Chapter 2

Hobbes, Lord Bolingbroke, a strenuous advocate for his political and moral opinions, enraged at what he calls his "High Church notions." Trenchard and Gordon, in their _Independent Whig_, No. 44, that libel on the clergy, accuse them of _Atheism_ and _Hobbism_; while some divines as earnestly reject Hobbes as an Atheist! Our temperate sage, though angried at that spirit of contradiction which he had raised, must, however, have sometimes smiled both on his advocates and his adversaries!

[356] The odious term of _Atheist_ has been too often applied to many great men of our nation by the hardy malignity of party. Were I to present a catalogue, the very names would refute the charge. Let us examine the religious sentiments of Hobbes. The materials for its investigation are not common, but it will prove a dissertation of facts. I warn some of my readers to escape from the tediousness, if they cannot value the curiosity.

Hobbes has himself thrown out an observation in his "Life of Thucydides" respecting Anaxagoras, that "his opinions, being of a strain above the apprehension of the vulgar, procured him the estimation of an _Atheist_, which name they bestowed upon all men that thought not as they did of their ridiculous religion, and in the end cost him his life." This was a parallel case with Hobbes himself, except its close, which, however, seems always to have been in the mind of our philosopher.

Bayle, who is for throwing all things into doubt, acknowledging that the life of Hobbes was blameless, adds, One might, however, have been tempted to ask him this question:

Heus age responde; minimum est quod scire laboro; _De Jove quid sentis?_--PERSIUS, Sat. ii. v. 17.

Hark, now! resolve this one short question, friend! _What are thy thoughts of Jove?_

But Bayle, who compared himself to the Jupiter of Homer, powerful in gathering and then dispersing the clouds, dissipates the one he had just raised, by showing how "Hobbes might have answered the question with sincerity and belief, _according to the writers of his life_."--But had Bayle known that Hobbes was the author of all the lives of himself, so partial an evidence might have raised another doubt with the great sceptic. It appears, by Aubrey's papers, that Hobbes did not wish his biography should appear when he was living, that he might not seem the author of it.

Baxter, who knew Hobbes intimately, ranks him with Spinosa, by a strong epithet for materialists--"The _Brutists_, Hobbes, and Spinosa." He tells us that Selden would not have him in his chamber while dying, calling out, "No Atheists!" But by Aubrey's papers it appears that Hobbes stood by the side of his dying friend. It is certain his enemies raised stories against him, and told them as suited their purpose. In the Lansdowne MSS. I find Dr. Grenville, in a letter, relates how "Hobbes, when in France, and like to die, betrayed such expressions of repentance to a great prelate, from whose mouth I had this relation, that he admitted him to the sacrament. But Hobbes afterwards made this a subject of ridicule in companies."--_Lansdowne MSS._ 990--73.

Here is a strong accusation, and a fact too; yet, when fully developed, the result will turn out greatly in favour of Hobbes.

Hobbes had a severe illness at Paris, which lasted six months, thus noticed in his metrical life:

Dein per sex menses morbo decumbo propinque Accinctus morti; nec fugio, illa fugit.

It happened that the famous Guy Patin was his physician; and in one of these amusing letters, where he puts down the events of the day, like a newspaper of the times, in No. 61, has given an account of his intercourse with the philosopher, in which he says that Hobbes endured such pain, that he would have destroyed himself--"_Qu'il avoit voulu se tuer._"--Patin is a vivacious writer: we are not to take him _au pied de la lettre_. Hobbes was systematically tenacious of life: and, so far from attempting suicide, that he wanted even the courage to allow Patin to bleed him! It was during this illness that the Catholic party, who like to attack a Protestant in a state of unresisting debility, got his learned and intimate friend, Father Mersenne, to hold out all the benefits a philosopher might derive from their Church. When Hobbes was acquainted with this proposed interview (says a French contemporary, whose work exists in MS., but is quoted in Joly's folio volume of Remarks on Bayle), the sick man answered, "Don't let him come for this; I shall laugh at him; and perhaps I may convert him myself." Father Mersenne did come; and when this missionary was opening on the powers of Rome to grant a plenary pardon, he was interrupted by Hobbes--"Father, I have examined, a long time ago, all these points; I should be sorry to dispute now; you can entertain me in a more agreeable manner. When did you see Mr. Gassendi?" The monk, who was a philosopher, perfectly understood Hobbes, and this interview never interrupted their friendship. A few days after, Dr. Cosin (afterwards Bishop of Durham), the great prelate whom Dr. Grenville alludes to, prayed with Hobbes, who first _stipulated_ that the prayers should be those authorised by the _Church of England_; and he also received the sacrament with reverence. Hobbes says:--"Magnum hoc erga disciplinam Episcopalem signum erat reverentiae."--It is evident that the conversion of Father Mersenne, to which Hobbes facetiously alluded, could never be to Atheism, but to Protestantism: and had Hobbes been an Atheist, he would not have risked his safety, when he arrived in England, by his strict attendance to the _Church of England_, resolutely refusing to unite with any of the sects. His views of the national religion were not only enlightened, but in this respect he showed a boldness in his actions very unusual with him.

But the religion of Hobbes was "of a strain beyond the apprehension of the vulgar," and not very agreeable to some of the Church. A man may have peculiar notions respecting the Deity, and yet be far removed from Atheism; and in his political system the Church may hold that subordinate place which some Bishops will not like. When Dr. Grenville tells us "Hobbes ridiculed in companies" certain matters which the Doctor held sacred, this is not sufficient to accuse a man of Atheism, though it may prove him not to have held orthodox opinions. From the MS. collections of the French contemporary, who well knew Hobbes at Paris, I transcribe a remarkable observation:--"Hobbes said, that he was not surprised that the Independents, who were enemies of monarchy, could not bear it in heaven, and that therefore they placed there three Gods instead of one; but he was astonished that the English bishops, and those Presbyterians who were favourers of monarchy, should persist in the same opinion concerning the Trinity. He added, that the Episcopalians ridiculed the Puritans, and the Puritans the Episcopalians; but that the wise ridiculed both alike."--_Lantiniana MS._ quoted by Joly, p. 434.

The _religion_ of Hobbes was in _conformity_ to _State and Church_. He had, however, the most awful notions of the Divinity. He confesses he is unacquainted with "the nature of God, but not with the _necessity_ of the existence of the Power of all powers, and First Cause of all causes; so that we know that God is, though not what he is." See his "Human Nature," chap. xi. But was the God of Hobbes the inactive deity of Epicurus, who takes no interest in the happiness or misery of his created beings; or, as Madame de Stael has expressed it, with the point and felicity of French antithesis, was this "an Atheism with a God?" This consequence some of his adversaries would draw from his principles, which Hobbes indignantly denies. He has done more; for in his _De Corpore Politico_, he declares his belief of all the fundamental points of Christianity, part i. c. 4, p. 116. Ed. 1652. But he was an open enemy to those "who presume, out of Scripture, by their own interpretation, to raise any _doctrine to the understanding_, concerning those things which are incomprehensible;" and he refers to St. Paul, who gives a good rule "_to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man_ the measure of faith."--Rom. xii. 3.

[357] This he pictures in a strange engraving prefixed to his book, and representing a crowned figure, whose description will be found in the note, p. 440. It is remarkable that when Hobbes adopted the principle that the _ecclesiastical_ should be united with the _sovereign_ power, he was then actually producing that portentous change which had terrified Luther and Calvin; who, even in their day, were alarmed by a new kind of political Antichrist; that "Caesarean Popery" which Stubbe so much dreaded, and which I have here noticed, p. 358. Luther predicted that as the pope had at times seized on the political sword, so this "Caesarean Popery," under the pretence of policy, would grasp the ecclesiastical crosier, to form a _political church_. The curious reader is referred to Wolfius _Lectionum Memorabilium et reconditarum_, vol. ii. cent. x. p. 987. Calvin, in his commentary on Amos, has also a remarkable passage on this _political church_, animadverting on Amaziah, the priest, who would have proved the Bethel worship warrantable, because settled by the royal authority: "It is the king's chapel." Amos, vii. 13. Thus Amaziah, adds Calvin, assigns the king a double function, and maintains it is in his power to transform religion into what shape he pleases, while he charges Amos with disturbing the public repose, and encroaching on the royal prerogative. Calvin zealously reprobates the conduct of those inconsiderate persons, "who give the civil magistrate a sovereignty in religion, and dissolve the Church into the State." The supremacy in Church and State, conferred on Henry VIII., was the real cause of these alarms; but the passage of domination raged not less fiercely in Calvin than in Henry VIII.; in the enemy of kings than in kings themselves. Were the _forms_ of religion more celestial from the sanguinary hands of that tyrannical reformer than from those of the reforming tyrant? The system of our philosopher was, to lay all the wild spirits which have haunted us in the chimerical shapes of _nonconformity_. I have often thought, after much observation on our Church history since the Reformation, that _the devotional feelings_ have not been so much concerned in this bitter opposition to the National Church as the rage of dominion, the spirit of vanity, the sullen pride of sectarism, and the delusions of madness.

[358] Hobbes himself tells us that "some bishops are content to hold their authority from _the king's letters patents_; others will needs have somewhat more they know not what of _divine rights_, &c., _not acknowledging the power of the king_. It is a relic still remaining of the venom of popish ambition, lurking in that _seditious distinction and division_ between the power _spiritual_ and _civil_. The safety of the State does not depend on the safety of the clergy, but on the _entireness of the sovereign power_."--_Considerations upon the Reputation, &c., of Mr. Hobbes_, p. 44.

[359] This royal observation is recorded in the "Sorberiana." Sorbiere gleaned the anecdote during his residence in England. By the "Aubrey Papers," which have been published since I composed this article, I find that Charles II. was greatly delighted by the wit and repartees of Hobbes, who was at once bold and happy in making his stand amidst the court wits. The king, whenever he saw Hobbes, who had the privilege of being admitted into the royal presence, would exclaim, "Here comes the bear to be baited." This did not allude to his native roughness, but the force of his resistance when attacked.

[360] See "Mr. Hobbes's State of Nature considered, in a Dialogue between Philautus and Timothy." The second dialogue is not contained in the eleventh edition of Eachard's Works, 1705, which, however, was long after his death, so careless were the publishers of those days of their authors' works. The literary bookseller, Tom Davies, who ruined himself by giving good editions of our old authors, has preserved it in his own.

[361] "A Discourse Concerning Irony," 1729, p. 13.

[362] Men of very opposite principles, but aiming at the same purpose, are reduced to a dilemma, by the spirit of party in controversy. Sir Robert Filmer, who wrote against "The Anarchy of a Limited Monarchy," and "Patriarcha," to re-establish _absolute power_, derived it from the scriptural accounts of the patriarchal state. But Sir Robert and Hobbes, though alike the advocates for supremacy of power, were as opposite as possible on theological points. Filmer had the same work to perform, but he did not like the instruments of his fellow-labourer. His manner of proceeding with Hobbes shows his dilemma: he refutes the doctrine of the "Leviathan," while he confesses that Hobbes is right in the main. The philosopher's reasonings stand on quite another foundation than the scriptural authorities deduced by Filmer. The result therefore is, that Sir Robert had the trouble to confute the very thing he afterwards had to establish!

[363] It may be curious to some of my readers to preserve that part of Hobbes's Letter to Anthony Wood, in the rare tract of his "Latin Life," in which, with great calmness, the philosopher has painfully collated the odious interpolations. All that was written in favour of the morals of Hobbes--of the esteem in which foreigners held him--of the royal patronage, &c., were maliciously erased. Hobbes thus notices the amendments of Bishop Fell:--

"Nimirum ubi mihi tu ingenium attribuis _Sobrium_, ille, deleto _Sobrio_, substituit _Acri_.

"Ubi tu scripseras _Libellum scripsit de Cive_, interposuit ille inter _Libellum_ et _de Cive, rebus permiscendis natum_, de _Cive_, quod ita manifeste falsum est, &c.

"Quod, ubi tu de libro meo _Leviathan_ scripsisti, primo, quod esset, _Vicinis gentibus notissimus_ interposuit ille, _publico damno_. Ubi tu scripseras, _scripsit librum_, interposuit ille _monstrosissimum_."

A noble confidence in his own genius and celebrity breaks out in this Epistle to Wood. "In leaving out all that you have said of my character and reputation, the dean has injured you, but cannot injure me; for long since has my fame winged its way to a station from which it can never descend." One is surprised to find such a Miltonic spirit in the contracted soul of Hobbes, who in his own system might have cynically ridiculed the passion for fame, which, however, no man felt more than himself. In his controversy with Bishop Bramhall (whose book he was cautious not to answer till ten years after it was published, and his adversary was no more, pretending he had never heard of it till then!) he breaks out with the same feeling:--"What my works are, he was no fit judge; but now he has provoked me, I will say thus much of them, that neither he, if he had lived, could--nor I, if I would, can--extinguish the light which is set up in the world by the greatest part of them."

It is curious to observe that an idea occurred to Hobbes, which some authors have attempted lately to put into practice against their critics--to prosecute them in a court of law; but the knowledge of mankind was one of the liveliest faculties of Hobbes's mind; he knew well to what account common minds place the injured feelings of authorship; yet were _a jury of literary men_ to sit in judgment, we might have a good deal of business in the court for a long time; the critics and the authors would finally have a very useful body of reports and pleadings to appeal to; and the public would be highly entertained and greatly instructed. On this attack of Bishop Fell, Hobbes says--"I might perhaps have an action on the case against him, if it were worth my while; but juries seldom consider the Quarrels of Authors as of much moment."

[364] Bayle has conjured up an amusing theory of apparitions, to show that Hobbes might fear that a certain combination of atoms agitating his brain might so disorder his mind that it would expose him to spectral visions; and being very timorous, and distrusting his imagination, he was averse to be left alone. Apparitions happen frequently in dreams, and they may happen, even to an incredulous man, when awake, for reading and hearing of them would revive their images--these images, adds Bayle, might play him some unlucky trick! We are here astonished at the ingenuity of a disciple of Pyrrho, who in his inquiries, after having exhausted all human evidence, seems to have demonstrated what he hesitates to believe! Perhaps the truth was, that the sceptical Bayle had not entirely freed himself from the traditions which were then still floating from the fireside to the philosopher's closet: he points his pen, as AEneas brandished his sword at the Gorgons and Chimeras that darkened the entrance of Hell; wanting the admonitions of the sibyl, he would have rushed in--

_Et frustra ferro diverberet umbras._

[365] The papers of Aubrey confirm my suggestion. I shall give the words--"There was a report, and surely true, that in parliament, not long after the king was settled, some of the bishops made a motion to have the good old gentleman burned for a heretique; which he hearing, feared that his papers might be searched by their order, and he told me he had burned part of them."--p. 612. When Aubrey requested Waller to write verses on Hobbes, the poet said that he was afraid of the Churchmen. Aubrey tells us--"I have often heard him say that he was not afraid of _Sprights_, but afraid of being knocked on the head for five or ten pounds which rogues might think he had in his chamber." This reason given by Hobbes for his frequent alarms was an evasive reply for too curious and talkative an inquirer. Hobbes has not concealed the cause of his terror in his metrical life--

"Tunc venit in mentem mihi Dorislaus et Ascham, Tanquam proscripto terror ubique aderat."

Dr. Dorislaus and Ascham had fallen under the daggers of proscription. [The former was assassinated in Holland, whither he had fled for safety.]

[366] It is said that Hobbes completely recanted all his opinions; and proceeded so far as to declare that the opinions he had published in his "Leviathan," were not his real sentiments, and that he neither maintained them in public nor in private. Wood gives this title to a work of his--"An Apology for Himself and his Writings," but without date. Some have suspected that this Apology, if it ever existed, was not his own composition. Yet why not? Hobbes, no doubt, thought that "The Leviathan" would outlast any recantation; and, after all, that a recantation is by no means a refutation!--recantations usually prove the force of authority, rather than the force of conviction. I am much pleased with a Dr. Pocklington, who hit the etymology of the word _recantation_ with the spirit. Accused and censured, for a penance he was to make a recantation, which he began thus:--"If _canto_ be to sing, _recanto_ is to sing again:" so that he _re-chanted_ his offensive principles by his _recantation_!

I suspect that the apology Wood alludes to was only a republication of Hobbes's Address to the King, prefixed to the "Seven Philosophical Problems," 1662, where he openly disavows his opinions, and makes an apology for the "Leviathan." It is curious enough to observe how he acts in this dilemma. It was necessary to give up his opinions to the clergy, but still to prove they were of an innocent nature. He therefore acknowledges that "his theological notions are not his opinions, but propounded with submission to the power ecclesiastical, never afterwards having maintained them in writing or discourse." Yet, to show the king that the regal power incurred no great risk in them, he laid down one principle, which could not have been unpleasing to Charles II. He asserts, truly, that he never wrote against episcopacy; "yet he is called an Atheist, or man of no religion, because he has made the authority of the Church depend wholly upon the regal power, which, I hope, your majesty will think is neither Atheism nor Heresy." Hobbes considered the _religion_ of his country as a subject of _law_, and not _philosophy_. He was not for _separating_ the Church from the State; but, on the contrary, for _joining them_ more closely. The bishops ought not to have been his enemies; and many were not.

[367] In the MS. collection of the French contemporary, who personally knew him, we find a remarkable confession of Hobbes. He said of himself that "he sometimes made openings to let in light, but that he could not discover his thoughts but by half-views: like those who throw open the window for a short time, but soon closing it, from the dread of the storm." _"Il disoit qu'il faisoit quelquefois des ouvertures, mais qu'il ne pouvoit decouvrir ses pensees qu'a-demi; qu'il imitoit ceux qui ouvrent la fenetre pendant quelques momens, mais qui la referment promptement de peur de l'orage."_--Lantiniana MSS., quoted by Joly in his volume of "Remarques sur Bayle."

[368] Could one imagine that the very head and foot of the stupendous "Leviathan" bear the marks of the little artifices practised for self by its author? This grave work is dedicated to Francis Godolphin, a person whom its author had never seen, merely to remind him of a certain legacy which that person's brother had left to our philosopher. If read with this fact before us, we may detect the concealed claim to the legacy, which it seems was necessary to conceal from the Parliament, as Francis Godolphin resided in England. It must be confessed this was a miserable motive for dedicating a system of philosophy which was addressed to all mankind. It discovers little dignity. This secret history we owe to Lord Clarendon, in his "Survey of the Leviathan," who adds another. The postscript to the "Leviathan," which is only in the English edition, was designed as an easy summary of the principles: and his lordship adds, as a sly address to Cromwell, that he might be induced to be master of them at once, and "as a pawn of his new subject's allegiance." It is possible that Hobbes might have anticipated the sovereign power which the _general_ was on the point of assuming in the _protectorship_. It was natural enough, that Hobbes should deny this suggestion.

[369] The story his antagonist (Dr. Wallis) relates is perfectly in character. Hobbes, to show the Countess of Devonshire his attachment to life, declared that "were he master of all the world to dispose of, he would give it to live one day." "But you have so many friends to oblige, had you the world to dispose of!" "Shall I be the better for that when I am dead?" "No," repeated the sublime cynic, "I would give the whole world to live one day." He asserted that "it was lawful to make use of ill instruments to do ourselves good," and illustrated it thus:--"Were I cast into a deep pit, and the devil should put down his cloven foot, I would take hold of it to be drawn out by it." It must be allowed this is a philosophy which has a chance of being long popular; but it is not that of another order of human beings! Hobbes would not, like Curtius, have leaped into a "deep pit" for his country; or, to drop the fable, have died for it in the field or on the scaffold, like the Falklands, the Sidneys, the Montroses--all the heroic brotherhood of genius! One of his last expressions, when informed of the approaches of death, was--"I shall be glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at." Everything was seen in a little way by this great man, who, having reasoned himself into an abject being, "licked the dust" through life.

[370] In our country, Mandeville, Swift, and Chesterfield have trod in the track of Hobbes; and in France, Helvetius, Rochefoucault in his "Maxims," and L'Esprit more openly in his "Fausette des Vertus Humaines." They only degrade us--they are polished cynics! But what are we to think of the tremendous cynicism of Machiavel? That great genius eyed human nature with the ferocity of an enraged savage. Machiavel is a vindictive assassin, who delights even to turn his dagger within the mortal wound he has struck; but our Hobbes, said his friend Sorbiere, "is a gentle and skilful surgeon, who, with regret, cuts into the living flesh, to get rid of the corrupted." It is equally to be regretted that the same system of degrading man has been adopted by some, under the mask of religion.

Yet Hobbes, perhaps, never suspected the arms he was placing in the hands of wretched men, when he furnished them with such fundamental positions as, that "Man is naturally an evil being; that he does not love his equal; and only seeks the aid of society for his own particular purposes." He would at least have disowned some of his diabolical disciples. One of them, so late as in 1774, vented his furious philosophy in "An Essay on the Depravity and Corruption of Human Nature, wherein the Opinions of Hobbes, Mandeville, Helvetius, &c. are supported against Shaftesbury, Hume, Sterne, &c. by Thomas O'Brien M'Mahon." This gentleman, once informed that he was _born wicked_, appears to have considered that wickedness was his paternal estate, to be turned to as profitable an account as he could. The titles of his chapters, serving as a string of the most extraordinary propositions, have been preserved in the "Monthly Review," vol. lii. 77. The demonstrations in the work itself must be still more curious. In these axioms we find that "Man has an _enmity_ to all beings; that had he _power_, the first victims of his revenge would be his wife, children, &c.--a sovereign, if he could reign with the _unbounded authority_ every man _longs for_, free from apprehension of punishment for misrule, would slaughter all his subjects; perhaps he would not leave one of them alive at the end of his reign." It was perfectly in character with this wretched being, after having quarrelled with human nature, that he should be still more inveterate against a small part of her family, with whom he was suffered to live on too intimate terms; for he afterwards published another extraordinary piece--"The Conduct and Good-Nature of Englishmen Exemplified in their charitable way of Characterising the Customs, Manners, &c. of Neighbouring Nations; their Equitable and Humane Mode of Governing States, &c.; their Elevated and Courteous Deportment, &c. of which their own Authors are everywhere produced as Vouchers," 1777. One is tempted to think that this O'Brien M'Mahon, after all, is only a wag, and has copied the horrid pictures of his masters, as Hogarth did the School of Rembrandt by his "Paul before Felix, designed and _scratched_ in the true Dutch taste." These works seem, however, to have their use. To have carried the conclusions of the Anti-social Philosophy to as great lengths as this writer has, is to display their absurdity. But, as every rational Englishman will appeal to his own heart, in declaring the one work to be nothing but a libel on the nation; so every man, not destitute of virtuous emotions, will feel the other to be a libel on human nature itself.

[371] "Human Nature," c. ix.

[372] Hobbes did not exaggerate the truth. Aubrey says of Cooper's portrait of Hobbes, that "he intends to borrow the picture of his majesty, for Mr. Loggan to engrave an accurate piece by, which will sell well at home and abroad." We have only the rare print of Hobbes by Faithorne, prefixed to a quarto edition of his Latin Life, 1682, remarkable for its expression and character. Sorbiere, returning from England, brought home a portrait of the sage, which he placed in his collection; and strangers, far and near, came to look on the physiognomy of a great and original thinker. One of the honours which men of genius receive is the homage the public pay to their images: either, like the fat monk, one of the heroes of the _Epistolae obscurorum Virorum_, who, standing before a portrait of Erasmus, spit on it in utter malice; or when they are looked on in silent reverence. It is alike a tribute paid to the masters of intellect. They have had their shrines and pilgrimages.

None of our authors have been better known, nor more highly considered, than our Hobbes, abroad. I find many curious particulars of him and his conversations recorded in French works, which are not known to the English biographers or critics. His residence at Paris occasioned this. See Ancillon's Melange Critique, Basle, 1698; Patin's Letters, 61; Sorberiana; Niceron, tome iv.; Joly's Additions to Bayle.--All these contain original notices on Hobbes.

[373] To his Life are additions, which nothing but the self-love of the author could have imagined.

"Amicorum Elenchus."--He might be proud of the list of foreigners and natives.

"Tractuum contra Hobbium editorum Syllabus."

"Eorum qui in Scriptis suis Hobbio contradixerunt Indiculus."

"Qui Hobbii meminerunt seu in bonam seu in sequiorem partem."

"In Hobbii Defensionem."--Hobbes died 1679, aged 91. These two editions are, 1681, 1682.

[374] This fact has been recorded in one of the pamphlets of Richard Baxter, who, however, was no well-wisher to our philosopher. "Additional Notes on the life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale," 1682, p. 40.

[375] "Athen. Oxon.," vol. ii. p. 665, ed. 1721. No one, however, knew better than Hobbes the vanity and uselessness of _words_: in one place he compares them to "a spider's web; for, by contexture of words, tender and delicate wits are insnared and stopped, but strong wits break easily through them." The pointed sentence with which Warburton closes his preface to Shakspeare, is Hobbes's--that "words are the counters of the wise, and the money of fools."

[376] Aubrey has minutely preserved for us the manner in which Hobbes composed his "Leviathan:" it is very curious for literary students. "He walked much, and contemplated; and he had in the head of his cane a pen and inkhorn, and carried always a note-book in his pocket; and as soon as a thought darted, he presently entered it into his book, or otherwise might have lost it. He had drawn the design of the book into chapters, &c., and he knew whereabouts it would come in. Thus that book was made."--Vol. ii. p. 607. Aubrey, the little Boswell of his day, has recorded another literary peculiarity, which some authors do not assuredly sufficiently use. Hobbes said that he sometimes would set his thoughts upon researching and contemplating, always with this proviso: "that he very much and deeply considered one thing at a time--for a week, or sometimes a fortnight."

[377] A small annuity from the Devonshire family, and a small pension from Charles II., exceeded the wants of his philosophic life. If he chose to compute his income, Hobbes says facetiously of himself, in French sols or Spanish maravedis, he could persuade himself that Croesus or Crassus were by no means richer than himself; and when he alludes to his property, he considers wisdom to be his real wealth:--

"An quam dives, id est, quam sapiens fuerim?"

He gave up his patrimonial estate to his brother, not wanting it himself; but he tells the tale himself, and adds, that though small in extent, it was rich in its crops. Anthony Wood, with unusual delight, opens the character of Hobbes: "Though he hath an ill name from some, and good from others, yet he was a person endowed with an excellent philosophical soul, was a contemner of riches, money, envy, the world, &c.; a severe lover of justice, and endowed with great morals; cheerful, open, and free of his discourse, yet without offence to any, which he endeavoured always to avoid." What an enchanting picture of the old man in the green vigour of his age has Cowley sent down to us!

"Nor can the snow which now cold age does shed Upon thy reverend head, Quench or allay the noble fires within; But all which thou hast been, And all that youth can be, thou'rt yet: So fully still dost thou Enjoy the manhood and the bloom of wit, And all the natural heat, but not the fever too. So contraries on AEtna's top conspire: Th' embolden'd snow next to the flame does sleep.-- To things immortal time can do no wrong; And that which never is to die, for ever must be young."

[378]

"Ipse meos nosti, Verdusi candide, mores, Et tecum cuncti qui mea scripta legunt: Nam mea vita meis non est incongrua scriptis; Justitiam doceo, Justitiamque colo. Improbus esse potest nemo qui non sit avarus, Nec pulchrum quisquam fecit avarus opus. Octoginta ego jam complevi et quatuor annos; Pene acta est vitae fabula longa meae."

[379] Hobbes, in his metrical (by no means his poetical) life, says, the more the "Leviathan" was written against, the more it was read; and adds,

"Firmius inde stetit, spero stabitque per omne AEvum, defensus viribus ipse suis. Justitiae mensura, atque ambitionis elenchus, Regum arx, pax populo, si doceatur, erit."

The term _arx_ is here peculiarly fortunate, according to the system of the author--it means a citadel or fortified place on an eminence, to which the people might fly for their common safety.

His works were much read; as appears by "The Court Burlesqued," a satire attributed to Butler.

"So those who wear the holy robes That rail so much at _Father Hobbs_, Because he has exposed of late _The nakedness of Church and State_; Yet tho' they do his books condemn, They love to buy and read the same."

Our author, so late as in 1750, was still so commanding a genius, that his works were collected in a handsome folio; but that collection is not complete. When he could not get his works printed at home, he published them in Latin, including his mathematical works, at Amsterdam, by Blaew, 1668, 4to. His treatises, "De Cive," and "On Human Nature," are of perpetual value. Gassendi recommends these admirable works, and Puffendorff acknowledges the depth of his obligations. The Life of Hobbes in the "Biographia Britannica," by Dr. Campbell, is a work of curious research.

HOBBES'S QUARRELS

WITH DR. WALLIS THE MATHEMATICIAN.

HOBBES'S passion for the study of Mathematics began late in life--attempts to be an original discoverer--attacked by WALLIS--various replies and rejoinders--nearly maddened by the opposition he encountered--after four years of truce, the war again renewed--character of HOBBES by Dr. WALLIS, a specimen of invective and irony; serving as a remarkable instance how the greatest genius may come down to us disguised by the arts of an adversary--HOBBES'S noble defence of himself; of his own great reputation; of his politics; and of his religion--a literary stratagem of his--reluctantly gives up the contest, which lasted twenty years.

The Mathematical War between HOBBES and the celebrated Dr. WALLIS is now to be opened. A series of battles, the renewed campaigns of more than twenty years, can be described by no term less eventful. Hobbes himself considered it as a war, and it was a war of idle ambition, in which he took too much delight. His "Amata Mathemata" became his pride, his pleasure, and at length his shame. He attempted to maintain his irruption into a province he ought never to have entered in defiance, by "a new method;" but having invaded the powerful natives, he seems to have almost repented the folly, and retires, leaving "the unmanageable brutes" to themselves:

Ergo meam statuo non ultra perdere opellam Indocile expectans discere posse pecus.

His language breathes war, while he sounds his retreat, and confesses his repulse. The Algebraists had all declared against the Invader.

Wallisius contra pugnat; victusque videbar Algebristarum Theiologumque scholis, Et simul eductus Castris exercitus omnis Pugnae securus Wallisianus ovat.

And,

Pugna placet vertor-- Bella mea audisti--&c.

So that we have sufficient authority to consider this Literary Quarrel as a war, and a "Bellum Peloponnesiacum" too, for it lasted as long. Political, literary, and even personal feelings were called in to heat the temperate blood of two Mathematicians.

What means this tumult in a Vestal's veins?

Hobbes was one of the many victims who lost themselves in squaring the circle, and doubling the cube. He applied, late in life, to mathematical studies, not so much, he says, to learn the subtile demonstrations of its figures, as to acquire those habits of close reasoning, so useful in the discovery of new truths, to prove or to refute. So justly he reasoned on mathematics; but so ill he practised the science, that it made him the most unreasonable being imaginable, for he resisted mathematical demonstration, itself![380]

His great and original character could not but prevail in everything he undertook; and his egotism tempted him to raise a name in the world of Science, as he had in that of Politics and Morals. With the ardour of a young mathematician, he exclaimed, "_Eureka!_" "I have found it." The quadrature of the circle was indeed the common Dulcinea of the Quixotes of the time; but they had all been disenchanted. Hobbes alone clung to his ridiculous mistress. Repeatedly confuted, he was perpetually resisting old reasonings and producing new ones. Were only genius requisite for an able mathematician, Hobbes had been among the first; but patience and docility, not fire and fancy, are necessary. His reasonings were all paralogisms, and he had always much to say, from not understanding the subject of his inquiries.

When Hobbes published his "De Corpore Philosophico," 1655, he there exulted that he had solved the great mystery. Dr. Wallis, the Savilian professor of mathematics at Oxford,[381] with a deep aversion to Hobbes's political and religious sentiments, as he understood them, rejoiced to see this famous combatant descending into his own arena. He certainly was eager to meet him single-handed; for he instantly confuted Hobbes, by his "Elenchus Geometriae Hobbianae." Hobbes, who saw the newly-acquired province of his mathematics in danger, and which, like every new possession, seemed to involve his honour more than was necessary, called on all the world to be witnesses of this mighty conflict. He now published his work in English, with a sarcastic addition, in a magisterial tone, of "_Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics in Oxford_." These were Seth Ward[382] and Wallis, both no friends to Hobbes, and who hungered after him as a relishing morsel. Wallis now replied in English, by "Due Correction for Mr. Hobbes, or School-discipline for not saying his Lessons Right," 1656. That part of controversy which is usually the last had already taken place in their choice of phrases.[383]

In the following year the campaign was opened by Hobbes with "~STIGMAI~; or, _marks_ of the absurd Geometry, _rural Language_, Scottish Church-politics, and Barbarisms, of John Wallis." Quick was the routing of these fresh forces; not one was to escape alive! for Wallis now took the field with "Hobbiani Puncti dispunctio! or, the undoing of Mr. Hobbes's Points; in answer to Mr. Hobbes's ~STIGMAI~, _id est_, Stigmata Hobbii." Hobbes seems now to have been reduced to great straits; perhaps he wondered at the obstinacy of his adversary. It seems that Hobbes, who had been used to other studies, and who confesses all the algebraists were against him, could not conceive a point to exist without quantity; or a line could be drawn without latitude; or a superficies be without depth or thickness; but mathematicians conceive them without these qualities, when they exist abstractedly in the mind; though, when for the purposes of science they are produced to the senses, they necessarily have all the qualities. It was understanding these figures, in the vulgar way, which led Hobbes into a labyrinth of confusions and absurdities.[384] They appear to have nearly maddened the clear and vigorous intellect of our philosopher; for he exclaims, in one of these writings:--

"I alone am mad, or they are all out of their senses: so that no third opinion can be taken, unless any will say that we are all mad."

Four years of truce were allowed to intervene between the next battle; when the irrefutable Hobbes, once more collecting his weak and his incoherent forces, arranged them, as well as he was able, into "Six Dialogues," 1661. The utter annihilation he intended for his antagonist fell on himself. Wallis borrowing the character of "The Self-tormentor" from Terence, produced "Hobbius Heauton-timorumenos (Hobbes the Self-tormentor); or, a Consideration of Mr. Hobbes's Dialogues; addressed to Robert Boyle," 1662.

This attack of Wallis is of a very opposite character to the arid discussion of abstract blunders in geometry. He who began with points, and doubling the cube, and squaring the circle, now assumes a loftier tone, and carrying his personal and moral feelings into a mere controversy between two idle mathematicians, he has formed a solemn invective, and edged it with irony. I hope the reader has experienced sufficient interest in the character of Hobbes to read the long, but curious extract I shall now transcribe, with that awe and reverence which the old man claims. It will show how even the greatest genius may be disguised, when viewed through the coloured medium of an adversary. One is, however, surprised to find such a passage in a mathematical work.

"He doth much improve; I mean he doth, _proficere in pejus_; more, indeed, than I could reasonably have expected he would have done;--insomuch, that I cannot but profess some relenting thoughts (though I had formerly occasion to use him somewhat coarsely), to see an old man thus fret and torment himself to no purpose. You, too, should pity your antagonist; not as if he did deserve it, but because he needs it; and as Chremes, in Terence, of his Senex, his self-tormenting Menedemus--

Cum videam miserum hunc tam excruciarier Miseret me ejus. Quod potero adjutabo senem.

"Consider the temper of the man, to move your pity; a person _extremely passionate and peevish, and wholly impatient of contradiction_. A temper which, whether it be a greater fault or torment (to one who must so often meet with what he is so ill able to bear), is hard to say.

"And to this fretful humour you must add another as bad, which feeds it. You are therefore next to consider him as _one highly opinionative and magisterial_. _Fanciful_ in his conceptions, and deeply enamoured with those _phantasmes_, without a rival. He doth not spare to profess, upon all occasions, how incomparably he thinks himself to have _surpassed all_, ancient, modern, schools, academies, persons, societies, philosophers, divines, heathens, Christians; how despicable he thinks all their writings in comparison of his; and what hopes he hath, that, by _the sovereign command of some absolute prince, all other doctrines being exploded, his new dictates should be_ _peremptorily imposed, to be alone taught in all schools and pulpits, and universally submitted to_. To recount all which he speaks of himself _magnificently_, and _contemptuously_ of others, would fill a volume. Should some idle person read over all his books, and collecting together his arrogant and supercilious speeches, applauding himself, and despising all other men, set them forth in one _synopsis_, with this title, _Hobbius de se_--what a pretty piece of pageantry this would make!

"The admirable sweetness of your own nature has not given you the experience of such a temper: yet your contemplation must have needs discerned it, in those symptoms which you have seen it work in others, like the strange effervescence, ebullition, fumes, and fetors, which you have sometimes given yourself the content to observe, in some active _acrimonious_ chymical _spirits_ upon the injection of some contrariant _salts_ strangely vexing, fretting, and tormenting itself, while it doth but administer _sport_ to the unconcerned spectator. Which temper, being so eminent in the person we have to deal with, your generous nature, which cannot but pity affliction, how much soever deserved, must needs have some compassion for him: who, besides those exquisite _torments_ wherewith he doth afflict himself, like that

----quo Siculi non invenere Tyranni Tormentum majus--

is unavoidably exposed to those two great _mischiefs_; an incapacity to be _taught what he doth not know_, or to be _advised when he thinks amiss_; and moreover, to this _inconvenience_, that he must never _hear his faults but from his adversaries_; for those who are willing to be reputed _friends_ must either not advertise what they see amiss, or incommode themselves.

"But, you will ask, what need he thus torment himself? What need of pity? If _he have hopes_ to be admitted the _sole dictator in philosophy_, civil and natural, in schools and pulpits, and to be owned as the only _magister sententiarum_, what would he have more?

"True, _if he have_; but what _if he have not_? That he _had_ some hopes of such an honour, he hath not been sparing to let us know, and was providing against the _envy_ that might attend it (_nec deprecabor invidiam, sed augendo, ulciscar_, was his resolution); but I doubt these hopes are at an end. He did not find (as he expected) that the _fairies and hobgoblins_ (for such he reputes all that went before him) did vanish presently, upon the first appearance of his _sunshine_: and, which is worse, while he was on the one side guarding himself against _envy_, he is, on the other side, unhappily _surprised_ by a worse enemy, called _contempt_, and with which he is less able to grapple.

"I forbear to mention (lest I might seem to reproach that age which I reverence) the _disadvantages_ which he may sustain by his old age. 'Tis possible that time and age, in a person somewhat _morose_, may have riveted faster that preconceived opinion of his own worth and excellency beyond others. 'Tis possible, also, that he may have _forgotten_ much of what once he knew. He may, perhaps, be sometimes more _secure_ than _safe_; while trusting to what he thinks a firm foundation, his footing fails him; nor always so vigilant or quicksighted as to discern the _incoherence_ or _inconsequence_ of his own discourses; unwilling, notwithstanding, to make use of the eyes of other men, lest he should seem thereby to disparage his own; but certainly (though his _will_ may be as good as ever) his _parts_ are less vegete and nimble, as to _invention_ at least, than in his younger days.

"While he had endeavoured only to _raise an expectation_, or put the world in hopes of what great things he had in hand (_to render all philosophy as clear and certain as Euclid's Elements_), if he had then _died_, it might, perhaps, have been thought by some that the world had been deprived of _a great philosopher_, and learning sustained an invaluable loss, by the abortion of _so desired a piece_. But since that _Partus Montis_ is come to light, and found to be no more than what little animals have brought forth, and that _deformed_ enough and _unamiable_, he might have sooner gone off the stage with more advantage than now he is like to do; such is the misfortune for a man to _outlive his reputation_!

"By this time, perhaps, you may see cause to _pity_ him while you see him _falling_. But if you consider him _tumbling headlong_ from so great a height, 'twill make some addition to that _compassion_ which doth already begin to work. You are therefore next to consider that when, upon the account of _geometry_, he was unsafely mounted to that height of vanity, he did unhappily fall into the hands of two mathematicians, who have used him so unmercifully as would have put a person of _greater patience_ into _passion_, and meeting with such a _temper_, have so discomposed him that he hath ever since _talked idly_: and to augment the grief, these mathematicians were both divines--he had rather have fallen by any other hand. These _mathematical divines_ (a term which he had thought incomponible) began to unravel the wrong end; and while he thought they should have first _untiled the roof_, and by degrees gone downward, they strike at the _foundation_, and make the building tumble all at once; and that in such confusion, that by dashing one part against another, they make each help to destroy the whole. They first fall upon his _last reserve_, and rout his _mathematics_ beyond a possibility of _rallying_; and by _firing his magazine_ upon the first assault, make his own weapons _fight against him_. Not contented herewith, they enter the _breach_, and pursue the _rout_ through his Logics, Physics, Metaphysics, Theology, where they find all in confusion."

This invective and irony from this celebrated mathematician, so much out of the path of his habitual studies, might have proved a tremendous blow; but the genius of Hobbes was invulnerable to mere human opposition, unless accompanied by the supernatural terrors of penal fires or perpetual dungeons. Our hero received the whole discharge of this battering train, and stood invulnerable, while he returned the fire in "Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion of Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, written by way of Letter to a learned person, Dr. Wallis," 1662.

It is an extraordinary production. His lofty indignation retorts on the feeble irony of his antagonist with keen and caustic accusations; and the green strength of youth was still seen in the old man whose head was covered with snows.

From this spirited apology for himself I shall give some passages. Hobbes thus replied to Dr. Wallis, who affected to consider the old man as a fit object for commiseration.

"You would make him contemptible, and move Mr. Boyle to pity him. This is a way of railing too much beaten to be thought witty: besides, 'tis no argument of your contempt to spend upon him so many angry lines, as would have furnished you with a dozen of sermons. If you had in good earnest despised him, you would have let him alone, as he does Dr. Ward, Mr. Baxter, Pike, and others, that have reviled him as you do. As for his reputation beyond the seas, it fades not yet; and because, perhaps, you have no means to know it, I will cite you a passage of an epistle written by a learned Frenchman to an eminent person in France, in a volume of epistles." Hobbes quotes the passage at length, in which his name appears joined with Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Gassendi.

In reply to Wallis' sarcastic suggestion that an idle person should collect together Hobbes's arrogant and supercilious speeches applauding himself, under one title, _Hobbius de se_, he says--

"Let your idle person do it; Mr. Hobbes shall acknowledge them under his hand, and be commended for it, and you scorned. A certain Roman senator having propounded something in the assembly of the people, which they, misliking, made a noise at, boldly bade them hold their peace, and told them he knew better what was good for the commonwealth than all they; and his words are transmitted to us as an argument of his virtue; _so much do truth and vanity alter the complexion of self-praise_. You can have very little skill in morality, that cannot see the justice of commending a man's self, as well as of anything else, in his own defence; and it was want of prudence in you to constrain him to a thing that would so much displease you.

"When you make his _age_ a reproach to him, and show no cause that might impair the faculties of his mind, but only age, I admire how you saw not that you reproached all old men in the world as much as him, and warranted all young men, at a certain time which they themselves shall define, to call you _fool_! Your dislike of old age you have also otherwise sufficiently signified, in venturing so fairly as you have done to escape it. But that is no great matter to one that hath so many marks upon him of much greater reproaches. By Mr. Hobbes's calculation, that derives prudence from experience, and experience from age, you are a very young man; but, by your own reckoning, you are older already than Methuselah.

"During the late trouble, who made both Oliver and the people mad but the preachers of your principles? But besides the wickedness, see the folly of it. You thought to make them mad, but just to such a degree as should serve your own turn; that is to say, mad, and yet just as wise as yourselves. Were you not very imprudent to think to govern madness?"--p. 15.

"The king was hunted as a partridge in the mountains, and though the hounds have been hanged, yet the hunters were as guilty as they, and deserved no less punishment. And the decypherers (Wallis had decyphered the royal letters),[385] and all that blew the horn, are to be reckoned among the hunters. Perhaps you would not have had the prey killed, but rather have kept it tame. And yet who can tell? I have read of few kings deprived of their power by their own subjects that have lived any long time after it, for reasons that every man is able to conjecture."

He closes with a very odd image of the most cynical contempt:--

"Mr. Hobbes has been always far from provoking any man, though, when he is provoked, you find his pen as sharp as yours. All you have said is error and railing; that is, _stinking wind_, such as a jade lets fly when he is too hard girt upon a full belly. I have done. I have considered you now, but will not again, whatsoever preferment any of your friends shall procure you."

These were the pitched battles; but many skirmishes occasionally took place. Hobbes was even driven to a _ruse de guerre_. When he found his mathematical character in the utmost peril, there appeared a pamphlet, entitled "Lux Mathematica, &c., or, Mathematical Light struck out from the clashings between Dr. John Wallis, Professor of Geometry in the celebrated University of Oxford (celeberrima Academia), and Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury; augmented with many and shining rays of the Author, R. R." 1672.

Here the victories of Hobbes are trumpeted forth, but the fact is, that R. R. should have been T. H. It was Hobbes's own composition! R. R. stood for _Roseti Repertor_, that is, the Finder of the Rosary, one of the titles of Hobbes's mathematical discoveries. Wallis asserts that this R. R. may still serve, for it may answer his own book, "Roseti Refutator, or, the Refuter of the Rosary."

Poor Hobbes gave up the contest reluctantly; if, indeed, the controversy may not be said to have lasted all his life. He acknowledges he was writing to no purpose; and that the medicine was obliged to yield to the disease.

Sed nil profeci, magnis authoribus Error Fultus erat, cessit sic Medicina malo.

He seems to have gone down to the grave, in spite of all the reasonings of the geometricians on this side of it, with a firm conviction that its superficies had both depth and thickness.[386] Such were the fruits of a great genius, entering into a province out of his own territories; and, though a most energetic reasoner, so little skilful in these new studies, that he could never know when he was confuted and refuted.[387]

FOOTNOTES:

[380] The origin of his taste for mathematics was purely accidental: begun in love, it continued to dotage. According to Aubrey, he was forty years old when, "being in a gentleman's library, Euclid's Elements lay open at the 47th Propos. lib. i., which, having read, he swore 'This is impossible!' He read the demonstration, which referred him back to another--at length he was convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry. I have heard Mr. Hobbes say that he was wont to draw lines on his thighs and on the sheets a-bed."

[381] The author of the excellent Latin grammar of the English language, so useful to every student in Europe, of which work that singular patriot, Thomas Hollis, printed an edition, to present to all the learned Institutions of Europe. Henry Stubbe, the celebrated physician of Warwick, to whom the reader has been introduced, joined, for he loved a quarrel, in the present controversy, when it involved philosophical matters, siding with Hobbes, because he hated Wallis. In his "Oneirocritica, or an Exact Account of the Grammatical Parts of this Controversy," he draws a strong character of Wallis, who was indeed a great mathematician, and one of the most extraordinary decypherers of letters; for perhaps no new system of character could be invented for which he could not make a key; by which means he had rendered the most important services to the Parliament. Stubbe quaintly describes him as "the sub-scribe to the tribe of Adoniram" (_i.e._ Adoniram Byfield, who, with this cant name, was scribe to the fanatical Assembly of Divines), and "as the glory and pride of the Presbyterian faction."

[382] Dr. Seth Ward, after the Restoration made Bishop of Salisbury, said, some years before this event was expected, that "he had rather be the author of one of Hobbes's books than be king of England." But afterwards he seemed not a little inclined to cry out _Crucifige_! He who, to one of these books, the admirable treatise on "Human Nature," had prefixed one of the highest panegyrics Hobbes could receive!--_Athen. Oxon._ vol. ii. p. 647.

[383] It is mortifying to read _such language_ between two mathematicians, in the calm inquiries of square roots, and the finding of mean proportionals between two straight lines. I wish the example may prove a warning. Wallis thus opens on Hobbes:--"It seems, Mr. Hobbs, that you have a mind to _say your lesson_, and that the mathematic professors of Oxford should _hear_ you. You are too old to learn, though you have as much need as those that be younger, and yet will think much to be whipped.

"What moved you to say your lessons in English, when the books against which you do chiefly intend them were written in Latin? Was it chiefly for the perfecting your natural rhetoric whenever you thought it convenient to repair to Billingsgate?--You found that the oyster-women could not teach you to rail in Latin. Now you can, upon all occasion, or without occasion, give the titles of _fool_, _beast_, _ass_, _dog_, &c., which I take to be but barking; and they are no better than a man might have at Billingsgate for a box o' the ear.

"You tell us, 'though the beasts that think our railing to be roaring have for a time admired us; yet now you have showed them our ears, they will be less affrighted.' Sir, those persons (the professors themselves) needed not the sight of _your ears_, but could tell by the _voice_ what kind of creature _brayed_ in your books: you dared not have said this to their faces."--He bitterly says of Hobbes, that "he is a man who is always writing what was answered before he had written."

[384] Dr. Campbell's art. on Hobbes, in "Biog. Brit." p. 2619.

[385] Found in the king's tent at Naseby, and which were written to the queen on important political subjects, in a cypher of which they only had the key. They were afterwards published in a quarto pamphlet, and did much mischief to the royal cause.--ED.

[386] The strange conclusions some mathematicians have deduced from their principles concerning the _real quantity of matter_, and the _reality of space_, have been noticed by Pope, in the _Dunciad_:--

"Mad _Mathesis_ alone was unconfined, Too mad for mere material chains to bind: Now to _pure space_ lifts her ecstatic stare; Now running round _the circle_, finds its _square_." _Dunciad_, Book iv. ver. 31.

[387] When all animosities had ceased, after the death of Hobbes, I find Dr. Wallis, in a very temperate letter to Tenison, exposing the errors of Hobbes in mathematical studies; Wallis acknowledges that philology had never entered into his pursuits,--in this he had never designed to oppose his superior genius: but it was Hobbes who had too often turned his mathematical into a philological controversy. Wallis has made a just observation on the nature of mathematical truths:--"Hobbes's argumentations are destructive in one part of what is said in another. This is more convincingly evident, and more unpardonable, in mathematics than in other discourses, which are things capable of cogent demonstration, and so evident, that though a good mathematician may be subject to commit an error, yet one who understands but little of it cannot but see a fault when it is showed him."

Wallis was an eminent genius in scientific pursuits. His art of decyphering letters was carried to amazing perfection; and among other phenomena he discovered was that of teaching a young man, born deaf and dumb, to speak plainly. He humorously observes, in one of his letters:--"I am now employed upon another work, as hard almost as to make Mr. Hobbes understand mathematics. It is to teach a person dumb and deaf to speak, and to understand a language."

[388] The gross convivialities of the times, from the age of Elizabeth, were remarkable for several circumstances. Hard-drinking was a foreign vice, imported by our military men on their return from the Netherlands: and the practice, of whose prevalence Camden complains, was even brought to a kind of science. They had a dialect peculiar to their orgies. See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 294 (last edition).

Jonson's inclinations were too well suited to the prevalent taste, and he gave as largely into it as any of his contemporaries. Tavern-habits were then those of our poets and actors. Ben's _Humours_, at "the Mermaid," and at a later period, his _Leges Convivales_ at "the Apollo," the club-room of "the Devil," were doubtless one great cause of a small personal unhappiness, of which he complains, and which had a very unlucky effect in rendering a mistress so obdurate, who "through her eyes had stopt her ears." This was, as his own verse tells us,

"His mountain-belly and his rocky face."

He weighed near twenty stone, according to his own avowal--an Elephant-Cupid! One of his "Sons," at the "Devil," seems to think that his _Catiline_ could not fail to be a miracle, by a certain sort of inspiration which Ben used on the occasion.

"With strenuous sinewy words that _Catiline_ swells, I reckon it not among men-miracles. How could that poem heat and vigour lack, _When each line oft cost BEN a cup of sack_?" R. BARON'S _Pocula Castalia_, p. 113, 1650.

Jonson, in the Bacchic phraseology of the day, was "a Canary-bird." "He would (says Aubrey) many times exceed in drink; canary was his beloved liquor; then he would tumble home to bed; and when he had thoroughly perspired, then to study."

Tradition, too, has sent down to us several tavern-tales of "Rare Ben." A good-humoured one has been preserved of the first interview between Bishop Corbet, when a young man, and our great bard. It occurred at a tavern, where Corbet was sitting alone. Ben, who had probably just drank up to the pitch of good fellowship, desired the waiter to take to the gentleman "a quart of _raw_ wine; and tell him," he added, "I _sacrifice_ my service to him."--"Friend," replied Corbet, "I thank him for his love; but tell him, from me, that he is mistaken; for _sacrifices are always burned_." This pleasant allusion to the mulled wine of the time by the young wit could not fail to win the affection of the master-wit himself. Harl. MSS. 6395.

Ben is not viewed so advantageously, in an unlucky fit of ebriety recorded by Oldys, in his MS. notes on Langbaine; but his authority is not to me of a suspicious nature: he had drawn it from a MS. collection of Oldisworth's, who appears to have been a curious collector of the history of his times. He was secretary to that strange character, Philip, Earl of Pembroke. It was the custom of those times to form collections of little traditional stories and other good things; we have had lately given to us by the Camden Society an amusing one, from the L'Estrange family, and the MS. already quoted is one of them. There could be no bad motive in recording a tale, quite innocent in itself, and which is further confirmed by Isaac Walton, who, without alluding to the tale, notices that Jonson parted from Sir Walter Raleigh and his son "not in cold blood." Mr. Gifford, in a MS. note on this work, does not credit this story, it not being accordant with dates. Such stories may not accord with dates or persons, and yet may be founded on some substantial fact. I know of no injury to Ben's poetical character, in showing that he was, like other men, quite incapable of taking care of himself, when he was sunk in the heavy sleep of drunkenness. It was an age when kings, as our James I. and his majesty of Denmark, were as often laid under the table as their subjects. My motive for preserving the story is the incident respecting _carrying men in baskets_: it was evidently a custom, which perhaps may have suggested the memorable adventure of Falstaff. It was a convenient mode of conveyance for those who were incapable of taking care of themselves before the invention of hackney coaches, which was of later date, in Charles the First's reign.

Camden recommended Jonson to Sir Walter Raleigh as a tutor to his son, whose gay humours not brooking the severe studies of Jonson, took advantage of his foible, to degrade him in the eyes of his father, who, it seems, was remarkable for his abstinence from wine: though, if another tale be true, he was no common sinner in "the true Virginia." Young Raleigh contrived to give Ben a surfeit, which threw the poet into a deep slumber; and then the pupil maliciously procured a buck-basket, and a couple of men, who carried our Ben to Sir Walter, with a message that "their young master had sent home his tutor." There is nothing improbable in the story; for the circumstance of _carrying drunken men in baskets_ was a usual practice. In the Harleian MS. quoted above, I find more than one instance; I will give one. An alderman, carried in _a porter's basket_, at his own door, is thrown out of it in a _qualmish_ state. The man, to frighten away the passengers, and enable the grave citizen to creep in unobserved, exclaims, that the man had the _falling sickness_!

[389] These were Marston and Decker, but as is usual with these sort of caricatures, the originals sometimes mistook their likenesses. They were both town-wits, and cronies, of much the same stamp; by a careful perusal of their works, the editor of Jonson has decided that Marston was Crispinus. With him Jonson had once lived on the most friendly terms: afterwards the great poet quarrelled with both, or they with him.

Dryden, in the preface to his "Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco," in his quarrel with Settle, which has been sufficiently narrated by Dr. Johnson, felt, when poised against this miserable rival, who had been merely set up by a party to mortify the superior genius, as Jonson had felt when pitched against _Crispinus_. It is thus that literary history is so interesting to authors. How often, in recording the fates of others, it reflects their own! "I knew indeed (says Dryden) that to write against him was to do him too great an honour; but I considered Ben Jonson had done it before to Decker, our author's predecessor, whom he chastised in his Poetaster, under the character of _Crispinus_." Langbaine tells us the subject of the "Satiromastix" of Decker, which I am to notice, was "the witty Ben Jonson;" and with this agree all the notices I have hitherto met with respecting "the Horace Junior" of Decker's _Satiromastix_. Mr. Gilchrist has published two curious pamphlets on Jonson; and in the last, p. 56, he has shown that Decker was "the poet-ape of Jonson," and that he avenged himself under the character of _Crispinus_ in his "Satiromastix;" to which may be added, that the _Fannius_, in the same satirical comedy, is probably his friend Marston.

Jonson allowed himself great liberty in _personal satire_, by which, doubtless, he rung an alarum to a waspish host; he lampooned _Inigo Jones_, the great machinist and architect. The lampoons are printed in Jonson's works [but not in their entirety. The great architect had sufficient court influence to procure them to be cancelled; and the character of _In-and-in Medley_, in "The Tale of a Tub," has come down to us with no other satirical personal traits than a few fantastical expressions]; and I have in MS. an answer by Inigo Jones, in verse, so pitiful that I have not printed it. That he condescended to bring obscure individuals on the stage, appears by his character of _Carlo Buffoon_, in _Every Man out of his Humour_. He calls this "a second untruss," and was censured for having drawn it from personal revenge. The Aubrey Papers, recently published have given us the character of this _Carlo Buffoon_, "one Charles Chester, a bold impertinent fellow; and they could never be at quiet for him; a perpetual talker, and made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him, and seals up his mouth; _i.e._, his upper and nether beard, with hard wax."--p. 514. Such a character was no unfitting object for dramatic satire. Mr. Gilchrist's pamphlets defended Jonson from the frequent accusations raised against him for the freedom of his muse, in such portraits after the life. Yet even our poet himself does not deny their truth, while he excuses himself. In the dedication of "The Fox," to the two Universities, he boldly asks, "Where have I been particular? Where personal?--Except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, buffoon, creatures (for their insolencies) worthy to be taxed." The mere list he here furnishes us with would serve to crowd one of the "twopenny audiences" in the small theatres of that day.

[390] Alluding, no doubt, to the price of seats at some of the minor theatres.

[391] It was the fashion with the poets connected with the theatre to wear long hair. Nashe censures Greene "for his fond (foolish) disguising of a Master of Arts (which was Greene's degree) with ruffianly hair."--ED.

[392] Alluding to the trial of the Poetasters, which takes place before Augustus and his poetical jury of Virgil, Ovid, Tibullus, &c., in Ben's play.

[393] Decker alludes here to the bastard of Burgundy, who considered himself unmatchable, till he was overthrown in Smithfield by Woodville, Earl Rivers.

[394] Horace acknowledges he played Zulziman at Paris-garden. "Sir Vaughan: Then, master Horace, you played the part of an honest man--"

Tucca exclaims: "Death of Hercules! he could never play that part well in 's life!"

[395] Among those arts of imitation which man has derived from the practice of animals, naturalists assure us that he owes _the use of clysters_ to the Egyptian Ibis. There are some who pretend this medicinal invention comes from the stork. The French are more like _Ibises_ than we are: _ils se donnent des lavements eux-memes_. But as it is rather uncertain what the Egyptian _Ibis_ is; whether, as translated in Leviticus xi. 17, the cormorant, or a species of stork, or only "a great owl," as we find in Calmet; it would be safest to attribute the invention to the unknown bird. I recollect, in Wickliffe's version of the Pentateuch, which I once saw in MS. in the possession of my valued friend Mr. Douce, that that venerable translator interpolates a little, to tell us that the Ibis "giveth to herself a purge."

JONSON AND DECKER.

BEN JONSON appears to have carried his military spirit into the literary republic--his gross convivialities, with anecdotes of the prevalent taste in that age for drinking-bouts--his "Poetaster" a sort of _Dunciad_, besides a personal attack on the frequenters of the theatres, with anecdotes--his Apologetical Dialogue, which was not allowed to be repeated--characters of DECKER and of MARSTON--DECKER'S Satiromastix, a parody on JONSON'S "Poetaster"--BEN exhibited under the character of "Horace Junior"--specimens of that literary satire; its dignified remonstrance, and the honourable applause bestowed on the great bard--some foibles in the literary habits of BEN, alluded to by DECKER--JONSON'S noble reply to his detractors and rivals.

This quarrel is a splendid instance how genius of the first order, lavishing its satirical powers on a number of contemporaries, may discover, among the crowd, some individual who may return with a right aim the weapon he has himself used, and who will not want for encouragement to attack the common assailant: the greater genius is thus mortified by a victory conceded to the inferior, which he himself had taught the meaner one to obtain over him.

JONSON, in his earliest productions, "Every Man in his Humour," and "Every Man out of his Humour," usurped that dictatorship, in the Literary Republic, which he so sturdily and invariably maintained, though long and hardily disputed. No bard has more courageously foretold that posterity would be interested in his labours; and often with very dignified feelings he casts this declaration into the teeth of his adversaries: but a bitter contempt for his brothers and his contemporaries was not less vehement than his affections for those who crowded under his wing. To his "sons" and his admirers he was warmly attached, and no poet has left behind him, in MS., so many testimonies of personal fondness, in the inscriptions and addresses, in the copies of his works which he presented to friends: of these I have seen more than one fervent and impressive.

DRUMMOND of Hawthornden, who perhaps carelessly and imperfectly minuted down the heads of their literary conference on the chief authors of the age, exposes the severity of criticism which Ben exercised on some spirits as noble as his own. The genius of Jonson was rough, hardy, and invincible, of which the frequent excess degenerated into ferocity; and by some traditional tales, this ferocity was still inflamed by large potations: for Drummond informs us, "Drink was the element in which he lived."[388] Old Ben had given, on two occasions, some remarkable proofs of his personal intrepidity. When a soldier, in the face of both armies, he had fought single-handed with his antagonist, had slain him, and carried off his arms as trophies. Another time he killed his man in a duel. Jonson appears to have carried the same military spirit into the Literary Republic.

Such a genius would become more tyrannical by success, and naturally provoked opposition, from the proneness of mankind to mortify usurped greatness, when they can securely do it. The man who hissed the poet's play had no idea that he might himself become one of the dramatic personages. Ben then produced his "Poetaster," which has been called the _Dunciad_ of those times; but it is a _Dunciad_ without notes. The personages themselves are now only known by their general resemblance to nature, with the exception of two characters, those of _Crispinus and Demetrius_.[389]

In "The Poetaster," Ben, with flames too long smothered, burst over the heads of all rivals and detractors. His enemies seem to have been among all classes; personages recognised on the scene as soon as viewed; poetical, military, legal, and histrionic. It raised a host in arms. Jonson wrote an apologetical epilogue, breathing a firm spirit, worthy of himself; but its dignity was too haughty to be endured by contemporaries, whom genius must soothe by equality. This apologetical dialogue was never allowed to be repeated; now we may do it with pleasure. Writings, like pictures, require a particular light and distance to be correctly judged and inspected, without any personal inconvenience.

One of the dramatic personages in this epilogue inquires

I never saw the play breed all this tumult. What was there in it could so deeply offend, And stir so many hornets?

The author replies:

------------I never writ that piece More innocent, or empty of offence; Some salt it had, but neither tooth nor gall. ------------Why, they say you tax'd The law and lawyers, captains, and the players, By their particular names. ------------It is not so: I used no names. My books have still been taught To spare the persons, and to speak the vices.

And he proceeds to tell us, that to obviate this accusation he had placed his scenes in the age of Augustus.

To show that Virgil, Horace, and the rest Of those great master-spirits, did not want Detractors then, or practisers against them: And by this line, although no parallel, I hoped at last they would sit down and blush.

But instead of their "sitting down and blushing," we find--

That they fly buzzing round about my nostrils; And, like so many screaming grasshoppers Held by the wings, fill every ear with noise.

Names were certainly not necessary to portraits, where every day the originals were standing by their side. This is the studied pleading of a poet, who knows he is concealing the truth.

There is a passage in the play itself where Jonson gives the true cause of "the tumult" raised against him. Picturing himself under the character of his favourite Horace, he makes the enemies of Horace thus describe him, still, however, preserving the high tone of poetical superiority.

"Alas, sir, Horace is a mere sponge. Nothing but humours and observations he goes up and down sucking from every society, and when he comes home squeezes himself dry again. He will pen all he knows. He will sooner lose his best friend than his least jest. What he once drops upon paper against a man, lives eternally to upbraid him."

Such is the true picture of a town-wit's life! The age of Augustus was much less present to Jonson than his own; and Ovid, Tibullus, and Horace were not the personages he cared so much about, as "that society in which," it was said, "he went up and down sucking in and squeezing himself dry:" the formal lawyers, who were cold to his genius; the sharking captains, who would not draw to save their own swords, and would cheat "their friend, or their friend's friend," while they would bully down Ben's genius; and the little sycophant histrionic, "the twopenny[390] tear-mouth, copper-laced scoundrel, stiff-toe, who used to travel with pumps full of gravel after a blind jade and a hamper, and stalk upon boards and barrel-heads to an old crackt trumpet;" and who all now made a party with some rival of Jonson.

All these personages will account for "the tumult" which excites the innocent astonishment of our author. These only resisted him by "filling every ear with noise." But one of the "screaming grasshoppers held by the wings," boldly turned on the holder with a scorpion's bite; and Decker, who had been lashed in "The Poetaster," produced his "Satiromastix, or the untrussing of the humorous Poet." Decker was a subordinate author, indeed; but, what must have been very galling to Jonson, who was the aggressor, indignation proved such an inspirer, that Decker seemed to have caught some portion of Jonson's own genius, who had the art of making even Decker popular; while he discovered that his own laurel-wreath had been dexterously changed by the "Satiromastix" into a garland of "stinging nettles."

In "The Poetaster," _Crispinus_ is the picture of one of those impertinent fellows who resolve to become poets, having an equal aptitude to become anything that is in fashionable request. When Hermogenes, the finest singer in Rome, refused to sing, _Crispinus_ gladly seizes the occasion, and whispers the lady near him--"Entreat the ladies to entreat me to sing, I beseech you." This character is marked by a ludicrous peculiarity which, turning on an individual characteristic, must have assisted the audience in the true application. Probably Decker had some remarkable head of hair,[391] and that his locks hung not like "the curls of Hyperion;" for the jeweller's wife admiring among the company the persons of Ovid, Tibullus, &c., _Crispinus_ acquaints her that they were poets, and, since she admires them, promises to become a poet himself. The simple lady further inquires, "if, when he is a poet, his looks will change? and particularly if his hair will change, and be like those gentlemen's?" "A man," observes _Crispinus_, "may be a poet, and yet not change his hair." "Well!" exclaims the simple jeweller's wife, "we shall see your cunning; yet if you can change your hair, I pray do it."

In two elaborate scenes, poor Decker stands for a full-length. Resolved to be a poet, he haunts the company of Horace: he meets him in the street, and discovers all the variety of his nothingness: he is a student, a stoic, an architect: everything by turns, "and nothing long." Horace impatiently attempts to escape from him, but _Crispinus_ foils him at all points. This affectionate admirer is even willing to go over the world with him. He proposes an ingenious project, if Horace will introduce him to Maecenas. _Crispinus_ offers to become "his assistant," assuring him that "he would be content with the next place, not envying thy reputation with thy patron;" and he thinks that Horace and himself "would soon lift out of favour Virgil, Varius, and the best of them, and enjoy them wholly to ourselves." The restlessness of Horace to extricate himself from this "Hydra of Discourse," the passing friends whom he calls on to assist him, and the glue-like pertinacity of _Crispinus_, are richly coloured.

A ludicrous and exquisitely satirical scene occurs at the trial of _Crispinus_ and his colleagues. Jonson has here introduced an invention, which a more recent satirist so happily applied to our modern Lexiphanes, Dr. Johnson, for his immeasurable polysyllables. Horace is allowed by Augustus to make _Crispinus_ swallow a certain pill; the light vomit discharges a great quantity of hard matter, to clear

His brain and stomach of their tumorous heats.

These consist of certain affectations in style, and adulteration of words, which offended the Horatian taste: "the basin" is called quickly for and _Crispinus_ gets rid easily of some, but others were of more difficult passage:--

'Magnificate!' that came up somewhat hard!

_Crispinus._ 'O barmy froth----'

_Augustus._ What's that?

_Crispinus._ 'Inflate!--Turgidous!--and Ventositous'--

_Horace._ 'Barmy froth, inflate, turgidous, and ventosity are come up.'

_Tibullus._ O terrible windy words!

_Gallus._ A sign of a windy brain.

But all was not yet over: "Prorumpt" made a terrible rumbling, as if his spirit was to have gone with it; and there were others which required all the kind assistance of the Horatian "light vomit." This satirical scene closes with some literary admonitions from the grave Virgil, who details to _Crispinus_ the wholesome diet to be observed after his surfeits, which have filled

His blood and brain thus full of crudities.

Virgil's counsels to the vicious neologist, who debases the purity of English diction by affecting new words or phrases, may too frequently be applied.

You must not hunt for wild outlandish terms To stuff out a peculiar dialect; But let your matter run before your words. And if at any time you chance to meet Some Gallo-Belgick phrase, you shall not straight Rack your poor verse to give it entertainment, But let it pass; and do not think yourself Much damnified, if you do leave it out When not the sense could well receive it.

Virgil adds something which breathes all the haughty spirit of Ben: he commands _Crispinus_:

------------Henceforth, learn To bear yourself more humbly, nor to swell Or breathe your insolent and idle spite On him whose laughter can your worst affright:

and dismisses him

To some dark place, removed from company; He will talk idly else after his physic.

"The Satiromastix" may be considered as a parody on "The Poetaster." Jonson, with classical taste, had raised his scene in the court of Augustus: Decker, with great unhappiness, places it in that of William Rufus. The interest of the piece arises from the dexterity with which Decker has accommodated those very characters which Jonson has satirised in his "Poetaster." This gratified those who came every day to the theatre, delighted to take this mimetic revenge on the arch bard.

In Decker's prefatory address "To the World," he observes, "Horace haled his Poetasters to the bar;[392] the Poetasters untrussed Horace: Horace made himself believe that his Burgonian wit[393] might desperately challenge all comers, and that none durst take up the foils against him." But Decker is the Earl Rivers! He had been blamed for the personal attacks on Jonson; for "whipping his fortunes and condition of life; where the more noble reprehension had been of his mind's deformity:" but for this he retorts on Ben. Some censured Decker for barrenness of invention, in bringing on those characters in his own play whom Jonson had stigmatised; but "it was not improper," he says, "to set the same dog upon Horace, whom Horace had set to worry others." Decker warmly concludes with defying the Jonsonians.

"Let that mad dog Detraction bite till his teeth be worn to the stumps; Envy, feed thy snakes so fat with poison till they burst; World, let all thy adders shoot out their Hydra-headed forked stings! I thank thee, thou true Venusian Horace, for these good words thou givest me. _Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo._"

The whole address is spirited. Decker was a very popular writer, whose numerous tracts exhibit to posterity a more detailed narrative of the manners of the town in the Elizabethan age than is elsewhere to be found.

In Decker's Satiromastix, Horace junior is first exhibited in his study, rehearsing to himself an ode: suddenly the Pindaric rapture is interrupted by the want of a rhyme; this is satirically applied to an unlucky line of Ben's own. One of his "sons," Asinius Bubo, who is blindly worshipping his great idol, or "his Ningle," as he calls him, amid his admiration of Horace, perpetually breaks out into digressive accounts of what sort of a man his friends take him to be. For one, Horace in wrath prepares an epigram: and for _Crispinus_ and _Fannius_, brother bards, who threaten "they'll bring your life and death on the stage, as a bricklayer in a play," he says, "I can bring a prepared troop of gallants, who, for my sake, shall distaste every unsalted line in their fly-blown comedies." "Ay," replies Asinius, "and all men of my rank!" _Crispinus_, Horace calls "a light voluptuous reveller," and _Fannius_ "the slightest cobweb-lawn piece of a poet." Both enter, and Horace receives them with all friendship.

The scene is here conducted not without skill. Horace complains that

----------------When I dip my pen In distill'd roses, and do strive to drain Out of mine ink all gall-- Mine enemies, with sharp and searching eyes, Look through and through me. And when my lines are measured out as straight As even parallels, 'tis strange, that still, Still some imagine that they're drawn awry. The error is not mine, but in their eye, That cannot take proportions.

To the querulous satirist, _Crispinus_ replies with dignified gravity--

Horace! to stand within the shot of galling tongues Proves not your guilt; for, could we write on paper Made of these turning leaves of heaven, the clouds, Or speak with angels' tongues, yet wise men know That some would shake the head, though saints should sing; Some snakes must hiss, because they're born with stings. ------------Be not you grieved If that which you mould fair, upright, and smooth, Be screw'd awry, made crooked, lame, and vile, By racking comments.-- So to be bit it rankles not, for Innocence May with a feather brush off the foul wrong. But when your _dastard wit will strike at men In corners, and in riddles fold the vices Of your best friends_, you must not take to heart If they take off all gilding from their pills, And only offer you the bitter core.--

At this the galled Horace winces. _Crispinus_ continues, that it is in vain Horace swears, that

--------------He puts on The office of an executioner, Only to strike off the swoln head of sin, Where'er you find it standing. Say you swear, And make damnation, parcel of your oath, That when your lashing jests make all men bleed, Yet you whip none--court, city, country, friends, Foes, all must smart alike.--

_Fannius_, too, joins, and shows Ben the absurd oaths he takes, when he swears to all parties, that he does not mean them. How, then, of five hundred and four, five hundred

Should all point with their fingers in one instant, At one and the same man?

Horace is awkwardly placed between these two friendly remonstrants, to whom he promises perpetual love.

Captain Tucca, a dramatic personage in Jonson's Poetaster, and a copy of his own Bobadil, whose original the poet had found at "Powles," the fashionable lounge of that day, is here continued with the same spirit; and as that character permitted from the extravagance of its ribaldry, it is now made the vehicle for those more personal retorts, exhibiting the secret history of Ben, which perhaps twitted the great bard more than the keenest wit, or the most solemn admonition which Decker could ever attain. Jonson had cruelly touched on Decker being out at elbows, and made himself too merry with the histrionic tribe: he, who was himself a poet, and had been a Thespian! The blustering captain thus attacks the great wit:--"Do'st stare, my Saracen's head at Newgate? I'll march through thy Dunkirk guts, for shooting jests at me." He insists that as Horace, "that sly knave, whose shoulders were once seen lapp'd in a player's old cast cloak," and who had reflected on _Crispinus's_ satin doublet being ravelled out; that he should wear one of _Crispinus's_ "old cast sattin suits," and that _Fannius_ should write a couple of scenes for his own "strong garlic comedies," and Horace should swear that they were his own--he would easily bear "the guilt of conscience." "Thy Muse is but a hagler, and wears clothes upon best be trust (a humorous Deckerian phrase)--thou'rt _great_ in somebody's books for this!" Did it become Jonson to gibe at the histrionic tribe, who is himself accused of "treading the stage, as if he were treading mortar."[394] He once put up--"a supplication to be a poor journeyman player, and hadst been still so, but that thou couldst not set _a good face_ upon't. Thou hast forget how thou ambled'st in leather-pilch, by a play-waggon in the highway; and took'st mad Jeronimo's part, to get service among the mimics," &c.

Ben's person was, indeed, not gracious in the playfulness of love or fancy. A female, here, thus delineates Ben:--

"That same Horace has the most ungodly face, by my fan; it looks for all the world like a rotten russet-apple, when 'tis bruised. It's better than a spoonful of cinnamon-water next my heart, for me to hear him speak; he sounds it so i' th' nose, and talks and rants like the poor fellows under Ludgate--to see his face make faces, when he reads his songs and sonnets."

Again, we have Ben's face compared with that of his favourite, Horace's--"You staring Leviathan! look on the sweet visage of Horace; look, parboil'd face, look--he has not his face punchtfull of eyelet-holes, like the cover of a warming-pan."

Joseph Warton has oddly remarked that most of our poets were handsome men. Jonson, however, was not poetical on that score; though his bust is said to resemble Menander's.

Such are some of the personalities with which Decker recriminated.

Horace is thrown into many ludicrous situations. He is told that "admonition is good meat." Various persons bring forward their accusations; and Horace replies that they envy him,

Because I hold more worthy company.

The greatness of Ben's genius is by no means denied by his rivals; and Decker makes _Fannius_ reply, with noble feelings, and in an elevated strain of poetry:--

Good Horace, no! my cheeks do blush for thine, As often as thou speakst so; where one true And nobly virtuous spirit, for thy best part Loves thee, I wish one, ten; even from my heart! I make account, I put up as deep share In any good man's love, which thy worth earns, As thou thyself; we envy not to see Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesy. No, here the gall lies;--We, that know what stuff Thy very heart is made of, know the stalk On which thy learning grows, and can give life To thy, once dying, baseness; yet must we Dance anticke on your paper--. But were thy warp'd soul put in a new mould, I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold.

To which one adds, that "jewels, master Horace, must be hanged, you know." This "Whip of Men," with Asinius his admirer, are brought to court, transformed into satyrs, and bound together: "not lawrefied, but nettle-fied;" crowned with a wreath of nettles.

With stinging-nettles crown his stinging wit.

Horace is called on to swear, after Asinius had sworn to give up his "Ningle."

"Now, master Horace, you must be a more horrible swearer; for your oath must be, like your wits, of many colours; and like a broker's book, of many parcels."

Horace offers to swear till his hairs stand up on end, to be rid of this sting. "Oh, this sting!" alluding to the nettles. "'Tis not your sting of conscience, is it?" asks one. In the inventory of his oaths, there is poignant satire, with strong humour; and it probably exhibits some foibles in the literary habits of our bard.

He swears "Not to hang himself, even if he thought any man could write plays as well as himself; not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests stolen from the _Temple's Revels_; not to sit in a gallery, when your comedies have entered their actions, and there make vile and bad faces at every line, to make men have an eye to you, and to make players afraid; not to venture on the stage, when your play is ended, and exchange courtesies and compliments with gallants to make all the house rise and cry--'That's Horace that's he that pens and purges humours.' When you bid all your friends to the marriage of a poor couple, that is to say, your Wits and Necessities--_alias_, a poet's Whitsun-ale--you shall swear that, within three days after, you shall not abroad, in bookbinders' shops, brag that your viceroys, or tributary-kings, have done homage to you, or paid quarterage. Moreover, when a knight gives you his passport to travel in and out to his company, and gives you money for God's sake--you will swear not to make scald and wry-mouthed jests upon his knighthood. When your plays are misliked at court, you shall not cry Mew! like a puss-cat, and say, you are glad you write out of the courtier's element; and in brief, when you sup in taverns, amongst your betters, you shall swear not to dip your manners in too much sauce; nor, at table, to fling epigrams or play-speeches about you."

The king observes, that

--------------------He whose pen Draws both corrupt and clear blood from all men Careless what vein he pricks; let him not rave When his own sides are struck; blows, blows do crave.

Such were the bitter apples which Jonson, still in his youth, plucked from the tree of his broad satire, that branched over all ranks in society. That even his intrepidity and hardiness felt the incessant attacks he had raised about him, appears from the close of the Apologetical Epilogueto "The Poetaster;" where, though he replies with all the consciousness of genius, and all its haughtiness, he closes with a determination to give over the composition of comedies! This, however, like all the vows of a poet, was soon broken; and his masterpieces were subsequently produced.

_Friend._ Will you not answer then the libels?

_Author._ No.

_Friend._ Nor the Untrussers.

_Author._ Neither.

_Friend._ You are undone, then.

_Author._ With whom?

_Friend._ The world.

_Author._ The bawd!

_Friend._ It will be taken to be stupidity or tameness in you.

_Author._ But they that have incensed me, can in soul Acquit me of that guilt. They know I dare To spurn or baffle them; or squirt their eyes With ink or urine: or I could do worse, Arm'd with Archilochus' fury, write iambicks, Would make the desperate lashers hang themselves.--

His Friend tells him that he is accused that "all his writing is mere railing;" which Jonson nobly compares to "the salt in the old comedy;" that they say, that he is slow, and "scarce brings forth a play a year."

_Author._ ------------'Tis true, I would they could not say that I did that.

He is angry that their

------------Base and beggarly conceits Should carry it, by the multitude of voices, Against the most abstracted work, opposed To the stufft nostrils of the drunken rout.--

And then exclaims with admirable enthusiasm--

O this would make a learn'd and liberal soul To rive his stained quill up to the back, And damn his long-watch'd labours to the fire; Things, that were born, when none but the still night, And the dumb candle, saw his pinching throes.

And again, alluding to these mimics--

This 'tis that strikes me silent, seals my lips, And apts me rather to sleep out my time, Than I would waste it in contemned strifes With these vile Ibides, these unclean birds, That make their mouths their clysters, and still purge From their hot entrails.[395] But I leave the monsters To their own fate. And since the Comic Muse Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try If Tragedy have a more kind aspect. Leave me! There's something come into my thought That must and shall be sung, high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof.

_Friend._ I reverence these raptures, and obey them.

Such was the noble strain in which Jonson replied to his detractors in the town and to his rivals about him. Yet this poem, composed with all the dignity and force of the bard, was not suffered to be repeated. It was stopped by authority. But Jonson, in preserving it in his works, sends it "TO POSTERITY, that it may make a difference between their manners that provoked me then, and mine that neglected them ever."

FOOTNOTES:

[396] This work was not given to the public till 1724, a small quarto, with a fine portrait of Brooke. More than a century had elapsed since its forcible suppression. Anstis printed it from the fair MS. which Brooke had left behind him. The author's paternal affection seemed fondly to imagine its child might be worthy of posterity, though calumniated by its contemporaries.

[397] "Verum enimvero de his et hoc genere hominum ne verbum amplius addam, tabellam tamen summi illius artificis Apellis, cum colorum vivacitate depingere non possim, verbis leviter adumbrabo et proponam, ut Antiphilus noster, suique similes, et qui calumniis credunt, hanc, et in hac seipsos semel simulque intueantur.

"Ad dextram sedet quidam, quia credulus, auribus praelongis insignis, quales fere illae Midae feruntur. Manum porrigit procul accedenti Calumniae. Circumstant eum mulierculae duae, Ignorantia ac Suspicio. Adit aliunde propius Calumnia eximie compta, vultu ipso et gestu corporis efferens rabiem, et iram aestuanti conceptam pectore prae se ferens: sinistra facem tenens flammantem, dextra secum adolescentem capillis arreptum, manus ad superos tendentem, obtestantemque immortalium deorum fidem, trahit. Anteit vir pallidus, in specium impurus, acie oculorum minime hebeti, caeterum plane iis similis, qui gravi aliquo morbo contabuerunt. Hic livor est, ut facile conjicias. Quin, et mulierculae aliquot Insidiae et Fallaciae ut comites Calumniam comitantur. Harum est munus, dominam hortari, instruere, comere, et subornare. A tergo, habitu lugubri, pullato, laceroque Poenitentia subsequitur, quae capite in tergum deflexo, cum lachrymis, ac pudore procul venientem Veritatem agnoscit, et excipit."

[398] A _Fletcher_ is a maker of bows and arrows.--ASH.

[399] Brooke died at the old mansion opposite the Roman town of Reculver in Kent. The house is still known as Brooke-farm; and the original gateway of decorative brickwork still exists. He was buried in Reculver Church, now destroyed, where a mural monument was erected to his memory, having a rhyming inscription, which told the reader:--

"Fifteenth October he was last alive, One thousand six hundred and twenty-five, Seaventy-three years bore he fortune's harms, And forty-five an officer of armes."

Brooke was originally a painter-stainer. His enmity to Camden appears to have originated in the appointment of the latter to the office of Clarencieux on the death of Richard Lee; he believing himself to be qualified for the place by greater knowledge, and by his long connexion with the College of Arms. His mode of righting himself lacked judgment, and he was twice suspended from his office, and was even attempted to be expelled therefrom.--ED.

[400] In Anstis's edition of "A Second Discoverie of Errors in the Much-commended 'Britannia,' &c.," 1724, the reader will find all the passages in the "Britannia" of the edition of 1594 to which Brooke made exceptions, placed column-wise with the following edition of it in 1600. It is, as Anstis observes, a debt to truth, without making any reflections.

[401] There is a sensible observation in the old "Biographia Britannica" on Brooke. "From the splenetic attack originally made by Rafe Brooke upon the 'Britannia' arose very _great advantages to the public_, by the shifting and bringing to light as good, perhaps a better and more authentic account of our nobility, than had been given at that time of those in any other country of Europe."--p. 1135.

CAMDEN AND BROOKE.

Literary, like political history, is interested in the cause of an obscure individual, when deprived of his just rights--character of CAMDEN--BROOKE'S "Discovery of Errors" in the "Britannia"--his work disturbed in the printing--afterwards enlarged, but never suffered to be published--whether BROOKE'S motive was personal rancour!--the persecuted author becomes vindictive--his keen reply to CAMDEN--CAMDEN'S beautiful picture of calumny--BROOKE furnishes a humorous companion-piece--CAMDEN'S want of magnanimity and justice--when great authors are allowed to suppress the works of their adversary, the public receives the injury and the insult.

In the literary as well as the political commonwealth, the cause of an obscure individual violently deprived of his just rights is a common one. We protest against the power of genius itself, when it strangles rather than wrestles with its adversary, or combats in mail against a naked man. The general interests of literature are involved by the illegitimate suppression of a work, of which the purpose is to correct another, whatever may be the invective which accompanies the correction: nor are we always to assign to malignant motives even this spirit of invective, which, though it betrays a contracted genius, may also show the earnestness of an honest one.

The quarrel between CAMDEN, the great author of the "Britannia," and BROOKE, the "York Herald," may illustrate these principles. It has hitherto been told to the shame of the inferior genius; but the history of Brooke was imperfectly known to his contemporaries. Crushed by oppression, his tale was marred in the telling. A century sometimes passes away before the world can discover the truth even of a private history.

Brooke is aspersed as a man of the meanest talents, insensible to the genius of Camden, rankling with envy at his fame, and correcting the "Britannia" out of mere spite.

When the history of Brooke is known, and his labours fairly estimated, we shall blame him much less than he has been blamed; and censure Camden, who has escaped all censure, and whose conduct, in the present instance, was destitute of magnanimity and justice.

The character of the author of "Britannia" is great, and this error of his feelings, now first laid to his charge, may be attributed as much to the weakness of the age as to his own extreme timidity, and perhaps to a little pride. Conscious as was Camden of enlarged views, we can easily pardon him for the contempt he felt, when he compared them with the subordinate ones of his cynical adversary.

Camden possessed one of those strongly directed minds which early in life plan some vast labour, while their imagination and their industry feed on it for many successive years; and they shed the flower and sweetness of their lives in the preparation of a work which at its maturity excites the gratitude of their nation. His passion for our national antiquities discovered itself even in his school-days, grew up with him at the University; and, when afterwards engaged in his public duties as master at Westminster school, he there composed his "Britannia," "at spare hours, and on festival days." To the perpetual care of his work, he voluntarily sacrificed all other views in life, and even drew himself away from domestic pleasures; for he refused marriage and preferments, which might interrupt his beloved studies! The work at length produced, received all the admiration due to so great an enterprise; and even foreigners, as the work was composed in the universal language of learning, could sympathise with Britons, when they contemplated the stupendous labour. Camden was honoured by the titles (for the very names of illustrious genius become such), of the Varro, the Strabo, and the Pausanias of Britain.

While all Europe admired the "Britannia," a cynical genius, whose mind seemed bounded by his confined studies, detected one error amidst the noble views the mighty volume embraced; the single one perhaps he could perceive, and for which he stood indebted to his office as "York Herald." Camden, in an appendage to the end of each county, had committed numerous genealogical errors, which he afterwards affected, in his defence, to consider as trivial matters in so great a history, and treats his adversary with all the contempt and bitterness he could inflict on him; but Ralph Brooke entertained very high notions of the importance of heraldical studies, and conceived that the "Schoolmaster" Camden, as he considered him, had encroached on the rights and honours of his College of Heralds. When particular objects engage our studies, we are apt to raise them in the scale of excellence to a degree disproportioned to their real value; and are thus liable to incur ridicule. But it should be considered that many useful students are not philosophers, and the pursuits of their lives are never ridiculous to them. It is not the interest of the public to degrade this class too low. Every species of study contributes to the perfection of human knowledge, by that universal bond which connects them all in a philosophical mind.

Brooke prepared "A Discovery of Certain Errors in the Much-commended Britannia." When we consider Brooke's character, as headstrong with heraldry as Don Quixote's with romances of chivalry, we need not attribute his motives (as Camden himself, with the partial feelings of an author, does, and subsequent writers echo) to his envy at Camden's promotion to be Clarencieux King of Arms; for it appears that Brooke began his work before this promotion. The indecent excesses of his pen, with the malicious charges of plagiarism he brings against Camden for the use he made of Leland's collections, only show the insensibility of the mere heraldist to the nobler genius of the historian. Yet Brooke had no ordinary talents: his work is still valuable for his own peculiar researches; but his _naive_ shrewdness, his pointed precision, the bitter invective, and the caustic humour of his cynical pen, give an air of originality, if not of genius, which no one has dared to notice. Brooke's first work against Camden was violently disturbed in its progress, and hurried, in a mutilated state, into the world, without licence or a publisher's name. Thus impeded, and finally crushed, the howl of persecution followed his name; and subsequent writers servilely traced his character from their partial predecessors.

But Brooke, though denied the fair freedom of the press, and a victim to the powerful connexions of Camden, calmly pursued his silent labour with great magnanimity. He wrote his "Second Discovery of Errors," an enlargement of the first. This he carefully finished for the press, but could never get published. The secret history of the controversy may be found there.[396]

Brooke had been loudly accused of indulging a personal rancour against Camden, and the motive of his work was attributed to envy of his great reputation; a charge constantly repeated.

Yet this does not appear, for when Brooke first began his "Discovery of Errors," he did not design its publication; for he liberally offered Camden his Observations and Collections. They were fastidiously, perhaps haughtily, rejected; on this pernicious and false principle, that to correct his errors in genealogy might discredit the whole work. On which absurdity Brooke shrewdly remarks--"As if healing the sores would have maimed the body." He speaks with more humility on this occasion than an insulted, yet a skilful writer, was likely to do, who had his labours considered, as he says, "worthy neither of thanks nor acceptance."

"The rat is not so contemptible but he may help the lion, at a pinch, out of those nets wherein his strength is hampered; and the words of an inferior may often carry matter in them to admonish his superior of some important consideration; and surely, of what account soever I might have seemed to this learned man, yet, in respect to my profession and courteous offer, (I being an officer-of-arms, and he then but a schoolmaster), might well have vouchsafed the perusal of my notes."

When he published, our herald stated the reasons of writing against Camden with good-humour, and rallies him on his "incongruity in his principles of heraldry--for which I challenge him!--for depriving some nobles of issue to succeed them, who had issue, of whom are descended many worthy families: denying barons and earls that were, and making barons and earls of others that were not; mistaking the son for the father, and the father for the son; affirming legitimate children to be illegitimate, and illegitimate to be legitimate; and framing incestuous and unnatural marriages, making the father to marry the son's wife, and the son his own mother."

He treats Camden with the respect due to his genius, while he judiciously distinguishes where the greatest ought to know when to yield.

"The most abstruse arts I profess not, but yield the palm and victory to mine adversary, that great learned Mr. Camden, with whom, yet, a long experimented navigator may contend about his chart and compass, about havens, creeks, and sounds; so I, an ancient herald, a little dispute, without imputation of audacity, concerning the honour of arms, and the truth of honourable descents."

Brooke had seen, as he observes, in four editions of the "Britannia," a continued race of errors, in false descents, &c., and he continues, with a witty allusion:--

"Perceiving that even the brains of many learned men beyond the seas had misconceived and miscarried in the travail and birth of their relations, being gotten, as it were, with child (as Diomedes's mares) by the blasts of his erroneous puffs; I could not but a little question the original father of their absurdities, being so far blown, with the trumpet of his learning and fame, into foreign lands."

He proceeds with instances of several great authors on the Continent having been misled by the statements of Camden.

Thus largely have I quoted from Brooke, to show, that at first he never appears to have been influenced by the mean envy, or the personal rancour, of which he is constantly accused. As he proceeded in his work, which occupied him several years, his reproaches are whetted with a keener edge, and his accusations are less generous. But to what are we to attribute this? To the contempt and persecution Brooke so long endured from Camden: these acted on his vexed and degraded spirit, till it burst into the excesses of a man heated with injured feelings.

When Camden took his station in the Herald's College with Brooke, whose offers of his notes he had refused to accept, they soon found what it was for two authors to live under the same roof, who were impatient to write against each other. The cynical York, at first, would twit the new king-of-arms, perpetually affirming that "his predecessor was a more able herald than any who lived in this age:" a truth, indeed, acknowledged by Dugdale. On this occasion, once the king-of-arms gave malicious York "the lie!" reminding the crabbed herald of "his own learning; who, as a scholar, was famous through all the provinces of Christendom." "So that (adds Brooke) now I learnt, that before him, when we speak in commendation of any other, to say, I must always except Plato." Camden would allow of no private communication between them; and in _Sermonibus Convivalibus_, in his table-talk, "the heat and height of his spirit" often scorched the contemned Yorkist, whose rejected "Discovery of Errors" had no doubt been too frequently enlarged, after such rough convivialities. Brooke now resolved to print; but, in printing the work, the press was disturbed, and his house was entered by "this learned man, his friends, and the stationers." The latter were alarmed for the sale of the "Britannia," which might have been injured by this rude attack. The work was therefore printed in an unfinished state: part was intercepted; and the author stopped, by authority, from proceeding any further. Some imperfect copies got abroad.

The treatment the exasperated Brooke now incurred was more provoking than Camden's refusal of his notes, and the haughtiness of his "Sermonibus Convivalibus." The imperfect work was, however, laid before the public, so that Camden could not refuse to notice its grievous charges. He composed an angry reply in Latin, addressed _ad Lectorem_! and never mentioning Brooke by name, contemptuously alludes to him only by a _Quidam_ and _Iste_ (a certain person, and He!)--"He considers me (cries the mortified Brooke, in his second suppressed work) as an _Individuum vagum_, and makes me but a _Quidam_ in his pamphlet, standing before him as a schoolboy, while he whips me. Why does he reply in Latin to an English accusation? He would disguise himself in his school-rhetoric; wherein, like the cuttle-fish, being stricken, he thinks to hide and shift himself away in the ink of his rhetoric. I will clear the waters again."

He fastens on Camden's former occupation, virulently accusing him of the manners of a pedagogue:--"A man may perceive an immoderate and eager desire of vainglory growing in hand, ever since he used to teach and correct children for these things, according to the opinion of some, _in mores et naturam abeunt_." He complains of "the school-hyperboles" which Camden exhausts on him, among which Brooke is compared to "the strumpet Leontion," who wrote against "the divine Theophrastus." To this Brooke keenly replies:

"Surely, had Theophrastus dealt with women's matters, a woman, though mean, might in reason have contended with him. A king must be content to be laughed at if he come into Apelles's shop, and dispute about colours and portraiture. I am not ambitious nor envious to carp at matters of higher learning than matters of heraldry, which I profess: that is the slipper, wherein I know a slip when I find it. But see your cunning; you can, with the blur of your pen, dipped in copperas and gall, make me learned and unlearned; nay, you can almost change my sex, and make me a whore, like Leontion; and, taking your silver pen again, make yourself the divine Theophrastus."

At the close of Camden's answer, he introduced the allegorical picture of Calumny, that elegant invention of the Grecian fancy of Apelles, painted by him when suffering under the false accusations of a rival. The picture is described by Lucian; but it has received many happy touches from the classical hand of the master of Westminster School. As a literary satire, he applies it with great dignity. I give here a translation, but I preserve the original Latin in the note as Camden's reply to Brooke is not easily to be procured.

"But though I am not disposed to waste more words on these, and this sort of men, yet I cannot resist the temptation of adding a slight sketch, for I cannot give that vivacity of colouring of the picture of the great artist Apelles that our Antiphilus and the like, whose ears are ever open to calumny, may, in contemplating it, find a reflection of themselves.

"On the right hand sits a man, who, to show his credulity, is remarkable for his prodigious ears, similar to those of Midas. He extends his hand to greet Calumny, who is approaching him. The two diminutive females around him are Ignorance and Suspicion. Opposite to them, Calumny advances, betraying in her countenance and gesture the savage rage and anger working in her tempestuous breast: her left hand holds a flaming torch; while with her right she drags by the hair a youth, who, stretching his uplifted hands to Heaven, is calling on the immortal powers to bear testimony to his innocence. She is preceded by a man of a pallid and impure appearance, seemingly wasting away under some severe disease, except that his eye sparkles, and has not the dulness usual to such. That Envy is here meant, you readily conjecture. Some diminutive females, frauds and deceits, attend her as companions, whose office is to encourage and instruct, and studiously to adorn their mistress. In the background, Repentance, sadly arrayed in a mournful, worn-out, and ragged garment, who, with averted head, with tears and shame, acknowledges and prepares to receive Truth, approaching from a distance."[397]

This elegant picture, so happily introduced into a piece of literary controversy, appears to have only slightly affected the mind of Brooke, which was probably of too stout a grain to take the folds of Grecian drapery. Instead of sympathising with its elegance, he breaks out into a horse-laugh; and, what is quite unexpected among such grave inquiries into a ludicrous tale in verse, which, though it has not Grecian fancy, has broad English humour, where he maliciously insinuates that Camden had appropriated to his own use, or "new-coated his 'Britannia'" with Leland's MSS., and disguised what he had stolen.

Now, to show himself as good a painter as he is a herald, he propounded, at the end of his book, a table (_i.e._ a picture) of his own invention, being nothing comparable to "Apelles," as he himself confesseth, and we believe him; for, like the rude painter that was fain to write, 'This is a Horse,' upon his painted horse, he writes upon his picture the names of all that furious rabble therein expressed--which, for to requite him, I will return a tale of John Fletcher (some time of Oxford) and his horse. Neither can this fable be any disparagement to his table, being more ancient and authenticall, and far more conceipted than his envious picture. And thus it was:--

A TALE (NOT OF A ROASTED) BUT OF A PAINTED HORSE.

JOHN FLETCHER, famous, and a man well known, But using not his sirname's trade alone,[398] Did hackney out poor jades for common hire, Not fit for any pastime but to tire.

His conscience, once, surveying his jade's stable, Prick'd him, for keeping horses so unable. "Oh why should I," saith John, "by scholars thrive, For jades that will not carry, lead, nor drive?"

To mend the matter, out he starts, one night, And having spied a palfrey somewhat white, He takes him up, and up he mounts his back, Rides to his house, and there he turns him black;

Marks him in forehead, feet, in rump, and crest, As coursers mark those horses which are best. So neatly John had coloured every spot, That the right owner sees him, knows him not.

Had he but feather'd his new-painted breast, He would have seemed Pegasus at least. Who but John Fletcher's horse, in all the town, Amongst all hackneys, purchased this renown?

But see the luck; John Fletcher's horse, one night, By rain was wash'd again almost to white. His first right owner, seeing such a change, Thought he should know him, but his hue was strange!

But eyeing him, and spying out his steed, By flea-bit spots of his now washed weed, Seizes the horse; so Fletcher was attainted, And did confess the horse--he stole and painted.

To close with honour to Brooke; in his graver moments he warmly repels the accusation Camden raised against him, as an enemy to learning, and appeals to many learned scholars, who had tasted of his liberality at the Universities, towards their maintenance; but, in an elevated tone, he asserts his right to deliver his animadversions as York Herald.

"I know (says Brooke) the great advantage my adversary has over me, in the received opinion of the world. If some will blame me for that my writings carry some characters of spleen against him, men of pure affections, and not partial, will think reason that he should, by ill hearing, lose the pleasure he conceived by ill speaking. But since I presume not to understand above that which is meet for me to know, I must not be discouraged, nor fret myself, because of the malicious; for I find myself seated upon a rock, that is sure from tempest and waves, from whence I have a prospect into his errors and waverings. I do confess his great worth and merit, and that we Britons are in some sort beholding to him; and might have been much more, if God had lent him the grace to have played the faithful steward, in the talent committed to his trust and charge."

Such was the dignified and the intrepid reply of Ralph Brooke, a man whose name is never mentioned without an epithet of reproach; and who, in his own day, was hunted down, and not suffered, vindictive as he was no doubt, to relieve his bitter and angry spirit, by pouring it forth to the public eye.[399]

But the story is not yet closed. Camden, who wanted the magnanimity to endure with patient dignity the corrections of an inferior genius, had the wisdom, with the meanness, silently to adopt his useful corrections, but would never confess the hand which had brought them.[400]

Thus hath Ralph Brooke told his own tale undisturbed, and, after the lapse of more than a century, the press has been opened to him. Whenever a great author is suffered to gag the mouth of his adversary, Truth receives the insult. But there is another point more essential to inculcate in literary controversy. Ought we to look too scrupulously into the motives which may induce an inferior author to detect the errors of a greater? A man from no amiable motive may perform a proper action: Ritson was useful after Warton; nor have we a right to ascribe it to any concealed motives, which, after all, may be doubtful. In the present instance, our much-abused Ralph Brooke first appears to have composed his elaborate work from the most honourable motives: the offer he made of his Notes to Camden seems a sufficient evidence. The pride of a great man first led Camden into an error, and that error plunged him into all the barbarity of persecution; thus, by force, covering his folly. Brooke over-valued his studies: it is the nature of those peculiar minds adapted to excel in such contracted pursuits. He undertook an ungracious office, and he has suffered by being placed by the side of the illustrious genius with whom he has so skilfully combated in his own province; and thus he has endured contempt, without being contemptible. The public are not less the debtors to such unfortunate, yet intrepid authors.[401]

FOOTNOTES:

[396] This work was not given to the public till 1724, a small quarto, with a fine portrait of Brooke. More than a century had elapsed since its forcible suppression. Anstis printed it from the fair MS. which Brooke had left behind him. The author's paternal affection seemed fondly to imagine its child might be worthy of posterity, though calumniated by its contemporaries.

[397] "Verum enimvero de his et hoc genere hominum ne verbum amplius addam, tabellam tamen summi illius artificis Apellis, cum colorum vivacitate depingere non possim, verbis leviter adumbrabo et proponam, ut Antiphilus noster, suique similes, et qui calumniis credunt, hanc, et in hac seipsos semel simulque intueantur.

"Ad dextram sedet quidam, quia credulus, auribus praelongis insignis, quales fere illae Midae feruntur. Manum porrigit procul accedenti Calumniae. Circumstant eum mulierculae duae, Ignorantia ac Suspicio. Adit aliunde propius Calumnia eximie compta, vultu ipso et gestu corporis efferens rabiem, et iram aestuanti conceptam pectore prae se ferens: sinistra facem tenens flammantem, dextra secum adolescentem capillis arreptum, manus ad superos tendentem, obtestantemque immortalium deorum fidem, trahit. Anteit vir pallidus, in specium impurus, acie oculorum minime hebeti, caeterum plane iis similis, qui gravi aliquo morbo contabuerunt. Hic livor est, ut facile conjicias. Quin, et mulierculae aliquot Insidiae et Fallaciae ut comites Calumniam comitantur. Harum est munus, dominam hortari, instruere, comere, et subornare. A tergo, habitu lugubri, pullato, laceroque Poenitentia subsequitur, quae capite in tergum deflexo, cum lachrymis, ac pudore procul venientem Veritatem agnoscit, et excipit."

[398] A _Fletcher_ is a maker of bows and arrows.--ASH.

[399] Brooke died at the old mansion opposite the Roman town of Reculver in Kent. The house is still known as Brooke-farm; and the original gateway of decorative brickwork still exists. He was buried in Reculver Church, now destroyed, where a mural monument was erected to his memory, having a rhyming inscription, which told the reader:--

"Fifteenth October he was last alive, One thousand six hundred and twenty-five, Seaventy-three years bore he fortune's harms, And forty-five an officer of armes."

Brooke was originally a painter-stainer. His enmity to Camden appears to have originated in the appointment of the latter to the office of Clarencieux on the death of Richard Lee; he believing himself to be qualified for the place by greater knowledge, and by his long connexion with the College of Arms. His mode of righting himself lacked judgment, and he was twice suspended from his office, and was even attempted to be expelled therefrom.--ED.

[400] In Anstis's edition of "A Second Discoverie of Errors in the Much-commended 'Britannia,' &c.," 1724, the reader will find all the passages in the "Britannia" of the edition of 1594 to which Brooke made exceptions, placed column-wise with the following edition of it in 1600. It is, as Anstis observes, a debt to truth, without making any reflections.

[401] There is a sensible observation in the old "Biographia Britannica" on Brooke. "From the splenetic attack originally made by Rafe Brooke upon the 'Britannia' arose very _great advantages to the public_, by the shifting and bringing to light as good, perhaps a better and more authentic account of our nobility, than had been given at that time of those in any other country of Europe."--p. 1135.

MARTIN MAR-PRELATE.

Of the two prevalent factions in the reign of Elizabeth, the Catholics and the Puritans--Elizabeth's philosophical indifference offends both--Maunsell's Catalogue omits the books of both parties--of the Puritans, "the mild and moderate, with the fierce and fiery," a great religious body covering a political one--Thomas Cartwright, the chief of the Puritans, and his rival Whitgift--attempts to make the Ecclesiastical paramount to the Civil Power--his plan in dividing the country into comitial, provincial, and national assemblies, to be concentrated under the secret head at Warwick, where Cartwright was elected "perpetual Moderator!"--after the most bitter controversies, Cartwright became very compliant to his old rival Whitgift, when Archbishop of Canterbury--of MARTIN MAR-PRELATE--his sons--specimens of their popular ridicule and invective--Cartwright approves of this mode of controversy--better counteracted by the wits than by the grave admonishers--specimens of the ANTI-MARTIN MAR-PRELATES--of the authors of these surreptitious publications.

The Reformation, or the new Religion, as it was then called, under Elizabeth, was the most philosophical she could form, and therefore the most hateful to the zealots of all parties. It was worthy of her genius, and of a better age! Her sole object was, a deliverance from the Papal usurpation. Her own supremacy maintained, she designed to be the great sovereign of a great people; and the Catholic, for some time, was called to her council-board, and entered with the Reformer into the same church. But wisdom itself is too weak to regulate human affairs, when the passions of men rise up in obstinate insurrection. Elizabeth neither won over the Reformers nor the Catholics. An excommunicating bull, precipitated by Papal Machiavelism, driving on the brutalised obedience of its slaves, separated the friends. This was a political error arising from a misconception of the weakness of our government; and when discovered as such, a tolerating dispensation was granted "till better times;" an unhealing expedient, to join again a dismembered nation! It would surprise many, were they aware how numerous were our ancient families and our eminent characters who still remained Catholics.[402] The country was then divided, and Englishmen who were heroic Romanists fell the terrible victims.

On the other side, the national evil took a new form. It is probable that the Queen, regarding the mere ceremonies of religion, now venerable with age, as matters of indifference, and her fine taste perhaps still lingering amid the solemn gorgeousness of the Roman service, and her senses and her emotions excited by the religious scenery, did not share in that abhorrence of the paintings and the images, the chant and the music, the censer and the altar, and the pomp of the prelatical habits, which was prompting many well-intentioned Reformers to reduce the ecclesiastical state into apostolical nakedness and primitive rudeness. She was slow to meet this austerity of feeling, which in this country at length extirpated those arts which exalt our nature, and for this these pious Vandals nicknamed the Queen "the untamed heifer;" and the fierce Knox expressly wrote his "First Blast Against the Monstrous Government of Women." Of these Reformers, many had imbibed the republican notions of Calvin. In their hatred of Popery, they imagined that they had not gone far enough in their wild notions of reform, for they viewed it, still shadowed out in the new hierarchy of the bishops. The fierce Calvin, in his little church at Geneva, presumed to rule a great nation on the scale of a parish institution; copying the apostolical equality at a time when the Church (say the Episcopalians) had all the weakness of infancy, and could live together in a community of all things, from a sense of their common poverty. Be this as it may, the dignified ecclesiastical order was a vulnerable institution, which could do no greater injury, and might effect as much public good as any other order in the state.[403] My business is not with this discussion. I mean to show how the republican system of these Reformers ended in a political struggle which, crushed in the reign of Elizabeth, and beaten down in that of James, so furiously triumphed under Charles. Their history exhibits the curious spectacle of a great religious body covering a political one--such as was discovered among the Jesuits, and such as may again distract the empire, in some new and unexpected shape.

Elizabeth was harassed by the two factions of the intriguing Catholic and the disguised Republican. The age abounded with libels.[404] Many a _Benedicite_ was handed to her from the Catholics; but a portentous personage, masked, stepped forth from a club of PURITANS, and terrified the nation by continued visitations, yet was never visible till the instant of his adieus--"starting like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons!"

Men echo the tone of their age, yet still the same unvarying human nature is at work; and the Puritans,[405] who in the reign of Elizabeth imagined it was impossible to go too far in the business of reform, were the spirits called _Roundheads_ under Charles, and who have got another nickname in our days. These wanted a Reformation of a Reformation--they aimed at reform, but they designed Revolution; and they would not accept of toleration, because they had determined on predominance.[406]

Of this faction, the chief was THOMAS CARTWRIGHT, a person of great learning, and doubtless of great ambition. Early in life a disappointed man, the progress was easy to a disaffected subject. At a Philosophy Act, in the University of Cambridge, in the royal presence, the queen preferred and rewarded his opponent for the slighter and more attractive elegances in which the learned Cartwright was deficient. He felt the wound rankle in his ambitious spirit. He began, as Sir George Paul, in his "Life of Archbishop Whitgift," expresses it, "to kick against her Ecclesiastical Government." He expatriated himself several years, and returned fierce with the republican spirit he had caught among the Calvinists at Geneva, which aimed at the extirpation of the bishops. It was once more his fate to be poised against another rival, Whitgift, the Queen's Professor of Divinity. Cartwright, in some lectures, advanced his new doctrines; and these innovations soon raised a formidable party, "buzzing their conceits into the green heads of the University."[408] Whitgift regularly preached at Cartwright, but to little purpose; for when Cartwright preached at St. Mary's they were forced to take down the windows. Once our sly polemic, taking advantage of the absence of Whitgift, so powerfully operated, in three sermons on one Sunday, that in the evening his victory declared itself, by the students of Trinity College rejecting their surplices, as Papistical badges. Cartwright was now to be confuted by other means. The University refused him his degree of D.D.; condemned the lecturer to silence; and at length performed that last feeble act of power, expulsion. In a heart already alienated from the established authorities, this could only envenom a bitter spirit. Already he had felt a personal dislike to royalty, and now he had received an insult from the University: these were motives which, though concealed, could not fail to work in a courageous mind, whose new forms of religion accorded with his political feelings. The "Degrees" of the University, which he now declared to be "unlawful," were to be considered "as limbs of Antichrist." The whole hierarchy was to be exterminated for a republic of Presbyters; till, through the church, the republican, as we shall see, discovered a secret passage to the Cabinet of his Sovereign, where he had many protectors.

Such is my conception of the character of Cartwright. The reader is enabled to judge for himself by the note.[409]

But Cartwright, chilled by an imprisonment, and witnessing some of his party condemned, and some executed, after having long sustained the most elevated and rigid tone, suddenly let his alp of ice dissolve away in the gentlest thaw that ever occurred in political life. Ambitious he was, but not of martyrdom! His party appeared once formidable,[410] and his protection at Court sure. I have read several letters of the Earl of Leicester, in MS., that show he always shielded Cartwright, whenever in danger. Many of the ministers of Elizabeth were Puritans; but doubtless this was before their state policy had detected the politicians in mask. When some of his followers had dared to do what he had only thought, he appears to have forsaken them. They reproached him for this left-handed policy, some of the boldest of them declaring that they had neither acted nor written anything but what was warranted by his principles. I do not know many political ejaculations more affecting than that of Henry Barrow, said to have been a dissipated youth, when Cartwright refused, before Barrow's execution, to allow of a conference. The deluded man, after a deep sigh, said: "Shall I be thus forsaken by him? Was it not he that brought me first into these briars? and will he now leave me in the same? Was it not from him alone that I took my grounds? Or did I not, out of such premises as he pleased to give me, infer those propositions, and deduce those conclusions, for which I am now kept in these bonds?" He was soon after executed, with others.

Then occurred one of those political spectacles at which the simple-minded stare, and the politic smile; when, after the most cruel civil war of words,[411] Cartwright wrote very compliant letters to his old rival, Whitgift, now Archbishop of Canterbury; while the Archbishop was pleading with the Queen in favour of the inveterate Republican, declaring that had Cartwright not so far engaged himself in the beginning, he thought he would have been, latterly, drawn into conformity. To clear up this mysterious conduct, we must observe that Cartwright seems to have graduated his political ambition to the degree the government touched of weakness or of strength; and besides, he was now growing prudent as he was growing rich. For it seems that he who was for scrambling for the Church revenues, while telling the people of the Apostles, _silver and gold they had none_, was himself "feeding too fair and fat" for the meagre groaning state of a pretended reformation. He had early in life studied that part of the law by which he had learned the marketable price of landed property; and as the cask still retains its old flavour, this despiser of bishops was still making the best interest for his money by land-jobbing.[412]

One of the memorable effects of this attempted innovation was that continued stream of libels which ran throughout the nation, under the portentous name of Martin Mar-Prelate.[413] This extraordinary personage, in his collective form, for he is to be splitted into more than one, long terrified Church and State. He walked about the kingdom invisibly, dropping here a libel, and there a proclamation for sedition; but wherever _Martinism_ was found, _Martin_ was not. He prided himself in what he calls "Pistling the Bishops." Sometimes he hints to his pursuers how they may catch him, for he prints, "within two furlongs of a bouncing priest," or "in Europe;" while he acquaints his friends, who were so often uneasy for his safety, that "he has neither wife nor child," and prays "they may not be anxious for him, for he wishes that his head might not go to the grave in peace."--"I come, with the rope about my neck, to save you, howsoever it goeth with me." His press is interrupted, he is silent, and Lambeth seems to breathe in peace. But he has "a son; nay, five hundred sons!" and _Martin Junior_ starts up! He inquires

"Where his father is; he who had studied the art of pistle-making? Why has he been tongue-tied these four or five months? Good Nuncles (the bishops), have you closely murthered the gentleman in some of your prisons? Have you choaked him with a fat prebend or two? I trow my father will swallow down no such pills, for he would thus soon purge away all the conscience he hath. Do you mean to have the keeping of him? What need that? he hath five hundred sons in the land. My father would be sorry to put you to any such cost as you intend to be at with him. A meaner house, and less strength than the Tower, the Fleet, or Newgate, would serve him well enough. He is not of that ambitious vein that many of his brethren the bishops are, in seeking for more costly houses than even his father built for him."

This same "Martin Junior," who, though he is but young, as he says, "has a pretty smattering gift in this pistle-making; and I fear, in a while, I shall take a pride in it." He had picked up beside a bush, where it had dropped from somebody, an imperfect paper of his father's:--

"Theses Martinianae--set forth as an after-birth of the noble gentleman himselfe, by a pretty stripling of his, Martin Junior, and dedicated by him to his good nuncka, Maister John Cankerbury (i.e. Canterbury). Printed without a sly privilege of the Cater Caps"--(i.e. the square caps the bishops wore).

But another of these five hundred sons, who declares himself to be his "reverend and elder brother, heir to the renowned _Martin Mar-Prelate_ the Great," publishes

"The just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior; where, lest the Springall should be utterly discouraged in his good meaning, you shall finde that he is not bereaved of his due commendation."

_Martin Senior_, after finding fault with _Martin Junior_ for "his rash and indiscreet headiness," notwithstanding agrees with everything he had said. He confirms all, and cheers him; but charges him,

"Should he meet their father in the street, never to ask his blessing, but walke smoothly and circumspectly; and if anie offer to talk with thee of Martin, talke thou straite of the voyage into Portugal, or of the happie death of the Duke of Guise, or some such accident; but meddle not with thy father. Only, if thou have gathered anie thing in visitation for thy father, intreate him to signify, in some secret printed pistle, where a will have it lefte. I feare least some of us should fall into John Canterburie's hand."

Such were the mysterious personages who, for a long time, haunted the palaces of the bishops and the vicarages of the clergy, disappearing at the moment they were suddenly perceived to be near. Their slanders were not only coarse buffooneries, but the hottest effusions of hatred, with an unparalleled invective of nicknames.[414] Levelled at the bishops, even the natural defects, the personal infirmities, the domestic privacies, much more the tyranny, of these now "petty popes," now "bouncing priests," now "terrible priests," were the inexhaustible subjects of these popular invectives.[415] Those "pillars of the State" were now called "its caterpillars;" and the inferior clergy, who perhaps were not always friendly to their superiors, yet dreaded this new race of innovators, were distinguished as "halting neutrals." These invectives were well farced for the gross taste of the multitude; and even the jargon of the lowest of the populace affected, and perhaps the coarse malignity of two _cobblers_ who were connected with the party, often enlivened the satirical page. The _Martin Mar-Prelate_ productions are not, however, effusions of genius; they were addressed to the coarser passions of mankind, their hatred and contempt. The authors were grave men, but who affected to gain over the populace with a popular familiarity.[416] In vain the startled bishops remonstrated: they were supposed to be criminals, and were little attended to as their own advocates. Besides, they were solemn admonishers, and the mob are composed of laughers and scorners.

The Court-party did not succeed more happily when they persecuted Martin, broke up his presses, and imprisoned his assistants. Never did sedition travel so fast, nor conceal itself so closely; for they employed a moveable press; and, as soon as it was surmised that Martin was in Surrey, it was found he was removed to Northamptonshire, while the next account came that he was showing his head in Warwickshire. And long they invisibly conveyed themselves, till in Lancashire the snake was scotched by the Earl of Derby, with all its little brood.[417]

These pamphlets were "speedily dispersed and greedily read," not only by the people; they had readers and even patrons among persons of condition. They were found in the corners of chambers at Court; and when a prohibition issued that no person should carry about them any of the Mar-Prelate pamphlets on pain of punishment, the Earl of Essex observed to the Queen, "What then is to become of me?" drawing one of these pamphlets out of his bosom, and presenting it to her.

The Martinists were better counteracted by the Wits, in some extraordinary effusions, prodigal of humour and invective Wit and raillery were happily exercised against these masked divines: for the gaiety of the Wits was not foreign to their feelings. The Mar-Prelates showed merry faces, but it was with a sardonic grin they had swallowed the convulsing herb; they horridly laughed against their will--at bottom all was gloom and despair. The extraordinary style of their pamphlets, concocted in the basest language of the populace, might have originated less from design than from the impotence of the writers. Grave and learned persons have often found to their cost that wit and humour must spring from the soil; no art of man can plant them there. With such, this play and grace of the intellect can never be the movements of their nature, but its convulsions.

Father Martin and his two sons received "A sound boxe of the eare," in "a pistle" to "the father and the two sonnes, Huffe, Ruffe, and Snuffe, the three tame ruffians of the Church, who take pepper in the nose because they cannot marre prelates grating," when they once met with an adversary who openly declared--

"I profess rayling, and think it is as good a cudgel for a Martin as a stone for a dogge, or a whip for an ape, or poison for a rat. Who would curry an ass with an ivory comb? Give this beast thistles for provender. I doe but yet angle with a silken flie, to see whether Martins will nibble; and if I see that, why then I have wormes for the nonce, and will give them line enough, like a trowte, till they swallow both hooke and line, and then, Martin, beware your gills, for I'll make you daunce at the pole's end."

"Fill thy answer as full of lies as of lines, swell like a toade, hiss like an adder, bite like a dog, and chatter like a monkey, my pen is prepared, and my mind; and if you chaunce to find anie worse words than you broughte, let them be put in your dad's dictionarie. Farewell, and be hanged; and I pray God you fare no worse.--Yours at an hour's warning."

This was the proper way to reply to such writers, by driving them out of the field with their own implements of warfare. "Pasquill of England"[418] admirably observed of the papers of this faction--"Doubt not but that the same reckoning in the ende will be made of you which your favourers commonly make of their old shooes--when they are past wearing, they barter them awaie for newe broomes, or carrie them forth to the dunghill and leave them there." The writers of these Martin Mar-Prelate books have been tolerably ascertained,[419] considering the secrecy with which they were printed--sometimes at night, sometimes hid in cellars, and never long in one place: besides the artifices used in their dispersion, by motley personages, held together by an invisible chain of confederacy. Conspiracy, like other misery, "acquaints a man with strange bedfellows;" and the present confederacy combined persons of the most various descriptions, and perhaps of very opposite views. I find men of learning, and of rigid lives, intimately associated with dissipated, or with too ardently-tempered youths; connected, too, with maniacs, whose lunacy had taken a revolutionary turn; and men of rank combining with old women and cobblers.[420] Such are the party-coloured apostles of insurrection! and thus their honourable and dishonourable motives lie so blended together, that the historian cannot separate them. At the moment the haughty spirit of a conspirator is striking at the head of established authority, he is himself crouching to the basest intimates; and to escape often from an ideal degradation, he can bear with a real one.

Of the heads of this party, I shall notice Penry and Udall, two self-devoted victims to Nonconformity. The most active was John Penry, or _Ap Henry_. He exulted that "he was born and bred in the mountains of Wales:" he had, however, studied at both our Universities. He had all the heat of his soil and of his party. He "wished that his head might not go down to the grave in peace," and was just the man to obtain his purpose. When he and his papers were at length seized, Penry pleaded that he could not be tried for sedition, professing unbounded loyalty to the Queen: such is the usual plea of even violent Reformers. Yet how could Elizabeth be the sovereign, unless she adopted the mode of government planned by these Reformers? In defence of his papers, he declared that they were only the private memorandums of a scholar, in which, during his wanderings about the kingdom, he had collected all the objections he had heard against the government. Yet these, though written down, might not be his own. He observed that they were not even English, nor intelligible to his accusers; but a few Welshisms could not save Ap Henry; and the judge, assuming the hardy position, that _scribere est agere_, the author found more honour conferred on his MSS. than his genius cared to receive. It was this very principle which proved so fatal, at a later period, to a more elevated politician than Penry; yet Algernon Sidney, perhaps, possessed not a spirit more Roman.[421] State necessity claimed another victim; and this ardent young man, whose execution had been at first unexpectedly postponed, was suddenly hurried from his dinner to a temporary gallows; a circumstance marked by its cruelty, but designed to prevent an expected tumult.[422]

Contrasted with this fiery Mar-Prelate was another, the learned subtile John Udall. His was the spirit which dared to do all that Penry had dared, yet conducting himself in the heat of action with the tempered wariness of age: "If they silence me as a minister," said he, "it will allow me leisure to write; and then I will give the bishops such a blow as shall make their hearts ache." It was agreed among the party neither to deny, or to confess, writing any of their books, lest among the suspected the real author might thus be discovered, or forced solemnly to deny his own work; and when the Bishop of Rochester, to catch Udall by surprise, suddenly said, "Let me ask you a question concerning your book," the wary Udall replied, "It is not yet proved to be mine!" He adroitly explained away the offending passages the lawyers picked out of his book, and in a contest between him and the judge, not only repelled him with his own arms, but when his lordship would have wrestled on points of divinity, Udall expertly perplexed the lawyer by showing he had committed an anachronism of four hundred years! He was equally acute with the witnesses; for when one deposed that he had seen a catalogue of Udall's library, in which was inserted "The Demonstration of Discipline," the anonymous book for which Udall was prosecuted; with great ingenuity he observed that this was rather an argument that he was not the author, for "scholars use not to put their own books in the catalogue of those they have in their study." We observe with astonishment the tyrannical decrees of our courts of justice, which lasted till the happy Revolution. The bench was as depraved in their notions of the rights of the subject in the reign of Elizabeth as in those of Charles II. and James II. The Court refused to hear Udall's witnesses, on this strange principle, that "witnesses in favour of the prisoner were against the queen!" To which Udall replied, "It is for the queen to hear all things when the life of any of her subjects is in question." The criminal felt what was just more than his judges; and yet the judge, though to be reprobated for his mode, calling so learned a man "Sirrah!" was right in the thing, when he declared that "you would bring the queen and the crown under your girdles." It is remarkable that Udall repeatedly employed that expression which Algernon Sidney left as his last legacy to the people, when he told them he was about to die for "that _Old Cause_ in which I was from my youth engaged." Udall perpetually insisted on "_The Cause_." This was a term which served at least for a watchword: it rallied the scattered members of the republican party. The precision of the expression might have been difficult to ascertain; and, perhaps, like every popular expedient, varied with "existing circumstances." I did not, however, know it had so remote an origin as in the reign of Elizabeth; and suspect it may still be freshened up, and varnished over, for any present occasion.

The last stroke for Udall's character is the history of his condemnation. He suffered the cruel mockery of a pardon granted conditionally, by the intercession of the Scottish monarch but never signed by the Queen--and Udall mouldered away the remnant of his days in a rigid imprisonment.[423] Cartwright and Travers, the chief movers of this faction, retreated with haste and caution from the victims they had conducted to the place of execution, while they themselves sunk into a quiet forgetfulness and selfish repose.

FOOTNOTES:

[402] The Church History by Dodd, a Catholic, fills three vols. folio: it is very rare and curious. Much of our own domestic history is interwoven in that of the fugitive papists, and the materials of this work are frequently drawn from their own archives, preserved in their seminaries at Douay, Valladolid, &c., which have not been accessible to Protestant writers. Here I discovered a copious nomenclature of eminent persons, and many literary men, with many unknown facts, both of a private and public nature. It is useful, at times, to know whether an English author was a Catholic.

[403] I refer the reader to Selden's "Table Talk" for many admirable ideas on "Bishops." That enlightened genius, who was no friend to the ecclesiastical temporal power, acknowledges the absolute necessity of this order in a great government. The preservers of our literature and our morals they ought to be, and many have been. When the political reformers ejected the bishops out of the house, what did they gain? a more vulgar prating race, but even more lordly! Selden says--"The bishops being put out of the house, whom will they lay the fault upon now? When the dog is beat out of the room, where will they lay the stink?"

[404] The freedom of the press hardly subsisted in Elizabeth's reign; and yet libels abounded! A clear demonstration that nothing is really gained by those violent suppressions and expurgatory indexes which power in its usurpation may enforce. At a time when they did not dare even to publish the titles of such libels, yet were they spread about, and even hoarded. The most ancient catalogue of our vernacular literature is that by Andrew Maunsell, published in 1595. It consists of Divinity, Mathematics, Medicine, &c.; but the third part which he promised, and which to us would have been the most interesting, of "Rhetoric, History, Poetry, and Policy," never appeared. In the Preface, such was the temper of the times, and of Elizabeth, we discover that he has deprived us of a catalogue of the works alluded to in our text, for he thus distinctly points at them:--"The books written by the _fugitive papistes_, as also those that are _written against the present government_ (meaning those of the Puritans), I doe not think meete for me to meddle withall." In one part of his catalogue, however, he contrived to insert the following passage; the burden of the song seems to have been chorused by the ear of our cautious Maunsell. He is noticing a Pierce Plowman in prose. "I did not see the beginning of this booke, but it ended thus:--

"God save the king, and speed the plough And send the _prelats_ care inough, Inough, inough, inough."--p. 80.

Few of our native productions are so rare as the _Martin Mar-Prelate_ publications. I have not found them in the public repositories of our national literature. There they have been probably rejected with indignity, though their answerers have been preserved; yet even these are almost of equal rarity and price. They were rejected in times less enlightened than the present. In a national library every book deserves preservation. By the rejection of these satires, however absurd or infamous, we have lost a link in the great chain of our National Literature and History. [Since the above was written, many have been added to our library; and the Rev. William Maskell, M.A., has published his "History of the Martin Mar-Prelate Controversy." It is a most careful summary of the writings and proceedings of all connected with this important event, and is worthy the attentive perusal of such as desire accurate information in this chapter of our Church history.]

[405] We know them by the name of Puritans, a nickname obtained by their affecting superior sanctity; but I find them often distinguished by the more humble appellative of Precisians. As men do not leap up, but climb on rocks, it is probable they were only _precise_ before they were _pure_. A satirist of their day, in "Rythmes against Martin Marre-Prelate," melts their attributes into one verse:--

"The sacred sect, and perfect _pure precise_."

A more laughing satirist, "Pasquill of England to Martin Junior," persists in calling them Puritans, _a pruritu!_ for their perpetual itching, or a desire to do something. Elizabeth herself only considered them as "a troublesome sort of people:" even that great politician could not detect the political monster in a mere chrysalis of reform. I find, however, in a poet of the Elizabethan age, an evident change in the public feeling respecting the _Puritans_, who being always most active when the government was most in trouble, their political views were discovered. Warner, in his "Albion's England," describes them:--

"If ever England will in aught prevent her own mishap, Against these Skommes (no terme too gross) let England shut the gap; With giddie heads-- Their countrie's foes they helpt, and most their country harm'd. If _Hypocrites_ why _Puritaines_ we term, be asked, in breefe, 'Tis but an _ironised terme_: good-fellow so spells theefe!"

The gentle-humoured FULLER, in his "Church History," felt a tenderness for the name of _Puritan_, which, after the mad follies they had played during the Commonwealth, was then held in abhorrence. He could not venture to laud the good men of that party, without employing a new term to conceal the odium. In noticing, under the date of 1563, that the bishops urged the clergy of their dioceses to press uniformity, &c., he adds--"Such as refused were branded with the name of Puritans--a name which in this nation began in this year, subject to several senses, and various in the acceptions. _Puritan_ was taken for the opposers of hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superstition. But the nickname was quickly improved by profane mouths to abuse pious persons. We will decline the word to prevent exceptions, which, if casually slipping from our pen, the reader knoweth that only _nonconformists_ are intended," lib. ix. p. 76. Fuller, however, divided them into classes--"the mild and moderate, and the fierce and fiery." HEYLIN, in his "History of the Presbyterians," blackens them as so many political devils; and NEALE, in his "History of the Puritans," blanches them into a sweet and almond whiteness.

Let us be thankful to these PURITANS for a political lesson. They began their quarrels on the most indifferent matters. They raised disturbances about the "Romish Rags," by which they described the decent surplice as well as the splendid scarlet chimere[407] thrown over the white linen rochet, with the square cap worn by the bishops. The scarlet robe, to please their sullen fancy, was changed into black satin; but these men soon resolved to deprive the bishops of more than a scarlet robe. The affected niceties of these PRECISIANS, dismembering our images, and scratching at our paintings, disturbed the uniformity of the religious service. A clergyman in a surplice was turned out of the church. Some wore square caps, some round, some abhorred all caps. The communion-table placed in the East was considered as an idolatrous altar, and was now dragged into the middle of the church, where, to show their contempt, it was always made the filthiest seat in the church. They used to kneel at the sacrament; now they would sit, because that was a proper attitude for a supper; then they would not sit, but stand: at length they tossed the elements about, because the bread was wafers, and not from a loaf. Among their _preciseness_ was a qualm at baptism: the water was to be taken from a basin, and not from a fount; then they would not name their children, or if they did, they would neither have Grecian, nor Roman, nor Saxon names, but Hebrew ones, which they ludicrously translated into English, and which, as Heylin observes, "many of them when they came of age were ashamed to own"--such as "Accepted, Ashes, Fight-the-good-Fight-of-Faith, Joy-again, Kill-sin, &c."

Who could have foreseen that some pious men quarrelling about the square caps and the rochets of bishops should at length attack bishops themselves; and, by an easy transition, passing from bishops to kings, finally close in levellers!

[406] The origin of the controversy may be fixed about 1588. "A far less easy task," says the Rev. Mr. Maskell, "is it to guess at the authors. The tracts on the Mar-Prelate side have been usually attributed to Penry, Throgmorton, Udal, and Fenner. Very considerable information may be obtained about these writers in Wood's 'Athenae,' art. _Penry_; in Collier, Strype, and Herbert's edition of 'Arnes,' to whom I would refer. After a careful examination of these and other authorities on the subject, the question remains, in my judgment, as obscure as before; and I think that it is very far from clear that either one of the three last-named was actually concerned in the authorship of any of the pamphlets."--ED.

[407] So Heylin writes the word; but in the "Rythmes against Martin," a contemporary production, the term is _Chiver_. It is not in Cotgrave.

[408] In the "Just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior" (circae 1589), we are told: "There is Cartwright, too, at Warwick; he hath got him such a company of disciples, both of the worshipfull and other of the poorer sort, as wee have no cause to thank him. Never tell me that he is too grave to trouble himself with Martin's conceits. Cartwright seeks the peace of the Church no otherwise than his platform may stand." He was accused before the commissioners in 1590 of knowing who wrote and printed these squibs, which he did not deny.--ED.

[409] I give a remarkable extract from the writings of Cartwright. It will prove two points. First, that the _religion_ of those men became a cover for a _political_ design; which was _to raise the ecclesiastical above the civil power_. Just the reverse of Hobbes's after scheme; but while theorists thus differ and seem to refute one another, they in reality work for an identical purpose. Secondly, it will show the not uncommon absurdity of man; while these nonconformists were affecting to annihilate the hierarchy of England as a remains of the Romish supremacy, they themselves were designing one according to their own fresher scheme. It was to be a state or republic of Presbyters, in which _all Sovereigns_ were to hold themselves, to use their style, as "Nourisses, or servants under the Church; the Sovereigns were to be as subjects; they were to vail their sceptres and to offer their crowns as the prophet speaketh, _to lick the dust of the feet of the Church_." These are Cartwright's words, in his "Defence of the Admonition." But he is still bolder, in a joint production with _Travers_. He insists that "the _Monarchs of the World_ should give up their _sceptres and crowns_ unto him (Jesus Christ) who is _represented by the Officers of the Church_." See "A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline," p. 185. One would imagine he was a disguised Jesuit, and an advocate for the Pope's supremacy. But observe how these saintly Republicans would govern the State. Cartwright is explicit, and very ingenious. "The world is now deceived that thinketh that the _Church_ must be framed according to the _Commonwealth_, and the _Church Government_ according to the _Civil Government_, which is as much as to say, as if a man should fashion his house according to his hangings; whereas, indeed, it is clean contrary. That as the hangings are made fit for the house, so the Commonwealth must be made to agree with the Church, and the government thereof with her government; for, as the house is before the hangings, therefore the hangings, which come after, must be framed to the house, which was before; so the Church being before there was a commonwealth, and the commonwealth coming after, must be fashioned and made suitable to the Church; otherwise, God is made to give place to men, heaven to earth."--CARTWRIGHT'S _Defence of the Admonition_, p. 181.

Warburton's "Alliance between Church and State," which was in his time considered as a hardy paradox, is mawkish in its pretensions, compared with this sacerdotal republic. It is not wonderful that the wisest of our Sovereigns, that great politician Elizabeth, should have punished with death these democrats: but it is wonderful to discover that these inveterate enemies to the Church of Rome were only trying to transfer its absolute power into their own hands! They wanted to turn the Church into a democracy. They fascinated the people by telling them that there would be no beggars were there no bishops; that every man would be a governor by setting up a Presbytery. From the Church, I repeat, it is scarcely a single step to the Cabinet. Yet the early Puritans come down to us as persecuted saints. Doubtless, there were a few honest saints among them; but they were as mad politicians as their race afterwards proved to be, to whom they left so many fatal legacies. Cartwright uses the very language a certain cast of political reformers have recently done. He declares "An establishment may be made without the magistrate;" and told the people that "if every hair of their head was a life, it ought to be offered for such a cause." Another of this faction is for "registering the names of the fittest and hottest brethren without lingering for Parliament;" and another exults that "there are a hundred thousand hands ready." Another, that "we may overthrow the bishops and all the government in one day." Such was the style, and such the confidence in the plans which the lowest orders of revolutionists promulgated during their transient exhibition in this country. More in this strain may be found in "Maddox's Vindication Against Neale," the advocate for the Puritans, p. 255; and in an admirable letter of that great politician, Sir Francis Walsingham, who, with many others of the ministers of Elizabeth, was a favourer of the Puritans, till he detected their secret object to subvert the government. This letter is preserved in "Collier's Eccl. Hist." vol. ii. 607. They had begun to divide the whole country into _classes_, provincial synods, &c. They kept registers, which recorded all the heads of their debates, to be finally transmitted to the secret head of the _Classis_ of Warwick, where Cartwright governed as _the perpetual moderator_! _Heylin's Hist. of Presbyt._ p. 277. These violent advocates for the freedom of the press had, however, an evident intention to monopolise it; for they decreed that "no book should be put in print but by consent of the _Classes_."--Sir G. PAUL'S _Life of Whitgift_, p. 65. The very Star-Chamber they justly protested against, they were for raising among themselves!

[410] Under the denomination of _Barrowists_ and _Brownists_. I find Sir Walter Raleigh declaring, in the House of Commons, on a motion for reducing disloyal subjects, that "they are worthy to be rooted out of a Commonwealth." He is alarmed at the danger, "for it is to be feared that men not guilty will be included in the law about to be passed. I am sorry for it. I am afraid there is near twenty thousand of them in England; and when they be gone (that is, expelled) who shall maintain their wives and children?"--SIR SIMONDS D'EWES' _Journal_, p. 517.

[411] The controversies of Whitgift and Cartwright were of a nature which could never close, for toleration was a notion which never occurred to either. These rivals from early days wrote with such bitterness against each other, that at length it produced mutual reproaches. Whitgift complains to Cartwright: "If you were writing against the veriest Papist, or the ignorantest dolt, you could not be more spiteful and malicious." And Cartwright replies: "If peace had been so precious unto you as you pretend, you would not have brought so many hard words and bitter reproaches, as it were sticks and coals, to double and treble the heat of contention."

After this it is curious, even to those accustomed to such speculations, to observe some men changing with the times, and furious rivals converted into brothers. Whitgift, whom Elizabeth, as a mark of her favour, called "her black husband," soliciting Cartwright's pardon from the Queen; and the proud Presbyter Cartwright styling Whitgift his Lord the Archbishop's Grace of Canterbury, and visiting him!

[412] Sir George Paul, a contemporary, attributes his wealth "to the benevolence and bounty of his followers." Dr. Sutcliffe, one of his adversaries, sharply upbraids him, that "in the persecution he perpetually complained of, he was grown rich." A Puritan advocate reproves Dr. Sutcliffe for always carping at Cartwright's purchases:--"Why may not Cartwright sell the lands he had from his father, and buy others with the money, as well as some of the bishops, who by bribery, simony, extortion, racking of rents, wasting of woods, and such like stratagems, wax rich, and purchase great lordships for their posterity?"

To this Sutcliffe replied:

"I do not carpe alway, no, nor once, at Master Cartwright's purchase. I hinder him not; I envy him not. Only thus much I must tell him, that Thomas Cartwright, a man that hath more landes of his own in possession than any bishop that I know, and that fareth daintily every day, and feedeth fayre and fatte, and lyeth as soft as any tenderling of that brood, and hath wonne much wealth in short time, and will leave more to his posterity than any bishop, should not cry out either of persecution or of excess of bishop's livinges."--SUTCLIFFE'S _Answer to Certain Calumnious Petitions._

[413] "The author of these libels," says Bishop Cooper, in his "Admonition to the People of England," 1589, "calleth himself by a feigned name, _Martin Mar-Prelate_, a very fit name undoubtedly. But if this outrageous spirit of boldness be not stopped speedily, I fear he will prove himself to be, not only _Mar-Prelate_, but Mar-Prince, Mar-State, Mar-Law, Mar-Magistrate, and altogether, until he bring it to an Anabaptistical equality and community."--ED.

[414] Cartwright approved of them, and well knew the concealed writers, who frequently consulted him: this appears by Sir G. Paul's "Life of Whitgift," p. 65. Being asked his opinion of such books, he said, that "since the bishops, and others there touched, would not amend by grave books, it was therefore meet they should be dealt withal to their farther reproach; and that some books must be _earnest_, some _more mild and temperate_, whereby they may be both of the spirit of Elias and Eliseus;" the one the great mocker, the other the more solemn reprover. It must be confessed Cartwright here discovers a deep knowledge of human nature. He knew the power of ridicule and of invective. At a later day, a writer of the same stamp, in "The Second Wash, or the _Moore_ Scoured _once more_," (written against Dr. Henry More, the Platonist), in defence of that vocabulary of _names_ which he has poured on More, asserts it is a practice allowed by the high authority of Christ himself. I transcribe the curious passage:--"It is the practice of Christ himself to character _men_ by those _things_ to which they assimilate. Thus hath he called _Herod_ a _fox_; _Judas_ a _devil_; _false pastors_ he calls _wolves_; the _buyers and sellers_, _theeves_; and those Hebrew Puritans the _Pharisees_, _hypocrites_. This rule and justice of his Master St. Paul hath well observed, and he acts freely thereby; for when he reproves the Cretians, he makes use of that ignominious proverb, _Evil beasts and slow bellies_. When the high priest commanded the Jews to _smite_ him on the face, he replied to him, not without some bitterness, _God shall smite thee, thou white wall_. I cite not these places to justify an injurious spleen, but to argue the liberty of the truth."--_The Second Wash, or the +Moore+ Scoured once_ more. 1651. P. 8.

[415] One of their works is "A Dialogue, wherein is laid open the tyrannical dealing of L. Bishopps against God's children." It is full of scurrilous stories, probably brought together by two active cobblers who were so useful to their junto. Yet the bishops of that day were not of dissolute manners; and the accusations are such, that it only proves their willingness to raise charges against them. Of one bishop they tell us, that after declaring he was poor, and what expenses he had been at, as Paul's church could bear witness, shortly after hanged four of his servants for having robbed him of a considerable sum. Of another, who cut down all the woods at Hampstead, till the towns-women "fell a swaddling of his men," and so saved Hampstead by their resolution. But when _Martin_ would give a proof that the Bishop of London was one of the bishops of the devil, in his "Pistle to the terrible priests," he tells this story:--"When the bishop throws his bowl (as he useth it commonly upon the Sabbath-day), he runnes after it; and if it be too hard, he cries _Rub! rub! rub! the diuel goe with thee!_ and he goeth himself with it; so that by these words he names himself the Bishop of the Divel, and by his tirannical practice prooveth himselfe to be." He tells, too, of a parson well known, who, being in the pulpit, and "hearing his dog cry, he out with this text: 'Why, how now, hoe! can you not let my dog alone there? Come, Springe! come, Springe!' and whistled the dog to the pulpit." One of their chief objects of attack was Cooper, Bishop of Lincoln, a laborious student, but married to a dissolute woman, whom the University of Oxford offered to separate from him: but he said he knew his infirmity, and could not live without his wife, and was tender on the point of divorce. He had a greater misfortune than even this loose woman about him--his _name_ could be punned on; and this bishop may be placed among that unlucky class of authors who have fallen victims to their _names_. Shenstone meant more than he expressed, when he thanked God that he could not be punned on. Mar-Prelate, besides many cruel hits at Bishop Cooper's wife, was now always "making the _Cooper's hoops to flye off_, and the bishop's tubs to leake out." In "The Protestatyon of Martin Marprelat," where he tells of two bishops, "who so contended in throwing down elmes, as if the wager had bene whether of them should most have impoverished their bishopricks. Yet I blame not _Mar-Elme_ so much as Cooper for this fact, because it is no less given him by his _name_ to spoil elmes, than it is allowed him by the secret judgment of God to mar the Church. A man of _Cooper's_ age and occupation, so wel seene in that trade, might easily knowe that tubs made of green timber must needs leak out; and yet I do not so greatly marvel; for he that makes no conscience to be a deceiver in the building of the churche, will not stick for his game to be a _deceitfull workeman in making of tubbs_."--p. 19. The author of the books against Bishop Cooper is said to have been Job Throckmorton, a learned man, affecting raillery and humour to court the mob.

Such was the strain of ribaldry and malice which Martin Mar-Prelate indulged, and by which he obtained full possession of the minds of the people for a considerable time. His libels were translated, and have been often quoted by the Roman Catholics abroad and at home for their particular purposes, just as the revolutionary publications in this country have been concluded abroad to be the general sentiments of the people of England; and thus our factions always will serve the interests of our enemies. Martin seems to have written little verse; but there is one epigram worth preserving for its bitterness.

Martin Senior, in his "Reproofe of Martin Junior," complains that "his younger brother has not taken a little paines in ryming with _Mar-Martin_ (one of their poetical antagonists), that the Cater-Caps may know how the meanest of my father's sonnes is able to answeare them both at blunt and sharpe." He then gives his younger brother a specimen of what he is hereafter to do. He attributes the satire of _Mar-Martin_ to Dr. Bridges, Dean of Sarum, and John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury.

"The first Rising, Generation, and Original of _Mar-Martin_.

"From Sarum came a goos's egg, With specks and spots bepatched; A priest of Lambeth coucht thereon, Thus was _Mar-Martin_ hatched.

Whence hath _Mar-Martin_ all his wit, But from that egge of Sarum? The rest comes all from great Sir John, Who rings us all this 'larum.

What can the cockatrice hatch up But serpents like himselfe? What sees the ape within the glasse But a deformed elfe?

Then must _Mar-Martin_ have some smell Of forge, or else of fire: A sotte in wit, a beaste in minde, For so was damme and sire."

[416] It would, however, appear that these revolutionary publications reached the universities, and probably fermented "the green heads" of our students, as the following grave admonition directed to them evidently proves:--

"Anti-Martinus sive monitio cujusdam Londinensis ad adolescentes vtrimque academiae contra personatum quendam rabulam qui se Anglice Martin Marprelat, &c. Londini, 1589, 4o."

A popular favourite as he was, yet even Martin, _in propria persona_, acknowledges that his manner was not approved of by _either party_. His "Theses Martinianae" opens thus: "I see my doings and my course misliked of many, both the good and the bad; though also I have favourers of both sortes. The bishops and their traine, though they stumble at the cause, yet especially mislike my maner of writing. Those whom foolishly men call _Puritanes_, like of the matter I have handled, but the forme they cannot brooke. So that herein I have them both for mine adversaries. But now what if I should take the course in certain theses or conclusions, without _inveighing_ against either _person_ or _cause_." This was probably written after Martin had swallowed some of his own sauce, or taken his "Pap (offered to him) with a Hatchet," as one of the most celebrated government pamphlets is entitled. But these "Theses Martinianae," without either scurrility or invective are the dullest things imaginable; abstract propositions were not palatable to the multitude; and then it was, after the trial had been made, that _Martin Junior and Senior_ attempted to revive the spirit of the old gentleman; but if sedition has its progress, it has also its decline; and if it could not strike its blow when strongest, it only puled and made grimaces, prognostics of weakness and dissolution. This is admirably touched in "Pappe with an Hatchet." "Now Old Martin appeared, with a wit worn into the socket, twingling and pinking like the snuffe of a candle; _quantum mutatus ab illo_, how unlike the knave he was before, not for malice, but for sharpnesse! The hogshead was even come to the hauncing, and nothing could be drawne from him but dregs; yet the emptie caske sounds lowder than when it was full, and protests more in his waining than he could performe in his waxing. I drew neere the sillie soul, whom I found quivering in two sheets of protestation paper (alluding to the work mentioned here in the following note). O how meager and leane he looked, so crest falne that his combe hung downe to his bill; and had I not been sure it was the picture of Envie, I should have sworn it had been the image of Death: so like the verie anatomie of Mischief, that one might see through all the ribbes of his conscience."

In another rare pamphlet from the same school, "Pasquill of England to Martin Junior, in a countercuffe given to Martin Junior," he humorously threatens to write "The Owle's Almanack, wherein your night labours be set down;" and "some fruitful volumes of 'The Lives of the Saints,' which, maugre your father's five hundred sons, shall be printed," with "hays, jiggs, and roundelays, and madrigals, serving for epitaphs for his father's hearse."

[417] Some of these works still bear evident marks that the "pursuivants" were hunting the printers. "The Protestatyon of Martin Mar-Prelate, wherein, notwithstanding the surprising of the printer, he maketh it knowne vnto the world that he feareth neither proud priest, tirannous prelate, nor godlesse cater-cap; but defieth all the race of them," including "a challenge" to meet them personally; was probably one of their latest efforts. The printing and the orthography show all the imperfections of that haste in which they were forced to print this work. As they lost their strength, they were getting more venomous. Among the little Martins disturbed in the hour of parturition, but already christened, there were: "Episto Mastix;" "The Lives and Doings of English Popes;" "Itinerarium, or Visitations;" "Lambethisms." The "Itinerary" was a survey of every clergyman of England! and served as a model to a similar work, which appeared during the time of the Commonwealth. The "Lambethisms" were secrets divulged by Martin, who, it seems, had got into the palace itself! Their productions were, probably, often got up in haste, in utter scorn of the Horatian precept. [These pamphlets were printed with difficulty and danger, in secrecy and fear, for they were rigidly denounced by the government of Elizabeth. Sir George Paul, in his "Life of Archbishop Whitgift," informs us that they were printed with a kind of wandering press, which was first set up at Moulsey, near Kingston-on-Thames, and from thence conveyed to Fauseley in Northamptonshire, and from thence to Norton, afterwards to Coventry, from thence to Welstone in Warwickshire, from which place the letters were sent to another press in or near Manchester; where by the means of Henry, Earl of Derby, the press was discovered in printing "More Work for a Cooper;" an answer to Bishop Cooper's attack on the party, and a work so rare Mr. Maskell says, "I believe no copy of it, in any state, remains."]

As a great curiosity, I preserve a fragment in the _Scottish_ dialect, which well describes them and their views. The title is wanting in the only copy I have seen; but its extreme rarity is not its only value: there is something venerable in the criticism, and poignant in the political sarcasm.

"Weil lettred clarkis endite their warkes, quoth Horace, slow and geasoun, Bot thou can wise forth buike by buike, at every spurt and seasoun; For men of litrature t'endite so fast, them doth not fitte, Enanter in them, as in thee, their pen outrun thair witte. The shaftis of foolis are soone shot out, but fro the merke they stray; So art thou glibbe to guibe and taunte, but rouest all the way, Quhen thou hast parbrackt out thy gorge, and shot out all thy arrowes, See that thou hold thy clacke, and hang thy quiver on the gallows. Els Clarkis will soon all be Sir Johns, the priestis craft will empaire, And Dickin, Jackin, Tom, and Hob, mon sit in Rabbies chaire. Let Georg and Nichlas, cheek by jol, bothe still on cock-horse yode, That dignitie of Pristis with thee may hau a long abode. Els Litrature mon spredde her wings, and piercing welkin bright, To Heaven, from whence she did first wend, retire and take her flight."

[418] "Pasquill of England to Martin Junior, in a countercuffe given to Martin Junior."

[419] "Most of the books under Martin's name were composed by John Penry, John Udall, John Field, and Job Throckmorton, who all concurred in making Martin. See 'Answer to Throgmorton's Letter by Sutcliffe,' p. 70; 'More Work for a Cooper;' and 'Hay any Work for a Cooper;' and 'Some layd open in his Colours;' were composed by Job Throckmorton."--MS. Note by Thomas Baker. Udall, indeed, denied having any concern in these invectives, and professed to disapprove of them. We see Cartwright, however, of quite a different opinion. In Udall's library some MS. notes had been seen by a person who considered them as materials for a Martin Mar-Prelate work in embryo, which Udall confessed were written "by a friend." All the writers were silenced ministers; though it is not improbable that their scandalous tales, and much of the ribaldry, might have been contributed by their lowest retainers, those purveyors for the mob, of what they lately chose to call their "Pig's-meat."

[420] The execution of Hacket, and condemnation of his party, who had declared him "King of Europe," so that England was only a province to him, is noted in our "General History of England." This was the first serious blow which alarmed the Puritanic party. Doubtless, this man was a mere maniac, and his ferocious passions broke out early in life; but, in that day, they permitted no lunacy as a plea for any politician. Cartwright held an intercourse with that party, as he had with Barrow, said to have been a debauched youth; yet we had a sect of Barrowists; and Robert Brown, the founder of another sect, named after him _Brownists_; which became very formidable. This Brown, for his relationship, was patronised by Cecil, Earl of Burleigh. He was a man of violent passions. He had a wife, with whom he never lived; and a church, wherein he never preached, observes the characterising Fuller, who knew him when Fuller was young. In one of the pamphlets of the time I have seen, it is mentioned that being reproached with beating his wife, he replied, "I do not beat Mrs. Brown as my wife, but as a curst cross old woman." He closed his life in prison; not for his opinions, but for his brutality to a constable. The old women and the cobblers connected with these Martin Mar-Prelates are noticed in the burlesque epitaphs on Martin's death, supposed to be made by his favourites; a humorous appendix to "Martin's Monthminde." Few political conspiracies, whenever religion forms a pretext, is without a woman. One Dame Lawson is distinguished, changing her "silke for sacke;" and other names might be added of ladies. Two cobblers are particularly noticed as some of the industrious purveyors of sedition through the kingdom--Cliffe, the cobbler, and one Newman. Cliffe's epitaph on his friend Martin is not without humour:--

"Adieu, both naule and bristles now for euer; The shoe and soale--ah, woe is me!--must sever. Bewaile, mine awle, thy sharpest point is gone; My bristle's broke, and I am left alone. Farewell old shoes, thumb-stall, and clouting-leather; Martin is gone, and we undone together."

Nor is Newman, the other cobbler, less mortified and pathetic. "The London Corresponding Society" had a more ancient origin than that sodality was aware.

"My hope once was, my old shoes should be sticht; My thumbs ygilt, that were before bepicht: Now Martin's gone, and laid full deep in ground, My gentry's lost, before it could be found."

Among the Martin Mar-Prelate books was one entitled "The Cobbler's Book." This I have not seen; but these cobblers probably picked up intelligence for these scandalous chronicles. The writers, too, condescended to intersperse the cant dialect of the populace, with which the cobblers doubtless assisted these learned men, when busied in their buffoonery. Hence all their vulgar gibberish; the Shibboleth of the numerous class of their admirers--such as, "O, whose _tat_?" John _Kan_kerbury, for Canterbury; _Paltri_-politans, for Metropolitans; _See Villains_, for Civilians; and Doctor of _Devility_, for Divinity! and more of this stamp. Who could imagine that the writers of these scurrilities were learned men, and that their patrons were men of rank! We find two knights heavily fined for secreting these books in their cellars. But it is the nature of rebellion to unite the two extremes; for _want_ stirs the populace to rise, and _excess_ the higher orders. This idea is admirably expressed in one of our elder poets:--

"Want made them murmur; for the people, who To get their bread, do wrestle with their fate, Or those, who in superfluous riot flow, Soonest rebel. Convulsions in a State, Like those which natural bodies do oppress, Rise from repletion, or from emptiness." ALEYNE'S _Henry VII_.

[421] The writer of Algernon Sidney's Memoirs could not have known this fact, or he would not have said that "this was the first indictment of high treason upon which any man lost his life for _writing anything without publishing it_."--Edit. 1751, p. 21. It is curious to have Sidney's own opinion on this point. We discover this on his trial. He gives it, assuming one of his own noble principles, not likely to have been allowed by the wretched Tories of that day. Addressing the villanous Jeffries, the Lord Chief Justice:--"My Lord, I think it is _a right of mankind, and 'tis exercised by all studious men_, to write, in their own closets, what they please, for their own memory; and no man can be answerable for it, unless they publish it." Jeffries replied:--"Pray don't go away with _that right of mankind_, that it is lawful for me to write what I will in my own closet, so I do not publish it. We must not endure men to talk thus, that by the _right of nature_ every man may contrive mischief in his own chamber, and is not to be punished till he thinks fit to be called to it." Jeffries was a profligate sophist, but his talents were as great as his vices.

[422] Penry's unfinished petition, which he designed to have presented to the Queen before the trial, is a bold and energetic composition; his protestation, after the trial, a pathetic prayer! Neale has preserved both in his "History of the Puritans." With what simplicity of eloquence he remonstrates on the temporising government of Elizabeth. He thus addresses the Queen, under the title of Madam!--"Your standing is, and has been, by the Gospel: it is little beholden to you for anything that appears. The practice of your government shows that if you could have ruled without the Gospel, it would have been doubtful whether the Gospel should be established or not; for now that you are established in your throne by the Gospel, you suffer it to reach no farther than the end of your sceptre limiteth unto it." Of a milder, and more melancholy cast, is the touching language, when the hope of life, but not the firmness of his cause had deserted him. "I look not to live this week to an end. I never took myself for a rebuker, much less for a reformer of states and kingdoms. I never did anything in this cause for contention, vainglory, or to draw disciples after me. Great things, in this life, I never sought for: sufficiency I had, with great outward trouble; but most content I was with my lot, and content with my untimely death, though I leave behind me a friendless widow and four infants."--Such is often the pathetic cry of the simple-hearted, who fall the victims to the political views of more designing heads.

We could hardly have imagined that this eloquent and serious young man was that Martin Mar-Prelate who so long played the political ape before the populace, with all the mummery of their low buffoonery, and even mimicking their own idioms. The populace, however, seems to have been divided in their opinions respecting the sanity of his politics, as appears by some ludicrous lines, made on Penry's death, by a northern rhymer.

"The Welshman is hanged, Who at our kirke flanged, And at the state banged, And brened are his buks. And though he be hanged, Yet he is not wranged; The deil has him fanged In his kruked kluks." WEEVER'S _Funerall Monuments_, p. 56. Edit. 1631.

[423] Observe what different conclusions are drawn from the same fact by opposite writers. Heylin, arguing that Udall had been justly condemned, adds, "the man remained a _living monument_ of the archbishop's extraordinary goodness to him in the preserving of that life which by the law he had forfeited." But Neale, on the same point, considers him as one who "died for his conscience, and stands upon record _as a monument_ of the oppression and cruelty of the government." All this opposition of feeling is of the nature of party-spirit; but what is more curious in the history of human nature, is the change of opinion in the same family in the course of the same generation. The son of this Udall was as great a zealot for Conformity, and as great a sufferer for it from his father's party, when they possessed political power. This son would not submit to their oaths and covenants, but, with his bedridden wife, was left unmercifully to perish in the open streets,--WALKER'S _Sufferings of the Clergy_, part ii. p. 178.

SUPPLEMENT TO MARTIN MAR-PRELATE.

As a literary curiosity, I shall preserve a very rare poetical tract, which describes with considerable force the Revolutionists of the reign of Elizabeth. They are indeed those of wild democracy; and the subject of this satire will, I fear, be never out of time. It is an admirable political satire against a mob-government. In our poetical history, this specimen too is curious, for it will show that the stanza in alternate rhymes, usually denominated elegiac, is adapted to very opposite themes. The solemnity of the versification is impressive, and the satire equally dignified and keen.

The taste of the mere modern reader had been more gratified by omitting some unequal passages; but, after deliberation, I found that so short a composition would be injured by dismembering extracts. I have distinguished by italics the lines to which I desire the reader's attention, and have added a few notes to clear up some passages which might appear obscure.

RYTHMES AGAINST MARTIN MARRE-PRELATE.[424]

_Ordo Sacerdotum fatuo turbatur ab omni, Labitur et passim Religionis honos._

Since Reason, _Martin_, cannot stay thy pen, We 'il see what rime will do; have at thee then!

A Dizard late skipt out upon our stage, But in a sacke, that no man might him see; And though we know not yet the paltrie page, Himselfe hath _Martin_ made his name to bee. A proper name, and for his feates most fit; The only thing wherein he hath shew'd wit.

Who knoweth not, that Apes, men _Martins_ call,[425] Which beast, this baggage seemes as 't were himselfe: So as both nature, nurture, name, and all, Of that's expressed in this apish elfe. Which Ile make good to Martin Marre-als face, In three plaine poynts, and will not bate an ace.

For, first, _the Ape delights with moppes and mowes, And mocketh Prince and Peasants all alike_; _This jesting Jacke_, that no good manners knowes, _With his Asse-heeles presumes all states to strike_. Whose scoffes so stinking in each nose doth smell, As all mouthes saie of Dolts he beares the bell.

Sometimes his chappes do walke in poynts too high, Wherein the Ape himself a Woodcock tries. Sometimes with floutes he drawes his mouth awrie, And sweares by his ten bones, and falselie lies. Wherefore be he what he will I do not passe; He is the paltriest Ape that euer was.

Such fleering, leering, jeering fooles bopeepe, Such hahas! teehees! weehees! wild colts play; Such Sohoes! whoopes and hallowes; hold and keepe; Such rangings, ragings, reuelings, roysters ray; With so foule mouth, and knaue at euery catch, 'Tis some knaue's nest did surely _Martin_ hatch.

_Now out he runnes with Cuckowe king of May, Then in he leapes with a wild Morrice daunce_; Then strikes he up _Dame Lawson's_[426] lustie lay; Then comes Sir _Jeffrie's_ ale-tub, tapp'd by chaunce, Which makes me gesse, and I can shrewdly smell, He loues both t' one and t'other passing well.

_Then straight, as though he were distracted quite, He chafeth like a cut-purse layde in warde_; _And rudely railes with all his maine and might, Against both knights and lords without regard_: So as _Bridewell_ must tame his dronken fits, And _Bedlem_ help to bring him to his wits.

But, _Martin_, why, in matters of such weight, Dost thou thus _play the dawe, and dauncing foole_? O sir (quoth he) _this is a pleasant baite For men of sorts_, to traine them to my schoole. _Ye noble states, how can you like hereof, A shamelesse Ape at your sage head should scoffe?_

Good Noddie, now leaue scribbling in such matters; They are no tooles for fooles to tend unto; Wise men regard not what mad monkies patters! 'Twere trim a beast should teach men what to do. Now _Tarleton's_ dead, the consort lackes a Vice. For knaue and foole thou maist bear prick and price.

The sacred sect, and perfect pure precise, Whose cause must be by _Scoggin's_ jests mainteinde, Ye shewe, although that Purple, Apes disguise, Yet Apes are still, and so must be, disdainde. _For though your Lyons lookes weake eyes escapes, Your babling bookes bewraies you all for Apes._

The next point is, _Apes use to tosse and teare What once their fidling fingers fasten on_; _And clime aloft, and cast downe euery where, And neuer staie till all that stands be gon!_ Now whether this in _Martin_ be not true, You wiser heads marke here what doth ensue.

What is it not that _Martin_ doth not rent? Cappes, tippets, gownes, black chiuers, rotchets white; Communion bookes, and homelies: yea, so bent To teare, as women's wimples feele his spite. Thus tearing all, as all apes use to doo, He teares withall the Church of Christ in two.

Marke now what thinges he meanes to tumble downe, For to this poynt to look is worth the while, In one that makes no choice 'twixt cap and crowne, Cathedral churches he would fain untile, And snatch up bishops' lands, and catch away All gaine of learning for his prouling pray.

_And thinke you not he will pull downe at length As well the top from tower as cocke from steeple_; _And when his head hath gotten some more strength, To play with Prince as now he doth with People_: Yes, he that now saith, Why should Bishops bee? Will next crie out, _Why Kings? The Saincts are free!_

The Germaine boores with Clergiemen began, But neuer left till Prince and Peeres were dead. _Jacke Leyden was a holy zealous man, But ceast not till the Crowne was on his head._ And _Martin's_ mate, _Jacke Strawe_, would alwaies ring, The Clergie's faults, but sought to kill the King.

"Oh that," quoth _Martin_, "_chwere_ a Nobleman!"[427] Avaunt, vile villain! 'tis not for such swads. And of the Counsell, too: marke Princes then: These roomes are raught at by these lustie lads. _For Apes must climbe, and neuer stay their wit, Untill on top of highest hilles they sit._

What meane they els, in euery towne to craue Their Priest and King like Christ himself to be: _And for one Pope ten thousand Popes to have, And to controll the highest he or she?_ Aske Scotland that, whose King so long they crost, As he was like his kingdome to haue lost.

Beware ye States and Nobles of this lande, The Clergie is but one of these men's buttes. _The Ape at last on master's necke will stande: Then gegge betimes these gaping greedie gutts._ _Least that too soone, and then too late ye feele, He strikes at head that first began with heele._

The third tricke is, _what Apes by flattering waies Cannot come by with biting, they will snatch_; Our _Martin_ makes no bones, but plainely saies, Their fists shall walke, they will both bite and scratch. He'll make their hearts to ake, and will not faile, _Where pen cannot, their penknife shall prevail_.[428]

But this is false, he saith he did but mock: A foole he was, that so his words did scanne. He only meant with pen their pates to knocke; A knaue he is, that so turns cat in pan. But, _Martin_, sweare and stare as deepe as hell, Thy sprite, thy spite and mischeuous minde doth tell.

_The thing that neither Pope with booke nor bull, Nor Spanish King with ships could doe without, Our MARTINS heere at home will worke at full: If Prince curbe not betimes that rabble rout._ That is, destroy both Church and State and all; For if t' one faile, the other needes must fall.

Thou England, then, whom God doth make so glad Through Gospel's grace and Prince's prudent reigne, Take heede lest thou at last be made as sad, Through _Martin's_ makebates marring, to thy paine. For he marrs all and maketh nought, nor will, Saue lies and strife, and works for _England's_ ill.

_And ye graue men that answere MARTIN'S mowes, He mocks the more, and you in vain loose times. Leaue Apes to Doggs to baite, their skins to Crowes_, And let old _Lanam_[429] lashe him with his rimes. _The beast is proud when men read his enditings_; Let his workes goe the waie of all wast writings.

Now, _Martin_, you that say you will spawne out Your brawling brattes, in euery towne to dwell, _We will provide in each place for your route, A bell and whippe that Apes do loue so well._ And if yo skippe, and will not wey the checke, We 'il haue a springe, and catche you by the necke.

And so adieu, mad _Martin_-mar-the-land Leaue off thy worke, and "more work"[430] hearest thou me Thy work's nought worth, take better worke in hand. _Thou marr'st thy worke, and thy work will marre thee._ Worke not anewe, least it doth work thy wracke, And then make worke for him that worke doth lacke.

And this I warn thee, Martin Monckies-face, Take heed of me; my rime doth charm thee bad. I am a rimer of the Irish race, And haue alreadie rimde thee staring mad. But if thou cease not thy bald jests to spread, I'le never leave till I have rimde thee dead.

FOOTNOTES:

[424] In Herbert's "Typographical Antiquities," p. 1689, this tract is intituled, "A Whip for an Ape, or Martin Displaied." I have also seen the poem with this title. Readers were then often invited to an old book by a change of title: in some cases, I think the same work has been published with several titles.

[425] _Martin_ was a name for a _bird_, and a cant term for an _Ass_; and, as it appears here, an _Ape_. Our _Martins_, considered as birds, were often reminded that their proper food was "hempen seed," which at length choked them. That it meant an _Ass_, appears from "Pappe with a Hatchet." "Be thou Martin the bird or Martin the beast, a bird with the longest bill, or a _beast with the longest ears_, there's a net spread for your neck."--Sign. B. 5. There is an old French proverb, quoted by Cotgrave, _voce_ Martin:--"_Plus d'un ASNE a la foire, a nom +Martin+_."

[426] Martin was a _protege_ of this _Dame Lawson_. There appear to have been few political conspiracies without a woman, whenever religion forms a part. This dame is thus noticed in the mock epitaphs on Martin's funeral--

"Away with silk, for I will mourn in sacke; Martin is dead, our new sect goes to wrack. Come, gossips mine, put finger in the eie, He made us laugh, but now must make us crie." DAME LAWSON.

"Sir Jeffrie's Ale-tub" alludes to two knights who were ruinously fined, and hardly escaped with life, for their patronage of Martin.

[427] _Chwere_, _i.e._ "that I were," alluding to their frequently adopting the corrupt phraseology of the populace, to catch the ears of the mob.

[428] It is a singular coincidence that Arnauld, in his caustic retort on the Jesuits, said--"I do not fear your _pen_, but your _penknife_." The play on the word, tells even better in our language than in the original--_plume_ and _canife_.

[429] I know of only one _Laneham_, who wrote "A Narrative of the Queen's Visit at Kenilworth Castle," 1575. He was probably a redoubtable satirist. I do not find his name in Ritson's "Bibliographia Poetica."

[430] Alluding to the title of one of their most virulent libels against Bishop Cooper ["Hay any worke for Cooper," which was a pun on the Bishop's name, conveyed in the street cry of an itinerant trader, and was followed by another entitled] "More work for a Cooper." Cooper, in his "Admonition to the People of England," had justly observed that this _Mar-Prelate_ ought to have many other names. See note, p. 510.

I will close this note with an extract from "Pappe with a Hatchet," which illustrates the ill effects of all sudden reforms, by an apposite and original image.

"There was an aged man that lived in a well-ordered Commonwealth by the space of threescore years, and finding, at the length, that by the heate of some men's braines, and the warmness of other men's blood, that newe alterations were in hammering, and that it grewe to such an height, that all the desperate and discontented persons were readie to runne their heads against their head; comming into the midst of these mutiners, cried, as loude as his yeeres would allow:--'Springalls, and vnripened youthes, whose wisedomes are yet in the blade, when this snowe shall be melted (laying his hand on his siluer haires) then shall you find store of dust, _and rather wish for the continuance of a long frost, than the incomming of an vntimely thaw_.'"--_Sig. D. 3. verso._

LITERARY QUARRELS

FROM PERSONAL MOTIVES

Anecdote of a BISHOP and a DOCTOR--Dr. MIDDLETON and Dr. BENTLEY--WARBURTON and Dr. TAYLOR--WARBURTON and EDWARDS--SWIFT and DRYDEN--POPE and BENTLEY--why fiction is necessary for satire, according to Lord ROCHESTER'S confession--ROWE and ADDISON--POPE and ATTERBURY--Sir JOHN HAWKINS and GEORGE STEEVENS--a fierce controversial author a dangerous neighbour--a ludicrous instance of a literary quarrel from personal motives between BOHUN and the WYKEHAMISTS.

Literary Quarrels have abundantly sprung from mere personal motives; and controversies purely literary, sometimes of magnitude, have broken out, and been voluminously carried on, till the public are themselves involved in the contest, while the true origin lies concealed in some sudden squabble; some neglect of petty civility; some unlucky epithet; or some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which mortified or enraged the author. How greatly has passion prevailed in literary history! How often the most glorious pages in the chronicles of literature are tainted with the secret history which must be placed by their side, so that the origin of many considerable works, which do so much honour to the heads of their authors, sadly accuse their hearts. But the heaven of Virgil was disturbed with quarrels--

Tantaene animis coelestibus irae? _AEneid._

Can heavenly minds such high resentment show? _Dryden._

And has not a profound observer of human affairs declared, _Ex privatis odiis respublica crescit?_ individual hatreds aggrandize the republic. This miserable philosophy will satisfy those who are content, from private vices, to derive public benefits. One wishes for a purer morality, and a more noble inspiration.

To a literary quarrel from personal motives we owe the origin of a very remarkable volume. When Dr. Parr delivered his memorable sermon, which, besides the "_sesquipedalia verba_," was perhaps the longest that ever was heard--if not listened to--Bishop Hurd, who had always played the part of one of the most wary of politicians in private life, and who had occasion once adroitly to explain the French word _Retenue_, which no man better understood, in a singularly unguarded moment, sarcastically observed that he did not like "the doctor's long vernacular sermon." The happy epithet was soon conveyed to the classical ear of the modern Grecian: it was a wasp in it! The bishop had, in the days of literary adventure, published some pieces of irony, which were thought more creditable to his wit than his feelings--and his great patron, Warburton, certain juvenile prose and verse--all of which they had rejected from their works. But this it is to be an author!--his errors remain when he has outlived and corrected them. The mighty and vindictive Grecian in rage collected them all; exhausted his own genius in perpetuating follies; completed the works of the two bishops in utter spite; and in "Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian," has furnished posterity with a specimen of the force of his own "vernacular" style, giving a lesson to the wary bishop, who had scarcely wanted one all his life--of the dangers of an unlucky epithet!

Dr. Conyers Middleton, the author of the "Life of Cicero," seldom wrote but out of pique; and he probably owed his origin as an author to a circumstance of this nature. Middleton when young was a _Dilettante_ in music; and Dr. Bentley, in contempt, applied the epithet "fiddling Conyers." Had the irascible Middleton broken his violin about the head of the learned Grecian, and thus terminated the quarrel, the epithet had then cost Bentley's honour much less than it afterwards did. It seems to have excited Middleton to deeper studies, which the great Bentley not long after felt when he published proposals for an edition of the New Testament in Greek. Middleton published his "Remarks, paragraph by paragraph, upon the proposals," to show that Bentley had neither talents nor materials proper for the work. This opened a great paper-war, and again our rabid wolf fastened on the majestic lion, "paragraph by paragraph." And though the lion did affect to bear in contempt the fangs of his little active enemy, the flesh was torn. "The proposals" sunk before the "paragraph by paragraph," and no edition of the Greek Testament by Bentley ever appeared. Bentley's proposals at first had met with the greatest success; the subscription-money amounted to two thousand pounds, and it was known that his nephew had been employed by him to travel abroad to collect these MSS. He declared he would make use of no MS. that was not a thousand years old, or above; of which sort he had collected twenty, so that they made up a total of twenty thousand years. He was four years studying them before he issued his proposals. The Doctor rested most on eight Greek MSS., the most recent of which was one thousand years old. All this wore a very imposing appearance. At a touch the whole magnificent edifice fell to pieces! Middleton says, "His twenty old MSS. shrink at once to eight, and he is forced again to own that even of these eight there are only four which had not been used by Dr. Mill;" and these Middleton, by his sarcastic reasoning, at last reduces to "some pieces only of the New Testament in MS." So that twenty MSS. and their twenty thousand years were battered by the "fiddling Conyers" into a solitary fragment of little value! Bentley returned the subscription-money, and would not publish; the work still lies in its prepared state, and some good judges of its value have expressed a hope to see it yet published. But Bentley himself was not untainted in this dishonourable quarrel: he well knew that Middleton was the author of this severe attack; but to show his contempt of the real author, and desirous, in his turn, of venting his disappointment on a Dr. Colbatch, he chose to attribute it to him, and fell on Colbatch with a virulence that made the reply perfectly libellous, if it was Bentley's, as was believed.

The irascibility of Middleton, disguising itself in a literary form, was still more manifested by a fact recorded of him by Bishop Newton. He had applied to Sir Robert Walpole for the mastership of the Charter-house, who honestly informed him that Bishop Sherlock, with the other Bishops, were against his being chosen. Middleton attributed the origin of this opposition to Bishop Sherlock, and wreaked his vengeance by publishing his "Animadversions upon Sherlock's Discourses on Prophecy." The book had been long published, and had passed through successive editions; but Middleton pretended he had never seen them before, and from this time Lambeth-house was a strong provocative for his vindictive temper.

Nor was the other great adversary of Middleton, he who so long affected to be the lord paramount, the Suzerain in the feudal empire, rather than the republic of letters--Warburton himself--less easily led on to these murderous acts of personal rancour. A pamphlet of the day has preserved an anecdote of this kind. Dr. Taylor, the Chancellor of Lincoln, once threw out in company an opinion derogatory to the scholarship of Warburton, who seems to have had always some choice spirits of his legion as spies in the camp of an enemy, and who sought their tyrant's grace by their violation of the social compact. The tyrant himself had an openness, quite in contrast with the dark underworks of his satellites. He boldly interrogated our critic, and Taylor replied, undauntedly and more poignantly than Warburton might have suspected, that "he did not recollect ever _saying_ that Dr. Warburton was no scholar, but that indeed he had always _thought_ so." To this intrepid spirit the world owes one of the remarkable prefaces to the "Divine Legation"--in which the Chancellor of Lincoln, intrepid as he was, stands like a man of straw, to be buffeted and tossed about with all those arts of distortion which the wit and virulence of Warburton almost every day was practising at his "established places of execution," as his prefaces and notes have been wittily termed.

Even Warburton himself, who committed so many personal injuries, has, in his turn, most eminently suffered from the same motive. The personal animosity of a most ingenious man was the real cause of the utter destruction of Warburton's critical reputation. Edwards, the author of the "Canons of Criticism," when young and in the army, was a visitor at Allen's of Prior-park, the patron of Warburton; and in those literary conversations which usually occupied their evenings, Warburton affected to show his superiority in his acquaintance with the Greek writers, never suspecting that a red coat covered more Greek than his own--which happened unluckily to be the case. Once, Edwards in the library, taking down a Greek author, explained a passage in a manner which did not suit probably with some new theory of the great inventor of so many; a contest arose, in which Edwards discovered how Warburton came by his illegitimate knowledge of Greek authors: Edwards attempted to convince him that he really did not understand Greek, and that his knowledge, such as it was, was derived from French translations--a provoking act of literary kindness, which took place in the presence of Ralph Allen and his niece, who, though they could not stand as umpires, did as witnesses. An incurable breach took place between the parties, and from this trifling altercation, Edwards produced the bitter "Canons of Criticism," and Warburton those foaming notes in the _Dunciad_.

Such is the implacable nature of literary irascibility! Men so tenderly alive to intellectual sensibility, find even the lightest touch profoundly enter into the morbid constitution of the literary temper; and even minds of a more robust nature have given proof of a sickly delicacy hanging about them quite unsuspected. Swift is a remarkable instance of this kind: the foundation of the character of this great wit was his excellent sense. Yet having, when young, composed one of the wild Pindarics of the time, addressed to the Athenian Society, and Dryden judiciously observing that "cousin Jonathan would never be a poet," the enraged wit, after he had reached the maturity of his own admirable judgment, and must have been well aware of the truth of the friendly prediction, could never forgive it. He has indulged the utmost licentiousness of personal rancour; he even puns miserably on his name to degrade him as the _emptiest_ of writers. His spirited translation of Virgil, which was admired even by Pope, he levels by the most grotesque sarcastic images to mark the poet's diminutive genius--he says this version-maker is so lost in Virgil, that he is like "the lady in a lobster; a mouse under a canopy of state; a shrivelled beau within the penthouse of a full-bottomed perriwig." He never was generous enough to contradict his opinion, and persisted in it to the last. Some critic, about Swift's own time, astonished at his treatment of Dryden, declares he must have been biassed by some prejudice--the anecdote here recorded, not then probably known, discovers it.

What happened to Pope on the publication of his Homer shows all the anxious temper of the author. Being in company with Bentley, the poet was very desirous of obtaining the doctor's opinion of it, which Bentley contrived to parry as well as he could; but in these matters an author who calculates on a compliment, will risk everything to obtain it. The question was more plainly put, and the answer was as plainly given. Bentley declared that "the verses were good verses, but the work is not Homer--it is Spondanus!" From this interview posterity derives from the mortified poet the full-length figure of "_the slashing_ Bentley," in the fourth book of the Dunciad:

The mighty Scholiast, whose unwearied pains Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains.

When Bentley was told by some officious friend that Pope had abused him, he only replied, "Ay, like enough! I spoke against his Homer, and the _portentous cub_ never forgives!" Part of Pope's severe criticism only is true; but to give full effect to their severity, poets always infuse a certain quantity of fiction. This is an artifice absolutely necessary to practise; so I collect from a great master in the arts of satire, and who once honestly avowed that no satire could be composed unless it was _personal_; and no personalities would sufficiently adorn a poem without _lies_. This great satirist was Rochester. Burnet details a curious conversation between himself and his lordship on this subject. The bishop tells us that "he would often go into the country, and be for some months wholly employed in study, or the sallies of his wit chiefly directed to satire. And this he often defended to me by saying, there were some people that could not be kept in order, or admonished, but in this way." Burnet remonstrated, and Rochester replied--"A man could not write with life unless he were _heated by revenge_; for to make a satire without resentments, upon the cold notions of philosophy, was as if a man would, in cold blood, cut men's throats who had never offended him. And he said, the _lies_ in these libels came often in as _ornaments_, that could not be spared without _spoiling the beauty_ of the poem." It is as useful to know how the materials of satire are put together; as thus the secret of pulling it to pieces more readily may sometimes be obtained.

These facts will sufficiently establish this disgraceful principle of the personal motives which have influenced the quarrels of authors, and which they have only disguised by giving them a literary form. Those who are conversant in literary history can tell how many works, and some considerable ones, have entirely sprung out of the vengeance of authors. Johnson, to whom the feelings of the race were so well known, has made a curious observation, which none but an author could have made:--"The best advice to authors would be, that they should keep out of the way of one another." He says this in the "Life of Rowe," on the occasion of Addison's Observations on Rowe's Character. Rowe had expressed his happiness to Pope at Addison's promotion; and Pope, who wished to conciliate Addison towards Rowe, mentioned it, adding, that he believed Rowe was sincere. Addison replied, "That he did not suspect Rowe feigned; but _the levity of his heart is such, that he is struck with any new adventure_: and it would affect him just in the same manner as if he heard I was going to be hanged." Warburton adds that Pope said he could not deny but Addison understood Rowe well. Such is the fact on which Johnson throws out an admirable observation:--"This censure time has not left us the power of confirming or refuting; but observation daily shows that much stress is not to be laid on hyperbolical accusations and pointed sentences, which even he that utters them desires to be applauded, rather than credited. Addison can hardly be supposed to have meant all that he said. _Few characters can bear the microscopic scrutiny of WIT quickened by ANGER._" I could heap up facts to demonstrate this severe truth. Even of Pope's best friends, some of their severities, if they ever reached him, must have given the pain he often inflicted. His friend Atterbury, to whom he was so partial, dropped an expression, in the heat of conversation, which Pope could never have forgiven; that our poet had "a crooked mind in a crooked body." There was a rumour, after Pope's death, that he had left behind him a satirical "Life of Dean Swift." Let genius, whose faculty detects the foibles of a brother, remember he is a rival, and be a generous one. In that extraordinary morsel of literary history, the "Conversations of Ben Jonson with his friend Drummond of Hawthornden," preserving his opinions of his contemporaries, if I err not in my recollection, I believe that he has not spoken favourably of a single individual!

The personal motives of an author, influencing his literary conduct, have induced him to practise meannesses and subterfuges. One remarkable instance of this nature is that of Sir John Hawkins, who indeed had been hardly used by the caustic pleasantries of George Steevens. Sir John, in his edition of Johnson, with ingenious malice contrived to suppress the acknowledgment made by Johnson to Steevens of his diligence and sagacity, at the close of his preface to Shakspeare. To preserve the panegyric of Steevens mortified Hawkins beyond endurance; yet, to suppress it openly, his character as an editor did not permit. In this dilemma he pretended he reprinted the preface from the edition of 1765; which, as it appeared before Johnson's acquaintance with Steevens, could not contain the tender passage. However, this was unluckily discovered to be only a subterfuge, to get rid of the offensive panegyric. On examination, it proved not true; Hawkins did not reprint from this early edition, but from the latest, for all the corrections are inserted in his own. "If Sir John were to be tried at Hicks's Hall (long the seat of that justice's glory), he would be found guilty of _clipping_," archly remarks the periodical critic.

A fierce controversial author may become a dangerous neighbour to another author: a petulant fellow, who does not write, may be a pestilent one; but he who prints a book against us may disturb our life in endless anxieties. There was once a dean who actually teased to death his bishop, wore him out in journeys to London, and at length drained all his faculties--by a literary quarrel from personal motives.

Dr. THOMAS PIERCE, Dean of Sarum--a perpetual controversialist, and to whom it was dangerous to refuse a request, lest it might raise a controversy--wanted a prebend of Dr. WARD, Bishop of Salisbury, for his son Robert. He was refused; and now, studying revenge, he opened a controversy with the bishop, maintaining that the king had the right of bestowing all dignities in all cathedrals in the kingdom, and not the bishops. This required a reply from the bishop, who had been formerly an active controversialist himself. Dean Pierce renewed his attack with a folio volume, entitled "A Vindication of the King's Sovereign Right, &c.," 1683.--Thus it proceeded, and the web thickened around the bishop in replies and rejoinders. It cost him many tedious journeys to London, through bad roads, fretting at "the King's Sovereign Right" all the way; and, in the words of a witness, "in unseasonable times and weather, that by degrees his spirits were exhausted, his memory quite gone, and he was totally unfitted for business."[431] Such was the fatal disturbance occasioned by Dean Pierce's folio of "The King's Sovereign Right," and his son Bob being left without a prebend!

I shall close this article with a very ludicrous instance of a literary quarrel from personal motives. This piece of secret history had been certainly lost, had not Bishop Lowth condescended to preserve it, considering it as necessary to assign a sufficient reason for the extraordinary libel it produced.

Bohun, an antiquarian lawyer, in a work entitled "The English Lawyer," in 1732, in illustrating the origin of the Act of _Scandalum Magnatum_, which arose in the time of William of Wykeham, the chancellor and bishop of Edward III. and the founder of New College, in Oxford; took that opportunity of committing the very crime on the venerable manes of Wykeham himself. He has painted this great man in the darkest colours. Wykeham is charged with having introduced "Alice Piers, his niece or," &c., for the truth is he was uncertain who she was, to use his peculiar language, "into the king's bosom;" to have joined her in excluding the Black Prince from all power in the state; and he hints at this hero having been poisoned by them; of Wykeham's embezzling a million of the public money, and, when chancellor, of forging an Act of Parliament to indemnify himself, and thus passing his own pardon. It is a singularity in this libellous romance, that the contrary of all this only is true. But Bohun has so artfully interwoven his historical patches of misrepresentations, surmises, and fictions, that he succeeded in framing an historical libel.

Not satisfied with this vile tissue, in his own obscure volume, seven years afterwards, being the editor of a work of high reputation, Nathaniel Bacon's "Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws and Government of England," he further satiated his frenzy by contriving to preserve his libel in a work which he was aware would outlive his own.

Whence all this persevering malignity? Why this quarrel of Mr. Bohun, of the Middle Temple, with the long-departed William of Wykeham?

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?

He took all these obscure pains, and was moved with this perpetual rancour against William of Wykeham, merely to mortify the Wykehamists; and slandered their founder, with the idea that the odium might be reflected on New College. Bohun, it seems, had a quarrel with them concerning a lease on which he had advanced money; but the holder had contrived to assign it to the well-known Eustace Budgell: the college confirmed the assignment. At an interview before the warden, high words had arisen between the parties: the warden withdrew, and the wit gradually shoved the antiquary off the end of the bench on which they were sitting: a blow was struck, and a cane broken. Bohun brought an action, and the Wykehamites travelled down to give bail at Westminster Hall, where the legal quarrel was dropped, and the literary one then began. Who could have imagined that the venerable bishop and chancellor of Edward III. was to be involved in a wretched squabble about a lease with an antiquary and a wit? "Fancying," says Bishop Lowth, "he could inflict on the Society of New College a blow which would affect them more sensibly by wounding the reputation of their founder, he set himself to collect everything he could meet with that was capable of being represented to his discredit, and to improve it with new and horrible calumnies of his own invention." Thus originated this defamatory attack on the character of William of Wykeham! And by arts which active writers may practise, and innocent readers cannot easily suspect, a work of the highest reputation, like that of Nathaniel Bacon's, may be converted into a vehicle of personal malignity, while the author himself disguises his real purpose under the specious appearance of literature! The present case, it must be acknowledged, is peculiar, where a dead person was attacked with a spirit of rancour to which the living only appear subject; but the author was an antiquary, who lived as much with the dead as the living: his personal motive was the same as those already recorded, and here he was acting with a double force on the dead and the living!

But here I stop my hand, my list would else be too complete. Great names are omitted--Whitaker and Gibbon;[432] Pope and Lord Hervey;[433] Wood and South;[434] Rowe, Mores, and Ames;[435] and George Steevens and Gough.[436]

This chapter is not honourable to authors; but historians are only Lord Chief Justices, who must execute the laws, even on their intimate friends, when standing at the bar. The chapter is not honourable--but it may be useful; and that is a quality not less valuable to the public. It lets in their readers to a kind of knowledge, which opens a necessary comment on certain works, and enlarges our comprehension of their spirit.

If in the heat of controversy authors imprudently attack each other with personalities, they are only scattering mud and hurling stones, and will incur the ridicule or the contempt of those who, unfriendly to the literary character, feel a secret pleasure in its degradation; but let them learn, that to open a literary controversy from mere personal motives; thus to conceal the dagger of private hatred under the mantle of literature, is an expedient of short duration, for the secret history is handed down with the book; and when once the dignity of the author's character sinks in the meanness of his motives, powerful as the work may be, even Genius finds its lustre diminished, and Truth itself becomes suspicious.

FOOTNOTES:

[431] Lansdowne MSS. 1042-1316.

[432] GIBBON'S _Miscellaneous Works_, vol. i. 243.

[433] WALPOLE'S _Memoirs_, vol. iii. 40.

[434] The Life of Wood, by GUTCH, vol. i.

[435] NICHOLS'S _Literary Anecdotes_.

[436] "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 303-4.

INDEX.

ADDISON, quarrels with Pope, 313 disapproves of his satire on Dennis, 315 aids a rival version of Homer, 316 satirized by Pope as _Atticus_, _n._ 317 his nervous fear of criticism, 317 his last interview with Pope, 318-320 quarrels with Steele on political grounds, 433 his disbelief in Rowe, 535

AKENSIDE exhibited as a ludicrous personage by Smollett; his real character cast in the mould of antiquity, _n._ 114 severely criticised by Warburton, 264

ALDRICH, Dean, secretly fosters the attacks on Bentley, 378, _n._ 383

AMHURST, a political author, his history, 11

ARNALL, a great political scribe, 10

ASCHAM, Roger, the founder of English Prose, 19

ATHENAE BRITANNICAE, one of the rarest works, account of, _n._ 31

ATHENAE OXONIENSES, an apology for, 89

ATTERBURY, Bp., on terrors of conscience, 451 severe remarks on Pope, 535

AUBREY, gives the real reason for the fears of Hobbes the philosopher, _n._ 452 minutely narrates the mode in which he composed his "Leviathan," _n._ 459

AUTHORS by profession, a phrase of modern origin, 8 original letter to a Minister from one, _ib._ Fielding's apology for them, 11

AUTHORS, Horace Walpole affects to despise them, 43 their maladies, 78 case of, stated, 15 incompetent remuneration of, 21 who wrote above the genius of their own age, 84 ill reception from the public of their valuable works, 85 who have sacrificed their fortunes to their studies, _ib._ who commenced their literary life with ardour, and found their genius obstructed by numerous causes, 87 who have never published their works, 90 provincial, liable to bad passions, 128

AYRE'S Memoirs of Pope, _n._ 318, 319

BAKER and his microscopical discoveries, _n._ 366-367 Rev. Thomas, his collection, 93

BALGUY, Dr. Thos., _n._ 273

BARNES, Joshua, wrote a poem to prove Solomon was the author of the "Iliad," and why, 97 his pathetic letter descriptive of his literary calamities, _ib._ hints at the vast number of his unpublished works, 98

BAYLE, his use of paradox, 247 his theory of apparitions, _n._ 451

BAYNE, Alexander, died of intense application, 72

BENTLEY, Dr., his controversy with Boyle, 378, 390 his haughtiness, _n._ 379 his dissertation on "Phalaris", 380 satirized by Dr. Middleton, 531

BIOGRAPHIA BRITANNICA in danger of being left unfinished, 84

BIRKENHEAD, Sir J., a newspaper-writer, 416

BLACKSTONE investigates the quarrel between Pope and Addison, 314

BOHUN, his unjustifiable attack on William of Wykeham, 537

BOLINGBROKE, his share in Pope's "Essay on Man,", 256 quarrel with Pope, 321-328 his "Patriot King" secretly printed by Pope, 321 his hatred of Warburton, 323-328

BOOKSELLERS in the reign of Elizabeth, 23 why their interest is rarely combined with the advancement of literature, _n._ 87 why they prefer the crude to the matured fruit, 210

BOYLE, his controversy with Bentley, 378-390 his edition of "Phalaris", 378-381 his literary aids, _n._ 382

BRAMHALL opposes Hobbes' philosophy, 449

BRERETON, Sir W., characterised by Clarendon and Cleveland, _n._ 418

BROOKE attacks errors in Camden's "Britannia", 492 his work unfairly suppressed, 495 his severe remarks on Camden, _ib._ humorous rhymes on a horse, 497 his self-defence, 498 his real motives vindicated, 499 biographical note, _ib._

BROWN, Dr., his panegyric on Warburton, and his sorrow for writing it, _n._ 235 account of, _n._ 273

BROWN, Robt., founder of a sect of Puritans, _n._ 518

BURNET, Bp., his character attacked, 426

BURTON, his laborious work, 83 his constitutional melancholy, _n._ 182

CAESALPINUS, originally the propounder of a theory of the circulation of the blood, 335

CALVIN'S opinions on government, _n._ 447

CALVIN, his narrowed sectarianism, 502

CAMDEN recommends Jonson to Raleigh, _n._ 476 his industry, and his great work the "Britannia", 491 Brooke points out its errors, 492 his works suppressed through Camden's interest, 495 his exasperation, _ib._ his powerful picture of calumny, 496 his quiet adoption of Brooke's corrections, 499

CAMPANELLA and his political works, 351-352

CAREY, Henry, inventor of "Namby Pamby", 101 "Carey's Wish," a patriotic song on the Freedom of Election, by the author of "God save the King," _n._ 102 "Sally in our Alley," a popular ballad, its curious origin, 103 author of several of our national poems, 104 his miserable end, _ib._

CARTE, Thomas, his valuable history, 110-111 the first proposer of public libraries, 111 its fate from his indiscretion, 112

CARTWRIGHT, Thomas, chief of the Puritan faction, 505 progress of his opinions, 506 his great popularity, _ib._ forsakes his party, 508-509

CARYLL'S voluminous commentary on Job, _n._ 392

CASTELL, Dr., ruined in health and fortune by the publication of his Polyglott, _n._ 189

CHARLES THE SECOND'S jest at the Royal Society, _n._ 311 an admirer of Hobbes's ability in disputation, _n._ 448

CHATTERTON, his balance-sheet on the Lord Mayor's death, _n._ 25

CHURCHILL'S satire on Warburton, 240, 242, 243, 246

CHURCHYARD, Thomas, an unhappy poet, describes his patrons, 26 his pathetic description of his wretched old age, _ib._

CIBBER, his easy good-nature, 306 his reasonable defence of himself, _n._ 305-307 his "Essay on Cicero," _n._ 306 apology for his Life, 307 attacks on himself, 305, 308 unjustly degraded, 312

CLARENDON, Lord, his prejudice against May, 434 his opinion of Hobbes's philosophy, _n._ 438

CLERGY fight in the great civil wars, _n._ 422

CLELAND, biographical note on, 282

CLEVELAND'S character of a journal-maker, 416

COLE, Rev. William, his character, 90 his melancholy confession on his lengthened literary labours, 92 his anxiety how best to dispose of his collections, 93

COLLINS, Arthur, historian of the Peerage, 85

COLLINS, Wm., the poet, quits the university suddenly with romantic hopes of becoming an author, 172 publishes his "Odes" without success, and afterwards indignantly burns the edition, 180 defended from some reproaches of irresolution, made by Johnson, 181 anecdote of his life in the metropolis, 182 anecdotes of, when under the influence of a disordered intellect, 183 his monument described, 184 two sonnets descriptive of Collins, 185 his poetical character defended, 186

CONTEMPORARIES, how they seek to level genius, 206

COOPER, author of "Life of Socrates," attacked by Warburton, _n._ 272

COOPER, Bishop, attacked by Mar-Prelates, _n._ 513, 514

COPYRIGHTS, Lintot's payments for, 328-333

CORBET, his humorous introduction to Ben Jonson, _n._ 475

COTGRAVE, Randle, falls blind in the labour of his "Dictionary", 73

COURT of Charles II. satirised by Marvell, 393 its characteristics, 414

COWEL incurs by his curious work "The Interpreter" the censure of the King and the Commons on opposite principles, 193

COWLEY, original letter from, _n._ 36 his essays form a part of his confessions, 37 describes his feelings at court, _ib._ his melancholy attributed to his "Ode to Brutus," by which he incurred the disgrace of the court, 40 his remarkable lamentation for having written poetry, 41 his Epitaph composed by himself, 42

CRITIC, poetical, without any taste, how he contrived to criticise poems, 143

CRITICISMS, illiberal, some of its consequences stated, 140

CROSS attacks the Royal Society, 344-346

CROUSAZ dissects Pope's "Essay on Man", 256

CURLL, and his publication of Pope's letters, 292

D'AVENANT, his poem of "Gondibert", 404 history of its composition, _n._ 404 its merits and defects, 405-408 a club of wits satirize it, 409 and its author, 412 and occasion it to be left unfinished, 413

DAVIES, Myles, a mendicant author, his life, 30

DECKER quarrels with Ben Jonson for his arrogance, 475-487 ridicules him in his "Satiromastix", 482-487

DEDICATION, composed by a patron to himself, _n._ 30

DEDICATIONS, used in an extraordinary way, _n._ 30

DE LOLME'S work on the Constitution could find no patronage, and the author's bitter complaints, 200 relieved by the Literary Fund, _n._ 201

DENHAM falsely satirized, _n._ 429

DENNIS, John, distinguished as "The Critic", 52 his "Original Letters" and "Remarks on Prince Arthur," his best productions, 52 anecdotes of his brutal vehemence, 53 curious caricature of his personal manners, 54 a specimen of his anti-poetical notions, _n._ 55 his frenzy on the Italian Opera, 57 acknowledges that he is considered as ill-natured, and complains of public neglect, _ib._ more the victim of his criticisms than the genius he insulted, 58 his insatiable vengeance toward Pope, 286 his attack on Addison's "Cato", 315 his account with the bookseller Lintot, 331

DRAKE, Dr. John, a political writer, his miserable life, 11

DRAYTON'S national work, "The Polyolbion," ill received, and the author greatly dejected, 210 angry preface addressed "To any that will read it", 211

DRUMMOND of Hawthornden, his love of poetry, 213 conversation with Jonson, 475

DRYDEN, in his old age, complains of dying of over-study, 204 his dramatic life a series of vexations, 205 regrets he was born among Englishmen, 206 remarkable confession of the poet, _ib._ vilified by party spirit, 427 compares his quarrel with Settle to that of Jonson with Decker, _n._ 477

DUNCIAD, Pope's collections for, 278 early editions of, _n._ 283 rage of persons satirized in, _n._ 284 satire on naturalists in, 342

DUNTON the bookseller satirized by Swift, 430

DYSON defends Akenside, 265

EACHARD'S satire on Hobbes and his sect, _n._ 439

EDWARDS, Thomas, author of "Canons of Criticism", 261 biographical notice, _n._ 532 anecdotes of his critical sagacity, _n._ 262-263 origin of his "Canons of Criticism", 532

EVANS, Arise, a fanatical Welsh prophet, patronised by Warburton, _n._ 240

EVELYN defends the Royal Society, 340

EXERCISE, to be substituted for medicine by literary men, and which is the best, _n._ 68

FALSE rumours in the great Civil War, 421

FARNEWORTH'S Translation of Machiavel, 84

FELL, Dr., an opponent of the Royal Society, 350 ungenerous to Hobbes, 450 rhymes descriptive of his unpopularity, 451

FIELDING attacks Sir John Hill, 368-369

FILMER, Sir R., writes to establish despotism, _n._ 449

FOLKES, Martin, President of the Royal Society, _n._ 364 attacked by Sir John Hill, _n._ 366

FULLER'S "Medicina Gymnastica," _n._ 71

GARTH, Dr., and his Dispensary, 429

GAY acts as mediator with Pope and Addison, 320 his account with Lintot the bookseller, 330

GIBBON, Ed., price of his copyright, 87

GILDON supposed by Pope to have been employed by Addison to write against him, 316

GLANVILL a defender of the Royal Society, 244

GLOVER, Leonidas, declines to write a Life of Marlborough, _n._ 325

GOLDSMITH'S remonstrance on illiberal criticism, from which the law gives no protection, 142

GRANGER'S complaint of not receiving half the pay of a scavenger, 85

GREENE, Robert, a town-wit, his poverty and death, 23 awful satirical address to, _n._ 119

GREY, Dr. Zachary, the father of our commentators, ridiculed and abused, 104 the probable origin of his new mode of illustrating Hudibras, _ib._ Warburton's double-dealing with him, _n._ 259

GUTHRIE offers his services as a hackney-writer to a minister, 8

HACKETT executed for attacks on the church, _n._ 518

HANMER, Sir T., his edition of Shakespeare, _n._ 242, _n._ 258

HARDOUIN supposes the classics composed by monks in the Middle Ages, 249-252

HARRINGTON and his "Oceana", 449

HARVEY, Dr., and his discovery of the circulation of the blood, 335

HARVEY, Gabriel, his character, 117 his device against his antagonist, _n._ 119 his portrait, 121 severely satirised by Nash for his prolix periods, 122 cannot be endured to be considered as the son of a rope-maker, 123 his pretended sordid manners, 124 his affectation of Italian fashions, _ib._ his friends ridiculed, 125 his pedantic taste for hexameter verses, &c., 127 his curious remonstrance with Nash, 126 his lamentation on invectives, 129 his books, and Nash's, suppressed by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury for their mutual virulence, 120

HAWKESWORTH, Dr., letter on presenting his MS. of Cook's Voyages for examination, the publication of which overwhelmed his fortitude and intellect, 199

HENLEY, Orator, this buffoon an indefatigable student, an elegant poet, and wit, 59 his poem of "Esther, Queen of Persia", 60 sudden change in his character, 62 seems to have attempted to pull down the Church and the University, 63 some idea of his lectures, _n._ 64 his projects to supply a Universal School, _ib._ specimens of his buffoonery on solemn occasions, 66 his "Defence of the Oratory," _n._ _ib._ once found his match in two disputants, 67 specimen of the diary of his "Oratory Transactions", _ib._ close of his career, _n._ 68 his character, 69 parallel between him and Sir John Hill, 363

HENRY, Dr., the Historian, the sale of his work, on which he had expended most of his fortune and his life, stopped, and himself ridiculed, by a conspiracy raised against him, 136

HENRY, Dr., caustic review of his history, _n._ _ib._

HERON, Robert, draws up the distresses of a man of letters living by literary industry, in the confinement of a sponging-house, from his original letter, 81

HERRICK, Robert, petulant invective against Devonshire, 215

HILL, Aaron, and his quarrel with Pope, 290

HILL, Sir John, 362-396 parallel between him and Orator Henley, 383 his great work on Botany, _n._ _ib._ his personalities, 364 attacks the Royal Society, 365 his _Inspector_, 367 war of wit with Fielding, 368 and Smart, 370-372 attacks Woodward, who replies with some ridiculous anecdotes, _n._ 372 proposes himself as keeper of the Sloane collection, 374 manufactures _Travels_, _n._ 374 his death, 375

HOBBES contemns the Royal Society, 342 praises D'Avenant's poem of "Gondibert", 408-412 his quarrels, 436 peculiarities of his character, 437 his sect, 438 his real opinions, 439 his "Leviathan", 440-448 feared and suspected by both parties, _n._ 442 no atheist, _n._ 445 his continual disputations, 448-450 his terror of death, 451 the real solution of his fears, 452 his disciples in literature, _n._ 455 his pride, 456 his mode of composition, _n._ 459 his contented poverty, and consistent conduct, _ib._ characteristics of his writings, 461 his passion for mathematics, 464 leads to a quarrel with Dr. Wallis, 465-473

HOME and his tragedy of "Douglas", 79

HOWEL, nearly lost his life by excessive study, 74

HUME, his literary life mortified with disappointments, 202 wished to change his name and his country, 204 his letter to Des Maiseaux requesting his opinion of his philosophy, 202

HURD, Bishop, biographical note on, 253 imitates Warburton's style, _n._ 269

_Icon Libellorum._ See _Athenae Britannicae_.

JOHNSON, Dr., his aversion to Milton's politics, 425

JONES, Inigo, ridiculed by Ben Jonson, _n._ 477

JONSON, Ben, his quarrel with Decker, 475 his conversation with Drummond of Hawthornden, 475, 535 his general conviviality, _n._ 475 his play "The Poetaster", 476-481 his powerful satire on Decker, 482-487 his bitter allusions to his enemies, 487-488

KENNET'S, Bishop, Register and Chronicle, 87

KENRICK, Dr., a caustic critic, treats our great authors with the most amusing arrogance, 141 an epigram on himself, by himself, _n._ 142

KING, Dr., his payments as an author, 332 biographical notice of, _n._ 358 ridicules the Transactions of the Royal Society, 358, 361 aids in attacking Bentley, 384 his satirical Index to Bentley's Characteristics, _n._ 386

LAWSON, Dame, a noted female Puritan, _n._ 519, 525

LEE, Nat., his love of praise, 213

LELAND, the antiquary, an accomplished scholar, 172 his "Strena," or New Year's Gift to Henry VIII.; an account of his studies, and his magnificent projects, 174 doubts that his labours will reach posterity, 175 he values "the furniture" of his mind, _ib._ his bust striking from its physiognomy, 177 the ruins of his mind discovered in his library, _ib._ the inscription on his tomb probably had been composed by himself, before his insanity, 178 thoughts on Eloquence, 255

LIBELS abounded in the age of Elizabeth, 503

LIGHTFOOT could not procure the printing of his work, 192

LINTOT'S account-book, 328-333

LITERARY PROPERTY, difficulties to ascertain its nature, 16 history of, _ib._ value of, _n._ _ib._

LITERARY quarrels from personal motives, 529-539

LLOYD'S, Bishop, collections and their fate, 93

LOGAN, the history of his literary disappointments, 78 dies broken-hearted, _ib._ his poetic genius, 80

LOWTH, Bishop, attack on pretensions of Warburton, _n._ 235-246, _n._ 252-268

M'DONALD, or Matthew Bramble, his tragical reply to an inquiry after his tragedy, 77

MACDIARMID, John, died of over-study and exhaustion, 74

MALLET, his knowledge of Pope and Warburton, _n._ 242 his attacks on Warburton, _n._ 271 employed by Bolingbroke to libel Pope, _ib._ anecdote of his egotism, 324 employed by the Duchess of Marlborough on a Life of the Duke, _n._ 325

M'MAHON and his anti-social philosophy, _n._ 456

MARSTON, John, satirised by Ben Jonson, _n._ 477

MARTIN MAR-PRELATE'S libels issuing from a moveable press carried about the country, 116 a party-name for satirists of the Church, 510 their popularity, 513-516 their secret printings, 515 opposed by other wits, 517 authors of these satires, _n._ 505, _n._ 518, 520, 523 curious rhymes against, 524-528

MARVELL attacks the intolerant tenets of Bishop Parker, 392 severity of his satire on the Court of Charles II., _n._ 393 comments on the early career of Parker, 394-395 origin of quarrel, 396 his noble defence of Milton, 399 his rencontre with Parker in the streets, 401 his political honesty, 402 his generous criticism on Butler, 434

MASKELL, Rev. W., history of the Mar-Prelate controversy, _n._ 503 date of its origin, and opinion on its authors, _n._ 505

MELANCHOLY persons frequently the most delightful companions, _n._ 182

MENASSAH, Ben Israel, his treatise "De Resurrectione Mortuorum," _n._ 252

MICKLE'S pathetic address to his muse, 207 his disappointments after the publication of the "Lusiad" induce him to wish to abandon his native country, 208

MIDDLETON, Dr. Conyers, quarrel with Bentley, 530 and with Warburton, 532

MILTON'S works the favourite prey of booksellers, 17 vilified by party spirit, 424-425

MORTIMER, Thomas, his complaint in old age of the preference given to young adventurers, 75

MOTTEUX, Peter, and his patron, 30

MUGHOUSE, political clubs, _n._ 32

NASH, Tom, the misery of his literary life, 23 threatens his patrons, 24 silences Mar-Prelate with his own weapons, 116 his character as a Lucianic satirist, 120 his "Have with you to Saffron Walden," a singular literary invective against Gabriel Harvey, 120

NEEDHAM, Marchmont, a newspaper writer in the great Civil War, 420

NEWSPAPERS of the great Civil War, 415, 422

NEWTON, of a fearful temper in criticism, _n._ 140

NEWTON'S "Optics" first favourably noticed in France, 84

OCKLEY, Simon, among the first of our authors who exhibited a great nation in the East in his "History of the Saracens", 163 his sufferings expressed in a remarkable preface dated from gaol, 187 dines with the Earl of Oxford; an original letter of apology for his uncourtly behaviour, 189 exults in prison for the leisure it affords for study, _n._ _ib._ neglected, but employed by ministers, 196

OLDMIXON asserts Lord Clarendon's "History" to have been interpolated, while himself falsifies Daniel's "Chronicle," _n._ 10

PALERMO, Prince of; and his Palace of Monsters, _n._ 243

PAPER-WARS of the Civil Wars, 415, 422

PARKER, Bishop of Oxford, his early career, 394-395 the intolerance of his style, 397 attacks Milton, 399 and Marvell in the streets, 401 his posthumous portrait of Marvell, 402

PARR, Dr., his talent and his egotism, _n._ 236 his defence of Warburton, _n._ 239 in revenge for Bishop Hurd's criticism, publishes his early works of irony, 531

PATIN, Guy, his account of Hobbes, _n._ 445

PATTISON, a young poet, his college career, 98 his despair in an address to Heaven, and a pathetic letter, 101

PENRY, one of the writers of Mar-Prelate tracts, _n._ 505, _n._ 518 his career, 520 his execution, 521 his petition and protest, _n._ 521 rhymes on his death, _ib._

PHALARIS, Epistles of, 378

PHILLIPS asperses Pope, 316

PIERCE, Dr. T., his controversies, 537

POETS, _mediocre_ Critics are the real origin of _mediocre_, 212 Nat. Lee describes their wonderful susceptibility of praise, 213 provincial, their situation at variance with their feelings, 214

POPE, Alex., his opinion of "the Dangerous Fate of Authors", 214 the Poet Prior, 216

POPE, Alexander, his high estimation of Warburton, 257, 273 Warburton's edition of his works, 263, 270 his miscellaneous quarrel, 278, 291 collects libels on himself, _n._ 273 literary stratagems, 280 early neglect of his "Essay on Criticism," _n._ 280 the real author of the "Key to the Lock," _n._ 280 hostilities between him and others, 282 the finest character-painter, _n._ 283 his personal sufferings on Cibber's satire, 285 his first introduction to Dennis, _n._ 286 narrative of the publication of his letter to Curll, 292, 300 his attacks on Cibber, 301, 312 his condemned comedy, _n._ 301, 307 quarrels with Addison, 313 urges an attack on his _Cato_, _n._ 315 believes him to have employed adverse critics, _n._ 316-317 satirizes Addison as Atticus, _n._ 317 his last interview with Addison, 318, 320 surreptitiously prints Bolingbroke's "Patriot King", 321 his bookselling account with Lintot, 329 his earliest satire, 333-335 his satires and their effects, 535

PRIDEAUX'S "Connection of Old and New Testament", 84

PRINCE'S "Worthies of Devon", _ib._

PRIOR, curious character of, from a Whig satire, 216 felicitated himself that his natural inclination for poetry had been checked, 217 attacked for his political creed, 429

PROCLAMATION issued by James I. against Cowel's book, "The Interpreter," a curious document in literary history, 195

PRYNNE, a voluminous author without judgment, but the character of the man not so ridiculous as the author, 146 his intrepid character, 147 his curious argument against being debarred from pen and ink, _n._ 148 his interview with Laud in the Tower, _n._ 149 had a good deal of cunning in his character, _n._ 150 grieved for the Revolution in which he himself had been so conspicuous a leader, 148 his speeches as voluminous as his writings, _n._ 151 seldom dined, _n._ 152 account of his famous "Histriomastix", _ib._ Milton admirably characterises Prynne's absurd learning, _n._ _ib._ how the "Histriomastix" was at once an elaborate work of many years, and yet a temporary satire--the secret history of the book being as extraordinary as the book itself, 153

PURITANS, origin of their name, _n._ 504

RALEIGH, Sir W., an opposer of Puritanism, _n._ 508

REFORMATION, the, under Elizabeth, 501

RIDICULE described, 114 it creates a fictitious personage, _ib._ a test of truth, 264, 267

RITSON, Joseph, the late poetical antiquary, carried criticism to insanity, 51

RITSON, Isaac, a young Scotch writer, perishes by attempting to exist by the efforts of his pen, 75 his extemporary rhapsody descriptive of his melancholy fate, 76

ROYAL SOCIETY, the, 335, 361 encounters much opposition when first established, _ib._

RUFFHEAD'S Life of Pope, 290

RUSHWORTH dies of a broken heart, having neglected his own affairs for his "Historical Collections", 85

RYMER'S distress in forming his "Historical Collections", 85

RYVES, Eliza, her extraordinary literary exertions and melancholy end, 107

SALE, the learned, often wanted a meal while translating the Koran, _n._ 189

SAVAGE the Poet employed by Pope to collect materials for notes to the _Dunciad_, _n._ 279

SCOT, Reginald, persecuted for his work against Witchcraft, 198

SCOTT, of Amwell, the Quaker and poet, offended at being compared to Capt. Macheath by the affected witticism of a Reviewer, 143 his extraordinary "Letter to the Critical Reviewers," in which he enumerates his own poetical beauties, _ib._

SELDEN compelled to recant his opinions, and not suffered to reply to his calumniators, 198 refuses James I. to publish his defence of the "Sovereignty of the Seas" till Grotius provoked his reply, _ib._ opinions on bishops, _n._ 502

SETTLE, Elkanah, the ludicrous close of a scribbler's life, 146 the hero of Pope's earliest satire, 333 manages Pope burnings, 334

SHAFTESBURY, Lord, on the origin of irony, _n._ 436 his character of Hobbes, _n._ 437 his conversation with Hobbes in Paris on his work, "The Leviathan," _n._ 441

SHUCKFORD, "Sacred and Profane History Connected", 85

SLOANE, Sir Hans, his peculiarities of style, 358-360

SMART and his satire, "The Hilliad", 371-372

SMOLLETT confesses the incredible labour and chagrin he had endured as an author, 13

SOCRATES ridiculed by Aristophanes, 266

SOUTH'S poignant reflection on the Royal Society, 342

SPRAT'S History of the Royal Society, 337-339 his aversion to Milton, 424

STEELE, his paradoxical character, 168 satirized by Swift, 429-431 why he wrote a laughable comedy after his "Christian Hero", 169 his ill choice in a wife of an uncongenial character, 170 specimens of his "Love Despatches," _n._ _ib._ finely contrasts his own character with that of Addison, _n._ 172 introduces Pope to Addison, 314 manages a friendly interview between them after a long disseverance, 319 his political creed loses him Addison's friendship, 433

STEEVENS, G., satirizes Sir John Hawkins, 535

STILLINGFLEET, Bishop, his end supposed to have been hastened by Locke's confutation of his metaphysical notions, _n._ 140

STOCKDALE, Perceval, his character an extraordinary instance of the illusions of writers in verse, 218 draws a parallel between Charles XII. and himself, 224

STOWE, the chronicler, petitions to be a licensed beggar, 29

STRUTT, the antiquary, a man of genius and imagination, 86 his spirited letters on commencing his career of authorship, 88

STUART, Dr. Gilbert, his envious character; desirous of destroying the literary works of his countrymen, 131 projects the "Edinburgh Magazine and Review;" its design, _ib._ his horrid feelings excited by his disappointments, 132 raises a literary conspiracy against Dr. Henry, 135 dies miserably, 139

STUBBE and his attacks on the Royal Society, 346 his early history, 347 influenced by Dr. Fell in his attacks, _n._ 350 specimens of them, 356

SYSTEMS of Opinions, often fallacies in practice, 461

SUBSCRIPTIONS once inundated our literature with worthless works, 29

TEMPLE, Sir W., Essay on Learning, 378

THEOBALD, his payments from, and literary arrangements with Lintot, 331-332

TICKELL'S Homer, 316

TOLAND, a lover of study, 157 defends himself from the aspersion of atheism or deism, 150 accused of an intention to found a sect, 159 had the art of explaining away his own words, _ib._ a great artificer of title-pages, 160 his "Pantheisticon", 161 projects a new office of a private monitor to the minister, 163 of the books he read and his MSS. _n._ 166 his panegyrical epitaph composed by himself, 167 Locke's admirable foresight of his character, 168 the miserable payment for his life of literary labour, 332

TONSON, Jacob, bickerings with Dryden, _n._ 171 his bookselling career, _ib._

UDALL, John, a writer in the Mar-Prelate controversy, _n._ 505, _n._ 518 his character and career, 521-523

WAGSTAFFE, Dr., his character of Steele, _n._ 429-432 his satirical works, _n._ 431

WAKEFIELD, Gilbert, his works unsuccessful because of his politics, _n._ 435

WALLIS, Dr., his curious narrative of a dialogue between Hobbes and the Countess of Devonshire, _n._ 455 his quarrel with Hobbes, 465-473 his power of deciphering secret writing, 472 his real opinion of Hobbes, _n._ 473

WALPOLE, Horace, his literary character, 43 instances of his pointed vivacity against authors, _n._ 43 why he attacked the fame of Sydney, and defended Richard III., 45 his literary mortifications, acknowledged by himself from his original letters, 47 how Gray treated him when invited to Strawberry-hill, _n._ 46 extraordinary letter of, expressing his contempt of his most celebrated contemporaries, 49

WALSINGHAM, Sir Francis, originally favours the Puritans, _n._ 508

WARBURTON, dishonest criticism on Gray's "Hudibras", 105 and his quarrels, 233-277 his early career, 239 his traffic in dedications, 241 his contemptuous criticism on Pope and Addison, 244 his miscellaneous reading, 245, 246 his love of conjecture, 247 Divine Legation, _n._ 250, 267 unhappy in his labours, _n._ 252 his coarseness of invective, _n._ 224, 268 his contemptuous criticisms, 258, 269 conjectural criticism on Shakspeare, 260 his edition of Pope, 263, 270, 271 his literary recruits, 274 defends Pope against Bolingbroke, 321 influenced Pope through his religion, _n._ 323 his opinion of Hobbes, _n._ 444 offends Edwards in a contest, 532

WARD, Dr. Seth, his double opinion of Hobbes' Works, _n._ 465

WARD, Dr., his quarrel with Dr. Pierce, 536

WHARTON, Henry, sunk under his historical studies, 74

WHITGIFT, Archbishop, his controversies with Cartwright the Puritan, and ultimate friendship with him, _n._ 509

WILLIAM of WYKEHAM attacked by Bohun, 537

WOOD, Anthony, his character, 94 an apology for the "Athenae Oxonienses", 92 the writers of a party whom he abhorred frequently refer to him in their own favour, 99 defines Marvell's style, 392 gives Bishop Parker's early history, 394 his prejudice against Lake, 423

WOODWARD the actor attacked by Hill, 372, and note

WORKS, valuable, not completed from deficient encouragement, 84

WOTTON'S reflections on learning, 378

THE END.

* * * * *

Transcriber Notes

Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below.

Archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is preserved, including the author's use of "wont" instead of "won't".

Author's punctuation style is preserved, except where noted below.

Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.

Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=.

Emphasized words within italics indicated by +plus signs+.

Greek transliterations are surrounded by ~tildes~.

Transcriber Changes

The following changes were made to the original text:

Page 11: Added missing word (He passed through a youth of iniquity, and was expelled =from= his college for his irregularities)

Page 21: Was 'ingratisude' (it seems a national =ingratitude= to limit the existence of works for their authors)

Page 23: Was 'roya' (passed off in currency their base metal stamped with a =royal= head)

Page 40: Was 'discontentd' (he retired =discontented= into Surrey.")

Page 62: Was smudged 'brothe' (envied their Ciceronian =brothers.=)

Page 63: Added period (he then requested the Bishop of =London.=)

Page 89: Was 'prosspects' (his imagination delighted to expatiate in its future =prospects=)

Page 105: Was 'Hubidras' (might have served as the model of Grey's =Hudibras=.)

Page 118: Added quote (="Harvey=, the happy above happier men, I read)

Page 187: Was 'sorows' (the oriental student pathetically counts over his =sorrows=)

Page 215: Removed quote (O people currish, churlish as their =seas--=)

Page 230: Changed comma to period (he gave a new turn to our =studies.=)

Page 281: Added quote ("and the weekly clubs held to consult of hostilities against the =author;"=)

Page 289: Was 'nor' (Is =not= _Word-catching_ more serviceable in splitting a cause, than explaining a fine poet?)

Page 327: Was 'damagogue' (which such a political =demagogue= as Bolingbroke never forgave)

Page 328: Added quote (which I have noticed in the ="Quarrels= of Warburton.")

Page 350: Was 'petulent' (which closed this life of toil and hurry and =petulant= genius)

Page 399: Was 'ut' (he was glad to make use of anything rather than sit =out=;)

Page 403: Was 'Philosoper' (while the =Philosopher= keenly retorts on the Club)

Page 420: Added missing i (I give a short narrative of the political temper of the times, =in= their unparalleled gazettes.)

Page 434: Added quote (From age to age, =&c."=)

Page 436: Was 'montrous' (his =monstrous= egotism)

Page 469: Changed comma to period (than in his younger =days.=)

Page 471: Removed quote (you are older already than =Methuselah.=)

Page 481: Added quote ('Barmy froth, inflate, turgidous, and ventosity are come =up.'=)

Page 483: Was 'searchin' (Mine enemies, with sharp and =searching= eyes)

Page 487: Added period (Nor the =Untrussers.=)

Page 497: Removed quote (=Now=, to show himself as good a painter as he is a herald)

Footnote 20: Extra comma removed (his _Bibliographia =Poetica=_.)

Footnote 140: Was 'afterwardss' (As City Poet =afterwards= Settle composed the pageants)

Footnote 140: Was 'Mayor' (songs for the Lord =Mayor's= Shows from 1691 to 1708)

Footnote 140: Original split across lines as 'im,' and 'poverished,' (Towards the close of his career he became =impoverished=)

Footnote 150: Changed period to comma (by =Indignatio,"= 1772)

Footnote 157: Added quote ("that last foible of superior =genius."=)

Footnote 163: Was 'Manasseh' (which =Menasseh= Ben Israel has written his treatise)

Footnote 183: Was 'infallibilty' (to the standard of your =infallibility=)

Footnote 186: Added quote (="Letter= to Warburton," p. 4.)

Footnote 195: Added quote (Prince Eugene, ="who= came hither for that purpose.")

Footnote 202: Was 'Irishmant o' (had a tall Irishman =to= attend him)

Footnote 291: Added quote (And changed his skin to monumental =brass."=)

Footnote 324: Added missing word (=It= may be inscribed in the library of the student)

Footnote 353: Was 'caligraphy' (this beautiful specimen of =calligraphy= may still be seen)

Footnote 353: Was 'hi' (it produced =his= sudden dismissal from the presence of Charles II. when at Paris)

Footnote 354: Added quote (but, chewed, are for the most part cast up again without =effect."=)

Footnote 367: Added quote (="Il= disoit qu'il faisoit quelquefois des ouvertures)

Footnote 369: Added period (The story his antagonist (Dr. Wallis) relates is perfectly in =character.=)

Footnote 418: Changed comma to period (in a countercuffe given to Martin =Junior."=)

Index: Was 'Gilden' (=GILDON= supposed by Pope to have been employed by Addison to write against him, 316)

Index: Added period (JOHNSON, =Dr.,= his aversion to Milton's politics, 425)

Index: Was '132' (LIGHTFOOT could not procure the printing of his work, =192=)