, not many months before his death, when he had almost forgotten +her name, he was still talking kindly of her work. Speaking to Mrs. John +Davy of Miss Austen and Miss Ferrier, he said: "And there's that Irish +lady, too--but I forget everybody's name now" ... "she's _very_ clever, +and best in the little touches too. I'm sure in that children's story, +where the little girl parts with her lamb, and the little boy brings it +back to her again, there's nothing for it but just to put down the book +and cry."[25] The reference is to "Simple Susan," the longest and +prettiest tale in the _Parent's Assistant_. + +Note: + +[25] Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, ch. lxxxi. _ad finem_. + + +Another anecdote pleasantly connects the same book with a popular work +of a later writer. Readers of _Cranford_ will recall the feud between +the Johnson-loving Miss Jenkyns of that story and its _Pickwick_-loving +Captain Brown. The Captain--as is well-known--met his death by a railway +accident, just after he had been studying the last monthly "green +covers" of Dickens. Years later, the assumed narrator of _Cranford_ +visits Miss Jenkyns, then faliing into senility. She still vaunts _The +Rambler_; still maunders vaguely of the "strange old book, with the +queer name, poor Captain Brown was killed for reading-that book by Mr. +Boz, you know--_Old Poz_; when I was a girl--but that's a long time +ago--I acted Lucy in _Old Poz_." There can be no mistake. Lucy is the +justice's daughter in Miss Edgeworth's little chamber-drama. + + + + +A PLEASANT INVECTIVE AGAINST PRINTING + +"Flee fro the PREES, and dwelle with sothfastnesse."--CHAUCER, _Balade +de Bon Conseil_. + + +The Press is too much with us, small and great: +We are undone of chatter and _on dit_, +Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee, +Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date, +Babble of booklets, bicker of debate, +Aspect of A., and attitude of B.-- +A waste of words that drive us like a sea, +Mere derelict of Ourselves, and helpless freight! + +"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!" +Some region unapproachable of Print, +Where never cablegram could gain access, +And telephones were not, nor any hint +Of tidings new or old, but Man might pipe +His soul to Nature,--careless of the Type! + + + + +TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS + + +I. KATE GREENAWAY + +In the world of pictorial recollection there are many territories, the +natives of which you may recognise by their characteristics as surely as +Ophelia recognises her true-love by his cockle-hat and sandal shoon. +There is the land of grave gestures and courteous inclinations, of +dignified leave-takings and decorous greetings; where the ladies (like +Richardson's Pamela) don the most charming round-eared caps and frilled +_négligés_; where the gentlemen sport ruffles and bag-wigs and spotless +silk stockings, and invariably exhibit shapely calves above their silver +shoe-buckles; where you may come in St. James's Park upon a portly +personage with a star, taking an alfresco pinch of snuff after that +leisurely style in which a pinch of snuff should be taken, so as not to +endanger a lace cravat or a canary-coloured vest; where you may seat +yourself on a bench by Rosamond's Pond in company with a tremulous mask +who is evidently expecting the arrival of a "pretty fellow"; or happen +suddenly, in a secluded side-walk, upon a damsel in muslin and a dark +hat, who is hurriedly scrawling a _poulet_, not without obvious signs of +perturbation. But whatever the denizens of this country are doing, they +are always elegant and always graceful, always appropriately grouped +against their fitting background of high-ceiled rooms and striped +hangings, or among the urns and fish-tanks of their sombre-shrubbed +gardens. This is the land of STOTHARD. + +In the adjoining country there is a larger sense of colour--a fuller +pulse of life. This is the region of delightful dogs and horses and +domestic animals of all sorts; of crimson-faced hosts and buxom +ale-wives; of the most winsome and black-eyed milkmaids and the most +devoted lovers and their lasses; of the most headlong and horn-blowing +huntsmen--a land where Madam Blaize forgathers with the impeccable +worthy who caused the death of the Mad Dog; where John Gilpin takes the +Babes in the Wood _en croupe_; and the bewitchingest Queen of Hearts +coquets the Great Panjandrum himself "with the little round button at +top"--a land, in short, of the most kindly and light-hearted fancies, of +the freshest and breeziest and healthiest types--which is the land of +CALDECOTT. + +Finally, there is a third country, a country inhabited almost +exclusively by the sweetest little child-figures that have ever been +invented, in the quaintest and prettiest costumes, always happy, always +gravely playful,--and nearly always playing; always set in the most +attractive framework of flower-knots, or blossoming orchards, or +red-roofed cottages with dormer windows. Everywhere there are green +fields, and daisies, and daffodils, and pearly skies of spring, in which +a kite is often flying. No children are quite like the dwellers in this +land; they are so gentle, so unaffected in their affectation, so easily +pleased, so trustful and so confiding. And this is GREENAWAY-land. + +It is sixty years since Thomas Stothard died, and only fifteen since +Randolph Caldecott closed his too brief career.[26] And now Kate +Greenaway, who loved the art of both, and in her own gentle way +possessed something of the qualities of each, has herself passed away. +It will rest with other pens to record her personal characteristics, and +to relate the story of her life. I who write this was privileged to know +her a little, and to receive from her frequent presents of her books; +but I should shrink from anything approaching a description of the +quiet, unpretentious, almost homely little lady, whom it was always a +pleasure to meet and to talk with. If I here permit myself to recall one +or two incidents of our intercourse, it is solely because they bear +either upon her amiable disposition or her art. I remember that once, +during a country walk in Sussex, she gave me a long account of her +childhood, which I wish I could repeat in detail. But I know that she +told me that she had been brought up in just such a neighbourhood of +thatched roofs and "grey old gardens" as she depicts in her drawings; +and that in some of the houses, it was her particular and unfailing +delight to turn over ancient chests and wardrobes filled with the +flowered frocks and capes of the Jane Austen period. As is well known, +she corresponded frequently with Ruskin, and possessed numbers of his +letters. In his latter years, it had been her practice to write to him +periodically--I believe she said once a week. He had long ceased, +probably from ill-health, to answer her letters; but she continued to +write punctually lest he should miss the little budget of chit-chat to +which he had grown accustomed. At another time--in a pleasant +country-house which contained many examples of her art--and where she +was putting the last touches to a delicately tinted child-angel in the +margin of a Bible--I ventured to say, "Why do your children always ...?" +But it is needless to complete the query; the answer alone is important. +She looked at me reflectively, and said, after a pause, "Because I +see it so." + +Note: + +[26] This was written in 1902. + + +Answers not dissimilar have been given before by other artists in like +case. But it was this rigid fidelity to her individual vision and +personal conviction which constituted her strength. There are always +stupid, well-meaning busybodies in the world, who go about making +question of the sonneteer why he does not attempt something epic and +homicidal, or worrying the carver of cherry-stones to try his hand at a +Colossus; but though they disturb and discompose, they luckily do no +material harm. They did no material harm to Kate Greenaway. She yielded, +no doubt, to pressure put upon her to try figures on a larger scale; to +illustrate books, which was not her strong point, as it only put fetters +upon her fancy; but, in the main, she courageously preserved the even +tenor of her way, which was to people the artistic demesne she +administered with the tiny figures which no one else could make more +captivating, or clothe more adroitly. It may be doubted whether the +collector will set much store by Bret Harte's _Queen of the Pirate Isle_ +or the _Pied Piper of Hamelin_, suitable at first sight as is the +latter, with its child-element, to her inventive idiosyncrasy. But he +will revel in the dainty scenes of "Almanacks" (1883 to 1895, and 1897); +in the charming Birthday Book of 1880; in _Mother Goose, A Day in a +Child's Life, Little Ann, Marigold Garden_ and the rest, of which the +grace is perennial, though the popularity for the moment may have waned. + +I have an idea that _Mother Goose; or, the Old Nursery Rhymes_, 1881, +was one of Miss Greenaway's favourites, although it may have been +displaced in her own mind by subsequent successes. Nothing can certainly +be more deftly-tinted than the design of the "old woman who lived under +a hill," and peeled apples; nothing more seductive, in infantile +attitude, than the little boy and girl, who, with their arms around each +other, stand watching the black-cat in the plum-tree. Then there is +Daffy-down-dilly, who has come up to town, with "a yellow petticoat and +a green gown," in which attire, aided by a straw hat tied under her +chin, she manages to look exceedingly attractive, as she passes in front +of the white house with the pink roof and the red shutters and the green +palings. One of the most beautiful pictures in this gallery is the dear +little "Ten-o'-clock Scholar" in his worked smock, as, trailing his +blue-and-white school-bag behind him, he creeps unwillingly to his +lessons at the most picturesque timbered cottage you can imagine. +Another absolutely delightful portrait is that of "Little Tom Tucker," +in sky-blue suit and frilled collar, singing, with his hands behind him, +as if he never could grow old. And there is not one of these little +compositions that is without its charm of colour and accessory--blue +plates on the dresser in the background, the parterres of a formal +garden with old-fashioned flowers, quaint dwellings with their gates and +grass-work, odd corners of countryside and village street, and all, +generally, in the clear air or sunlight. For in this favoured +Greenaway-realm, as in the island-valley of Avilion there + + falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, + Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies + Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns. + +To _Mother Goose_ followed _A Day in a Child's Life_, also 1881, and +_Little Ann_, 1883. The former of these contained various songs set to +music by Mr. Myles B. Foster, the organist of the Foundling Hospital, +and accompanied by designs on rather a larger scale than those in +_Mother Goose_. It also included a larger proportion of the floral +decorations which were among the artist's chief gifts. Foxgloves and +buttercups, tulips and roses, are flung about the pages of the book; and +there are many pictures, notably one of a little green-coated figure +perched upon a five-barred gate, which repeat the triumphs of its +predecessor. In _Little Ann and other Poems_, which is dedicated to the +four children of the artist's friend, the late Frederick Locker-Lampson, +she illustrated a selection from the verses for "Infant Minds" of Jane +and Ann Taylor, daughters of that Isaac Taylor of Ongar, who was first a +line engraver and afterwards an Independent Minister.[27] The +dedication contains a charming row of tiny portraits of the +Locker-Lampson family. These illustrations may seem to contradict what +has been said as to Miss Greenaway's ability to interpret the +conceptions of others. But this particular task left her perfectly free +to "go her own gait," and to embroider the text which, in this case, was +little more than a pretext for her pencil. + +Note: + +[27] Since this paper was written, the _Original Poems and Others_, of Ann +and Jane Taylor, with illustrations by F.D. Bedford, and a most interesting +"Introduction" by Mr. E.V. Lucas, have been issued by Messrs. Wells, +Gardner, Darton and Co. + + +In _Marigold Garden_, 1885, Miss Greenaway became her own poet; and next +to _Mother Goose_, this is probably her most important effort. The +flowers are as entrancing as ever; and the verse makes one wish that the +writer had written more. The "Genteel Family" and "Little Phillis" are +excellent nursery pieces; and there is almost a Blake-like note about +"The Sun Door." + + They saw it rise in the morning, + They saw it set at night, + And they longed to go and see it, + Ah! if they only might. + + The little soft white clouds heard them, + And stepped from out of the blue; + And each laid a little child softly + Upon its bosom of dew. + + And they carried them higher and higher, + And they nothing knew any more, + Until they were standing waiting, + In front of the round gold door. + + And they knocked, and called, and entreated + Whoever should be within; + But all to no purpose, for no one + Would hearken to let them in. + +"_La rime n'est pas riche_" nor is the technique thoroughly assured; but +the thought is poetical. Here is another, "In an Apple-Tree," which +reads like a child variation of that haunting "Mimnermus in Church" of +the author of Ionica:-- + + In September, when the apples are red, + To Belinda I said, + "Would you like to go away + To Heaven, or stay + Here in this orchard full of trees + All your life? "And she said," If you please + I'll stay here--where I know, + And the flowers grow." + +In another vein is the bright little "Child's Song":-- + + The King and the Queen were riding + Upon a Summer's day, + And a Blackbird flew above them, + To hear what they did say. + + The King said he liked apples, + The Queen said she liked pears; + And what shall we do to the Blackbird + Who listens unawares? + +But, as a rule, it must be admitted of her poetry that, while nearly +always poetic in its impulse, it is often halting and inarticulate in +its expression. A few words may be added in regard to the mere facts of +Miss Greenaway's career. She was born at 1 Cavendish Street, Hoxton, on +the 17th March, 1846, her father being Mr. John Greenaway, a draughtsman +on wood, who contributed much to the earlier issues of the _Illustrated +London News_ and _Punch_. Annual visits to a farm-house at Rolleston in +Nottinghamshire--the country residence already referred to--nourished +and confirmed her love of nature. Very early she showed a distinct bias +towards colour and design of an original kind. She studied at different +places, and at South Kensington. Here both she and Lady Butler "would +bribe the porter to lock them in when the day's work was done, so that +they might labour on for some while more." Her master at Kensington was +Richard Burchett, who, forty years ago, was a prominent figure in the +art-schools, a well instructed painter, and a teacher exceptionally +equipped with all the learning of his craft. Mr. Burchett thought highly +of Miss Greenaway's abilities; and she worked under him for several +years with exemplary perseverance and industry. She subsequently studied +in the Slade School under Professor Legros. + +Her first essays in the way of design took the form of Christmas cards, +then beginning their now somewhat flagging career, and she exhibited +pictures at the Dudley Gallery for some years in succession, beginning +with 1868. In 1877 she contributed to the Royal Academy a water colour +entitled "Musing," and in 1889 was elected a member of the Royal +Institute of Painters in Water Colours. + +By this date, as will be gathered from what has preceded, Miss Greenaway +had made her mark as a producer of children's books, since, in addition +to the volumes already specially mentioned, she had issued _Under the +Window_ (her earliest success), _The Language of Flowers, Kate +Greenaway's Painting Book, The Book of Games, King Pepito_ and other +works. Her last "Almanack," which was published by Messrs Dent and Co., +appeared in 1897. In 1891, the Fine Arts Society exhibited some 150 of +her original drawings--an exhibition which was deservedly successful, +and was followed by others.[28] As Slade Professor at Oxford, Ruskin, +always her fervent admirer, gave her unstinted eulogium; and in France +her designs aroused the greatest admiration. The _Débats_ had a leading +article on her death; and the clever author of _L'Art du Rire_, M. +Arsène Alexandre, who had already written appreciatively of her gifts as +a "_paysagiste_," and as a "_maîtresse en l'art du sourire, du jolt +sourire_ _d'enfant inginu et gaiement candide_" devoted a column in the +_Figaro_ to her merits. + +Note: + +[28] Among other things these exhibitions revealed the great superiority +of the original designs to the reproductions with which the public are +familiar--excellent as these are in their way. Probably, if Miss +Greenaway's work were now repeated by the latest form of three-colour +process, she would be less an "inheritor"--in this respect--"of unfulfilled +renown." + + +It has been noted that, in her later years, Miss Greenaway's popularity +was scarcely maintained. It would perhaps be more exact to say that it +somewhat fell off with the fickle crowd who follow a reigning fashion, +and who unfortunately help to swell the units of a paying community. To +the last she gave of her best; but it is the misfortune of distinctive +and original work, that, while the public resents versatility in its +favourites, it wearies unreasonably of what had pleased it at +first--especially if the note be made tedious by imitation. Miss +Greenaway's old vogue was in some measure revived by her too-early death +on the 6th November 1901; but, in any case, she is sure of attention +from the connoisseur of the future. Those who collect Stothard and +Caldecott (and they are many!) cannot afford to neglect either _Marigold +Garden_ or _Mother Goose_.[29] + +Note: + +[29] Since the above article appeared in the _Art Journal_, from +which it is here substantially reproduced, Messrs. M.H, Spieimann and +G.S. Layard have (1905) devoted a sumptuous and exhaustive volume to +Miss Greenaway and her art. To this truly beautiful and sympathetic book +I can but refer those of her admirers who are not yet acquainted +with it. + + + + +A SONG OF THE GREENAWAY CHILD + + +As I went a-walking on _Lavender Hill_, +O, I met a Darling in frock and frill; +And she looked at me shyly, with eyes of blue, +"Are you going a-walking? Then take me too!" + +So we strolled to the field where the cowslips grow, +And we played--and we played, for an hour or so; +Then we climbed to the top of the old park wall, +And the Darling she threaded a cowslip ball. + +Then we played again, till I said--"My Dear, +This pain in my side, it has grown severe; +I ought to have mentioned I'm past three-score, +And I fear that I scarcely can play any more!" + +But the Darling she answered,-"O no! O no! +You must play--you must play.--I sha'n't let you go!" + +--And I woke with a start and a sigh of despair, +And I found myself safe in my Grandfather's-chair! + + + + +TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS + + +II. MR HUGH THOMSON + +In virtue of certain gentle and caressing qualities of style, Douglas +Jerrold conferred on one of his contributors--Miss Eliza Meteyard--the +pseudonym of "Silverpen." It is in the silver-pensive key that one would +wish to write of Mr. HUGH THOMSON. There is nothing in his work of +elemental strife,--of social problem,--of passion torn to tatters. He +leads you by no _terribile via_,--over no "burning Marle." You cannot +conceive him as the illustrator of _Paradise Lost_, of Dante's +_Inferno_--even of Doré's _Wandering Jew_. But when, after turning over +some dozens of his designs, you take stock of your impressions, you +discover that your memory is packed with pleasant fancies. You have been +among "blown fields" and "flowerful closes"; you have passed quaint +roadside-inns and picturesque cottages; you are familiar with the +cheery, ever-changing idyll of the highway and the bustle of animal +life; with horses that really gallop, and dogs that really bark; with +charming male and female figures in the most attractive old-world +attire; with happy laughter and artless waggeries; with a hundred +intimate details of English domesticity that are pushed just far enough +back to lose the hardness of their outline in a softening haze of +retrospect. There has been nothing more tragic in your travels than a +sprained ankle or an interrupted affair of honour; nothing more +blood-curdling than a dream of a dragoon officer knocked out of his +saddle by a brickbat. Your flesh has never been made to creep: but the +cockles of your heart have been warmed. Mechanically, you raise your +hand to lift away your optimistic spectacles. But they are not there. +The optimism is in the pictures. + +It must be more than a quarter of a century since Mr. Hugh Thomson, +arriving from Coleraine in all the ardour of one-and-twenty, invaded the +strongholds of English illustration. He came at a fortunate moment. +After a few hesitating and tentative attempts upon the newspapers, he +obtained an introduction to Mr. Comyns Carr, then engaged in +establishing the _English Illustrated Magazine_ for Messrs. Macmillan. +His recommendation was a scrap-book of minutely elaborated designs for +_Vanity Fair_, which he had done (like Reynolds) "out of pure idleness." +Mr. Carr, then, as always, a discriminating critic, with a keen eye to +possibilities, was not slow to detect, among much artistic recollection, +something more than uncertain promise; and although he had already +Randolph Caldecott and Mr. Harry Furniss on his staff, he at once gave +Mr. Thomson a commission for the magazine. The earliest picture from his +hand which appeared was a fancy representation of the Parade at Bath for +a paper in June, 1884, by the late H. D. Traill; and he also illustrated +(in part) papers on Drawing Room Dances, on Cricket (by Mr. Andrew +Lang), and on Covent Garden. But graphic and vividly naturalistic as +were his pictures of modern life, his native bias towards imaginary +eighteenth century subjects (perhaps prompted by boyish studies of +Hogarth in the old Dublin _Penny Magazine_), was already abundantly +manifest. He promptly drifted into what was eventually to become his +first illustrated book, a series of compositions from the _Spectator_. +These were published in 1886 as a little quarto, entitled _Days with Sir +Roger de Coverley_. + +It was a "temerarious" task to attempt to revive the types which, from +the days of Harrison's _Essayists_, had occupied so many of the earlier +illustrators. But the attempt was fully justified by its success. One +has but to glance at the head-piece to the first paper, where Sir Roger +and "Mr. Spectator" have alighted from the jolting, springless, +heavy-wheeled old coach as the tired horses toil uphill, to recognise at +once that here is an artist _en pays de connaissance_, who may fairly be +trusted, in the best sense, to "illustrate" his subject. Whatever one's +predilections for previous presentments, it is impossible to resist Sir +Roger (young, slim, and handsome), carving the perverse widow's name +upon a tree-trunk; or Sir Roger at bowls, or riding to hounds, or +listening--with grave courtesy--to Will Wimble's long-winded and +circumstantial account of the taking of the historic jack. Nor is the +conception less happy of that amorous fine-gentleman ancestor of the +Coverleys who first made love by squeezing the hand; or of that other +Knight of the Shire who so narrowly escaped being killed in the Civil +Wars because he was sent out of the field upon a private message, the +day before Cromwell's "crowning mercy,"--the battle of Worcester. But +the varied embodiments of these, and of Mrs. Betty Arable ("the great +fortune"), of Ephraim the Quaker, and the rest, are not all. The figures +are set in their fitting environment; they ride their own horses, hallo +to their own dogs, and eat and drink in their own dark-panelled rooms +that look out on the pleached alleys of their ancient gardens. They live +and move in their own passed-away atmosphere of association; and a +faithful effort has moreover been made to realise each separate scene +with strict relation to its text. + +All of the "Coverley" series came out in the _English Illustrated_. So +also did the designs for the next book, the _Coaching Days and Coaching +Ways_ of Mr. Outram Tristram, 1888. Here Mr. Thomson had a topographical +collaborator, Mr. Herbert Railton, who did the major part of the very +effective drawings in this kind. But Mr. Thomson's contributions may +fairly be said to have exhausted the "romance" of the road. Inns and +inn-yards, hosts and ostlers and chambermaids, stage-coachmen, +toll-keepers, mail-coaches struggling in snow-drifts, mail-coaches held +up by highwaymen, overturns, elopements, cast shoes, snapped poles, lost +linch-pins,--all the episodes and moving accidents of bygone travel on +the high road have abundant illustration, till the pages seem almost to +reek of the stableyard, or ring with the horn.[30] And here it may be +noted, as a peculiarity of Mr. Thomson's conscientious horse-drawing, +that he depicts, not the ideal, but the actual animal. His steeds are +not "faultless monsters" like the Dauphin's palfrey in _Henry the +Fifth_. They are "all sorts and conditions" of horses; and--if truth +required it--would disclose as many sand-cracks as Rocinante, or as many +equine defects (from wind-gall to the bolts) as those imputed to that +unhappy "Blackberry" sold by the Vicar of Wakefield at Welbridge Fair to +Mr, Ephraini Jenkinson. + +Note: + +[30] Sometimes a literary or historical picture creeps into the text. +Such are "Swift and Bolingbroke at Backlebury" (p. 30); "Charles +II. recognised by the Ostler" (p. 144), and "Barry Lyndon cracks a +Bottle" (p. 116). _Barry Lyndon_ with its picaresque note and Irish +background, would seem an excellent contribution to the "Cranford" +series. Why does not Mr. Thomson try his hand at it? He has illustrated +_Esmond_, and the _Great Haggarty Diamond_. + + +The _Vicar of Wakefield_--as it happens--was Mr. Thomson's next +enterprise; and it is, in many respects, a most memorable one. It came +out in December, 1890, having occupied him for nearly two years. He took +exceptional pains to study and realise the several types for himself, +and to ensure correctness of costume. From the first introductory +procession of the Primrose family at the head of chapter i. to the +awkward merriment of the two Miss Flamboroughs at the close, there is +scarcely a page which has not some stroke of quiet fun, some graceful +attitude, or some ingenious contrivance in composition. Considering that +from Wenham's edition of 1780, nearly every illustrator of repute had +tried his hand at Goldsmith's masterpiece in fiction,--that he had been +attempted without humour by Stothard, without lightness by +Mulready,[31]--that he had been made comic by Cruikshank, and vulgarised +by Rowiandson,--it was certainly to Mr. Thomson's credit that he had +approached his task with so much refinement, reverence and originality. +If the book has a blemish, it is to be mentioned only because the +artist, by his later practice, seems to have recognised it himself. For +the purposes of process reproduction, the drawings were somewhat loaded +and overworked. + +Note: + +[31]: Mulready's illustrations of 1843 are here referred to, net his +pictures. + + +This was not chargeable against the next volumes to be chronicled. Mrs. +Gaskell's _Cranford_, 1891, and Miss Mitford's _Our Village_, 1893, are +still regarded by many as the artist's happiest efforts. I say "still," +because Mr. Thomson is only now in what Victor Hugo called the youth of +old age (as opposed to the old age of youth); and it would be premature +to assume that a talent so alert to multiply and diversify its efforts, +had already attained the summit of its achievement. But in these two +books he had certain unquestionable advantages. One obviously would be, +that his audience were not already preoccupied by former illustrations; +and he was consequently free to invent his own personages and follow his +own fertile fancy, without recalling to that implacable and Gorgonising +organ, the "Public Eye," any earlier pictorial conceptions. Another +thing in his favour was, that in either case, the very definite, and not +very complex types surrendered themselves readily to artistic +embodiment. "It almost illustrated itself,"--he told an interviewer +concerning _Cranford_; "the characters were so exquisitely and +distinctly realised." Every one has known some like them; and the +delightful Knutsford ladies (for "Cranford" was "Knutsford"), the +"Boz"--loving Captain Brown and Mr. Holbrook, Peter and his father, and +even Martha the maid, with their _mise en scène_ of card-tables and +crackle-china, and pattens and reticules, are part of the memories of +our childhood. The same may be said of _Our Village_, except that the +breath of Nature blows more freely through it than through the quiet +Cheshire market-town; and there is a larger preponderance of those +"charming glimpses of rural life" of which Lady Ritchie speaks +admiringly in her sympathetic preface. And with regard to the "bits of +scenery"--as Mr. Thomson himself calls them--it may be noted that one of +the Manchester papers, speaking of _Cranford_, praised the artist's +intimate knowledge of the locality,--a locality he had never seen. Most +of his backgrounds were from sketches made on Wimbledon Common, near +which--until he moved for a space to the ancient Cinque Port of Seaford +in Sussex--he lived for the first years of his London life. + +In strict order of time, Mr. Thomson's next important effort should have +preceded the books of Miss Mitford and Mrs. Gaskell. The novels of Jane +Austen--to which we now come--if not the artist's high-water mark, are +certainly remarkable as a _tour de force_. To contrive some forty page +illustrations for each of Miss Austen's admirable, but--from an +illustrator's standpoint--not very palpitating productions,--with a +scene usually confined to the dining-room or parlour,--with next to no +animals, and with rare opportunities for landscape accessory,--was an +"adventure"--in Cervantic phrase--which might well have given pause to a +designer of less fertility and resource. But besides the figures there +was the furniture; and acute admirers have pointed out that a nice +discretion is exhibited in graduating the appointments of Longbourn and +Netherfield Park,--of Rosings and Hunsford. But what is perhaps more +worthy of remark is the artist's persistent attempt to give +individuality, as well as grace, to his dramatis persona;. The +unspeakable Mr. Collins, Mr. Bennet, the horsy Mr. John Thorpe, Mrs. +Jennings and Mrs. Norris, the Eltons--are all carefully discriminated. +Nothing can well be better than Mr. Woodhouse, with his "almost +immaterial legs" drawn securely out of the range of a too-fierce fire, +chatting placidly to Miss Bates upon the merits of water-gruel; nothing +more in keeping than the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, "in +the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind" of her indignation, +superciliously pausing to patronise the capabilities of the Longbourn +reception rooms. Not less happy is the dumbfounded astonishment of Mrs. +Bennet at her toilet, when she hears--to her stupefaction--that her +daughter Elizabeth is to be mistress of Pemberley and ten thousand a +year. This last is a head-piece; and it may be observed, as an +additional difficulty in this group of novels, that, owing to the +circumstances of publication, only in one of the books. _Pride and +Prejudice_, was Mr, Thomson free to decorate the chapters with those +ingenious _entêtes_ and _culs-de-lampe_ of which he so eminently +possesses the secret.[32] + +Note: + +[32] That eloquence of subsidiary detail, which has had so many +exponents in English art from Hogarth onwards, is one of Mr. Thomson's +most striking characteristics. The reader will find it exemplified in +the beautiful book-plate at page 111, which, by the courtesy of its +owner, Mr. Ernest Brown, I am permitted to reproduce. + + +By this time his reputation had long been firmly established. To the +Jane Austen volumes succeeded other numbers of the so-called "Cranford" +series, to which, in 1894, Mr. Thomson had already added, under the +title of _Coridon's Song and other Verses_, a fresh ingathering of +old-time minstrelsy from the pages of the _English Illustrated_. Many of +the drawings for these, though of necessity reduced for publication in +book form, are in his most delightful and winning manner,--notably +perhaps (if one must choose!) the martial ballad of that "Captain of +Militia, Sir Bilberry Diddle," who + + --dreamt, Fame reports, that he cut all the throats + Of the French as they landed in flat-bottomed boats + +--or rather were going to land any time during the Seven Years' War. +Excellent, too, are John Gay's ambling _Journey to Exeter_., the +_Angler's Song_ from Walton (which gives its name to the collection), +and Fielding's rollicking "A-hunting we will go." Other "Cranford" +books, which now followed, were James Lane Allen's _Kentucky Cardinal_, +1901; Fanny Burney's _Evelina_, 1903; Thackeray's _Esmond_, 1905; and +two of George Eliot's novels--_Scenes of Clerical Life_, 1906, and +_Silas Marner_, 1907. In 1899 Mr. Thomson had also undertaken another +book for George Allen, an edition of Reade's _Peg Woffington_,--a task +in which he took the keenest delight, particularly in the burlesque +character of Triplet. These were all in the old pen-work; but some of +the designs for _Silas Marner_ were lightly and tastefully coloured. +This was a plan the author had adopted, with good effect, not only in a +special edition of _Cranford_ (1898), but for some of his original +drawings which came into the market after exhibition. Nothing can be +more seductive than a Hugh Thomson pen-sketch, when delicately tinted in +sky-blue, _rose-Du Barry_, and apple-green (the _vert-pomme_ dear--as +Gautier says--to the soft moderns)--a treatment which lends them a +subdued but indefinable distinction, as of old china with a pedigree, +and fully justifies the amiable enthusiasm of the phrase-maker who +described their inventor as the "Charles Lamb of illustration." + +From the above enumeration certain omissions have of necessity been +made. Besides the books mentioned, Mr. Thomson has contrived to prepare +for newspapers and magazines many closely-studied sketches of +contemporary manners. Some of the best of his work in this way is to be +found in the late Mrs. E.T. Cook's _Highways and Byways of London Life_, +1902. For the _Highways and Byways_ series, he has also illustrated, +wholly or in part, volumes on Ireland, North Wales, Devon, Cornwall and +Yorkshire. The last volume, Kent, 1907, is entirely decorated by +himself. In this instance, his drawings throughout are in pencil, and he +is his own topographer. It is a remarkable departure, both in manner and +theme, though Mr. Thomson's liking for landscape has always been +pronounced. "I would desire above all things," he told an interviewer, +"to pass my time in painting landscape. Landscape pictures always +attract me, and the grand examples, Gainsboroughs, Claudes, Cromes, and +Turners, to be seen any day in our National Gallery, are a source of +never-failing yearning and delight." The original drawings for the Kent +book are of great beauty; and singularly dexterous in the varied methods +by which the effect is produced. The artist is now at work on the county +of Surrey. It is earnest of his versatility that, in 1904, he +illustrated for Messrs. Wells, Darton and Co., with conspicuous success, +a modernised prose version of certain of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, +as well as _Tales from Maria Edgeworth_, 1903; and he also executed, in +1892 and 1895,[33] some charming designs to selections from the verses of +the present writer, who has long enjoyed the privilege of his friendship. + +Personal traits do not come within the province of this paper, or it +would be pleasant to dwell upon Mr. Thomson's modesty, his untiring +industry, and his devotion to his art. But in regard to that art, it may +be observed that to characterise it solely as "packing the memory with +pleasant fancies" may suffice for an exordium, but is inadequate as a +final appreciation. Let me therefore note down, as they occur to me, +some of his more prominent pictorial characteristics. With three of the +artists mentioned in this and the preceding paper, he has obvious +affinities, while, in a sense, he includes them all. If he does not +excel Stothard in the gift of grace, he does in range and variety; and +he more than rivals him in composition. He has not, like Miss Greenaway, +endowed the art-world with a special type of childhood; but his children +are always lifelike and engaging. (Compare, at a venture, the boy +soldiers whom Frank Castlewood is drilling in chapter xi. of _Esmond_, +or the delightful little fellow who is throwing up his arms in chapter +ix. of _Emma_.) As regards dogs and horses and the rest, his colleague, +Mr, Joseph Pennell, an expert critic, and a most accomplished artist, +holds that he has "long since surpassed" Randolph Caldecott.[34] I doubt +whether Mr. Thomson himself would concur with his eulogist in this. But +he has assuredly followed Caldecott close; and in opulence of +production, which--as Macaulay insisted--should always count, has +naturally exceeded that gifted, but shortlived, designer. If, pursuing +an ancient practice, one were to attempt to label Mr. Thomson with a +special distinction apart from, and in addition to, his other merits, I +should be inclined to designate him the "Master of the +Vignette,"--taking that word in its primary sense as including +head-pieces, tail-pieces and initial letters. In this department, no +draughtsman I can call to mind has ever shown greater fertility of +invention, so much playful fancy, so much grace, so much kindly humour, +and such a sane and wholesome spirit of fun. + +Notes: + +[33] _The Ballad of Beau Brocade_, and _The Story of Rosina_. + +[34] _Pen-Drawing and Pen-Draughtsmen, 2nd ed. 1894, p. 358._ + + + + +HORATIAN ODE + +ON THE TERCENTENARY OF + +"DON QUIXOTE" + +_(Published at Madrid, by Francisco de Robles, January 1605)_ + +"Para mí sola nació don Quixote, y yo para él."--CERVANTES. + + +Advents we greet of great and small; + Much we extol that may not live; + Yet to the new-born Type we give + No care at all! + +This year,[35]--three centuries past,--by age + More maimed than by LEPANTO'S fight,-- + This year CERVANTES gave to light + His matchless page, + +Whence first outrode th' immortal Pair,-- + The half-crazed Hero and his hind,-- + To make sad laughter for mankind; + And whence they fare + +Throughout all Fiction still, where chance + Allies Life's dulness with its dreams-- + Allies what is, with what but seems,-- + Fact and Romance:-- + +O Knight of fire and Squire of earth!-- + O changing give-and-take between + The aim too high, the aim too mean, + I hail your birth,-- + +Three centuries past,--in sunburned SPAIN, + And hang, on Time's PANTHEON wall, + My votive tablet to recall + That lasting gain! + +Note: + +[35] _I.e._ January 1905. + + + + +THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS + + +One common grave, according to Garrick, covers the actor and his art. +The same may be said of the raconteur. Oral tradition, or even his own +writings, may preserve his precise words; but his peculiarities of voice +or action, his tricks of utterance and intonation,--all the collateral +details which serve to lend distinction or piquancy to the +performance--perish irrecoverably. The glorified gramophone of the +future may perhaps rectify this for a new generation; and give us, +without mechanical drawback, the authentic accents of speakers dead and +gone; but it can never perpetuate the dramatic accompaniment of gesture +and expression. If, as always, there are exceptions to this rule, they +are necessarily evanescent. Now and then, it may be, some clever mimic +will recall the manner of a passed-away predecessor; and he may even +contrive to hand it on, more or less effectually, to a disciple. But the +reproduction is of brief duration; and it is speedily effaced or +transformed. + +In this way it is, however, that we get our most satisfactory idea of +the once famous table-talker, Samuel Rogers. Charles Dickens, who sent +Rogers several of his books; who dedicated _Master Humphrey's Clock_ to +him; and who frequently assisted at the famous breakfasts in St. James's +Place, was accustomed--rather cruelly, it may be thought--to take off +his host's very characteristic way of telling a story; and it is, +moreover, affirmed by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald[36] that, in the famous +Readings, "the strangely obtuse and owl-like expression, and the slow, +husky croak" of Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the "Trial from _Pickwick_" +were carefully copied from the author of the _Pleasures of Memory_, That +Dickens used thus to amuse his friends is confirmed by the autobiography +of the late Frederick Locker,[37] who perfectly remembered the old man, +to see whom he had been carried, as a boy, by his father. He had also +heard Dickens repeat one of Rogers's stock anecdotes (it was that of the +duel in a dark room, where the more considerate combatant, firing up the +chimney, brings down his adversary);[38]--and he speaks of Dickens as +mimicking Rogers's "calm, low-pitched, drawling voice and dry biting +manner very comically."[39] At the same time, it must be remembered that +these reminiscences relate to Rogers in his old age. He was over seventy +when Dickens published his first book, _Sketches by Boz_; and, though it +is possible that Rogers's voice was always rather sepulchral, and his +enunciation unusually deliberate and monotonous, he had nevertheless, as +Locker says, "made story-telling a fine art." Continued practice had +given him the utmost economy of words; and as far as brevity and point +are concerned, his method left nothing to be desired. Many of his best +efforts are still to be found in the volume of _Table-Talk_ edited for +Moxon in 1856 by the Rev. Alexander Dyce; or preferably, as actually +written down by Rogers himself in the delightful _Recollections_ issued +three years later by his nephew and executor, William Sharpe. + +Notes: + +[36] _Recreations of a Literary Man_, 1882, p. 137. + +[37] _My Confidences_, by Frederick Locker-Lampson, 1896, pp. 98 +and 325. + +[38] The duellists were an Englishman and a Frenchman; and +Rogers was in the habit of adding as a postscript: "When I tell that in +Paris, I always put the Englishman up the chimney!" + +[39] It may be added that Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, himself no mean +mime, may be sometimes persuaded to imitate Dickens imitating Rogers. + + +But although the two things are often intimately connected, the "books," +and not the "stories" of Rogers, are the subject of the present paper. +After this, it sounds paradoxical to have to admit that his reputation +as a connoisseur far overshadowed his reputation as a bibliophile. When, +in December 1855, he died, his pictures and curios,--his "articles of +virtue and bigotry" as a modern Malaprop would have styled +them,--attracted far more attention than the not very numerous volumes +forming his library.[40] What people flocked to see at the tiny +treasure-house overlooking the Green Park,[41] which its nonagenarian +owner had occupied for more than fifty years, were the "Puck" and +"Strawberry Girl" of Sir Joshua, the Titians, Giorgiones, and Guidos,[42] +the Poussins and Claudes, the drawings of Raphael and Dürer and Lucas +van Leyden, the cabinet decorated by Stothard, the chimney-piece carved +by Flaxman; the miniatures and bronzes and Etruscan vases,--all the +"infinite riches in a little room," which crowded No. 22 from garret to +basement. These were the rarities that filled the columns of the papers +and the voices of the quidnuncs when in 1856 they came to the hammer. +But although the Press of that day takes careful count of these things, +it makes little reference to the sale of the "books" of the banker-bard +who spent some £15,000 on the embellishments of his _Italy_ and his +_Poems_; and although Dr. Burney says that Rogers's library included +"the best editions of the best authors in most languages," he had +clearly no widespread reputation as a book-collector pure and simple. +Nevertheless he loved his books,--that is, he loved the books he read. +And, as far as can be ascertained, he anticipated the late Master of +Balliol, since he read only the books he liked. Nor was he ever diverted +from his predilections by mere fashion or novelty. "He followed Bacon's +maxim"--says one who knew him--"to read much, not many things: _multum +legere, non multa_. He used to say, 'When a new book comes out, I read +an old one.'"[43] + +Notes: + +[40] The prices obtained confirm this. Thetotaisum realised was +£45,188:14:3. Of this the books represented no more than £1415:5. + +[41] This--with its triple range of bow-windows, from one of +which Rogers used to watch his favourite sunsets--is now the residence +of Lord Northcliffe. + +[42] Three of these--the "_Noli me tangere_" of Titian, Giorgione's +"Knight in Armour," and Guide's "_Ecce Homo_"--are now in the National +Gallery, to which they were bequeathed by Rogers. + +[43] _Edinburgh Review_, vol. civ. p. 105, by Abraham Hayward. + + +The general Rogers-sale at Christie's took place in the spring of 1856, +and twelve days had been absorbed before the books were reached. Their +sale took six days more--_i.e._ from May 12 to May 19. As might be +expected from Rogers's traditional position in the literary world, the +catalogue contains many presentation copies. What, at first sight, would +seem the earliest, is the _Works_ of Edward Moore, 1796, 2 vols. But if +this be the fabulist and editor of the _World_, it can scarcely have +been received from the writer, since, in 1796, Moore had been dead for +nearly forty years. With Bloomfield's poems of 1802, l. p., we are on +surer ground, for Rogers, like Capel Lofft, had been kind to the author +of _The Farmer's Boy_, and had done his best to obtain him a pension. +Another early tribute, subsequently followed by the _Tales of the Hall_, +was Crabbe's Borough, which he sent to Rogers in 1810, in response to +polite overtures made to him by the poet. This was the beginning of a +lasting friendship, of no small import to Crabbe, as it at once admitted +him to Rogers's circle, an advantage of which there are many traces in +Crabbe's journal. Next comes Madame de Staël's much proscribed _De +l'Allamagne_ (the Paris edition); and from its date, 1813, it must have +been presented to Rogers when its irrepressible author was in England. +She often dined or breakfasted at St. James's Place, where (according to +Byron), she out-talked Whitbread, confounded Sir Humphry Davy, and was +herself well "_ironed_"[44] by Sheridan. Rogers considered _Corinne_ to +be her best novel, and _Delphine_ a terrible falling-off. The Germany he +found "very fatiguing." "She writes her works four or five times over, +correcting them only in that way"--he says. "The end of a chapter [is] +always the most obscure, as she ends with an epigram,"[45] Another early +presentation copy is the second edition of Bowles's _Missionary_, 1815. +According to Rogers, who claims to have suggested the poem, it was to +have been inscribed to him. But somehow or other, the book got dedicated +to noble lord who--Rogers adds drily--never, either by word or letter, +made any acknowledgment of the homage.[46] It is not impossible that +there is some confusion of recollection here, or Rogers is misreported +by Dyce. The first anonymous edition of the _Missionary_, 1813, had _no_ +dedication; and the second was inscribed to the Marquess of Lansdowne +because he had been prominent among those who recognised the merit of +its predecessor. + +Notes: + +[44] Perhaps a remembrance of Mrs Slipslop's "_ironing_." + +[45] Clayden's _Rogers and his Contemporaries_, 1889, i. 225. As +an epigrammatist himself, Rogers might have been more indulgent to a +_consoeur_. Here is one of Madame de Staël's "ends of chapters":--"_La +monotonie, dans la retraite, tranquillise l'âme; la monotonie, dans le +grand monde, fatigue l'esprit_" (ch. viii.). But he evidently found her +rather overpowering. + +[46] Table-Talk, 1856, p. 258. + + +Several of Scott's poems, with Rogers's autograph, and Scott's card, +appear in the catalogue; and, in 1812, Byron, who a year after inscribed +the _Giaour_ to Rogers, sent him the first two cantos of _Childe +Harold._ In 1838, Moore presents _Lalla Rookh_, with Heath's plates, a +work which, upon its first appearance, twenty years earlier, had been +dedicated to Rogers. In 1839 Charles Dickens followed with _Nicholas +Nickleby_, succeeded a year later by _Master Humphrey's Clock_ (1840-1), +also dedicated to Rogers in recognition, not only of his poetical merit, +but of his "active sympathy with the poorest and humblest of his kind." +Rogers was fond of "Little Nell"; and in the Preface to _Barnaby Rudge_, +Dickens gracefully acknowledged that "for a beautiful thought" in the +seventy-second chapter of the _Old Curiosity Shop_, he was indebted to +Rogers's Ginevra in the _Italy_:-- + + And long might'st thou have seen + An old man wandering _as in quest of something,_ + Something he could not find--he knew not what. + +The _American Notes_, 1842, was a further offering from Dickens. Among +other gifts may be noted Wordsworth's _Poems_, 1827-35; Campbell's +_Pilgrim of Glencoe_, 1842; Longfellow's _Ballads and Voices of the +Night_, 1840-2; Macaulay's _Lays_ and Tennyson's _Poems_, 1842; and +lastly, Hazlitt's _Criticisms on Art_, 1844, and Carlyle's _Letters and +Speeches of Cromwell_, 1846. Brougham's philosophical novel of _Albert +Lunel; or, the Château of Languedoc_, 3 vols, 1844, figures in the +catalogue as "withdrawn." It had been suppressed "for private reasons" +upon the eve of publication; and this particular copy being annotated by +Rogers (to whom it was inscribed) those concerned were no doubt all the +more anxious that it should not get abroad. Inspection of the reprint of +1872 shows, however, that want of interest was its chief error. A +reviewer of 1858 roundly calls it "feeble" and "commonplace"; and it +could hardly have increased its writer's reputation. Indeed, by some, it +was not supposed to be from his Lordship's pen at all. Rogers, it may be +added, frequently annotated his books. His copies of Pope, Gray and +Scott had many _marginalia_. Clarke's and Fox's histories of James II. +were also works which he decorated in this way. + +As already hinted, not very many bibliographical curiosities are +included in the St. James's Place collection; and to look for +Shakespeare quartos or folios, for example, would be idle. Ordinary +editions of Shakespeare, such as Johnson's and Theobald's; +Shakespeariana, such as Mrs. Montagu's _Essay_ and Ayscough's +_Index_,--these are there of course. If the list also takes in Thomas +Caldecott's _Hamlet_, and _As you like it_ (1832), that is, first, +because the volume is a presentation copy; and secondly, because +Caldecott's colleague in his frustrate enterprise was Crowe, Rogers's +Miltonic friend, hereafter mentioned. Rogers's own feeling for +Shakespeare was cold and hypercritical; and he was in the habit of +endorsing with emphasis Ben Jonson's aspiration that the master had +blotted a good many of his too-facile lines. Nevertheless, it is +possible to pick out a few exceptional volumes from Mr. Christie's +record. Among the earliest comes a copy of Garth's _Dispensary_, 1703, +which certainly boasts an illustrious pedigree. Pope, who received it +from the author, had carefully corrected it in several places; and in +1744 bequeathed it to Warburton. Warburton, in his turn, handed it on to +Mason, from whom it descended to Lord St. Helens, by whom, again, +shortly before his death (1815), it was presented to Rogers. To Pope's +corrections, which Garth adopted, Mason had added a comment. What made +the volume of further interest was, that it contained Lord Dorchester's +receipt for his subscription to Pope's _Homer_; and, inserted at the +end, a full-length portrait of Pope; viz., that engraved in Warton's +edition of 1797, as sketched in pen-and-ink by William Hoare of Bath. +Another interesting item is the quarto first edition (the first three +books) of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, Ponsonbie, 1590: and a third, the +_Paradise Lost_ of Milton in ten books, the original text of 1667 (with +the 1669 title-page and the Argument and Address to the Reader)--both +bequeathed to Rogers by W, Jackson of Edinburgh. (One of the stock +exhibits at "Memory Hall"--as 22 St. James's Place was playfully called +by some of the owner's friends--was Milton's receipt to Symmons the +printer for the five pounds he received for his epic. This, framed and +glazeds hung, according to Lady Eastlake, on one of the doors.[47]) A +fourth rare book was William Bonham's black-letter Chaucer, a folio +which had been copiously annotated in MS. by Home Tooke, who gave it to +Rogers. It moreover contained, at folio 221, the record of Tooke's +arrest at Wimbledon on 16th May, 1794, and subsequent committal on the +19th to the Tower, for alleged high treason.[48] Further _notabilia_ in +this category were the Duke of Marlborough's _Hypnerotomachie_ of +Poliphilus, Paris, 1554, and also the Aldine edition of 1499; the very +rare 1572 issue of Camoens's _Lusiads_; Holbein's _Dance of Death_, the +Lyons issues of 1538 and 1547; first editions of Bewick's _Birds_ and +_Quadrupeds_; Le Sueur's _Life of St. Bruno_, with the autograph of Sir +Joshua Reynolds, and a rare quarto (1516) of Boccaccio's _Decameron_. + +Notes: + +[47] It was, no doubt, identical with the "Original Articles of +Agreement" (Add. MSS. 18,861) between Milton and Samuel Symmons, +printer, dated 27th April, 1667, presented by Rogers in 1852 to the +British Museum. Besides the above-mentioned £5 down, there were to be +three further payments of £5 each on the sale of three editions, each of +1300 copies. The second edition appeared in 1674, the year of the +author's death. + +[48] He was acquitted. His notes, in pencil, and relating chiefly to his +_Diversions of Parley_, were actually written in the Tower. Rogers, who +was present at the trial in November, mentioned, according to Dyce, a +curious incident bearing upon a now obsolete custom referred to by +Goldsmith and others. As usual, the prisoner's dock, in view of possible +jail-fever, was strewn with sweet-smelling herbs-fennel, rosemary and the +like. Tooke indignantly swept them away. Another of several characteristic +anecdotes told by Rogers of Tooke is as follows:--Being asked once at +college what his father was, he replied, "A Turkey Merchant." Tooke _père_ +was a poulterer in Clare Market. + + +But the mere recapitulation of titles readily grows tedious, even to the +elect; and I turn to some of the volumes with which, from references in +the _Table-Talk_ and _Recollections_, their owner might seem to be more +intimately connected. Foremost among these--one would think--should come +his own productions. Most of these, no doubt, are included under the +auctioneers' heading of "Works and Illustrations." In the "Library" +proper, however, there are few traces of them. There is a quarto copy of +the unfortunate _Columbus_, with Stothard's sketches; and there is the +choice little _Pleasures of Memory_ of 1810, with Luke Clennell's +admirable cuts in _facsimile_ from the same artist's pen-and-ink,--a +volume which, come what may, will always hold its own in the annals of +book-illustration. That there were more than one of these latter may be +an accident. Rogers, nevertheless, like many book-lovers, must have +indulged in duplicates. According to Hayward, once at breakfast, when +some one quoted Gray's irresponsible outburst concerning the novels of +Marivaux and Crébillon _le fils_, Rogers asked his guests, three in +number, whether they were familiar with Marivaux's _Vie de Marianne_, a +book which he himself confesses to have read through six times, and +which French critics still hold, on inconclusive evidence, to have been +the "only begetter" of Richardson's _Pamela_ and the sentimental novel. +None of the trio knew anything about it. "Then I will lend you each a +copy," rejoined Rogers; and the volumes were immediately produced, +doubtless by that faithful and indefatigable factotum, Edmund Paine, of +whom his master was wont to affirm that he would not only find any book +_in_ the house, but _out_ of it as well. What is more (unless it be +assumed that the poet's stock was larger still), one, at least, of the +three copies must have been returned, since there is a copy in the +catalogue. As might be expected in the admirer of Marivaux's heroine, +the list is also rich in Jean-Jacques, whose "_goût vif pour les +déjeuners_," this Amphitryon often extolled, quoting with approval +Rousseau's opinion that "_C'est le temps de la journée où nous sommes le +plus tranquilles, où nous causons le plus à noire aise._" Another of his +favourite authors was Manzoni, whose _Promessi Sposi_ he was inclined to +think he would rather have written than all Scott's novels; and he never +tired of reading Louis Racine's _Mémoires_ of his father, 1747,--that +"_filon de l'or pur du dix-septième siecle_"--as Villemain calls +it--"_qui se prolonge dans l'âge suivant._" Some of Rogers's likings +sound strange enough nowadays. With Campbell, he delighted in Cowper's +_Homer_, which he assiduously studied, and infinitely preferred to that +of Pope. Into Chapman's it must be assumed that he had not +looked--certainly he has left no sonnet on the subject. Milton was +perhaps his best-loved bard. "When I was travelling in Italy (he says), +I made two authors my constant study for versification,--Milton _and +Crowe_" (The italics are ours.) It is an odd collocation; but not +unintelligible. William Crowe, the now forgotten Public Orator of +Oxford, and author of _Lewesdon Hill_, was an intimate friend; a writer +on versification; and, last but not least, a very respectable echo of +the Miltonic note, as the following, from a passage dealing with the +loss in 1786 of the _Halsewell_ East Indiaman off the coast of Dorset, +sufficiently testifies:-- + + The richliest-laden ship + Of spicy Ternate, or that annual sent + To the Philippines o'er the southern main + From Acapulco, carrying massy gold, + Were poor to this;--freighted with hopeful Youth + And Beauty, and high Courage undismay'd + By mortal terrors, and paternal Love, etc., etc. + +It is not improbable that Rogers caught the mould of his blank verse +from the copy rather than from the model. In the matter of style--as +Flaubert has said--the second-bests are often the better teachers. More +is to be learned from La Fontaine and Gautier than from Molière and +Victor Hugo. + +Many art-books, many books addressed specially to the connoisseur, as +well as most of those invaluable volumes no gentleman's library should +be without, found their places on Rogers's hospitable shelves. Of such, +it is needless to speak; nor, in this place, is it necessary to deal +with his finished and amiable, but not very vigorous or vital poetry. A +parting word may, however, be devoted to the poet himself. Although, +during his lifetime, and particularly towards its close, his weak voice +and singularly blanched appearance exposed him perpetually to a kind of +brutal personality now happily tabooed, it cannot be pretended that, +either in age or youth, he was an attractive-looking man. In these +cases, as in that of Goldsmith, a measure of burlesque sometimes +provides a surer criterion than academic portraiture. The bust of the +sculptor-caricaturist, Danton, is of course what even Hogarth would have +classed as _outré_[49]; but there is reason for believing that Maclise's +sketch in _Fraser_ of the obtrusively bald, cadaverous and wizened +figure in its arm-chair, which gave such a shudder of premonition to +Goethe, and which Maginn, reflecting the popular voice, declared to be a +mortal likeness--"painted to the very death"--was more like the original +than his pictures by Lawrence and Hoppner. One can comprehend, too, that +the person whom nature had so ungenerously endowed, might be perfectly +capable of retorting to rudeness, or the still-smarting recollection of +rudeness, with those weapons of mordant wit and acrid epigram which are +not unfrequently the protective compensation of physical shortcomings. +But this conceded, there are numberless anecdotes which testify to +Rogers's cultivated taste and real good breeding, to his genuine +benevolence, to his almost sentimental craving for appreciation and +affection. In a paper on his books, it is permissible to end with +a bookish anecdote. One of his favourite memories, much repeated in his +latter days, was that of Cowley's laconic Will,--"I give my body to the +earth, and my soul to my Maker." Lady Eastlake shall tell the +rest:--"This ... proved on one occasion too much for one of the party, +and in an incautious moment a flippant young lady exclaimed, 'But, Mr. +Rogers, what of Cowley's _property_?' An ominous silence ensued, broken +only by a _sotto voce_ from the late Mrs. Procter: 'Well, my dear, you +have put your foot in it; no more invitations for you in a hurry,' But +she did the kind old man, then above ninety, wrong. The culprit +continued to receive the same invitations and the same welcome."[50] + +Note: + +[49] Rogers's own copy of this, which (it may be added), he held +in horror, now belongs to Mr. Edmund Gosse. Lord Londonderry has a +number of Danton's busts. + +[50] _Quarterly Review_, vol. 167, p. 512. + + + + +PEPYS' "DIARY" + +To One who asked why he wrote it. + + +You ask me what was his intent? + In truth, I'm not a German; +'Tis plain though that he neither meant + A Lecture nor a Sermon. + +But there it is,--the thing's a Fact. + I find no other reason +But that some scribbling itch attacked + Him in and out of season, + +To write what no one else should read, + With this for second meaning, +To "cleanse his bosom" (and indeed + It sometimes wanted cleaning); + +To speak, as 'twere, his private mind, + Unhindered by repression, +To make his motley life a kind, + Of Midas' ears confession; + +And thus outgrew this work _per se_,-- + This queer, kaleidoscopic, +Delightful, blabbing, vivid, free + Hotch-pot of daily topic. + +So artless in its vanity, + So fleeting, so eternal, +So packed with "poor Humanity"-- + We know as Pepys' his journal.[51] + +Note: + +[51] Written for the Pepys' Dinner at Magdalene College, Cambridge, +February 23rd, 1905. + + + + +A FRENCH CRITIC ON BATH + + +Among other pleasant premonitions of the present _entente cordiale_ +between France and England is the increased attention which, for some +time past, our friends of Outre Manche have been devoting to our +literature. That this is wholly of recent growth, is not, of course, to +be inferred. It must be nearly five-and-forty years since M. Hippolyte +Taine issued his logical and orderly _Histoire de la Littérature +Anglaise_; while other isolated efforts of insight and importance--such +as the _Laurence Sterne_ of M. Paul Stapfer, and the excellent _Le +Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au XVIII^e Siècle_ of the +late M. Alexandre Beljame of the Sorbonne--are already of distant date. +But during the last two decades the appearance of similar productions +has been more recurrent and more marked. From one eminent writer +alone--M. J.-J. Jusserand--we have received an entire series of studies +of exceptional charm, variety, and accomplishment. M. Felix Rabbe has +given us a sympathetic analysis of Shelley; M. Auguste +Angellier,--himself a poet of individuality and distinction,--what has +been rightly described as a "splendid work" on Burns;[52] while M. Émile +Legouis, in a minute examination of "The Prelude," has contrasted and +compared the orthodox Wordsworth of maturity with the juvenile +semi-atheist of Coleridge. Travelling farther afield, M. W. Thomas has +devoted an exhaustive volume to Young of the _Night Thoughts_; M. Léon +Morel, another to Thomson; and, incidentally, a flood of fresh light has +been thrown upon the birth and growth of the English Novel by the +admirable _Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les Origines du Cosmopolitisme +Littéraire_ of the late Joseph Texte--an investigation unquestionably of +the ripest scholarship, and the most extended research. And now once +more there are signs that French lucidity and French precision are about +to enter upon other conquests; and we have M. Barbeau's study of a +famous old English watering-place[53]--appropriately dedicated, as is +another of the books already mentioned, to M. Beljame.[54] + +Notes: + +[52] A volume of _Pages Choisies de Auguste Angellier, Prose et +Vers_, with an Introduction by M. Legouis, has recently (1908) been +issued by the Clarendon Press. It contains lengthy extracts from M. +Angellier's study of Burns. + +[53:]_Une Ville d'Eaux anglaise au XVIIIe Siècle, La Société Elegante +et Littéraire à Bath sous la Reine Anne et sous les Georges_. Par A. +Barbeau. Paris, Picard, 1904. + +[54] The list grows apace. To the above, among others, must now +be added M. René Huchon's brilliant little essay on Mrs. Montagu, and +his elaborate study of Crabbe, to say nothing of M. Jules Derocquigny's +Lamb, M. Jules Douady's Hazlitt, and M. Joseph Aynard's Coleridge. + + +At first sight, topography, even when combined with social sketches, may +seem less suited to a foreigner and an outsider than it would be to a +resident and a native. In the attitude of the latter to the land in +which he lives or has been born, there is always an inherent something +of the soil for which even trained powers of comparison, and a special +perceptive faculty, are but imperfect substitutes. On the other hand, +the visitor from over-sea is, in many respects, better placed for +observation than the inhabitant. He enjoys not a little--it has been +often said--of the position of posterity. He takes in more at a glance; +he leaves out less; he is disturbed by no apprehensions of explaining +what is obvious, or discovering what is known. As a consequence, he sets +down much which, from long familiarity, an indigenous critic would be +disposed to discard, although it might not be, in itself, either +uninteresting or superfluous. And if, instead of dealing with the +present and actual, his concern is with history and the past, his +external standpoint becomes a strength rather than a weakness. He can +survey his subject with a detachment which is wholly favourable to his +project; and he can give it, with less difficulty than another, the +advantages of scientific treatment and an artistic setting. Finally, if +his theme have definite limits--as for instance an appreciable +beginning, middle, and end--he must be held to be exceptionally +fortunate. And this, either from happy guessing, or sheer good luck, is +M. Barbeau's case. All these conditions are present in the annals of the +once popular pleasure-resort of which he has elected to tell the story. +It arose gradually; it grew through a century of unexampled prosperity; +it sank again to the level of a county-town. If it should ever arise +again,--and it is by no means a _ville morte_,--it will be in an +entirely different way. The particular Bath of the eighteenth +century--the Bath of Queen Anne and the Georges, of Nash and Fielding +and Sheridan, of Anstey and Mrs. Siddons, of Wesley and Lady Huntingdon, +of Quin and Gainsborough and Lawrence and a hundred others--is no more. +It is a case of _Fuit Ilium_. It has gone for ever; and can never be +revived in the old circumstances. To borrow an apposite expression from +M. Texte, it is an organism whose evolution has accomplished its course. + +M. Barbeau's task, then, is very definitely mapped-out and +circumscribed. But he is far too good a craftsman to do no more than +give a mere panorama of that daily Bath programme which King Nash and +his dynasty ordained and established. He goes back to the origins; to +the legend of King Lear's leper-father; to the _Diary_ of the +too-much-neglected Celia Fiennes; to Pepys[55] and Grammont's Memoirs; to +the days when hapless Catherine of Braganza, with the baleful "_belle_ +Stewart" in her train, made fruitless pilgrimage to Bladud's spring as a +remedy against sterility. He sketches, with due acknowledgments to +Goldsmith's unique little book, the biography of that archquack, +_poseur_, and very clever organiser, Mr. Richard Nash, the first real +Master of the Ceremonies; and he gives a full account of his followers +and successors. He also minutely relates the story of Sheridan's +marriage to his beautiful "St. Cecilia," Elizabeth Ann Linley. A +separate and very interesting chapter is allotted to Lady Huntingdon and +the Methodists, not without levies from the remarkable _Spiritual +Quixote_ of that Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, of whom an excellent +account was given not long since in Mr. W. H. Hutton's suggestive +_Burford Papers_. Other chapters are occupied with Bath and its _belles +lettres_; with "Squire Allworthy" of Prior Park and his literary guests, +Pope, Warburton, Fielding and his sister, etc.; with the historic +Frascati vase of Lady Miller at Batheaston, which stirred the ridicule +of Horace Walpole, and is still, it is said, to be seen in a local park. +The dosing pages treat of Bath--musical, artistic, scientific--of its +gradual transformation as a health resort--of its eventual and +foredoomed decline and fall as the one fashionable watering-place, +supreme and single, for Great Britain and Ireland. + +Note: + +[55] Oddly enough--if M. Barbeau's index is to be trusted, and +it is an unusually good one,--he makes no reference to Evelyn's visit to +Bath. But Evelyn went there in June, 1654, bathed in the Cross Bath, +criticised the "_facciata_" of the Abbey Church, complained of the +"narrow, uneven and unpleasant streets," and inter-visited with the +company frequenting the place for health. "Among the rest of the idle +diversions of the town," he says, "one musician was famous for acting a +changeling [idiot or half-wit], which indeed he personated strangely." +(_Diary_, Globe edn., 1908, p. 174.) + + +But it is needless to prolong analysis. One's only wonder--as usual +after the event--is that what has been done so well had never been +thought of before. For while M. Barbeau is to be congratulated upon the +happy task he has undertaken, we may also congratulate ourselves that he +has performed it so effectively. His material is admirably arranged. He +has supported it by copious notes; and he has backed it up by an +impressive bibliography of authorities ancient and modern. This is +something; but it is not all[56]. He has done much more than this. He has +contrived that, in his picturesque and learned pages, the old "Queen of +the West" shall live again, with its circling terraces, its grey stone +houses and ill-paved streets, its crush of chairs and chariots, its +throng of smirking, self-satisfied prom-enaders. + +Note: + +[56] To the English version (Heinemann, 1904) an eighteenth-century map +of Bath, and a number of interesting views and portraits have been added. + + +One seems to see the clumsy stage-coaches depositing their touzled and +tumbled inmates, in their rough rocklows and quaint travelling headgear, +at the "Bear" or the "White Hart," after a jolting two or three days' +journey from Oxford or London, not without the usual experiences, real +and imaginary, of suspicious-looking horsemen at Hounslow, or masked +"gentlemen of the pad" on Claverton Down. One hears the peal of +five-and-twenty bells which greets the arrival of visitors of +importance; and notes the obsequious and venal town-waits who follow +them to their lodgings in Gay Street or Milsom Street or the +Parades,--where they will, no doubt, be promptly attended by the Master +of the Ceremonies, "as fine as fivepence," and a very pretty, +sweet-smelling gentleman, to be sure, whether his name be Wade or +Derrick. Next day will probably discover them in chip hats and flannel, +duly equipped with wooden bowls and bouquets, at the King's Bath, where, +through a steaming atmosphere, you may survey their artless manoeuvres +(as does Lydia Melford in _Humphry Clinker_) from the windows of the +Pump Room, to which rallying-place they will presently repair to drink +the waters, in a medley of notables and notorieties, members of +Parliament, chaplains and led-captains, Noblemen with ribbons and stars, +dove-coloured Quakers, Duchesses, quacks, fortune-hunters, lackeys, +lank-haired Methodists, Bishops, and boarding-school misses. Ferdinand +Count Fathom will be there, as well as my Lord Ogleby; Lady Bellaston +(and Mr. Thomas Jones); Geoffry Wildgoose and Tugwell the cobbler; +Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble; the caustic Mrs. Selwyn and the blushing +Miss Anville. Be certain, too, that, sooner or later, you will encounter +Mrs, Candour and Lady Sneerwell, Sir Benjamin Backbite and his uncle, +Mr. Crabtree, for this is their main haunt and region--in fact, they +were born here. You may follow this worshipful and piebald procession to +the Public Breakfasts in the Spring Gardens, to the Toy-shops behind the +Church, to the Coffee-houses in Westgate Street, to the Reading Rooms on +the Walks, where, in Mr. James Leake's parlour at the back--if you are +lucky--you may behold the celebrated Mr. Ralph Allen of Prior Park, +talking either to Mr. Henry Fielding or to Mr. Leake's brother-in-law, +Mr. Samuel Richardson, but never--if we are correctly informed--to both +of them together. Or you may run against Mr. Christopher Anstey of the +over-praised _Guide_, walking arm-in-arm with another Bathonian, Mr. +Melmoth, whose version of Pliny was once held to surpass its original. +At the Abbey--where there are daily morning services--you shall listen +to the silver periods of Bishop Kurd, whom his admirers call fondly "the +Beauty of Holiness"; at St. James's you can attend the full-blown +lectures, "more unctuous than ever he preached," of Bishop Beilby +Porteus; or you may succeed in procuring a card for a select hearing, at +Edgar Buildings, of Lady Huntingdon's eloquent chaplain, Mr. Whitefield. +With the gathering shades of even, you may pass, if so minded, to +Palmer's Theatre in Orchard Street, and follow Mrs. Siddons acting +Belvidera in Otway's _Venice Preserv'd_ to the Pierre of that forgotten +Mr. Lee whom Fanny Burney put next to Garrick; or you may join the +enraptured audience whom Mrs. Jordan is delighting with her favourite +part of Priscilla Tomboy in _The Romp_. You may assist at the concerts +of Signer Venanzio Rauzzini and Monsieur La Motte; you may take part in +a long minuet or country dance at the Upper or Lower Assembly Rooms, +which Bunbury will caricature; you may even lose a few pieces at the +green tables; and, should you return home late enough, may watch a +couple of stout chairmen at the door of the "Three Tuns" in Stall +Street, hoisting that seasoned toper, Mr. James Quin, into a sedan after +his evening's quantum of claret. What you do to-day, you will do +to-morrow, if the bad air of the Pump Room has not given you a headache, +or the waters a touch of vertigo; and you will continue to do it for a +month or six weeks, when the lumbering vehicle with the leathern straps +and crane-necked springs will carry you back again over the deplorable +roads ("so _sidelum_ and _jumblum_," one traveller calls them) to your +town-house, or your country-box, or your city-shop or chambers, as the +case may be. Here, in due course, you will begin to meditate upon your +next excursion to THE BATH, provided always that you have not dipped +your estate at "E.O.", or been ruined by milliners' bills;--that your +son has not gone northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter +been married at Charicombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish +peer. For all these things--however painful the admission--were, +according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means infrequent +accompaniment or sequel of an unguarded sojourn at the old jigging, +card-playing, scandal-loving, pleasure-seeking city in the loop of "the +soft-flowing Avon." + +It is an inordinate paragraph, outraging all known rules of composition! +But then--How seductive a subject is eighteenth-century Bath!--and how +rich in memories is M. Barbeau's book! + + + + +A WELCOME FROM THE "JOHNSON CLUB" + +To William John Courthope, _March 12, 1903_ + + +When Pope came back from Trojan wars once more, +He found a Bard, to meet him on the shore, +And hail his advent with a strain as clear +As e'er was sung by BYRON or by FRERE.[57] + +You, SIR, have travelled from no distant clime, +Yet would JOHN GAY could welcome you in rhyme; +And by some fable not too coldly penned, +Teach how with judgment one may praise a Friend. + +There is no need that I should tell in words +Your prowess from _The Paradise of Birds_;[58] +No need to show how surely you have traced +The Life in Poetry, the Law in Taste;[59] +Or mark with what unwearied strength you wear +The weight that WARTON found too great to bear.[60] +There Is no need for this or that. My plan +Is less to laud the Matter than the Man. + +This is my brief. We recognise in you +The mind judicial, the untroubled view; +The critic who, without pedantic pose, +Takes his firm foothold on the thing he knows; +Who, free alike from passion or pretence, +Holds the good rule of calm and common sense; +And be the subject or perplexed or plain,-- +Clear or confusing,--is throughout urbane, +Patient, persuasive, logical, precise, +And only hard to vanity and vice. + +More I could add, but brevity is best;-- +These are our claims to honour you as Guest. + +Notes: + +[57] _Alexander Pope: his Safe Return from Troy. A Congratulatory Poem +on his Completing his Translation of Homer's Iliad._ (In _ottava rima_.) +By Mr. Gay, 1720(?). Frere's burlesque, _Monks and Giants_--it will be +remembered--set the tune to Byron's _Beppo_. + +[58] _The Paradise of Birds_, 1870. + +[59] _Life in Poetry, Law in Taste_, two series of Lectures +delivered in Oxford, 1895-1900. 1901. + +[60] _A History of English Poetry_. 1895 (in progress). + + + + +THACKERY'S "ESMOND" + + +At this date, Thackeray's _Esmond_ has passed from the domain of +criticism into that securer region where the classics, if they do not +actually "slumber out their immortality," are at least preserved from +profane intrusion. This "noble story"[61]--as it was called by one of its +earliest admirers--is no longer, in any sense, a book "under review." +The painful student of the past may still, indeed, with tape and +compass, question its details and proportions; or the quick-fingered +professor of paradox, jauntily turning it upside-down, rejoice in the +results of his perverse dexterity; but certain things are now +established in regard to it, which cannot be gainsaid, even by those who +assume the superfluous office of anatomising the accepted. In the first +place, if _Esmond_ be not the author's greatest work (and there are +those who, like the late Anthony Trollope, would willingly give it that +rank), it is unquestionably his greatest work in its particular kind, +for its sequel, _The Virginians_, however admirable in detached +passages, is desultory and invertebrate, while _Denis Duval_, of which +the promise was "great, remains unfinished. With _Vanity Fair_, the +author's masterpiece in another manner, _Esmond_ cannot properly be +compared, because an imitation of the past can never compete in +verisimilitude or on any satisfactory terms with a contemporary picture. +Nevertheless, in its successful reproduction of the tone of a bygone +epoch, lies _Esmond's_ second and incontestable claim to length of days. +Athough fifty years and more have passed since it was published, it is +still unrivalled as the typical example of that class of historical +fiction, which, dealing indiscriminately with characters real and +feigned, develops them both with equal familiarity, treating them each +from within, and investing them impartially with a common atmosphere of +illusion. No modern novel has done this in the same way, nor with the +same good fortune, as Esmond; and there is nothing more to be said on +this score. Even if--as always--later researches should have revised our +conception of certain of the real personages, the value of the book as +an imaginative _tour de force_ is unimpaired. Little remains therefore +for the gleaner of to-day save bibliographical jottings, and neglected +notes on its first appearance. + +Note: + +[61] "Never could I have believed that Thackeray, great as his abilities +are, could have written so noble a story as _Esmond_."--WALTER SAVAGE +LANDOR, August 1856. + + +In Thackeray's work, the place of _The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., a +Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Q. Anne. Written by Himself_--lies +midway between his four other principal books, _Vanity Fair, Pendennis, +The Newcomes_, and _The Virginians_; and its position serves, in a +measure, to explain its origin. In 1848, after much tentative and +miscellaneous production, of which the value had been but imperfectly +appreciated, the author found his fame with the yellow numbers of +_Vanity Fair_. Two years later, adopting the same serial form, came +_Pendennis_. _Vanity Fair_ had been the condensation of a life's +experience; and excellent as _Pendennis_ would have seemed from any +inferior hand, its readers could not disguise from themselves that, +though showing no falling off in other respects, it drew to some extent +upon the old material. No one was readier than Thackeray to listen to a +whisper of this kind, or more willing to believe that--as he afterwards +told his friend Elwin concerning _The Newcomes_--"he had exhausted all +the types of character with which he was familiar." Accordingly he +began, for the time, to turn his thoughts in fresh directions; and in +the year that followed the publication of _Pendennis_, prepared and +delivered in England and Scotland a series of _Lectures upon the English +Humourists of the Eighteenth Century_. With the success of these came +the prompting for a new work of fiction,--not to be contemporary, and +not to be issued in parts. His studies for the _Humourists_ had +saturated him with the spirit of a time to which--witness his novelette +of _Barry Lyndon_--he had always been attracted; and when Mr. George +Smith called on him with a proposal that he should write a new story for +£1000, he was already well in hand with _Esmond_,--an effort in which, +if it were not possible to invent new puppets, it was at least possible +to provide fresh costumes and a change of background. Begun in 1851, +_Esmond_ progressed rapidly, and by the end of May 1852 it was +completed. Owing to the limited stock of old-cut type in which it was +set up, its three volumes passed but slowly through the press; and it +was eventually issued at the end of the following October, upon the eve +of the author's departure to lecture in America. In fact, he was waiting +on the pier for the tender which was to convey him to the steamer, when +he received his bound copies from the publisher. + +Mr. Eyre Crowe, A.R.A., who accompanied Thackeray to the United States, +and had for some time previously been acting as his "factotum and +amanuensis," has recorded several interesting details with regard to the +writing of _Esmond_, To most readers it will be matter of surprise, and +it is certainly a noteworthy testimony to the author's powers, that this +attempt to revive the language and atmosphere of a vanished era was in +great part dictated. It has even been said that, like _Pendennis_, it +was _all_ dictated; but this it seems is a mistake, for, as we shall see +presently, part of the manuscript was prepared by the author himself. As +he warmed to his work, however, he often reverted to the method of oral +composition which had always been most congenial to him, and which +explains the easy colloquialism of his style. Much of the "copy" was +taken down by Mr. Crowe in a first-floor bedroom of No. 16 Young Street, +Kensington, the still-existent house where Vanity Fair had been written; +at the Bedford Hotel in Covent Garden; at the round table in the +Athenasum library, and elsewhere. "I write better anywhere than at +home,"--Thackeray told Elwin,--"and I write less at home than anywhere." +Sometimes author and scribe would betake themselves to the British +Museum, to look up points in connection with Marlborough's battles, or +to rummage Jacob Tonson's Gazettes for the official accounts of +Wynendael and Oudenarde. The British Museum, indeed, was another of +_Esmond's_ birthplaces. By favour of Sir Antonio Panizzi, Thackeray and +his assistant, surrounded by their authorities, were accommodated in one +of the secluded galleries. "I sat down,"--says Mr. Crowe--"and wrote to +dictation the scathing sentences about the great Marlborough, the +denouncing of Cadogan, etc., etc. As a curious instance of literary +contagion, it may be here stated that I got quite bitten, with the +expressed anger at their misdeeds against General Webb, Thackeray's +kinsman and ancestor; and that I then looked upon Secretary Cardonnel's +conduct with perfect loathing. I was quite delighted to find his +meannesses justly pilloried in _Esmond's_ pages." What rendered the +situation more piquant,--Mr. Crowe adds,--all this took place on the +site of old Montague House, where, as Steele's "Prue" says to St. John +in the novel," you wretches go and fight duels."[62] + +Note: + +[62] _With Thackeray in America_, 1893, p. 4. + + +Those who are willing to make a pilgrimage to Cambridge, may, if they +please, inspect the very passages which aroused the enthusiam of +Thackeray's secretary. In a special case in the Library of Trinity +College, not far from those which enclose the manuscripts of Tennyson +and Milton, is the original and only manuscript of _Esmond_, being in +fact the identical "copy" which was despatched to the press of Messrs. +Bradbury and Evans at Whitefriars. It makes two large quarto volumes, +and was presented to the College (Esmond's College!) in 1888 by the +author's son-in-law, the late Sir Leslie Stephen. It still bears in +pencil the names of the different compositors who set up the type. Much +of it is in Thackeray's own small, slightly-slanted, but oftener upright +hand, and many pages have hardly any corrections.[63] His custom was to +write on half-sheets of a rather large notepaper, and some idea may be +gathered of the neat, minute, and regular script, when it is added that +the lines usually contain twelve to fifteen words, and that there are +frequently as many as thirty-three of these lines to a page. Some of the +rest of the "copy" is in the handwriting of the author's daughter, now +Lady Ritchie; but a considerable portion was penned by Mr. Eyre Crowe. +The oft-quoted passage in book ii. chap. vi. about "bringing your +sheaves with you," was written by Thackeray himself almost as it stands; +so was the sham _Spectator_, hereafter mentioned, and most of the +chapter headed "General Webb wins the Battle of Wynendael." But the +splendid closing scene,--"August 1st, 1714,"--is almost wholly in the +hand of Mr. Crowe. It is certainly a remarkable fact that work at this +level should have been thus improvised, and that nothing, as we are +credibly informed, should have been before committed to paper.[64] + +When _Esmond_ first made its appearance in October 1852, it was not +without distinguished and even formidable competitors. _Bleak House_ had +reached its eighth number; and Bulwer was running _My Novel in +Blackwood_. In _Fraser_, Kingsley was bringing out _Hypatia_; and Whyte +Melville was preluding with _Digby Grand_. Charlotte Brontë must have +been getting ready _Villette_ for the press; and Tennyson--undeterred by +the fact that his hero had already been "dirged" by the indefatigable +Tupper--was busy with his _Ode on the Death of the Duke of +Wellington_.[65] The critics of the time were possibly embarrassed with +this wealth of talent, for they were not, at the outset, immoderately +enthusiastic over the new arrival. The _Athenaeum_ was by no means +laudatory. _Esmond_ "harped upon the same string"; "wanted vital heat"; +"touched no fresh fount of thought"; "introduced no novel forms of +life"; and so forth. But the _Spectator_, in a charming greeting from +George Brimley (since included in his _Essays_), placed the book, as a +work of art, even above _Vanity Fair_ and _Pendennis_; the "serious and +orthodox" _Examiner_, then under John Forster, was politely judicial; +the _Daily News_ friendly; and the _Morning Advertiser_ enraptured. The +book, this last declared, was the "beau-ideal of historical romance." On +December 4 a second edition was announced. Then, on the 22nd, came the +_Times_. Whether the _Times_ remembered and resented a certain +delightfully contemptuous "Essay on Thunder and Small Beer," with which +Thackeray retorted to its notice of _The Kickkburys on the Rhine_ (a +thing hard to believe!) or whether it did not,--its report of _Esmond_ +was distinctly hostile. In three columns, it commended little but the +character of Marlborough, and the writer's "incomparably easy and +unforced style." Thackeray thought that it had "absolutely stopped" the +sale. But this seems inconsistent with the fact that the publisher sent +him a supplementary cheque for £250 on account of _Esmond's_ success. + +Notes: + +[63] One is reminded of the accounts of Scott's "copy." "Page +after page the writing runs on exactly as you read it in print"--says +Mr. Mowbray Morris. "I was looking not long ago at the manuscript of +_Kenilworth_ in the British Museum, and examined the end with particular +care, thinking that the wonderful scene of Amy Robsart's death must +surely have cost him some labour. They were the cleanest pages in the +volume: I do not think there was a sentence altered or added in the +whole chapter" (Lecture at Eton, _Macmillan's Magazine_ (1889), lx. +pp. 158-9). + +[64] "The sentences"--Mr. Crowe told a member of the Athenaeum, +when speaking of his task--"came out glibly as he [Thackeray] paced the +room." This is the more singular when contrasted with the slow +elaboration of the Balzac and Flaubert school. No doubt Thackeray must +often have arranged in his mind precisely much that he meant to say. +Such seems indeed to have been his habit. The late Mr. Lockcer-Lampson +informed the writer of this paper that once, when he met the author of +Esmond in the Green Park, Thackeray gently begged to be allowed to walk +alone, as he had some verses In his head which he was finishing. They +were those which afterwards appeared in the _Cornhill_ for January 1867, +under the title of _Mrs. Katherine's Lantern_. + +[65] The Duke died 14th Sept. 1852. + + +Another reason which may have tended to slacken--not to stop--the sale, +is also suggested by the author himself. This was the growing popularity +of _My Novel_ and _Villette_. And Miss Brontë's book calls to mind the +fact that she was among the earliest readers of _Esmond_, the first two +volumes of which were sent to her in manuscript by George Smith, She +read it, she tells him, with "as much ire and sorrow as gratitude and +admiration," marvelling at its mastery of reconstruction,--hating its +satire,--its injustice to women. How could Lady Castlewood peep through +a keyhole, listen at a door, and be jealous of a boy and a milkmaid! +There was too much political and religious intrigue--she thought. +Nevertheless she said (this was in February 1852, speaking of vol. i.) +the author might "yet make it the best he had ever written." In March +she had seen the second volume. The character of Marlborough (here she +anticipated the _Times_) was a "masterly piece of writing." But there +was "too little story." The final volume, by her own request, she +received in print. It possessed, in her opinion, the "most sparkle, +impetus, and interest." "I hold," she wrote to Mr. Smith, "that a work +of fiction ought to be a work of creation: that the _real_ should be +sparingly introduced in pages dedicated to the _ideal_" In a later +letter she gives high praise to the complex conception of Beatrix, +traversing incidentally the absurd accusation of one of the papers that +she resembled. Blanche Amory [the _Athenaeum_ and _Examiner_, it may be +noted, regarded her as "another Becky"]. "To me," Miss Bronte exclaims, +"they are about as identical as a weasel and a royal tigress of Bengal; +both the latter are quadrupeds, both the former women." These frank +comments of a fervent but thoroughly honest admirer, are of genuine +interest. When the book was published, Thackeray himself sent her a copy +with his "grateful regards," and it must have been of this that she +wrote to Mr. Smith on November 3,--"Colonel Henry Esmond is just +arrived. He looks very antique and distinguished in his Queen Anne's +garb; the periwig, sword, lace, and ruffles are very well represented by +the old _Spectator_ type."[66] + +Note: + +[66] Mr. Clement Shorter's _Charlotte Brontë and her Circle_, +1896, p. 403; and Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_, 1900, pp. 561 +et seq. + + +One of the points on which Miss Brontë does not touch,--at all events +does not touch in those portions of her correspondence which have been +printed,--is the marriage with which _Esmond_ closes. Upon this event it +would have been highly instructive to have had her views, especially as +it appears to have greatly exercised her contemporaries, the first +reviewers. It was the gravamen of the _Times_ indictment; to the critic +of _Fraser_ it was highly objectionable; and the _Examiner_ regarded it +as "incredible." Why it was "incredible" that a man should marry a woman +seven years older than himself, to whom he had already proposed once in +vol. ii., and of whose youthful appearance we are continually reminded +("she looks the sister of her daughter" says the old Dowager at +Chelsea), is certainly not superficially obvious. Nor was it obvious to +Lady Castlewood's children, "Mother's in love with you,--yes, I think +mother's in love with you," says downright Frank Esmond; the only +impediment in his eyes being the bar sinister, as yet unremoved. And +Miss Beatrix herself, in vol. iii., is even more roundly explicit. "As +for you," she tells Esmond, "you want a woman to bring your slippers and +cap, and to sit at your feet, and cry 'O caro! O bravo!' whilst you read +your Shakespeares, and Miltons, and stuff" [which shows that she herself +had read Swift's _Grand Question Debated_]. "Mamma would have been the +wife for you, had you been a little older, though you look ten years +older than she does," "You do, you glum-faced, blue-bearded, little old +man!" adds this very imperious and free-spoken young lady. The situation +is, no doubt, at times extremely difficult, and naturally requires +consummate skill in the treatment. But if these things and others +signify anything to an intelligent reader, they signify that the author, +if he had not his end steadily in view, knew perfectly well that his +story was tending in one direction. There will probably always be some +diversity of opinion in the matter; but the majority of us have accepted +Thackeray's solution, and have dropped out of sight that hint of +undesirable rivalry, which so troubled the precisians of the early +Victorian age. To those who read _Esmond_ now, noting carefully the +almost imperceptible transformation of the motives on either side, as +developed by the evolution of the story, the union of the hero and +heroine at the end must appear not only credible but preordained. And +that the gradual progress towards this foregone conclusion is handled +with unfailing tact and skill, there can surely be no question.[67] + +Note: + +[67} Thackeray's own explanation was more characteristic than +convincing. "Why did you"--said once to him impetuous Mrs. John Brown of +Edinburgh--"Why did you make Esmond marry that old woman?" "My dear +lady," he replied, "it was not I who married them. They married +themselves." (Dr. _John Brmon_, by the late John Taylor Brown, 1903, +pp. 96-7.) + + +Of the historical portraits in the book, the interest has, perhaps, at +this date, a little paled. Not that they are one whit less vigorously +alive than when the author first put them in motion; but they have +suffered from the very attention which _Esmond_ and _The Humourists_ +have directed to the study of the originals. The picture of Marlborough +is still as effective as when it was first proclaimed to be good enough +for the brush of Saint-Simon. But Thackeray himself confessed to a +family prejudice against the hero of Blenheim, and later artists have +considerably readjusted the likeness. Nor in all probability would the +latest biographer of Bolingbroke endorse _that_ presentment. In the +purely literary figures, Thackeray naturally followed the _Lectures_, +and is consequently open to the same criticisms as have been offered on +those performances. The Swift of _The Humourists_, modelled on Macaulay, +was never accepted from the first; and it has not been accepted in the +novel, or by subsequent writers from Forster onwards.[68] Addison has +been less studied; and his likeness has consequently been less +questioned. Concerning Steele there has been rather more discussion. +That Thackeray's sketch is very vivid, very human, and in most +essentials, hard to disprove, must be granted. But it is obviously +conceived under the domination of the "poor Dick" of Addison, and dwells +far too persistently upon Steele's frailer and more fallible aspect. No +one would believe that the flushed personage in the full-bottomed +periwig, who hiccups Addison's _Campaign_ in the Haymarket garret, or +the fuddled victim of "Prue's" curtain lecture at Hampton, ranked, at +the date of the story, far higher than Addison as a writer, and that he +was, in spite of his faults, not only a kindly gentleman and scholar, +but a philanthropist, a staunch patriot, and a consistent politician. +Probably the author of _Esmond_ considered that, in a mixed character, +to be introduced incidentally, and exhibited naturally "in the quotidian +undress and relaxation of his mind" (as Lamb says), anything like +biographical big drum should be deprecated. This is, at least, the +impression left on us by an anecdote told by Elwin. He says that +Thackeray, talking to him once about _The Virginians_, which was then +appearing, announced that he meant, among other people, to bring in +Goldsmith, "representing him as he really was, a little, shabby, mean, +shuffling Irishman." These are given as Thackeray's actual words. If so, +they do not show the side of Goldsmith which is shown in the last +lecture of _The Humourists._[69] + +Notes: + +[68] Thackeray heartily disliked Swift, and said so. "As for +Swift, you haven't made me alter my opinion"--he replied to Hannay's +remonstrances. This feeling was intensified by the belief that Swift, as +a clergyman, was insincere. "Of course,"--he wrote in September, 1851, +in a letter now in the British Museum,--"any man is welcome to believe +as he likes for me _except_ a parson; and I can't help looking upon +Swift and Sterne as a couple of traitors and renegades ... with a +scornful pity for them in spite of all their genius and greatness." + +[69] _Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters_, 1902, i. 187. The +intention was never carried out. In _The King over the Water_, 1908, +Miss A. Shield and Mr. Andrew Lang have recently examined another +portrait in _Esmond_,--that of the Chevalier de St. George,--not without +injury to its historical veracity. In these matters, Mr. Lang--like Rob +Roy--is on his native heath; and it is only necessary to refer the +reader to this highly interesting study. + + +But although, with our rectified information, we may except against the +picture of Steele as a man, we can scarcely cavil at the reproduction of +his manner as a writer. Even when Thackeray was a boy at Charterhouse, +his imitative faculty had been exceptional; and he displayed it +triumphantly in his maturity by those _Novels by Eminent Hands_ in which +the authors chosen are at once caricatured and criticised. The thing is +more than the gift of parody; it amounts (as Mr. Frederic Harrison has +rightly said) to positive forgery. It is present in all his works, in +stray letters and detached passages. + +In its simplest form it is to be found in the stiff, circumstantial +report of the seconds in the duel at Boulogne in _Denis Duval_; and in +the missive in barbarous French of the Dowager Viscountess +Castlewood[70]--a letter which only requires the sprawling, childish +script to make it an exact facsimile of one of the epistolary efforts of +that "baby-faced" Caroline beauty who was accustomed to sign herself "L +duchesse de Portsmout." It is better still in the letter from Walpole to +General Conway in chap. xl. of _The Virginians_, which is perfect, even +to the indifferent pun of sleepy (and overrated) George Selwyn. But the +crown and top of these _pastiches_ is certainly the delightful paper, +which pretends to be No. 341 of the _Spectator_ for All Fools' Day, +1712, in which Colonel Esmond treats "Mistress Jocasta-Beatrix," to +what, in the parlance of the time, was decidedly a "bite."[71] Here +Thackeray has borrowed not only Steele's voice, but his very trick of +speech. It is, however, a fresh instance of the "tangled web we weave, +When first we practise to deceive," that although this +pseudo-_Spectator_ is stated to have been printed "exactly as those +famous journals were printed" for eighteenth-century breakfast-tables, +it could hardly, owing to one microscopic detail, have deceived the +contemporary elect. For Mr, Esmond, to his very apposite Latin epigraph, +unluckily appended an English translation,--a concession to the country +gentlemen from which both Addison and Steele deliberately abstained, +holding that their distinctive mottoes were (in Addison's own phrase) +"words to the wise," of no concern to unlearned persons.[72] + +Notes: + +[70] _Esmond_, Book ii, chap, ii. + +[71] _Ib_. Book iii, chap, iii. + +[72] _Spectator_, No. 221, November 13, 1711. + + +This very minute trifle emphasises the pitfalls of would-be perfect +imitation. But it also serves to bring us finally to the vocabulary of +_Esmond_. As to this, extravagant pretensions have sometimes been +advanced. It has been asserted, for instance, by a high journalistic +authority, that "no man, woman, or child in _Esmond_, ever says anything +that he or she might not have said in the reign of Queen Anne." This is +one of those extreme utterances in which enthusiasm, losing its head, +invites contradiction. Thackeray professedly "copied the language of +Queen Anne,"--he says so in his dedication to Lord Ashburton; but he +himself would certainly never have put forward so comprehensive a claim +as the above. There is no doubt a story that he challenged Mr. Lowell +(who was his fellow-passenger to America on the _Canada_) to point out +in _Esmond_ a word which had not been used in the early eighteenth +century; and that the author of _The Biglow Papers_ promptly discovered +such a word. But even if the anecdote be not well-invented, the +invitation must have been more jest than earnest. For none knew better +than Thackeray that these barren triumphs of wording belong to ingenuity +rather than genius, being exercises altogether in the taste of the +Persian poet who left out all the A's (as well as the poetry) in his +verses, or of that other French funambulist whose sonnet in honour of +Anne de Montaut was an acrostic, a mesostic, a St. Andrew's Cross, a +lozenge,--everything, in short, but a sonnet. What Thackeray endeavoured +after when "copying the language of Queen Anne," and succeeded in +attaining, was the spirit and tone of the time. It was not pedantic +philology at which he aimed, though he did not disdain occasional +picturesque archaisms, such as "yatches" for "yachts," or despise the +artful aid of terminal k's, long s's, and old-cut type. Consequently, as +was years ago pointed out by Fitzedward Hall (whose manifest prejudice +against Thackeray as a writer should not blind us in a matter of fact), +it is not difficult to detect many expressions in the memoirs of Queen +Anne's Colonel which could never have been employed until Her Majesty +had long been "quietly inurned." What is more,--if we mistake not,--the +author of _Esmond_ sometimes refrained from using an actual +eighteenth-century word, even in a quotation, when his instinct told him +it was not expedient to do so. In the original of that well-known +anecdote of Steele beside his father's coffin, In _Tatler_ No. 181, +reproduced in book i. chap. vi. of the novel, Steele says, "My mother +catched me in her arms." "Catched" is good enough eighteenth-century for +Johnson and Walpole. But Thackeray made it "caught," and "caught" it +remains to this day both in _Esmond_ and _The Humourists_. + + + + +A MILTONIC EXERCISE + +(TERCENTENARY, 1608-1908) + +"Stops of various Quills."--LYCIDAS. + + + What need of votive Verse + To strew thy _Laureat Herse_ +With that mix'd _Flora_ of th' _Aonian Hill_? + Or _Mincian_ vocall Reed, + That _Cam_ and _Isis_ breed, +When thine own Words are burning in us still? + + _Bard, Prophet, Archimage!_ + In this Cash-cradled Age, +We grate our scrannel Musick, and we dote: + Where is the Strain unknown, + Through Bronze or Silver blown, +That thrill'd the Welkin with thy woven Note? + + Yes,--"we are selfish Men": + Yet would we once again +Might see _Sabrina_ braid her amber Tire; + + Or watch the _Comus_ Crew + Sweep down the Glade; or view +Strange-streamer'd Craft from _Javan_ or _Gadire_! + + Or could we catch once more, + High up, the Clang and Roar +Of Angel Conflict,--Angel Overthrow; + Or, with a World begun, + Behold the young-ray'd Sun +Flame in the Groves where the _Four Rivers_ go! + + Ay me, I fondly dream! + Only the Storm-bird's Scream +Foretells of Tempest in the Days to come; + Nowhere is heard up-climb + The lofty lyric Rhyme, +And the "God-gifted Organ-voice" is dumb.[73] + +Note: + +[73] Written, by request, for the celebration at Christ's College, +Cambridge, July 10, 1908. + + + + +FRESH FACTS ABOUT FIELDING + + +The general reader, as a rule, is but moderately interested in minor +rectifications. Secure in a conventional preference of the spirit to the +letter, he professes to be indifferent whether the grandmother of an +exalted personage was a "Hugginson" or a "Blenkinsop"; and he is equally +careless as to the correct Christian names of his cousins and his aunts. +In the main, the general reader is wise in his generation. But with the +painful biographer, toiling in the immeasurable sand of thankless +research, often foot-sore and dry of throat, these trivialities assume +exaggerated proportions; and to those who remind him--as in a cynical +age he is sure to be reminded--of the infinitesimal value of his +hard-gotten grains of information, he can only reply mournfully, if +unconvincingly, that fact is fact--even in matters of mustard-seed. With +this prelude, I propose to set down one or two minute points concerning +Henry Fielding, not yet comprised in any existing records of his +career.[74] + +Note: + +[74] Since this was published in April 1907, they have been +embodied in an Appendix to my "Men of Letters" _Fielding_; and used, to +some extent, for a fresh edition of the _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_ +("World's Classics"). + + +The first relates to the exact period of his residence at Leyden +University. His earliest biographer, Arthur Murphy, writing in 1762, is +more explicit than usual on this topic. "He [Fielding]," says Murphy, +"went from Eton to Leyden, and there continued to show an eager thirst +for knowledge, and to study the civilians with a remarkable application +for about two years, when, remittances failing, he was obliged to return +to London, not then quite twenty years old" [_i.e._ before 22nd April, +1727]. In 1883, like my predecessors, I adopted this statement, for the +sufficient reason that I had nothing better to put in its place. And +Murphy should have been well-informed. He had known Fielding personally; +he was employed by Fielding's publisher; and he could, one would +imagine, have readily obtained accurate data from Fielding's surviving +sister, Sarah, who was only three years younger than her brother, of +whose short life (he died at forty-eight) she could scarcely have +forgotten the particulars. Murphy's story, moreover, exactly fitted in +with the fact, only definitely made known in June 1883, that Fielding, +as a youth of eighteen, had endeavoured, in November 1725, to abduct or +carry off his first love, Miss Sarah Andrew of Lyme Regis. Although the +lady was promptly married to a son of one of her fluttered guardians, +nothing seemed more reasonable than to assume that the disappointed +lover (one is sure he was never an heiress-hunter!) was despatched to +the Dutch University to keep him out of mischief.[75] But in once more +examining Mr. Keightley's posthumous papers, kindly placed at my +disposal by his nephew, Mr. Alfred C. Lyster, I found a reference to an +un-noted article in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for November, 1863 (from +internal evidence I believe it to have been written by James Hannay), +entitled "A Scotchman in Holland." Visiting Leyden, the writer was +permitted to inspect the University Album; and he found, under 1728, the +following:--"_Henricus Fielding, Anglus, Ann. 20. Stud. Lit._", coupled +with the further detail that he "was living at the 'Hotel of Antwerp.'" +Except in the item of "_Stud. Lit._", this did not seem to conflict +materially with Murphy's account, as Fielding was nominally twenty from +1727 to 1728, and small discrepancies must be allowed for. + +Note: + +[75] "Men of Letters" _Fielding_, 1907, Appendix I. + + +Twenty years later, a fresh version of the record came to light. At +their tercentenary festival in 1875, tne Leyden University printed a +list of their students from their foundation to that year. From this Mr. +Edward Peacock, F.S.A., compiled in 1883, for the Index Society, an +_Index to English-Speaking Students who have graduated at Leyden +University_; and at p. 35 appears _Fielding, Henricus, Anglus_, 16 +Mart. 1728, 915 (the last being the column number of the list). This +added a month-date, and made Fielding a graduate. Then, two years ago, +came yet a third rendering. Mr. A.E.H. Swaen, writing in _The Modern +Language Review_ for July 1906, printed the inscription in the Album as +follows; "Febr. 16. 1728: Rectore Johanne Wesselio, Henricus Fielding, +Anglus. 20, L." Mr. Swaen construed this to mean that, on the date named +(which, it may be observed, is not Mr. Peacock's date), Fielding, "aged +twenty, was _entered_ as _litterarum studiosus_ at Leyden." In this case +it would follow that his residence in Holland should have come after +February 16th, 1728; and Mr. Swaen went on to conjecture that, "as his +[Fielding's] first play, _Love in Several Masques_, was staged at Drury +Lane in February, 1728, and his next play, _The Temple Beau_, was +produced in January, 1730, it is not improbable that his residence in +Holland filled up the interval or part of it. Did the profits of the +play [he proceeded] perhaps cover part of his travelling expenses?" + +The new complications imported into the question by this fresh aspect of +it, will be at once apparent. Up to 1875 there had been but one Fielding +on the Leyden books; so that all these differing accounts were +variations from a single source. In this difficulty, I was fortunate +enough to enlist the sympathy of Mr. Frederic Harrison, who most kindly +undertook to make inquiries on my behalf at Leyden University itself. In +reply to certain definite queries drawn up by me, he obtained from the +distinguished scholar and Professor of History, Dr. Pieter Blok, the +following authoritative particulars. The exact words in the original +_Album Academicum_ are:--"16 Martii 1728 Henricus Fielding, Anglus, +annor. 20 Litt. Stud." He was then staying at the "Casteel van +Antwerpen"--as related by "A Scotchman in Holland." His name only occurs +again in the yearly _recensiones_ under February 22nd, 1729, as +"Henricus Fieldingh," when he was domiciled with one Jan Oson. He must +consequently have left Leyden before February 8th, 1730, February 8th +being the birthday of the University, after which all students have to +be annually registered. The entry in the Album (as Mr. Swaen affirmed) +is an _admission_ entry; there are no leaving entries. As regards +"studying the civilians," Fielding might, in those days, Dr. Blok +explains, have had private lessons from the professors; but he could not +have studied in the University without being on the books. To sum up: +After producing _Love in Several Masques_ at Drury Lane, probably on +February 12th, I728,[76] Fielding was admitted a "Litt. Stud." at Leyden +University on March 16th; was still there in February 1729; and left +before February 8th, 1730. Murphy is therefore at fault in almost every +particular. Fielding did _not_ go from Eton to Leyden; he did _not_ make +any recognised study of the civilians, "with remarkable application" or +otherwise; and he did _not_ return to London before he was twenty. But +it is by no means improbable that the _causa causans_ or main reason for +his coming home was the failure of remittances. + +Note: + +[76] _Genest_, iii. 209. + + +Another recently established fact is also more or less connected with +"Mur.--" as Johnson called him. In his "Essay" of 1762, he gave a +highly-coloured account of Fielding's first marriage, and of the +promptitude with which, assisted by yellow liveries and a pack of +hounds, he managed to make duck and drake of his wife's little fortune. +This account has now been "simply riddled in its details" (as Mr. +Saintsbury puts it) by successive biographers, the last destructive +critic being the late Sir Leslie Stephen, who plausibly suggested that +the "yellow liveries" (not the family liveries, be it noted!) were +simply a confused recollection of the fantastic pranks of that other and +earlier Beau Fielding (Steele's "Orlando the Fair"), who married the +Duchess of Cleveland in 1705, and was also a Justice of the Peace for +Westminster. One thing was wanting to the readjustment of the narrative, +and that was the precise date of Fielding's marriage to the beautiful +Miss Cradock of Salisbury, the original both of Sophia Western and +Amelia Booth. By good fortune this has now been ascertained. Lawrence +gave the date as 1735; and Keightley suggested the spring of that year. +This, as Swift would say, was near the mark, although confirmation has +been slow in coming. In June 1906, Mr. Thomas S. Bush, of Bath, +announced in _The Bath Chronicle_ that the desired information was to be +found (not in the Salisbury registers which had been fruitlessly +consulted, but) at the tiny church of St. Mary, Charlcombe, a secluded +parish about one and a half miles north of Bath. Here is the +record:--"November y'e 28, 1734. Henry Fielding of y'e Parish of St. +James in Bath, Esq., and Charlotte Cradock, of y'e same Parish, +spinster, were married by virtue of a licence from y'e Court of Wells." +All lovers of Fielding owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Bush, whose +researches, in addition, disclosed the fact that Sarah Fielding, the +novelist's third sister (as we shall see presently), was buried, not in +Bath Abbey, where Dr. John Hoadly raised a memorial to her, but "in y'e +entrance of the Chancel [of Charlcombe Church] close to y'e Rector's +seat," April 14th, 1768.[77] Mr. Bush's revelation, it may be added, was +made in connection with another record of the visits of the novelist to +the old Queen of the West, a tablet erected in June 1906 to Fielding and +his sister on the wall of Yew Cottage, now renovated as Widcombe Lodge, +Widcombe, Bath, where they once resided. + +Note: + +[77] Sarah Fielding's epitaph in Bath Abbey is often said to have been +written by Bishop Benjamin Hoadly. In this case, it must have been +anticipatory (like Dr. Primrose's on his Deborah), for the Bishop died +in 1761. + + +In the last case I have to mention, it is but fair to Murphy to admit +that he seems to have been better informed than those who have succeeded +him. Richardson writes of being "well acquainted" with four of +Fielding's sisters, and both Lawrence and Keightley refer to a Catherine +and an Ursula, of whom Keightley, after prolonged enquiries, could +obtain no tidings. With the help of Colonel W.F. Prideaux, and the kind +offices of Mr. Samuel Martin of the Hammersmith Free Library, this +matter has now been set at rest. In 1887 Sir Leslie Stephen had +suggested to me that Catherine and Ursula were most probably born at +Sharpham Park, before the Fieldings moved to East Stour. This must have +been the case, though Keightley had failed to establish it. At all +events, Catherine and Ursula must have existed, for they both died in +1750, The Hammersmith Registers at Fulham record the following +burials:-- + +1750 July 9th, Mrs. Catherine Feilding (_sic_) +1750 Nov. 12th, Mrs. Ursula Fielding +1750 [--1] Feb'y. 24th, Mrs. Beatrice Fielding +1753 May 10th, Louisa, d. of Henry Fielding, Esq. + +The first three, with Sarah, make up the "Four Worthy Sisters" of the +reprehensible author of that "truly coarse-titled _Tom Jones_" +concerning which Richardson wrote shudderingly in August 1749 to his +young friends, Astraea and Minerva Hill. The final entry relating to +Fielding's little daughter, Louisa, born December 3rd, 1752, makes it +probable that, in May, 1753, he was staying in the house at Hammersmith, +then occupied by his sole surviving sister, Sarah. In the following year +(October 8th) he himself died at Lisbon. There is no better short +appreciation of his work than Lowell's lapidary lines for the Shire Hall +at Taunton,--the epigraph to the bust by Miss Margaret Thomas: + + He looked on naked nature unashamed, + And saw the Sphinx, now bestial, now divine, + In change and re-change; he nor praised nor blamed, + But drew her as he saw with fearless line. + Did he good service? God must judge, not we! + Manly he was, and generous and sincere; + English in all, of genius blithely free: + Who loves a Man may see his image here. + + + + +THE HAPPY PRINTER + +"_Hoc est vivere._"--MARTIAL. + + +The Printer's is a happy lot: + Alone of all professions, +No fateful smudges ever blot + His earliest "impressions." + +The outgrowth of his youthful ken + No cold obstruction fetters; +He quickly learns the "types" of men, + And all the world of "letters." + +With "forms" he scorns to compromise; + For him no "rule" has terrors; +The "slips" he makes he can "revise"-- + They are but "printers' errors." + +From doubtful questions of the "Press" + He wisely holds aloof; +In all polemics, more or less, + His argument is "proof." + +Save in their "case," with High and Low, + Small need has he to grapple! +Without dissent he still can go + To his accustomed "Chapel,"[78] + +From ills that others scape or shirk, + He rarely fails to rally; +For him, his most "composing" work + Is labour of the "galley." + +Though ways be foul, and days are dim, + He makes no lamentation; +The primal "fount" of woe to him + Is--want of occupation: + +And when, at last, Time finds him grey + With over-close attention, +He solves the problem of the day, + And gets an Old Age pension. + +Note: + +[78] This, derived, it is said, from Caxton's connection with +Westminster Abbey, is the name given to the meetings held by printers to +consider trade affairs, appeals, etc, (Printers' Vocabulary). + + + + + +CROSS READINGS--AND CALEB WHITEFOORD + +Towards the close of the year 1766--not many months after the +publication of the Vicat of Wakefield--there appeared in Mr. Henry +Sampson Woodfall's _Public Advertiser_, and other newspapers, a letter +addressed "To the Printer," and signed "PAPYRIUS CURSOR." The name was a +real Roman name; but in its burlesque applicability to the theme of the +communication, it was as felicitous as Thackeray's "MANLIUS +PENNIALINUS," or that "APOLLONIUS CURIUS" from whom Hood fabled to have +borrowed the legend of "Lycus the Centaur." The writer of the letter +lamented--as others have done before and since--the barren fertility of +the news sheets of his day. There was, he contended, some diversion and +diversity in card-playing. But as for the papers, the unconnected +occurrences and miscellaneous advertisements, the abrupt transitions +from article to article, without the slightest connection between one +paragraph and another--so overburdened and confused the memory that when +one was questioned, it was impossible to give even a tolerable account +of what one had read. The mind became a jumble of "politics, religion, +picking of pockets, puffs, casualties, deaths, marriages, bankruptcies, +preferments, resignations, executions, lottery tickets, India bonds, +Scotch pebbles, Canada bills, French chicken gloves, auctioneers, and +quack doctors," of all of which, particularly as the pages contained +three columns, the bewildered reader could retain little or nothing. +(One may perhaps pause for a moment to wonder, seeing that Papyrius +could contrive to extract so much mental perplexity from Cowper's "folio +of four pages"--he speaks specifically of this form,--what he would have +done with _Lloyd's_, or a modern American Sunday paper!) Coming later to +the point of his epistle, he goes on to explain that he has hit upon a +method (as to which, be it added, he was not, as he thought, the +originator[79]) of making this heterogeneous mass afford, like cards, a +"_variety_ of entertainment." + +Note: + +[79] As a matter of fact, he had been anticipated by a paper, No. 49 of +"little Harrison's" spurious _Tatler_, vol. v., where the writer reads a +newspaper "in a direct Line" ... "without Regard to the Distinction of +Columns,"--which is precisely the proposal of Papyrius. + + +By reading the afore-mentioned three columns horizontally and _onwards_, +instead of vertically and _downwards_ "in the old trite vulgar way," it +was contended that much mirth might observingly be distilled from the +most unhopeful material, as "_blind Chance_" frequently brought about the +oddest conjunctions, and not seldom compelled _sub juga aenea_ persons +and things the most dissimilar and discordant. He then went on to give a +number of examples in point, of which we select a few. This was the +artless humour of it:-- + + "Yesterday Dr. Jones preached at St. James's, +and performed it with ease in less than 16 Minutes." + "Their R.H. the Dukes of York and Gloucester +were bound over to their good behaviour." + "At noon her R.H. the Princess Dowager was +married to Mr. Jenkins, an eminent Taylor." + "Friday a poor blind man fell into a saw-pit, +to which he was conducted by Sir Clement Cottrell."[80] + "A certain Commoner will be created a Peer. +N.B.--No greater reward will be offered." + "John Wilkes, Esq., set out for France, +being charged with returning from transportation." + "Last night a most terrible fire broke out, +and the evening concluded with the utmost Festivity." + "Yesterday the new Lord Mayor was sworn in, +and afterwards toss'd and gored several Persons." + "On Tuesday an address was presented; +it happily miss'd fire, and the villain made off, +when the honour of knighthood was conferred on him +to the great joy of that noble family." + "Escaped from the New Gaol, Terence M'Dermot. +If he will return, he will be kindly received." + "Colds caught at this season are +The Companion to the Playhouse." + "Ready to sail to the West Indies, +the Canterbury Flying Machine in one day." + "To be sold to the best Bidder, +My Seat in Parliament being vacated." + "I have long laboured under a complaint +For ready money only," + "Notice is hereby given, +and no Notice taken." + +Note: + +[80] Master of the Ceremonies.] + + +And so forth, fully justifying the writer's motto from Cicero, _De +Finibus_: "_Fortuitu Concursu hoc fieri, mirum est._" It may seem that +the mirthful element is not overpowering. But "gentle Dulness ever loves +a joke"; and in 1766 this one, in modern parlance, "caught on." "Cross +readings" had, moreover, one popular advantage: like the Limericks of +Edward Lear, they were easily imitated. What is not so intelligible is, +that they seem to have fascinated many people who were assuredly not +dull. Even Johnson condescended to commend the aptness of the pseudonym, +and to speak of the performance as "ingenious and diverting." Horace +Walpole, writing to Montagu in December 1766, professes to have laughed +over them till he cried. It was "the newest piece of humour," he +declared, "except the _Bath Guide_ [Anstey's], that he had seen of many +years"; and Goldsmith--Goldsmith, who has been charged with want of +sympathy for rival humourists--is reported by Northcote to have even +gone so far as to say, in a transport of enthusiasm, that "it would have +given him more pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the +works he had ever published of his own,"--which, of course, must be +classed with "Dr. Minor's" unconsidered speeches. + +"_Bien heureux_"--to use Voltaire's phrase--is he who can laugh much at +these things now. As Goldsmith himself would have agreed, the jests of +one age are not the jests of another. But it is a little curious that, +by one of those freaks of circumstance, or "fortuitous concourses," +there is to-day generally included among the very works of Goldsmith +above referred to something which, in the opinion of many, is +conjectured to have been really the production of the ingenious compiler +of the "Cross Readings." That compiler was one Caleb Whitefoord, a +well-educated Scotch wine-merchant and picture-buyer, whose portrait +figures in Wilkie's "Letter of Introduction." The friend of Benjamin +Franklin, who had been his next-door neighbour at Craven Street, he +became, in later years, something of a diplomatist, since in 1782-83 he +was employed by the Shelburne administration in the Paris negotiation +for the Treaty of Versailles. But at the date of the "Cross Readings" he +was mainly what Burke, speaking contemptuously of his status as a +plenipotentiary, styled a "_diseur de bons mots_"; and he was for this +reason included among those "most distinguished Wits of the Metropolis," +who, following Garrick's lead in 1774, diverted themselves at the St. +James's Coffee-house by composing the epitaphs on Goldsmith which gave +rise to the incomparable gallery entitled _Retaliation_. In the first +four editions of that posthumous poem there is no mention of Whitefoord, +who, either at, or soon after the first meeting above referred to, had +written an epitaph on Goldsmith, two-thirds of which are declared to be +"unfit for publication."[81] But when the fourth edition of _Retaliation_ +had been printed, an epitaph on Whitefoord was forwarded to the +publisher, George Kearsly, by "a friend of the late Doctor Goldsmith," +with an intimation that it was a transcript of an original in "the +Doctor's own handwriting." "It is a striking proof of Doctor Goldsmith's +good-nature," said the sender, glancing, we may suppose, at Whitefoord's +performance. "I saw this sheet of paper in the Doctor's room, five or +six days before he died; and, as I had got all the other Epitaphs, I +asked him if I might take it. "_In truth you may, my Boy_ (replied he), +_for it will be of no use to me where I am going_." + +Note: + +[81] Hewins's _Whitefoord Papers_, 1898, p. xxvii. ff., where the first +four lines of twelve are given. They run-- + + Noll Goldsmith lies here, as famous for writing + As his namesake old Noll was for praying and fighting, + In friends he was rich, tho' not loaded with Pelf; + He spoke well of them, and thought well of himself. + + +The lines--there are twenty-eight of them--speak of Whitefoord as, among +other things, a + + Rare compound of oddity, frolic and fun! + Who relish'd a joke, and rejoic'd in a pun;[82] + Whose temper was generous, open, sincere; + A stranger to flatt'ry, a stranger to fear; + Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will, + Whose daily _bons mots_ half a column would fill; + A Scotchman, from pride and from prejudice free, + A scholar, yet surely no pedant was he. + + What pity, alas! that so lib'ral a mind + Should so long be to news-paper-essays confin'd! + Who perhaps to the summit of science could soar, + Yet content "if the table he set on a roar"; + Whose talents to fill any station were fit, + Yet happy if _Woodfall_ confess'd him a wit. + +Note: + +[82] "Mr, W."--says a note to the fifth edition--"is so notorious a +punster, that Doctor Goldsmith used to say, it was impossible to keep +him company, without being infected with the _itch_ of _punning_." Yet +Johnson endured him, and apparently liked him, though he had the +additional disqualification of being a North Briton. + + +The "servile herd" of "tame imitators"--the "news-paper witlings" and +"pert scribbling folks"--were further requested to visit his tomb-- + + To deck it, bring with you festoons of the vine, + And copious libations bestow on his shrine; + Then strew all around it (you can do no less) + _Cross-readings, Ship-news_, and _Mistakes_ of the _Press_. + +It is not recorded that Kearsly ever saw this in Goldsmith's "own +handwriting"; the sender's name has never been made known; and--as above +observed--it has been more than suspected that Whitefoord concocted it +himself, or procured its concoction. As J.T. Smith points out in +_Nollekens and his Times_, 1828, i, 337-8, Whitefoord was scarcely +important enough to deserve a far longer epitaph than those bestowed on +Burke and Reynolds; and Goldsmith, it may be added--as we know In the +case of Beattie and Voltaire--was not in the habit of confusing small +men with great. Moreover, the lines would (as intimated by the person +who sent them to Kearsly) be an extraordinarily generous return for an +epitaph "unfit for publication," by which, it is stated, Goldsmith had +been greatly disturbed. Prior had his misgivings, particularly in +respect to the words attributed to Goldsmith on his death-bed; and +Forster allows that to him the story of the so-called "Postscript" has +"a somewhat doubtful look." To which we unhesitatingly say--ditto. + +Whitefoord, it seems, was in the habit of printing his "Cross Readings" +on small single sheets, and circulating them among his friends. +"Rainy-Day Smith" had a specimen of these. In one of Whitefoord's +letters he professes to claim that his _jeux d'esprit_ contained more +than met the eye. "I have always," he wrote, "endeavour'd to make such +changes [of Ministry] a matter of _Laughter_ [rather] than of serious +concern to the People, by turning them into horse Races, Ship News, &c, +and these Pieces have generally succeeded beyond my most sanguine +Expectations, altho' they were not season'd with private Scandal or +personal Abuse, of which our good neighbours of South Britain are realy +too fond." In Debrett's _New Foundling Hospital for Wit_, new edition, +1784, there are several of his productions, including a letter to +Woodfall "On the Errors of the Press," of which the following may serve +as a sample: "I have known you turn a matter of hearsay, into a matter +of heresy; Damon into a daemon; a delicious girl, into a delirious girl; +the comic muse, into a comic mouse; a Jewish Rabbi, into a Jewish +Rabbit; and when a correspondent, lamenting the corruption of the times, +exclaimed 'O Mores!' you made him cry, 'O Moses!'" And here is an +extract from another paper which explains the aforegoing reference to +"horse Races": "1763--Spring Meeting... Mr. Wilkes's horse, LIBERTY, +rode by himself, took the lead at starting; but being pushed hard by Mr. +Bishop's black gelding, PRIVILEGE, fell down at the Devil's Ditch, and +was no where." The "Ship News" is on the same pattern. "_August_ 25 +[1765] We hear that his Majesty's Ship _Newcastle_ will soon have a new +figure-head, the old one being almost worn out." + + + + +THE LAST PROOF + + +AN EPILOGUE TO ANY BOOK + +"_Hic Finis chartaeque viaeque._" + +"FINIS at last--the end, the End, the END! +No more of paragraphs to prune or mend; +No more blue pencil, with its ruthless line, +To blot the phrase 'particularly fine'; +No more of 'slips,' and 'galleys,' and 'revises,' +Of words 'transmogrified,' and 'wild surmises'; +No more of _n_'s that masquerade as _u_'s, +No nice perplexities of _p_'s and _q_'s; +No more mishaps of _ante_ and of _post_, +That most mislead when they should help the most; +No more of 'friend' as 'fiend,' and 'warm' as 'worm'; +No more negations where we would affirm; +No more of those mysterious freaks of fate +That make us bless when we should execrate; +No more of those last blunders that remain +Where we no more can set them right again; + +No more apologies for doubtful data; +No more fresh facts that figure as Errata; +No more, in short, O TYPE, of wayward lore +From thy most _un_-Pierian fount--NO MORE!" + +So spoke PAPYRIUS. Yet his hand meanwhile +Went vaguely seeking for the vacant file, +Late stored with long array of notes, but now +Bare-wired and barren as a leafless bough;-- +And even as he spoke, his mind began +Again to scheme, to purpose and to plan. + +There is no end to Labour 'neath the sun; +There is no end of labouring--but One; +And though we "twitch (or not) our Mantle blue," +"To-morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new." + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's De Libris: Prose and Verse, by Austin Dobson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE LIBRIS: PROSE AND VERSE *** + +This file should be named 8dlbr10.txt or 8dlbr10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8dlbr11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8dlbr10a.txt + +Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Sjaani and the Online Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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