Part 1

Chapter 13,656 wordsPublic domain

ANTICIPATION

BY RICHARD TICKELL

Reprinted from the First Edition, London, 1778 With an Introduction, Notes & a Bibliography of Tickell’s Writings

BY L. H. BUTTERFIELD

_NEW YORK_ King’s Crown Press, Morningside Heights 1942

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

KZ-19-VB-500

_King’s Crown Press is a division of Columbia University Press organized for the purpose of making certain scholarly material available at minimum cost. Toward that end, the publishers have adopted every reasonable economy except such as would interfere with a legible format. The work is presented substantially as submitted by the author, without the usual editorial attention of Columbia University Press._

_To C. J. F. B._

FOREWORD

Some years ago a literary investigator came into my office and inquired whether he could find a copy of Richard Tickell’s _Anticipation_ in our library. He was thinking of sending to the British Museum for a photostatic copy, in case we could not supply his need. We were able to reply that we had sixteen editions of this book—ten of them printed in the year 1778 alone. Now publishers do not re-issue a book unless someone is reading it. The number of reprints induced me to read the book, and I found it one of the best of eighteenth-century satires on the ponderous serio-comic addresses delivered in what is still pleased to call itself the M-th-r of P-rl—m-nts. Though Mr. Butterfield has restrained himself in the matter of drawing parallels between the bumbling follies of that legislative conclave, then and now, yet the writer of a foreword may be permitted to do so.

In the summer of 1941, I received in the mail a pamphlet, in an envelope which bore a Chinese postage stamp and the postmark of Shanghai. The pamphlet was one of the familiar blue-covered fascicles which we all recognize as the format of the _Parliamentary Debates_. This particular fascicle purported to contain the debate for August 15, 1941, and was typographically exact, even to the reproduction of the arms of H-s Br-t-nn-c M-j-sty on the cover. An examination revealed it to be the twentieth-century parallel of Tickell’s _Anticipation_—a satiric report of the debates in the H—s- of C-mm-ns as of 1941. It was obvious German propaganda, but so well done typographically that I found some of my learned colleagues had read a part of it before it dawned on them that the whole thing was analogous to Tickell’s _Anticipation_. But let no American be complacent about the failure of the H—s- of C-mm-ns to progress during the intervening one hundred and sixty-three years. Let him dip into our own _C-ngr-ss—n-l R-c-rd_.

Mr. Butterfield and the publisher could have chosen no more appropriate time than the present at which to issue the twentieth-century edition of this book. It ought to be read by all students of American history—elementary and advanced.

RANDOLPH G. ADAMS

The W. L. Clements Library Ann Arbor

EDITOR’S FOREWORD

This is the first reprint since 1822 of a politico-literary satire that delighted a generation of readers during and after the American War of Independence. It has seemed to the editor, and to others who encouraged the project, that the neglect of _Anticipation_ has been due less to its want of interest than to the want of a properly edited reprint. The mere presence in it of so many names with deleted letters has discouraged later readers.[1] The present volume provides an account of the author and of the setting and reception of _Anticipation_, an accurate text, explanatory notes, and a bibliography of Tickell’s writings.

_Anticipation_ was written and printed hastily; and the spelling (especially of proper names), the punctuation, and sometimes even the grammar are erratic. But since it has proved impossible to distinguish the carelessness of the printer from that of the author, I have followed the first issue literally except when corrections were available in the following later ones: “The Third Edition, Corrected,” which appeared within a week of first publication; “The Tenth Edition, Corrected,” 1780, which was the last published during Tickell’s life; and “A New Edition, Corrected,” 1794, a re-issue occasioned, probably, by Tickell’s death and set from new type. Two or three flagrant errors (e.g., the name “Bonille” for “Bouillé” at p. 59) and a few typographical absurdities (such as quotation marks without mates) recur in all the London issues. These I have corrected without warrant from any text.

It should be stated that in the Introduction I have usually not cited sources for dates and other biographical details when the sources are correctly given in W. Fraser Rae’s article on Tickell in _The Dictionary of National Biography_. Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication of all works cited is London.

A great many friends have contributed to the making of this book, and almost as many librarians in the United States and England have aided my researches for it. Some special debts I wish to record here. Randolph G. Adams, Director of the William L. Clements Library at Ann Arbor, Julian P. Boyd, Librarian of Princeton University, and Professor George Sherburn of Harvard have read my manuscript and given me helpful advice. W. S. Lewis, Esq., of Farmington, Connecticut, kindly allowed me to quote from notes written by Horace Walpole in a copy of _Anticipation_ now in Mr. Lewis’ collection of Walpoliana; Richard Eustace Tickell, Esq., of London, sent me useful material from the Tickell family papers; Mrs. Flora V. Livingston and Mr. William Van Lennep, curators, respectively, of the Widener Collection and the Theatre Collection in the Harvard College Library, allowed me to quote from manuscript letters in their charge; the New York Public Library gave me permission to reproduce the title-page that precedes the text. For aid in preparing the Bibliography of Tickell’s Writings I am most indebted to Mr. John D. Gordan of the New York Public Library, who read and ably criticized it; to Miss Anne S. Pratt of the Yale University Library, and Mr. Frederick R. Goff of the Library of Congress, who answered numerous bibliographical inquiries; to the Union Catalog in the Library of Congress and its staff; and to the admirable _Bibliotheca Americana_, begun by Joseph Sabin, continued by Wilberforce Eames, and then completed by R. W. G. Vail, New York, 1868-1937. The services of Herbert B. Anstaett, Librarian of Franklin and Marshall College, have been so various, constant, and indispensable that they deserve my most sincere thanks. No thanks, however, can be adequate for the devoted work and interest bestowed on the preparation of this book, from beginning to end, by my wife.

* * * * *

I am grateful also to the following publishers for permission to quote from the books named: The Clarendon Press, Oxford, for _Boswell’s Life of Johnson_ edited by George Birkbeck Hill, revised and enlarged edition by L. F. Powell; _The Letters of Horace Walpole_ edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee; and _Satirical Poems Published Anonymously by William Mason with Notes by Horace Walpole_ edited by Paget Toynbee. Constable and Company, Ltd., for _Sheridan: From New and Original Material_ by Walter Sichel. Henry Holt and Company for _Sheridan: A Biography_ by W. Fraser Rae. The Huntington Library for _The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe 1776-1778_, edited by Edward H. Tatum, Jr. Hutchinson and Company, Ltd., for _The Farington Diary_ by Joseph Farington, R.A., edited by James Greig. John Lane, the Bodley Head, Ltd., for _The Last Journals of Horace Walpole during the Reign of George III from 1771-1783_ edited by A. Francis Steuart. The Macmillan Company for _The Writings of Benjamin Franklin_ edited by Albert Henry Smyth. John Murray for _Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (1753-1794)_ edited by Rowland E. Prothero. Martin Secker and Warburg, Ltd., for _The Linleys of Bath_ by Clementina Black. The Viking Press, Inc., for _The Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle_ as originally published in a limited edition by William Rudge and to be published in an unlimited edition by The Viking Press, Inc., under the editorship of Professor Frederick A. Pottle.

L. H. B.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania March 1941

[1] In the present text deleted letters are supplied within square brackets. Originally the use of blanks and asterisks in names of persons was a means of avoiding libel actions. One should never print a man’s name out at length, said Swift in _The Importance of the Guardian Considered_, 1713; “but, as I do, that of Mr. St—le: so that, although everybody alive knows whom I mean, the plaintiff can have no redress in any court of justice.” This was such an easy way to add piquancy to defamation that it became conventional in satire. In 1778 the reviewer of an anti-ministerial poem called _The Conquerors_ observed that the work seemed “designed for the perusal of astronomers; there are more _stars_ in it than the galaxy contains” (_The Critical Review_, XLV, 150).

CONTENTS

PAGE

FOREWORD _by Randolph G. Adams_ vii

EDITOR’S FOREWORD ix

INTRODUCTION 3

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 17

ANTICIPATION 21

NOTES 67

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TICKELL’S WRITINGS 85

He was the happiest of any occasional writer in his day: happy alike in the subject and in the execution of it.—I mention with pleasure _Anticipation_, the _Wreath of Fashion_, &c. &c. &c. and I wish to preserve the name and remembrance of such a man as Mr. Tickell. Poets and ingenious men, who write on occasional subjects with great ability, are too often lost in the most undeserved oblivion. But we must recollect, that even such a poem as “The Absalom and Achitophel” of Dryden himself (perhaps his greatest production) was but _occasional_, and written _for a party_.⸺_The Pursuits of Literature_, 5th edition, 1798

INTRODUCTION

_1_

Early in 1778 a new satirical poet caused a flutter in the polite circles of London. Within a few weeks of one another two poems, _The Project_ and _The Wreath of Fashion_, were issued by Becket, the bookseller of the Adelphi in the Strand. Though anonymous, their author was soon known to be a young barrister named Richard Tickell. _The Project_ treats of a scheme overlooked by the Academy of Projectors which Captain Gulliver visited in the course of his third voyage. In deft octosyllabics the satirist proposes applying Montesquieu’s discovery of the effect of climate on character to the problem of the parliamentary Opposition:

Suppose the Turks, who now agree It wou’d _fatigue_ them to be free, Should build an ice-house, to debate More _cooly_ on affairs of state, Might not some Mussulmen be brought, To brace their minds, nor shrink at thought?

Surely the philosophers are right who have reasoned that England’s northern air is accountable for Englishmen’s love of liberty, and many a question has been lost by Administration from Parliament’s meeting in cold weather. An obvious solution would be to alter the season of meeting:

But ah, what honest squire would stay To make his _speech_, instead of _hay_? The _Beaux_ would scarcely think of law, To give up _Scarborough_ or _Spa’_: And say ye _sportsmen_, wou’d a member Attend _St. Stephen’s_ in September?

The poet’s more feasible plan is a better mode of heating the Parliament buildings. He suggests that in each House, replacing the table where votes, journals, and mace are laid, a vast “_Buzaglo_”[1] be set up; that is, an open fire of intense heat, over which a Fire Committee should preside with a fuel supply of seditious tracts—_Junius_, _Common Sense_, and the works of Tucker and Price. Such a device will mollify the most inveterate foes of Administration:

From bench to bench, in spite of gout, The soften’d _Chatham_ moves about: “My good _Lord Sandwich_, how d’ye do? I like the speech; ’twas penn’d by you. America has gone too far; We must support so just a war.”

The reviewers were delighted with the poem, so distinguished by its good nature and wit amid the current tide of party polemics. The connoisseur in Horace Walpole was stronger than his Whiggism, and he found _The Project_ excellent.[2] Dr. Johnson, who disapproved of flippancy in politics, dissented. At a dinner party at Sir Joshua Reynolds’ on the 25th of April, Dr. Samuel Musgrave, the learned editor of Euripides, read the new poem. Johnson was not amused. “A temporary poem always entertains us,” urged Musgrave. “So,” replied Johnson, “does an account of the criminals hanged yesterday entertain us.”[3]

Rather ungratefully, Tickell followed up his reception as a poet in the circles of _ton_ with a satire on one of society’s most conspicuous foibles. _The Wreath of Fashion, or, the Art of Sentimental Poetry_, said _The Critical Review_ in its notice, “is levelled at the same vice in the poetical world, at which the School for Scandal was aimed in the theatrical and moral worlds,—at the present fashionable strain of sentimental whining.”[4] It was an age of rhyming peers. Tickell declared in the preface that he was prompted to write his satire by reading a recent volume by a noble author (whom he did not name but who was the Earl of Carlisle, Byron’s “Lord, rhymester, petit-maître, pamphleteer”) containing one ode on the death of Mr. Gray and two on the death of his lordship’s spaniel. In _The Wreath of Fashion_ Tickell deplored, with Sheridan, the vogue of tearful comedies and gently rebuked the inanities of newspaper poets. His chief ridicule was reserved for the poetic salon of Mrs. “Calliope” Miller at Batheaston, where the quality from Bath wrote _bouts-rimés_ about buttered muffins and the like, dropped them into a classic vase, and applauded the winners crowned by Mrs. Miller with wreaths of myrtle.[5] Over these rites of poetic sensibility, said the satirist, the goddess Fashion presides, and thus she must be supplicated:

On a spruce pedestal of _Wedgwood ware_, Where motley forms, and tawdry emblems glare, Behold she consecrates to cold applause, A Petrefaction, work’d into a _Vase_: The Vase of Sentiment!—to this impart Thy kindred coldness, and congenial art.... With votive song, and tributary verse, Fashion’s gay train her gentle rites rehearse. What soft poetic incense breathes around! What soothing hymns from Adulation sound!

_The Wreath of Fashion_ went through a half-dozen editions. David Garrick wrote a puff for it in _The Monthly Review_ in which he ventured to prophesy that “elegant poetry, refined satire, and exquisite irony” would be revived by the new author;[6] and Samuel Rogers, belated Augustan that he was, always remembered _The Wreath_ as an early favorite.[7]

_2_

Who was the new poet? The turn of his couplets and the delicate barbs of his satire suggested a poetic school then growing outmoded. There were those who, when they learned his name, remembered his grandfather, Thomas Tickell, a poet of Queen Anne’s day and the particular friend of Mr. Addison. Thomas Tickell (1685-1740) served as Addison’s Under-Secretary of State and retained his post under Craggs and Carteret. In 1724, when Carteret became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Tickell was sent to Dublin as Secretary to the Lords Justices. There were cordial relations between Dublin Castle and the Deanery of St. Patrick’s, and a circle of friends that included Swift, the Delanys, Lord Orrery, and Dr. Sheridan maintained in Dublin an outpost of Augustan literary society. In this propitious atmosphere John Tickell, eldest son of Thomas and father of Richard, our poet, was born in 1729 and grew up to take his place among the Dublin _virtuosi_. But he had a volatile character and fell into a train of misadventures and difficulties. In 1748 he made a runaway marriage with Esther (or Hester) Pierson, and children to the number of six followed in rapid succession.[8] At length he became disastrously involved in Anglo-Irish politics while serving on the court side as a magistrate after the Dublin riots in December 1759.[9] His conduct on this occasion, though its precise nature is not clear, excited such indignation that he was obliged to leave Dublin. In 1765, according to information in the Tickell family papers, his mother purchased for him a civil appointment at Windsor Castle; but some years later, like other indigent Englishmen at that period, he went to live on the Continent and disappeared from sight.

Richard, the second son of John Tickell, is usually said to have been born at Bath in 1751, but neither the place nor the date can be verified. He and his elder brother Thomas were briefly at Westminster School (from 19 June 1764); when their father went to Windsor Castle, they were transferred to Eton (29 May 1765); three years later Richard proceeded to the Middle Temple (8 November 1768).[10] Having in due time been called to the bar, he was, about the beginning of 1777, appointed by Lord Chancellor Bathurst a commissioner of bankrupts. However, as a contemporary biographer remarked, law was not to Tickell’s taste; “his disposition was too volatile and desultory for that study.”[11] In April or May 1778 he was removed from his post. Doubtless his courtship of the muses had been at the expense of the law, for his fellow-commissioners had complained of his absences. Tickell turned in his distress to his most influential friend, David Garrick, who at once interceded for him with the Lord Chancellor, by way of Lady Bathurst.[12] Garrick obtained from Bathurst a promise of reinstatement, but in June Bathurst was succeeded by Edward Thurlow, and Garrick had to begin all over again. His further attempts met with no success. “I am sorry we were both so unsuccessful in our Schems with the present Chancellor,” Garrick was informed by Lady Bathurst on the 25th of July; “I do assure you I did my part for Mʳ Tickle but I find he has enemies who flung cold water on my solicitations.”[13] The news plunged Tickell into despair.

But Fortune is capricious, and at this moment Tickell made the acquaintance of one who was even closer than Garrick to the springs of patronage. This was William Brummell, whose only claim to remembrance today is the fact that he had a very famous son, but who appears in late eighteenth-century memoirs as an able backstairs politician and private secretary to Lord North. Brummell, we are informed by the _Biographia Dramatica_, “conceived a strong friendship for our author, and patronised him with a generosity and warmth that did him honour.”[14] With the approval and perhaps at the instigation of Lord North, Tickell was at once set to work on a secret and important project. On the 7th of November he wrote Garrick pleading to be excused from writing a prologue that had been requested of him:

You may be assured Mr. Garrick’s wishes shall always have the force of commands with me; but when I acquaint you that at present ... I am employed in a work that may make or mar my fortune, I can scarcely think you would wish to interrupt my attention to it.[15]

On Monday the 23rd of that month, three days before Parliament met for the new session, Becket announced the publication of a work entitled “_ANTICIPATION_, Containing the Substance of his M⸻y’s most gracious Speech to both H⸺s of P⸻t, on the Opening of the approaching Session. Together with a full and authentic account of the Debate in the H⸺ of C⸻, that will take place on the motion for the address and amendment.” On Tuesday night Edward Gibbon wrote his friend Holroyd:

You sometimes complain that I do not send you early news; but you will now be satisfied with receiving a full and true account of all the parliamentary transactions of _next_ Thursday. In town we think it an excellent piece of humour (the author is one Tickell). Burke and C. Fox are pleased with their own Speaches, but serious Patriots groan that such things should be turned to farce.[16]

Horace Walpole, though unable to deny the wit of _Anticipation_, was among those who thought its jocularity ill-timed. Said he:

The drollery of the pamphlet was congenial with the patron: a very unprosperous and disgraceful civil war, just heightened by a bloody proclamation of Sir Henry Clinton, and accompanied by a war with France, was not a very decent moment for joking![17]

_3_

No one in any party was disposed to deny the seriousness of the moment. The preceding twelve months, as some were then aware, had proved the turning-point in the war with America. The threat of French aggression following Burgoyne’s defeat had transformed Britain’s war of subjugation into one of defence. After a comfortable winter in Philadelphia, without having struck a blow at the inferior American forces at Valley Forge, Sir William Howe was ordered to evacuate that city lest it be cut off by a French fleet. Englishmen at home could still cling to the official view, held by George III and expressed by Lord North in _Anticipation_, that most Americans, if given a chance to choose, would prefer conciliation with England to an upstart democracy and an “unnatural connection” with France. But those on the spot saw that the hope of affording Americans such a chance was now dashed. At Philadelphia Admiral Lord Howe’s secretary wrote in his journal on the 22nd of May:

I now look upon the Contest as at an End. No man can be expected to declare for us, when he cannot be assured of a Fortnight’s Protection. Every man, on the contrary, whatever might have been his primary Inclinations, will find it his Interest to oppose & drive us out of the Country.[18]

Two days later General Howe set sail for England and left Sir Henry Clinton to evacuate the troops in June. The incompetence or treachery of an American officer, Charles Lee, saved Clinton’s regiments from severe losses as they crossed New Jersey. After their arrival within the fortifications around New York, the British held not a square mile elsewhere on the mainland of the northern and middle colonies.

The summer was occupied with raids by British irregulars on the Pennsylvania and New York frontier and a series of inconclusive feints and chases between Admirals Howe and D’Estaing. In September Howe resigned his command and followed his brother home to England. Deeply disgruntled with Administration, the Howes joined General Burgoyne in efforts to obtain satisfaction from Parliament. The Whigs, hoping for disclosures embarrassing to the government, at once took up the cause of the commanders; while the ministers, with equal determination, resisted every move for a court-martial or inquiry.