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ENGLISH HUMOURISTS

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THE

ENGLISH HUMOURISTS

OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY,

^ Series of ILectures,

DELIVERED IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES OF

AMERICA.

BY

W. M. THACKERAY,

Author of "Esmond," "Pendeiinis," "Vanity Fair,"&c.

LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO. 65, CORNHILL.

BOMBAY : SMITH, TAYLOR, & CO.

1853.

I27ie author of this vjork reserves to himself the right of authorising a trandation of ii.]

LONDON : EKADBORY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, "WHITEFRIARH.

CONTENTS.

-4-

Lecture the First.

Page SWIFT 1

Lecture the Second. CONGREVE AND ADDISON 5

Lecture the Third.

STEELE 105

Lecture the Fourth.

PRIOR, GAT, AND POPE 160

Lecture the Fifth.

HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING .219

Lecture the Sixth.

STERNE AND GOLDSMITH 269

ERRATA.

— ♦ —

Page 56, last line but tliree,/o/- "an empire," rea.d "or empire." „ 83, line 11 ; for "Peggott," read " Doggett." ,, 115, last line but four; for "detestable," read "delectable." ,, 117, line 7; for "physic," read "physics."

,, 150, line 14 ; for "the instinct we desire," read "the instinctive desire. ,, 171, line 9 ; for "It was so kind," read "He was so kind." ,, 177, line 11 ; for "deary idyllic," read "dreary idyllic." ,, 196, line 5 ; for "a Hardy," read "or Hardy," ,, 218, line 2 ; for "transcendant," read "transcendent." ,, 226, line 20 ; for " as the clerk," read " and the clerk." „ 228, line 3; for "1800," read "1847." ,, 250, line 4 ; for "wild," read "Welsh." ,, 255, line 3 ; for "wine-stained," read "wine. Stained." ,, 258, line 14; for "him," read "them." ,, 28.3, line 18 ; for "point," read " paint." ,, 294, line 15 ; for "of necessity," read " and necessity." ,, 298, last line but one of text; for "dependants," read "dependents."

THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS

OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

LECTURE THE FIRST.

SWIFT. In treating of the English humourists of the i^ast age, it is of the men and of their lives, rather than of their books, that I ask permission to speak to you ; and in doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope to entertain you with a merely humourous or facetious story. Harlequin without his mask is known to present a very sober countenance, and was himself, the story goes, the melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go and see Harlequin ' — a man full of cares and perplexities like the rest of us, whose Self must always be serious to him, under whatever mask, or disguise, or uniform he presents it to the public. And as all of you here must needs be grave when you

^ The anecdote is fi-equently told of our performer, Rich.

B

ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

think of 3^our own past and present, you will not look to find, in tlie histories of those whose lives and feelings I am going to try and describe to you, a story that is otherwise than serious, and often very sad. If Humour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feel more interest about humourous writers than about the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who possesses in common with these the power of making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humourous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness — your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture — your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. According^, as he finds, and speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem him — sometimes love him. And, as his business is to mark other people's lives and peculiarities, we moralise upon his life when he is gone — and yesterday's preacher becomes the text for to-day's sermon.

Of English parents, and of a good English family of clergymen,* Swift was born in Dublin in 1G67, seven

^ He was from a younger branch of the Swifts of Yorkshire. His

SWIFT. 3

months after tlie death of his father, who had come to practise there as a lawyer. The boy went to school at Kilkenny, and afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a degree with difficulty, and was wild, and witty, and poor. In 1688, by the recommendation of his mother. Swift was received into the family of Sir AVilliam Temple, who had known Mrs. Swift in Ireland. He left his patron in 1693, and the next year took orders in Dublin. But he threw up the small Irish preferment which he got, and returned to Temple, in whose family he remained until Sk William's death in 1699. His hopes of advancement in England failing, Swift returned to Ireland, and took the living of Laracor. Hither he invited Hester Johnson,* Temple's

gi'andfather, the Rev. Thomas Swift, Vicar of Goodrich, in Hereford- shire, suffered for his loyalty in Charles I.'s time. That gentleman married Elizabeth Dryden, a member of the family of the poet. Sir Walter Scott gives, with his characteristic minuteness in such points, the exact relationship between these famous men. Swift was " the son of Dryden's second cousin." Swift, too, was the enemy of Dryden's reputation. Witness the " Battle of the Books :" — " The difference was greatest among the horse," says he of the moderns, "where every private trooper pretended to the command, from Tasso and Milton to Dryden and Withers." And in '* Poetry, a Rhapsody," he advises the poetaster to —

" Read all the Prefaces of Dryden, For these our critics much confide in, Though merely writ, at first, for filling. To raise the volume's price a shilling."

** Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet/' was the phrase of Dryden to his kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such matters. ^ " Miss Hetty" she was called in the family — where her face, and her dress, and Sir William's treatment of her, — all made the real fact about her birth plain enough. Sir William left her a thousand pounds.

B 2

ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

natural daugiiter, -with whom he had contracted a tender friendship, while they were both dependants of Temple's. And with an occasional visit to England, Swift now passed nine years at home.

In 1709 he came to England, and, with a brief visit to Ireland, dming which he took possession of his deanery of St. Patrick, he now passed five years in England, taking the most distinguished part in the poli- tical transactions which terminated with the death of Queen Ainie. After her death, his party disgraced, and his hopes of ambition over, Swift returned to Dublin, where he remained twelve years. In this time he wrote the famous "Drapier's Letters" and "Gulliver's Travels." He married Hester Johnson, Stella, and buried Esther Vanhomrigh, Vanessa, who had followed him to Ireland from London, where she had contracted a violent passion for him. In 1726 and 1727 Swift was in England, which he quitted for the last time on hearing of his wife's ilhiess. Stella died in January, 1728, and Swift not until 1745, ha^dng passed the last five of the seventy-eight years of his life, with an impaired intellect and keepers to watch him.*

^ Sometimes, during his mental affliction, lie continued walking about the house foi^ many consecutive hours ; sometimes he remained in a kind of torpor. At times, he would seem to struggle to bring into distinct consciousness and shape into expression, the intellect that lay- smothering under gloomy obstruction in him. A pier-glass falling by accident, nearly fell on him. He said, lie wished it had ! He once repeated, slowly, several times, " I am what I am." The last thing he wrote was an epigiam on the building of a magazine for arms and

SWIFT. 5

You know, of course, that Swift lias had many biographers ; his hfe has been told by the Idndest and most good-natured of men, Scott, who admires but can't bring himself to love him ; and by stout old Johnson,* who, forced to admit him into the company of poets, receives the famous Irishman, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of surly recognition, scans him from head to foot, and passes over to the other side of the street. Dr. Wilde of Dublin,^ who has written a most

stores, which was pointed out to him as he went abroad during his mental disease : —

^ Behold a proof of Irish sense :

Here Irish wit is seen ; When nothing's left that's worth defence, They build a magazine !

^ Besides these famous books of Scott's and Johnson's, there is a copious " Life " by Thomas Sheridan (Dr. Johnson's " Sherry "), father of Richard Brinsley, and son of that good-natured, clever, Irish, Dr. Thomas Sheridan, Swift's intimate, who lost his chaplaincy by so unluckily choosing for a text on the king's birthday, "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof ! " Not to mention less important works, there is also the *' Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift," by that polite and dignified writer, the Earl of Orrery. His lordship is said to have striven for literary renown, chiefly that he might make up for the slight passed on him by his father, who left his library away from him. It is to be feared that the ink he used to wash out that stain only made it look bigger. He had, however, known Swift, and corresponded with people who knew him. His work (which appeared in 1751) provoked a good deal of controversy, calling out, among other Irochures, the interesting " Observations on Lord Oi-rery's Remarks," &c. of Dr. Delany.

- Dr. Wilde's book was written on the occasion of the remains of Swift and Stella being brought to the light of day — a thing which happened in 1835, when certain works going on in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, afforded an opportunity of their being examined.

6 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

interesting volume on the closing years of Swift's life, calls Johnson " the most malignant of his biographers : " it is not easy for an English critic to please Irishmen — perhaps to try and please them. And yet Johnson truly admires Swift : Johnson does not quarrel with Swift's change of politics, or doubt his sincerity of religion : about the famous Stella and Vanessa contro- versy the Doctor does not bear very hardly on Swift. But he could not give the Dean that honest hand of his ; the stout old man puts it into his breast, and moves off from him.*

Would we have lilted to live with him ? That is a question which, in dealing with these people's w^orks, and thinking of their lives and peculiarities, every reader of biographies must put to himself. Would you have liked to be a friend of the great Dean ? I should like to have been Shakspeare's shoeblack — ^just to have lived in his house, just to have worshipped liim — to have run on his errands, and seen that sweet serene

One hears with surprise of these skulls "going the rounds " of houses, and being made the objects of dilettante curiosity. The larynx of Swift was actually carried off ! Phrenologists had a low opinion of his intellect, from the observations they took.

Dr. Wilde traces the symptoms of ill-health in Swift, as detailed in his writings from time to time. He observes, likewise, that the skull gave evidence of " diseased action " of the brain during life — such as would be produced by an increasing tendency to '' cerebral congestion."

^ " He [Dr. Johnson] seemed to mc to have an unaccountable preju- dice against Swift ; for I once took the liberty to ask him if S^vift had personally offended him, and he told me he had not." — Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides.

SWIFT. 7

face. I should like, as a j^oung man, to have lived on Fielding's stair-case in the Temple, and after helping him up to bed perhaps, and opening his door with his latch-key, to have shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard him talk and crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would not give something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck ? The charm of Addison's companion- ship and conversation has passed to us by fond tradition— — but Swift ? If you had been his in- ferior in parts (and that, with a great respect for all persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in mere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you ; if, undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, he would have quailed before you,^ and not had the pluck to reply, and gone home, and years after written a foul epigTam about you — watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you with a coward's blow and a dirty

^ Few men, to be sure, dared this experiment, but yet their success was encouraging. One gentleman made a point of asking the Dean, whether his uncle Godwin had not given him his education. Swift, who hated that subject cordially, and, indeed, cared little for his kindred, said, sternly, " Yes ; he gave me the education of a dog." " Then, sir," cried the other, striking his fist on the table, " you have not the gratitude of a dog ! "

Other occasions there were when a bold face gave the Dean pause, even after his Irish almost-royal position was established. But he brought himself into greater danger on a certain occasion and the

8 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

bludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue riband, wlio flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he would have been the most delightful company in the world. He would have been so manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original, that you might think he had no object in view but the indulgence of his humour, and that he was the most reckless, simple creature in the world. How he would have torn your enemies to pieces for you ! and made fun of the Opposition ! His servility was so boisterous that it looked like inde- pendence ; ^ he would have done your errands, but with the air of patronising you, and after fighting your battles masked in the street or the press, would have

amusing circumstances may be once more repeated here. He had unsparingly lashed the notable Dublin lawyer, Mr. Serjeant Bettes- worth —

" So, at the bar, the booby Bettesworth,

Though half-a-crown out-pays his sweat's worth,

Who knows in law nor text nor margent,

Calls Singleton his brother-serjeant ! "

The Serjeant, it is said, swore to have his life. He presented himself at the deanery. The Dean asked his name. *'Sir, I am Serjeant Bett-es-worth."

" In what regiment, pray ? " asked Swift.

A guard of volunteers formed themselves to defend the Dean this time.

^ '' But, my Hamilton, I will never hide the freedom of my senti- ments from you. I am much inclined to believe that the temper of my friend Swift might occasion his English friends to wish him happily and properly promoted at a distance. His spirit, for I would give it the proper name, was ever untractable. The motions of his genius were often irregular. He assumed more the air of a patron than of a friend. He affected rather to dictate than advise." — Orrehy.

SWIFT. 9

kept on liis hat before your wife and dangliters in the drawing-room, content to take that sort of pay for his tremendous services as a bravo/

He says as much himself in one of his letters to Bohngbroke : — " All my endeavours to distinguish myself were only for want of a gTeat title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opmion of my parts ; whether right or wrong is no great matter. And so the reputation of wit and great learniug does the office of a blue riband or a coach and six." ^

^ . . . . "An anecdote which, though only told by Mrs. Pilkington, is well attested, bears, that the last time he was in London he went to dine with the Earl of Bui'lington, who was but newly married. The Earl, it is supposed, being willing to have a little diversion, did not introduce him to his lady, nor mention his name. After dinner, said the Dean, ' Lady Burlington, I hear you can sing ; sing me a song.' The lady looked on this unceremonious manner of asking a favour with distaste, and positively refused. He said ' She should sing, or he would make her. Why, madam, I suppose you take me for one of your poor English hedge-parsons; sing when I bid you.' As the Earl did nothing but laugh at this freedom, the lady was so vexed that she burst into tears and retu-ed. His first compliment to her when he saw her again was, ' Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you last ] ' To which she answered with great good-humour, ' No, Mr. Dean, I'll sing for you if you please.' From which time he conceived a great esteem for her." — Scott's Life.

.... " He had not the least tincture of vanity in his conversation. He was, perhaps, as he said himself, too proud to be vain. WTien he was polite, it was in a manner entirely his own. In his friendships he was constant and undisguised. He was the same in his enmities.''—- Orrery.

^ "I make no figure but at court, where I afiect to turn from a lord to the meanest of my acquaintances." — Journal to Stella.

" 1 am plagued with bad authors, verse and prose, who send me

10 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

Could there be a greater candour ? It is an outlaw, who says, " These are my brains ; with these I'll win titles and compete with fortune. These are my bullets ; these I'll turn into gold ; " and he hears the sound of coaches and six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand and deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord bishop's apron, and his Grace's blue riband, and my lady's brocade petticoat in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and gives them over to followers of his own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the mitre and crosier in it, which he intends to have for his share, has been delayed on the way from St. James's; and he waits and waits until nightfall, when his runners come and tell him that the coach has taken a different road, and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air with a curse, and rides away into his own country.*

their books and poems, the vilest I ever saw ; but I have given their names to my man, never to let them see me." — Journal to Stella.

The following curious paragraph illustrates the life of a courtier : — " Did I ever tell you that the Lord Treasurer hears ill with the left

ear just as I do ? I dare not tell him that I am so, sir ; for

fear he should think that I counterfeited to make my court f" — Journal to Stella.

^ The war of pamphlets was carried on fiercely on one side and the other : and the "Whig attacks made the ministry Swift served very sore. Bolingbroke laid hold of several of the Opposition pamphleteers, and bewails their " factiousness " in the following letter :

SWIFT. 11

Swift's seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral or adorn a tale of ambition, as any hero's that ever lived and failed. But we must remember that the

"BOLINGBBOKE TO THE EaRL OF StRAFFORD.

" Whitehall, July 2Srd, 1712.

" It is a melancholy consideration that the laws of our country are too weak to punish effectually those factious scribblers, who presume to blacken the brightest characters, and to give even scurrilous language to those who are in the first degrees of honour. This, my lord, among others, is a symptom of the decayed condition of our government, and serves to show how fatally we mistake licentiousness for liberty. All I could do was to take up Hart, the printer, to send him to Newgate, and to bind him over upon bail to be prosecuted ; this I have done, and if I can arrive at legal proof against the author Ridpath, he shall have the same treatment."

Swift was not behind his illustrious friend in this virtuous indigna- tion. In the history of the four last years of the Queen, the Dean speaks in the most edifying manner of the licentiousness of the press and the abusive language of the other party :

" It must be acknowledged that the bad practices of printers have been such as to deserve the severest animadversion from the public.

The adverse party, full of rage and leisure since their fall,

and unanimous in their cause, employ a set of writers by subscription who are w^ell versed in all the topics of defamation and have a style and

genius levelled to the generality of their readers However,

the mischiefs of the press were too exorbitant to be cured by such a remedy as a tax upon small papers, and a bill for a much more effectual regulation of it was brought into the House of Commons, but so late in the session that there was no time to pass it, for there always appeared an unwillingness to cramp overmuch the liberty of the press."

But to a clause in the proposed bill, that the names of authors should be set to every printed book, pamphlet, or paper, his reverence objects altogether, for, says he, "beside the objection to this clause from the practice of pious men, who, in publishing excellent writings for the service of religion, have chosen, out of an humble Christian ■spirit, to conceal their names j it is certain that all persons of true genius

]a ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

morality was lax, — that other gentlemen besides him- self took the road in his day, — that public society was in a strange disordered condition, and the State was ravaged by other condottieri. The Boyne was bemg fought and won, and lost — the bells rung in Wilham's victory, in the very same tone with which they would have pealed for James's. Men were loose upon politics, and to shift for themselves. They, as well as old

or knowledge have an invincible modesty and suspicion of themselves upon their first sending their thoughts into the world."

This "invincible modesty" was no doubt the sole reason which induced the Dean to keep the secret of the "Drapier's Letters," and a hundred humble Christian works of which he was the author. As for the Opposition, the Doctor was for dealing severely with them: he writes to Stella :—

Journal. Letter XIX.

" London, March 25th, 1710-11.

" "We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing

him pickled in a trough this fortnight for twopence a piece ; and the

fellow that showed would point to his body and say, ' See, gentlemen,

this is the wound that was given him by his Grace the Duke of

Ormond ; ' and, * This is the wound,' &c, ; and then the show was

over, and another set of rabble came in. 'Tis hard that our laws

would not suffer us to hang his body in chains, because he was not

tried ; and in the eye of the law every man is innocent till then." ******

Journal. Letter XXVII.

''London, Jidy 25th, 1711. " I was this afternoon with Mr. Secretary at his office, and helped to hinder a man of his pardon, who is condemned for a rape. The Under Secretary was willing to save him ; but I told the Secretary he could not pardon him without a favourable report from the Judge ; besides, he was a fiddler, and conseqviently a rogue, and deserved hanging for something else, and so he shall swing."

SWIFT. 13

beliefs and institutions, had lost tlieii' moorings and gone adrift in the storm. As in the South Sea Bubble almost everybody gambled ; as in the Railway mania — not many centuries ago — almost every one took his unlucky share ; a man of that time, of the vast talents and ambition of Swift, could scarce do otherwise than grasp at his prize, and make his spring at his oppor- tunity. His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subsequent misanthropy, are ascribed by some pane- gyrists to a deliberate conviction of mankind's unworthi- ness, and a desire to amend them by castigating. His youth was bitter, as that of a great genius bound down by ignoble ties, and powerless in a mean dependence ; his age was bitter,* like that of a great genius that had fought the battle and nearly won it, and lost it, and thought of it afterwards writhing in a lonely exile. A man may attribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused by his own fury, or disappointment, or self-will. What public man — what statesman projecting a coup — w^hat king determined on an invasion of his neighbour — what satirist meditating an onslaught on society or an individual, can't give a pretext for his move ? There was a French general the other day who proposed to march into this country and put it to sack and pillage, in revenge for humanity outraged by our conduct at Copenhagen, — there is always some excuse for men of

1 It was tis constant pi-actice to keep his birth-day as a day of mourning.

14 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

the aggressive turn. They are of their nature warlike, predatory, eager for fight, pkmder, dominion.'

As fierce a heak and talon as ever struck — as strong a wing as ever beat, belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested the prey out of liis claws, and cut his wings and chained him. One can gaze, and not without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the bars.

That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's-court, Dublin, on the 30th November, 1G67, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny the sister island the honour and glory ; but, it seems to me, he was no more an Irish- man than a man born of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo.* Goldsmith was an Irishman and always

^ " These devils of Gi-ub-street rogues, that write the Flying-Post and Medley in one paper, will not be quiet. They are always mauling Lord Treasurer, Lord Bolingbroke, and me. We have the dog under prosecution, but Bolingbroke is not active enough: but I hope to swinge him. He is a Scotch rogue, one Ridpath. They get out upon bail, and write on. We take them again, and get fresh bail ; so it goes round." — Jownal to Stella.

2 Swift was by no means inclined to forget such considerations ; and his English birth makes its mark, strikingly enough, every now and then in his writings. Thus in a letter to Pope (Scott's Swift, vol. xix. p. 97), he says —

"We have had your volume of letters .... Some of those who highly value you, and a few who knew you personally, are grieved to find you make no distinction between the English gentry of this kingdom, and the savage old Irish (who are only the vulgar, and some gentlemen who live in the Irish pai'ts of the kingdom) ; but the English colonies, who are three parts in four, are much more civilized than many counties in England, and speak better English, and are much better bred."

SWIFT. 15

an Irishman : Steele was an Irishman, and always an Irishman: Swift's heart was EngHsh and in England, liis habits English, his logic eminently Enghsh; liis statement is elaborately simple ; he shuns tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with a wise tlnift and economy, as he used his money ; with which he could be generous and splendid upon great occasions, but which he husbanded when there was no need to spend it. He never indulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays his opinion before you with a grave simpHcity and a j)erfect neatness.^ Dreading ridicule too, as a man of

And again, in the fourth Drapier's Letter, we have the following : —

"A short paper, printed at Bristol, and reprinted here, reports Mr. Wood to say ' that he wonders at the impudence and insolence of the Irish, in refusing his coin.' "When by the way, it is the true English people of Ireland who refiise it, although we take it for gi'anted that the Irish will do so too whenever they are asked." — Scott's Swift, vol. iv. p. 143.

He goes fui-ther, in a good-humoured satirical paper, " On Barbarous Denominations in Ireland," where (after abusing, as he was wont, the Scotch cadence, as well as expression) he advances to the "Irish brogue" and speaking of the " censure " which it brings down, says : —

*'And what is yet worse, it is too well known that the bad consequence of this opinion affects those among vis who are not the least liable to such reproaches farther than the misfortune of being born in Ireland, although of English parents, and whose education has been chiefly in that kingdom." — Ihid, vol. vii. p. 149.

But, indeed, if we are to make anything of Race at all, we must call that man an Englishman whose father comes from an old Yorkshire family, and his mother from an old Leicestershire one !

^ " The style of his conversation was very much of a piece with that of his writings, concise and clear and strong. Being one day at a Sheriff's feast, who amongst other toasts called out to him, * Mr. Dean,

16 EN'GLISH HUMOURISTS.

his humour — above all an Englishman of his humour — certainly would, he is afraid to use the poetical power wliich he really possessed ; one often fancies in reading him that he dares not be eloquent when he might ; that he does not speak above his voice, as it were, and the tone of society.

His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his knowledge of pohte Hfe, his acquaintance with literature even, which he could not have pursued very sedulously during that reckless career at Dublin, Swift got under the roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of telHng in after life what quantities of books he devoured there, and how King William taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion. It was at Shene and at Moor Park, with a salary of twenty pounds and a dinner at the upper servants' table, that this great and lonely Swift passed a ten years' appren- ticeship— wore a cassock that was only not a livery — bent down a knee as proud as Lucifer's to supplicate

The trade of Ireland ! ' He answered quick : ' Sir, I drink no memories ! '

" Happening to be in company with a petulant young man who prided himself on saying pert things . . . and who cried out — 'You must know, Mr, Dean, that I set up for a wit ? ' 'Do you so,' says the Dean, ' take my advice, and sit down again ! '

" At another time, being in company, where a lady whisking her long train [long trains were then in fashion] swept down a fine fiddle and broke it ; Swift cried out —

" Mantua v£e miserse nimium vicina Cremona) ! " — Dr. Del ANT. Observations ui^on Lord Orrery's " EemarJcs, cCr." in Swift. London, 1754.

SWIFT. 17

my lady's good graces, or run on his honour's errands/ It was here, as he was writing at Temple's table, or following his patron's walk, that he saw and heard the men who had governed the great world — measured himself with them, looking up from his silent corner, gauged their brains, weighed their wits, turned them, and tried them, and marked them. Ah ! what platitudes he must have heard ! what feeble jokes ! what pompous commonplaces ! what small men they must have seemed under those enormous periwigs, to the swarthy, uncouth, silent Irish secre- tary. I wonder whether it ever struck Temple that that Irishman was his master ? I suppose that dismal conviction did not present itself under the ambrosial wig, or Temple could never have lived with Swift. Swift sickened, rebelled, left the service, — ate humble pie and came back again ; and so for ten years went on, gathering learning, swallowing scorn, and submit- ting with a stealthy rage to his fortune.

Temple's style is the perfection of practised and easy good-breeding. If he does not penetrate very deeply into a subject, he professes a very gentlemanly acquaintance with it ; if he makes rather a parade of Latin, it was the custom of his day, as it was the

^ " Don't you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir William Temple would look cold and out of humour for three or four days, and I used to suspect a hundred reasons? I have plucked up my spirits since then, faith; he spoiled a fine gentleman." — Journal to Stella.

c

18 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

custom for a gentleman to envelope liis head in a peri- wig and liis hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a con- summate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in the Court crowd. When that gTows too hot or too agitated for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of Shene or Moor Park ; and lets the King's party, and the Prince of Orange's party battle it out among themselves. He reveres the sovereign, (and no man perhaps ever testified to his loyalty by so elegant a bow :) he admires the Prince of Orange ; but there is one person whose ease and comfort he loves more than all the princes in Chris- tendom, and that valuable member of society Is himself, Gulielmus Temple, Baronettus. One sees him in his retreat; between his study -chair and his tuHp beds,* chpping his apricots and prmimg his essays, —

^ . . . " The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and fortunate in their expression, when they placed a man's happiness in the tranquillity of his mind and indolence of body; for while we are composed of both, I doubt both must have a share in the good or ill we feel. As men of several languages say the same things in very different words, so in several ages, countries, constitutions of laws and religion, the same thing seems to be meant by very different expressions ; what is called by the Stoics apathy, or dispassion ; by the sceptics, indisturbance ; by the Moliuists, quietism ; by common men, peace of conscience, — seems all to mean but great. For this reason Epicurus passed his life wholly in his garden : there he studied, there he exercised, there he taught his philosophy; and, indeed, no other sort of abode seems to contribute so much to both the tranquillity of

SWIFT. 19

the statesman, the ambassador no more ; but the philo- sopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier at St. James's as at Shene ; where in place of kings and fair ladies, he pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty ; or walks a minuet with the Epic Muse ; or dallies by the south wall with the ruddy nymph of gardens.

Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious deal of veneration from his household, and to have been coaxed, and warmed, and cuddled by the people round about him, as delicately as any of the plants which he loved. ^Vlien he fell ill in 1693, the household was aghast at his indisposition; mild

mind and indolence of body, whicli he made Lis chief ends. The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise of working or walking; but, above all, the exemption from cares and solicitude, seem equally to favoiir and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease both of the

body and mind Where Paradise was has been much debated,

and little agreed ; but what sort of place is meant by it may perhaps easier be conjectured. It seems to have been a Persian word, since Xenophon and other Greek authors mention it, as what was much in use and delight among the kings of those eastern countries. Strabo describing Jericho : * Ibi est palmetum, cui immixtae sunt etiam alise stirpes hortense?, locus ferax palmis abundans, spatio stadioitim centum, totus irriguus, ibi est Regis Balsami paradisus.' " — Essay on Gardens.

In the same famous essay Temple speaks of a friend, whose conduct and prudence he characteristically admires.

. ..." I thought it very prudent in a gentleman of my friends in Staffordshire, who is a great lover of his garden, to pretend no higher, though his soil be good enough, than to the perfection of plums ; and in these (by bestowing south walls upon them) he has very well suc- ceeded, which he could never have done in attempts iipon peaches and grapes ; and a good ]()lum is certainly better than an ill 2^each."

c 2

20 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

Dorothea liis wife, the best companion of the best of men —

" Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great. Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate."

As for Dorinda, his sister, —

" Those who would grief describe, might come and trace Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face. To see her weep, joy every face forsook, And grief flung sables on each menial look. The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, That furnished life and spirit through the whole."

Isn't that line in which grief is described as putting the menials into a mourning livery, a fine image ? One of the menials wrote it, who did not like that Temple livery nor those twenty-pound wages. Cannot one fancy the uncouth young servitor, with downcast eyes, books and papers in hand, following at his Honour's heels in the garden walk; or taking his Honour's orders as he stands by the great chair, where Sir William has the gout, and his feet all blistered with moxa ? When Sir Wilham has the gout or scolds it must be hard work at the second table ; ^ the Irish secretary owned

^ Swift's Thoughts on Hanging.

[Directions to Servants.)

" To grow old in the office of a footman, is the highest of all indig- nities ; therefore, when you find years coming on without hopes of a place at court, a command in the army, a succession to the stewardship, an employment in the revenue (which two last you cannot obtain without reading and writing), or running away with your master's niece or daughter, I directly advise you to go upon the road, which is the only post of honour left you : there you will meet many of your

SWIFT. 21

as mucli afterwards : and wlien he came to dinner, how he must have lashed and growled and torn the house- hold with his gibes and scorn ! What would the steward say about the pride of them Irish schollards — and this one had got no great credit even at his Irish college, if the truth were known — and what a contempt his excellency's own gentleman must have had for Parson Teague from Dublin. (The valets and chaplains were always at war. It is hard to say which Swift thought the more contemptible.) And what must have

old comrades, and live a short life and a merry one, and making a figure at your exit, wherein I will give you some instructions.

" The last advice I give you relates to your behaviour when you are going to be hanged ; which, either for robbing your master, for house- breaking, or going upon the highway, or in a drunken quarrel by killing the first man you meet, may very probably be your lot, and is owing to one of these three qualities : either a love of good fellowship, a generosity of mind, or too much vivacity of spirits. Your good behaviour on this article will concern your whole community : deny the fact with all solemnity of imprecations : a hundred of your brethren, if they can be admitted, will attend about the bar, and be ready upon demand to give you a character before the Court ; let nothing prevail on you to confess, but the promise of a pardon for discovering your comrades : but I suppose all this to be in vain ; for if you escape now, your fate will be the same another day. Get a speech to be written by the best author of Xewgate : some of your kind wenches will provide you with a holland shirt and white cap, crowned with a crimson or black libbon : take leave cheerfully of all your friends in Newgate : mount the cart with covn-age ; fall on your knees ; lift up your eyes ; hold a book in your hands, although you cannot read a word ; deny the fact at the gallows ; kiss and forgive the hangman, and so farewell ; you shall be buried in pomp at the charge of the fraternity : the surgeon shall not touch a limb of you ; and your fame shall continue imtil a successor of equal renown succeeds in your place "

ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

been the sadness, tlie sadness and terror, of the house- keeper's little daughter with the curling black ringlets and the sweet smiling face, when the secretary who teaches her to read and write, and whom she loves and reverences above all things — above mother, above mild Dorotliea, above that tremendous Sir WilHam in his square-toes and periwig, — when Air. Swift comes down from his master with rage in his heart, and has not a Idnd word even for little Hester Johnson ?

Perhaps for the Irish secretary, his Excellency's condescension was even more cruel than his frowns. Sir William ivould perpetually quote Latin and the ancient classics a proi:>os of his gardens and his Dutch statues and 'plates hancles, and talk about Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius, Julius Csesar, Semiramis, and the gardens of the Hesperides, Maecenas, Strabo describing Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. A j)ro2Jos of beans, he would mention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans, and that this precept probably meant that wise men should abstain from public affairs. He is a placid Epicurean ; he is a Pythagorean philosopher ; he is a wise man — that is the deduction. Does not Swift thmk so ? One can imagine the downcast eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which they emit. Swift's eyes were as azure as the heavens ; Pope says nobly (as everything Pope said and thought of his friend was good and noble), " His eyes are as azure as the heavens, and have a charming archness in them." And

SWIFT. 23

one person in that household, that pompous stately kindly Moor Park, saw heaven no where else.

But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree with Swift. He was half-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins ; and in a garden-seat which he devised for himself at Moor Park, and where he devoured greedily the stock of books within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness which punished and tormented him through life. He could not bear the place or the servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condolence, from which we have quoted a few lines of mock melancholy, he breaks out of the funereal procession with a mad shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying his own grief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by fortune, and even hope.

I don't know anything more melancholy than the letter to Temple, in which, after having broke from his bondage, the poor wretch crouches piteously towards his cage again, and deprecates his master's anger. He asks for testimonials for orders. " The particulars required of me are what relate to morals and learning; and the reasons of quitting your Honour's family — that is whether the last was occasioned by any ill action. They are left entirely to your Honour's mercy, though in the first I think I cannot reproach myself for any- thing further than for infirmities. This is all I dare at present beg from your Honour, under cii'cumstances of life not worth your regard : what is left me to wish

24 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

(next to the liealtli and prosperity of your Honour and family) is that Heaven would one day allow me the opportunity of leaving my acknowledgments at jour feet. I beg my most humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your Honour's lady and sister." — Can prostration fall deeper ? could a slave bow lower ? *

Twenty years afterwards Bishop Kennet, describing

* " He continued in Sir William Temple's house till the death of that great man." — Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, by the Dean.

'' It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to himself." — Preface to Temple's Worlcs.

On all public occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same tone. But the reader will better understand how acutely he remembered the indignities he suffered in his household, from the subjoined extracts from the Journal to Stella: —

" I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d

ailed him on Sunday ; I made him a very proper speech ; told him I observed he was much out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the cause, but would be glad to see he was in better ; and one thing I warned him of — never to appear cold to me, for I would not be treated like a schoolboy ; that I had felt too much of that in my life already" {meaning Sir William Temple), &c. &c. — Journal to Stella.

" I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple because he might have been secretary of state at fifty; and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment." — Ibid.

" The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary of State." — Ibid.

" Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite well. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family the other night. He gave us all twelvepence apiece to begin with : it put me in mind of Sir William Temple." — Ibid.

"I thought I saw Jack Temple [nephew to Sir William,'] and his wife pass by me to-day in their coach ; but I took no notice of them, I am glad I have wholly shaken oflf that family." — S. to S., Se2'>t. 1710.

SWIFT. 25

the same man, says, " Dr. Swift came into the coffee- house and had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers. Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business. He was sohciting the Earl of AiTan to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a place for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to under- take, with my Lord Treasurer, that he should obtain a salary of 2001. per annum as member of the English Chm'ch at Eotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in to the Queen with the red bag, and told him aloud, he had something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He took out liis gold watch, and telling the time of day, complained that it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. ' How can I help it,' says the doctor, ' if the courtiers give me a watch that won't go right ? ' Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the best poet in England was Mr, Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into Enghsh, for which he would have them all subscribe ; ' For,' says he, ' he shall not begin to i^rint till I have a thousand guineas for him.' ' Lord Treasurer, after

1 " Swift must be allowed," says Dr. Johnson, " for a time, to have dictated the political opinions of the English nation."

A conversation on the Dean's pamphlets excited one of the Doctor's liveliest sallies. " One, in particular, praised his ' Conduct of the Allies.' — Johnson : * Sir, his ' Conduct of the Allies ' is a performance of very- little ability Why, sir, Tom Davies might have written the

' Conduct of the Allies ! ' " — Boswell's Life of Johnson.

26 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

leaving tlie Queen, came through the room beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him, — both went off just before prayers." There's a little malice in the Bishop's "just before prayers."

This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and is harsh, though not altogether unpleasant. He was doing good, and to deserving men too, in the midst of these intrigues and triumphs. His journals and a thousand anecdotes of him relate his kind acts and rough manners. His hand was constantly stretched out to relieve an honest man — he was cautious about his money, but ready. — If you were in a strait would you lilce such a benefactor ? I think I would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner.* He insulted a man as he served him, made women cry, guests look foohsh, bullied unlucky friends, and flung his benefactions into poor men's faces. No ;

^ *' Whenever he fell into the company of any person for the first time, it was his custom to try their tempers and disposition by some abrupt question that bore the appearance of rudeness. If tiiis were well taken, and answered with good humour, he afterwards made amends by his civilities. But if he saw any marks of resentment, from alarmed pride, vanity, or conceit, he dropped all further inter- course with the party. This will be illustrated by an anecdote of that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. After supper, the Dean having decanted a bottle of wine, poured what remained into a glass, and seeing it was muddy, presented it to Mr. Pilkington to drink it. * For, ' said he, * I always keep some poor parson to drink the foul wine for me.' Mr. Pilkington, entering into his humoui', thanked him, and told him ' he did not know the difference, but was glad to get a glass at any rate.'

SWIFT. 27

the Dean was no Irisliman — no Irishman ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart.

It is tokl, as if it were to Swift's credit, that the Dean of St. Patrick's performed his family devotions every morning regularly, but with such secresy, that the guests in his house were never in the least aware of the ceremony. There was no need surely why a church dignitary should assemble his family privily in a crjrpt, and as if he was afraid of heathen persecution. But I thinli: the world was right, and the bishops who advised Queen Anne, when they counselled her not to appoint the author of the " Tale of a Tub " to a bishopric, gave perfectly good advice. The man who wrote the argu- ments and illustrations in that wild book, could not but be aware what must be the sequel of the propositions which he laid down. The boon companion of Pope and Bolingbroke, who chose these as the friends of his life, and the recipients of his confidence and affection, must have heard many an argument, and joined in many a conversation over Pope's port, or St. John's Burgundy, which would not bear to be repeated at other men's boards.

* why then,' said the Dean, ' you shan't, for I'll drink it myself. Why,

take you, you are wiser than a paltry curate whom I asked to

dine with me a few days ago ; for upon my making the same speech to him, he said, he did not understand such usage, and so walked off without his diunei\ By the same token, I told the gentleman who recommended him to me, that the fellow was a blockhead, and I had done with him." — Sheridan's Life of Sivift.

28 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

I know of few things more conclusive as to the sin- cerity of Swift's religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author of the " Beggar's Opera " — Gay, the wildest of the wits about town — it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders — to invest in a cassock and bands — just as he advised him to husband his shillings and put his thousand pounds out at interest.* The Queen, and the bishops, and

^ FROM THE ARCHBISHOP OF CASHELL.

"Cashell^MayZlst, 1735. "Dear Sir^, —

" I have been so unfortunate in all my contests of late, that I am. resolved to have no more, especially v^here I am likely to be overmatched ; and as I have some reason to hope what is past will be forgotten, I confess I did endeavour in my last to put the best colour I could think of upon a very bad cause. My friends judge right of my idleness ; but, in reality, it has hitherto proceeded from a hurry and confusion, arising fi'om a thousand unlucky unforeseen accidents rather than mere sloth. I have but one troublesome affair now upon my hands, which, by the help of the prime serjeant, I hope soon to get rid of; and then you shall see me a true Irish bishop. Sir James Ware has made a very useful collection of the memorable actions of my predecessors. He tells me, they were born in such a town of England or Ireland ; were consecrated siich a year ; and, if not trans- lated, were buried in the Cathedral church, either on the north or south side. Whence I conclude, that a good bishop has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die; which laudable example I propose for the remainder of my life to follow ; for to tell you the truth, I have for these four or five years past met with so much treachery, baseness, and ingratitude among mankind, that I can hardly think it incumbent on any man to endeavour to do good to so perverse a generation.

" I am truly concerned at the account you give me of your health. Without doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can

SWIFT. 29

the world, were right in mistrusting the religion of that man.

I am not here, of course, to speak of any man's religious views, except in so far as they influence his literary character, his Hfe, his humour. The most notorious sinners of all those fellow-mortals whom it is our business to discuss — Harry Fielding and Dick Steele, were especially loud, and I believe really fervent, in their expressions of belief ; they belaboured freethinkers, and stoned imaginary atheists on all sorts of occasions, going out of their way to bawl their own

take to recover your flesh ; and I do not know, except in one stage, where you can choose a road so suited to your circumstances, as from Dublin hither. You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at every ten or twelve miles end. From Kilkenny hither is twenty long miles, bad road, and no inns at all : but I have an expedient for you. At the foot of a very high hill, just midway, there lives in a neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is not poor ; his wife is allowed to be the best little woman in the world. Her chickens are the fattest, and her ale the best in all the country. Besides, the parson has a little cellar of his own, of which he keeps the key, where he always has a hogshead of the best wine that can be got, in bottles well corked, upon their side ; and he cleans, and pulls out the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with a coach ; if you be tired, you shall stay all night ; if not, after dinner we will set out about four, and be at Cashell by nine ; and by going through fields and by-ways, which the parson will show us, we shall escape all the rocky and stony roads that lie between this place and that, which are certainly very bad. I hope you will be so kind as to let me know a post or two before you set out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, that I may have all things prepared for you. It may be, if you ask him. Cope will come : he will do nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, I shall add no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth, your most faithful and obedient servant,

*'Theo. Cashell."

30 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

creed, and persecute their neighbour's, and if thej^ sinned and stumbled, as they constantly did with debt, with drink, with all sorts of bad behaviour, they got up on their knees, and cried " Peccavi " with a most sono- rous orthodoxy. Yes ; poor Harry Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty and undoubting Church of England men ; they abhorred Popery, Atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries in general; and hiccupped Church and State with fervour.

But Swift ? His mind had had a different schooling, and possessed a very different logical power. He was not bred up in a tipsy guard-room, and did not learn to reason in a Covent Garden tavern. He could con- duct an argument from beginning to end. He could see forward with a fatal clearness. In his old age, looking at the " Tale of a Tub," when he said, " Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book ! " I think he was admiring not the genius, but the conse- quences to which the genius had brought him — a vast genius, a magnificent genius, a genius wonderfully bright, and dazzlmg, and strong, — to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon falsehood and scorch it into per- dition, to penetrate into the hidden motives, and expose the black thoughts of men, — an awful, an evil spirit.

Ah, man ! you, educated in Epicurean Temple's library, you whose friends were Pope and St. John — what made you to swear to fatal vows, and bind your-

SWIFT. 31

self to a life -long hypocrisy before the Heaven which you adored with such real wonder, humility, and reverence ? For Swift's was a reverent, was a pious spiiit — for Swift could love and could pray. Through the storms and tempests of his furious mind, the stars of religion and love break out in the blue, shinmg serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds and the maddened huiTicane of his life.

It is my behef that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his apostasy out to hire.' The paper left behind him, called " Thoughts on Eeligion," is merely a set of excuses for not pro- fessing disbelief. He says of his sermons that he preached pamphlets : they have scarce a Christian characteristic ; they might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house almost. There is little or no cant — he is too gTeat and too proud for that ; and, in so far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is honest. But having put that cassock on, it poisoned him : he was strangled in his bands. He goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the

1 " Mr. Swift lived with liim [Sir William Temple] some time, but resolving to settle himself in some way of living, was inclined to take orders. However, although his fortune was veiy small, he had a scruple of entering into the Church merely for support." — Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, by the Dean.

3:2 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

Fury, and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it was! what a lonely rage and long agony — what a vidture that tore the heart of that giant ! * It is awful to think of the great suffermgs of this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can't fancy Shakspeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The kings can have no company. But this man suffered so ; and deserved so to suffer. One hardly reads anywhere of such a pain. The " sseva indignatio" of which he spoke as lacerating his heart, and wdiich he dares to inscribe on his tombstone — as if the wretch who lay under that stone waiting God's judgment had a right to be angry — breaks out from him in a thousand pages of his writing, and tears and rends him. Agamst men in office, he having been overthrown ; against men in England, he having lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile never fails to rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous "Drapier's Letters" patriotism ? They are master-pieces of dreadful humour and invective : they are reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the

1 " Dr. Swift had a natural severity of face, which even his smiles could never soften, or his utmost gaiety render placid and serene ; but when that sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is scarce possible to imagine looks or features that carried in them more terror and austerity." — Orrery.

SWIFT. 33

grievance is so great, but there is liis enemy — tlie assault is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a bone in his hand, rushing on his enemies and felling them : one admu'es not the cause so much as the strength, the anger, the fury of the champion. As is the case with madmen, certain subjects provoke him, and awaken his fits of wrath. Marriage is one of these ; in a hundred passages in his writings he rages against it ; rages against children — an object of constant satii'e, even more contemptible in his eyes than a lord's chaplain, is a poor curate with a large family. The idea of this luckless paternity never fails to bring down from him gibes and foul language. Could Dick Steele, or Goldsmith, or Fielding, in his most reckless moment of satire, have written anything like the Dean's famous " modest proposal " for eating children ? Not one of these but melts at the thoughts of childhood, fondles and caresses it. Mr. Dean has no such softness, and enters the nursery with the tread and gaiety of an ogre.* " I have been assured," says he in the " Modest Proposal," " by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well-nursed, is, at a year

1 "London, April 10th, 1713.

" Lady Masham's eldest boy is very ill : I doubt he will not live,

and she stays at Kensiiogton to nurse him, which vexes us all. She is

so excessively fond, it makes me mad. She should never leave the

Queen, but leave everything, to stick to what is so much the interest

of the public, as well as her own." — Journal.

D

34 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

old, a most delicious, nourisliiiig, and wholesome food, wlietlier stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make, no doubt it will equally serve in a ragout.'* And taking up this pretty joke, as his way is, he argues it with perfect gravity and logic. He turns and twists this subject in a score of different ways : he hashes it; and he serves it up cold ; and he garnishes it ; and relishes it always. He describes the little animal as " dropped from its dam," advising that the mother should let it suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render it plump and fat for a good table! "A child," says his reverence, "will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends ; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind-quarter will make a reasonable dish," and so on; and, the subject being so delightful that he can't leave it — he proceeds to recommend, in place of venison for squires' tables, "the bodies of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen nor under twelve." Amiable humourist ! laughing castigator of morals ! There was a process well known and practised in the Dean's gay days : when a lout entered the coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they called " roasting " him. This is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native genius for it. As the " Almanach des Gourmands " says. On nait rotisseur.

And it was not merely by the sarcastic method that Swift exposed the unreasonableness of loving and

SWIFT. 35

having cliildren. In Gulliver, the folly of love and marriage is urged by graver arguments and advice. In the famous Lilliputian kingdom, Swift speaks with approval of the practice of instantly removing children from their parents and educating them by the State ; and amongst his favourite horses, a pair of foals are stated to be the very utmost a well-regulated equine couple would permit themselves. In fact, our great satirist was of opinion that conjugal love was unad- visable, and illustrated the theory by his own practice and example — God help him — which made him about the most wretched being in God's world.'

The grave and logical conduct of an absurd propo- sition, as exemplified in the cannibal proposal just mentioned, is our author's constant method through all his works of humour. Given a country of people six inches or sixty feet high, and by the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved, at so many stages of the calculation. Turning to the first minister who waited behind him with a wliite staff near as tall as the mainmast of the " Royal Sovereign," the king of Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human grandeur is, as represented by such a contemptible little creature as Gulliver. " The Emperor of Lilliput's features are strong and masculine (what a surprising humour there is in this

1 " My liealtli is somewhat mended, but at best I have an ill head and an aching heart." — In May, 1719.

36 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

description !) — the Emperor's features," Gulliver says, " are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip, an arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well-proportioned, and his deportment majestic- He is taller hy the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into beholders."

What a surprising humour there is in these descrip- tions ! How noble the satire is here ! how just and honest ! How perfect the image ! Mr. Macaulay has quoted the charming lines of the poet, where the king of the pigmies is measured by the same standard. We have all read in Milton of the spear that was like " the mast of some tall amiral," but these images are surely likely to come to the comic poet originally. The subject is before him. He is turning it in a thousand ways. He is full of it. The figure suggests itself naturally to him, and comes out of his subject, as in that wonderful passage, when Gulliver's box having been dropped by the eagle into the sea, and Gulliver having been received into the ship's cabin, he calls upon the crew to bring the box into the cabin, and put it on the table, the cabin being only a quarter the size of the box. It is the veracity of the blunder which is so admirable. Had a man come from such a country as Brobdingnag he would have blundered so.

But the best stroke of humour, if there be a best

SWIFT. 37

in that abounding book, is tbat where Gulliver, in

the unpronounceable country describes his parting

from his master the horse.* "I took," he says, " a

^ Perhaps the most melancholy satu*e in the whole of the dreadful book, is the description of the very old people in the Voyage to Laputa. At Lugnag, Gulliver hears of some persons who never die, called the Struldbrugs, and expressing a wish to become acquainted with men who mvist have so much learning and experience, his colloquist describes the Struldbrugs to him.

" He said, They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years old, after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession : for otherwise there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they come to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grand- children. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure ; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repent that others are gone to a harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in tlieir youth and middle age, and even tbat is very imperfect. And for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories ; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

" If a Struldbrug happened to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore. For the law thinks it to be a reasonable indulgence that those who are condemned, without any

38 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

second leave of my master, but as I was going to pros- trate myself to kiss liis lioof, he did me the honour to

fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.

"As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law ; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates, only a small pittance is reserved for their support ; and the poor ones are maintained at tlie public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit, they cannot purchase lands or take leases, neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds.

"■ At ninety they lose their teeth and hair ; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relatives. For the same reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end ; and by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.

" The language of this country being always on the flux, the Struld- brugs of one age do not understand those of another ; neither are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (further than by a few general words) with their neighbours, the mortals ; and thus they lie vmder the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country.

" This was the account given me of the Struldbrugs, as near as I can remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me several times by some of my friends ; but although they were told ' that I was a great traveller, and had seen all the world,' they had not the least curiosity to ask me a single question ; only desired I would give them slumskudask, or a token of remembrance ; which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the law that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a very scanty allowance.

" They are despised and hated by all sorts of people ; when one of

SWIFT. 39

raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. Detractors are pleased to think it impro- bable that so illustrious a person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so mferior as I. Neither am I ignorant how apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have received. But if these censurers were better acquainted with the noble and courteous disposition of the Houyhnhnms they would soon change their opinion."

The surprise here, the audacity of circumstantial evidence, the astounding gravity of the speaker, who is not ignorant how much he has been censured, the nature of the favour conferred, and the respectful exultation at the receipt of it, are surely complete ; it is truth topsy-turvy, entirely logical and absurd.

them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly ; so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the usual way of computing how old they are, is, by asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting history ; for infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old.

" They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women more horrible than the men ; besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in propoi'tion to their number of years, which is not to be described ; and among half a dozen, I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although thei'e was not above a century or two between them." — Gulliver's Travels.

40 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

As for the humour and conduct of this famous fable, I suppose there is no person who reads but must admire ; as for the moral, I think it horrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous ; and giant and great as this Dean is, I say we should hoot him. Some of this audience majai't have read the last part of Gulliver, and to such I would recal the advice of the venerable Mr. Punch to persons about to marry, and say " Don't." "When Gulliver first lands among the Yahoos, the naked howling wretches clamber up trees and assault him, and he describes himself as " almost stifled with the filth which fell about him." The reader of the fourth part of Gulliver's Travels is hke the hero him- self in this instance. It is Yahoo language ; a monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations against mankind, — tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense of manliness and shame; filthy in. word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene.

And dreadful it is to think that Swift knew the tendency of his creed — the fatal rocks towards which his logic desperately drifted. That last part of Gulliver is only a consequence of what has gone before; and the worthlessness of all mankind, the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecility, the general vanitj^, the foolish pretension, the mock greatness, tlie I)ompous dulness, the mean aims, the base suc- cesses,— all these were present to him ; it was with the din of these curses of the world, blasphemies

SWIFT. 41

against Heaven, shrieking in liis ears, that he began to \vTite his dreadful allegorj^, — of which the meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate, and imbecile, and his passions are so monstrous, and his boasted powers so mean, that he is and deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance is better than his vaunted reason. What had this man done ? Avhat secret remorse was rank- ling at his heart ? what fever was boiling in him, that he should see all the world blood-shot ? AVe view the world with our own eyes, each of us ; and we make from within us the world we see. A weary heart gets no gladness out of sunshine ; a selfish man is sceptical about friendship, as a man with no ear doesn't care for music. A friaiitful self-consciousness it must have

o

been, which looked on mankind so darkly through those keen eyes of Swift.

A remarkable story is told by Scott, of Delany, who interrupted Archbishop King and Swift in a conversa- tion which left tlie prelate in tears, and from which Swift rushed away with marks of strong terror and agitation in his countenance, upon which the arch- bishop said to Delany, "You have just met the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question."

The most unhappy man on earth ; — Miserrimus — what a character of him ! And at this time all the great wits of England had been at his feet. All Ireland had shouted after him, and worshipped as a

42 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

liberator, a saviour, the greatest Irish patriot and citizen. Dean Drapier Bickerstaff Gulliver — the most famous statesmen, and the greatest poets of his day, had applauded him, and done him homage, and at this time writing over to Bolingbroke, from Ireland, he sajs, " It is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not to die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.''

We have spoken about the men, and Swift's behaviour to them ; and now it behoves us not to forget that there are certain other persons in the creation who had rather intimate relations with the great Dean.' Tw^o women whom he loved and injured are known by every

^ The name of Varina has been thrown into the shade by those of the famous Stella and "Vanessa ; but she had a story of her own to tell about the blue eyes of young Jonathan. One may say that the book of Swift's Life opens at places kept by these blighted flowers ! Varina must have a paragraph.

She was a Miss Jane Waryng, sister to a college chum of his. In 1696, when Swift was nineteen years old, we find him writing a love- letter to her, beginning, " Impatience is the most inseparable quality of a lover." But absence made a great difference in his feelings ; so, four years afterwards, the tone is changed. He writes again, a very curious letter, offering to marry her, and putting the offer in such a way that nobody could possibly accept it.

After dwelling on his poverty, &c., he says, conditionally, " I shall be blessed to have you in my arms, without regarding whether your person be beautiful, or your fortune large. Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the second, is all I ask for ! "

The editors do not tell us what became of Varina in life. One would be glad to know that she met with some worthy partner, and lived long enough to see her little boys laughing over Lilliput, without any arriere jpensee of a sad character about the great Dean !

SWIFT. 43

reader of books so familiarly that if we had seen them, or if they had been relatives of our own, we scarcely could have known them better. Who hasn't in his mind an image of Stella ? AVho does not love her ? Fair and tender creature : pure and affectionate heart ! Boots it to you now that you have been at rest for a hundred and twenty years, not divided in death from the cold heart which caused j^ours, whilst it beat, such faithful pangs of love and grief — boots it to jou now, that the whole world loves and deplores jon ? Scarce any man, I believe, ever thought of that grave, that did not cast a flower of pity on it, and write over it a sweet epitaph. Gentle lady ! — so lovely, so loving, so unhappy. You have had countless champions, millions of manly hearts mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up the fond tradition of your beauty ; we watch and follow your tragedy, your bright morning love and purity, your constancy, your grief, your sweet martyrdom. We know your legend by heart. You are one of the saints of English story.

And if Stella's love and innocence is charming to contemplate, I will say that in spite of ill-usage, in spite of drawbacks, in spite of mysterious separation and union, of hope delayed and sickened heart — in the teeth of Vanessa, and that little episodical aberration which plunged Swift into such woeful pitfalls and quagmires of amorous perplexity — in spite of the

44 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

verdicts of most women, I believe, who, as far as my experience and conversation goes, generally take Vanessa's part in the controversy — in spite of the tears which Swift caused Stella to shed, and the rocks and barriers which fate and temper interposed, and which prevented the pure course of that true love from run- ning smoothly ; the brightest part of Swift's story, the pure star in that dark and tempestuous life of Swift's, is his love for Hester Johnson. It has been my busi- ness, professionally of course, to go through- a deal of sentimental reading in my time, and to acquaint thj- self with love-making, as it has been described in various languages, and at various ages of the world ; and I know of nothing more manly, more tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these brief notes, written in what Swift calls " his little language " in his journal to Stella.' He writes to her night and morning often. He never sends away a letter to her but he begins a new one on the same daj. He can't bear to

^ A sentimental Champollion might find a good deal of matter for his art, in expounding the symbols of the " Little Language." Usually, Stella is " M.D.," but sometimes her companion, Mrs. Dingley, is included in it. Swift is "Presto;" also P.D.F.R. We have *' Good- night, M.D. ; Night, M.D. ; Little M.D. ; Stelhikins ; Pretty Stella; Dear roguish, impudent, pretty M.D. ! " Every now and then he breaks into rhyme, as —

" I wish you both a merry new yeai". Roast beef, minced-pies, and good strong beer, And me a share of your good cheer, That I was there, as you were here, And you are a little saucy dear."

SWIFT. 45

let go lier kind little hand as it were. He knows that she is thinking of him, and longing for him far away in Dublin yonder. He takes her letters from under his i)illow and talks to them, familiarly, paternally, with fond epithets and pretty caresses — as he would to the sweet and artless creature who loved him. " Stay," he writes one morning — it is the 1-lth of December, 1710 — " Stay, I will answer some of your letter this morning in bed — let me see. Come and appear little letter ! Here I am says he, and what say you to Stella this mornmg fresh and fasting ? And can Stella read tliis writing without hurting her dear eyes ? " he goes on, after more kind prattle and fond whispering. The dear eyes shine clearly upon him then — the good angel of his life is with him and blessing him. Ah, it was a hard fate that wrung from them so many tears, and stabbed pitilessly that pure and tender bosom. A hard fate : but would she have changed it ? I have heard a woman say that she would have taken Swift's cruelty to have had his tenderness. He had a sort of worship for her whilst he wounded her. He speaks of her after she is gone ; of her^ wit, of her kindness, of her grace, of her beauty, with a simple love and reverence that are indescribably touching; in con- templation of her goodness his hard heart melts into pathos : liis cold rhyme kindles and glows into poetry, and he falls down on his knees, so to speak, before the angel, whose life he had embittered, confesses his own

46 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

wretchedness and unwortliiness, and adores her with cries of remorse and love : —

" When on my sickly couch I lay, Impatient both of night and day, And groaning in unmanly strains, Called every power to ease my pains, Then Stella ran to my relief, With cheerful face and inward grief, And though by Heaven's severe decree She suffers hourly more than me, No cruel master could require From slaves employed for daily hire, What Stella, by her friendship warmed. With vigour and delight performed. Now, with a soft and silent tread. Unheard she moves about my bed : My sinking spirits now supplies With cordials in her hands and eyes. Best pattern of true friends ! beware ; You pay too dearly for your care If, while your tenderness secures My life, it must endanger yours : For such a fool was never found Who pulled a palace to the ground, Only to have the ruins made Materials for a house decayed."

One little triumph Stella had in her life — one dear little piece of injustice was performed in her favour, for which I confess, for my part, I can't help thanking fate and the Dean. That other person was sacrificed to her — that — that young woman, who lived five doors from Dr. Swift's lodgings in Bmy-street, and who flattered him, and made love to him in such an outrageous manner — Vanessa was thrown over.

Swift did not keep Stella's letters to him in reply to

SWIFT. 47

those lie wrote to her/ He kept BoUngbroke's, and Pope's, and Harley's, and Peterborough's : but Stella, "very carefully," the Lives say, kept Swift's. Of

^ The following passages are from a paper begun by Swift on the evening of the day of her death, Jan. 28, 1727-8 :

" She was sickly from her childhood, until about the age of fifteen ; but then she grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London — only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in perfection.

.... "Properly speaking" — he goes on with a calmness which, under the. circumstances, is terrible — "she has been dying six months!"

" Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or

who more improved them by reading and conversation All of

us who had the happiness of her friendship agreed unanimously that in an afternoon's or evening's conversation she never failed before we parted of delivering the best thing that was said in the company. Some of us have written down several of her sayings, or what the French call bons mots, wherein she excelled beyond belief"

The specimens on record, however, in the Dean's paper called "Bons Mots de Stella," scarcely bear out this last part of the pane- gyric. But the following prove her wit :

" A gentleman, who had been very silly and pei't in her company, at last began to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A bishop sitting by comforted him — that he should be easy, because * the child was gone to heaven.' ' No, my lord,' said she ; ' that is it which most grieves him, because he is sure never to see his child there.'

" When she was extremely ill, her physician said, ' Madam, you are near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavour to get you up again.' She answered, ' Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath before I get up to the top.'

"A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smart- ness and repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dir-ty. He was at a loss ; but she solved the difficulty, by saying, ' the Doctor's nails grew dirty by scratching himself.'

" A quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked ; it had a broad

48 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

course : that is tlie way of the world : and so we cannot tell what her stjde was, or of what sort were the little letters which the Doctor placed there at night, and bade to appear from under his pillow of a morning. But in Letter IV. of that famous collection he describes his lodging in Bury-street, where he has the first floor, a dining-room and bed-chamber, at eight shillings a-week ; and in Letter VI. he says " he has visited a lady just come to town," whose name somehow is not mentioned ; and in Letter VIII. he enters a query of Stella's — " What do you mean ' that boards near me, that I dine with now and then ? ' What the deuce ! You know whom I have dined with every day since I left you, better than I do." Of course she does. Of course Swift has not the slightest idea of what she means. But in a few letters more it turns out that the Doctor has been to dine " gravely " with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh : then that he has been to " his neigh- bour : " then that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the whole week with his neighbour ! Stella was quite right in her previsions. She saw from the very first hint what was going to happen ; and scented Vanessa in the air.^ The rival is at the Dean's feet.

brim, and a label of paper about its neck. 'What is that ' — said she — ' my apothecary's son !' The ridiculous resemblance, and the sudden- ness of the question, set us all a-laughiug," — Swift's Wo7'hs, Scott's Ed, vol. ix. 295-6.

1 '* I am so hot and lazy after my morning's walk, that I loitered at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, where my best gown and periwig was, and out of

SWIFT. 49

The pupil and teacher are reading together, and drinkmg tea together, and going to prayers together, and learning Latin together, and conjugating amo, amas, amavi together. The little language is over for poor Stella. By the rule of grammar and the course of conjugation, doesn't amavi come after amo and avias ? The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa' jou may peruse in Cadenus's o^^ti poem on the subject, and in poor Vanessa's vehement expostulatory verses and letters to him, she adores him, implores him, admires him, thinks liim something god-like, and onlj prays to be admitted to lie at his feet.^ As they are bringmg him home

mere listlessness dine therCf very often; so I did to-day." — Journal to Stella.

Mrs, Vanliomrigh, " Vanessa's " mother, was the widow of a Dutch merchant who held lucrative appointments in King William's time. The family settled in London in 1709, and had a house in Bury-street, St, James's — a street made notable by such residents as Swift and Steele ; and, in our own time, Moore and Crabbe,

^ '' Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress ; impatient to be admired ; very romantic in her turn of mind ; sviperior, in her own opinion, to all her sex ; full of pertness, gaiety, and pride ; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but far from

being either beautiful or genteel; happy in the thoughts of

being reported Swift's concubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife," — Lord Orrery.

- " You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said, as often as you can get the better of your inclinations so much ; or as often as you remember there was such a one in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last : I am siu-e I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, kilhng words of yours. Some-

E

50 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

from cliurcli, those divine feet of Dr. Swift's are found pretty often in Vanessa's parlour. He likes to be admired and adored. He finds Miss Van- liomrigli to be a woman of great taste and spirit, and beauty and wit, and a fortune too. He sees her every day; he does not tell Stella about the business : until the impetuous Vanessa becomes too fond of him, until the doctor is quite frightened by the young woman's ardour, and confounded by her warmth. He wanted to marry neither of them — that I believe was the truth; but if he had not married Stella, Vanessa would have had him in spite of himself. When he went back to Ireland, his Ariadne, not content to remain in her isle, pursued the fugitive Dean. In vain he protested, he vowed, he soothed and bullied ; the news of the Dean's marriage with Stella at last came to her, and it killed her — she died of that passion.^

times I have resolved to die without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you'd not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you ; for when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh that you may have but so much regard for me left that this complamt may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can ; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me ; and believe I cannot help telling you this and live." — Vanessa. (M. 1714.)

1 " If we consider Swift's behaviour, so far only as it relates to

SWIFT. 5 1

And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had written beautifullj^ regarding her, "that doesn't

women, we shall find that he looked upon them rather as busts than as whole figures." — Orrery.

" You must have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of very virtuous women, who attended him from morning to night." — Orrery.

A correspondent of Sir "Walter Scott's furnished him with the materials on which to found the following interesting passage about Vanessa — after she had retired to cherish her passion in retreat: —

" Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account) showed the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden while a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well ; and his accoimt of her corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company : her constant amusement was reading,

or walking in the garden She avoided company, and was

always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called 'Vanessa's bower.' Three or four trees and some laurels indicate

the spot There were two seats and a rude table within the

bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Lifiey

In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them." — Scott's Swift, vol. i. pp. 246-7.

.... "But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the object of her affections — to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connection with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long elicited her secret jealousy, although only a single

E 2

52 EI^GLISH HUMOUKISTS.

surprise me," said Mrs. Stella, " for we all know the Dean could write beautifully about a broomstick." A woman — a true woman ! Would you have had one of them forgive the other ?

In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's hair, enclosed in a paper by Swift, on which are written in

hint to that purpose is to be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him — then in Ireland — 'If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent with mine.' Her silence and patience under this state of imcertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe for Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival's health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's impa- tience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connec- tion. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean ; and full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent to him her i-ival's letter of interrogatories, and, without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was liable, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table, and, instantly leaving the house, remounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived the last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks." — Scott.

SWIFT. 53

tlie Dean's hand, the words : " Only a icomaiis hairy An instance, says Scott, of the Dean's desire to veil his feelings under the mask of cjmical mdiiference.

See the various notions of critics ! Do those words indicate indifference or an attempt to hide feeling? Did you ever hear or read four words more pathetic ? Only a woman's haii', only love, only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty ; only the tenderest heart in the world stricken and wounded, and passed awa}^ now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love insulted, and pitiless desertion ; — only that lock of hair left : and memory and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering over the grave of his victim.

And yet to have had so much love, he must have given some. Treasures of wit and wisdom and tenderness, too, must that man have had locked up in the caverns of his gloomy heart, and shown fitfully to one or two whom he took in there. But it was not good to visit that place. People did not remain there long, and suffered for having been there. ^ He shrank away from all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both died near liim, and away from him. He had not heart

^ "M. Swift est Eabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. II n'a pas, ^ la verite, la gaite du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la raison, le chois, le bon gout qui manquent b; notre cui-e de Meudon. Ses vers sont d'un gout singulier, et presque inimitable ; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose ; mais pour le bien en tendre il faut faii'e un petit voyage dans son pays." — Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais. Let. 22.

54 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

enough to see them die. He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan ; he shmk away from his fondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars on one's ear after seven score years. He was always alone — alone and gnash- ing in the darkness, except when Stella's sweet smile came and shone upon him. When that went, silence and utter night closed over him. An immense genius : an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that thinldng of him is like thinkmg of an empire falhng. We have other great names to mention — none I think, however, so great or so gloomy.

LECTURE THE SECOND.

CON'GREVE AND ADDISON".

A GREAT number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the " Union," and I remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the Opposition and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman's nominee. So Jones of John's, or Thomson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping them- selves in their gowns, rally^ round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at priests and kings with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman's emissary was Hstening to the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young Cambridge -men, orators of

56 EI^GLISH HUMOUKISTS.

the Union, were actually caught up thence, and carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a young fellow deserted the jogtrot Uni- versity curriculum, to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the parliamentary chariot.

Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of peers and members of Parliament in Anne's and George's time ? Were they all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the watch ? How was it that the young gentlemen from the University got such a pro- digious number of places ? A lad composed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king assailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene compli- mented, or the reverse ; and the party in power was presently to provide for the young poet ; and a com- missionership, or a post in the Stamps, or the secretary- ship of an embassy, or a clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A wonderful fruit- bearing rod was that of Busby's. What have men of letters got in our time ? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time an empire — but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many others who got pubhc employment, and pretty little i^ickings out of the public purse.* The

^ The following is a conspectus of them : — Addison. — Commissioner of Appeals ; Under Secretary of State ; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper

co:n'greve and addisox. 57

wits of whose names we shall treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the King's coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter- day coming round for them.

They all began at school or college in the regular way, producing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public events, battles, sieges, court marriages and deaths, in which the gods of Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invo- cations, according to the fashion of the time in France and in England. Aid us Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marl- borough. "Accourez, chastes nyinphes de Permesse,'' says Boileau, celebrating the Grand Monarch. " Des sons

of the Records in Ireland ; Lord of Trade ; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively.

Steele. — Commissioner of the Stamp Office ; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Coui-t ; and Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians ; Commissioner of " Forfeited Estates in Scotland."

Prior. — Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague ; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King William ; Secretary to the Embassy in France ; Under Secretary of State ; Ambassador to France.

TiCKELL. — Under Secretary of State"; Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland.

Congreve. — Commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches ; Commis- sioner for Wine Licenses ; Place in the Pipe Office ; post in the Custom House ; Secretary of Jamaica,

Gay. — Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover.)

John Dennis. — A place in the Custom House.

"En Angleterre les lettres sent plus en honneur qu'ici."

— Voltaire, Lettres sw les Anglais, Let. 20.

58 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

que ma lyre enfante, marquez en bien la cadence, et vous, vents, faites silence ! je vais parler cle Louis /" School- boys' themes and foundation-exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olym- pians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country newspaper, would now think of writing a con- gratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman ? In the xDast century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves at these queer compositions ; and some got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses.

WilHam Congreve's ' Pindaric Odes are still to be found m " Johnson's Poets," that now unfrequented poet's corner, in which so many forgotten big- wigs have a niche — but though he was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve's wit and humour which first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded, that his first play, the " Old Bachelor," brought our author to the notice of that great patron of the English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax, who being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity,

1 He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire — a very ancient family.

CONGEEVE AND ADDISON. 59

instantly made liim one of the commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe-office, and likewise a post in the Custom-house of the value of 600Z.

A commissionership of hackney-coaches — a post m the Custom-house — a place in the Pipe-office, and all for writing a comedy ! Doesn't it sound like a fable, that place m the Pipe -office ? ^ Ah, I'heureux temps que celui de ces fables ! Men of letters there still be : but I doubt whether any pipe-offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago.

Words, like men, pass current for a while mth the pubhc, and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places in society ; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers at school, and will

^ " Pipe, — Pipe, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the great roll.

" 'PiFE-Office is an ofi&ce in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out leases of crown lands, by warrant, from the Lord-Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer.

" Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c." — Rees. Cyclopcecl. Art. Pipe.

*' PiPE-Q/^ce. — Spelman thinks so called because the papers were kept in a large pipe or cask."

" These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer,

which we, by a metaphor, do call the pii^e because the whole

receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills." — Bacon. The Office of Alienations.

[We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But a modern man-of-letters can know little on these points, by — experience.]

60 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary " swell " of his age. In my copy of " Johnson's Lives " Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. " I am the great Mr. Congreve," he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve.' From the begin- ning of his career until the end everybody admired himc Having got his education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift ; he came to live m the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no atten- tion to the law ; but splendidly frequented the coffee- houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, the Piazza and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. Dryden ' declared

^ " It has been observed that no change of ministers affected bim in the least, nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His place in the Custom-House, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year." — Biog. Brit., Art. Congreve.

2 Dryden addressed his " twelfth epistle " to " My dear friend Mr. Congreve," on hia comedy called the " Double Dealer," in which he says —

" Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please;

Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease.

In differing talents both adorn'd their age ;

One for the study, t'other for the stage.

But both to Congreve justly shall submit,

One match'd in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit.

In him all beauties of this age we see," &c., &c.

The "Double Dealer," however, was not so palpable a hit as the

CONGREVE A^T) ADDISOK 61

that he was equal to Shakspeare, and bequeathed to hhn his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him, " Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review the *^neis,' and compare my version with the origmal. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed me many faults wliich I have endeavoured to correct."

The "excellent young man" was but three or four- and-twenty when the great Dryden thus spoke of him : the greatest literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a school of wits, who daily gathered round his chair and tobacco-pipe at Wills'. Pope dedicated his "Iliad" to him; ' Swift, Addison,

" Old Bachelor," but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our "Swell " applied the scourge to that presumj^tuous body, in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the " Right Honourable Charles Montague."

" I was conscious," said he, " where a true critic might have put me

upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack, but I have

not heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer." He goes on —

" But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me ; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it ; for I declai'e, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected. How can I help it 1 It is the business of a comic poet to

paint the vices and follies of human kind I should be very

glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood."

' " Instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave behind me a memorial of my friendship, with one of the most

62 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

Steele, all acknowledge Congreve's rank, and lavish compliments upon him. Voltaire went to wait upon him as on one of the Eepresentatives of Literature — and the man who scarce praises any other living person, who flung abuse at Pope, and Swift, and Steele, and Addison, — the Grub-street Timon, old John Dennis,* was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve ; and said, that when he retired from the stage, Comedy went with him.

Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in the drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses ; as much beloved in the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted the beautiful Brace- girdle,^ the heroine of all his plays, the favourite of all the town of her day — and the Duchess of Marlborough,

valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country — one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer — and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of Mr. Congreve and of — A. Pope." Postscript to Translation of the Iliad of Homer. Mar. 25, 1720.

^ "When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said, he had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for our author, and generally took him under his protec- tion in his high authoritative manner." — Thos, Davies. Dramatic Miscellanies,

2 " Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdlc, and lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaint- ance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess showed us a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better

CONGREVE AN^D ADDISON". 63

Marlborough's daughter, had such an admiration of him, that when he died she had an ivory figure made to imi- tate him,^ and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed just as the great Congreve's gouty feet were dressed in his great lifetime. He saved some money by his Pipe-office, and his Custom-house office, and his Hackney-coach office, and nobly left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it," but to the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn't.'

would it liave been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle." — Dr. Young, Spences A necclotes.

1 "A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it." — Thos. Davies. Dramatic Miscellanies.

2 The sum Congreve left her was 200Z., as is said in the " Dramatic Miscellanies" of Tom Davies; where are some particulars about this charming actress and beautiful woman.

She had a "lively aspect," says Tom, on the authority of Gibber, and ''such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired eveiybod}^ with desire." "Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of them her lovers."

Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. " In

Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla ;

Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in his 'Love for Love;' in his Osmyn to lier Almena, in the 'Mourning Bride;' and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the 'Way of the World.' Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not veiy distant from the real character of Congreve." — Dramatic Mis- cellanies, vol. iii. 1784.

She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public favourite. She died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.

3 Johnson calls his legacy the "accumulation of attentive parsi- mony, which," he continues, " though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress." — Lives of the Poets.

64 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

How can I introduce to you that merry and shame- less Comic Muse who won him such a reputation ? Nell Gwynn's servant fought the other footmen for having called his mistress a bad name ; and in like manner, and with pretty like epithets, Jeremy Collier attacked that godless, reckless Jezebel, the English comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn's man's fellow- servants called Nell Gwynn's man's mistress. The servants of the theatre, Dryden, Congreve,' and others, defended themselves with the same success, and for the same cause which set Nell's lackey fighting. She was a disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic Muse. She came over from the continent with Charles (who chose many more of his

^ He replied to Colliei*, in the pamplilet called "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False aud Imperfect Citations," &c. A specimen or two are subjoined : —

" The greater part of these examples which he has produced, are only demonstrations of his own impurity : they only savour of his utterance, and were sweet enough till tainted by his breath.

" Where the expression is unblameable in its own pure and genuine signification, he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit ; he possesses the innocent phrase, aud makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies.

" If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because

I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures I will only

call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it,

" The corruption of a rotten divine is the generation of a sour critic."

"Congreve," says Dr. Johnson, "a very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and

security The dispute was protracted through two years ; but

at last Comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labours in the reformation of the theatre." — Life of Couyreve.

CON'GEEVE AND ADDISOI^. 65

female friends there) at the Eestoration — a wild, dishevelled Lais, with eyes bright with wit and wine — a saucy court -favourite that sate at the King's knees, and laughed in his face, and when she showed her bold cheeks at her chariot-window, had some of the noblest and most famous people of the land bowing round her wheel. She was kind and popular enough, that daring Comedy, that audacious poor Nell — she was gay and generous, kind, frank, as such people can afford to be : and the men who lived with her and laughed with her, took her pay and drank her mne, turned out when the Puritans hooted her, to fight and defend her. But the jade was indefensible, and it is pretty certain her servants knew it.

There is life and death going on in every thing: truth and lies always at battle. Pleasure is always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is always crying Psha, and sneering. A man in life^ a humourist in writing about life, sways over to one prmciple or the other, and laughs with the reverence for right and the love of truth in his heart, or laughs at these from the other side. Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious business to Harlequin ? I have read two or three of Congreve's plays over before speaking of him ; and my feehngs were rather like those, which I daresay most of us here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust's house and the rehcs of an orgy, a dried wine -jar or two, a charred supper -table, the breast of a dancing

66 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skuU of a jester, a perfect stillness round ahout, as the Cicerone twangs his moral, and the hlue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve muse is dead, and her song choked in Time's ashes. Vi'e gaze at the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once revelled in its mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse over the frolic and dai'ing, the wit, scorn, passion, hope, desii'e, with which that empty howl once fermented. We think of the glances that allui'ed, the teai's that melted, of the hright eyes that shone in those vacant sockets ; and of lips whispeiing love, and cheeks dimpling with smiles, that once covered yon ghastly yellow frame- work. They used to call those teeth pearls once. See ! there's the cup she di'ank fi'om, the gold-chain she wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge for her cheeks, her looking-glass, and the hai'p she used to dance to. Instead of a feast we find a gi*ave- stone, and in place of a misti'ess, a few bones !

Reading in these plays now, is like shuttiug your eai's and looking at people dancing. "VMiat does it mean ? the measiu'es, the gi'imaces, the bowing, shuffling and retreating, the cavaher seul advancing upon those ladies — those ladies and men twii'ling round at the end in a mad galop, after which ever^'body bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we can't understand that comic dance of the last centmy — its strange gi-avity and gaiety, its deconim

COXGREYE AND ADDISON. 67

or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlilvG life ; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too. I'm afraid it's a Heathen mystery, symbohsmg a Pagan doctrine ; protesting, as the Pompeians very likely were, assembled at their theatre and laughing at theii' games — as Sallust and his friends, and their mistresses protested — crowned with flowers, with cups in theii* hands, against the new, hard, ascetic pleasure - hatmg doctrine, whose gaunt disciples, lately passed over from the Asian shores of the Mediterranean were for breaking the fair images of "Venus, and flinging the altars of Bacchus down.

I fancy poor CongTeve's theatre is a temple of Pagan dehghts, and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worsliip, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites from temple to temple, \\lien the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for ha'sdng the young wife : in the ballad, when the poet bid his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-fl3ing : in the ballet, when honest Corj-don com'ts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, who is opportunely asleep ; and when seduced by the invitations of the rosy youth she comes forward to the foothghts, and they perform on each other's tiptoes that pas which you all know and which

F 2

68 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

is only interrupted by old grandpapa awaking from his doze at the pasteboard chalet (whither he returns to take another nap in case the young people get an encore) : when Harlequin, splendid in youth, strength and agility, arrayed in gold and a thousand colours, springs over the heads of countless perils, leaps down the throat of bewildered giants, and, dauntless and splendid, dances danger down : when Mr. Punch, that godless old rebel, breaks every law and laughs at it with odious triumph, outwits his lawyer, bullies the beadle, knocks his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman, — don't you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch's puppet-show, — the Pagan protest ? Doesn't it seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment ? Look how the lovers walk and hold each other's hands and whisper ! Sings the chorus — "There is nothing like love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty of your spring time. Look ! how old age tries to meddle with merry sport ! Beat him with his own crutch, the wrinkled old dotard ! There is nothing like j^outh, there is nothing like beauty, there is nothing like strength. Strength and valour win beauty and youth. Be brave and conquer. Be young and happy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy ! Would you know the Segreto per esser felice ? Here it is, in a smiling mistress and a cup of Falernian." As the boy tosses the cup and sings his song. Hark ! what is that chaunt coming nearer and

CONGEEVE AND ADDISON". 69

nearer ? What is tliat dirge which will disturb us ? The lights of the festival burn dim — the cheeks turn pale — ^the voice quavers — and the cup drops on the floor. AVho's there ? Death and Fate are at the gate, and they icill come in.

Congreve's comic feast flares with lights, and round the table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets and attendants as dis- solute as their mistresses — perhaps the very worst com- pany in the world. There doesn't seem to be a pretence of morals. At the head of the table sits Mii^abel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited on by Enghsh imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling is to be irresistible, and to conquer everywhere. Like the heroes of the chivahy story, whose long-winded loves and combats they were sending out of fasliion ; they are always splendid and triumphant — overcome all dangers, vanquish all enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands, usurers are the foes these champions contend with. They are merciless in old age, invariably, and an old man plays the part in the dramas, which the wicked enchanter or the great blundering giant performs in the chivalry tales, who threatens and grumbles and resists — a huge stupid obstacle always overcome by the knight. It is an old man with a money-box : Sir Behnour his son or nephew spends his money and laughs at him. It is an old man

70 EJNGLISH HU MO HEISTS.

with a young wife whom he locks up : Sir Mirabel robs him of his wife, trips up his gouty old heels and leaves the old hunx — the old fool what business has he to hoard his money, or to lock up blushing eighteen ? Money is for youth, love is for youth, away with the old peoi)le. When Millamant is sixty, having of course divorced the first Lady Millamant, and married his friend Doricourt's grand- daughter out of the nursery — it will be his turn; and young Belmour will make a fool of him. All this pretty morality you have in the comedies of William Congreve, Esq. They are full of wit. Such manners as he observes, he observes with great humour ; but ah ! it's a weary feast that banquet of wit were no love is. It palls very soon ; sad indi- gestions follow it and lonely blank headaches in the morning.

I can't pretend to quote scenes from the splendid Congreve's plays * — which are undeniably bright, witty,

1 The scene of Valentine's pretended madness in *' Love for Love," is a splendid specimen of Congreve's daring manner : —

Scandal. — And have you given your master a hint of their plot upon him ?

Jeremy. — Yes, Sir; he says he'll favour it, and mistake her for Angelica.

Scandal. — It may make us sport.

ForedgJit. — Mercy on us !

Valentine. — Husht — interrupt me not — I'll whisper predictions to thee, and thou shalt prophesie ; — I am truth, and can teach thy tongue a new trick, — I have told thee what's passed, — now I'll tell what's to come : — Dost thou know what will happen to-morrow ? Answer me not — for I will tell thee. To-morrow knaves will thrive thro' craft, and

CON-GREVE AND ADDISON. 71

and daring, — any more than I could ask you to hear the dialogue of a witty bargeman and a brilliant fish-

fools thro' foi^tune ; and honesty will go as it did, frost-nipt in a summer suit. Ask me questions concerning to-morrow.

Scandal. — Ask him, Mr. Foresight.

Foresight — Pray what will be done at Court ?

Valentine. — Scandal will tell you ; — I am truth, I never come there.

Foresight. — In the city ?

Valentine. — Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters, as if religion were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horn'd herd buz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee- houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt prentice that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things, that you will see very strange ; which are, wanton wives with their legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks. But hold, I must examine you before I go further; you look suspiciously. Are you a husband 1

Foresight. — I am married.

Valentine. — Poor creatui*e ! Is your wife of Covent-garden Parish ?

Foresight. — No ; St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.

Valentine. — Alas, poor man ! his eyes are sixnk, and his hands shrivelled ; his leggs dwindled, and his back bow'd. Pray, pray, for a metamorphosis — change thy shape, and shake off age; get the Medea's kettle and be boiled anew ; come forth with lab'i-ing callous hands, and chine of steel, and Atlas' shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the calves of twenty chairmen, and make the pedestals to stand erect upon, and look matrimony in the face. Ha, ha, ha ! That a man should have a stomach to a wedding supper, when the pidgeons ought rather to be laid to his feet ! ha, ha, ha !

Foresight. — His frenzy is very high now, Mr. Scandal.

Scandal. — I believe it is a spring-tide.

Foresight. — Very likely — truly ; you understand these matters. Mr. Scandal, I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things he has uttered. His sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical .

Valentine. — Oh ! why would Angelica be absent from my eyes so long?

72 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

woman exchanging compliments at Billingsgate; but some of his verses, — they were amongst the most famous

Jeremy. — She's here, Sir.

Mrs. Foresight. — Now, Sister !

Mrs. Frail. — 0 Lord ! what must I say ?

Scandal. — Humour him, Madam, by all means.

Valentine. — Where is she ] Oh ! I see her ; she comes, like Riches, Health, and Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and abandoned wretch. Oh — welcome, welcome !

Mrs. Frail. — How d'ye. Sir ] Can I serve you 1

Valeoitine. — Hark'ee — I have a secret to tell you, Endymion and the moon shall meet as on Mount Latmos, and we'll be married in the dead of night. But say not a word. Hymen shall put his torch into a dark lanthorn, that it may be secret ; and Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail; and Argus's hundred eyes be shut — ha ! Nobody shall know, but Jeremy.

Mrs. Frail. — No, no ; we'll keep it secret; it shall be done presently. Valentine. — The sooner the better. Jeremy, come hither — closer — that none may overhear us. Jeremy, I can tell you news; Angelica is turned nun, and I am turning friar, and yet we'll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part; for she'll meet me two hours hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won't see one another's faces 'till we have done something to be ashamed of, and then we'll blush once for all

Enter Tattle.

Tattle. — Do you know me, Valentine ?

Valentine. — You ! — who are you 1 No ; I hope not.

Tattle. — I am JacJc Tattle, your friend.

Valentine. — My friend ! What to do ] I am no married man, and thou canst not lye with my wife; I am very poor, and thou canst not borrow money of me. Then, what employment have I for a friend ]

Tattle. — Hah ! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a secret.

Angelica. — Do you know me, Valentine!

Valentine. — Oh, very well.

Angelica. — Who am 1%

CON'GEEVE AND ADDISON". 73

lyrics of the time, and pronounced equal to Horace by liis contemporaries, — may give an idea of his power,

Valentine. — You're a woman; one to whom Heaven gave beauty when it gi'afted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond; and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white — a sheet of spotless paper — when you first are born ; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill. I know you ; for I loved a woman, and loved her so long that I found out a strange thing : I found out what a woman was good for.

Tattle. — Ay ! pr'ythee, what's that 1

Valentine. — Why, to keep a secret.

Tattle.— 0 Lord !

Valentine. — 0, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she shoul'd tell, yet she is not to be believed.

Tattle. — Hah ! Good again, faith.

Valentine. — I would have musick. Sing me the song that I like. — Congee VE. " Love for Love."

There is a Mrs. Niclclehy, of the year 1700, in Cougreve's Comedy of "The Double Dealer," in whose character the author introduces some wonderful traits of roguish satii'e. She is practised on by the gallants of the play, and no more knows how to resist them than any of the ladies above quoted could resist Congreve.

Lady Plyant. — 0 ! reflect upon the honour of your conduct ! Offering to pervert me [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady for her daughter's hand, not for her own] — perverting me from the road of virtue, in which I have trod thus long, and never made one trip — not one faux pas ; 0, consider it ; what would you have to answer for-, if you should provoke me to frailty ! Alas ! humanity is feeble, Heaven knows ! Very feeble,, and unable to support itself.

Mellefont. — Where am 11 Is it day ? and am I awake ? Madam —

Lady Plyant. — 0 Lord, ask me the question ! I'll swear I'll deny it — ^therefore don't ask me ; nay, you shan't ask me ; I swear I'll deny it. 0 Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face ; I wai'rant I am as red as a turkey-cock ; 0 fie, cousin Mellefont !

Mellefont.- — Nay, madam, hear me ; I mean

Lady Plyant. — Hear you 1 No, no ; I'll deny you first, and hear you afterwards. For one does not know how one's mind may change upon hearing — hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are fallible. I

74 EN'GLTSH HUMOUEISTS.

of liis grace, of his daring manner, his magnificence in comphment, and his polished sarcasm. He writes as if he was so accustomed to conquer, that he has a poor opinion of his victims. Nothing's new except their faces, says he, " Every woman is the same." He says this in his first comedy, which he -wTote languidly' in

won't trust my honour, I assure you ; my honour is infallible and uncomatable.

Mellefont. — For Heaven's sake, madam

Lady Plyant. — 0, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart ? May be, you dosn't think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don't think it a

sin ; but still, my honour, if it were no sin . But, then, to marry

my daughter for the convenience of frequent opportunities, — I'll never consent to that : as sure as can be, I'll break the match.

Mellefont. — Death and amazement ! Madam, upon my knees

Lady Plyant. — Nay, nay, rise up ; come, you shall see my good- nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion. 'Tis not your fault ; nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms ? And how can you help it, if you are made a captive ? I swear it is pity it should be a fault ; but, my honom-. "Well, but your honour, too — but the sin ! Well, but the necessity. 0 Lord, here's somebody coming, I dare not stay. Well, you must consider of your crime ; and strive as much as can be against it — strive, be sure ; but don't be melancholick — don't despair ; but never think that I'll grant you anything. 0 Lord, no ; but be sure you lay all thoughts aside of the marriage, for though I know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind for your passion to me ; yet it will make me jealous. 0 Lord, what did I say? Jealous ! No, I can't be jealous; for I must not love you; therefore don't hope; but don't despair neither. They're coming ; I must ^j.—The Double Dealer. Act 2nd, scene v. page 156.

^ " There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance. The Old Bachelor was written for amusement in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant ambition of wit." — Johnson. Lives of the Poets.

COXGREYE AN"D ADDISOl!^. 75

illness, when lie was an " excellent young man." Eiche- lieu at eighty could have hardly said a more excellent thing.

When he advances to make one of his conquests it is with a splendid gallantry, in full uniform and with the fiddles playing, like Grammont's French dandies attacking the breach of Lerida.

"Cease, cease to ask her name," he writes of a young lady at the Wells at Tunbridge, whom he salutes with a magnificent compliment —

" Cease, cease to ask her name, The crowned Muse's noblest theme, Whose glory by immortal fame

Shall only sounded be. But if you long to know, Then look round yonder dazzling row. Who most does like an angel show

You may be sure 'tis she."

Here are Hues about another beauty, who perhaps was not so well pleased at the poet's manner of cele- brating her —

" When Lesbia first I saw, so heavenly fair, With eyes so bright and with that awful air, I thought my heart would durst so high aspire As bold as his who snatched celestial fire. But soon as e'er the beauteous idiot spoke. Forth fi'om her coral lips such folly broke ; Like balm the trickling nonsense heal'd my wound. And what her eyes enthralled, her tongue unbound."

Amoret is a cleverer woman than the lovely Lesbia, but the poet does not seem to respect one much more

76 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

than tlie other ; and describes both with exquisite satirical humour —

" Fair Amoret is gone astray,

Pursue aud seek her every lover ; I'll tell the signs by which you may The wandering shepherdess discover.

Coquet and coy at once her air,

Both studied, though both seem neglected ;

Careless she is with artful care, Affecting to be unaffected.

With skill her eyes dart every glance,

Yet change so soon you'd ne'er suspect them ;

For she'd persuade they wound by chance, Though certain aim and art direct them.

She likes herself, yet others hates

For that which in herself she prizes ; And, while she laughs at them, forgets

She is the thing which she despises."

What could Amoret have done to bring down such shafts of ridicule upon her ? Could she have resisted the irresistible Mr. Congreve ? Could anybody ? Could Sabina, when she woke and heard such a bard singing under her window. See, he writes —

" See ! see, she wakes — Sabina wakes !

And now the sun begins to rise : Less glorious is the morn, that breaks

From his bright beams, than her fair eyes. With light united day they give ;

But different fates ere night fulfil : How many by his warmth will live !

How many will her coldness kill ! "

Are you melted ? Don't jou think him a divine

co:n'GREve and addisok. 77

man ? If not toucliecl by tlie brilliant Sabina, hear the devout Selinda : —

" Pious Selinda goes to prayers,

If I but ask her favour ; And yet the silly fool 's in tears,

If she believes I'll leave her. "Would I were free from this restraint.

Or else had hopes to win her : "Would she could make of me a saint.

Or I of her a sinner ! "

"What a conquering air there is about these ! What an irresistible Mr. Congreve it is ! Sinner ! of course he will be a sinner, the delightful rascal ! Win her ; of course he will win her, the victorious rogue ! He knows he will : he must — with such a grace, with such a fashion, with such a splendid embroidered suit — you see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously turned out, passing a fair jewelled hand through his dishevelled periwig and dehvering a killing ogle along with his scented billet. And Sabina? What a comparison that is between the nymph and the sun ! The sun gives Sabina the pas, and does not venture to rise before her ladyship : the morn's bright beams are less glorious than her fair eyes : but before night everybody will be frozen by her glances : everybody but one lucky rogue who shall be nameless : Louis Quatorze in all his glory is hardly more splendid than our Phoebus Apollo of the Mall and Spring Garden.*

'Among those by whom it ('Wills's') was frequented, Southeme

78 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

When Voltake came to visit tlie great Congreve, the latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation, and in this perhaps the great Congreve was not far wrong.^ A touch of Steele's tenderness is worth all his finery — a flash of Swift's lightning — a beam of Addison's pure sunshme, and his tawdry play-house taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him and he was undoubtedly a pretty fellow.'

and Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship.

But Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne

upon Dryden's friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the celebrated * Old Bachelor ' being put into the poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the stage, returned it to the author with the high and just commendation, that it was the best first play he had ever seen." — Scott's I>ryden, vol. i. p. 370.

^ It was in Surrey-street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life.

The anecdote in the text, relating to his saying that he wished " to be visited on no other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity," is common to all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Voltaire's Letters concerning the English nation, published in London, 1733, as also in Goldsmith's " Memoir of Voltaii'e." But it is worthy of remark, that it does not appear in the text of the same Letters in the edition of Voltaire's CEuvres Completes in the Pantheon Litteraire. Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1837.)

" Celm de tons les Anglais qui a portd le plus loin la gloire du thedtre comique est feu M. Congreve. II n'a fait que peu de pieces, mais toutes sont excellentes dans leur genre Vous y voyez par- tout le langage des honnetes gens avec des actions de fripon ; ce qui prouve qu'il connaissait bien son monde, et qu'il vivait dans ce qu'on appelle la bonne compagnie." — Voltaike. Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 19.

" On the death of Queen Mary, he published a Pastoral — " The

COJfGREVE AND ADDISOX. 79

We have seen in Swift a humourous philosopher, whose truth frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We have had in Congreve a

Mourning Muse of Alexis." Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the orthodox way. The Queen is called Pastora.

" I mourn Pastora dead, let Albion mourn, And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,"

says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that —

" With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound, And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground," —

(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period !).... It continues —

"Lord of these woods and wide extended plains,

Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face,

Scalding with tears the already faded grass. *****

To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come ?

And must Pastora moulder in the tomb ?

Ah Death ! more fierce and unrelenting far.

Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are ;

With lambs and sheep their hunger is appeased.

But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized."

This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess; that figure of the " Great Shepherd," lying speechless on his stomach, in a state of despair which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit, are to be remembered in poetry surely, and this style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great Congi'eve !

In the " Teai-s of Amaryllis for Amyntas " (the young Lord Blandford, the great Duke of Marlborough's only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah Duchess !

The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come in to work here again. At the sight of her grief —

" Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forego. And dumb distress and new compassion show. Nature herself attentive silence kept, And motion seemed sics^pended ivhile she wcjjt /" —

80 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

humourous observer of another school to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and whose ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) when the time comes. We come now to a humour that flows from quite a different heart and

And Pope dedicated the Iliad to the author of these lines — and Dryden wrote to him in his great hand :

" Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, But Genius must be born and never can be taught. This is your portion, this your native store ; Heaven, that but once was prodigal before, To Shakspeare gave as much she could not give him more.

Maintain your Post : that's all the Fame you need, For 'tis impossible you should proceed; Already I am worn with cares and age, And just abandoning th' ungrateful Stage : Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expence, I live a Rent-charge upon Providence : But you whom every Muse and Grace adorn, Whom I foresee to better fortune born, .Be kind to my remains, and oh defend Against your Judgment your departed Friend ! Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue ; But shade those Lawrels which descend to You : And take for Tribute what these Lines express; You merit more, nor could my Love do less,"

This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day. In Shadwell, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time, when gentlemen meet they fall into each other's arms, with "Jack, Jack, I must buss thee ;" or " Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee, lad." And in a similar manner the poets saluted their brethren. Literary gentlemen do not kiss now ; I wonder if they love each other better,

Steele calls Congreve " Great Sir " and " Great Author; " says, " Well- dressed barbarians knew his awful name," and addresses him as if he were a prince ; and speaks of " Pastora " as one of the most famous tragic compositions.

CONGREVE AND ADDISON". 81

spirit — a wit that makes us laugh and leaves us good and happy ; to one of the kindest benefactors that society has ever had, and I believe you have divined already that I am about to mention Addison's honoured name.

From reading over his writings, and the biographies which w^e have of him, amongst which the famous aj;ticle in the Edinburgh Eeview ^ may be cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer and morahst of the last age, raised by the love and the marvellous skill and genius of one of the most illustrious artists of our own ; looking at that calm, fair face, and clear countenance — those chiselled features pure and cold, I can't but fanc}^ that this great man, in this respect, like him of wdiom we spoke in the last lecture, was also one of the lonely ones of the world. Such men have very few equals, and they don't herd with those. It is

^ " To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. . . " . . . "After full inquiry and impartial reflection we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can justly be claimed by any of our infirm and erring race." — Macaulat.

'' Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable to believe that Addison's profession and practice were at no great variance ; since, amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and his activity made him formidable, the character given him by his fi'iends was never contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom interest or opinion united him, he had not only the esteem but the kindness ; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove against him, though he might lose the love, he retained the reverence." — Johnson.

G

82 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

in the nature of such lords of intellect to he sohtary — they are in the world hut not of it ; and our minor struggles, hrawls, successes, pass under them.

Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fortitude not tried heyond easy endurance, his affections not much used, for his hooks were his family, and his society was in puhlic ; admirably wiser, wittier, calmer, and more instructed than almost every man with whom he met, how could Addison suffer, desire, admire, feel much ? I may expect a child to admii'e me for heing taller or writing more cleverly than she ; hut how can I ask my superior to say that I am a wonder wdien he knows better than I ? In Addison's days you could scarcety show him a literary performance, a sermon, or a poem, or a piece of literary criticism, but he felt he could do better. His justice must have made him indifferent. He didn't praise, because he measured his compeers by a liigher standard than common people have.* How was he who was so tall to look up to any but the loftiest genius ? He must have stooped to put himself on a level with most men. By that profusion of gTaciousness and smiles, with which Goethe or Scott, for instance, greeted almost every literary beginner, every small literary adventurer who came to his court and went

^ "Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had something more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man ; but with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of silence." — Pope. {S^ence's Anecdotes).

COIn^GREYE and ADDISON". 83

away charmed from the great king's audience, and cuddling to his heart the compliment which his literary majesty had paid him — each of the two good- natured potentates of letters brought their star and riband into discredit. Everybody had his Majesty's orders. Everybody had liis Majesty's cheap j)ortrait, on a box surrounded with diamonds worth twopence a piece. A very great and just and wise man ought not to praise indiscriminately, but give his idea of the truth. Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Pinkethman : Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Peggott the actor, whose benefit is coming off that night : Addison praises Don Saltero : Addison praises Milton with all his heart, bends liis knee and frankly pays homage to that imperial genius.^ But between those degrees of his men his praise is very scanty. I don't think the great Mr. Addison liked young Mr. Pope, the Papist, much; I don't think he abused him. But when Mr.

^ "Milton's cliief talent, and indeed his distinguisliing excellence lies in the sublimity of his thoughts. There are others of the modem, who rival him in every other part of poetiy ; but in the greatness of his sentiments he triumphs over all tha poets, both modem and ancient, Homer alone excepted. It is impossible for the imagination of man to distvu'b itself with greater ideas than those which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth books." — Spectator, No 279.

" If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one." — Ibid. No. 417.

These famous papers appeared in each Saturday's Spectator, from January 19th to May 3rd, 1712. Besides his services to Milton, we may place those he did to Sacred Music.

G 2

84 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

Addison's men abused Mr. Pope, I don't think Addison took liis pipe out of liis mouth to contradict them.*

Addison's father was a clergyman of good repute in Wiltshire, and rose in the church.^ His famous son never lost his clerical training and scholastic gravity, and was called " a parson in a tye-wig " ^ in London afterwards at a time when tye-wigs were only worn by the laity, and the fathers of theology did not think it

^ "Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards." — Pope {Spence's Anecdotes).

" ' Leave him as soon as you can/ said Addison to me, speaking of Pope; 'he will certainly play you some devilish trick else : he has an appetite to satire.'" — Lady Wortlet Montagu {Spence's Anecdotes).

2 Lancelot Addison, his father, was the son of another Lancelot Addison, a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield and Archdeacon of Coventry.

^ " The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his company, declared that he was 'a parson in a tye-wig,' can detract little from his character. He was always reserved to strangers and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of Mandeville." — Johnson {Lives of the Poets.)

"■ Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison : he had a quarrel with him, and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to say of him — ' One day or other you'll see that man a bishop — I'm sure he looks that way ; and indeed I ever thought him a priest in his heart.'" — Pope {Spence's Anecdotes).

" Mr. Addison staid above a year at Blois. He 'would rise as early as between two and three in the height of summer, and lie a bed till between eleven and twelve in the depth of ^vinter. He was untalkative whilst here, and often thoughtful : sometimes so lost in thought, that I have come into his room and staid five minutes there before he has known anything of it. He had his masters generally at supper with him ; kept very little company beside ; and had no amour whilst too, that I know of ; and I think I should have known it, if he had had any." — Abbe Philippeaux of Blois {Spence's Anecdotes).

CONGREYE AND ADDISON. 85

decent to appear except in a full bottom. Having been at school at Salisbury, and the Charterhouse, in 1687, when he was fifteen years old he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where he speedily began to distinguish himself by the making of Latin verses. The beautiful and fanciful j)oem of " The Pigmies and the Cranes " is still read by lovers of that sort of exercise, and verses are extant in honour of King AYilliam by which it appears that it was the loyal youth's custom to toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyseus ; and many more works are in the Collection, includmg one on the -peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which was so good that Montague got him a pension of 300L a year, on which Addison set out on his travels.

During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at his fingers' ends when he travelled in Italy.* His patron went out of office, and his pension was unpaid : and hearing that this great scholar, now eminent and known to the literati of Europe (the great Boileau,'' upon perusal of Mr. Addison's elegant hexameters, was first made aware that England was not altogether a barbarous nation) — hearing that the

^ " His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus, down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound." — Macaulay.

2 " Our country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing the present he made him of the Musce Angllcance." — Tickell {Preface to Addison's Woi-ks).

86 ENGLISH HTJMOUPJSTS.

celebrated Mr. Addison, of Oxford, proposed to travel as governor to a young gentleman on the grand tour, the great Duke of Somerset proposed to Mr. Addison to accompany his son, Lord Hartford,

Mr. Addison was delighted to be of use to his Grace and his lordship, his Grace's son, and expressed him- self ready to set forth.

His Grace the Duke of Somerset now announced to one of the most famous scholars of Oxford and Europe that it was his gracious intention to allow my Lord Hartford's tutor one hundred guineas per annum. Mr. Addison wrote back that his services were his Grace's, but he by no means found his account in the recompense for them. The negotiation was broken off. They parted with a profusion of congees on one side and the other.

Addison remained abroad for some time, living in the best society of Europe. How could he do otherwise ? He must have been one of the finest gentlemen the world ever saw : at all moments of life serene and courteous, cheerful and calm.* He could scarcely ever have had a degrading thought. He might have omitted a vii'tue or two, or many, but could not have had many faults committed for which he need blush or turn pale.

^ "It was my fate to be much with the wits; my father was acquainted with all of them. Addison was the best company in the world. I never knew anybody that had so much wit as Cougreve." — Lady Wortlet Montaou {Spence's Anecdotes).

CONGKEVE AND ADDISOK 87

When warmed into confidence, his conversation appears to have been so delightful that the greatest wits sate wrapt and charmed to listen to him. No man bore poverty and narrow fortune with a more lofty cheerful- ness. His letters to his friends at this period of his life when he had lost his government pension, and given up his college chances, are full of courage and a gay confidence and philosophy: and they are none the worse in my eyes, and I hope not in those of his last and greatest biogi^apher (though Mr. Macaulay is bound to own and lament a certain weakness for wine, which the great and good Joseph Addison notoriously pos- sessed, in common with countless gentlemen of his time), because some of the letters are written when his honest hand was shaking a little in the morning after libations to purple Lyseus over-night. He was fond of drinking the healths of his friends : he writes to Wyche,'

^ mr, addison to me. wyche. "Dear Sir,

" My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, BO the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done could I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have escaped for ye present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at Crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible for me to express ye deep sense I have of ye many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met with in my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, I dare say it will be thought a very good excuse when

88 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

of Hamburgh, gratefully remembering Wyche's " hoc." " I have been drinking your health to-day with Sir Richard Shirley," he writes to Bathurst. " I have lately had the honour to meet my Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, where we have drunk Mr. Wood's health a hundred times in excellent champagne," he writes again. Swift * describes him over his cups, when Joseph

I tell him Mr. Wycbe was there. As your company made our stay

at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction

that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking

your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long lived

as Methusaleh, or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc

in ye cellar, I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling

behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can't forbear

troubling you with my hearty respects to ye ownei'S of them, and

desiring you to believe me always,

" Dear Sir,

" Yours, &c.

" To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty's Resident at Hambourg,

"May, 1703."

— From the " Life of Addison,'" by Miss Aikin. Vol, i. p. 146.

^ It is pleasing to remember, that the relation between Swift and Addison was, on the whole, satisfactory, from first to last. The value of Swift's testimony, when nothing personal inflamed his vision or warped his judgment, can be doubted by nobody.

"Sept. 10, 1710. — I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele.

'* 11. — Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him part of this evening.

" 18. — To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison's retire- ment near Chelsea I will get what good offices I can from

Mr. Addison.

" 27. — To-day all our company dined at WillFrankland's, with Steele and Addison, too.

" 29. —I dined with Mr. Addison, fee." — Journal to Stella.

Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his Travels '' To Dr.

CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 89

yielded to a temptation wliicli Jonathan resisted. Joseph was of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the fire of wine to warm his hlood. If he was a parson : he wore a tye-wig, recollect, A better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine — why, we could scarcely have found a fault with him, and could not have liked him as we do.^

At thirty-three years of age, this most distinguished wit, scholar, and gentleman was without a profession and an income. His book of " Travels " had failed : his " Dialogues on Medals " had had no particular success : his Latin verses, even though reported the best since Virgil, or Statins at any rate, had not brought him a

Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age." — (Scott. From the information of Mr. Theophilus Swift.)

" Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person ; and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of persons and things." — Letters.

" I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I have nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself." — Swift to Addison (1717). Scott's Swift. Yol. xix. p. 274.

Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly commvmi- cations. Time renewed them ; and Tickell enjoyed Swift's friendship as a legacy from the man with whose memory his is so honourably connected.

^ " Addison usually studied all the morning ; then met his party at Button's ; dined there, and stayed five or six houi-s, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me : it hurt my health, and so I quitted it." — Pope {SpeTic^s Anecdotes).

90 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

Government-place, and Addison was living up two shabby pair of stairs in the Haymarket (in a poverty over which old Samuel Johnson rather chuckles), when in these shabby rooms, an emissary from Government and Fortune came and found him.* A poem was wanted about the Duke of Marlborough's victory of Blenheim. Would Mr. Addison write one ? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton, took back the reply to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, that Mr. Addison would. When the poem had reached a certain stage, it was carried to Godolphin ; and the last lines which he read were these : —

*' But 0, my muse ! wliat numbers wilt thou find To sing the furious trqops in battle join'd? Methinks I hear the drum's tumultouuf? sound, The victor's shouts and dying groans confound ; The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies, And all the thunders of the battle rise. 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved, That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examined all the dreadful scenes of war : In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, To fainting squadrons lent the timely aid, Inspired repulsed battalions to engage. And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. So when an angel by divine command. With rising tempests shakes a guilty land (Such as of late o'er pale Bi'itannia passed). Calm and serene he dxives the furious blast ; And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform. Bides on the whirlwind and directs the storm."

"When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of

CONGREVE AXD ADDIS0:N". 91

Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was pronounced to be of the greatest ever produced in poetry. That angel, that good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and landed him in the place of Commis- sioner of Appeals — vice Mr. Locke providentially promoted. In the follomng year, Mr. Addison went to Hanover with Lord Halifax, and the year after was made Under-Secretary of State. 0 angel visits ! you come " few and far between " to literary gentlemen's lodgings ! Your wings seldom quiver at second-floor windows now !

You laugh ? You think it is in the power of few writers now-a-days to call up such an angel ? Well perhaps not; but permit us to comfort ourselves by pointing out that there are in the poem of the " Campaign" some as bad lines as heart can desire : and to hint that Mr. Addison did very wisely in not going- further with my Lord Godolphin than that angelical simile. Do allow me, just for a little harmless mischief, to read you some of the lines which follow. Here is the interview between the Duke and the King of the Romans after the battle : —

" Austria's young monarch, whose imperial sway Sceptres and thrones are destined to obey,

appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was, there- fore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind." — Johnson {Lives of the Poets).

92 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

Whose boasted ancestry so higli extends That in the pagan Gods his lineage ends, Comes from afar, in gratitude to own The great supporter of his father's throne. What tides of glory to his bosom ran Clasped in th' embraces of the godlike man ! How were his eyes with pleasing wonder fixt, To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt ! Such easy greatness, such a graceful port, So learned and finished for the camp or court I "

How many fourtli-form boys at Mr. Addison's school of Charter-house could write as well as that now ? The " Campaign " has blunders, triumphant as it was ; and weak points like all campaigns.'

In the year 1718 " Cato " came out. Swift has left a description of the first night of the performance. All the laurels of Europe were scarcely sufficient for the author of this prodigious poem.^ Laudations of Whig

^ " Mr. Addison wrote very fluently ; but he was sometimes very slow and scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several friends ; and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself; and too much concerned about his character as a poet ; or (as he worded it), too solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very little matter after all !" — Pope {Spence's Anecdotes).

2 "As to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "lam content at

present to be a bare looker-on Cato was not so much the

wonder of Eome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours ; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion :

"'Envy itself is dumb — in wonder lost;

And factions strive who shall applaud him most.'

''The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one

CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 93

and Tory chiefs, popular ovations, complimentary garlands from literary men, translations in all languages, delight and homage from all — save from John Dennis in a minority of one — Mr. Addison was called the " great Mr. Addison" after this. The Coffee- house Senate saluted him Divus : it was heresy to question that decree.

Meanwhile he was writing political i)a]3ers and

side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other ; while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find

their applause proceeding more from the hands than the head

I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgment (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator." — Pope's Letter to Sir W. Trumbull.

Cato ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue.

It is worth noticing how many things in Cato keep their ground as habitual quotations, e. g, : — ■

" . . . . big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome."

*' Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."

" Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury."

" 1 think the Romans call it Stoicism."

" My voice is still for war."

" When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,

The post of honour is a private station."

Not to mention —

" The woman who deliberates is lost."

And the eternal —

" Plato, thou reasonest well,"

which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play !

94 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

advancing in the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1717. And letters of liis are extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written to young Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him as " my dearest lord," and asks affectionately about his studies, and writes very prettily about nightingales, and birds' -nests, which he has found at Fulham for his lordship. Those nightin- gales were intended to warble in the ear of Lord Warwick's mamma. Addison married her ladyship in 1716 ; and died at Holland House three years after that splendid but dismal union. ^

^ " The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused, — to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, * Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.' The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness ; it neither found them, nor made

them, equal Rowe's ballad of 'The Despairing Shepherd' is

said to have been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable pair." — Dr. Johnson.

" I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. At that time he declined it, and I really believe that he would have done well to have declined it now. Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both." — Lady Wortlet Montagu TO Pope. Woi-Jcs, Lord Wharncliffe's edit., vol. ii. p. 111.

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who inherited, on her mother's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her father had purchased, and died, unmarried, at an advanced age. She was of weak intellect.

Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship, for his Collection contains * Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on

CONGEE YE AIN'D ADDISON". 95

But it is not for liis reputation as the great author of "Cato" and the " Campaign," or for his merits as Secre- tary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as my Lady AVarwick's husband, or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Sj^ec- tator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow ; the kind judge who castigated only in smilmg. While Swift went about, hanging and ruthless — a literary Jeffries — in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried : only peccadilloes and small sins against society : only a

Mr. Addison's going to Ireland,' in which her ladyship is called ' Chloe,' and Joseph Addison, ' Lycidas ; ' besides the ballad mentioned by the Doctor, and which is entitled ' Colin's Complaint.' But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a specimen : —

"What though I have skill to complain — Though the Muses my temples have crowned ; What though, when they hear my sweet strain, The Muses sit weeping aroimd.

" Ah, Colin ! thy hopes are in vain ; Thy pipe and thy laurel resign ; Thy false one inclines to a swain Whose music is sweeter than thine."

96 ENGLISH HUMOITRISTS.

dangerous libertinism in tuckers and lioops ; * or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux' canes and snuff-boxes.

1 One of the most humorous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the "Spectator" tells us, particularly pleased his friend Sir Roger.

"Mr. Spectator,

"You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the country ; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagancies. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more ; in short, Sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the Spectator, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their head-dresses ; for as the humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure.

" The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are very airy and very proper for the season ; but this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather ; besides, I would fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their mothers before them 1

" I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of out-works and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whale-bone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etlieridge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops.

"Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers who look upon the hoop -petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some

CONGEE VE AND ADDISON. 97

It may be a lady is tried for breaking the peace of our sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too danger- ously from the side-box : or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian's head : or a citizen's wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too Httle for her husband and children : every one of the little sinners brought before him is amusmg, and he dis- misses each with the pleasantest penalties and the most charming words of admonition.

Addison wrote his papers as gaily as if he was going out for a hoHday. "When Steele's " Tatler " first began his prattle, Addison, then in Ireland, caught at his friend's notion, poured in paper after paper, and con- tributed the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanmgs of his daily observa- tion, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed an almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thii'ty years old: full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his brain, manurmg hastily, subsoiling indif- ferently, cutting and sowing and cutting agam, like other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much as yet ; a few Latin poems — graceful prolusions ;

will have it that it portends the downfall of the French king, and observes, that the farthingale appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and blood-shed, and believe it of the same prognosti- cation as the tail of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think that it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world rather than going out of it," &c. kc— Spectator, No. 127.

H

98 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

a polite book of travels ; a dissertation on medals, not very deep ; four acts of a tragedy, a great classical exercise ; and the " Campaign," a large prize poem that won an enormous prize. But with his friend's discovery of the " Tatler," Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful tallver in the world began to speak. He does not go very deep : let gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he couldn't go very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night's rest or his day's tranquillity about any woman in his life : * whereas poor Dick Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and to cry his honest old ejes out, for a dozen. His writmgs do not show insight into or reverence for the love of women, which I take to be, one the consequence of the other. He walks about the world watchmg their pretty humours, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries ; and noting them with the most charming archness. He sees them in public, in the theatre, or the assembly, or the puppet-show; or at the toy- shop higgling for gloves and lace ; or at the

^ " Mr. Addison has not liad one epitbalamium that I can hear of, and must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his own." — Pope's Letters.

CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 99

auction, battling together over a blue porcelain dragon, or a darling monster in Japan ; or at church, eyeing the width of their rivals' hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep down the aisles. Or he looks out of liis window at the Garter in St. James's Street, at Ardeha's coach, as she blazes to the dra-wdng-room with her coronet and six footmen ; and remembering that her father was a Turkey merchant in the city, cal- culates how many sponges went to purchase her earring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box ; or he demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women. Addison was one of the most resolute club- men of his day. He passed many hours daily in those haunts. Besides drinking, which alas ! is past praj^mg for ; you must know it, he owned, too, ladies, that he indulged in that odious practice of smoking. Poor fellow ! He was a man's man, remember. The only woman he did know, he didn't write about. I take it there would not have been much humour in that story. He lilves to go and sit in the smoking-room at the Grecian, or the Devil; to pace 'Change and the Mair — to mingle in that great club of the world — sitting alone

^ " I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor; with

H 2

100 ENGLISH HUMOUEISTS.

in it somehow: having good-will and kindness for every single man and woman in it — having need of

otlier particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings ; and shall give some account in them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my

own history There runs a story in the family, that when

my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine ; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favour my mother's dream ; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it. "As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my nonage I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always the favourite of my schoolmastei', who used to say that my parts xoere solid and would wear icell. I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence ; for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words ; and indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole

life

" I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not more than half-a-dozen

of my select friends that know me There is no place of general

resort wherein I do not often make my appearance ; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Wills', and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the

CONGREVE AND ADDISON". 101

some habit and custom binding him to some few ; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong to hint a little doubt about a man's parts, and to damn him with faint praise) ; and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humours of all of us — laughs the kindest laugh — points our neighbour's foible or eccentricity out to us with the most good-natured, smiling confidence ; and then, turning over his shoulder, whispers our foibles to our neighbour. What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and his charming little brain-cracks ? * If the good knight did not call out to the iDeople sleeping in church, and say " Amen "

conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Tuesday night at St, James's Coffee-house; and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa-tree, and in the theatres both of Drury-lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these two years ; and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's. In short, whei-ever I see a cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club.

" Thus I live in the world rather as a ' Spectator'' of mankind than as one of the species ; by which means I have made myself a specu- lative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever meddling in any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who are engaged in them — as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those

who are in the game In short, I have acted, in all the parts

of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper." — Spectator, No. 1.

^ " So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark of a fool." — Macau lay.

102 E:t^GLISH HUMOURISTS.

with sucli a delightful pomposity : if he did not make a speech in the assize-court apropos cle hottes, and merely to show his dignity to Mr. Spectator : * if he did not mistake Madam Doll Tearsheet for a lady of quality in Temple Garden : if he were wiser than he is : if he had not his humour to salt his life, and were but a mere English gentleman and game -preserver — of what worth were he to us ? We love him for his vanities as much as his virtues. What is ridiculous is delightful in him : we are so fond of him because we laugh at him so. And out of that laughter, and out of that sweet weakness, and out of those harmless eccentricities and follies, and out of that touched brain, and out of that honest manhood and

^ " The Court was sat before Sir Roger came ; but, notwithstanding all the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room for the old knight at the head of them ; who for his reputation in the country took occasion to whisper in the judge's ear that he was glad hu lordship had met icith so much good weather in his circuit. I was listening to the proceedings of the Court with much attention, and infinitelj^ pleased with that great appearance and solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our laws ; when, after about an hour's sitting, I observe to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was getting i;p to speak. I was in some pain for him, till I found he had acquitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much business and great intrepidity,

" Upon his first rising the Court was hushed, and a general whisper ran among the country people that Sir Roger was up. The speech he made was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an account of it, and I believe was not so much designed by the knight himself to inform the Court, as to give him a figure in my eyes, and to keep up his credit in the country." — Spectator, No. 122.

CONGEE VE AND ADDISON. 103

simplicity — we get a result of happiness, goodness, tenderness, pity, piety; such as, if my audience will think their reading and hearing over, doctors and divines but seldom have the fortune to inspire. And why not ? Is the glory of Heaven to be sung only by gentlemen in black coats ? Must the truth be only expounded in gown and surplice, and out of those two vestments can nobody preach it ? Commend me to this dear preacher without orders — this parson in the tye-wig. When this man looks from the world whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, up to the Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up with a more serene rapture : a human intellect thrilhng with a purer love and adora- tion than Joseph Addison's. Listen to him : from your childhood you have known the verses : but who can hear their sacred music without love and awe ?

" Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth, Repeats the story of her birth ; And all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll. And spread the truth from pole to pole. What though, in solemn silence, all Move round this dark terrestrial ball ; What though no real voice nor sound, Among their radiant orbs be found ; In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, For ever singing as they shine. The hand that made us is divine."

104 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. They shine out of a great deep cahn. When he turns to Heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man's mind : and his face lights up from it with a glory of thanks and praj^er. His sense of religion stirs through his whole being. In the fields, in the town : looking at the birds in the trees : at the children in the streets : in the morning or in the moonlight : over his books in his own room : in a happy party at a country merry- making or a town assembly, good-will and peace to God's creatures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill his pure heart and shine from his kind face. If Swift's life was the most wretched, I think Addison's was one of the most enviable. A life prosperous and beautiful — a calm death — an immense fame and affec- tion afterwards for his happy and spotless name.^

^ " Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his death-bed, to ask him whether the Christian religion was true." — Dr. Young {Spence's Anecdotes).

" I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I con- sider as an act, the former as an habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject to the greatest depression of melancholy : on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladnesss, prevents us from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of light- ning that breaks throvigh a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment ; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity." — Addison {Spectator, p. 381.)

LECTURE THE THIRD.

STEELE.

"What do we look for in studying the history of a past age ? Is it to learn the political transactions and characters of the leading public men ? is it to make ourselves acquainted with the life and being of the time ? If we set out with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has it entke ? What character of what great man is known to you ? You can but make guesses as to character more or less happy. In common life don't you often judge and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression ? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behaviour — the cut of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion ; or at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend sajs something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a different

106 ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

motive to that Avliich 3^011 fancied you knew. And if it is so with those you know, how much more with those you don't know ? Say, for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of Marlborough. I read Swift's history of the times in which he took a part ; the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age — he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubt- ful military capacity : he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the Pre- tender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best infor- mation ; and I get little or no insight into this secret motive which I believe influenced the whole of Marl- borough's career, which caused his turnings and wind- ings, his opportune fidelity and treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed him finally on the Hanoverian side — the winning side ; I get, I say, no truth or only a portion of it in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Cox's portrait or Swift's portrait is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take this as a single instance, prepared to be as sceptical about any other, and say to the Muse of History, " 0 vener- able daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single statement you ever made since j^our ladyship was a

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Muse ! For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look down. You bid me listen to a general's oration to his soldiers. Nonsense ! He no more made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You pronounce a panegyric of a hero ; I doubt it, and say you flatter outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character ; I doubt it, and think you are prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an autobiography ; I doubt all autobiographies I ever read except those, perhaps, of Mr. Eobinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class. These have no object in setting them- selves right with the public or their own consciences, these have no motive for concealment or half truths, these call for no more confidence than I can cheerfully give, and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the " Spectator," and say the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time ; of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of societ}' — the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me ?

As we read in these delightful volumes of the " Tatler"

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and " Spectator," the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is revivified. The May- pole rises in the Strand again in London ; the churches are thronged with daily worshippers ; the beaux are gathering in the coffee-houses — the gentry are going to the Drawing- room — the ladies are thronging to the toy- shops — the chairmen are jostling in the streets — the footmen are running with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre doors. In the country I see the young Squire riding to Eton with his servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of the family, to see him safe. To make that journey from the Squire's and back. Will is a week on horseback. The coach takes five days between London and the Bath. The judges and the bar ride the circuit. If my lady comes to town in her post- chariot, her people carry pistols to fire a salute on Captain Macheath if he should appear, and her couriers ride a-head to prepare apartments for her at the great caravanserais on the road ; Boniface receives her under the creaking sign of the Bell or the Ram, and he and his chamberlains bow her up the great stair to the state -apartments, whilst her carriage rumbles into the court-yard, where the Exeter Fly is housed that performs the journey in eight days God willing, having achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its passengers for supper and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe in the kitchen, where the Captain's man — having hung up his master's half pike

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— is at his bacon and eggs, bragging of Ramillies and Malplaquet to the town's -folk, who have their chib in the chimney-corner. The Captain is ogling the chambermaid in the wooden gallery, or bribing her to know who is the pretty young mistress that has come in the coach ? The pack-horses are in the great stable, and the drivers and ostlers carousing in the tap. And in Mrs. Landlady's bar, over a glass of strong waters, sits a gentleman of military appearance who travels with pistols, as all the rest of the world does, and has a rattling grey mare in the stables which will be saddled and away with its owner half-an-hour before the " Fly " sets out on its last day's flight. And some five miles on the road, as the Exeter Fly comes jingling and creaking onwards, it will suddenly be brought to a halt by a gentleman on a grey mare, with a black vizard on his face, who thrusts a long pistol into the coach- window, and bids the company to hand out their purses. ... It must have been no small pleasure even to sit in the gTeat kitchen in those days and see the tide of human kind pass by. We arrive at places now, but we travel no more. Addison talks jocularly of a difference of manner and costume being quite per- ceivable at Staines, where there passed a young fellow " with a very tolerable periwig," though to be sure his hat was out of fashion, and had a Eamillies cock. I would have liked to travel in those days (being of that class of travellers who are proverbially pretty easy

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coram latro7iibus) and have seen my friend with the grey mare and the hlack vizard. Alas ! there always came a da}^ in the life of that warrior when it was the fashion to accompany him as he passed — without his black mask, and with a nosegay in his hand, accompanied by halberdiers and attended by the sheriff, — in a carriage without springs, and a clergyman jolting beside him to a spot close by Cumberland-gate and the Marble Arch, where a stone still records that here Tybm-n turnpike stood. What a change in a century ; in a few years ! Within a few yards of that gate the fields began : the fields of his exploits, behind the hedges of which he lurked and robbed. A great and wealthy city has grown over those meadows. Were a man brought to die there now, the windows would be closed and the inhabitants keep theii' houses in sickening horror. A hundred years back, people crowded to see that last act of a highwayman's Hfe, and make jokes on it. Swift laughed at him, grimly advising him to pro- vide a Holland shirt and white cap crowned with a crimson or black ribbon for his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully — shake hands with the hangman, and so — farewell. Gay wrote the most delightful ballads and made merry over the same hero. Contrast these with the writings of our present humourists ! Compare those morals and ours — those manners and ours !

We can't tell — you would not bear to be told the whole truth regarding those men and manners. You

STEELE. Ill

could no more suffer iii a British drawing-room, under the reign of Queen Victoria, a fine gentleman or fine lady of Queen Anne's time, or hear what they heard and said, than you would receive an ancient Briton. It is as one reads about savages, that one contemplates the wild ways, the barbarous feasts, the terrific pas- times, of the men of pleasure of that age. AVe have our fine gentlemen, and our "fast men;" permit me to give you an idea of one particularly fast nobleman of Queen Anne's days, whose biography has been preserved to us by the law reporters.

In 1691, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun was tried by his peers for the mui'der of William Mountford, comedian. In "Howell's State- Trials," the reader will find not only an edifying account of this exceedingly fast nobleman, but of the times and manners of those days. My lord's friend, a Captain Hill, smitten -^ith the charms of the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, determined to carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney-coach with six horses, and a half-dozen of soldiers, to aid him in the storm. The coach with a pair of horses (the four leaders being in waitmg elsewhere) took its station opposite my Lord Craven's house in Drury-lane, by which door Mrs. Bracegirdle was to pass on her way from the theatre. As she passed in company of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the Captam seized her by the hand, the

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soldiers hustled Mr. Page and attacked liim sword in hand, and Captain Hill and his noble friend endea- voured to force Madam Bracegirdle into the coach. Mr, Page called for help : the population of Drury-lane rose : it was impossible to effect the capture ; and bidding the soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off. Hill let go of his prey sulkily, and he waited for other opportunities of revenge. The man of whom he was most jealous was Will Mountford, the come- dian ; Will removed, he thought Mrs. Bracegirdle might be his : and accordingly the Captain and his lordship lay that night in wait for Will, and as he was coming out of a house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in talk. Hill, in the words of the Attorney- General, made a pass and run him clean through the body.

Sixty-one of my lord's peers finding him not guilty of murder, while