Chapter 8

From ministers proceed we to the misers. I doubt whether any domestic changes have wrought so great an amelioration in our well-being as banks and banking. It has saved us from burglars; it has, by cheques, redeemed us from the tyranny of tradesmen's books. It has put personal property on a stronger foundation than it held, and the banker keeps an excellent private account, gratuitously, of your receipts and expenditure. The trouble that the possession of gold gave to its possessor before this wonderful institution was brought to bear, may be told by a few instances of divers epochs. There is a tale of a man who was supposed to have discovered the treasures of Croesus, in the treasury--such as is shown now at Mycenae and Orchomenos as the treasuries of old. The hero of the tale having discovered the crypt and its hoard, built another, and spent half of his life in secretly removing the treasures of Croesus to his new treasury; which was no sooner a deed accomplished than he perceived the original treasury was superior to the new, and he spent an equal amount of years in secretly restoring the treasures to their original crypt, where doubtless they are now, for he died whilst he was the slave to the gold. Herodotus has stories quite as marvellous as this, of the fortunate finder of the treasures of Croesus. But our friend Mr. Pepys--who, I believe, has given us more amusement than any other Englishman, be he whom he may--is more amusing and instructive. His story is written in 1667, the year after the fire of London, and whilst the invasion of the Dutch was apprehended, and we will see how Mr. Pepys fulfilled the adage of "as much trouble as all my money." On 30th March, 1666, we find him write:--"I to Lombard St., and there received 2200_l._, and brought it home, and, contrary to expectation, received 35_l._ for the use of 2000_l._ of it for a quarter of a year, where it hath produced me this profit, and hath been a conveniency to me as to care and security at my house, and demandable at two days' warning, as this has been."

On 12th November: "This day I received 450 pieces of gold, which cost me 22-1/2_d._ change. But I am well contented with it, I having now nearly 2800_l._ in gold, and will not rest till I get full 3000_l._" But on the 13th June, 1667, on the sad news of the taking of the 'Royal Charles,' and sinking ships at Barking Creek, "put me into such a fear, that I presently resolved of my father's and wife's going into the country; and at two hours' warning they did go by the coach this day with 1300_l._ in gold in their night-bag. Pray God give them good passage, and good care to hide it when they come home! But my heart is full of fear. They gone, I continued in frights and fear what to do with the rest."

And on the 10th October, when the Dutch were gone, we read:--"Up, and to walk up and down in the garden with my father, to talk of all our concernments: about a husband for my sister, whereof there is at present no appearance; but we must endeavour to find her one now, for she grows old and ugly. My father and I with a dark lantern, it being now light, into the garden with my wife, and there went about our great work to dig up my gold. But, Lord, what a tosse I was for some time in, that they could not justly tell where it was: but by-and-bye, poking with a spit, we found it, and then began with a spudd. But, good God! to see how sillily they did it, not half a foot under ground, and in the sight of the world from a hundred places, and within sight of a neighbour's window. Only my father says that he saw them all gone to church before he began the work when he laid the money. But I was out of my wits almost, and the more from that, upon my lifting the earth with my spudd, I did discern that I had scattered the pieces of gold in the loose earth, and, taking up the iron head-pieces whereon they were put, I perceived the earth had gotten among the gold, and wet, so that the bags were all rotten and notes; so that I could not tell what in the world to say to it, not knowing how to judge what was wanting, or what had been lost by Gibson in his journey down, which, all put together, did make me mad. And at last I was obliged to take up the pieces, dirt and all, by candle-light, and carry them into my brother's chamber, and there lock them up, whilst I eat a little supper; and then, all people going to bed, William Hewer and I did, all alone, with pails of water and besoms, wash the dirt off the pieces, and then began to tell them, by a note which I had of the value of the whole in my pocket, and do find that there was short above a hundred pieces, which did make me mad.... So William Hewer and I out again about midnight, and there by candle-light did make shift to gather forty pieces more; and so to bed, and there lay in some disquiet until daylight. 11th.--And then William Hewer and I, with pails and a sieve, did lock ourselves into the garden, and did gather the earth and then sift those pails in one of the summer-houses (just as they do for diamonds in other parts), and there, to our great content did, by nine o'clock, make the last night's forty-five up to seventy-nine; so that we are come to some twenty or thirty of what I think the true number should be. So do leave my father to make a second examination of the dirt, and my mind at rest on it, being but an accident; and so give me some kind of content to remember how painful it is sometimes to keep money as well as to get it, and how doubtful I was to keep it all night, and how to secure it to London.

"About ten o'clock, took coach, my wife and I, and Willett and W. Hewer, and Mumford and Bowles (whom my lady sent me to go along with me my journey, not telling her the reason, but it was only to secure my gold), and my brother John on horseback; and with these four I thought myself pretty safe. My gold I put into a basket, and set it under one of the seats; and so my work every quarter of an hour was to look to see whether all was well; and I did ride in great fear all the day. 12th.--By five o'clock got home, and did bring my gold to my heart's content very safe, having not this day carried it in a basket, but in our hands; the girl took care of one, and my wife of another bag, and I the rest, I being afraid of the bottom of the coach lest it should break." Such is Mr. Pepys' story.

"Nor light nor darkness brings his pains relief: One shows the plunder, and one hides the thief."

Mr. Crabbe has portrayed the marvel of an honest inhabitant of Aldborough, when first he learnt, in his graphic phrase, "that money would breed,"--that it could afford to pay yearly interest. Shakespeare has several references to the fact. Shylock, and a clown in 'Twelfth Night' making very quaint allusions. I shall only add one more tale from Mr. S. Trench's late stories of 'Realities of Irish Life.' A neighbour, who had saved two hundred pounds in gold, kept it in the thatch of his roof. One day he appeared before Mr. Trench bearing his gold, and requesting him to be his depositee, expressing the comfort it would afford him. Mr. Trench declined the unprofitable duty, and pointed out to him the bank, which would accept his deposit and give him interest. The eye of Patrick flashed with intelligence and foresight as he warned Mr. Trench from the delusion of banks, which every year wasted the original sum by paying the stipend, and when you wished to reclaim the original, lo, it had disappeared. No, no, he would have no dividend, forsooth, to eat away his capital; which he bore back again (about five pounds' weight) and replaced it in his thatch. It was neither lost nor wasted there; it became the inheritance of his only daughter, a woman of extreme energy, who had from childhood loved--more, methinks, as a mother loves a helpless child--a good-hearted, unvicious piece of indolence and sloth. She followed him to New York and married him, _nolens volens_; and Providence assigned to him an energetic woman, to make his castle of indolence a bed of roses to the satisfaction of them both,--supplying for each the energy and the repose, both constitutional, both unvicious, which the other lacked.

Highwaymen beset the highways, as burglars invaded the residences; and Macaulay chuckles over the fact that his _bete noire_--the noble Marlborough--was eased of 5000_l._ in gold in one of his trips between London and St. Alban's.

From the regions of ministers and misers we may descend to the equally disputed realms of the muses. Horace terms it "the peevish and inhuman muse," which those who drink of Aganippe's fountain woo; whilst others are apt to equal their Castalian spring and Parnassus with the height of the empyreal, regarding with pity the toilers on the land and deep. But herein, as in aught else, it is the mind, and not the outward circumstances, which makes the happiness suited to its strength and position; for it must be confessed it is from the weak in bodily frame, the lame, and the blind, that we draw our poets: and when we find a rare bodily exception to the rule, we find too often a mind insatiate of applause, and pining for more appreciation of their productions. The votaries of the muse cannot be set down as so happy and contented as many a ploughman, nor does the smoothness of the lines gratify the eye more than the smoothness of the furrow. But these rhymes of Gay hardly aspire to the height of poesy, nor do they possess the banter and raciness, such as we find in Butler's 'Hudibras':--

"When oyster-women lock their fish up, And trudge away to bawl, 'No bishop!'"

Neither has it the deep pathos of the Spenserian stanza, which perhaps strives at the deepest vein of poetry. Take two of Thomson's, for example:--

"O mortal man, who livest here by toil, Do not complain of this thy hard estate; That like an emmet thou must ever moil, Is a hard sentence of an ancient date: And, certes, there is for it reason great; For though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail, And curse thy star, and early drudge and late, Withouten that would come a heavier bale,-- Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale."

And another stanza runs thus:--

"I care not, Fortune, what you me deny: You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living stream at eve. Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave; Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave."

Such is the _stanza_ in which are written Spenser's 'Faerie Queen,' Thomson's 'Castle of Indolence,' and Byron's 'Childe Harold,' and it is the highest flight of poetry: after which comes the heroic verse, in which we lap the heavy poems we call epic--their Latin appellation; of these the Iliads of Homer and the AEneids of Virgil are the ever recurring aspirations of poets doomed to fall untimely. The charm of Homer is that it is not only a poem, but it instructs us in the history--all that we know of it--of those prehistoric days. It is full of ballads, which are the ground-work by which we trace the manners and the tenets of the pagan tribes. The truth involved in 'Homer' is the charm of his epic poem, while the falsehood involved in the 'Henriade' of Voltaire is amply sufficient to condemn it utterly. For a specimen let us take Pope's 'Homer,' where Hector answers Andromache's appeal to stay and guard the walls of Troy:--

"The chief replied, 'That post shall be my care; Nor that alone, but all the works of war; Still foremost let me stand to guard the throne, To save my father's honours and my own: Yet come it will, the day decreed by Fates-- How my heart trembles whilst my tongue relates-- That day when thou, imperial Troy, must bend, Must see thy warriors fall, thy glories end. And yet no presage dire so wounds my mind-- My mother's death, the ruin of my kind-- As thine, Andromache, thy griefs I dread. I see thee weeping, trembling, captive led. In Argive looms our battles to design, Woes--of which woes so large a part was thine; To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring The waters from the Hypereian spring. There, whilst you groan beneath the load of life, They cry "Behold the Trojan Hector's wife!" Some Argive, who shall live thy griefs to see, Embitters thy great woe by naming me: The thoughts of glory past and present shame, A thousand griefs, shall waken at the name. May I lie cold before that dreadful day, Pressed by a load of monumental clay Thy Hector, wrapped in everlasting sleep, Shall neither hear thee sigh nor see thee weep.'"

Next in pathos is the _mournful_ elegy; of which none can surpass Gray's elegy:--

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Alike await the inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?

Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Let not ambition mock our useful toil, Our homely joys and destiny obscure, Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor:

Their names, their years spelt by the untaught Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply, And many a holy text around she strews, To teach the rustic moralist to die."

Nursery rhymes, old ballads, odes, sonnets, epigrams, travesties, fables, satires, and eclogues, and, most of all, songs, provide daily pleasure for us from our cradle to the grave. Every language has its nursery rhymes, which are a sort of Delphian lot, sung in enigma from 'King Pittacus of Mytilene' and 'Le bon Roi Dagobert,' to the lullaby of 'Four-and-twenty Blackbirds.' There is as much sarcasm in nursery rhymes as there is of pride and boast in the songs of bards at the feast of heroes, and as there is of humble confession in the funeral psalm. Song tends alike to evaporate exuberant spirits, and to soothe the soul in an affliction--as Desdemona informs us so sweetly in her misery:--

"My mother had a maid called Barbara; She was in love: and he she loved proved mad, And did forsake her. She had a song of willow, An old thing 'twas; but it expressed her fortune, And she died singing it. That song to-night Will not go from my mind: I have much to do, But to go hang my head all of one side, And sing it like poor Barbara."

Ophelia chanted as she floated down the brook, Arion tamed the flood, and Orpheus the trees and rocks. It is a marvellous power which soothes alike the babe in the arms and the hero at the feast, the lover and the forsaken maiden, which leads to battle and returns from conquest; therefore let us see the ODE, in 'Eton Revisited':--

"Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade! Ah, fields beloved in vain! Where once my careless boyhood strayed A stranger yet to pain. I feel the gales that from ye blow A momentary bliss bestow, As waving fresh their gladsome wing My weary soul they seem to soothe, And redolent of joy and youth, To breathe a second spring.

Whilst some on earnest labour bent Their business, murmuring, ply 'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint To sweeten liberty; Some bold adventurers disdain The limits of the little reign And unknown regions dare descry; Still as they run they look behind, And hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy.

To each his sufferings, all are men Condemned alike to groan; The tender, for another's pain-- The unfeeling, for his own. Yet, ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late; And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more: 'where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.'"

Let me add four lines from Denham's poem, 'On Cooper's Hill,' addressing the River Thames:--

"O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull, Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."

Our old ballads are very fine: the opening of 'Chevy Chase' is equal to 'Wrath, Goddess sing the Wrath of Achilles,' or 'Arms and the Man:'--

"The Perse owt of Northumberland, And a vowe to Godde made he, That he would hunt in the mountains Of Cheviot within days three. In maugre of doughty Douglas And all that ever with him be, The fattest hartes in all Cheviot, He said, to kill and bear away. 'By my faith!' quoth the doughty Douglas then, 'I will lette that hunting, gif I may.'

Worde is commen to Eddenburrowe To James, the Scottish King, That doughty Douglas, Lyfftenant of Marches, Lay slain Chevyot hills within. His handdes did James weal and wryng, Sighing, 'Alas! and woe is me-- Such another captain Scotland within I trow there will never be!' Worde is commen to lovely Londone Till the fourth Harry, our King, That Lord Perse, Lyfftenant of Marches, Lay slain Cheviot hills within. 'God have mercy on his soul!' said Kyng Harry, 'Good Lord, if thy will it be. I have a hondrith Captains in Englonde As good as ever was he; But Perse, and I brook my lyffe Thy death well quit shall be.' This was the honting off the Cheviot 'That tear beganne this spurn:' Old men that known the ground well enough Call it the battle of Otterburn. At Otterburn began this spurn Upon a Monnynday; There was the doughtie Douglas slain, The Perse went captive away."

But of every species of poetry none are so rife with life and beauty as the song. It conjoins music with words, and brevity with sweetness. There is no position in which man does not sing,--in joy to express it, and in woe to relieve it: in company in chorus, and alone for companionship. Sir Walter Scott has imagined the minstrel to sing:--

"I have song of war for knight, Lay of love for ladye bright, Fairie tale to lull the heir, Goblin grim the maid to scare. If you pity kith or kin, Take the wandering harper in."

But songs are like the flowers of the field: each age hath its own, which fade and perish and make way for another crop, and every age claims its own. For melody, terseness, and beauty of words, the song excels more than any other form of poetry; and they are wise who have a private collection of the songs which, like swallows, come and disappear.

It may appear strange to print the Fables of Gay, and say no word of our author; but the truth is that it is unkind to withdraw the veil of privacy from any man's life. Doctor Johnson did an unkind deed when he wrote the 'Lives of the Poets;' for which he was fully repaid when Boswell flayed him bare as ever Apollo flayed Marsyas, and exposed all the quivering nerves to the light of day. Of all classes of men, the class of poets most need the concealing veil: the greatest have been blind; the next greatest halt, and the remainder weak or deformed of frame. Debarred the healthier paths of life, man rushes for employment to the refuging muse; and rightly so, for he finds an employment ornamental and useful still. But solitude does not nurture the virtues of the soul more than physical defect does that of the body, and the withdrawal of the curtain divulges a very sad sight of discontent and envy. Homer himself is recorded to have ejaculated his aspiration to be the favourite of the Greek girls and boys. A poet seer loves no brother near his throne, and is but too apt to complain of non-appreciation of his muse on the part of the world. The fault rather is in their own too sensitive souls; and it is a fact that there is scarcely a name in the roll of poets, whose fame is not harmed by divulging his exotic life. The rural labourer's fate--

"Where to be born and die, Of rich and poor, make all the history"--

is far better than to be paraded from the disobedience of youth, the rebellion of manhood, and the disappointment of age, divulged in the storied lives of the few hundred names admitted to be British poets; and the reading of whose works is, as a rule, a task of weariness. The career of Gay is a very fair one as an average of the poetic. He mainly avoided the enumerated ills--enumerated by Dr. Johnson--

"Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail."

The poetic element in Britain was very strong in the days of Gay. Pope, Swift, Prior, Addison were the petted servants of the Ministers. They were all far more successful in their careers than was Gay, who from his boyhood refused to labour for his bread. Very early he found a patroness in the Duchess of Monmouth, who had

"Wept over Monmouth's bloody tomb,"

with whom he enjoyed a sort of honorary post--secretary to the shadow of a princess; next he became a real secretary to the Earl of Clarendon, Ambassador at Hanover, as Prior had been to the Ambassador at Paris. We easily trace in Gay's career the unsatisfied overweening poetic soul, like a Charybdis, insatiable of adulation. In 1716, the Earl of Burlington cheered him at his seat in Devon; in 1717, he accompanied Mr. Pulteney to Aix; in 1718, Lord Harcourt soothed his spirits. Then he made money, which burnt holes in his pockets. He called his friends together, to ask how he should invest. His poetic friends Pope and Swift advised him to sink it in an annuity. But fate or fortune cast him in with Secretary Craggs and the South Sea scheme, and, from the possessor of 20,000_l._, his capital collapsed to _nil_. In vain he had been bidden to sell and to realize. He had visions of wealth, and held on to be accidentally an honester man than if he had enriched himself by that delusive scheme; but he nearly sunk beneath his disappointment, and his health was endangered. Hope and the Muse restored him to more life and to more disappointment. He then wrote 'The Captive,' obtained an appointment to read it to the Princess of Wales, stumbled, like Caesar, over a stool; the princess screamed, the omen was a true one--'The Captive' pined and died.

In 1726 he wrote these Fables, dedicating them to the Duke of Cumberland, and in 1727 his royal patron succeeded to the crown; when he was offered the post of Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa. Gay was hurt and indignant, and made court to Mrs. Howard (afterwards Countess of Suffolk), one of the anomalous favourites alluded to in page 131, but in vain.

Then came the great success of his 'Beggars' Opera,' which was followed by 'Polly,' its sequel. 'Polly' was forbidden by the Lord Chamberlain, and a private subscription raised 1200_l._ to recompense Gay for not being suffered to please the mob with his immorality. And, lastly, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry took this child of nature by the hand--the duke to manage his worldly substance, and the duchess to soothe his insatiable vanity--and so he died at the early age of 45, and has a very pretty tomb, with "Queensberry weeping o'er his urn," in Poets' Corner. Pope's epitaph runs thus:--

"Blest be the gods for those they took away, And those they left me, for they left me Gay. Left me to see deserted genius bloom, Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb; Of all his blameless life the sole return My verse and Queensberry weeping o'er his urn."