Chapter 46

interesting reminiscence of _Pendennis_ wrote “Arthur”.

THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS

OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

A Series of Lectures

DELIVERED IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[First edition, 1853; second edition, revised, 1853]

Lecture The First. Swift

In treating of the English humourists of the past age, it is of the men and of their lives, rather than of their books, that I ask permission to speak to you; and in doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope to entertain you with a merely humorous or facetious story. Harlequin without his mask is known to present a very sober countenance, and was himself, the story goes, the melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go and see Harlequin(21)—a man full of cares and perplexities like the rest of us, whose Self must always be serious to him, under whatever mask, or disguise, or uniform he presents it to the public. And as all of you here must needs be grave when you think of your own past and present, you will not look to find, in the histories of those whose lives and feelings I am going to try and describe to you, a story that is otherwise than serious, and often very sad. If Humour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers than about the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who possesses in common with these the power of making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem him—sometimes love him. And, as his business is to mark other people’s lives and peculiarities, we moralize upon _his_ life when he is gone—and yesterday’s preacher becomes the text for to-day’s sermon.

Of English parents, and of a good English family of clergymen,(22) Swift was born in Dublin in 1667, seven months after the death of his father, who had come to practise there as a lawyer. The boy went to school at Kilkenny, and afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a degree with difficulty, and was wild, and witty, and poor. In 1688, by the recommendation of his mother, Swift was received into the family of Sir William Temple, who had known Mrs. Swift in Ireland. He left his patron in 1693, and the next year took orders in Dublin. But he threw up the small Irish preferment which he got and returned to Temple, in whose family he remained until Sir William’s death in 1699. His hopes of advancement in England failing, Swift returned to Ireland, and took the living of Laracor. Hither he invited Hester Johnson,(23) Temple’s natural daughter, with whom he had contracted a tender friendship, while they were both dependants of Temple’s. And with an occasional visit to England, Swift now passed nine years at home.

In 1709 he came to England, and, with a brief visit to Ireland, during which he took possession of his deanery of St. Patrick, he now passed five years in England, taking the most distinguished part in the political transactions which terminated with the death of Queen Anne. After her death, his party disgraced, and his hopes of ambition over, Swift returned to Dublin, where he remained twelve years. In this time he wrote the famous _Drapier’s Letters_ and _Gulliver’s Travels_. He married Hester Johnson (Stella) and buried Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) who had followed him to Ireland from London, where she had contracted a violent passion for him. In 1726 and 1727 Swift was in England, which he quitted for the last time on hearing of his wife’s illness. Stella died in January, 1728, and Swift not until 1745, having passed the last five of the seventy-eight years of his life with an impaired intellect and keepers to watch him.(24)

You know, of course, that Swift has had many biographers; his life has been told by the kindest and most good-natured of men, Scott, who admires but can’t bring himself to love him; and by stout old Johnson,(25) who, forced to admit him into the company of poets, receives the famous Irishman, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of surly recognition, scans him from head to foot, and passes over to the other side of the street. Dr. Wilde, of Dublin,(26) who has written a most interesting volume on the closing years of Swift’s life, calls Johnson “the most malignant of his biographers”: it is not easy for an English critic to please Irishmen—perhaps to try and please them. And yet Johnson truly admires Swift: Johnson does not quarrel with Swift’s change of politics, or doubt his sincerity of religion: about the famous Stella and Vanessa controversy the Doctor does not bear very hardly on Swift. But he could not give the Dean that honest hand of his; the stout old man puts it into his breast, and moves off from him.(27)

Would we have liked to live with him? That is a question which, in dealing with these people’s works, and thinking of their lives and peculiarities, every reader of biographies must put to himself. Would you have liked to be a friend of the great Dean? I should like to have been Shakespeare’s shoeblack—just to have lived in his house, just to have worshipped him—to have run on his errands, and seen that sweet serene face. I should like, as a young man, to have lived on Fielding’s staircase in the Temple, and after helping him up to bed perhaps, and opening his door with his latchkey, to have shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard him talk and crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would not give something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison’s companionship and conversation has passed to us by fond tradition—but Swift? If you had been his inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect for all persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in mere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you; if, undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, he would, have quailed before you,(28) and not had the pluck to reply, and gone home, and years after written a foul epigram about you—watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you with a coward’s blow and a dirty bludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue ribbon, who flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he would have been the most delightful company in the world. He would have been so manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original, that you might think he had no object in view but the indulgence of his humour, and that he was the most reckless, simple creature in the world. How he would have torn your enemies to pieces for you! and made fun of the Opposition! His servility was so boisterous that it looked like independence;(29) he would have done your errands, but with the air of patronizing you, and after fighting your battles masked in the street or the press, would have kept on his hat before your wife and daughters in the drawing-room, content to take that sort of pay for his tremendous services as a bravo.(30)

He says as much himself in one of his letters to Bolingbroke:—“All my endeavours to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of my parts; whether right or wrong is no great matter. And so the reputation of wit and great learning does the office of a blue ribbon or a coach-and-six.”(31)

Could there be a greater candour? It is an outlaw, who says, “These are my brains; with these I’ll win titles and compete with fortune. These are my bullets; these I’ll turn into gold”; and he hears the sound of coaches-and-six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand and deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord bishop’s apron, and his grace’s blue ribbon, and my lady’s brocade petticoat in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and gives them over to followers of his own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the mitre and crosier in it, which he intends to have for _his_ share, has been delayed on the way from St. James’s; and he waits and waits until nightfall, when his runners come and tell him that the coach has taken a different road, and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air with a curse, and rides away into his own country.(32)

Swift’s seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral or adorn a tale of ambition, as any hero’s that ever lived and failed. But we must remember that the morality was lax—that other gentlemen besides himself took the road in his day—that public society was in a strange disordered condition, and the State was ravaged by other condottieri. The Boyne was being fought and won, and lost—the bells rung in William’s victory, in the very same tone with which they would have pealed for James’s. Men were loose upon politics, and had to shift for themselves. They, as well as old beliefs and institutions, had lost their moorings and gone adrift in the storm. As in the South Sea Bubble almost everybody gambled; as in the Railway mania—not many centuries ago—almost every one took his unlucky share; a man of that time, of the vast talents and ambition of Swift, could scarce do otherwise than grasp at his prize, and make his spring at his opportunity. His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subsequent misanthropy, are ascribed by some panegyrists to a deliberate conviction of mankind’s unworthiness, and a desire to amend them by castigating. His youth was bitter, as that of a great genius bound down by ignoble ties, and powerless in a mean dependence; his age was bitter,(33) like that of a great genius that had fought the battle and nearly won it, and lost it, and thought of it afterwards writhing in a lonely exile. A man may attribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused by his own fury, or disappointment, or self-will. What public man—what statesman projecting a _coup_—what king determined on an invasion of his neighbour—what satirist meditating an onslaught on society or an individual, can’t give a pretext for his move? There was a French general the other day who proposed to march into this country and put it to sack and pillage, in revenge for humanity outraged by our conduct at Copenhagen—there is always some excuse for men of the aggressive turn. They are of their nature warlike, predatory, eager for fight, plunder, dominion.(34)

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

That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey’s Court, Dublin, on the 30th November, 1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny the sister island the honour and glory, but, it seems to me, he was no more an Irishman than a man born of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo.(35) Goldsmith was an Irishman, and always an Irishman: Steele was an Irishman, and always an Irishman: Swift’s heart was English and in England, his habits English, his logic eminently English; his statement is elaborately simple; he shuns tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with a wise thrift and economy, as he used his money; with which he could be generous and splendid upon great occasions, but which he husbanded when there was no need to spend it. He never indulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays his opinion before you with a grave simplicity and a perfect neatness.(36) Dreading ridicule too, as a man of his humour—above all an Englishman of his humour—certainly would, he is afraid to use the poetical power which he really possessed; one often fancies in reading him that he dares not be eloquent when he might; that he does not speak above his voice, as if were, and the tone of society.

His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his knowledge of polite life, his acquaintance with literature even, which he could not have pursued very sedulously during that reckless career at Dublin, Swift got under the roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of telling in after-life what quantities of books he devoured there, and how King William taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion. It was at Shene and at Moor Park, with a salary of twenty pounds and a dinner at the upper servants’ table, that this great and lonely Swift passed a ten years’ apprenticeship—wore a cassock that was only not a livery—bent down a knee as proud as Lucifer’s to supplicate my lady’s good graces, or run on his honour’s errands.(37) It was here, as he was writing at Temple’s table, or following his patron’s walk, that he saw and heard the men who had governed the great world—measured himself with them, looking up from his silent corner, gauged their brains, weighed their wits, turned them, and tried them, and marked them. Ah, what platitudes he must have heard! what feeble jokes! what pompous commonplaces! what small men they must have seemed under those enormous periwigs, to the swarthy, uncouth, silent Irish secretary. I wonder whether it ever struck Temple that that Irishman was his master? I suppose that dismal conviction did not present itself under the ambrosial wig, or Temple could never have lived with Swift. Swift sickened, rebelled, left the service—ate humble pie and came back again; and so for ten years went on, gathering learning, swallowing scorn, and submitting with a stealthy rage to his fortune.

Temple’s style is the perfection of practised and easy good-breeding. If he does not penetrate very deeply into a subject, he professes a very gentlemanly acquaintance with it; if he makes rather a parade of Latin, it was the custom of his day, as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelop his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady’s train or any rival’s heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of Shene or Moor Park; and lets the King’s party, and the Prince of Orange’s party battle it out among themselves. He reveres the Sovereign (and no man perhaps ever testified to his loyalty by so elegant a bow); he admires the Prince of Orange; but there is one person whose ease and comfort he loves more than all the princes in Christendom, and that valuable member of society is himself, Gulielmus Temple, Baronettus. One sees him in his retreat; between his study-chair and his tulip-beds,(38) clipping his apricots and pruning his essays,—the statesman, the ambassador no more; but the philosopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier at St. James’s as at Shene; where, in place of kings and fair ladies, he pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty; or walks a minuet with the Epic Muse; or dallies by the south wall with the ruddy nymph of gardens.

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

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

As for Dorinda, his sister,—

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

Isn’t that line in which grief is described as putting the menials into a mourning livery, a fine image? One of the menials wrote it, who did not like that Temple livery nor those twenty-pound wages. Cannot one fancy the uncouth young servitor, with downcast eyes, books and papers in hand, following at his Honour’s heels in the garden walk; or taking his Honour’s orders as he stands by the great chair, where Sir William has the gout, and his feet all blistered with moxa? When Sir William has the gout or scolds it must be hard work at the second table;(39) the Irish secretary owned as much afterwards: and when he came to dinner, how he must have lashed and growled and torn the household with his gibes and scorn! What would the steward say about the pride of them Irish schollards—and this one had got no great credit even at his Irish college, if the truth were known—and what a contempt his Excellency’s own gentleman must have had for Parson Teague from Dublin. (The valets and chaplains were always at war. It is hard to say which Swift thought the more contemptible.) And what must have been the sadness, the sadness and terror, of the housekeeper’s little daughter with the curling black ringlets and the sweet smiling face, when the secretary who teaches her to read and write, and whom she loves and reverences above all things—above mother, above mild Dorothea, above that tremendous Sir William in his square-toes and periwig,—when _Mr. Swift_ comes down from his master with rage in his heart, and has not a kind word even for little Hester Johnson?

Perhaps, for the Irish secretary, his Excellency’s condescension was even more cruel than his frowns. Sir William _would_ perpetually quote Latin and the ancient classics à propos of his gardens and his Dutch statues and _plates-bandes_, and talk about Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius, Julius Caesar, Semiramis, and the gardens of the Hesperides, Maecenas, Strabo describing Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. A propos of beans, he would mention Pythagoras’s precept to abstain from beans, and that this precept probably meant that wise men should abstain from public affairs. _He_ is a placid Epicurean; _he_ is a Pythagorean philosopher; _he_ is a wise man—that is the deduction. Does not Swift think so? One can imagine the downcast eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which they emit. Swift’s eyes were as azure as the heavens; Pope says nobly (as everything Pope said and thought of his friend was good and noble), “His eyes are as azure as the heavens, and have a charming archness in them.” And one person in that household, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor Park, saw heaven nowhere else.

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

I don’t know anything more melancholy than the letter to Temple, in which, after having broke from his bondage, the poor wretch crouches piteously towards his cage again, and deprecates his master’s anger. He asks for testimonials for orders. “The particulars required of me are what relate to morals and learning—and the reasons of quitting your Honour’s family—that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill action. They are left entirely to your Honour’s mercy, though in the first I think I cannot reproach myself for anything further than for _infirmities_. This is all I dare at present beg from your Honour, under circumstances of life not worth your regard: what is left me to wish (next to the health and prosperity of your Honour and family) is that Heaven would one day allow me the opportunity of leaving my acknowledgements at your feet. I beg my most humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your Honour’s lady and sister.”—Can prostration fall deeper? Could a slave bow lower?(40)

Twenty years afterwards, Bishop Kennet, describing the same man, says, “Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a place for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake, with my Lord Treasurer, that he should obtain a salary of 200_l._ per annum as member of the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in to the Queen with the red bag, and told him aloud, he had something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He took out his gold watch, and telling the time of day, complained that it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. ‘How can I help it,’ says the doctor, ‘if the courtiers give me a watch that won’t go right?’ Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English, for which he would have them all subscribe; ‘For,’ says he, ‘he shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.’(41) Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him,—both went off just before prayers.” There’s a little malice in the Bishop’s “just before prayers”.

This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and is harsh, though not altogether unpleasant. He was doing good, and to deserving men too, in the midst of these intrigues and triumphs. His journals and a thousand anecdotes of him relate his kind acts and rough manners. His hand was constantly stretched out to relieve an honest man—he was cautious about his money, but ready.—If you were in a strait would you like such a benefactor? I think I would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner.(42) He insulted a man as he served him, made women cry, guests look foolish, bullied unlucky friends, and flung his benefactions into poor men’s faces. No; the Dean was no Irishman—no Irishman ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart.

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

I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift’s religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author of the _Beggar’s Opera_—Gay, the wildest of the wits about town—it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders—to invest in a cassock and bands—just as he advised him to husband his shillings and put his thousand pounds out at interest.(43) The Queen, and the bishops, and the world, were right in mistrusting the religion of that man.

I am not here, of course, to speak of any man’s religious views, except in so far as they influence his literary character, his life, his humour. The most notorious sinners of all those fellow mortals whom it is our business to discuss—Harry Fielding and Dick Steele, were especially loud, and I believe really fervent, in their expressions of belief; they belaboured freethinkers, and stoned imaginary atheists on all sorts of occasions, going out of their way to bawl their own creed, and persecute their neighbour’s, and if they sinned and stumbled, as they constantly did with debt, with drink, with all sorts of bad behaviour, they got up on their knees, and cried “Peccavi” with a most sonorous orthodoxy. Yes; poor Harry Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty and undoubting Church of England men; they abhorred Popery, atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries in general; and hiccupped “Church and State” with fervour.

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

Ah, man! you, educated in Epicurean Temple’s library, you whose friends were Pope and St. John—what made you to swear to fatal vows, and bind yourself to a lifelong hypocrisy before the Heaven which you adored with such real wonder, humility, and reverence? For Swift was a reverent, was a pious spirit—for Swift could love and could pray. Through the storms and tempests of his furious mind, the stars of religion and love break out in the blue, shining serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of his life.

It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his apostasy out to hire.(44) The paper left behind him, called _Thoughts on Religion_, is merely a set of excuses for not professing disbelief. He says of his sermons that he preached pamphlets: they have scarce a Christian characteristic; they might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house almost. There is little or no cant—he is too great and too proud for that; and, in so far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is honest. But having put that cassock on, it poisoned him: he was strangled in his bands. He goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it was! what a lonely rage and long agony—what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant!(45) It is awful to think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can’t fancy Shakespeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The kings can have no company. But this man suffered so; and deserved so to suffer. One hardly reads anywhere of such a pain.

The “saeva indignatio” of which he spoke as lacerating his heart, and which he dares to inscribe on his tombstone—as if the wretch who lay under that stone waiting God’s judgement had a right to be angry—breaks out from him in a thousand pages of his writing, and tears and rends him. Against men in office, he having been overthrown; against men in England, he having lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile never fails to rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous _Drapier’s Letters_ patriotism? They are masterpieces of dreadful humour and invective: they are reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy—the assault is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a bone in his hand, rushing on his enemies and felling them: one admires not the cause so much as the strength, the anger, the fury of the champion. As is the case with madmen, certain subjects provoke him, and awaken his fits of wrath. Marriage is one of these; in a hundred passages in his writings he rages against it; rages against children; an object of constant satire, even more contemptible in his eyes than a lord’s chaplain, is a poor curate with a large family. The idea of this luckless paternity never fails to bring down from him gibes and foul language. Could Dick Steele, or Goldsmith, or Fielding, in his most reckless moment of satire, have written anything like the Dean’s famous “modest proposal” for eating children? Not one of these but melts at the thoughts of childhood, fondles and caresses it. Mr. Dean has no such softness, and enters the nursery with the tread and gaiety of an ogre.(46) “I have been assured,” says he in the _Modest Proposal_, “by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt it will equally serve in a _ragoût_.” And taking up this pretty joke, as his way is, he argues it with perfect gravity and logic. He turns and twists this subject in a score of different ways: he hashes it; and he serves it up cold; and he garnishes it; and relishes it always. He describes the little animal as “dropped from its dam’” advising that the mother should let it suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render it plump and fat for a good table! “A child,” says his reverence, “will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish,” and so on; and, the subject being so delightful that he can’t leave it—he proceeds to recommend, in place of venison for squires’ tables, “the bodies of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve.” Amiable humourist! laughing castigator of morals! There was a process well known and practised in the Dean’s gay days: when a lout entered the coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they called “roasting” him. This is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native genius for it. As the _Almanach des Gourmands_ says, _On nait rôtisseur_.

And it was not merely by the sarcastic method that Swift exposed the unreasonableness of loving and having children. In Gulliver, the folly of love and marriage is urged by graver arguments and advice. In the famous Lilliputian kingdom, Swift speaks with approval of the practice of instantly removing children from their parents and educating them by the State; and amongst his favourite horses, a pair of foals are stated to be the very utmost a well-regulated equine couple would permit themselves. In fact, our great satirist was of opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, and illustrated the theory by his own practice and example—God help him—which made him about the most wretched being in God’s world.(47)

The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition, as exemplified in the cannibal proposal just mentioned, is our author’s constant method through all his works of humour. Given a country of people six inches or sixty feet high, and by the mere process of the logic, a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved, at so many stages of the calculation. Turning to the first minister who waited behind him with a white staff near as tall as the mainmast of the _Royal Sovereign_, the King of Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human grandeur is, as represented by such a contemptible little creature as Gulliver. “The Emperor of Lilliput’s features are strong and masculine” (what a surprising humour there is in this description!)—“the Emperor’s features,” Gulliver says, “are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip, an arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well-proportioned, and his deportment majestic. He is taller _by the breadth of my nail_ than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into beholders.”

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

But the best stroke of humour, if there be a best in that abounding book, is that where Gulliver, in the unpronounceable country, describes his parting from his master the horse.(48) “I took,” he says, “a second leave of my master, but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. Detractors are pleased to think it improbable that so illustrious a person should descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so inferior as I. Neither am I ignorant how apt some travellers are to boast of extraordinary favours they have received. But if these censurers were better acquainted with the noble and courteous disposition of the Houyhnhnms they would soon change their opinion.”

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

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

And dreadful it is to think that Swift knew the tendency of his creed—the fatal rocks towards which his logic desperately drifted. That last part of Gulliver is only a consequence of what has gone before; and the worthlessness of all mankind, the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecility, the general vanity, the foolish pretension, the mock greatness, the pompous dullness, the mean aims, the base successes—all these were present to him; it was with the din of these curses of the world, blasphemies against Heaven, shrieking in his ears, that he began to write his dreadful allegory—of which the meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate, and imbecile, and his passions are so monstrous, and his boasted powers so mean, that he is and deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance is better than his vaunted reason. What had this man done? what secret remorse was rankling at his heart? what fever was boiling in him, that he should see all the world bloodshot? We view the world with our own eyes, each of us; and we make from within us the world we see. A weary heart gets no gladness out of sunshine; a selfish man is sceptical about friendship, as a man with no ear doesn’t care for music. A frightful self-consciousness it must have been, which looked on mankind so darkly through those keen eyes of Swift.

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

The most unhappy man on earth;—_Miserrimus_—what a character of him! And at this time all the great wits of England had been at his feet. All Ireland had shouted after him, and worshipped as a liberator, a saviour, the greatest Irish patriot and citizen. Dean Drapier Bickerstaff Gulliver—the most famous statesmen, and the greatest poets of his day, had applauded him, and done him homage; and at this time writing over to Bolingbroke, from Ireland, he says, “It is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, _and not to die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole_.”

We have spoken about the men, and Swift’s behaviour to them; and now it behoves us not to forget that there are certain other persons in the creation who had rather intimate relations with the great Dean.(49) Two women whom he loved and injured are known by every reader of books so familiarly that if we had seen them, or if they had been relatives of our own, we scarcely could have known them better. Who hasn’t in his mind an image of Stella? Who does not love her? Fair and tender creature: pure and affectionate heart! Boots it to you, now that you have been at rest for a hundred and twenty years, not divided in death from the cold heart which caused yours, whilst it beat, such faithful pangs of love and grief—boots it to you now, that the whole world loves and deplores you? Scarce any man, I believe, ever thought of that grave, that did not cast a flower of pity on it, and write over it a sweet epitaph. Gentle lady, so lovely, so loving, so unhappy! you have had countless champions; millions of manly hearts mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up the fond tradition of your beauty; we watch and follow your tragedy, your bright morning love and purity, your constancy, your grief, your sweet martyrdom. We know your legend by heart. You are one of the saints of English story.

And if Stella’s love and innocence are charming to contemplate, I will say that in spite of ill-usage, in spite of drawbacks, in spite of mysterious separation and union, of hope delayed and sickened heart—in the teeth of Vanessa, and that little episodical aberration which plunged Swift into such woful pitfalls and quagmires of amorous perplexity—in spite of the verdicts of most women, I believe, who, as far as my experience and conversation go, generally take Vanessa’s part in the controversy—in spite of the tears which Swift caused Stella to shed, and the rocks and barriers which fate and temper interposed, and which prevented the pure course of that true love from running smoothly—the brightest part of Swift’s story, the pure star in that dark and tempestuous life of Swift’s, is his love for Hester Johnson. It has been my business, professionally of course, to go through a deal of sentimental reading in my time, and to acquaint myself with love-making, as it has been described in various languages, and at various ages of the world; and I know of nothing more manly, more tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these brief notes, written in what Swift calls “his little language” in his journal to Stella.(50) He writes to her night and morning often. He never sends away a letter to her but he begins a new one on the same day. He can’t bear to let go her kind little hand, as it were. He knows that she is thinking of him, and longing for him far away in Dublin yonder. He takes her letters from under his pillow and talks to them, familiarly, paternally, with fond epithets and pretty caresses—as he would to the sweet and artless creature who loved him. “Stay,” he writes one morning—it is the 14th of December, 1710—“stay, I will answer some of your letter this morning in bed—let me see. Come and appear, little letter! Here I am, says he, and what say you to Stella this morning fresh and fasting? And can Stella read this writing without hurting her dear eyes?” he goes on, after more kind prattle and fond whispering. The dear eyes shine clearly upon him then—the good angel of his life is with him and blessing him. Ah, it was a hard fate that wrung from them so many tears, and stabbed pitilessly that pure and tender bosom. A hard fate: but would she have changed it? I have heard a woman say that she would have taken Swift’s cruelty to have had his tenderness. He had a sort of worship for her whilst he wounded her. He speaks of her after she is gone; of her wit, of her kindness, of her grace, of her beauty, with a simple love and reverence that are indescribably touching; in contemplation of her goodness his hard heart melts into pathos; his cold rhyme kindles and glows into poetry, and he falls down on his knees, so to speak, before the angel, whose life he had embittered, confesses his own wretchedness and unworthiness, and adores her with cries of remorse and love:—

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

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

Swift did not keep Stella’s letters to him in reply to those he wrote to her.(51) He kept Bolingbroke’s, and Pope’s, and Harley’s, and Peterborough’s: but Stella, “very carefully,” the _Lives_ say, kept Swift’s. Of course: that is the way of the world: and so we cannot tell what her style was, or of what sort were the little letters which the doctor placed there at night, and bade to appear from under his pillow of a morning. But in Letter IV of that famous collection he describes his lodging in Bury Street, where he has the first floor, a dining-room and bedchamber, at eight shillings a week; and in Letter VI he says “he has visited a lady just come to town”, whose name somehow is not mentioned; and in Letter VIII he enters a query of Stella’s—“What do you mean ‘that boards near me, that I dine with now and then?’ What the deuce! You know whom I have dined with every day since I left you, better than I do.” Of course she does. Of course Swift has not the slightest idea of what she means. But in a few letters more it turns out that the doctor has been to dine “gravely” with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh: then that he has been to “his neighbour”: then that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the whole week with his neighbour! Stella was quite right in her previsions. She saw from the very first hint what was going to happen; and scented Vanessa in the air.(52) The rival is at the Dean’s feet. The pupil and teacher are reading together, and drinking tea together, and going to prayers together, and learning Latin together, and conjugating _amo_, _amas_, _amavi_ together. The “little language” is over for poor Stella. By the rule of grammar and the course of conjugation, doesn’t _amavi_ come after _amo_ and _amas_?

The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa(53) you may peruse in Cadenus’s own poem on the subject, and in poor Vanessa’s vehement expostulatory verses and letters to him; she adores him, implores him, admires him, thinks him something godlike, and only prays to be admitted to lie at his feet.(54) As they are bringing him home from church, those divine feet of Dr. Swift’s are found pretty often in Vannessa’s parlour. He likes to be admired and adored. He finds Miss Vanhomrigh to be a woman of great taste and spirit, and beauty and wit, and a fortune too. He sees her every day; he does not tell Stella about the business: until the impetuous Vanessa becomes too fond of him, until the doctor is quite frightened by the young woman’s ardour, and confounded by her warmth. He wanted to marry neither of them—that I believe was the truth; but if he had not married Stella, Vanessa would have had him in spite of himself. When he went back to Ireland, his Ariadne, not content to remain in her isle, pursued the fugitive Dean. In vain he protested, he vowed, he soothed, and bullied; the news of the Dean’s marriage with Stella at last came to her, and it killed her—she died of that passion.(55)

And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had written beautifully regarding her, “That doesn’t surprise me,” said Mrs. Stella, “for we all know the Dean could write beautifully about a broomstick.” A woman—a true woman! Would you have had one of them forgive the other?

In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella’s hair, enclosed in a paper by Swift, on which are written in the Dean’s hand, the words: “_Only a woman’s hair_.” An instance, says Scott, of the Dean’s desire to veil his feelings under the mask of cynical indifference.

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

And yet to have had so much love, he must have given some. Treasures of wit and wisdom, and tenderness, too, must that man have had locked up in the caverns of his gloomy heart, and shown fitfully to one or two whom he took in there. But it was not good to visit that place. People did not remain there long, and suffered for having been there.(56) He shrank away from all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both died near him, and away from him. He had not heart enough to see them die. He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan; he slunk away from his fondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars on one’s ear after sevenscore years. He was always alone—alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella’s sweet smile came and shone upon him. When that went, silence and utter night closed over him. An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have other great names to mention—none, I think, however, so great or so gloomy.

Lecture The Second. Congreve And Addison

A great number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the “Union”; and I remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the Opposition and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman’s nominee. So Jones of John’s, or Thomson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping themselves in their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at priests and kings, with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman’s emissary was listening to the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young Cambridge men, orators of the Union, were actually caught up thence, and carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the Parliamentary chariot.

Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of peers and Members of Parliament in Anne’s and George’s time? Were they all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the watch? How was it that the young gentlemen from the University got such a prodigious number of places? A lad composed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king assailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene complimented, or the reverse; and the party in power was presently to provide for the young poet; and a commissionership, or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an embassy, or a clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard’s possession. A wonderful fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby’s. What have men of letters got in _our_ time? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time or empire—but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many others, who got public employment, and pretty little pickings out of the public purse.(57) The wits of whose names we shall treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the king’s coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter-day coming round for them.

They all began at school or college in the regular way, producing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public events, battles, sieges, court marriages and deaths, in which the gods of Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invocations, according to the fashion of the time in France and in England. “Aid us Mars, Bacchus, Apollo,” cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. “_Accourez, chastes nymphes de Parnasse_,” says Boileau, celebrating the Grand Monarch. “_Des sons que ma lyre enfante_, marquez-en bien la cadence, _et vous, vents, faites silence! je vais parler de __ Louis!_” Schoolboys’ themes and foundation exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country newspaper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman? In the past century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves at these queer compositions; and some got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses.

William Congreve’s(58) Pindaric Odes are still to be found in _Johnson’s Poets_, that now unfrequented poets’ corner, in which so many forgotten bigwigs have a niche—but though he was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve’s wit and humour which first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded, that his first play, the _Old Bachelor_, brought our author to the notice of that great patron of English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax, who being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity, instantly made him one of the Commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe-office, and likewise a post in the Custom-house of the value of 600_l._

A commissionership of hackney-coaches—a post in the Custom-house—a place in the Pipe-office, and all for writing a comedy! Doesn’t it sound like a fable, that place in the Pipe-office?(59) _Ah, l’heureux temps que celui de ces fables!_ Men of letters there still be: but I doubt whether any Pipe-offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago.

Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places in society; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers at school, and will permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary “swell” of his age. In my copy of _Johnson’s Lives_ Congreve’s wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. “I am the great Mr. Congreve,” he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve.(60) From the beginning of his career until the end everybody admired him. Having got his education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift, he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to the law; but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. Dryden(61) declared that he was equal to Shakespeare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him, “Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review the _Aeneis_, and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavoured to correct.”

The “excellent young man” was but three- or four-and-twenty when the great Dryden thus spoke of him: the greatest literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a school of wits, who daily gathered round his chair and tobacco-pipe at Will’s. Pope dedicated his _Iliad_ to him;(62) Swift, Addison, Steele, all acknowledge Congreve’s rank, and lavish compliments upon him. Voltaire went to wait upon him as on one of the Representatives of Literature—and the man who scarce praises any other living person, who flung abuse at Pope, and Swift, and Steele, and Addison—the Grub Street Timon, old John Dennis,(63) was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve; and said, that when he retired from the stage, Comedy went with him.

Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in the drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses; as much beloved in the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle,(64) the heroine of all his plays, the favourite of all the town of her day—and the Duchess of Marlborough, Marlborough’s daughter, had such an admiration of him, that when he died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him,(65) and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed just as the great Congreve’s gouty feet were dressed in his great lifetime. He saved some money by his Pipe-office, and his Custom-house office, and his Hackney-coach office, and nobly left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it,(66) but to the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn’t.(67)

How can I introduce to you that merry and shameless Comic Muse who won him such a reputation? Nell Gwynn’s servant fought the other footman for having called his mistress a bad name; and in like manner, and with pretty like epithets, Jeremy Collier attacked that godless, reckless Jezebel, the English comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn’s man’s fellow-servants called Nell Gwynn’s man’s mistress. The servants of the theatre, Dryden, Congreve,(68) and others, defended themselves with the same success, and for the same cause which set Nell’s lackey fighting. She was a disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic Muse. She came over from the Continent with Charles (who chose many more of his female friends there) at the Restoration—a wild, dishevelled Laïs, with eyes bright with wit and wine—a saucy court-favourite that sat at the king’s knees, and laughed in his face, and when she showed her bold cheeks at her chariot-window, had some of the noblest and most famous people of the land bowing round her wheel. She was kind and popular enough, that daring Comedy, that audacious poor Nell—she was gay and generous, kind, frank, as such people can afford to be: and the men who lived with her and laughed with her, took her pay and drank her wine, turned out when the Puritans hooted her, to fight and defend her. But the jade was indefensible, and it is pretty certain her servants knew it.

There is life and death going on in everything: truth and lies always at battle. Pleasure is always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is always crying Psha, and sneering. A man in life, a humourist in writing about life, sways over to one principle or the other, and laughs with the reverence for right and the love of truth in his heart, or laughs at these from the other side. Didn’t I tell you that dancing was a serious business to Harlequin? I have read two or three of Congreve’s plays over before speaking of him; and my feelings were rather like those, which I daresay most of us here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust’s house and the relics of an orgy, a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast of a dancing girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester, a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone twangs his moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve muse is dead, and her song choked in Time’s ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once revelled in its mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse over the frolic and daring, the wit, scorn, passion, hope, desire, with which that empty bowl once fermented. We think of the glances that allured, the tears that melted, of the bright eyes that shone in those vacant sockets; and of lips whispering love, and cheeks dimpling with smiles, that once covered yon ghastly yellow framework. They used to call those teeth pearls once. See! there’s the cup she drank from, the gold chain she wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge for her cheeks, her looking-glass, and the harp she used to dance to. Instead of a feast we find a gravestone, and in place of a mistress, a few bones!

Reading in these plays now, is like shutting your ears and looking at people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling and retreating, the _cavalier seul_ advancing upon those ladies—those ladies and men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, after which everybody bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we can’t understand that comic dance of the last century—its strange gravity and gaiety, its decorum or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlike life; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too. I’m afraid it’s a heathen mystery, symbolizing a Pagan doctrine; protesting, as the Pompeians very likely were, assembled at their theatre and laughing at their games—as Sallust and his friends, and their mistresses protested—crowned with flowers, with cups in their hands, against the new, hard, ascetic, pleasure-hating doctrine, whose gaunt disciples, lately passed over from the Asian shores of the Mediterranean, were for breaking the fair images of Venus, and flinging the altars of Bacchus down.

I fancy poor Congreve’s theatre is a temple of Pagan delights, and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worship, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites from temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for having the young wife: in the ballad, when the poet bid his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying: in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, who is opportunely asleep; and when seduced by the invitations of the rosy youth she comes forward to the footlights, and they perform on each other’s tiptoes that _pas_ which you all know, and which is only interrupted by old grandpapa awaking from his doze at the pasteboard chalet (whither he returns to take another nap in case the young people get an encore): when Harlequin, splendid in youth, strength, and agility, arrayed in gold and a thousand colours, springs over the heads of countless perils, leaps down the throat of bewildered giants, and, dauntless and splendid, dances danger down: when Mr. Punch, that godless old rebel, breaks every law and laughs at it with odious triumph, outwits his lawyer, bullies the beadle, knocks his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman—don’t you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch’s puppet-show—the Pagan protest? Doesn’t it seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment? Look how the lovers walk and hold each other’s hands and whisper! Sings the chorus—“There is nothing like love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty of your spring-time. Look! how old age tries to meddle with merry sport! Beat him with his own crutch, the wrinkled old dotard! There is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty, there is nothing like strength. Strength and valour win beauty and youth. Be brave and conquer. Be young and happy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! Would you know the _segreto per esser felice_? Here it is, in a smiling mistress and a cup of Falernian.” As the boy tosses the cup and sings his song—hark! what is that chaunt coming nearer and nearer? What is that dirge which _will_ disturb us? The lights of the festival burn dim—the cheeks turn pale—the voice quavers—and the cup drops on the floor. Who’s there? Death and Fate are at the gate, and they _will_ come in.

Congreve’s comic feast flares with lights, and round the table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets and attendants as dissolute as their mistresses—perhaps the very worst company in the world. There doesn’t seem to be a pretence of morals. At the head of the table sits Mirabel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited on by English imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling is to be irresistible, and to conquer everywhere. Like the heroes of the chivalry story, whose long-winded loves and combats they were sending out of fashion, they are always splendid and triumphant—overcome all dangers, vanquish all enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands, usurers are the foes these champions contend with. They are merciless in old age, invariably, and an old man plays the part in the dramas, which the wicked enchanter or the great blundering giant performs in the chivalry tales, who threatens and grumbles and resists—a huge stupid obstacle always overcome by the knight. It is an old man with a money-box: Sir Belmour his son or nephew spends his money and laughs at him. It is an old man with a young wife whom he locks up: Sir Mirabel robs him of his wife, trips up his gouty old heels and leaves the old hunx—the old fool, what business has he to hoard his money, or to lock up blushing eighteen? Money is for youth, love is for youth; away with the old people. When Millamant is sixty, having of course divorced the first Lady Millamant, and married his friend Doricourt’s granddaughter out of the nursery—it will be his turn; and young Belmour will make a fool of him. All this pretty morality you have in the comedies of William Congreve, Esq. They are full of wit. Such manners as he observes, he observes with great humour; but ah! it’s a weary feast that banquet of wit where no love is. It palls very soon; sad indigestions follow it and lonely blank headaches in the morning.

I can’t pretend to quote scenes from the splendid Congreve’s plays(69)—which are undeniably bright, witty, and daring—any more than I could ask you to hear the dialogue of a witty bargeman and a brilliant fishwoman exchanging compliments at Billingsgate; but some of his verses—they were amongst the most famous lyrics of the time, and pronounced equal to Horace by his contemporaries—may give an idea of his power, of his grace, of his daring manner, his magnificence in compliment, and his polished sarcasm. He writes as if he was so accustomed to conquer, that he has a poor opinion of his victims. Nothing’s new except their faces, says he: “every woman is the same.” He says this in his first comedy, which he wrote languidly(70) in illness, when he was an “excellent young man”. Richelieu at eighty could have hardly said a more excellent thing.

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

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

Cease, cease to ask her name, The crowned Muse’s noblest theme, Whose glory by immortal fame Shall only sounded be. But if you long to know, Then look round yonder dazzling row, Who most does like an angel show You may be sure ’tis she.

Here are lines about another beauty, who perhaps was not so well pleased at the poet’s manner of celebrating her—

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

Amoret is a cleverer woman than the lovely Lesbia, but the poet does not seem to respect one much more than the other; and describes both with exquisite satirical humour—

Fair Amoret is gone astray, Pursue and seek her every lover; I’ll tell the signs by which you may The wandering shepherdess discover.

Coquet and coy at once her air, Both studied, though both seem neglected; Careless she is with artful care, Affecting to be unaffected.

With skill her eyes dart every glance, Yet change so soon you’d ne’er suspect them; For she’d persuade they wound by chance, Though certain aim and art direct them.

She likes herself, yet others hates For that which in herself she prizes; And, while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing which she despises.

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

See! see, she wakes—Sabina wakes! And now the sun begins to rise: Less glorious is the morn, that breaks From his bright beams, than her fair eyes. With light united day they give; But different fates ere night fulfil: How many by his warmth will live! How many will her coldness kill!

Are you melted? Don’t you think him a divine man? If not touched by the brilliant Sabina, hear the devout Selinda:—

Pious Selinda goes to prayers, If I but ask her favour; And yet the silly fool’s in tears, If she believes I’ll leave her: Would I were free from this restraint, Or else had hopes to win her: Would she could make of me a saint, Or I of her a sinner!

What a conquering air there is about these! What an irresistible Mr. Congreve it is! Sinner! of course he will be a sinner, the delightful rascal! Win her; of course he will win her, the victorious rogue! He knows he will: he must—with such a grace, with such a fashion, with such a splendid embroidered suit—you see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously turned out, passing a fair jewelled hand through his dishevelled periwig, and delivering a killing ogle along with his scented billet. And Sabina? What a comparison that is between the nymph and the sun! The sun gives Sabina the _pas_, and does not venture to rise before her ladyship: the morn’s _bright beams_ are less glorious than her _fair eyes_: but before night everybody will be frozen by her glances: everybody but one lucky rogue who shall be nameless: Louis Quatorze in all his glory is hardly more splendid than our Phoebus Apollo of the Mall and Spring Garden.(71)

When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve, the latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation, and in this perhaps the great Congreve was not far wrong.(72) A touch of Steele’s tenderness is worth all his finery—a flash of Swift’s lightning—a beam of Addison’s pure sunshine, and his tawdry play-house taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he was undoubtedly a pretty fellow.(73)

We have seen in Swift a humorous philosopher, whose truth frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We have had in Congreve a humorous observer of another school, to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and whose ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) when the time comes. We come now to a humour that flows from quite a different heart and spirit—a wit that makes us laugh and leaves us good and happy; to one of the kindest benefactors that society has ever had, and I believe you have divined already that I am about to mention Addison’s honoured name.

From reading over his writings, and the biographies which we have of him, amongst which the famous article in the _Edinburgh Review_(74) may be cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer and moralist of the last age, raised by the love and the marvellous skill and genius of one of the most illustrious artists of our own; looking at that calm, fair face, and clear countenance—those chiselled features pure and cold, I can’t but fancy that this great man, in this respect, like him of whom we spoke in the last lecture, was also one of the lonely ones of the world. Such men have very few equals, and they don’t herd with those. It is in the nature of such lords of intellect to be solitary—they are in the world but not of it; and our minor struggles, brawls, successes, pass under them.

Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fortitude not tried beyond easy endurance, his affections not much used, for his books were his family, and his society was in public; admirably wiser, wittier, calmer, and more instructed than almost every man with whom he met, how could Addison suffer, desire, admire, feel much? I may expect a child to admire me for being taller or writing more cleverly than she; but how can I ask my superior to say that I am a wonder when he knows better than I? In Addison’s days you could scarcely show him a literary performance, a sermon, or a poem, or a piece of literary criticism, but he felt he could do better. His justice must have made him indifferent. He didn’t praise, because he measured his compeers by a higher standard than common people have.(75) How was he who was so tall to look up to any but the loftiest genius? He must have stooped to put himself on a level with most men. By that profusion of graciousness and smiles, with which Goethe or Scott, for instance, greeted almost every literary beginner, every small literary adventurer who came to his court and went away charmed from the great king’s audience, and cuddling to his heart the compliment which his literary majesty had paid him—each of the two good-natured potentates of letters brought their star and ribbon into discredit. Everybody had his majesty’s orders. Everybody had his Majesty’s cheap portrait, on a box surrounded with diamonds worth twopence a-piece. A very great and just and wise man ought not to praise indiscriminately, but give his idea of the truth. Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Pinkethman: Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Doggett the actor, whose benefit is coming off that night: Addison praises Don Saltero: Addison praises Milton with all his heart, bends his knee and frankly pays homage to that imperial genius.(76) But between those degrees of his men his praise is very scanty. I don’t think the great Mr. Addison liked young Mr. Pope, the Papist, much; I don’t think he abused him. But when Mr. Addison’s men abused Mr. Pope, I don’t think Addison took his pipe out of his mouth to contradict them.(77)

Addison’s father was a clergyman of good repute in Wiltshire, and rose in the Church.(78) His famous son never lost his clerical training and scholastic gravity, and was called “a parson in a tye-wig”(79) in London afterwards at a time when tye-wigs were only worn by the laity, and the fathers of theology did not think it decent to appear except in a full bottom. Having been at school at Salisbury, and the Charterhouse, in 1687, when he was fifteen years old he went to Queen’s College, Oxford, where he speedily began to distinguish himself by the making of Latin verses. The beautiful and fanciful poem of _The Pigmies and the Cranes_ is still read by lovers of that sort of exercise; and verses are extant in honour of King William, by which it appears that it was the loyal youth’s custom to toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyaeus; and many more works are in the collection, including one on the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which was so good that Montague got him a pension of 300_l._ a year, on which Addison set out on his travels.

During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at his fingers’ ends when he travelled in Italy.(80) His patron went out of office, and his pension was unpaid: and hearing that this great scholar, now eminent and known to the _literati_ of Europe (the great Boileau,(81) upon perusal of Mr. Addison’s elegant hexameters, was first made aware that England was not altogether a barbarous nation)—hearing that the celebrated Mr. Addison, of Oxford, proposed to travel as governor to a young gentleman on the grand tour, the great Duke of Somerset proposed to Mr. Addison to accompany his son, Lord Hartford.

Mr. Addison was delighted to be of use to his grace and his lordship, his grace’s son, and expressed himself ready to set forth.

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

Addison remained abroad for some time, living in the best society of Europe. How could he do otherwise? He must have been one of the finest gentlemen the world ever saw: at all moments of life serene and courteous, cheerful and calm.(82) He could scarcely ever have had a degrading thought. He might have omitted a virtue or two, or many, but could not have had many faults committed for which he need blush or turn pale. When warmed into confidence, his conversation appears to have been so delightful that the greatest wits sat wrapt and charmed to listen to him. No man bore poverty and narrow fortune with a more lofty cheerfulness. His letters to his friends at this period of his life, when he had lost his Government pension and given up his college chances, are full of courage and a gay confidence and philosophy: and they are none the worse in my eyes, and I hope not in those of his last and greatest biographer (though Mr. Macaulay is bound to own and lament a certain weakness for wine, which the great and good Joseph Addison notoriously possessed, in common with countless gentlemen of his time), because some of the letters are written when his honest hand was shaking a little in the morning after libations to purple Lyaeus overnight. He was fond of drinking the healths of his friends: he writes to Wyche,(83) of Hamburgh, gratefully remembering Wyche’s “hoc”. “I have been drinking your health to-day with Sir Richard Shirley,” he writes to Bathurst. “I have lately had the honour to meet my Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, where we have drunk Mr. Wood’s health a hundred times in excellent champagne,” he writes again. Swift(84) describes him over his cups, when Joseph yielded to a temptation which Jonathan resisted. Joseph was of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the fire of wine to warm his blood. If he was a parson, he wore a tye-wig, recollect. A better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine—why, we could scarcely have found a fault with him, and could not have liked him as we do.(85)

At thirty-three years of age, this most distinguished wit, scholar, and gentleman was without a profession and an income. His book of _Travels_ had failed: his _Dialogues on Medals_ had had no particular success: his Latin verses, even though reported the best since Virgil, or Statius at any rate, had not brought him a Government place, and Addison was living up two shabby pair of stairs in the Haymarket (in a poverty over which old Samuel Johnson rather chuckles), when in these shabby rooms an emissary from Government and Fortune came and found him.(86)

A poem was wanted about the Duke of Marlborough’s victory of Blenheim. Would Mr. Addison write one? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton, took back the reply to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, that Mr. Addison would. When the poem had reached a certain stage, it was carried to Godolphin; and the last lines which he read were these:

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

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

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

Austria’s young monarch, whose imperial sway Sceptres and thrones are destined to obey, Whose boasted ancestry so high extends That in the pagan gods his lineage ends, Comes from afar, in gratitude to own The great supporter of his father’s throne. What tides of glory to his bosom ran Clasped in th’ embraces of the godlike man! How were his eyes with pleasing wonder fixt, To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt! Such easy greatness, such a graceful port, So learned and finished for the camp or court!

How many fourth-form boys at Mr. Addison’s school of Charterhouse could write as well as that now? The _Campaign_ has blunders, triumphant as it was; and weak points like all campaigns.(87)

In the year 1718 _Cato_ came out. Swift has left a description of the first night of the performance. All the laurels of Europe were scarcely sufficient for the author of this prodigious poem.(88) Laudations of Whig and Tory chiefs, popular ovations, complimentary garlands from literary men, translations in all languages, delight and homage from all—save from John Dennis in a minority of one—Mr. Addison was called the “great Mr. Addison” after this. The Coffee-house Senate saluted him Divus: it was heresy to question that decree.

Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1717. And letters of his are extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written to young Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him as “my dearest lord”, and asks affectionately about his studies, and writes very prettily about nightingales, and birds’-nests, which he has found at Fulham for his lordship. Those nightingales were intended to warble in the ear of Lord Warwick’s mamma. Addison married her ladyship in 1716; and died at Holland House three years after that splendid but dismal union.(89)

But it is not for his reputation as the great author of _Cato_ and the _Campaign_, or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as my Lady Warwick’s husband, or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about, hanging and ruthless—a literary Jeffries—in Addison’s kind court only minor cases were tried: only peccadilloes and small sins against society: only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops;(90) or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux’ canes and snuff-boxes. It may be a lady is tried for breaking the peace of our sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerously from the side-box: or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian’s head: or a citizen’s wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too little for her husband and children: every one of the little sinners brought before him is amusing, and he dismisses each with the pleasantest penalties and the most charming words of admonition.

Addison wrote his papers as gaily as if he was going out for a holiday. When Steele’s _Tatler_ first began his prattle, Addison, then in Ireland, caught at his friend’s notion, poured in paper after paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his daily observation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed an almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty years old: full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his brain, manuring hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting again, like other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much as yet; a few Latin poems—graceful prolusions; a polite book of travels; a dissertation on medals, not very deep; four acts of a tragedy, a great classical exercise; and the _Campaign_, a large prize poem that won an enormous prize. But with his friend’s discovery of the _Tatler_, Addison’s calling was found, and the most delightful talker in the world began to speak. He does not go very deep: let gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he _couldn’t_ go very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night’s rest or his day’s tranquillity about any woman in his life:(91) whereas poor Dick Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and to cry his honest old eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do not show insight into or reverence for the love of women, which I take to be, one the consequence of the other. He walks about the world watching their pretty humours, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries; and noting them with the most charming archness. He sees them in public, in the theatre, or the assembly, or the puppet-show; or at the toy-shop higgling for gloves and lace; or at the auction, battling together over a blue porcelain dragon, or a darling monster in japan; or at church, eyeing the width of their rivals’ hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the “Garter” in St. James’s Street, at Ardelia’s coach, as she blazes to the Drawing-room with her coronet and six footmen; and remembering that her father was a Turkey merchant in the City, calculates how many sponges went to purchase her ear-ring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box; or he demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women. Addison was one of the most resolute club-men of his day. He passed many hours daily in those haunts. Besides drinking, which, alas! is past praying for; you must know it, he owned, too, ladies that he indulged in that odious practice of smoking. Poor fellow! He was a man’s man, remember. The only woman he _did_ know, he didn’t write about. I take it there would not have been much humour in that story.

He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the Grecian, or the Devil; to pace “Change and the Mall”(92)—to mingle in that great club of the world—sitting alone in it somehow: having goodwill and kindness for every single man and woman in it—having need of some habit and custom binding him to some few; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong to hint a little doubt about a man’s parts, and to damn him with faint praise); and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humours of all of us—laughs the kindest laugh—points our neighbour’s foible or eccentricity out to us with the most good-natured, smiling confidence; and then, turning over his shoulder, whispers _our_ foibles to our neighbour. What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and his charming little brain-cracks?(93) If the good knight did not call out to the people sleeping in church, and say “Amen” with such a delightful pomposity: if he did not make a speech in the assize-court _à propos de bottes_, and merely to show his dignity to Mr. Spectator:(94) if he did not mistake Madam Doll Tearsheet for a lady of quality in Temple Garden: if he were wiser than he is: if he had not his humour to salt his life, and were but a mere English gentleman and game-preserver—of what worth were he to us? We love him for his vanities as much as his virtues. What is ridiculous is delightful in him: we are so fond of him because we laugh at him so. And out of that laughter, and out of that sweet weakness, and out of those harmless eccentricities and follies, and out of that touched brain, and out of that honest manhood and simplicity—we get a result of happiness, goodness, tenderness, pity, piety; such as, if my audience will think their reading and hearing over, doctors and divines but seldom have the fortune to inspire. And why not? Is the glory of Heaven to be sung only by gentlemen in black coats? Must the truth be only expounded in gown and surplice, and out of those two vestments can nobody preach it? Commend me to this dear preacher without orders—this parson in the tye-wig. When this man looks from the world, whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, up to the Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up with a more serene rapture: a human intellect thrilling with a purer love and adoration than Joseph Addison’s. Listen to him: from your childhood you have known the verses: but who can hear their sacred music without love and awe?

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

It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. They shine out of a great deep calm. When he turns to Heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man’s mind: and his face lights up from it with a glory of thanks and prayer. His sense of religion stirs through his whole being. In the fields, in the town: looking at the birds in the trees: at the children in the streets: in the morning or in the moonlight: over his books in his own room: in a happy party at a country merry-making or a town assembly, goodwill and peace to God’s creatures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill his pure heart and shine from his kind face. If Swift’s life was the most wretched, I think Addison’s was one of the most enviable. A life prosperous and beautiful—a calm death—an immense fame and affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name.(95)

Lecture The Third. Steele

What do we look for in studying the history of a past age? Is it to learn the political transactions and characters of the leading public men? Is it to make ourselves acquainted with the life and being of the time? If we set out with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has it entire? What character of what great man is known to you? You can but make guesses as to character more or less happy. In common life don’t you often judge and misjudge a man’s whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behaviour—the cut of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a different motive to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is so with those you know, how much more with those you don’t know? Say, for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of Marlborough. I read Swift’s history of the times in which he took a part; the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age—he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity: he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen’s latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough’s life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best information; and I get little or no insight into this secret motive which, I believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough’s career, which caused his turnings and windings, his opportune fidelity and treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed him finally on the Hanoverian side—the winning side; I get, I say, no truth, or only a portion of it, in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Coxe’s portrait or Swift’s portrait is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take this as a single instance, prepared to be as sceptical about any other, and say to the Muse of History, “O venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single statement you ever made since your ladyship was a Muse! For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look down. You bid me listen to a general’s oration to his soldiers: Nonsense! He no more made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You pronounce a panegyric of a hero: I doubt it, and say you flatter outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character: I doubt it, and think you are prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an autobiography: I doubt all autobiographies I ever read except those, perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class. _These_ have no object in setting themselves right with the public or their own consciences; these have no motive for concealment or half-truths; these call for no more confidence than I can cheerfully give, and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the _Spectator_, and say the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society—the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?”

As we read in these delightful volumes of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is revivified. The Maypole rises in the Strand again in London; the churches are thronged with daily worshippers; the beaux are gathering in the coffee-houses; the gentry are going to the Drawing-room; the ladies are thronging to the toy-shops; the chairmen are jostling in the streets; the footmen are running with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre doors. In the country I see the young Squire riding to Eton with his servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of the family, to see him safe. To make that journey from the Squire’s and back, Will is a week on horseback. The coach takes five days between London and Bath. The judges and the bar ride the circuit. If my lady comes to town in her post-chariot, her people carry pistols to fire a salute on Captain Macheath if he should appear, and her couriers ride ahead to prepare apartments for her at the great caravanserais on the road; Boniface receives her under the creaking sign of the “Bell” or the “Ram”, and he and his chamberlains bow her up the great stair to the state-apartments, whilst her carriage rumbles into the courtyard, where the Exeter “Fly” is housed that performs the journey in eight days, God willing, having achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its passengers for supper and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe in the kitchen, where the Captain’s man—having hung up his master’s half-pike—is at his bacon and eggs, bragging of Ramillies and Malplaquet to the townsfolk, who have their club in the chimney-corner. The Captain is ogling the chambermaid in the wooden gallery, or bribing her to know who is the pretty young mistress that has come in the coach? The pack-horses are in the great stable, and the drivers and ostlers carousing in the tap. And in Mrs. Landlady’s bar, over a glass of strong waters, sits a gentleman of military appearance, who travels with pistols, as all the rest of the world does, and has a rattling grey mare in the stables which will be saddled and away with its owner half an hour before the “Fly” sets out on its last day’s flight. And some five miles on the road, as the Exeter “Fly” comes jingling and creaking onwards, it will suddenly be brought to a halt by a gentleman on a grey mare, with a black vizard on his face, who thrusts a long pistol into the coach window, and bids the company to hand out their purses.... It must have been no small pleasure even to sit in the great kitchen in those days, and see the tide of humankind pass by. We arrive at places now, but we travel no more. Addison talks jocularly of a difference of manner and costume being quite perceivable at Staines, where there passed a young fellow “with a very tolerable periwig”, though, to be sure, his hat was out of fashion, and had a Ramillies cock. I would have liked to travel in those days (being of that class of travellers who are proverbially pretty easy _coram latronibus_) and have seen my friend with the grey mare and the black vizard. Alas! there always came a day in the life of that warrior when it was the fashion to accompany him as he passed—without his black mask, and with a nosegay in his hand, accompanied by halberdiers and attended by the sheriff,—in a carriage without springs, and a clergyman jolting beside him to a spot close by Cumberland Gate and the Marble Arch, where a stone still records that here Tyburn turnpike stood. What a change in a century; in a few years! Within a few yards of that gate the fields began: the fields of his exploits, behind the hedges of which he lurked and robbed. A great and wealthy city has grown over those meadows. Were a man brought to die there now, the windows would be closed and the inhabitants keep their houses in sickening horror. A hundred years back, people crowded to see that last act of a highwayman’s life, and make jokes on it. Swift laughed at him, grimly advising him to provide a Holland shirt and white cap crowned with a crimson or black ribbon for his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully—shake hands with the hangman, and so—farewell. Gay wrote the most delightful ballads, and made merry over the same hero. Contrast these with the writings of our present humourists! Compare those morals and ours—those manners and ours!

We can’t tell—you would not bear to be told the whole truth regarding those men and manners. You could no more suffer in a British drawing-room, under the reign of Queen Victoria, a fine gentleman or fine lady of Queen Anne’s time, or hear what they heard and said, than you would receive an ancient Briton. It is as one reads about savages, that one contemplates the wild ways, the barbarous feasts, the terrific pastimes, of the men of pleasure of that age. We have our fine gentlemen, and our “fast men”; permit me to give you an idea of one particularly fast nobleman of Queen Anne’s days, whose biography has been preserved to us by the law reporters.

In 1691, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun was tried by his peers for the murder of William Mountford, comedian. In Howell’s _State Trials_, the reader will find not only an edifying account of this exceedingly fast nobleman, but of the times and manners of those days. My lord’s friend, a Captain Hill, smitten with the charms of the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, determined to carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney-coach with six horses, and a half-dozen of soldiers, to aid him in the storm. The coach with a pair of horses (the four leaders being in waiting elsewhere) took its station opposite my Lord Craven’s house in Drury Lane, by which door Mrs. Bracegirdle was to pass on her way from the theatre. As she passed in company of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the Captain seized her by the hand, the soldiers hustled Mr. Page and attacked him sword in hand, and Captain Hill and his noble friend endeavoured to force Madam Bracegirdle into the coach. Mr. Page called for help: the population of Drury Lane rose: it was impossible to effect the capture; and bidding the soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off, Hill let go of his prey sulkily, and he waited for other opportunities of revenge. The man of whom he was most jealous was Will Mountford, the comedian; Will removed, he thought Mrs. Bracegirdle might be his: and accordingly the Captain and his lordship lay that night in wait for Will, and as he was coming out of a house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in talk, Hill, in the words of the Attorney-General, made a pass and run him clean through the body.

Sixty-one of my lord’s peers finding him not guilty of murder, while but fourteen found him guilty, this very fast nobleman was discharged: and made his appearance seven years after in another trial for murder—when he, my Lord Warwick, and three gentlemen of the military profession were concerned in the fight which ended in the death of Captain Coote.

This jolly company were drinking together at Lockit’s in Charing Cross, when angry words arose between Captain Coote and Captain French; whom my Lord Mohun and my lord the Earl of Warwick(96) and Holland endeavoured to pacify. My Lord Warwick was a dear friend of Captain Coote, lent him a hundred pounds to buy his commission in the Guards; once when the captain was arrested for 13_l_. by his tailor, my lord lent him five guineas, often paid his reckoning for him, and showed him other offices of friendship. On this evening the disputants, French and Coote, being separated whilst they were upstairs, unluckily stopped to drink ale again at the bar of Lockit’s. The row began afresh—Coote lunged at French over the bar, and at last all six called for chairs, and went to Leicester Fields, where they fell to. Their lordships engaged on the side of Captain Coote. My Lord of Warwick was severely wounded in the hand, Mr. French also was stabbed, but honest Captain Coote got a couple of wounds—one especially, “a wound in the left side just under the short ribs, and piercing through the diaphragma,” which did for Captain Coote. Hence the trials of my Lords Warwick and Mohun: hence the assemblage of peers, the report of the transaction, in which these defunct fast men still live for the observation of the curious. My Lord of Warwick is brought to the bar by the Deputy Governor of the Tower of London, having the axe carried before him by the gentleman gaoler, who stood with it at the bar at the right hand of the prisoner, turning the edge from him; the prisoner, at his approach, making three bows, one to his grace the Lord High Steward, the other to the peers on each hand; and his grace and the peers return the salute. And besides these great personages, august in periwigs, and nodding to the right and left, a host of the small come up out of the past and pass before us—the jolly captains brawling in the tavern, and laughing and cursing over their cups—the drawer that serves, the bar-girl that waits, the bailiff on the prowl, the chairmen trudging through the black lampless streets, and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords are clashing in the garden within. “Help there! a gentleman is hurt”: the chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gentleman over the railings, and carry him, ghastly and bleeding, to the bagnio in Long Acre, where they knock up the surgeon—a pretty tall gentleman—but that wound under the short ribs has done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen, and gentleman gaoler with your axe, where be you now? The gentleman axeman’s head is off his own shoulders; the lords and judges can wag theirs no longer; the bailiff’s writs have ceased to run; the honest chairmen’s pipes are put out, and with their brawny calves they have walked away into Hades—all as irrecoverably done for as Will Mountford or Captain Coote. The subject of our night’s lecture saw all these people—rode in Captain Coote’s company of the Guards very probably—wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy in many a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern—fled from many a bailiff.

In 1709, when the publication of the _Tatler_ began, our great-great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and delightful paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light literature in a later day exhibited when the Waverley novels appeared, upon which the public rushed, forsaking that feeble entertainment of which the Miss Porters, the Anne of Swanseas, and worthy Mrs. Radcliffe herself, with her dreary castles and exploded old ghosts, had had pretty much the monopoly. I have looked over many of the comic books with which our ancestors amused themselves, from the novels of Swift’s coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the delectable author of the _New Atlantis_, to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the _London Spy_ and several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collection at the British Museum, you may see, besides the _Craftsman_ and _Post Boy_, specimens, and queer specimens they are, of the higher literature of Queen Anne’s time. Here is an abstract from a notable journal bearing date, Wednesday, October 13th, 1708, and entitled _The British Apollo; or, Curious Amusements for the Ingenious, by a Society of Gentlemen_. The _British Apollo_ invited and professed to answer questions upon all subjects of wit, morality, science, and even religion; and two out of its four pages are filled with queries and replies much like some of the oracular penny prints of the present time.

One of the first querists, referring to the passage that a bishop should be the husband of one wife, argues that polygamy is justifiable in the laity. The society of gentlemen conducting the _British Apollo_ are posed by this casuist, and promise to give him an answer. Celinda then wishes to know from “the gentlemen”, concerning the souls of the dead, whether they shall have the satisfaction to know those whom they most valued in this transitory life. The gentlemen of the _Apollo_ give but cold comfort to poor Celinda. They are inclined to think not: for, say they, since every inhabitant of those regions will be infinitely dearer than here are our nearest relatives—what have we to do with a partial friendship in that happy place? Poor Celinda! it may have been a child or a lover whom she had lost, and was pining after, when the oracle of _British Apollo_ gave her this dismal answer. She has solved the question for herself by this time, and knows quite as well as the society of gentlemen.

From theology we come to physics, and Q. asks, “Why does hot water freeze sooner than cold?” Apollo replies, “Hot water cannot be said to freeze sooner than cold, but water once heated and cold, may be subject to freeze by the evaporation of the spirituous parts of the water, which renders it less able to withstand the power of frosty weather.”

The next query is rather a delicate one. “You, Mr. Apollo, who are said to be the God of Wisdom, pray give us the reason why kissing is so much in fashion: what benefit one receives by it, and who was the inventor, and you will oblige Corinna.” To this queer demand the lips of Phoebus, smiling, answer: “Pretty, innocent Corinna! Apollo owns that he was a little surprised by your kissing question, particularly at that part of it where you desire to know the benefit you receive by it. Ah! madam, had you a lover, you would not come to Apollo for a solution; since there is no dispute but the kisses of mutual lovers give infinite satisfaction. As to its invention, ’tis certain nature was its author, and it began with the first courtship.”

After a column more of questions, follow nearly two pages of poems, signed by Philander, Armenia, and the like, and chiefly on the tender passion; and the paper wound up with a letter from Leghorn, an account of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene before Lille, and proposals for publishing two sheets on the present state of Aethiopia, by Mr. Hill; all of which is printed for the authors by J. Mayo, at the Printing Press against Water Lane in Fleet Street. What a change it must have been—how Apollo’s oracles must have been struck dumb, when the _Tatler_ appeared, and scholars, gentlemen, men of the world, men of genius, began to speak!

Shortly before the Boyne was fought, and young Swift had begun to make acquaintance with English Court manners and English servitude, in Sir William Temple’s family, another Irish youth was brought to learn his humanities at the old school of Charterhouse, near Smithfield; to which foundation he had been appointed by James Duke of Ormond, a governor of the House, and a patron of the lad’s family. The boy was an orphan, and described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos and simplicity, some of the earliest recollections of a life which was destined to be chequered by a strange variety of good and evil fortune.

I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters and ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape the flogging block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have myself inspected, but only as an amateur, that instrument of righteous torture still existing, and in occasional use, in a secluded private apartment of the old Charterhouse School; and have no doubt it is the very counterpart, if not the ancient and interesting machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele submitted himself to the tormentors.

Besides being very kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy went invariably into debt with the tart-woman; ran out of bounds, and entered into pecuniary, or rather promissory, engagements with the neighbouring lollipop-vendors and piemen—exhibited an early fondness and capacity for drinking mum and sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements here made of Steele’s early life; but if the child is father of the man, the father of young Steele of Merton, who left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered the Life Guards—the father of Captain Steele of Lucas’s Fusiliers, who got his company through the patronage of my Lord Cutts—the father of Mr. Steele the Commissioner of Stamps, the editor of the _Gazette_, the _Tatler_, and _Spectator_, the expelled Member of Parliament, and the author of the _Tender Husband_ and the _Conscious Lovers_; if man and boy resembled each other, Dick Steele the schoolboy must have been one of the most generous, good-for-nothing, amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb _tupto_, I beat, _tuptomai_, I am whipped, in any school in Great Britain.

Almost every gentleman who does me the honour to hear me will remember that the very greatest character which he has seen in the course of his life, and the person to whom he has looked up with the greatest wonder and reverence, was the head boy at his school. The schoolmaster himself hardly inspires such an awe. The head boy construes as well as the schoolmaster himself. When he begins to speak the hall is hushed, and every little boy listens. He writes off copies of Latin verses as melodiously as Virgil. He is good-natured, and, his own masterpieces achieved, pours out other copies of verses for other boys with an astonishing ease and fluency; the idle ones only trembling lest they should be discovered on giving in their exercises, and whipped because their poems were too good. I have seen great men in my time, but never such a great one as that head boy of my childhood: we all thought he must be Prime Minister, and I was disappointed on meeting him in after-life to find he was no more than six feet high.

Dick Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, contracted such an admiration in the years of his childhood, and retained it faithfully through his life. Through the school and through the world, whithersoever his strange fortune led this erring, wayward, affectionate creature, Joseph Addison was always his head boy. Addison wrote his exercises. Addison did his best themes. He ran on Addison’s messages: fagged for him and blacked his shoes: to be in Joe’s company was Dick’s greatest pleasure; and he took a sermon or a caning from his monitor with the most boundless reverence, acquiescence, and affection.(97)

Steele found Addison a stately college Don at Oxford, and himself did not make much figure at this place. He wrote a comedy, which, by the advice of a friend, the humble fellow burned there; and some verses, which I dare say are as sublime as other gentlemen’s composition at that age; but being smitten with a sudden love for military glory, he threw up the cap and gown for the saddle and bridle, and rode privately in the Horse Guards, in the Duke of Ormond’s troop—the second—and, probably, with the rest of the gentlemen of his troop, “all mounted on black horses with white feathers in their hats, and scarlet coats richly laced,” marched by King William, in Hyde Park, in November, 1699, and a great show of the nobility, besides twenty thousand people, and above a thousand coaches. “The Guards had just got their new clothes,” the _London Post_ said: “they are extraordinary grand, and thought to be the finest body of horse in the world.” But Steele could hardly have seen any actual service. He who wrote about himself, his mother, his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the wine he drank, would have told us of his battles if he had seen any. His old patron, Ormond, probably got him his cornetcy in the Guards, from which he was promoted to be a captain in Lucas’s Fusiliers, getting his company through the patronage of Lord Cutts, whose secretary he was, and to whom he dedicated his work called the _Christian Hero_. As for Dick, whilst writing this ardent devotional work, he was deep in debt, in drink, and in all the follies of the town; it is related that all the officers of Lucas’s, and the gentlemen of the Guards, laughed at Dick.(98) And in truth a theologian in liquor is not a respectable object, and a hermit, though he may be out at elbows, must not be in debt to the tailor. Steele says of himself that he was always sinning and repenting. He beat his breast and cried most piteously when he _did_ repent: but as soon as crying had made him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. In that charming paper in the _Tatler_, in which he records his father’s death, his mother’s griefs, his own most solemn and tender emotions, he says he is interrupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, “the same as is to be sold at Garraway’s, next week,” upon the receipt of which he sends for three friends, and they fall to instantly, “drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit to themselves, and not separating till two o’clock in the morning.”

His life was so. Jack the drawer was always interrupting it, bringing him a bottle from the “Rose”, or inviting him over to a bout there with Sir Plume and Mr. Diver; and Dick wiped his eyes, which were whimpering over his papers, took down his laced hat, put on his sword and wig, kissed his wife and children, told them a lie about pressing business, and went off to the “Rose” to the jolly fellows.

While Mr. Addison was abroad, and after he came home in rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in his shabby lodging in the Haymarket, young Captain Steele was cutting a much smarter figure than that of his classical friend of Charterhouse Cloister and Maudlin Walk. Could not some painter give an interview between the gallant captain of Lucas’s, with his hat cocked, and his lace, and his face too, a trifle tarnished with drink, and that poet, that philosopher, pale, proud, and poor, his friend and monitor of schooldays, of all days? How Dick must have bragged about his chances and his hopes, and the fine company he kept, and the charms of the reigning toasts and popular actresses, and the number of bottles that he and my lord and some other pretty fellows had cracked overnight at the “Devil”, or the “Garter”! Cannot one fancy Joseph Addison’s calm smile and cold grey eyes following Dick for an instant, as he struts down the Mall, to dine with the Guard at St. James’s, before he turns, with his sober pace and threadbare suit, to walk back to his lodgings up the two pair of stairs? Steele’s name was down for promotion, Dick always said himself, in the glorious, pious, and immortal William’s last table-book. Jonathan Swift’s name had been written there by the same hand too.

Our worthy friend, the author of the _Christian Hero_, continued to make no small figure about town by the use of his wits.(99) He was appointed Gazetteer: he wrote, in 1703, _The Tender Husband_, his second play, in which there is some delightful farcical writing, and of which he fondly owned in after-life, and when Addison was no more, that there were “many applauded strokes” from Addison’s beloved hand.(100) Is it not a pleasant partnership to remember? Can’t one fancy Steele full of spirits and youth, leaving his gay company to go to Addison’s lodging, where his friend sits in the shabby sitting-room, quite serene, and cheerful, and poor? In 1704, Steele came on the town with another comedy, and behold it was so moral and religious, as poor Dick insisted, so dull the town thought, that the _Lying Lover_ was damned.

Addison’s hour of success now came, and he was able to help our friend, the _Christian Hero_, in such a way, that, if there had been any chance of keeping that poor tipsy champion upon his legs, his fortune was safe, and his competence assured. Steele procured the place of Commissioner of Stamps: he wrote so richly, so gracefully often, so kindly always, with such a pleasant wit and easy frankness, with such a gush of good spirits and good humour, that his early papers may be compared to Addison’s own, and are to be read, by a male reader at least, with quite an equal pleasure.(101)

After the _Tatler_, in 1711, the famous _Spectator_ made its appearance, and this was followed, at various intervals, by many periodicals under the same editor—the _Guardian_—the _Englishman_—the _Lover_, whose love was rather insipid—the _Reader_, of whom the public saw no more after his second appearance—the _Theatre_, under the pseudonym of Sir John Edgar, which Steele wrote, while Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians, to which post, and to that of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court, and to the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex, and to the honour of knighthood, Steele had been preferred soon after the accession of George I, whose cause honest Dick had nobly fought, through disgrace and danger, against the most formidable enemies, against traitors and bullies, against Bolingbroke and Swift in the last reign. With the arrival of the King, that splendid conspiracy broke up; and a golden opportunity came to Dick Steele, whose hand, alas, was too careless to grip it.

Steele married twice; and outlived his places, his schemes, his wife, his income, his health, and almost everything but his kind heart. That ceased to trouble him in 1729, when he died, worn out and almost forgotten by his contemporaries, in Wales, where he had the remnant of a property.

Posterity has been kinder to this amiable creature; all women especially are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was the first of our writers who really seemed to admire and respect them. Congreve the Great, who alludes to the low estimation in which women were held in Elizabeth’s time, as a reason why the women of Shakespeare make so small a figure in the poet’s dialogues, though he can himself pay splendid compliments to women, yet looks on them as mere instruments of gallantry, and destined, like the most consummate fortifications, to fall, after a certain time, before the arts and bravery of the besieger, man. There is a letter of Swift’s, entitled “Advice to a very Young Married Lady”, which shows the Dean’s opinion of the female society of his day, and that if he despised man he utterly scorned women too. No lady of our time could be treated by any man, were he ever so much a wit or Dean, in such a tone of insolent patronage and vulgar protection. In this performance, Swift hardly takes pains to hide his opinion that a woman is a fool: tells her to read books, as if reading was a novel accomplishment; and informs her that “not one gentleman’s daughter in a thousand has been brought to read or understand her own natural tongue”. Addison laughs at women equally; but, with the gentleness and politeness of his nature, smiles at them and watches them, as if they were harmless, halfwitted, amusing, pretty creatures, only made to be men’s playthings. It was Steele who first began to pay a manly homage to their goodness and understanding, as well as to their tenderness and beauty.(102) In his comedies, the heroes do not rant and rave about the divine beauties of Gloriana or Statira, as the characters were made to do in the chivalry romances and the high-flown dramas just going out of vogue, but Steele admires women’s virtue, acknowledges their sense, and adores their purity and beauty, with an ardour and strength which should win the goodwill of all women to their hearty and respectful champion. It is this ardour, this respect, this manliness, which makes his comedies so pleasant and their heroes such fine gentlemen. He paid the finest compliment to a woman that perhaps ever was offered. Of one woman, whom Congreve had also admired and celebrated, Steele says, that “to have loved her was a liberal education”. “How often,” he says, dedicating a volume to his wife, “how often has your tenderness removed pain from my sick head, how often anguish from my afflicted heart! If there are such beings as guardian angels, they are thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to be more good in inclination, or more charming in form than my wife.” His breast seems to warm and his eyes to kindle when he meets with a good and beautiful woman, and it is with his heart as well as with his hat that he salutes her. About children, and all that relates to home, he is not less tender, and more than once speaks in apology of what he calls his softness. He would have been nothing without that delightful weakness. It is that which gives his works their worth and his style its charm. It, like his life, is full of faults and careless blunders; and redeemed, like that, by his sweet and compassionate nature.

We possess of poor Steele’s wild and chequered life some of the most curious memoranda that ever were left of a man’s biography.(103) Most men’s letters, from Cicero down to Walpole, or down to the great men of our own time, if you will, are doctored compositions, and written with an eye suspicious towards posterity. That dedication of Steele’s to his wife is an artificial performance, possibly; at least, it is written with that degree of artifice which an orator uses in arranging a statement for the House, or a poet employs in preparing a sentiment in verse or for the stage. But there are some 400 letters of Dick Steele’e to his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved accurately, and which could have been written but for her and her alone. They contain details of the business, pleasures, quarrels, reconciliations of the pair; they have all the genuineness of conversation; they are as artless as a child’s prattle, and as confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some are written from the printing-office, where he is waiting for the proofsheets of his _Gazette_, or his _Tatler_; some are written from the tavern, whence he promises to come to his wife “within a pint of wine”, and where he has given a rendezvous to a friend, or a money-lender: some are composed in a high state of vinous excitement, when his head is flustered with burgundy, and his heart abounds with amorous warmth for his darling Prue: some are under the influence of the dismal headache and repentance next morning: some, alas, are from the lock-up house, where the lawyers have impounded him, and where he is waiting for bail. You trace many years of the poor fellow’s career in these letters. In September, 1707, from which day she began to save the letters, he married the beautiful Mistress Scurlock. You have his passionate protestations to the lady; his respectful proposals to her mamma; his private prayer to Heaven when the union so ardently desired was completed; his fond professions of contrition and promises of amendment, when, immediately after his marriage, there began to be just cause for the one and need for the other.

Captain Steele took a house for his lady upon their marriage, “the third door from Germain Street, left hand of Berry Street,” and the next year he presented his wife with a country house at Hampton. It appears she had a chariot and pair, and sometimes four horses: he himself enjoyed a little horse for his own riding. He paid, or promised to pay, his barber fifty pounds a year, and always went abroad in a laced coat and a large black-buckled periwig, that must have cost somebody fifty guineas. He was rather a well-to-do gentleman, Captain Steele, with the proceeds of his estates in Barbadoes (left to him by his first wife), his income as a writer of the _Gazette_, and his office of gentleman waiter to his Royal Highness Prince George. His second wife brought him a fortune too. But it is melancholy to relate, that with these houses and chariots and horses and income, the Captain was constantly in want of money, for which his beloved bride was asking as constantly. In the course of a few pages we begin to find the shoemaker calling for money, and some directions from the Captain, who has not thirty pounds to spare. He sends his wife, “the beautifullest object in the world,” as he calls her, and evidently in reply to applications of her own, which have gone the way of all waste paper, and lighted Dick’s pipes, which were smoked a hundred and forty years ago—he sends his wife now a guinea, then a half-guinea, then a couple of guineas, then half a pound of tea; and again no money and no tea at all, but a promise that his darling Prue shall have some in a day or two: or a request, perhaps, that she will send over his night-gown and shaving-plate to the temporary lodging where the nomadic captain is lying, hidden from the bailiffs. Oh that a Christian hero and late captain in Lucas’s should be afraid of a dirty sheriff’s officer! That the pink and pride of chivalry should turn pale before a writ! It stands to record in poor Dick’s own handwriting; the queer collection is preserved at the British Museum to this present day; that the rent of the nuptial house in Jermyn Street, sacred to unutterable tenderness and Prue, and three doors from Bury Street, was not paid until after the landlord had put in an execution on Captain Steele’s furniture. Addison sold the house and furniture at Hampton, and, after deducting the sum in which his incorrigible friend was indebted to him, handed over the residue of the proceeds of the sale to poor Dick, who wasn’t in the least angry at Addison’s summary proceeding, and I dare say was very glad of any sale or execution, the result of which was to give him a little ready money. Having a small house in Jermyn Street for which he couldn’t pay, and a country house at Hampton on which he had borrowed money, nothing must content Captain Dick but the taking, in 1712, a much finer, larger, and grander house, in Bloomsbury Square; where his unhappy landlord got no better satisfaction than his friend in St. James’s, and where it is recorded that Dick, giving a grand entertainment, had a half-dozen queer-looking fellows in livery to wait upon his noble guests, and confessed that his servants were bailiffs to a man. “I fared like a distressed prince,” the kindly prodigal writes, generously complimenting Addison for his assistance in the _Tatler_,—“I fared like a distressed prince, who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.” Poor, needy Prince of Bloomsbury! think of him in his palace, with his allies from Chancery Lane ominously guarding him.

All sorts of stories are told indicative of his recklessness and his good humour. One narrated by Dr. Hoadly is exceedingly characteristic; it shows the life of the time: and our poor friend very weak, but very kind both in and out of his cups.

“My father” (says Dr. John Hoadly, the bishop’s son)—“when Bishop of Bangor, was, by invitation, present at one of the Whig meetings, held at the ‘Trumpet’, in Shire Lane, when Sir Richard, in his zeal, rather exposed himself, having the double duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the immortal memory of King William, it being the 4th of November, as to drink his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose phlegmatic constitution was hardly warmed for society by that time. Steele was not fit for it. Two remarkable circumstances happened. John Sly, the hatter of facetious memory, was in the house; and John, pretty mellow, took it into his head to come into the company on his knees, with a tankard of ale in his hand to drink off to the _immortal memory_, and to return in the same manner. Steele, sitting next my father, whispered him—‘_Do laugh. It is humanity to laugh._’ Sir Richard, in the evening, being too much in the same condition, was put into a chair, and sent home. Nothing would serve him but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor’s, late as it was. However, the chairmen carried him home, and got him upstairs, when his great complaisance would wait on them downstairs, which he did, and then was got quietly to bed.”(104)

There is another amusing story which, I believe, that renowned collector, Mr. Joseph Miller, or his successors, have incorporated into their work. Sir Richard Steele, at a time when he was much occupied with theatrical affairs, built himself a pretty private theatre, and, before it was opened to his friends and guests, was anxious to try whether the hall was well adapted for hearing. Accordingly he placed himself in the most remote part of the gallery, and begged the carpenter who had built the house to speak up from the stage. The man at first said that he was unaccustomed to public speaking, and did not know what to say to his honour; but the good-natured knight called out to him to say whatever was uppermost; and, after a moment, the carpenter began, in a voice perfectly audible: “Sir Richard Steele!” he said, “for three months past me and my men has been a-working in this theatre, and we’ve never seen the colour of your honour’s money: we will be very much obliged if you’ll pay it directly, for until you do we won’t drive in another nail.” Sir Richard said that his friend’s elocution was perfect, but that he didn’t like his subject much.

The great charm of Steele’s writing is its naturalness. He wrote so quickly and carelessly, that he was forced to make the reader his confidant, and had not the time to deceive him. He had a small share of book-learning, but a vast acquaintance with the world. He had known men and taverns. He had lived with gownsmen, with troopers, with gentleman ushers of the Court, with men and women of fashion; with authors and wits, with the inmates of the spunging-houses, and with the frequenters of all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He was liked in all company because he liked it; and you like to see his enjoyment as you like to see the glee of a box full of children at the pantomime. He was not of those lonely ones of the earth whose greatness obliged them to be solitary; on the contrary, he admired, I think, more than any man who ever wrote; and full of hearty applause and sympathy, wins upon you by calling you to share his delight and good humour. His laugh rings through the whole house. He must have been invaluable at a tragedy, and have cried as much as the most tender young lady in the boxes. He has a relish for beauty and goodness wherever he meets it. He admired Shakespeare affectionately, and more than any man of his time; and, according to his generous expansive nature, called upon all his company to like what he liked himself. He did not damn with faint praise: he was in the world and of it; and his enjoyment of life presents the strangest contrast to Swift’s savage indignation and Addison’s lonely serenity.(105) Permit me to read to you a passage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar humour: the subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. We have said that upon all the actions of man, the most trifling and the most solemn, the humourist takes upon himself to comment. All readers of our old masters know the terrible lines of Swift, in which he hints at his philosophy and describes the end of mankind:—(106)

Amazed, confused, its fate unknown, The world stood trembling at Jove’s throne; While each pale sinner hung his head, Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said: ’Offending race of human kind, By nature, reason, learning, blind; You who through frailty stepped aside, And you who never err’d through pride; You who in different sects were shamm’d, And come to see each other damn’d (So some folk told you, but they knew No more of Jove’s designs than you). The world’s mad business now is o’er, And I resent your freaks no more; _I_ to such blockheads set my wit, I damn such fools—go, go, you’re bit!’

Addison, speaking on the very same theme, but with how different a voice, says, in his famous paper on Westminster Abbey (_Spectator_, No. 26):—“For my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow.” (I have owned that I do not think Addison’s heart melted very much, or that he indulged very inordinately in the “vanity of grieving”.) “When,” he goes on, “when I see kings lying by those who deposed them: when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes,—I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. And, when I read the several dates on the tombs of some that died yesterday and some 600 years ago, I consider that Great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.”

Our third humourist comes to speak upon the same subject. You will have observed in the previous extracts the characteristic humour of each writer—the subject and the contrast—the fact of Death, and the play of individual thought, by which each comments on it, and now hear the third writer—death, sorrow, and the grave, being for the moment also his theme. “The first sense of sorrow I ever knew,” Steele says in the _Tatler_, “was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age: but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed of a real understanding why nobody would play with us. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling papa; for, I know not how, I had some idea that he was locked up there. My mother caught me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces, and told me in a flood of tears, ‘Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more: for they were going to put him under ground, whence he would never come to us again.’ She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which methought struck me with an instinct of sorrow that, before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since.”

Can there be three more characteristic moods of minds and men? “Fools, do you know anything of this mystery?” says Swift, stamping on a grave and carrying his scorn for mankind actually beyond it. “Miserable, purblind wretches, how dare you to pretend to comprehend the Inscrutable, and how can your dim eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder boundless heaven?” Addison, in a much kinder language and gentler voice, utters much the same sentiment: and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the contests of holy men, with the same sceptic placidity. “Look what a little vain dust we are;” he says, smiling over the tombstones, and catching, as is his wont, quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks in words of inspiration almost, of “the Great Day, when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together”.

The third, whose theme is Death, too, and who will speak his word of moral as Heaven teaches him, leads you up to his father’s coffin, and shows you his beautiful mother weeping, and himself an unconscious little boy wondering at her side. His own natural tears flow as he takes your hand and confidingly asks your sympathy. “See how good and innocent and beautiful women are,” he says, “how tender little children! Let us love these and one another, brother—God knows we have need of love and pardon.” So it is each man looks with his own eyes, speaks with his own voice, and prays his own prayer.

When Steele asks your sympathy for the actors in that charming scene of Love and Grief and Death, who can refuse it? One yields to it as to the frank advance of a child, or to the appeal of a woman. A man is seldom more manly than when he is what you call unmanned—the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak. If Steele is not our friend he is nothing. He is by no means the most brilliant of wits nor the deepest of thinkers: but he is our friend: we love him, as children love their love with an A, because he is amiable. Who likes a man best because he is the cleverest or the wisest of mankind; or a woman because she is the most virtuous, or talks French; or plays the piano better than the rest of her sex? I own to liking Dick Steele the man, and Dick Steele the author, much better than much better men and much better authors.

The misfortune regarding Steele is, that most part of the company here present must take his amiability upon hearsay, and certainly can’t make his intimate acquaintance. Not that Steele was worse than his time; on the contrary, a far better, truer, and higher-hearted man than most who lived in it. But things were done in that society, and names were named, which would make you shudder now. What would be the sensation of a polite youth of the present day, if at a ball he saw the young object of his affections taking a box out of her pocket and a pinch of snuff: or if at dinner, by the charmer’s side, she deliberately put her knife into her mouth? If she cut her mother’s throat with it, mamma would scarcely be more shocked. I allude to these peculiarities of bygone times as an excuse for my favourite, Steele, who was not worse, and often much more delicate than his neighbours.

There exists a curious document descriptive of the manners of the last age, which describes most minutely the amusements and occupations of persons of fashion in London at the time of which we are speaking; the time of Swift, and Addison, and Steele.

When Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and Colonel Alwit, the immortal personages of Swift’s polite conversation, came to breakfast with my Lady Smart, at eleven o’clock in the morning, my Lord Smart was absent at the Levée. His lordship was at home to dinner at three o’clock to receive his guests; and we may sit down to this meal, like the Barmecide’s, and see the fops of the last century before us. Seven of them sat down at dinner, and were joined by a country baronet, who told them they kept Court hours. These persons of fashion began their dinner with a sirloin of beef, fish, a shoulder of veal, and a tongue. My Lady Smart carved the sirloin, my Lady Answerwell helped the fish, and the gallant colonel cut the shoulder of veal. All made a considerable inroad on the sirloin and the shoulder of veal with the exception of Sir John, who had no appetite, having already partaken of a beefsteak and two mugs of ale, besides a tankard of March beer as soon as he got out of bed. They drank claret, which the master of the house said should always be drunk after fish; and my Lord Smart particularly recommended some excellent cider to my Lord Sparkish, which occasioned some brilliant remarks from that nobleman. When the host called for wine, he nodded to one or other of his guests, and said, “Tom Neverout, my service to you.”

After the first course came almond pudding, fritters, which the colonel took with his hands out of the dish, in order to help the brilliant Miss Notable; chickens, black puddings, and soup; and Lady Smart, the elegant mistress of the mansion, finding a skewer in a dish, placed it in her plate with directions that it should be carried down to the cook and dressed for the cook’s own dinner. Wine and small beer were drunk during this second course; and when the colonel called for beer, he called the butler, Friend, and asked whether the beer was good. Various jocular remarks passed from the gentlefolks to the servants; at breakfast several persons had a word and a joke for Mrs. Betty, my lady’s maid, who warmed the cream and had charge of the canister (the tea cost thirty shillings a pound in those days). When my Lady Sparkish sent her footman out to my Lady Match to come at six o’clock and play at quadrille, her ladyship warned the man to follow his nose, and if he fell by the way not to stay to get up again. And when the gentlemen asked the hall-porter if his lady was at home, that functionary replied, with manly waggishness, “She was at home just now, but she’s not gone out yet.”

After the puddings, sweet and black, the fritters and soup, came the third course, of which the chief dish was a hot venison pasty, which was put before Lord Smart, and carved by that nobleman. Besides the pasty, there was a hare, a rabbit, some pigeons, partridges, a goose, and a ham. Beer and wine were freely imbibed during this course, the gentlemen always pledging somebody with every glass which they drank; and by this time the conversation between Tom Neverout and Miss Notable had grown so brisk and lively, that the Derbyshire baronet began to think the young gentlewoman was Tom’s sweetheart; on which Miss remarked, that she loved Tom “like pie”. After the goose, some of the gentlemen took a dram of brandy, “which was very good for the wholesomes,” Sir John said; and now having had a tolerably substantial dinner, honest Lord Smart bade the butler bring up the great tankard full of October to Sir John. The great tankard was passed from hand to hand and mouth to mouth, but when pressed by the noble host upon the gallant Tom Neverout, he said, “No faith, my lord, I like your wine, and won’t put a churl upon a gentleman. Your honour’s claret is good enough for me.” And so, the dinner over, the host said, “Hang saving, bring us up a ha’porth of cheese.”

The cloth was now taken away, and a bottle of burgundy was set down, of which the ladies were invited to partake before they went to their tea. When they withdrew, the gentlemen promised to join them in an hour; fresh bottles were brought, the “dead men”, meaning the empty bottles, removed; and “D’you hear, John? bring clean glasses”, my Lord Smart said. On which the gallant Colonel Alwit said, “I’ll keep my glass; for wine is the best liquor to wash glasses in.”

After an hour the gentlemen joined the ladies, and then they all sat and played quadrille until three o’clock in the morning, when the chairs and the flambeaux came, and this noble company went to bed.

Such were manners six or seven score years ago. I draw no inference from this queer picture—let all moralists here present deduce their own. Fancy the moral condition of that society in which a lady of fashion joked with a footman, and carved a great shoulder of veal, and provided besides a sirloin, a goose, hare, rabbit, chickens, partridges, black-puddings, and a ham for a dinner for eight Christians. What—what could have been the condition of that polite world in which people openly ate goose after almond pudding, and took their soup in the middle of dinner? Fancy a colonel in the Guards putting his hand into a dish of _beignets d’abricot_, and helping his neighbour, a young lady _du monde_! Fancy a noble lord calling out to the servants, before the ladies at his table, “Hang expense, bring us a ha’porth of cheese!” Such were the ladies of St. James’s—such were the frequenters of White’s Chocolate-house, when Swift used to visit it, and Steele described it as the centre of pleasure, gallantry, and entertainment, a hundred and forty years ago!

Dennis, who ran amuck at the literary society of his day, falls foul of poor Steele, and thus depicts him,—“Sir John Edgar, of the county of —— in Ireland, is of a middle stature, broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture of somebody over a farmer’s chimney—a short chin, a short nose, a short forehead, a broad, flat face, and a dusky countenance. Yet with such a face and such a shape, he discovered at sixty that he took himself for a beauty, and appeared to be more mortified at being told that he was ugly, than he was by any reflection made upon his honour or understanding.

“He is a gentleman born, witness himself, of very honourable family; certainly of a very ancient one, for his ancestors flourished in Tipperary long before the English ever set foot in Ireland. He has testimony of this more authentic than the Heralds’ Office, or any human testimony. For God has marked him more abundantly than he did Cain, and stamped his native country on his face, his understanding, his writings, his actions, his passions, and, above all, his vanity. The Hibernian brogue is still upon all these, though long habit and length of days have worn it off his tongue.”(107)

Although this portrait is the work of a man who was neither the friend of Steele nor of any other man alive, yet there is a dreadful resemblance to the original in the savage and exaggerated traits of the caricature, and everybody who knows him must recognize Dick Steele. Dick set about almost all the undertakings of his life with inadequate means, and, as he took and furnished a house with the most generous intentions towards his friends, the most tender gallantry towards his wife, and with this only drawback, that he had not wherewithal to pay the rent when quarter-day came,—so, in his life he proposed to himself the most magnificent schemes of virtue, forbearance, public and private good, and the advancement of his own and the national religion; but when he had to pay for these articles—so difficult to purchase and so costly to maintain—poor Dick’s money was not forthcoming: and when Virtue called with her little bill, Dick made a shuffling excuse that he could not see her that morning, having a headache from being tipsy overnight; or when stern Duty rapped at the door with his account, Dick was absent and not ready to pay. He was shirking at the tavern; or had some particular business (of somebody’s else) at the ordinary; or he was in hiding, or worse than in hiding, in the lock-up house. What a situation for a man!—for a philanthropist—for a lover of right and truth—for a magnificent designer and schemer! Not to dare to look in the face the Religion which he adored and which he had offended; to have to shirk down back lanes and alleys, so as to avoid the friend whom he loved and who had trusted him—to have the house which he had intended for his wife, whom he loved passionately, and for her ladyship’s company which he wished to entertain splendidly, in the possession of a bailiff’s man, with a crowd of little creditors,—grocers, butchers, and small-coal men, lingering round the door with their bills and jeering at him. Alas! for poor Dick Steele! For nobody else, of course. There is no man or woman in _our_ time who makes fine projects and gives them up from idleness or want of means. When Duty calls upon _us_, we no doubt are always at home and ready to pay that grim tax-gatherer. When _we_ are stricken with remorse and promise reform, we keep our promise, and are never angry, or idle, or extravagant any more. There are no chambers in _our_ hearts, destined for family friends and affections, and now occupied by some Sin’s emissary and bailiff in possession. There are no little sins, shabby peccadilloes, importunate remembrances, or disappointed holders of our promises to reform, hovering at our steps, or knocking at our door! Of course not. We are living in the nineteenth century, and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got up again, and got into jail and out again, and sinned and repented; and loved and suffered; and lived and died scores of years ago. Peace be with him! Let us think gently of one who was so gentle: let us speak kindly of one whose own breast exuberated with human kindness.

Lecture The Fourth. Prior, Gay, And Pope

Matthew Prior was one of those famous and lucky wits of the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, whose name it behoves us not to pass over. Mat was a world-philosopher of no small genius, good nature, and acumen.(108) He loved, he drank, he sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics, “in a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night; on his left hand his Horace, and a friend on his right,” going out of town from the Hague to pass that evening and the ensuing Sunday, boozing at a _Spielhaus_ with his companions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain and with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean master, the charms of his idleness, his retreat, and his Batavian Chloe. A vintner’s son in Whitehall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the Rod, Prior attracted some notice by writing verses at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and, coming up to town, aided Montague(109) in an attack on the noble old English lion John Dryden, in ridicule of whose work, _The Hind and the Panther_, he brought out that remarkable and famous burlesque, _The Town and Country Mouse_. Aren’t you all acquainted with it? Have you not all got it by heart? What! have you never heard of it? See what fame is made of! The wonderful part of the satire was, that, as a natural consequence of _The Town and Country Mouse_, Matthew Prior was made Secretary of Embassy at the Hague! I believe it is dancing, rather than singing, which distinguishes the young English diplomatists of the present day; and have seen them in various parts perform that part of their duty very finely. In Prior’s time it appears a different accomplishment led to preferment. Could you write a copy of Alcaics? that was the question. Could you turn out a neat epigram or two? Could you compose _The Town and Country Mouse_? It is manifest that, by the possession of this faculty, the most difficult treaties, the laws of foreign nations, and the interests of our own, are easily understood. Prior rose in the diplomatic service, and said good things that proved his sense and his spirit. When the apartments at Versailles were shown to him, with the victories of Louis XIV painted on the walls, and Prior was asked whether the palace of the King of England had any such decorations, “The monuments of my master’s actions,” Mat said, of William, whom he cordially revered, “are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.” Bravo, Mat! Prior rose to be full ambassador at Paris,(110) where he somehow was cheated out of his ambassadorial plate; and in a heroic poem, addressed by him to her late lamented Majesty Queen Anne, Mat makes some magnificent allusions to these dishes and spoons, of which Fate had deprived him. All that he wants, he says, is her Majesty’s picture; without that he can’t be happy.

Thee, gracious Anne, thee present I adore: Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and Fate have power Higher to raise the glories of thy reign, In words sublimer and a nobler strain. May future bards the mighty theme rehearse. Here, Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, The votive tablet I suspend.

With that word the poem stops abruptly. The votive tablet is suspended for ever like Mahomet’s coffin. News came that the queen was dead. Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, were left there, hovering to this day, over the votive tablet. The picture was never got any more than the spoons and dishes—the inspiration ceased—the verses were not wanted—the ambassador wasn’t wanted. Poor Mat was recalled from his embassy, suffered disgrace along with his patrons, lived under a sort of cloud ever after, and disappeared in Essex. When deprived of all his pensions and emoluments, the hearty and generous Oxford pensioned him. They played for gallant stakes—the bold men of those days—and lived and gave splendidly.

Johnson quotes from Spence a legend, that Prior, after spending an evening with Harley, St. John, Pope, and Swift, would go off and smoke a pipe with a couple of friends of his, a soldier and his wife, in Long Acre. Those who have not read his late excellency’s poems should be warned that they smack not a little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. Johnson speaks slightingly of his lyrics; but with due deference to the great Samuel, Prior’s seem to me amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems.(111) Horace is always in his mind, and his song, and his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves, and his Epicureanism, bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master. In reading his works, one is struck with their modern air, as well as by their happy similarity to the songs of the charming owner of the Sabine farm. In his verses addressed to Halifax, he says, writing of that endless theme to poets, the vanity of human wishes—

So when in fevered dreams we sink, And, waking, taste what we desire, The real draught but feeds the fire, The dream is better than the drink.

Our hopes like towering falcons aim At objects in an airy height: To stand aloof and view the flight, Is all the pleasure of the game.

Would not you fancy that a poet of our own days was singing? and, in the verses of Chloe weeping and reproaching him for his inconstancy, where he says—

The God of us verse-men, you know, child, the Sun, How after his journey, he sets up his rest. If at morning o’er earth ’tis his fancy to run, At night he declines on his Thetis’s breast.

So, when I am wearied with wandering all day, To thee, my delight, in the evening I come: No matter what beauties I saw in my way; They were but my visits, but thou art my home!

Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war, And let us like Horace and Lydia agree; For thou art a girl as much brighter than her, As he was a poet sublimer than me.

If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior? Love and pleasure find singers in all days. Roses are always blowing and fading—to-day as in that pretty time when Prior sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting their decay—

She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers Pointing, the lovely moralist said; See, friend, in some few leisure hours, See yonder what a change is made!

Ah, me! the blooming pride of May, And that of Beauty are but one: At morn both flourisht, bright and gay, Both fade at evening, pale and gone.

At dawn poor Stella danced and sung, The amorous youth around her bowed, At night her fatal knell was rung; I saw, and kissed her in her shroud.

Such as she is who died to-day, Such I, alas, may be to-morrow: Go, Damon, bid the Muse display The justice of thy Chloe’s sorrow.

Damon’s knell was rung in 1721. May his turf lie lightly on him! _Deus sit propitius huic potatori_, as Walter de Mapes sang.(112) Perhaps Samuel Johnson, who spoke slightingly of Prior’s verses, enjoyed them more than he was willing to own. The old moralist had studied them as well as Mr. Thomas Moore, and defended them, and showed that he remembered them very well too on an occasion when their morality was called in question by that noted puritan, James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck.(113)

In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserved to be a favourite, and to have a good place.(114) In his set all were fond of him. His success offended nobody. He missed a fortune once or twice. He was talked of for Court favour, and hoped to win it; but the Court favour jilted him. Craggs gave him some South-Sea Stock; and at one time Gay had very nearly made his fortune. But Fortune shook her swift wings and jilted him too: and so his friends, instead of being angry with him, and jealous of him, were kind and fond of honest Gay. In the portraits of the literary worthies of the early part of the last century, Gay’s face is the pleasantest perhaps of all. It appears adorned with neither periwig nor nightcap (the full dress and _negligée_ of learning, without which the painters of those days scarcely ever portrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder with an honest boyish glee—an artless sweet humour. He was so kind, so gentle, so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally woebegone at others, such a natural good creature that the Giants loved him. The great Swift was gentle and sportive with him,(115) as the enormous Brobdingnag maids of honour were with little Gulliver. He could frisk and fondle round Pope,(116) and sport, and bark, and caper without offending the most thin-skinned of poets and men; and when he was jilted in that little Court affair of which we have spoken, his warm-hearted patrons the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry(117) (the “Kitty, beautiful and young”, of Prior) pleaded his cause with indignation, and quitted the Court in a huff, carrying off with them into their retirement their kind gentle protégé. With these kind lordly folks, a real Duke and Duchess, as delightful as those who harboured Don Quixote, and loved that dear old Sancho, Gay lived, and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken, and his saucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, and so ended.(118) He became very melancholy and lazy, sadly plethoric, and only occasionally diverting in his latter days. But everybody loved him, and the remembrance of his pretty little tricks; and the raging old Dean of St. Patrick’s, chafing in his banishment, was afraid to open the letter which Pope wrote him, announcing the sad news of the death of Gay.(119)

Swift’s letters to him are beautiful; and having no purpose but kindness in writing to him, no party aim to advocate, or slight or anger to wreak, every word the Dean says to his favourite is natural, trustworthy, and kindly. His admiration for Gay’s parts and honesty, and his laughter at his weaknesses, were alike just and genuine. He paints his character in wonderful pleasant traits of jocular satire. “I writ lately to Mr. Pope,” Swift says, writing to Gay; “I wish you had a little villakin in his neighbourhood; but you are yet too volatile, and any lady with a coach and six horses would carry you to Japan.” “If your ramble,” says Swift, in another letter, “was on horseback, I am glad of it, on account of your health; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between stage-coaches and friends” coaches—for you are as arrant a Cockney as any hosier in Cheapside. I have often had it in my head to put it into yours, that you ought to have some great work in scheme, which may take up seven years to finish, besides two or three under-ones that may add another thousand pounds to your stock, and then I shall be in less pain about you. I know you can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well, without considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings you but half a crown a day:’ and then Swift goes off from Gay to pay some grand compliments to her Grace the Duchess of Queensberry, in whose sunshine Mr. Gay was basking, and in whose radiance the Dean would have liked to warm himself too.

But we have Gay here before us, in these letters—lazy, kindly, uncommonly idle; rather slovenly, I’m afraid; for ever eating and saying good things; a little, round, French abbé of a man, sleek, soft-handed, and soft-hearted.

Our object in these lectures is rather to describe the men than their works; or to deal with the latter only in as far as they seem to illustrate the character of their writers. Mr. Gay’s _Fables_, which were written to benefit that amiable prince, the Duke of Cumberland, the warrior of Dettingen and Culloden, I have not, I own, been able to peruse since a period of very early youth; and it must be confessed that they did not effect much benefit upon the illustrious young prince, whose manners they were intended to mollify, and whose natural ferocity our gentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. But the six pastorals called the _Shepherd’s Week_, and the burlesque poem of _Trivia_ any man fond of lazy literature will find delightful, at the present day, and must read from beginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry what charming little Dresden china figures are to sculpture: graceful, minikin, fantastic; with a certain beauty always accompanying them. The pretty little personages of the pastoral, with gold clocks to their stockings, and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks and waistcoats and bodices, dance their loves to a minuet-tune played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer, or rush from the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and die of despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles; or repose, simpering at each other, under an arbour of pea-green crockery; or piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best Naples in a stream of Bergamot. Gay’s gay plan seems to me far pleasanter than that of Philips—his rival and Pope’s—a serious and dreary idyllic Cockney; not that Gay’s “Bumkinets and Hobnelias” are a whit more natural than the would-be serious characters of the other posture-master; but the quality of this true humourist was to laugh and make laugh, though always with a secret kindness and tenderness, to perform the drollest little antics and capers, but always with a certain grace, and to sweet music—as you may have seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, turning over head and heels, or clattering and piroueting in a pair of wooden shoes, yet always with a look of love and appeal in his bright eyes, and a smile that asks and wins affection and protection. Happy they who have that sweet gift of nature! It was this which made the great folks and Court ladies free and friendly with John Gay—which made Pope and Arbuthnot love him—which melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought of him—and drove away, for a moment or two, the dark frenzies which obscured the lonely tyrant’s brain, as he heard Gay’s voice with its simple melody and artless ringing laughter.

What used to be said about Rubini, _qu’il avait des larmes dans la voix_, may be said of Gay,(120) and of one other humourist of whom we shall have to speak. In almost every ballad of his, however slight,(121) in the _Beggar’s __ Opera_(122) and in its wearisome continuation (where the verses are to the full as pretty as in the first piece, however), there is a peculiar, hinted, pathetic sweetness and melody. It charms and melts you. It’s indefinable, but it exists; and is the property of John Gay’s and Oliver Goldsmith’s best verse, as fragrance is of a violet, or freshness of a rose.

Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so famous that most people here are no doubt familiar with it, but so delightful that it is always pleasant to hear:—

“I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord Harcourt’s, which he lent me. It overlooks a common hayfield, where, under the shade of a haycock, sat two lovers—as constant as ever were found in romance—beneath a spreading bush. The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet; of the other Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about five-and-twenty; Sarah, a brave woman of eighteen. John had for several months borne the labour of the day in the same field with Sarah; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows to her pails. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighbourhood, for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he had obtained her parents’ consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding clothes; and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field-flowers, to make her a present of knots for the day. While they were thus employed (it was on the last of July), a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath, sunk on a hay-cock; and John (who never separated from her) sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together, to secure her. Immediately, there was heard so loud a crash, as if heaven had burst asunder. The labourers, all solicitous for each other’s safety, called to one another: those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stepped to the place where they lay: they first saw a little smoke, and after, this faithful pair—John, with one arm about his Sarah’s neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring on their bodies—only that Sarah’s eyebrow was a little singed, and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in one grave!”

And the proof that this description is delightful and beautiful is, that the great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he thought proper to steal it and to send it off to a certain lady and wit, with whom he pretended to be in love in those days—my Lord Duke of Kingston’s daughter, and married to Mr. Wortley Montagu, then his Majesty’s Ambassador at Constantinople.

We are now come to the greatest name on our list—the highest among the poets, the highest among the English wits and humourists with whom we have to rank him. If the author of the _Dunciad_ be not a humourist, if the poet of the _Rape of the Lock_ be not a wit, who deserves to be called so? Besides that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both of which we should respect him, men of letters should admire him as being the greatest literary _artist_ that England has seen. He polished, he refined, he thought; he took thoughts from other works to adorn and complete his own; borrowing an idea or a cadence from another poet as he would a figure or a simile from a flower, river, stream, or any object which struck him in his walk, or contemplation of Nature. He began to imitate at an early age;(123) and taught himself to write by copying printed books. Then he passed into the hands of the priests, and from his first clerical master, who came to him when he was eight years old, he went to a school at Twyford, and another school at Hyde Park, at which places he unlearned all that he had got from his first instructor. At twelve years old, he went with his father into Windsor Forest, and there learned for a few months under a fourth priest. “And this was all the teaching I ever had,” he said, “and God knows it extended a very little way.”

When he had done with his priests he took to reading by himself, for which he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. He learned versification from Dryden, he said. In his youthful poem of _Alcander_, he imitated every poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statius, Homer, Virgil. In a few years he had dipped into a great number of the English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. “This I did,” he says, “without any design, except to amuse myself; and got the languages by hunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than read the books to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fell in his way. These five or six years I looked upon as the happiest in my life.” Is not here a beautiful holiday picture? The forest and the fairy story-book—the boy spelling Ariosto or Virgil under the trees, battling with the Cid for the love of Chimène, or dreaming of Armida’s garden—peace and sunshine round about—the kindest love and tenderness waiting for him at his quiet home yonder—and Genius throbbing in his young heart, and whispering to him, “You shall be great; you shall be famous; you, too, shall love and sing; you will sing her so nobly that some kind heart shall forget you are weak and ill-formed. Every poet had a love. Fate must give one to you too,”—and day by day he walks the forest, very likely looking out for that charmer. “They were the happiest days of his life,” he says, when he was only dreaming of his fame: when he had gained that mistress she was no consoler.

That charmer made her appearance, it would seem, about the year 1705, when Pope was seventeen. Letters of his are extant, addressed to a certain Lady M——, whom the youth courted, and to whom he expressed his ardour in language, to say no worse of it, that is entirely pert, odious, and affected. He imitated love compositions as he had been imitating love poems just before—it was a sham mistress he courted, and a sham passion, expressed as became it. These unlucky letters found their way into print years afterwards, and were sold to the congenial Mr. Curll. If any of my hearers, as I hope they may, should take a fancy to look at Pope’s correspondence, let them pass over that first part of it; over, perhaps, almost all Pope’s letters to women; in which there is a tone of not pleasant gallantry, and, amidst a profusion of compliments and politenesses, a something which makes one distrust the little pert, prurient bard. There is very little indeed to say about his loves, and that little not edifying. He wrote flames and raptures and elaborate verse and prose for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; but that passion probably came to a climax in an impertinence and was extinguished by a box on the ear, or some such rebuff, and he began on a sudden to hate her with a fervour much more genuine than that of his love had been. It was a feeble, puny grimace of love, and paltering with passion. After Mr. Pope had sent off one of his fine compositions to Lady Mary, he made a second draft from the rough copy, and favoured some other friend with it. He was so charmed with the letter of Gay’s, that I have just quoted, that he had copied that and amended it, and sent it to Lady Mary as his own. A gentleman who writes letters _à deux fins_, and after having poured out his heart to the beloved, serves up the same dish _rechauffé_ to a friend, is not very much in earnest about his loves, however much he may be in his piques and vanities when his impertinence gets its due.

But, save that unlucky part of the Pope Correspondence, I do not know, in the range of our literature, volumes more delightful.(124) You live in them in the finest company in the world. A little stately, perhaps; a little _apprêté_ and conscious that they are speaking to whole generations who are listening; but in the tone of their voices—pitched, as no doubt they are, beyond the mere conversation key—in the expression of their thoughts, their various views and natures, there is something generous, and cheering, and ennobling. You are in the society of men who have filled the greatest parts in the world’s story—you are with St. John the statesman; Peterborough the conqueror; Swift, the greatest wit of all times; Gay, the kindliest laugher—it is a privilege to sit in that company. Delightful and generous banquet! with a little faith and a little fancy any one of us here may enjoy it, and conjure up those great figures out of the past, and listen to their wit and wisdom. Mind that there is always a certain _cachet_ about great men—they may be as mean on many points as you or I, but they carry their great air—they speak of common life more largely and generously than common men do—they regard the world with a manlier countenance, and see its real features more fairly than the timid shufflers who only dare to look up at life through blinkers, or to have an opinion when there is a crowd to back it. He who reads these noble records of a past age, salutes and reverences the great spirits who adorn it. You may go home now and talk with St. John; you may take a volume from your library and listen to Swift and Pope.

Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things: narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly. I know nothing in any story more gallant and cheering, than the love and friendship which this company of famous men bore towards one another. There never has been a society of men more friendly, as there never was one more illustrious. Who dares quarrel with Mr. Pope, great and famous himself, for liking the society of men great and famous? and for liking them for the qualities which made them so? A mere pretty fellow from White’s could not have written the _Patriot King_, and would very likely have despised little Mr. Pope, the decrepit Papist, whom the great St. John held to be one of the best and greatest of men: a mere nobleman of the Court could no more have won Barcelona, than he could have written Peterborough’s letters to Pope,(125) which are as witty as Congreve: a mere Irish Dean could not have written _Gulliver_; and all these men loved Pope, and Pope loved all these men. To name his friends is to name the best men of his time. Addison had a senate; Pope reverenced his equals. He spoke of Swift with respect and admiration always. His admiration for Bolingbroke was so great, that when some one said of his friend, “There is something in that great man which looks as if he was placed here by mistake,” “Yes,” Pope answered, “and when the comet appeared to us a month or two ago, I had sometimes an imagination that it might possibly be come to carry him home, as a coach comes to one’s door for visitors.” So these great spirits spoke of one another. Show me six of the dullest middle-aged gentlemen that ever dawdled round a club-table, so faithful and so friendly.

We have said before that the chief wits of this time, with the exception of Congreve, were what we should now call men’s men. They spent many hours of the four-and-twenty, a fourth part of each day nearly, in clubs and coffee-houses, where they dined, drank, and smoked. Wit and news went by word of mouth; a journal of 1710 contained the very smallest portion of one or the other. The chiefs spoke, the faithful _habitués_ sat round; strangers came to wonder and listen. Old Dryden had his head quarters at Will’s, in Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street, at which place Pope saw him when he was twelve years old. The company used to assemble on the first floor—what was called the dining-room floor in those days—and sat at various tables smoking their pipes. It is recorded that the beaux of the day thought it a great honour to be allowed to take a pinch out of Dryden’s snuff-box. When Addison began to reign, he with a certain crafty propriety—a policy let us call it—which belonged to his nature, set up his court, and appointed the officers of his royal house. His palace was Button’s, opposite Will’s.(126) A quiet opposition, a silent assertion of empire, distinguished this great man. Addison’s ministers were Budgell, Tickell, Philips, Carey; his master of the horse, honest Dick Steele, who was what Duroc was to Napoleon, or Hardy to Nelson; the man who performed his master’s bidding, and would have cheerfully died in his quarrel. Addison lived with these people for seven or eight hours every day. The male society passed over their punch-bowls and tobacco-pipes about as much time as ladies of that age spent over Spadille and Manille.

For a brief space, upon coming up to town, Pope formed part of King Joseph’s court, and was his rather too eager and obsequious humble servant.(127) Dick Steele, the editor of the _Tatler_, Mr. Addison’s man, and his own man too—a person of no little figure in the world of letters, patronized the young poet, and set him a task or two. Young Mr. Pope did the tasks very quickly and smartly (he had been at the feet quite as a boy of Wycherley’s decrepit reputation, and propped up for a year that doting old wit): he was anxious to be well with the men of letters, to get a footing and a recognition. He thought it an honour to be admitted into their company; to have the confidence of Mr. Addison’s friend, Captain Steele. His eminent parts obtained for him the honour of heralding Addison’s triumph of _Cato_ with his admirable prologue, and heading the victorious procession as it were. Not content with this act of homage and admiration, he wanted to distinguish himself by assaulting Addison’s enemies, and attacked John Dennis with a prose lampoon, which highly offended his lofty patron. Mr. Steele was instructed to write to Mr. Dennis and inform him that Mr. Pope’s pamphlet against him was written quite without Mr. Addison’s approval.(128) Indeed, _The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Phrenzy of J. D._ is a vulgar and mean satire, and such a blow as the magnificent Addison could never desire to see any partisan of his strike in any literary quarrel. Pope was closely allied with Swift when he wrote this pamphlet. It is so dirty that it has been printed in Swift’s works, too. It bears the foul marks of the master hand. Swift admired and enjoyed with all his heart the prodigious genius of the young Papist lad out of Windsor Forest, who had never seen a university in his life, and came and conquered the Dons and the doctors with his wit. He applauded, and loved him, too, and protected him, and taught him mischief. I wish Addison could have loved him better. The best satire that ever has been penned would never have been written then; and one of the best characters the world ever knew would have been without a flaw. But he who had so few equals could not bear one, and Pope was more than that. When Pope, trying for himself, and soaring on his immortal young wings, found that his, too, was a genius, which no opinion of that age could follow, he rose and left Addison’s company, settling on his own eminence, and singing his own song.

It was not possible that Pope should remain a retainer of Mr. Addison; nor likely that after escaping from his vassalage and assuming an independent crown, the sovereign whose allegiance he quitted should view him amicably.(129) They did not do wrong to mislike each other. They but followed the impulse of nature, and the consequence of position. When Bernadotte became heir to a throne, the Prince Royal of Sweden was naturally Napoleon’s enemy. “There are many passions and tempers of mankind,” says Mr. Addison in the _Spectator_, speaking a couple of years before their little differences between him and Mr. Pope took place, “which naturally dispose us to depress and vilify the merit of one rising in the esteem of mankind. All those who made their entrance into the world with the same advantages, and were once looked on as his equals, are apt to think the fame of his merits a reflection on their own deserts. Those who were once his equals envy and defame him, because they now see him the superior; and those who were once his superiors, because they look upon him as their equal.” Did Mr. Addison, justly perhaps thinking that, as young Mr. Pope had not had the benefit of a university education, he couldn’t know Greek, therefore he couldn’t translate Homer, encourage his young friend Mr. Tickell, of Queen’s, to translate that poet, and aid him with his own known scholarship and skill?(130) It was natural that Mr. Addison should doubt of the learning of an amateur Grecian, should have a high opinion of Mr. Tickell, of Queen’s, and should help that ingenious young man. It was natural, on the other hand, that Mr. Pope and Mr. Pope’s friends should believe that this counter-translation, suddenly advertised and so long written, though Tickell’s college friends had never heard of it—though, when Pope first wrote to Addison regarding his scheme, Mr. Addison knew nothing of the similar project of Tickell, of Queen’s—it was natural that Mr. Pope and his friends, having interests, passions, and prejudices of their own, should believe that Tickell’s translation was but an act of opposition against Pope, and that they should call Mr. Tickell’s emulation Mr. Addison’s envy—if envy it were.

And were there one whose fires True genius kindles and fair fame inspires, Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease; Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne; View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes, And hate, for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame as to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne’er obliged; Like Cato give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause; While wits and templars every sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise; Who but must laugh if such a man there be, Who would not weep if Atticus were he?

“I sent the verses to Mr. Addison,” said Pope, “and he used me very civilly ever after.” No wonder he did. It was shame very likely more than fear that silenced him. Johnson recounts an interview between Pope and Addison after their quarrel, in which Pope was angry, and Addison tried to be contemptuous and calm. Such a weapon as Pope’s must have pierced any scorn. It flashes for ever, and quivers in Addison’s memory. His great figure looks out on us from the past—stainless but for that—pale, calm, and beautiful; it bleeds from that black wound. He should be drawn, like St. Sebastian, with that arrow in his side. As he sent to Gay and asked his pardon, as he bade his stepson come and see his death, be sure he had forgiven Pope, when he made ready to show how a Christian could die.

Pope then formed part of the Addisonian court for a short time, and describes himself in his letters as sitting with that coterie until two o’clock in the morning over punch and burgundy amidst the fumes of tobacco. To use an expression of the present day, the “pace” of those _viveurs_ of the former age was awful. Peterborough lived into the very jaws of death; Godolphin laboured all day and gambled at night; Bolingbroke,(131) writing to Swift, from Dawley, in his retirement, dating his letter at six o’clock in the morning, and rising, as he says, refreshed, serene, and calm, calls to mind the time of his London life; when about that hour he used to be going to bed, surfeited with pleasure, and jaded with business; his head often full of schemes, and his heart as often full of anxiety. It was too hard, too coarse a life for the sensitive, sickly Pope. He was the only wit of the day, a friend writes to me, who wasn’t fat.(132) Swift was fat; Addison was fat; Steele was fat; Gay and Thomson were preposterously fat—all that fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, shortened the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age. Pope withdrew in a great measure from this boisterous London company, and being put into an independence by the gallant exertions of Swift(133) and his private friends, and by the enthusiastic national admiration which justly rewarded his great achievement of the _Iliad_, purchased that famous villa of Twickenham which his song and life celebrated; duteously bringing his old parents to live and die there, entertaining his friends there, and making occasional visits to London in his little chariot, in which Atterbury compared him to “Homer in a nutshell”.

“Mr. Dryden was not a genteel man,” Pope quaintly said to Spence, speaking of the manner and habits of the famous old patriarch of Will’s. With regard to Pope’s own manners, we have the best contemporary authority that they were singularly refined and polished. With his extraordinary sensibility, with his known tastes, with his delicate frame, with his power and dread of ridicule, Pope could have been no other than what we call a highly-bred person. His closest friends, with the exception of Swift, were among the delights and ornaments of the polished society of their age. Garth,(134) the accomplished and benevolent, whom Steele has described so charmingly, of whom Codrington said that his character was “all beauty”, and whom Pope himself called the best of Christians without knowing it; Arbuthnot,(135) one of the wisest, wittiest, most accomplished, gentlest of mankind; Bolingbroke, the Alcibiades of his age; the generous Oxford; the magnificent, the witty, the famous, and chivalrous Peterborough: these were the fast and faithful friends of Pope, the most brilliant company of friends, let us repeat, that the world has ever seen. The favourite recreation of his leisure hours was the society of painters, whose art he practised. In his correspondence are letters between him and Jervas, whose pupil he loved to be—Richardson, a celebrated artist of his time, and who painted for him a portrait of his old mother, and for whose picture he asked and thanked Richardson in one of the most delightful letters that ever was penned,(136)—and the wonderful Kneller, who bragged more, spelt worse, and painted better than any artist of his day.(137)

It is affecting to note, through Pope’s correspondence, the marked way in which his friends, the greatest, the most famous, and wittiest men of the time—generals and statesmen, philosophers and divines—all have a kind word, and a kind thought for the good simple old mother, whom Pope tended so affectionately. Those men would have scarcely valued her, but that they knew how much he loved her, and that they pleased him by thinking of her. If his early letters to women are affected and insincere, whenever he speaks about this one, it is with a childish tenderness and an almost sacred simplicity. In 1713, when young Mr. Pope had, by a series of the most astonishing victories and dazzling achievements, seized the crown of poetry; and the town was in an uproar of admiration, or hostility, for the young chief; when Pope was issuing his famous decrees for the translation of the _Iliad_; when Dennis and the lower critics were hooting and assailing him; when Addison and the gentlemen of his court were sneering with sickening hearts at the prodigious triumphs of the young conqueror; when Pope, in a fever of victory, and genius, and hope, and anger, was struggling through the crowd of shouting friends and furious detractors to his temple of Fame, his old mother writes from the country, “My deare,” says she, “my deare, there’s Mr. Blount, of Mapel Durom, dead the same day that Mr. Inglefield died. Your sister is well; but your brother is sick. My service to Mrs. Blount, and all that ask of me. I hope to hear from you, and that you are well, which is my daily prayer; and this with my blessing.” The triumph marches by, and the car of the young conqueror, the hero of a hundred brilliant victories—the fond mother sits in the quiet cottage at home, and says, “I send you my daily prayers, and I bless you, my deare”.

In our estimate of Pope’s character, let us always take into account that constant tenderness and fidelity of affection which pervaded and sanctified his life, and never forget that maternal benediction.(138) It accompanied him always: his life seems purified by those artless and heartfelt prayers. And he seems to have received and deserved the fond attachment of the other members of his family. It is not a little touching to read in Spence of the enthusiastic admiration with which his half-sister regarded him, and the simple anecdote by which she illustrates her love. “I think no man was ever so little fond of money.” Mrs. Rackett says about her brother, “I think my brother when he was young read more books than any man in the world”; and she falls to telling stories of his schooldays, and the manner in which his master at Twyford ill-used him. “I don’t think my brother knew what fear was,” she continues; and the accounts of Pope’s friends bear out this character for courage. When he had exasperated the dunces, and threats of violence and personal assault were brought to him, the dauntless little champion never for one instant allowed fear to disturb him, or condescended to take any guard in his daily walks, except occasionally his faithful dog to bear him company. “I had rather die at once,” said the gallant little cripple, “than live in fear of those rascals.”

As for his death, it was what the noble Arbuthnot asked and enjoyed for himself—a euthanasia—a beautiful end. A perfect benevolence, affection, serenity, hallowed the departure of that high soul. Even in the very hallucinations of his brain, and weaknesses of his delirium, there was something almost sacred. Spence describes him in his last days, looking up, and with a rapt gaze as if something had suddenly passed before him. He said to me, “What’s that?” pointing into the air with a very steady regard, and then looked down and said, with a smile of the greatest softness, “’twas a vision!” He laughed scarcely ever, but his companions describe his countenance as often illuminated by a peculiar sweet smile.

“When,” said Spence,(139) the kind anecdotist whom Johnson despised, “when I was telling Lord Bolingbroke that Mr. Pope, on every catching and recovery of his mind, was always saying something kindly of his present or absent friends; and that this was so surprising, as it seemed to me as if humanity had outlasted understanding, Lord Bolingbroke said, ‘It has so,’ and then added, ‘I never in my life knew a man who had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that man’s love than——’ Here,” Spence says, “St. John sunk his head, and lost his voice in tears.” The sob which finishes the epitaph is finer than words. It is the cloak thrown over the father’s face in the famous Greek picture which hides the grief and heightens it.

In Johnson’s _Life of Pope_, you will find described with rather a malicious minuteness some of the personal habits and infirmities of the great little Pope. His body was crooked, he was so short that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to place him on a level with other people at table.(140) He was sewed up in a buckram suit every morning and required a nurse like a child. His contemporaries reviled these misfortunes with a strange acrimony, and made his poor deformed person the butt for many a bolt of heavy wit. The facetious Mr. Dennis, in speaking of him, says, “If you take the first letter of Mr. Alexander Pope’s Christian name, and the first and last letters of his surname, you have A. P. E.” Pope catalogues, at the end of the _Dunciad_, with a rueful precision, other pretty names, besides Ape, which Dennis called him. That great critic pronounced Mr. Pope was a little ass, a fool, a coward, a Papist, and therefore a hater of Scripture, and so forth. It must be remembered that the pillory was a flourishing and popular institution in those days. Authors stood in it in the body sometimes: and dragged their enemies thither morally, hooted them with foul abuse, and assailed them with garbage of the gutter. Poor Pope’s figure was an easy one for those clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid hand could draw a hunchback, and write Pope underneath. They did. A libel was published against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This kind of rude jesting was an evidence not only of an ill nature, but a dull one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks out into a laugh, it is some very obvious combination of words, or discrepancy of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or tickles the boorish wag; and many of Pope’s revilers laughed, not so much because they were wicked, as because they knew no better.

Without the utmost sensibility, Pope could not have been the poet he was; and through his life, however much he protested that he disregarded their abuse, the coarse ridicule of his opponents stung and tore him. One of Cibber’s pamphlets coming into Pope’s hands, whilst Richardson the painter was with him, Pope turned round and said, “These things are my diversions;” and Richardson, sitting by whilst Pope perused the libel, said he saw his features “writhing with anguish”. How little human nature changes! Can’t one see that little figure? Can’t one fancy one is reading Horace? Can’t one fancy one is speaking of to-day?

The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which led him to cultivate the society of persons of fine manners, or wit, or taste, or beauty, caused him to shrink equally from that shabby and boisterous crew which formed the rank and file of literature in his time: and he was as unjust to these men as they to him. The delicate little creature sickened at habits and company which were quite tolerable to robuster men: and in the famous feud between Pope and the Dunces, and without attributing any peculiar wrong to either, one can quite understand how the two parties should so hate each other. As I fancy, it was a sort of necessity that when Pope’s triumph passed, Mr. Addison and his men should look rather contemptuously down on it from their balcony; so it was natural for Dennis and Tibbald, and Welsted, and Cibber, and the worn and hungry pressmen in the crowd below, to howl at him and assail him. And Pope was more savage to Grub Street than Grub Street was to Pope. The thong with which he lashed them was dreadful; he fired upon that howling crew such shafts of flame and poison, he slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the _Dunciad_ and the prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side against the ruthless little tyrant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon whom he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, and Swift to aid him, who established among us the Grub Street tradition. He revels in base descriptions of poor men’s want; he gloats over poor Dennis’s garret, and flannel nightcap, and red stockings; he gives instructions how to find Curll’s authors, the historian at the tallow-chandler’s under the blind arch in Petty France, the two translators in bed together, the poet in the cock-loft in Budge Row, whose landlady keeps the ladder. It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, more than any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary calling. It was not an unprosperous one before that time, as we have seen; at least there were great prizes in the profession which had made Addison a minister, and Prior an ambassador, and Steele a commissioner, and Swift all but a bishop. The profession of letters was ruined by that libel of the _Dunciad_. If authors were wretched and poor before, if some of them lived in haylofts, of which their landladies kept the ladders, at least nobody came to disturb them in their straw; if three of them had but one coat between them, the two remained invisible in the garret, the third, at any rate, appeared decently at the coffee-house, and paid his twopence like a gentleman. It was Pope that dragged into light all this poverty and meanness, and held up those wretched shifts and rags to public ridicule. It was Pope that has made generations of the reading world (delighted with the mischief, as who would not be that reads it?) believe that author and wretch, author and rags, author and dirt, author and drink, gin, cowheel, tripe, poverty, duns, bailiffs, squalling children and clamorous landladies, were always associated together. The condition of authorship began to fall from the days of the _Dunciad_: and I believe in my heart that much of that obloquy which has since pursued our calling was occasioned by Pope’s libels and wicked wit. Everybody read those. Everybody was familiarized with the idea of the poor devil, the author. The manner is so captivating that young authors practise it, and begin their career with satire. It is so easy to write, and so pleasant to read! to fire a shot that makes a giant wince, perhaps; and fancy one’s self his conqueror. It is easy to shoot—but not as Pope did—the shafts of his satire rise sublimely: no poet’s verse ever mounted higher than that wonderful flight with which the _Dunciad_ concludes(141):—

She comes, she comes! the sable throne behold! Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old; Before her, Fancy’s gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away; Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As, one by one, at dread Medea’s strain The sick’ning stars fade off the ethereal plain; As Argus’ eyes, by Hermes’ wand oppress’d, Closed one by one to everlasting rest;— Thus, at her fell approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is night. See skulking Faith to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heaped o’er her head; Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause and is no more. Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And, unawares, Morality expires. Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored, Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all.(142)

In these astonishing lines Pope reaches, I think, to the very greatest height which his sublime art has attained, and shows himself the equal of all poets of all times. It is the brightest ardour, the loftiest assertion of truth, the most generous wisdom, illustrated by the noblest poetic figure, and spoken in words the aptest, grandest, and most harmonious. It is heroic courage speaking: a splendid declaration of righteous wrath and war. It is the gage flung down, and the silver trumpet ringing defiance to falsehood and tyranny, deceit, dullness, superstition. It is Truth, the champion, shining and intrepid, and fronting the great world-tyrant with armies of slaves at his back. It is a wonderful and victorious single combat, in that great battle, which has always been waging since society began.

In speaking of a work of consummate art one does not try to show what it actually is, for that were vain; but what it is like, and what are the sensations produced in the mind of him who views it. And in considering Pope’s admirable career, I am forced into similitudes drawn from other courage and greatness, and into comparing him with those who achieved triumphs in actual war. I think of the works of young Pope as I do of the actions of young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their common life you will find frailties and meannesses, as great as the vices and follies of the meanest men. But in the presence of the great occasion, the great soul flashes out, and conquers transcendent. In thinking of the splendour of Pope’s young victories, of his merit, unequalled as his renown, I hail and salute the achieving genius, and do homage to the pen of a hero.

Lecture The Fifth. Hogarth, Smollett, And Fielding

I suppose as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion; bravery and virtue conquer beauty: and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own. There never was perhaps a greatly popular story but this simple plot was carried through it: mere satiric wit is addressed to a class of readers and thinkers quite different to those simple souls who laugh and weep over the novel. I fancy very few ladies indeed, for instance, could be brought to like _Gulliver_ heartily, and (putting the coarseness and difference of manners out of the question) to relish the wonderful satire of _Jonathan Wild_. In that strange apologue, the author takes for a hero the greatest rascal, coward, traitor, tyrant, hypocrite, that his wit and experience, both large in this matter, could enable him to devise or depict; he accompanies this villain through all the actions of his life, with a grinning deference and a wonderful mock respect: and doesn’t leave him, till he is dangling at the gallows, when the satirist makes him a low bow and wishes the scoundrel good day.

It was not by satire of this sort, or by scorn and contempt, that Hogarth achieved his vast popularity and acquired his reputation.(143) His art is quite simple,(144) he speaks popular parables to interest simple hearts and to inspire them with pleasure or pity or warning and terror. Not one of his tales but is as easy as _Goody Two Shoes_; it is the moral of Tommy was a naughty boy and the master flogged him, and Jacky was a good boy and had plum cake, which pervades the whole works of the homely and famous English moralist. And if the moral is written in rather too large letters after the fable, we must remember how simple the scholars and schoolmaster both were, and like neither the less because they are so artless and honest. “It was a maxim of Dr. Harrison’s,” Fielding says in _Amelia_, speaking of the benevolent divine and philosopher who represents the good principle in that novel—“that no man can descend below himself, in doing any act which may contribute to protect an innocent person, _or to bring a rogue to the gallows_.” The moralists of that age had no compunction you see; they had not begun to be sceptical about the theory of punishment, and thought that the hanging of a thief was a spectacle for edification. Masters sent their apprentices, fathers took their children, to see Jack Sheppard or Jonathan Wild hanged, and it was as undoubting subscribers to this moral law, that Fielding wrote and Hogarth painted. Except in one instance, where in the mad-house scene in the _Rake’s Progress_, the girl whom he has ruined is represented as still tending and weeping over him in his insanity, a glimpse of pity for his rogues never seems to enter honest Hogarth’s mind. There’s not the slightest doubt in the breast of the jolly Draco.

The famous set of pictures called “Marriage à la Mode”, and which are exhibited at Marlborough House [1853], in London, contains the most important and highly wrought of the Hogarth comedies. The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between the daughter of a rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, the dissipated son of a gouty old earl. Pride and pomposity appear in every accessory surrounding the earl. He sits in gold lace and velvet—as how should such an earl wear anything but velvet and gold lace? His coronet is everywhere: on his footstool on which reposes one gouty toe turned out; on the sconces and looking-glasses; on the dogs; on his lordship’s very crutches; on his great chair of state and the great baldaquin behind him; under which he sits pointing majestically to his pedigree, which shows that his race is sprung from the loins of William the Conqueror, and confronting the old alderman from the City, who has mounted his sword for the occasion, and wears his alderman’s chain, and has brought a bag full of money, mortgage-deeds, and thousand-pound notes, for the arrangement of the transaction pending between them. Whilst the steward (a Methodist, therefore a hypocrite and cheat, for Hogarth scorned a Papist and a Dissenter) is negotiating between the old couple, their children sit together, united but apart. My lord is admiring his countenance in the glass, while his bride is twiddling her marriage ring on her pocket-handkerchief; and listening with rueful countenance to Counsellor Silvertongue, who has been drawing the settlements. The girl is pretty, but the painter, with a curious watchfulness, has taken care to give her a likeness to her father, as in the young viscount’s face you see a resemblance to the earl, his noble sire. The sense of the coronet pervades the picture, as it is supposed to do the mind of its wearer. The pictures round the room are sly hints indicating the situation of the parties about to marry. A martyr is led to the fire; Andromeda is offered to sacrifice; Judith is going to slay Holofernes. There is the ancestor of the house (in the picture it is the earl himself as a young man), with a comet over his head, indicating that the career of the family is to be brilliant and brief. In the second picture, the old lord must be dead, for madam has now the countess’s coronet over her bed and toilet-glass, and sits listening to that dangerous Counsellor Silvertongue, whose portrait now actually hangs up in her room, whilst the counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by her side, evidently the familiar of the house, and the confidant of the mistress. My lord takes his pleasure elsewhere than at home, whither he returns jaded and tipsy from the “Rose”, to find his wife yawning in her drawing-room, her whist-party over, and the daylight streaming in; or he amuses himself with the very worst company abroad, whilst his wife sits at home listening to foreign singers, or wastes her money at auctions, or, worse still, seeks amusement at masquerades. The dismal end is known. My lord draws upon the counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended whilst endeavouring to escape. My lady goes back perforce to the alderman in the City, and faints upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue’s dying speech at Tyburn, where the counsellor has been executed for sending his lordship out of the world. Moral:—Don’t listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors: don’t marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money: don’t frequent foolish auctions and masquerade balls unknown to your husband: don’t have wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be run through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn. The people are all naughty, and Bogey carries them all off.

In the _Rake’s Progress_, a loose life is ended by a similar sad catastrophe. It is the spendthrift coming into possession of the wealth of the paternal miser; the prodigal surrounded by flatterers, and wasting his substance on the very worst company; the bailiffs, the gambling-house, and Bedlam for an end. In the famous story of Industry and Idleness, the moral is pointed in a manner similarly clear. Fair-haired Frank Goodchild smiles at his work, whilst naughty Tom Idle snores over his loom. Frank reads the edifying ballads of Whittington and the London ’Prentice, whilst that reprobate Tom Idle prefers Moll Flanders, and drinks hugely of beer. Frank goes to church of a Sunday, and warbles hymns from the gallery; while Tom lies on a tombstone outside playing at halfpenny-under-the-hat, with street blackguards, and is deservedly caned by the beadle; Frank is made overseer of the business, whilst Tom is sent to sea. Frank is taken into partnership and marries his master’s daughter, sends out broken victuals to the poor, and listens in his nightcap and gown with the lovely Mrs. Goodchild by his side, to the nuptial music of the City bands and the marrow-bones and cleavers; whilst idle Tom, returned from sea, shudders in a garret lest the officers are coming to take him for picking pockets. The Worshipful Francis Goodchild, Esq., becomes Sheriff of London, and partakes of the most splendid dinners which money can purchase or alderman devour; whilst poor Tom is taken up in a night-cellar, with that one-eyed and disreputable accomplice who first taught him to play chuck-farthing on a Sunday. What happens next? Tom is brought up before the justice of his country, in the person of Mr. Alderman Goodchild, who weeps as he recognizes his old brother ’prentice, as Tom’s one-eyed friend peaches on him, and the clerk makes out the poor rogue’s ticket for Newgate. Then the end comes. Tom goes to Tyburn in a cart with a coffin in it; whilst the Right Honourable Francis Goodchild, Lord Mayor of London, proceeds to his Mansion House, in his gilt coach with four footmen and a sword-bearer, whilst the Companies of London march in the august procession, whilst the trainbands of the City fire their pieces and get drunk in his honour; and O crowning delight and glory of all, whilst his Majesty the King looks out from his royal balcony, with his ribbon on his breast, and his Queen and his star by his side, at the corner house of St. Paul’s Churchyard, where the toy-shop is now.

How the times have changed! The new Post Office now not disadvantageously occupies that spot where the scaffolding is in the picture, where the tipsy trainband-man is lurching against the post, with his wig over one eye, and the ’prentice-boy is trying to kiss the pretty girl in the gallery. Passed away ’prentice-boy and pretty girl! Passed away tipsy trainband-man with wig and bandolier! On the spot where Tom Idle (for whom I have an unaffected pity) made his exit from this wicked world, and where you see the hangman smoking his pipe as he reclines on the gibbet and views the hills of Harrow or Hampstead beyond—a splendid marble arch, a vast and modern city—clean, airy, painted drab, populous with nursery-maids and children, the abodes of wealth and comfort—the elegant, the prosperous, the polite Tyburnia rises, the most respectable district in the habitable globe!

In that last plate of the London Apprentices, in which the apotheosis of the Right Honourable Francis Goodchild is drawn, a ragged fellow is represented in the corner of the simple kindly piece, offering for sale a broadside, purporting to contain an account of the appearance of the ghost of Tom Idle, executed at Tyburn. Could Tom’s ghost have made its appearance in 1847, and not in 1747, what changes would have been remarked by that astonished escaped criminal! Over that road which the hangman used to travel constantly, and the Oxford stage twice a week, go ten thousand carriages every day: over yonder road, by which Dick Turpin fled to Windsor, and Squire Western journeyed into town, when he came to take up his quarters at the Hercules Pillars on the outskirts of London, what a rush of civilization and order flows now! What armies of gentlemen with umbrellas march to banks, and chambers, and counting-houses! What regiments of nursery-maids and pretty infantry; what peaceful processions of policemen, what light broughams and what gay carriages, what swarms of busy apprentices and artificers, riding on omnibus-roofs, pass daily and hourly! Tom Idle’s times are quite changed: many of the institutions gone into disuse which were admired in his day. There’s more pity and kindness and a better chance for poor Tom’s successors now than at that simpler period when Fielding hanged him and Hogarth drew him.

To the student of history, these admirable works must be invaluable, as they give us the most complete and truthful picture of the manners, and even the thoughts, of the past century. We look, and see pass before us the England of a hundred years ago—the peer in his drawing-room, the lady of fashion in her apartment, foreign singers surrounding her, and the chamber filled with gewgaws in the mode of that day; the church, with its quaint florid architecture and singing congregation; the parson with his great wig, and the beadle with his cane: all these are represented before us, and we are sure of the truth of the portrait. We see how the Lord Mayor dines in state; how the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio; how the poor girl beats hemp in Bridewell; how the thief divides his booty and drinks his punch at the night-cellar, and how he finishes his career at the gibbet. We may depend upon the perfect accuracy of these strange and varied portraits of the bygone generation: we see one of Walpole’s Members of Parliament chaired after his election, and the lieges celebrating the event, and drinking confusion to the Pretender: we see the grenadiers and trainbands of the City marching out to meet the enemy; and have before us, with sword and firelock, and white Hanoverian horse embroidered on the cap, the very figures of the men who ran away with Johnny Cope, and who conquered at Culloden.

Posterity has not quite confirmed honest Hogarth’s opinion about his talents for the sublime. Although Swift could not see the difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, posterity has not shared the Dean’s contempt for Handel; the world has discovered a difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, and given a hearty applause and admiration to Hogarth, too, but not exactly as a painter of scriptural subjects, or as a rival of Correggio. It does not take away from one’s liking for the man, or from the moral of his story, or the humour of it—from one’s admiration for the prodigious merit of his performances, to remember that he persisted to the last in believing that the world was in a conspiracy against him with respect to his talents as an historical painter, and that a set of miscreants, as he called them, were employed to run his genius down. They say it was Liston’s firm belief, that he was a great and neglected tragic actor; they say that every one of us believes in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he is something which he is not. One of the most notorious of the “miscreants”, Hogarth says, was Wilkes, who assailed him in the _North Briton_; the other was Churchill, who put the _North Briton_ attack into heroic verse, and published his _Epistle to Hogarth_. Hogarth replied by that caricature of Wilkes, in which the patriot still figures before us, with his Satanic grin and squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which he is represented as a bear with a staff, on which, “Lie the first”, “Lie the second”, “Lie the tenth”, are engraved in unmistakable letters. There is very little mistake about honest Hogarth’s satire: if he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws him with his head almost off; and he tried to do the same for his enemies in this little controversy. “Having an old plate by me,” says he, “with some parts ready, such as the background, and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account, and so patched up a print of Master Churchill, in the character of a bear; the pleasure and pecuniary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as I can expect at my time of life.”

And so he concludes his queer little book of _Anecdotes_: “I have gone through the circumstances of a life which till lately passed pretty much to my own satisfaction, and I hope in no respect injurious to any other man. This I may safely assert, that I have done my best to make those about me tolerably happy, and my greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an intentional injury. What may follow, God knows.”

A queer account still exists of a holiday jaunt taken by Hogarth and four friends of his, who set out, like the redoubted Mr. Pickwick and his companions, but just a hundred years before those heroes; and made an excursion to Gravesend, Rochester, Sheerness; and adjacent places.(145) One of the gentlemen noted down the proceedings of the journey, for which Hogarth and a brother artist made drawings. The book is chiefly curious at this moment from showing the citizen life of those days, and the rough, jolly style of merriment, not of the five companions merely, but of thousands of jolly fellows of their time. Hogarth and his friends, quitting the “Bedford Arms”, Covent Garden, with a song, took water to Billingsgate, exchanging compliments with the bargemen as they went down the river. At Billingsgate, Hogarth made a “caracatura” of a facetious porter, called the Duke of Puddledock, who agreeably entertained the party with the humours of the place. Hence they took a Gravesend boat for themselves; had straw to lie upon, and a tilt over their heads, they say, and went down the river at night, sleeping and singing jolly choruses.

They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their faces and hands, and had their wigs powdered. Then they sallied forth for Rochester on foot, and drank by the way three pots of ale. At one o’clock they went to dinner with excellent port, and a quantity more beer, and afterwards Hogarth and Scott played at hopscotch in the town hall. It would appear that they slept most of them in one room, and the chronicler of the party describes them all as waking at seven o’clock, and telling each other their dreams. You have rough sketches by Hogarth of the incidents of this holiday excursion. The sturdy little painter is seen sprawling over a plank to a boat at Gravesend; the whole company are represented in one design, in a fisherman’s room, where they had all passed the night. One gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself; another is being shaved by the fisherman; a third, with a handkerchief over his bald pate, is taking his breakfast; and Hogarth is sketching the whole scene.

They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, drank to their friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good flip, all singing merrily.

It is a jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high-jinks. These were the manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of his time very likely, of men not very refined, but honest and merry. It is a brave London citizen, with John Bull habits, prejudices, and pleasures.(146)

Of SMOLLETT’S associates and manner of life the author of the admirable _Humphry Clinker_ has given us an interesting account, in that most amusing of novels.(147)

I have no doubt that the above picture is as faithful a one as any from the pencil of his kindred humourist, Hogarth.

We have before us, and painted by his own hand, Tobias Smollett, the manly, kindly, honest, and irascible; worn and battered, but still brave and full of heart, after a long struggle against a hard fortune. His brain had been busied with a hundred different schemes; he had been reviewer and historian, critic, medical writer, poet, pamphleteer. He had fought endless literary battles; and braved and wielded for years the cudgels of controversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those days, and a niggard pay. He was oppressed by illness, age, narrow fortune; but his spirit was still resolute, and his courage steady; the battle over, he could do justice to the enemy with whom he had been so fiercely engaged, and give a not unfriendly grasp to the hand that had mauled him. He is like one of those Scotch cadets, of whom history gives us so many examples, and whom, with a national fidelity, the great Scotch novelist has painted so charmingly. Of gentle birth(148) and narrow means, going out from his northern home to win his fortune in the world, and to fight his way, armed with courage, hunger, and keen wits. His crest is a shattered oak-tree, with green leaves yet springing from it. On his ancient coat-of-arms there is a lion and a horn; this shield of his was battered and dinted in a hundred fights and brawls,(149) through which the stout Scotchman bore it courageously. You see somehow that he is a gentleman, through all his battling and struggling, his poverty, his hard-fought successes, and his defeats. His novels are recollections of his own adventures; his characters drawn, as I should think, from personages with whom he became acquainted in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have had; queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow College—in the country apothecary’s shop; in the gun-room of the man-of-war where he served as surgeon, and in the hard life on shore, where the sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest perceptive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish and delightful broad humour. I think Uncle Bowling, in _Roderick Random_, is as good a character as Squire Western himself; and Mr. Morgan, the Welsh apothecary, is as pleasant as Dr. Caius. What man who has made his inestimable acquaintance—what novel-reader who loves Don Quixote and Major Dalgetty—will refuse his most cordial acknowledgements to the admirable Lieutenant Lismahago? The novel of _Humphry Clinker_ is, I do think, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began. Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble must keep Englishmen on the grin for ages yet to come; and in their letters and the story of their loves there is a perpetual fount of sparkling laughter, as inexhaustible as Bladud’s well.

-------------------------------------

Fielding, too, has described, though with a greater hand, the characters and scenes which he knew and saw. He had more than ordinary opportunities for becoming acquainted with life. His family and education, first—his fortunes and misfortunes afterwards, brought him into the society of every rank and condition of man. He is himself the hero of his books: he is wild Tom Jones, he is wild Captain Booth, less wild, I am glad to think, than his predecessor, at least heartily conscious of demerit, and anxious to amend.

When Fielding first came upon the town in 1727, the recollection of the great wits was still fresh in the coffee-houses and assemblies, and the judges there declared that young Harry Fielding had more spirits and wit than Congreve or any of his brilliant successors. His figure was tall and stalwart; his face handsome, manly, and noble-looking; to the very last days of his life he retained a grandeur of air, and, although worn down by disease, his aspect and presence imposed respect upon the people round about him.

A dispute took place between Mr. Fielding and the captain(150) of the ship in which he was making his last voyage, and Fielding relates how the man finally went down on his knees and begged his passenger’s pardon. He was living up to the last days of his life, and his spirit never gave in. His vital power must have been immensely strong. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu(151) prettily characterizes Fielding and this capacity for happiness which he possessed, in a little notice of his death, when she compares him to Steele, who was as improvident and as happy as he was, and says that both should have gone on living for ever. One can fancy the eagerness and gusto with which a man of Fielding’s frame, with his vast health and robust appetite, his ardent spirits, his joyful humour, and his keen and hearty relish for life, must have seized and drunk that cup of pleasure which the town offered to him. Can any of my hearers remember the youthful feats of a college breakfast—the meats devoured and the cups quaffed in that Homeric feast? I can call to mind some of the heroes of those youthful banquets, and fancy young Fielding from Leyden rushing upon the feast, with his great laugh and immense healthy young appetite, eager and vigorous to enjoy. The young man’s wit and manners made him friends everywhere: he lived with the grand Man’s society of those days; he was courted by peers and men of wealth and fashion. As he had a paternal allowance from his father, General Fielding, which, to use Henry’s own phrase, any man might pay who would; as he liked good wine, good clothes, and good company, which are all expensive articles to purchase, Harry Fielding began to run into debt, and borrow money in that easy manner in which Captain Booth borrows money in the novel: was in nowise particular in accepting a few pieces from the purses of his rich friends, and bore down upon more than one of them, as Walpole tells us only too truly, for a dinner or a guinea. To supply himself with the latter, he began to write theatrical pieces, having already, no doubt, a considerable acquaintance amongst the Oldfields and Bracegirdles behind the scenes. He laughed at these pieces and scorned them. When the audience upon one occasion began to hiss a scene which he was too lazy to correct, and regarding which, when Garrick remonstrated with him, he said that the public was too stupid to find out the badness of his work;—when the audience began to hiss, Fielding said, with characteristic coolness—“They have found it out, have they?” He did not prepare his novels in this way, and with a very different care and interest laid the foundations and built up the edifices of his future fame.

Time and shower have very little damaged those. The fashion and ornaments are, perhaps, of the architecture of that age; but the buildings remain strong and lofty, and of admirable proportions—masterpieces of genius and monuments of workmanlike skill.

I cannot offer or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. Why hide his faults? Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases? Why not show him, like him as he is, not robed in a marble toga, and draped and polished in a heroic attitude, but with inked ruffles, and claret stains on his tarnished laced coat, and on his manly face the marks of good fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care, and wine. Stained as you see him, and worn by care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most precious and splendid human qualities and endowments. He has an admirable natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the happiest satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like a policeman’s lantern. He is one of the manliest and kindliest of human beings: in the midst of all his imperfections, he respects female innocence and infantine tenderness, as you would suppose such a great-hearted, courageous soul would respect and care for them. He could not be so brave, generous, truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, and tender. He will give any man his purse—he can’t help kindness and profusion. He may have low tastes, but not a mean mind; he admires with all his heart good and virtuous men, stoops to no flattery, bears no rancour, disdains all disloyal arts, does his public duty uprightly, is fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work.(152)

If that theory be—and I have no doubt it is—the right and safe one, that human nature is always pleased with the spectacle of innocence rescued by fidelity, purity, and courage; I suppose that of the heroes of Fielding’s three novels, we should like honest Joseph Andrews the best, and Captain Booth the second, and Tom Jones the third.(153)

Joseph Andrews, though he wears Lady Booby’s cast-off livery, is, I think, to the full as polite as Tom Jones in his fustian suit, or Captain Booth in regimentals. He has, like those heroes, large calves, broad shoulders, a high courage, and a handsome face. The accounts of Joseph’s bravery and good qualities; his voice, too musical to halloo to the dogs; his bravery in riding races for the gentlemen of the county, and his constancy in refusing bribes and temptation, have something affecting in their _naiveté_ and freshness, and prepossess one in favour of that handsome young hero. The rustic bloom of Fanny, and the delightful simplicity of Parson Adams are described with a friendliness which wins the reader of their story; we part with them with more regret than from Booth and Jones.

Fielding, no doubt, began to write this novel in ridicule of _Pamela_, for which work one can understand the hearty contempt and antipathy which such an athletic and boisterous genius as Fielding’s must have entertained. He couldn’t do otherwise than laugh at the puny Cockney bookseller, pouring out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a moll-coddle and a milksop. _His_ genius had been nursed on sack-posset, and not on dishes of tea. _His_ muse had sung the loudest in tavern choruses, had seen the daylight streaming in over thousands of emptied bowls, and reeled home to chambers on the shoulders of the watchman. Richardson’s goddess was attended by old maids and dowagers, and fed on muffins and bohea. “Milksop!” roars Harry Fielding, clattering at the timid shop-shutters. “Wretch! Monster! Mohock!” shrieks the sentimental author of _Pamela_;(154) and all the ladies of his court cackle out an affrighted chorus. Fielding proposes to write a book in ridicule of the author, whom he disliked and utterly scorned and laughed at; but he is himself of so generous, jovial, and kindly a turn that he begins to like the characters which he invents, can’t help making them manly and pleasant as well as ridiculous, and before he has done with them all loves them heartily every one.

Richardson’s sickening antipathy for Harry Fielding is quite as natural as the other’s laughter and contempt at the sentimentalist. I have not learned that these likings and dislikings have ceased in the present day: and every author must lay his account not only to misrepresentation but to honest enmity among critics, and to being hated and abused for good as well as for bad reasons. Richardson disliked Fielding’s works quite honestly: Walpole quite honestly spoke of them as vulgar and stupid. Their squeamish stomachs sickened at the rough fare and the rough guests assembled at Fielding’s jolly revel. Indeed the cloth might have been cleaner: and the dinner and the company were scarce such as suited a dandy. The kind and wise old Johnson would not sit down with him.(155) But a greater scholar than Johnson could afford to admire that astonishing genius of Harry Fielding: and we all know the lofty panegyric which Gibbon wrote of him, and which remains a towering monument to the great novelist’s memory. “Our immortal Fielding,” Gibbon writes, “was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Hapsburgh. The successors of Charles V may disdain their brethren of England: but the romance of _Tom Jones_, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of Austria.”

There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. To have your name mentioned by Gibbon, is like having it written on the dome of St. Peter’s. Pilgrims from all the world admire and behold it.

As a picture of manners, the novel of _Tom Jones_ is indeed exquisite: as a work of construction quite a wonder: the by-play of wisdom; the power of observation; the multiplied felicitous turns and thoughts; the varied character of the great Comic Epic keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curiosity.(156) But against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we have a right to put in a protest, and quarrel with the esteem the author evidently has for that character. Charles Lamb says finely of Jones, that a single hearty laugh from him “clears the air”—but then it is in a certain state of the atmosphere. It might clear the air when such personages as Blifil or Lady Bellaston poison it. But I fear very much that (except until the very last scene of the story), when Mr. Jones enters Sophia’s drawing-room, the pure air there is rather tainted with the young gentleman’s tobacco-pipe and punch. I can’t say that I think Mr. Jones a virtuous character; I can’t say but that I think Fielding’s evident liking and admiration for Mr. Jones, shows that the great humourist’s moral sense was blunted by his life, and that here in Art and Ethics, there is a great error. If it is right to have a hero whom we may admire, let us at least take care that he is admirable: if, as is the plan of some authors (a plan decidedly against their interests, be it said), it is propounded that there exists in life no such being, and therefore that in novels, the picture of life, there should appear no such character; then Mr. Thomas Jones becomes an admissible person, and we examine his defects and good qualities, as we do those of Parson Thwackum, or Miss Seagrim. But a hero with a flawed reputation; a hero spunging for a guinea; a hero who can’t pay his landlady, and is obliged to let his honour out to hire, is absurd, and his claim to heroic rank untenable. I protest against Mr. Thomas Jones holding such rank at all. I protest even against his being considered a more than ordinary young fellow, ruddy-cheeked, broad-shouldered, and fond of wine and pleasure. He would not rob a church, but that is all; and a pretty long argument may be debated, as to which of these old types, the spendthrift, the hypocrite, Jones and Blifil, Charles and Joseph Surface,—is the worst member of society and the most deserving of censure. The prodigal Captain Booth is a better man than his predecessor Mr. Jones, in so far as he thinks much more humbly of himself than Jones did: goes down on his knees, and owns his weaknesses, and cries out, “Not for my sake, but for the sake of my pure and sweet and beautiful wife Amelia, I pray you, O critical reader, to forgive me.” That stern moralist regards him from the bench (the judge’s practice out of court is not here the question), and says, “Captain Booth, it is perfectly true that your life has been disreputable, and that on many occasions you have shown yourself to be no better than a scamp—you have been tippling at the tavern, when the kindest and sweetest lady in the world has cooked your little supper of boiled mutton and awaited you all the night; you have spoilt the little dish of boiled mutton thereby, and caused pangs and pains to Amelia’s tender heart.(157) You have got into debt without the means of paying it. You have gambled the money with which you ought to have paid your rent. You have spent in drink or in worse amusements the sums which your poor wife has raised upon her little home treasures, her own ornaments, and the toys of her children. But, you rascal! you own humbly that you are no better than you should be; you never for one moment pretend that you are anything but a miserable weak-minded rogue. You do in your heart adore that angelic woman, your wife, and for her sake, sirrah, you shall have your discharge. Lucky for you and for others like you, that in spite of your failings and imperfections, pure hearts pity and love you. For your wife’s sake you are permitted to go hence without a remand; and I beg you, by the way, to carry to that angelical lady the expression of the cordial respect and admiration of this court.” Amelia pleads for her husband Will Booth: Amelia pleads for her reckless kindly old father, Harry Fielding. To have invented that character, is not only a triumph of art but it is a good action. They say it was in his own home that Fielding knew her and loved her: and from his own wife that he drew the most charming character in English fiction—Fiction! why fiction? why not history? I know Amelia just as well as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I believe in Colonel Bath almost as much as in Colonel Gardiner or the Duke of Cumberland. I admire the author of _Amelia_, and thank the kind master who introduced me to that sweet and delightful companion and friend. _Amelia_ perhaps is not a better story than _Tom Jones_, but it has the better ethics; the prodigal repents at least, before forgiveness,—whereas that odious broad-backed Mr. Jones carries off his beauty with scarce an interval of remorse for his manifold errors and shortcomings; and is not half punished enough before the great prize of fortune and love falls to his share. I am angry with Jones. Too much of the plum-cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without a proper sense of decorum; the fond, foolish, palpitating little creature,—“Indeed, Mr. Jones,” she says,—“it rests with you to appoint the day.” I suppose Sophia is drawn from life as well as Amelia; and many a young fellow, no better than Mr. Thomas Jones, has carried by a _coup de main_ the heart of many a kind girl who was a great deal too good for him.

What a wonderful art! What an admirable gift of nature, was it by which the author of these tales was endowed, and which enabled him to fix our interest, to waken our sympathy, to seize upon our credulity, so that we believe in his people—speculate gravely upon their faults or their excellences, prefer this one or that, deplore Jones’s fondness for drink and play, Booth’s fondness for play and drink, and the unfortunate position of the wives of both gentlemen—love and admire those ladies with all our hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted with them this morning in their actual drawing-rooms, or should meet them this afternoon in the Park! What a genius! what a vigour! what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is here!—watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What multitudes of truths has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit! What a courage he had!(158) What a dauntless and constant cheerfulness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck! It is wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the man suffered; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he endured; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melancholy, his view of truth never warped, and his generous human kindness never surrendered.(159)

In the quarrel mentioned before, which happened on Fielding’s last voyage to Lisbon, and when the stout captain of the ship fell down on his knees and asked the sick man’s pardon—“I did not suffer,” Fielding says, in his hearty, manly way, his eyes lighting up as it were with their old fire—“I did not suffer a brave man and an old man to remain a moment in that posture, but immediately forgave him.” Indeed, I think, with his noble spirit and unconquerable generosity, Fielding reminds one of those brave men of whom one reads in stories of English shipwrecks and disasters—of the officer on the African shore, when disease has destroyed the crew, and he himself is seized by fever, who throws the lead with a death-stricken hand, takes the soundings, carries the ship out of the river or off the dangerous coast, and dies in the manly endeavour—of the wounded captain, when the vessel founders, who never loses his heart, who eyes the danger steadily, and has a cheery word for all, until the inevitable fate overwhelms him, and the gallant ship goes down. Such a brave and gentle heart, such an intrepid and courageous spirit, I love to recognize in the manly, the English Harry Fielding.

Lecture The Sixth. Sterne And Goldsmith

Roger Sterne, Sterne’s father, was the second son of a numerous race, descendants of Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, in the reign of James II; and children of Simon Sterne and Mary Jaques, his wife, heiress of Elvington, near York.(160) Roger was a lieutenant in Handyside’s regiment, and engaged in Flanders in Queen Anne’s wars. He married the daughter of a noted sutler—“N.B., he was in debt to him,” his son writes, pursuing the paternal biography—and marched through the world with this companion following the regiment and bringing many children to poor Roger Sterne. The captain was an irascible but kind and simple little man, Sterne says, and informs us that his sire was run through the body at Gibraltar, by a brother officer, in a duel, which arose out of a dispute about a goose. Roger never entirely recovered from the effects of this rencontre, but died presently at Jamaica, whither he had followed the drum.

Laurence, his second child, was born at Clonmel, in Ireland, in 1713, and travelled for the first ten years of his life, on his father’s march, from barrack to transport, from Ireland to England.(161)

One relative of his mother’s took her and her family under shelter for ten months at Mullingar: another collateral descendant of the Archbishop’s housed them for a year at his castle near Carrickfergus. Larry Sterne was put to school at Halifax in England, finally was adopted by his kinsman of Elvington, and parted company with his father, the Captain, who marched on his path of life till he met the fatal goose, which closed his career. The most picturesque and delightful parts of Laurence Sterne’s writings, we owe to his recollections of the military life. Trim’s montero cap, and Le Fevre’s sword, and dear Uncle Toby’s roquelaure, are doubtless reminiscences of the boy, who had lived with the followers of William and Marlborough, and had beat time with his little feet to the fifes of Ramillies in Dublin barrack-yard, or played with the torn flags and halberds of Malplaquet on the parade-ground at Clonmel.

Laurence remained at Halifax school till he was eighteen years old. His wit and cleverness appear to have acquired the respect of his master here: for when the usher whipped Laurence for writing his name on the newly whitewashed schoolroom ceiling, the pedagogue in chief rebuked the under-strapper, and said that the name should never be effaced, for Sterne was a boy of genius, and would come to preferment.

His cousin, the Squire of Elvington, sent Sterne to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he remained five years, and taking orders, got, through his uncle’s interest, the living of Sutton and the prebendary of York. Through his wife’s connexions, he got the living of Stillington. He married her in 1741; having ardently courted the young lady for some years previously. It was not until the young lady fancied herself dying, that she made Sterne acquainted with the extent of her liking for him. One evening when he was sitting with her, with an almost broken heart to see her so ill (the Rev. Mr. Sterne’s heart was a good deal broken in the course of his life), she said—“My dear Laurey, I never can be yours, for I verily believe I have not long to live, but I have left you every shilling of my fortune,” a generosity which overpowered Sterne: she recovered: and so they were married, and grew heartily tired of each other before many years were over. “Nescio quid est materia cum me,” Sterne writes to one of his friends (in dog-Latin, and very sad dog-Latin too), “sed sum fatigatus et aegrotus de mea uxore plus quam unquam,” which means, I am sorry to say, “I don’t know what is the matter with me: but I am more tired and sick of my wife than ever.”(162)

This to be sure was five-and-twenty years after Laurey had been overcome by her generosity and she by Laurey’s love. Then he wrote to her of the delights of marriage, saying—“We will be as merry and as innocent as our first parents in Paradise, before the arch-fiend entered that indescribable scene. The kindest affections will have room to expand in our retirement—let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. has seen a polyanthus blow in December?—Some friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting wind—no planetary influence shall reach us, but that which presides and cherishes the sweetest flowers. The gloomy family of care and distrust shall be banished from our dwelling, guarded by thy kind and tutelar deity—we will sing our choral songs of gratitude and rejoice to the end of our pilgrimage. Adieu, my L. Return to one who languishes for thy society!—As I take up my pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows, and tears are trickling down on my paper as I trace the word L.”

And it is about this woman, with whom he finds no fault, but that she bores him, that our philanthropist writes, “Sum fatigatus et aegrotus”—_Sum mortaliter in amore_ with somebody else! That fine flower of love, that polyanthus over which Sterne snivelled so many tears, could not last for a quarter of a century!

Or rather it could not be expected that a gentleman with such a fountain at command, should keep it to _arroser_ one homely old lady, when a score of younger and prettier people might be refreshed from the same gushing source.(163)

It was in December, 1767, that the Rev. Laurence Sterne, the famous Shandean, the charming Yorick, the delight of the fashionable world, the delicious divine, for whose sermons the whole polite world was subscribing,(164) the occupier of Rabelais’s easy chair, only fresh stuffed and more elegant than when in possession of the cynical old curate of Meudon(165)—the more than rival of the Dean of St. Patrick’s, wrote the above-quoted respectable letter to his friend in London: and it was in April of the same year, that he was pouring out his fond heart to Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, wife of “Daniel Draper, Esq., Counsellor of Bombay, and, in 1775, chief of the factory of Surat—a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of the globe”.

“I got thy letter last night, Eliza,” Sterne writes, “on my return from Lord Bathurst’s, where I dined” (the letter has this merit in it that it contains a pleasant reminiscence of better men than Sterne, and introduces us to a portrait of a kind old gentleman)—“I got thy letter last night, Eliza, on my return from Lord Bathurst’s; and where I was heard—as I talked of thee an hour without intermission—with so much pleasure and attention, that the good old lord toasted your health three different times; and now he is in his 85th year, says he hopes to live long enough to be introduced as a friend to my fair Indian disciple, and to see her eclipse all other Nabobesses as much in wealth, as she does already in exterior, and what is far better” (for Sterne is nothing without his morality)—“and what is far better, in interior merit. This nobleman is an old friend of mine. You know he was always the protector of men of wit and genius, and has had those of the last century, Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Prior, &c., always at his table. The manner in which his notice began of me was as singular as it was polite. He came up to me one day as I was at the Princess of Wales’s court, and said, ‘I want to know you, Mr. Sterne, but it is fit you also should know who it is that wishes this pleasure. You have heard of an old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and Swifts have sung and spoken so much? I have lived my life with geniuses of that cast; but have survived them; and, despairing ever to find their equals, it is some years since I have shut up my books and closed my accounts; but you have kindled a desire in me of opening them once more before I die: which I now do: so go home and dine with me.’ This nobleman, I say, is a prodigy, for he has all the wit and promptness of a man of thirty; a disposition to be pleased, and a power to please others, beyond whatever I knew: added to which a man of learning, courtesy, and feeling.”

“He heard me talk of thee, Eliza, with uncommon satisfaction—for there was only a third person, _and of sensibility_, with us: and a most sentimental afternoon till nine o’clock have we passed!(166) But thou, Eliza! wert the star that conducted and enlivened the discourse! And when I talked not of thee, still didst thou fill my mind, and warm every thought I uttered, for I am not ashamed to acknowledge I greatly miss thee. Best of all good girls!—the sufferings I have sustained all night in consequence of thine, Eliza, are beyond the power of words.... And so thou hast fixed thy Bramin’s portrait over thy writing desk, and will consult it in all doubts and difficulties?—Grateful and good girl! Yorick smiles contentedly over all thou dost: his picture does not do justice to his own complacency. I am glad your shipmates are friendly beings” (Eliza was at Deal, going back to the Counsellor at Bombay, and indeed it was high time she should be off). “You could least dispense with what is contrary to your own nature, which is soft and gentle, Eliza; it would civilize savages—though pity were it thou shouldst be tainted with the office. Write to me, my child, thy delicious letters. Let them speak the easy carelessness of a heart that opens itself anyhow, every how. Such, Eliza, I write to thee!” (The artless rogue, of course he did!) “And so I should ever love thee, most artlessly, most affectionately, if Providence permitted thy residence in the same section of the globe: for I am all that honour and affection can make me ‘THY BRAMIN’.”

The Bramin continues addressing Mrs. Draper until the departure of the _Earl of Chatham_, Indiaman, from Deal, on the 2nd of April, 1767. He is amiably anxious about the fresh paint for Eliza’s cabin; he is uncommonly solicitous about her companions on board: “I fear the best of your shipmates are only genteel by comparison with the contrasted crew with which thou beholdest them. So was—you know who—from the same fallacy which was put upon your judgement when—but I will not mortify you!”

“You know who” was, of course, Daniel Draper, Esq., of Bombay—a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of the globe, and about whose probable health our worthy Bramin writes with delightful candour.

“I honour you, Eliza, for keeping secret some things which, if explained, had been a panegyric on yourself. There is a dignity in venerable affliction which will not allow it to appeal to the world for pity or redress. Well have you supported that character, my amiable, my philosophic friend! And indeed, I begin to think you have as many virtues as my Uncle Toby’s widow. Talking of widows—pray, Eliza, if ever you are such, do not think of giving yourself to some wealthy Nabob, because I design to marry you myself. My wife cannot live long, and I know not the woman I should like so well for her substitute as yourself. ’Tis true I am ninety-five in constitution, and you but twenty-five; but what I want in youth, I will make up in wit and good humour. Not Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Saccharissa. Tell me, in answer to this, that you approve and honour the proposal.”

Approve and honour the proposal! The coward was writing gay letters to his friends this while, with sneering allusions to this poor foolish _Bramine_. Her ship was not out of the Downs, and the charming Sterne was at the “Mount” Coffee-house, with a sheet of gilt-edged paper before him, offering that precious treasure his heart to Lady P——, asking whether it gave her pleasure to see him unhappy? whether it added to her triumph that her eyes and lips had turned a man into a fool?—quoting the Lord’s Prayer, with a horrible baseness of blasphemy, as a proof that he had desired not to be led into temptation, and swearing himself the most tender and sincere fool in the world. It was from his home at Coxwould that he wrote the Latin letter, which, I suppose, he was ashamed to put into English. I find in my copy of the _Letters_, that there is a note of I can’t call it admiration, at Letter 112, which seems to announce that there was a No. 3 to whom the wretched worn-out old scamp was paying his addresses;(167) and the year after, having come back to his lodgings in Bond Street, with his _Sentimental Journey_ to launch upon the town, eager as ever for praise and pleasure; as vain, as wicked, as witty, as false as he had ever been, death at length seized the feeble wretch, and, on the 18th of March, 1768, that “bale of cadaverous goods”, as he calls his body, was consigned to Pluto.(168) In his last letter there is one sign of grace—the real affection with which he entreats a friend to be a guardian to his daughter Lydia.(169) All his letters to her are artless, kind, affectionate, and _not_ sentimental; as a hundred pages in his writings are beautiful, and full, not of surprising humour merely, but of genuine love and kindness. A perilous trade, indeed, is that of a man who has to bring his tears and laughter, his recollections, his personal griefs and joys, his private thoughts and feelings to market, to write them on paper, and sell them for money. Does he exaggerate his grief, so as to get his reader’s pity for a false sensibility? feign indignation, so as to establish a character for virtue? elaborate repartees, so that he may pass for a wit? steal from other authors, and put down the theft to the credit side of his own reputation for ingenuity and learning? feign originality? affect benevolence or misanthropy? appeal to the gallery gods with claptraps and vulgar baits to catch applause?

How much of the paint and emphasis is necessary for the fair business of the stage, and how much of the rant and rouge is put on for the vanity of the actor? His audience trusts him: can he trust himself? How much was deliberate calculation and imposture—how much was false sensibility—and how much true feeling? Where did the lie begin, and did he know where? and where did the truth end in the art and scheme of this man of genius, this actor, this quack? Some time since, I was in the company of a French actor, who began after dinner, and at his own request, to sing French songs of the sort called _des chansons grivoises_, and which he performed admirably, and to the dissatisfaction of most persons present. Having finished these, he commenced a sentimental ballad—it was so charmingly sung that it touched all persons present, and especially the singer himself, whose voice trembled, whose eyes filled with emotion, and who was snivelling and weeping quite genuine tears by the time his own ditty was over. I suppose Sterne had this artistical sensibility; he used to blubber perpetually in his study, and finding his tears infectious, and that they brought him a great popularity, he exercised the lucrative gift of weeping; he utilized it, and cried on every occasion. I own that I don’t value or respect much the cheap dribble of those fountains. He fatigues me with his perpetual disquiet and his uneasy appeals to my risible or sentimental faculties. He is always looking in my face, watching his effect, uncertain whether I think him an impostor or not; posture-making, coaxing, and imploring me. “See what sensibility I have—own now that I’m very clever—do cry now, you can’t resist this.” The humour of Swift and Rabelais, whom he pretended to succeed, poured from them as naturally as song does from a bird; they lose no manly dignity with it, but laugh their hearty great laugh out of their broad chests as nature bade them. But this man—who can make you laugh, who can make you cry, too—never lets his reader alone, or will permit his audience repose: when you are quiet, he fancies he must rouse you, and turns over head and heels, or sidles up and whispers a nasty story. The man is a great jester, not a great humourist. He goes to work systematically and of cold blood; paints his face, puts on his ruff and motley clothes, and lays down his carpet and tumbles on it.

For instance, take the _Sentimental Journey_, and see in the writer the deliberate propensity to make points and seek applause. He gets to Dessein’s Hotel, he wants a carriage to travel to Paris, he goes to the inn-yard, and begins what the actors call “business” at once. There is that little carriage the _désobligeant_. “Four months had elapsed since it had finished its career of Europe in the corner of Monsieur Dessein’s courtyard, and having sallied out thence but a vamped-up business at first, though it had been twice taken to pieces on Mount Sennis, it had not profited much by its adventures, but by none so little as the standing so many months unpitied in the corner of Monsieur Dessein’s coachyard. Much, indeed, was not to be said for it—but something might—and when a few words will rescue misery out of her distress, I hate the man who can be a churl of them.”

_Le tour est fait!_ Paillasse has tumbled! Paillasse has jumped over the _désobligeant_, cleared it, hood and all, and bows to the noble company. Does anybody believe that this is a real Sentiment? that this luxury of generosity, this gallant rescue of Misery—out of an old cab, is genuine feeling? It is as genuine as the virtuous oratory of Joseph Surface when he begins, “The man who,” &c. &c., and wishes to pass off for a saint with his credulous, good-humoured dupes.

Our friend purchases the carriage—after turning that notorious old monk to good account, and effecting (like a soft and good-natured Paillasse as he was, and very free with his money when he had it), an exchange of snuff-boxes with the old Franciscan, jogs out of Calais; sets down in immense figures on the credit side of his account the sous he gives away to the Montreuil beggars; and, at Nampont, gets out of the chaise and whimpers over that famous dead donkey, for which any sentimentalist may cry who will. It is agreeably and skilfully done—that dead jackass; like M. de Soubise’s cook, on the campaign, Sterne dresses it, and serves it up quite tender and with a very piquante sauce. But tears, and fine feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, and horses and feathers, and a procession of mutes, and a hearse with a dead donkey inside! Psha! Mountebank! I’ll not give thee one penny more for that trick, donkey and all!

This donkey had appeared once before with signal effect. In 1765, three years before the publication of the _Sentimental Journey_, the seventh and eighth volumes of _Tristram Shandy_ were given to the world, and the famous Lyons donkey makes his entry in those volumes (pp. 315, 316):—

“’Twas by a poor ass, with a couple of large panniers at his back, who had just turned in to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious, with his two forefeet at the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to go in or no.

“Now ’tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike; there is a patient endurance of suffering wrote so unaffectedly in his looks and carriage which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me, and to that degree that I do not like to speak unkindly to him: on the contrary, meet him where I will, whether in town or country, in cart or under panniers, whether in liberty or bondage, I have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and, as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as I), I generally fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing responses from the etchings of his countenance; and where those carry me not deep enough, in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to think—as well as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of beings below me with whom I can do this.... With an ass I can commune for ever.

“ ‘Come, Honesty,’ said I, seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate, ‘art thou for coming in or going out?’

“The ass twisted his head round to look up the street.

“ ‘Well!’ replied I, ‘we’ll wait a minute for thy driver.’

“He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the opposite way.

“ ‘I understand thee perfectly,’ answered I: ‘if thou takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death. Well! a minute is but a minute; and if it saves a fellow creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill spent.’

“He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and, in the little peevish contentions between hunger and unsavouriness, had dropped it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and had picked it up again. ‘God help thee, Jack!’ said I, ‘thou hast a bitter breakfast on’t—and many a bitter day’s labour, and many a bitter blow, I fear, for its wages! ’Tis all, all bitterness to thee—whatever life is to others! And now thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter. I dare say, as soot’ (for he had cast aside the stem), ‘and thou hast not a friend perhaps in all this world that will give thee a macaroon.’ In saying this, I pulled out a paper of ’em, which I had just bought, and gave him one;—and, at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit of seeing _how_ an ass would eat a macaroon than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act.

“When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to come in. The poor beast was heavy loaded—his legs seemed to tremble under him—he hung rather backward, and, as I pulled at his halter, it broke in my hand. He looked up pensive in my face: ‘Don’t thrash me with it: but if you will you may.’ ‘If I do,’ said I, ‘I’ll be d——.’ ”

A critic who refuses to see in this charming description wit, humour, pathos, a kind nature speaking, and a real sentiment, must be hard indeed to move and to please. A page or two farther we come to a description not less beautiful—a landscape and figures, deliciously painted by one who had the keenest enjoyment and the most tremulous sensibility:—

“’Twas in the road between Nismes and Lunel, where is the best Muscatto wine in all France: the sun was set, they had done their work; the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh, and the swains were preparing for a carousal. My mule made a dead point. ‘’Tis the pipe and tambourine,’ said I—‘I never will argue a point with one of your family as long as I live;’ so leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch and t’other into that, ‘I’ll take a dance,’ said I, ‘so stay you here.’

“A sunburnt daughter of labour rose up from the group to meet me as I advanced towards them; her hair, which was of a dark chestnut approaching to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a single tress.

“ ‘We want a cavalier,’ said she, holding out both her hands, as if to offer them. ‘And a cavalier you shall have,’ said I, taking hold of both of them. ‘We could not have done without you,’ said she, letting go one hand, with self-taught politeness, and leading me up with the other.

“A lame youth, whom Apollo had recompensed with a pipe, and to which he had added a tambourine of his own accord, ran sweetly over the prelude, as he sat upon the bank. ‘Tie me up this tress instantly,’ said Nannette, putting a piece of string into my hand. It taught me to forget I was a stranger. The whole knot fell down—we had been seven years acquainted. The youth struck the note upon the tambourine, his pipe followed, and off we bounded.

“The sister of the youth—who had stolen her voice from Heaven—sang alternately with her brother. ’Twas a Gascoigne roundelay. ‘_Viva la joia, fidon la tristessa!_’—the nymphs joined in unison, and their swains an octave below them.

“_Viva la joia_ was in Nannette’s lips, _viva la joia_ in her eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us. She looked amiable. Why could I not live and end my days thus? ‘Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows!’ cried I, ‘why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid?’ Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious. ‘Then ’tis time to dance off,’ quoth I.”

And with this pretty dance and chorus, the volume artfully concludes. Even here one can’t give the whole description. There is not a page in Sterne’s writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption—a hint, as of an impure presence.(170)

Some of that dreary _double entendre_ may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours, but not all. The foul Satyr’s eyes leer out of the leaves constantly: the last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked—the last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon. I think of these past writers and of one who lives amongst us now, and am grateful for the innocent laughter and the sweet and unsullied page which the author of _David Copperfield_ gives to my children.

-------------------------------------

Jeté sur cette boule, Laid, chétif et souffrant; Étouffé dans la foule, Faute d’être assez grand;

Une plainte touchante De ma bouche sortit; Le bon Dieu me dit: Chante, Chante, pauvre petit!

Chanter, ou je m’abuse, Est ma tâche ici-bas. Tous ceux qu’ainsi j’amuse, Ne m’aimeront-ils pas?

In those charming lines of Béranger, one may fancy described the career, the sufferings, the genius, the gentle nature of GOLDSMITH, and the esteem in which we hold him. Who, of the millions whom he has amused, doesn’t love him? To be the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is for a man!(171) A wild youth, wayward, but full of tenderness and affection, quits the country village where his boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, and achieve name and fortune—and after years of dire struggle, and neglect and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his native place, as it had longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home—he paints the friends and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. Wander he must, but he carries away a home-relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change: as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday’s elegy; and he would fly away this hour, but that a cage and necessity keep him. What is the charm of his verse, of his style, and humour? His sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he owns? Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the day’s battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon—save the harp on which he plays to you; and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, the captains in the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the women and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story of the _Vicar of Wakefield_,(172) he has found entry into every castle and every hamlet in Europe. Not one of us, however busy or hard, but once or twice in our lives has passed an evening with him, and undergone the charm of his delightful music.

Goldsmith’s father was no doubt the good Doctor Primrose, whom we all of us know.(173) Swift was yet alive, when the little Oliver was born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of Longford, in Ireland. In 1730, two years after the child’s birth, Charles Goldsmith removed his family to Lissoy, in the county Westmeath, that sweet “Auburn” which every person who hears me has seen in fancy. Here the kind parson(174) brought up his eight children; and loving all the world, as his son says, fancied all the world loved him. He had a crowd of poor dependants besides those hungry children. He kept an open table; round which sat flatterers and poor friends, who laughed at the honest rector’s many jokes, and ate the produce of his seventy acres of farm. Those who have seen an Irish house in the present day can fancy that one of Lissoy. The old beggar still has his allotted corner by the kitchen turf; the maimed old soldier still gets his potatoes and buttermilk; the poor cottier still asks his honour’s charity, and prays God bless his Reverence for the sixpence; the ragged pensioner still takes his place by right and sufferance. There’s still a crowd in the kitchen, and a crowd round the parlour-table, profusion, confusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman comes to London to make his fortune, he has a half-dozen of Irish dependants who take a percentage of his earnings. The good Charles Goldsmith(175) left but little provision for his hungry race when death summoned him; and one of his daughters being engaged to a squire of rather superior dignity, Charles Goldsmith impoverished the rest of his family to provide the girl with a dowry.

The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of poor little Oliver’s face, when the child was eight years old, and left him scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman in his father’s village taught him his letters, and pronounced him a dunce: Paddy Byrne, the hedge-schoolmaster, took him in hand; and from Paddy Byrne, he was transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. When a child was sent to school in those days, the classic phrase was that he was placed under Mr. So-and-so’s _ferule_. Poor little ancestors! It is hard to think how ruthlessly you were birched; and how much of needless whipping and tears our small forefathers had to undergo! A relative—kind Uncle Contarine, took the main charge of little Noll; who went through his school-days righteously doing as little work as he could: robbing orchards, playing at ball, and making his pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent it to him. Everybody knows the story of that famous “Mistake of a Night”, when the young schoolboy, provided with a guinea and a nag, rode up to the “best house” in Ardagh, called for the landlord’s company over a bottle of wine at supper, and for a hot cake for breakfast in the morning; and found, when he asked for the bill, that the best house was Squire Featherstone’s, and not the inn for which he mistook it. Who does not know every story about Goldsmith? That is a delightful and fantastic picture of the child dancing and capering about in the kitchen at home, when the old fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness—and called him Aesop, and little Noll made his repartee of “Heralds proclaim aloud this saying—See Aesop dancing and his monkey playing”. One can fancy a queer pitiful look of humour and appeal upon that little scarred face—the funny little dancing figure, the funny little brogue. In his life, and his writings, which are the honest expression of it, he is constantly bewailing that homely face and person; anon, he surveys them in the glass ruefully; and presently assumes the most comical dignity. He likes to deck out his little person in splendour and fine colours. He presented himself to be examined for ordination in a pair of scarlet breeches, and said honestly that he did not like to go into the Church, because he was fond of coloured clothes. When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by crook a black velvet suit, and looked as big and grand as he could, and kept his hat over a patch on the old coat: in better days he bloomed out in plum-colour, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of those splendours the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, the tailor, have never been paid to this day; perhaps the kind tailor and his creditor have met and settled the little account in Hades.(176)

They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dublin, on which the name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a diamond. Whose diamond was it? Not the young sizar’s, who made but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure:(177) he learned his way early to the pawnbroker’s shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the street-singers, who paid him a crown for a poem: and his pleasure was to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear so much to heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property, and disappeared from college and family. He said he intended to go to America, but when his money was spent, the young prodigal came home ruefully, and the good folks there killed their calf—it was but a lean one—and welcomed him back.

After college, he hung about his mother’s house, and lived for some years the life of a buckeen—passed a month with this relation and that, a year with one patron, a great deal of time at the public-house.(178) Tired of this life, it was resolved that he should go to London, and study at the Temple; but he got no farther on the road to London and the woolsack than Dublin, where he gambled away the fifty pounds given to him for his outfit, and whence he returned to the indefatigable forgiveness of home. Then he determined to be a doctor, and Uncle Contarine helped him to a couple of years at Edinburgh. Then from Edinburgh he felt that he ought to hear the famous professors of Leyden and Paris, and wrote most amusing pompous letters to his uncle about the great Farheim, Du Petit, and Duhamel du Monceau, whose lectures he proposed to follow. If Uncle Contarine believed those letters—if Oliver’s mother believed that story which the youth related of his going to Cork, with the purpose of embarking for America, of his having paid his passage-money, and having sent his kit on board; of the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver’s valuable luggage in a nameless ship, never to return; if Uncle Contarine and the mother at Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been a very simple pair; as it was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them. When the lad, after failing in his clerical examination, after failing in his plan for studying the law, took leave of these projects and of his parents, and set out for Edinburgh, he saw mother, and uncle, and lazy Ballymahon, and green native turf, and sparkling river for the last time. He was never to look on old Ireland more, and only in fancy revisit her.

But me not destined such delights to share, My prime of life in wandering spent and care, Impelled, with step unceasing, to pursue Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view;

That like the circle bounding earth and skies Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies: My fortune leads to traverse realms unknown, And find no spot of all the world my own.

I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which enabled Fielding, in spite of disease, remorse, and poverty, always to retain a cheerful spirit and to keep his manly benevolence and love of truth intact, as if these treasures had been confided to him for the public benefit, and he was accountable to posterity for their honourable employ; and a constancy equally happy and admirable I think was shown by Goldsmith, whose sweet and friendly nature bloomed kindly always in the midst of a life’s storm, and rain, and bitter weather.(179) The poor fellow was never so friendless but he could befriend some one; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust, and speak his word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he could give that, and make the children happy in the dreary London court. He could give the coals in that queer coal-scuttle we read of to his poor neighbour: he could give away his blankets in college to the poor widow, and warm himself as he best might in the feathers: he could pawn his coat to save his landlord from gaol: when he was a school-usher, he spent his earnings in treats for the boys, and the good-natured schoolmaster’s wife said justly that she ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith’s money as well as the young gentlemen’s. When he met his pupils in later life, nothing would satisfy the Doctor but he must treat them still. “Have you seen the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds?” he asked of one of his old pupils. “Not seen it? not bought it? Sure, Jack, if your picture had been published, I’d not have been without it half an hour.” His purse and his heart were everybody’s, and his friends’ as much as his own. When he was at the height of his reputation, and the Earl of Northumberland, going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could be of any service to Dr. Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommended his brother, and not himself, to the great man. “My patrons,” he gallantly said, “are the booksellers, and I want no others.”(180) Hard patrons they were, and hard work he did; but he did not complain much: if in his early writings some bitter words escaped him, some allusions to neglect and poverty, he withdrew these expressions when his works were republished, and better days seemed to open for him; and he did not care to complain that printer or publisher had overlooked his merit, or left him poor. The Court face was turned from honest Oliver, the Court patronized Beattie; the fashion did not shine on him—fashion adored Sterne.(181)

Fashion pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of comedy of his day. A little—not ill humour, but plaintiveness—a little betrayal of wounded pride which he showed render him not the less amiable. The author of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ had a right to protest when Newbery kept back the MS. for two years; had a right to be a little peevish with Sterne; a little angry when Colman’s actors declined their parts in his delightful comedy, when the manager refused to have a scene painted for it, and pronounced its damnation before hearing. He had not the great public with him; but he had the noble Johnson, and the admirable Reynolds, and the great Gibbon, and the great Burke, and the great Fox—friends and admirers illustrious indeed, as famous as those who, fifty years before, sat round Pope’s table.

Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith’s buoyant temper kept no account of all the pains which he endured during the early period of his literary career. Should any man of letters in our day have to bear up against such, Heaven grant he may come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure kind heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast. The insults to which he had to submit are shocking to read of—slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest motives and actions: he had his share of these, and one’s anger is roused at reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child assaulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle and weak, and full of love, should have had to suffer so. And he had worse than insult to undergo—to own to fault, and deprecate the anger of ruffians. There is a letter of his extant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in which poor Goldsmith is forced to confess that certain books sent by Griffiths are in the hands of a friend from whom Goldsmith had been forced to borrow money. “He was wild, sir,” Johnson said, speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with his great, wise benevolence and noble mercifulness of heart, “Dr. Goldsmith was wild, sir; but he is so no more.” Ah! if we pity the good and weak man who suffers undeservedly, let us deal very gently with him from whom misery extorts not only tears, but shame; let us think humbly and charitably of the human nature that suffers so sadly and falls so low. Whose turn may it be tomorrow? What weak heart, confident before trial, may not succumb under temptation invincible? Cover the good man who has been vanquished—cover his face and pass on.

For the last half-dozen years of his life, Goldsmith was far removed from the pressure of any ignoble necessity: and in the receipt, indeed, of a pretty large income from the booksellers, his patrons. Had he lived but a few years more, his public fame would have been as great as his private reputation, and he might have enjoyed alive a part of that esteem which his country has ever since paid to the vivid and versatile genius who has touched on almost every subject of literature, and touched nothing that he did not adorn. Except in rare instances, a man is known in our profession, and esteemed as a skilful workman, years before the lucky hit which trebles his usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the strength of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for backers and friends the most illustrious literary men of his time,(182) fame and prosperity might have been in store for Goldsmith, had fate so willed it; and, at forty-six, had not sudden disease carried him off. I say prosperity rather than competence, for it is probable that no sum could have put order into his affairs or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It must be remembered that he owed 2,000_l._ when he died. “Was ever poet,” Johnson asked, “so trusted before?” As has been the case with many another good fellow of his nation, his life was tracked and his substance wasted by crowds of hungry beggars, and lazy dependants. If they came at a lucky time (and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, and watched his pay-day), he gave them of his money: if they begged on empty-purse days he gave them his promissory bills: or he treated them to a tavern where he had credit; or he obliged them with an order upon honest Mr. Filby for coats, for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until the shears of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under a load of debt and labour, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors, running from a hundred poor dependants, whose appealing looks were perhaps the hardest of all pains for him to bear, devising fevered plans for the morrow, new histories, new comedies, all sorts of new literary schemes, flying from all these into seclusion, and out of seclusion into pleasure—at last, at five-and-forty, death seized him and closed his career.(183) I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which were his, and passed up the staircase, which Johnson, and Burke, and Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith—the stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak door.(184) Ah, it was a different lot from that for which the poor fellow sighed, when he wrote with heart yearning for home those most charming of all fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn—

Here as I take my solitary rounds, Amidst thy tangled walks and ruined grounds, And, many a year elapsed, return to view Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train, Swells at my heart, and turns the past to pain.

In all my wanderings round this world of care In all my griefs—and God has given my share, I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; To husband out life’s taper at the close, And keep the flame from wasting by repose; I still had hopes—for pride attends us still— Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt and all I saw; And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue. Pants to the place from whence at first she flew— I still had hopes—my long vexations past, Here to return, and die at home at last.

O blest retirement, friend to life’s decline! Retreats from care that never must be mine— How blest is he who crowns in shades like these, A youth of labour with an age of ease; Who quits a world where strong temptations try, And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly! For him no wretches born to work and weep Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep; No surly porter stands in guilty state To spurn imploring famine from his gate: But on he moves to meet his latter end, Angels around befriending virtue’s friend; Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay, Whilst resignation gently slopes the way; And all his prospects brightening at the last, His heaven commences ere the world be past.

In these verses, I need not say with what melody, with what touching truth, with what exquisite beauty of comparison—as indeed in hundreds more pages of the writings of this honest soul—the whole character of the man is told—his humble confession of faults and weakness; his pleasant little vanity, and desire that his village should admire him; his simple scheme of good in which everybody was to be happy—no beggar was to be refused his dinner—nobody in fact was to work much, and he to be the harmless chief of the Utopia, and the monarch of the Irish Yvetôt. He would have told again, and without fear of their failing, those famous jokes(185) which had hung fire in London; he would have talked of his great friends of the Club—of my Lord Clare and my Lord Bishop, my Lord Nugent—sure he knew them intimately, and was hand and glove with some of the best men in town—and he would have spoken of Johnson and of Burke, from Cork, and of Sir Joshua who had painted him—and he would have told wonderful sly stories of Ranelagh and the Pantheon, and the masquerades at Madame Cornelys’; and he would have toasted, with a sigh, the Jessamy Bride—the lovely Mary Horneck.

The figure of that charming young lady forms one of the prettiest recollections of Goldsmith’s life. She and her beautiful sister, who married Bunbury, the graceful and humorous amateur artist of those days, when Gilray had but just begun to try his powers, were among the kindest and dearest of Goldsmith’s many friends, cheered and pitied him, travelled abroad with him; made him welcome at their home, and gave him many a pleasant holiday. He bought his finest clothes to figure at their country house at Barton—he wrote them droll verses. They loved him, laughed at him, played him tricks and made him happy. He asked for a loan from Garrick, and Garrick kindly supplied him, to enable him to go to Barton—but there were to be no more holidays, and only one brief struggle more for poor Goldsmith—a lock of his hair was taken from the coffin and given to the Jessamy Bride. She lived quite into our time. Hazlitt saw her an old lady, but beautiful still, in Northcote’s painting-room, who told the eager critic how proud she always was that Goldsmith had admired her. The younger Colman has left a touching reminiscence of him (vol. i. 63, 64).

“I was only five years old,” he says, “when Goldsmith took me on his knee one evening whilst he was drinking coffee with my father, and began to play with me, which amiable act I returned, with the ingratitude of a peevish brat, by giving him a very smart slap on the face: it must have been a tingler, for it left the marks of my spiteful paw on his cheek. This infantile outrage was followed by summary justice, and I was locked up by my indignant father in an adjoining room to undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably, which was no bad step towards my liberation, since those who were not inclined to pity me might be likely to set me free for the purpose of abating a nuisance.

“At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy, and that generous friend was no other than the man I had so wantonly molested by assault and battery—it was the tender-hearted Doctor himself, with a lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was still partially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked and sobbed as he fondled and soothed, till I began to brighten. Goldsmith seized the propitious moment of returning good humour, when he put down the candle and began to conjure. He placed three hats, which happened to be in the room, and a shilling under each. The shillings he told me were England, France, and Spain. ‘Hey presto cockalorum!’ cried the Doctor, and lo, on uncovering the shillings, which had been dispersed each beneath a separate hat, they were all found congregated under one. I was no politician at five years old, and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown; but, as also I was no conjurer, it amazed me beyond measure.... From that time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my father, ‘I plucked his gown to share the good man’s smile’; a game at romps constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry playfellows. Our unequal companionship varied somewhat as to sports as I grew older; but it did not last long: my senior playmate died in his forty-fifth year, when I had attained my eleventh.... In all the numerous accounts of his virtues and foibles, his genius and absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance of the world, his ‘compassion for another’s woe’ was always predominant; and my trivial story of his humouring a froward child weighs but as a feather in the recorded scale of his benevolence.”

Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like—but merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him; think of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph—and of the wonderful and unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave it. His humour delighting us still: his song fresh and beautiful as when first he charmed with it: his words in all our mouths: his very weaknesses beloved and familiar—his benevolent spirit seems still to smile upon us: to do gentle kindnesses: to succour with sweet charity: to soothe, caress, and forgive: to plead with the fortunate for the unhappy and the poor.

His name is the last in the list of those men of humour who have formed the themes of the discourses which you have heard so kindly.

-------------------------------------

Long before I had ever hoped for such an audience, or dreamed of the possibility of the good fortune which has brought me so many friends, I was at issue with some of my literary brethren upon a point—which they held from tradition I think rather than experience—that our profession was neglected in this country; and that men of letters were ill-received and held in slight esteem. It would hardly be grateful of me now to alter my old opinion that we do meet with goodwill and kindness, with generous helping hands in the time of our necessity, with cordial and friendly recognition. What claim had any one of these of whom I have been speaking, but genius? What return of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to all?

What punishment befell those who were unfortunate among them, but that which follows reckless habits and careless lives? For these faults a wit must suffer like the dullest prodigal that ever ran in debt. He must pay the tailor if he wears the coat; his children must go in rags if he spends his money at the tavern; he can’t come to London and be made Lord Chancellor if he stops on the road and gambles away his last shilling at Dublin. And he must pay the social penalty of these follies too, and expect that the world will shun the man of bad habits, that women will avoid the man of loose life, that prudent folks will close their doors as a precaution, and before a demand should be made on their pockets by the needy prodigal. With what difficulty had any one of these men to contend, save that eternal and mechanical one of want of means and lack of capital, and of which thousands of young lawyers, young doctors, young soldiers and sailors, of inventors, manufacturers, shopkeepers, have to complain? Hearts as brave and resolute as ever beat in the breast of any wit or poet, sicken and break daily in the vain endeavour and unavailing struggle against life’s difficulty. Don’t we see daily ruined inventors, grey-haired midshipmen, balked heroes, blighted curates, barristers pining a hungry life out in chambers, the attorneys never mounting to their garrets, whilst scores of them are rapping at the door of the successful quack below? If these suffer, who is the author, that he should be exempt? Let us bear our ills with the same constancy with which others endure them, accept our manly part in life, hold our own, and ask no more. I can conceive of no kings or laws causing or curing Goldsmith’s improvidence, or Fielding’s fatal love of pleasure, or Dick Steele’s mania for running races with the constable. You never can outrun that sure-footed officer—not by any swiftness or by dodges devised by any genius, however great; and he carries off the Tatler to the spunging-house, or taps the Citizen of the World on the shoulder as he would any other mortal.

Does society look down on a man because he is an author? I suppose if people want a buffoon they tolerate him only in so far as he is amusing; it can hardly be expected that they should respect him as an equal. Is there to be a guard of honour provided for the author of the last new novel or poem? how long is he to reign, and keep other potentates out of possession? He retires, grumbles, and prints a lamentation that literature is despised. If Captain A. is left out of Lady B.’s parties he does not state that the army is despised: if Lord C. no longer asks Counsellor D. to dinner, Counsellor D. does not announce that the Bar is insulted. He is not fair to society if he enters it with this suspicion hankering about him; if he is doubtful about his reception, how hold up his head honestly, and look frankly in the face that world about which he is full of suspicion? Is he place-hunting, and thinking in his mind that he ought to be made an Ambassador, like Prior, or a Secretary of State, like Addison? his pretence of equality falls to the ground at once: he is scheming for a patron, not shaking the hand of a friend, when he meets the world. Treat such a man as he deserves; laugh at his buffoonery, and give him a dinner and a _bon jour_; laugh at his self-sufficiency and absurd assumptions of superiority, and his equally ludicrous airs of martyrdom: laugh at his flattery and his scheming, and buy it, if it’s worth the having. Let the wag have his dinner and the hireling his pay, if you want him, and make a profound bow to the _grand homme incompris_, and the boisterous martyr, and show him the door. The great world, the great aggregate experience, has its good sense, as it has its good humour. It detects a pretender, as it trusts a loyal heart. It is kind in the main: how should it be otherwise than kind, when it is so wise and clear-headed? To any literary man who says, “It despises my profession,” I say, with all my might—no, no, no. It may pass over your individual case—how many a brave fellow has failed in the race, and perished unknown in the struggle!—but it treats you as you merit in the main. If you serve it, it is not unthankful; if you please it, it is pleased; if you cringe to it, it detects you, and scorns you if you are mean; it returns your cheerfulness with its good humour; it deals not ungenerously with your weaknesses; it recognizes most kindly your merits; it gives you a fair place and fair play. To any one of those men of whom we have spoken was it in the main ungrateful? A king might refuse Goldsmith a pension, as a publisher might keep his masterpiece and the delight of all the world in his desk for two years; but it was mistake, and not ill will. Noble and illustrious names of Swift, and Pope, and Addison! dear and honoured memories of Goldsmith and Fielding! kind friends, teachers, benefactors! who shall say that our country, which continues to bring you such an unceasing tribute of applause, admiration, love, sympathy, does not do honour to the literary calling in the honour which it bestows upon _you!_

THE GEORGES

The Poems

[_Punch_, October 11, 1845]

As the statues of these beloved Monarchs are to be put up in the Parliament palace—we have been favoured by a young lady (connected with the Court) with copies of the inscriptions which are to be engraven under the images of those Stars of Brunswick.

GEORGE I—STAR OF BRUNSWICK

He preferred Hanover to England, He preferred two hideous Mistresses To a beautiful and innocent Wife. He hated Arts and despised Literature; But He liked train-oil in his salads, And gave an enlightened patronage to bad oysters. And he had Walpole as a Minister: Consistent in his Preference for every kind of Corruption.

GEORGE II

In most things I did as my father had done, I was false to my wife and I hated my son:

My spending was small and my avarice much, My kingdom was English, my heart was High Dutch:

At Dettingen fight I was known not to blench I butchered the Scotch, and I bearded the French:

I neither had morals, nor manners, nor wit; I wasn’t much missed when I died in a fit.

Here set up my statue, and make it complete—With Pitt on his knees at my dirty old feet.

GEORGE III

Give me a royal niche—it is my due, The virtuousest king the realm e’er knew.

I, through a decent reputable life, Was constant to plain food and a plain wife.

Ireland I risked, and lost America; But dined on legs of mutton every day.

My brain, perhaps, might be a feeble part; But yet I think I had an English heart.

When all the kings were prostrate, I alone Stood face to face against Napoleon;

Nor ever could the ruthless Frenchman forge A fetter for Old England and Old George:

I let loose flaming Nelson on his fleets; I met his troops with Wellesley’s bayonets.

Triumphant waved my flag on land and sea: Where was the king in Europe like to me?

Monarchs exiled found shelter on my shores; My bounty rescued kings and emperors.

But what boots victory by land or sea? What boots that kings found refuge at my knee?

I was a conqueror, but yet not proud; And careless, even though Napoleon bow’d.

The rescued kings came kiss my garments’ hem: The rescued kings I never heeded them.

My guns roar’d triumph, but I never heard: All England thrilled with joy, I never stirred.

What care had I of pomp, or fame, or power,— A crazy old blind man in Windsor Tower?

GEORGIUS ULTIMUS

He left an example for age and for youth To avoid. He never acted well by Man or Woman, And was as false to his Mistress as to his Wife. He deserted his Friends and his Principles. He was so ignorant that he could scarcely Spell; But he had some Skill in Cutting out Coats, And an undeniable Taste for Cookery. He built the Palaces of Brighton and of Buckingham, And for these Qualities and Proofs of Genius, An admiring Aristocracy Christened him the “First Gentleman in Europe”. Friends, respect the King whose Statue is here, And the generous Aristocracy who admired him.

Sketches Of Manners, Morals, Court And Town Life

[_Cornhill Magazine_, 1860; first edition in book form, 1861]

George The First

A very few years since, I knew familiarly a lady, who had been asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been patted on the head by George I. This lady had knocked at Johnson’s door; had been intimate with Fox, the beautiful Georgina of Devonshire, and that brilliant Whig society of the reign of George III; had known the Duchess of Queensberry, the patroness of Gay and Prior, the admired young beauty of the Court of Queen Anne. I often thought as I took my kind old friend’s hand, how with it I held on to the old society of wits and men of the world. I could travel back for sevenscore years of time—have glimpses of Brummell, Selwyn, Chesterfield and the men of pleasure; of Walpole and Conway; of Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith; of North, Chatham, Newcastle; of the fair maids of honour of George II’s Court; of the German retainers of George I’s; where Addison was secretary of state; where Dick Steele held a place; whither the great Marlborough came with his fiery spouse; when Pope, and Swift, and Bolingbroke yet lived and wrote. Of a society so vast, busy, brilliant, it is impossible in four brief chapters to give a complete notion; but we may peep here and there into that bygone world of the Georges, see what they and their Courts were like; glance at the people round about them; look at past manners, fashions, pleasures, and contrast them with our own. I have to say thus much by way of preface, because the subject of these lectures has been misunderstood, and I have been taken to task for not having given grave historical treatises, which it never was my intention to attempt. Not about battles, about politics, about statesmen and measures of state, did I ever think to lecture you: but to sketch the manners and life of the old world; to amuse for a few hours with talk about the old society; and, with the result of many a day’s and night’s pleasant reading, to try and wile away a few winter evenings for my hearers.

-------------------------------------

Among the German princes who sat under Luther at Wittenberg, was Duke Ernest of Celle, whose younger son, William of Lüneburg, was the progenitor of the illustrious Hanoverian house at present reigning in Great Britain. Duke William held his Court at Celle, a little town of ten thousand people that lies on the railway line between Hamburg and Hanover, in the midst of great plains of sand, upon the river Aller. When Duke William had it, it was a very humble wood-built place, with a great brick church, which he sedulously frequented, and in which he and others of his house lie buried. He was a very religious lord, and called William the Pious by his small circle of subjects, over whom he ruled till fate deprived him both of sight and reason. Sometimes, in his latter days, the good duke had glimpses of mental light, when he would bid his musicians play the psalm-tunes which he loved. One thinks of a descendant of his, two hundred years afterwards, blind, old, and lost of wits, singing Handel in Windsor Tower.

William the Pious had fifteen children, eight daughters and seven sons, who, as the property left among them was small, drew lots to determine which one of them should marry, and continue the stout race of the Guelphs. The lot fell on Duke George, the sixth brother. The others remained single, or contracted left-handed marriages after the princely fashion of those days. It is a queer picture—that of the old prince dying in his little wood-built capital, and his seven sons tossing up which should inherit and transmit the crown of Brentford. Duke George, the lucky prizeman, made the tour of Europe, during which he visited the Court of Queen Elizabeth; and in the year 1617, came back and settled at Zell, with a wife out of Darmstadt. His remaining brothers all kept their house at Zell, for economy’s sake. And presently, in due course, they all died—all the honest dukes; Ernest, and Christian, and Augustus, and Magnus, and George, and John—and they are buried in the brick church of Brentford yonder, by the sandy banks of the Aller.

Dr. Vehse gives a pleasant glimpse of the way of life of our dukes in Zell. “When the trumpeter on the tower has blown,” Duke Christian orders—viz. at nine o’clock in the morning, and four in the evening, every one must be present at meals, and those who are not must go without. None of the servants, unless it be a knave who has been ordered to ride out, shall eat or drink in the kitchen or cellar; or, without special leave, fodder his horses at the prince’s cost. When the meal is served in the Court-room, a page shall go round and bid every one be quiet and orderly, forbidding all cursing, swearing, and rudeness; all throwing about of bread, bones, or roast, or pocketing of the same. Every morning, at seven, the squires shall have their morning soup, along with which, and dinner, they shall be served with their under-drink—every morning, except Friday morning, when there was sermon, and no drink. Every evening they shall have their beer, and at night their sleep-drink. The butler is especially warned not to allow noble or simple to go into the cellar: wine shall only be served at the prince’s or councillor’s table; and every Monday, the honest old Duke Christian ordains the accounts shall be ready, and the expenses in the kitchen, the wine and beer cellar, the bakehouse and stable, made out.

Duke George, the marrying duke, did not stop at home to partake of the beer and wine, and the sermons. He went about fighting wherever there was profit to be had. He served as general in the army of the circle of Lower Saxony, the Protestant army; then he went over to the emperor, and fought in his armies in Germany and Italy; and when Gustavus Adolphus appeared in Germany, George took service as a Swedish general, and seized the Abbey of Hildesheim, as his share of the plunder. Here, in the year 1641, Duke George died, leaving four sons behind him, from the youngest of whom descend our royal Georges.

Under these children of Duke George, the old God-fearing, simple ways of Zell appear to have gone out of mode. The second brother was constantly visiting Venice, and leading a jolly, wicked life there. It was the most jovial of all places at the end of the seventeenth century; and military men, after a campaign, rushed thither, as the warriors of the Allies rushed to Paris in 1814, to gamble, and rejoice, and partake of all sorts of godless delights. This prince, then, loving Venice and its pleasures, brought Italian singers and dancers back with him to quiet old Zell; and, worse still, demeaned himself by marrying a French lady of birth quite inferior to his own—Eleanor d’Olbreuse, from whom our queen is descended. Eleanor had a pretty daughter, who inherited a great fortune, which inflamed her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, with a desire to marry her; and so, with her beauty and her riches, she came to a sad end.

It is too long to tell how the four sons of Duke George divided his territories amongst them, and how, finally, they came into possession of the son of the youngest of the four. In this generation the Protestant faith was very nearly extinguished in the family: and then where should we in England have gone for a king? The third brother also took delight in Italy, where the priests converted him and his Protestant chaplain too. Mass was said in Hanover once more; and Italian soprani piped their Latin rhymes in place of the hymns which William the Pious and Dr. Luther sang. Louis XIV gave this and other converts a splendid pension. Crowds of Frenchmen and brilliant French fashions came into his Court. It is incalculable how much that royal bigwig cost Germany. Every prince imitated the French king, and had his Versailles, his Wilhelmshöhe or Ludwigslust; his court and its splendours; his gardens laid out with statues; his fountains, and waterworks, and Tritons; his actors, and dancers, and singers, and fiddlers; his harem, with its inhabitants; his diamonds and duchies for these latter; his enormous festivities, his gaming-tables, tournaments, masquerades, and banquets lasting a week long, for which the people paid with their money, when the poor wretches had it; with their bodies and very blood when they had none; being sold in thousands by their lords and masters, who gaily dealt in soldiers, staked a regiment upon the red at the gambling-table; swapped a battalion against a dancing-girl’s diamond necklace; and, as it were, pocketed their people.

As one views Europe, through contemporary books of travel in the early part of the last century, the landscape is awful—wretched wastes, beggarly and plundered; half-burned cottages and trembling peasants gathering piteous harvests; gangs of such tramping along with bayonets behind them, and corporals with canes and cats-of-nine-tails to flog them to barracks. By these passes my lord’s gilt carriage floundering through the ruts, as he swears at the postilions, and toils on to the Residenz. Hard by, but away from the noise and brawling of the citizens and buyers, is Wilhelmslust or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or Versailles—it scarcely matters which—near to the city, shut out by woods from the beggared country, the enormous, hideous, gilded, monstrous marble palace, where the prince is, and the Court, and the trim gardens, and huge fountains, and the forest where the ragged peasants are beating the game in (it is death to them to touch a feather); and the jolly hunt sweeps by with its uniform of crimson and gold; and the prince gallops ahead puffing his royal horn; and his lords and mistresses ride after him; and the stag is pulled down; and the grand huntsman gives the knife in the midst of a chorus of bugles; and ’tis time the Court go home to dinner; and our noble traveller, it may be the Baron of Pöllnitz, or the Count de Königsmarck, or the excellent Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the procession gleaming through the trim avenues of the wood, and hastens to the inn, and sends his noble name to the marshal of the Court. Then our nobleman arrays himself in green and gold, or pink and silver, in the richest Paris mode, and is introduced by the chamberlain, and makes his bow to the jolly prince, and the gracious princess; and is presented to the chief lords and ladies, and then comes supper and a bank at faro, where he loses or wins a thousand pieces by daylight. If it is a German Court, you may add not a little drunkenness to this picture of high life; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, misery is lying outside; hunger is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly following precarious husbandry; ploughing stony fields with starved cattle; or fearfully taking in scanty harvests. Augustus is fat and jolly on his throne; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost; his mistress Aurora von Königsmarck is the loveliest, the wittiest creature; his diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and his feasts as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis the Great, he is more than mortal. Lift up your glances respectfully, and mark him eyeing Madame de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan from under his sublime periwig, as he passes through the great gallery where Villars and Vendôme, and Berwick, and Bossuet, and Massillon are waiting. Can Court be more splendid; nobles and knights more gallant and superb; ladies more lovely? A grander monarch, or a more miserable starved wretch than the peasant his subject, you cannot look on. Let us bear both these types in mind, if we wish to estimate the old society properly. Remember the glory and the chivalry? Yes! Remember the grace and beauty, the splendour and lofty politeness; the gallant courtesy of Fontenoy, where the French line bids the gentlemen of the English guard to fire first; the noble constancy of the old king and Villars his general, who fits out the last army with the last crown-piece from the treasury, and goes to meet the enemy and die or conquer for France at Denain. But round all that royal splendour lies a nation enslaved and ruined: there are people robbed of their rights—communities laid waste—faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and wellnigh destroyed—nay, in the very centre of royalty itself, what horrible stains and meanness, crime and shame! It is but to a silly harlot that some of the noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the world, are bowing down; it is the price of a miserable province that the king ties in diamonds round his mistress’s white neck. In the first half of the last century, I say, this is going on all Europe over. Saxony is a waste as well as Picardy or Artois; and Versailles is only larger and not worse than Herrenhausen.

Two Portraits

It was the first Elector of Hanover who made the fortunate match which bestowed the race of Hanoverian Sovereigns upon us Britons. Nine years after Charles Stuart lost his head, his niece Sophia, one of many children of another luckless dethroned sovereign, the Elector Palatine, married Ernest Augustus of Brunswick, and brought the reversion to the crown of the three kingdoms in her scanty trousseau. One of the handsomest, the most cheerful, sensible, shrewd, accomplished of women was Sophia,(186) daughter of poor Frederick, the winter king of Bohemia. The other daughters of lovely, unhappy Elizabeth Stuart went off into the Catholic Church; this one, luckily for her family, remained, I cannot say faithful to the Reformed Religion, but at least she adopted no other. An agent of the French king’s, Gourville, a convert himself, strove to bring her and her husband to a sense of the truth; and tells us that he one day asked madame the Duchess of Hanover, of what religion her daughter was, then a pretty girl of thirteen years old. The duchess replied that the princess _was of no religion as yet_. They were waiting to know of what religion her husband would be, Protestant or Catholic, before instructing her! And the Duke of Hanover having heard all Gourville’s proposal, said that a change would be advantageous to his house, but that he himself was too old to change.

This shrewd woman had such keen eyes that she knew how to shut them upon occasion, and was blind to many faults which it appeared that her husband the Bishop of Osnaburg and Duke of Hanover committed. He loved to take his pleasure like other sovereigns—was a merry prince, fond of dinner and the bottle; liked to go to Italy, as his brothers had done before him; and we read how he jovially sold 6,700 of his Hanoverians to the seigniory of Venice. They went bravely off to the Morea, under command of Ernest’s son, Prince Max, and only 1,400 of them ever came home again. The German princes sold a good deal of this kind of stock. You may remember how George III’s Government purchased Hessians, and the use we made of them during the War of Independence.

The ducats Duke Ernest got for his soldiers he spent in a series of the most brilliant entertainments. Nevertheless, the jovial prince was economical, and kept a steady eye upon his own interests. He achieved the electoral dignity for himself: he married his eldest son George to his beautiful cousin of Zell; and sending his sons out in command of armies to fight—now on this side, now on that—he lived on, taking his pleasure, and scheming his schemes, a merry, wise prince enough, not, I fear, a moral prince, of which kind we shall have but very few specimens in the course of these lectures.

Ernest Augustus had seven children in all, some of whom were scapegraces, and rebelled against the parental system of primogeniture and non-division of property which the Elector ordained. “Gustchen,” the Electress writes about her second son:—“Poor Gus is thrust out, and his father will give him no more keep. I laugh in the day, and cry all night about it; for I am a fool with my children.” Three of the six died fighting against Turks, Tartars, Frenchmen. One of them conspired, revolted, fled to Rome, leaving an agent behind him, whose head was taken off. The daughter, of whose early education we have made mention, was married to the Elector of Brandenburg, and so her religion settled finally on the Protestant side.

A niece of the Electress Sophia—who had been made to change her religion, and marry the Duke of Orleans, brother of the French king; a woman whose honest heart was always with her friends and dear old Deutschland, though her fat little body was confined at Paris or Marly, or Versailles—has left us, in her enormous correspondence (part of which has been printed in German and French), recollections of the Electress, and of George her son. Elizabeth Charlotte was at Osnaburg when George was born (1660). She narrowly escaped a whipping for being in the way on that auspicious day. She seems not to have liked little George, nor George grown up; and represents him as odiously hard, cold, and silent. Silent he may have been: not a jolly prince like his father before him, but a prudent, quiet, selfish potentate, going his own way, managing his own affairs, and understanding his own interests remarkably well.

In his father’s lifetime, and at the head of the Hanover forces of 8,000 or 10,000 men, George served the Emperor, on the Danube against Turks, at the siege of Vienna, in Italy, and on the Rhine. When he succeeded to the Electorate, he handled its affairs with great prudence and dexterity. He was very much liked by his people of Hanover. He did not show his feelings much, but he cried heartily on leaving them; as they used for joy when he came back. He showed an uncommon prudence and coolness of behaviour when he came into his kingdom; exhibiting no elation; reasonably doubtful whether he should not be turned out some day; looking upon himself only as a lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure of St. James’s and Hampton Court; plundering, it is true, somewhat, and dividing amongst his German followers; but what could be expected of a sovereign who at home could sell his subjects at so many ducats per head, and made no scruple in so disposing of them? I fancy a considerable shrewdness, prudence, and even moderation in his ways. The German Protestant was a cheaper, and better, and kinder king than the Catholic Stuart in whose chair he sat, and so far loyal to England, that he let England govern herself.

Having these lectures in view I made it my business to visit that ugly cradle in which our Georges were nursed. The old town of Hanover must look still pretty much as in the time when George Louis left it. The gardens and pavilions of Herrenhausen are scarce changed since the day when the stout old Electress Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding but by a few weeks to the tomb James II’s daughter, whose death made way for the Brunswick Stuarts in England.

The two first royal Georges, and their father, Ernest Augustus, had quite royal notions regarding marriage; and Louis XIV and Charles II scarce distinguished themselves more at Versailles or St. James’s, than these German sultans in their little city on the banks of the Leine. You may see at Herrenhausen the very rustic theatre in which the Platens danced and performed masques, and sang before the Elector and his sons. There are the very fauns and dryads of stone still glimmering through the branches, still grinning and piping their ditties of no tone, as in the days when painted nymphs hung garlands round them; appeared under their leafy arcades with gilt crooks, guiding rams with gilt horns; descended from “machines” in the guise of Diana or Minerva; and delivered immense allegorical compliments to the princes returned home from the campaign.

That was a curious state of morals and politics in Europe; a queer consequence of the triumph of the monarchical principle. Feudalism was beaten down. The nobility, in its quarrels with the crown, had pretty well succumbed, and the monarch was all in all. He became almost divine: the proudest and most ancient gentry of the land did menial service for him. Who should carry Louis XIV’s candle when he went to bed? What prince of the blood should hold the king’s shirt when his Most Christian Majesty changed that garment?—the French memoirs of the seventeenth century are full of such details and squabbles. The tradition is not yet extinct in Europe. Any of you who were present, as myriads were, at that splendid pageant, the opening of our Crystal Palace in London, must have seen two noble lords, great officers of the household, with ancient pedigrees, with embroidered coats, and stars on their breasts and wands in their hands, walking backwards for near the space of a mile, while the royal procession made its progress. Shall we wonder—shall we be angry—shall we laugh at these old-world ceremonies? View them as you will, according to your mood; and with scorn or with respect, or with anger and sorrow, as your temper leads you. Up goes Gesler’s hat upon the pole. Salute that symbol of sovereignty with heartfelt awe; or with a sulky shrug of acquiescence, or with a grinning obeisance; or with a stout rebellious No—clap your own beaver down on your pate, and refuse to doff it, to that spangled velvet and flaunting feather. I make no comment upon the spectators’ behaviour; all I say is, that Gesler’s cap is still up in the market-place of Europe, and not a few folks are still kneeling to it.

Put clumsy, High Dutch statues in place of the marbles of Versailles: fancy Herrenhausen waterworks in place of those of Marly: spread the tables with _Schweinskopf_, _Specksuppe_, _Leberkuchen_, and the like delicacies, in place of the French _cuisine_; and fancy Frau von Kielmansegge dancing with Count Kammerjunker Quirini, or singing French songs with the most awful German accent: imagine a coarse Versailles, and we have a Hanover before us. “I am now got into the region of beauty,” writes Mary Wortley, from Hanover in 1716; “all the women have literally rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and necks, jet eyebrows, to which may generally be added coal-black hair. These perfections never leave them to the day of their death, and have a very fine effect by candlelight; but I could wish they were handsome with a little variety. They resemble one another as Mrs. Salmon’s Court of Great Britain, and are in as much danger of melting away by too nearly approaching the fire.” The sly Mary Wortley saw this painted seraglio of the first George at Hanover, the year after his accession to the British throne. There were great doings and feasts there. Here Lady Mary saw George II too. “I can tell you, without flattery or partiality,” she says, “that our young prince has all the accomplishments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air of sprightliness and understanding, and a something so very engaging in his behaviour that needs not the advantage of his rank to appear charming.” I find elsewhere similar panegyrics upon Frederick Prince of Wales, George II’s son; and upon George III, of course, and upon George IV in an eminent degree. It was the rule to be dazzled by princes, and people’s eyes winked quite honestly at that royal radiance.

The Electoral Court of Hanover was numerous—pretty well paid, as times went; above all, paid with a regularity which few other European Courts could boast of. Perhaps you will be amused to know how the Electoral Court was composed. There were the princes of the house in the first class; in the second, the single field-marshal of the army (the contingent was 18,000, Pöllnitz says, and the Elector had other 14,000 troops in his pay). Then follow, in due order, the authorities civil and military, the working privy councillors, the generals of cavalry and infantry, in the third class; the high chamberlain, high marshals of the Court, high masters of the horse, the major-generals of cavalry and infantry, in the fourth class; down to the majors, the Hofjunkers or pages, the secretaries or assessors, of the tenth class, of whom all were noble.

We find the master of the horse had 1,090 thalers of pay; the high chamberlain, 2,000—a thaler being about three shillings of our money. There were two chamberlains, and one for the princess; five gentlemen of the chamber, and five gentlemen ushers; eleven pages and personages to educate these young noblemen—such as a governor, a preceptor, a _Fechtmeister_, or fencing-master, and a dancing ditto, this latter with a handsome salary of 400 thalers. There were three body and Court physicians, with 800 and 500 thalers; a Court barber, 600 thalers; a Court organist; two _Musikanten_; four French fiddlers; twelve trumpeters, and a bugler; so that there was plenty of music, profane and pious, in Hanover. There were ten chamber waiters, and twenty-four lackeys in livery; a _maitre-d’hôtel_, and attendants of the kitchen; a French cook; a body cook; ten cooks; six cooks’ assistants; two _Braten_ masters, or masters of the roast—(one fancies enormous spits turning slowly, and the honest masters of the roast beladling the dripping); a pastry baker; a pie baker; and finally, three scullions, at the modest remuneration of eleven thalers. In the sugar-chamber there were four pastry-cooks (for the ladies, no doubt); seven officers in the wine and beer cellars; four bread bakers; and five men in the plate-room. There were 600 horses in the Serene stables—no less than twenty teams of princely carriage horses, eight to a team; sixteen coachmen; fourteen postilions; nineteen ostlers; thirteen helps, besides smiths, carriage-masters, horse-doctors, and other attendants of the stable. The female attendants were not so numerous: I grieve to find but a dozen or fourteen of them about the Electoral premises, and only two washerwomen for all the Court. These functionaries had not so much to do as in the present age. I own to finding a pleasure in these small-beer chronicles. I like to people the old world, with its everyday figures and inhabitants—not so much with heroes fighting immense battles and inspiring repulsed battalions to engage; or statesmen locked up in darkling cabinets and meditating ponderous laws or dire conspiracies—as with people occupied with their every-day work or pleasure: my lord and lady hunting in the forest, or dancing in the Court, or bowing to their serene highnesses as they pass in to dinner; John Cook and his procession bringing the meal from the kitchen; the jolly butlers bearing in the flagons from the cellar; the stout coachman driving the ponderous gilt wagon, with eight cream-coloured horses in housings of scarlet velvet and morocco leather; a postilion on the leaders, and a pair or a half-dozen of running footmen scudding along by the side of the vehicle, with conical caps, long silver-headed maces, which they poised as they ran, and splendid jackets laced all over with silver and gold. I fancy the citizens’ wives and their daughters looking out from the balconies; and the burghers over their beer and mumm, rising up, cap in hand, as the cavalcade passes through the town with torchbearers, trumpeters blowing their lusty cheeks out, and squadrons of jack-booted life-guardsmen, girt with shining cuirasses, and bestriding thundering chargers, escorting his highness’s coach from Hanover to Herrenhausen: or halting, mayhap, at Madame Platen’s country house of Monplaisir, which lies half-way between the summer palace and the Residenz.

In the good old times of which I am treating, whilst common men were driven off by herds, and sold to fight the emperor’s enemies on the Danube, or to bayonet King Louis’s troops of common men on the Rhine, noblemen passed from Court to Court, seeking service with one prince or the other, and naturally taking command of the ignoble vulgar of soldiery which battled and died almost without hope of promotion. Noble adventurers travelled from Court to Court in search of employment; not merely noble males, but noble females too; and if these latter were beauties, and obtained the favourable notice of princes, they stopped in the Courts, became the favourites of their serene or royal highnesses; and received great sums of money and splendid diamonds; and were promoted to be duchesses, marchionesses, and the like; and did not fall much in public esteem for the manner in which they won their advancement. In this way Mdlle. de Querouailles, a beautiful French lady, came to London on a special mission of Louis XIV, and was adopted by our grateful country and sovereign, and figured as Duchess of Portsmouth. In this way the beautiful Aurora of Königsmarck travelling about found favour in the eyes of Augustus of Saxony, and became the mother of Marshal Saxe, who gave us a beating at Fontenoy; and in this manner the lovely sisters Elizabeth and Melusina of Meissenbach (who had actually been driven out of Paris, whither they had travelled on a like errand, by the wise jealousy of the female favourite there in possession) journeyed to Hanover, and became favourites of the serene house there reigning.

That beautiful Aurora von Königsmarck and her brother are wonderful as types of bygone manners, and strange illustrations of the morals of old days. The Königsmarcks were descended from an ancient noble family of Brandenburgh, a branch of which passed into Sweden, where it enriched itself and produced several mighty men of valour.

The founder of the race was Hans Christof, a famous warrior and plunderer of the Thirty Years’ War. One of Hans’s sons, Otto, appeared as ambassador at the Court of Louis XIV, and had to make a Swedish speech at his reception before the Most Christian King. Otto was a famous dandy and warrior, but he forgot the speech, and what do you think he did? Far from being disconcerted, he recited a portion of the Swedish Catechism to His Most Christian Majesty and his Court, not one of whom understood his lingo with the exception of his own suite, who had to keep their gravity as best they might.

Otto’s nephew, Aurora’s elder brother, Carl Johann of Königsmarck, a favourite of Charles II, a beauty, a dandy, a warrior, a rascal of more than ordinary mark, escaped but deserved being hanged in England, for the murder of Tom Thynne of Longleat. He had a little brother in London with him at this time,—as great a beauty, as great a dandy, as great a villain as his elder. This lad, Philip of Königsmarck, also was implicated in the affair; and perhaps it is a pity he ever brought his pretty neck out of it. He went over to Hanover, and was soon appointed colonel of a regiment of H. E. Highness’s dragoons. In early life he had been page in the Court of Celle; and it was said that he and the pretty Princess Sophia Dorothea, who by this time was married to her cousin George the Electoral prince, had been in love with each other as children. Their loves were now to be renewed, not innocently, and to come to a fearful end.

A biography of the wife of George I, by Dr. Doran, has lately appeared, and I confess I am astounded at the verdict which that writer has delivered, and at his acquittal of this most unfortunate lady. That she had a cold selfish libertine of a husband no one can doubt; but that the bad husband had a bad wife is equally clear. She was married to her cousin for money or convenience, as all princesses were married. She was most beautiful, lively, witty, accomplished: his brutality outraged her: his silence and coldness chilled her: his cruelty insulted her. No wonder she did not love him. How could love be a part of the compact in such a marriage as that? With this unlucky heart to dispose of, the poor creature bestowed it on Philip of Königsmarck, than whom a greater scamp does not walk the history of the seventeenth century. A hundred and eighty years after the fellow was thrust into his unknown grave, a Swedish professor lights upon a box of letters in the University Library at Upsala, written by Philip and Dorothea to each other, and telling their miserable story.

The bewitching Königsmarck had conquered two female hearts in Hanover. Besides the Electoral prince’s lovely young wife Sophia Dorothea, Philip had inspired a passion in a hideous old Court lady, the Countess of Platen. The princess seems to have pursued him with the fidelity of many years. Heaps of letters followed him on his campaigns, and were answered by the daring adventurer. The princess wanted to fly with him; to quit her odious husband at any rate. She besought her parents to receive her back; had a notion of taking refuge in France and going over to the Catholic religion; had absolutely packed her jewels for flight, and very likely arranged its details with her lover, in that last long night’s interview, after which Philip of Königsmarck was seen no more.

Königsmarck, inflamed with drink—there is scarcely any vice of which, according to his own showing, this gentleman was not a practitioner—had boasted at a supper at Dresden of his intimacy with the two Hanoverian ladies, not only with the princess, but with another lady powerful in Hanover. The Countess Platen, the old favourite of the Elector, hated the young Electoral princess. The young lady had a lively wit, and constantly made fun of the old one. The princess’s jokes were conveyed to the old Platen just as our idle words are carried about at this present day: and so they both hated each other.

The characters in the tragedy, of which the curtain was now about to fall, are about as dark a set as eye ever rested on. There is the jolly prince, shrewd, selfish, scheming, loving his cups and his ease (I think his good humour makes the tragedy but darker); his princess, who speaks little but observes all; his old, painted Jezebel of a mistress; his son, the Electoral prince, shrewd too, quiet, selfish, not ill-humoured, and generally silent, except when goaded into fury by the intolerable tongue of his lovely wife; there is poor Sophia Dorothea, with her coquetry and her wrongs, and her passionate attachment to her scamp of a lover, and her wild imprudences, and her mad artifices, and her insane fidelity, and her furious jealousy regarding her husband (though she loathed and cheated him), and her prodigious falsehoods; and the confidante, of course, into whose hands the letters are slipped; and there is Lothario, finally, than whom, as I have said, one can’t imagine a more handsome, wicked, worthless reprobate.

A Deed Of Darkness

How that perverse fidelity of passion pursues the villain! How madly true the woman is, and how astoundingly she lies! She has bewitched two or three persons who have taken her up, and they won’t believe in her wrong. Like Mary of Scotland, she finds adherents ready to conspire for her even in history, and people who have to deal with her are charmed, and fascinated, and bedevilled. How devotedly Miss Strickland has stood by Mary’s innocence! Are there not scores of ladies in this audience who persist in it too? Innocent! I remember as a boy how a great party persisted in declaring Caroline of Brunswick was a martyred angel. So was Helen of Greece innocent. She never ran away with Paris, the dangerous young Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, ill-used her, and there never was any siege of Troy at all. So was Bluebeard’s wife innocent. She never peeped into the closet where the other wives were with their heads off. She never dropped the key, or stained it with blood; and her brothers were quite right in finishing Bluebeard, the cowardly brute! Yes, Caroline of Brunswick was innocent: and Madame Laffarge never poisoned her husband; and Mary of Scotland never blew up hers; and poor Sophia Dorothea was never unfaithful; and Eve never took the apple—it was a cowardly fabrication of the serpent’s.

George Louis has been held up to execration as a murderous Bluebeard, whereas the Electoral prince had no share in the transaction in which Philip of Königsmarck was scuffled out of this mortal scene. The prince was absent when the catastrophe came. The princess had had a hundred warnings; mild hints from her husband’s parents; grim remonstrances from himself—but took no more heed of this advice than such besotted poor wretches do. On the night of Sunday, the 1st of July, 1694, Königsmarck paid a long visit to the princess, and left her to get ready for flight. Her husband was away at Berlin; her carriages and horses were prepared and ready for the elopement. Meanwhile, the spies of Countess Platen had brought the news to their mistress. She went to Ernest Augustus, and procured from the Elector an order for the arrest of the Swede. On the way by which he was to come, four guards were commissioned to take him. He strove to cut his way through the four men, and wounded more than one of them. They fell upon him; cut him down; and, as he was lying wounded on the ground, the countess, his enemy, whom he had betrayed and insulted, came out and beheld him prostrate. He cursed her with his dying lips, and the furious woman stamped upon his mouth with her heel. He was dispatched presently; his body burnt the next day; and all traces of the man disappeared. The guards who killed him were enjoined silence under severe penalties. The princess was reported to be ill in her apartments, from which she was taken in October of the same year, being then eight-and-twenty years old, and consigned to the castle of Ahlden, where she remained a prisoner for no less than thirty-two years. A separation had been pronounced previously between her and her husband. She was called henceforth the “Princess of Ahlden”, and her silent husband no more uttered her name.

Four years after the Königsmarck catastrophe, Ernest Augustus, the first Elector of Hanover, died, and George Louis, his son, reigned in his stead. Sixteen years he reigned in Hanover, after which he became, as we know, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. The wicked old Countess Platen died in the year 1706. She had lost her sight, but nevertheless the legend says that she constantly saw Königsmarck’s ghost by her wicked old bed. And so there was an end of her.

In the year 1700, the little Duke of Gloucester, the last of poor Queen Anne’s children, died, and the folks of Hanover straightway became of prodigious importance in England. The Electress Sophia was declared the next in succession to the English throne. George Louis was created Duke of Cambridge; grand deputations were sent over from our country to Deutschland; but Queen Anne, whose weak heart hankered after her relatives at St. Germains, never could be got to allow her cousin, the Elector Duke of Cambridge, to come and pay his respects to her Majesty, and take his seat in her House of Peers. Had the queen lasted a month longer; had the English Tories been as bold and resolute as they were clever and crafty; had the prince whom the nation loved and pitied been equal to his fortune, George Louis had never talked German in St. James’s Chapel Royal.

When the crown did come to George Louis he was in no hurry about putting it on. He waited at home for awhile; took an affecting farewell of his dear Hanover and Herrenhausen; and set out in the most leisurely manner to ascend “the throne of his ancestors”, as he called it in his first speech to Parliament. He brought with him a compact body of Germans, whose society he loved, and whom he kept round the royal person. He had his faithful German chamberlains; his German secretaries; his negroes, captives of his bow and spear in Turkish wars; his two ugly, elderly German favourites, Mesdames of Kielmansegge and Schulenberg, whom he created respectively Countess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendal. The duchess was tall, and lean of stature, and hence was irreverently nicknamed the Maypole. The countess was a large-sized noblewoman, and this elevated personage was denominated the Elephant. Both of these ladies loved Hanover and its delights; clung round the linden-trees of the great Herrenhausen avenue, and at first would not quit the place. Schulenberg, in fact, could not come on account of her debts; but finding the Maypole would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and slipped out of Hanover unwieldy as she was. On this the Maypole straightway put herself in motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected; the courtiers who came in his train; the English nobles who came to welcome him, and on many of whom the shrewd old cynic turned his back—I protest it is a wonderful satirical picture. I am a citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, say, and crying hurrah for King George; and yet I can scarcely keep my countenance, and help laughing at the enormous absurdity of this advent!

Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the Archbishop of Canterbury prostrating himself to the head of his Church, with Kielmansegge and Schulenberg with their raddled cheeks grinning behind the Defender of the Faith. Here is my Lord Duke of Marlborough kneeling too, the greatest warrior of all times; he who betrayed King William—betrayed King James II—betrayed Queen Anne—betrayed England to the French, the Elector to the Pretender, the Pretender to the Elector; and here are my Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke, the latter of whom has just tripped up the heels of the former; and if a month’s more time had been allowed him, would have had King James at Westminster. The great Whig gentlemen made their bows and congees with proper decorum and ceremony; but yonder keen old schemer knows the value of their loyalty. “Loyalty,” he must think, “as applied to me—it is absurd! There are fifty nearer heirs to the throne than I am. I am but an accident, and you fine Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake, not for mine. You Tories hate me; you archbishop, smirking on your knees, and prating about Heaven, you know I don’t care a fig for your Thirty-nine Articles, and can’t understand a word of your stupid sermons. You, my Lords Bolingbroke and Oxford—you know you were conspiring against me a month ago; and you, my Lord Duke of Marlborough—you would sell me or any man else, if you found your advantage in it. Come, my good Melusina, come, my honest Sophia, let us go into my private room, and have some oysters and some Rhine wine, and some pipes afterwards: let us make the best of our situation; let us take what we can get, and leave these bawling, brawling, lying English to shout, and fight, and cheat, in their own way!”

If Swift had not been committed to the statesmen of the losing side, what a fine satirical picture we might have had of that general _sauve qui peut_ amongst the Tory party! How mum the Tories became; how the House of Lords and House of Commons chopped round; and how decorously the majorities welcomed King George!

Bolingbroke, making his last speech in the House of Lords, pointed out the shame of peerage, where several lords concurred to condemn in one general vote all that they had approved in former Parliaments by many particular resolutions. And so their conduct was shameful. St. John had the best of the argument, but the worst of the vote. Bad times were come for him. He talked philosophy, and professed innocence. He courted retirement, and was ready to meet persecution; but, hearing that honest Mat Prior, who had been recalled from Paris, was about to peach regarding the past transactions, the philosopher bolted, and took that magnificent head of his out of the ugly reach of the axe. Oxford, the lazy and good-humoured, had more courage, and awaited the storm at home. He and Mat Prior both had lodgings in the Tower, and both brought their heads safe out of that dangerous menagerie. When Atterbury was carried off to the same den a few years afterwards, and it was asked, what next should be done with him? “Done with him? Fling him to the lions,” Cadogan said, Marlborough’s lieutenant. But the British lion of those days did not care much for drinking the blood of peaceful peers and poets, or crunching the bones of bishops. Only four men were executed in London for the rebellion of 1715; and twenty-two in Lancashire. Above a thousand taken in arms, submitted to the king’s mercy, and petitioned to be transported to his Majesty’s colonies in America. I have heard that their descendants took the loyalist side in the disputes which arose sixty years after. It is pleasant to find that a friend of ours, worthy Dick Steele, was for letting off the rebels with their lives.

As one thinks of what might have been, how amusing the speculation is! We know how the doomed Scottish gentlemen came out at Lord Mar’s summons, mounted the white cockade, that has been a flower of sad poetry ever since, and rallied round the ill-omened Stuart standard at Braemar. Mar, with 8,000 men, and but 1,500 opposed to him, might have driven the enemy over the Tweed, and taken possession of the whole of Scotland; but that the Pretender’s duke did not venture to move when the day was his own. Edinburgh Castle might have been in King James’s hands; but that the men who were to escalade it stayed to drink his health at the tavern, and arrived two hours too late at the rendezvous under the castle wall. There was sympathy enough in the town—the projected attack seems to have been known there—Lord Mahon quotes Sinclair’s account of a gentleman not concerned, who told Sinclair, that he was in a house that evening where eighteen of them were drinking, as the facetious landlady said, “powdering their hair,” for the attack of the castle. Suppose they had not stopped to powder their hair? Edinburgh Castle, and town, and all Scotland were King James’s. The north of England rises, and marches over Barnet Heath upon London. Wyndham is up in Somersetshire; Packington in Worcestershire; and Vivian in Cornwall. The Elector of Hanover, and his hideous mistresses, pack up the plate, and perhaps the crown jewels in London, and are off _via_ Harwich and Helvoetsluys, for dear old Deutschland. The king—God save him!—lands at Dover, with tumultuous applause; shouting multitudes, roaring cannon, the Duke of Marlborough weeping tears of joy, and all the bishops kneeling in the mud. In a few years, mass is said in St. Paul’s; matins and vespers are sung in York Minster; and Dr. Swift is turned out of his stall and deanery house at St. Patrick’s, to give place to Father Dominic, from Salamanca. All these changes were possible then, and once thirty years afterwards—all this we might have had, but for the _pulveris exigui jactu_, that little toss of powder for the hair which the Scotch conspirators stopped to take at the tavern.

You understand the distinction I would draw between history—of which I do not aspire to be an expounder—and manners and life such as these sketches would describe. The rebellion breaks out in the north; its story is before you in a hundred volumes, in none more fairly than in the excellent narrative of Lord Mahon, The clans are up in Scotland; Derwentwater, Nithsdale and Forster are in arms in Northumberland—these are matters of history, for which you are referred to the due chroniclers. The Guards are set to watch the streets, and prevent the people wearing white roses. I read presently of a couple of soldiers almost flogged to death for wearing oak boughs in their hats on the 29th of May—another badge of the beloved Stuarts. It is with these we have to do, rather than the marches and battles of the armies to which the poor fellows belonged—with statesmen, and how they looked, and how they lived, rather than with measures of state, which belong to history alone. For example, at the close of the old queen’s reign, it is known the Duke of Marlborough left the kingdom—after what menaces, after what prayers, lies, bribes offered, taken, refused, accepted; after what dark doubling and tacking, let history, if she can or dare, say. The queen dead; who so eager to return as my lord duke? Who shouts God save the king! so lustily as the great conqueror of Blenheim and Malplaquet? (By the way, he will send over some more money for the Pretender yet, on the sly.) Who lays his hand on his blue ribbon, and lifts his eyes more gracefully to heaven than this hero? He makes a quasi-triumphal entrance into London, by Temple Bar, in his enormous gilt coach—and the enormous gilt coach breaks down somewhere by Chancery Lane, and his highness is obliged to get another. There it is we have him. We are with the mob in the crowd, not with the great folks in the procession. We are not the Historic Muse, but her ladyship’s attendant, tale-bearer—valet de chambre—for whom no man is a hero; and, as yonder one steps from his carriage to the next handy conveyance, we take the number of the hack; we look all over at his stars, ribbons, embroidery; we think within ourselves, O you unfathomable schemer! O you warrior invincible! O you beautiful smiling Judas! What master would you not kiss or betray? What traitor’s head, blackening on the spikes on yonder gate, ever hatched a tithe of the treason which has worked under your periwig?

We have brought our Georges to London city, and if we would behold its aspect, may see it in Hogarth’s lively perspective of Cheapside, or read of it in a hundred contemporary books which paint the manners of that age. Our dear old _Spectator_ looks smiling upon the streets, with their innumerable signs, and describes them with his charming humour. “Our streets are filled with ‘Blue Boars’, ‘Black Swans’, and ‘Red Lions’, not to mention ‘Flying Pigs’ and ‘Hogs in Armour’, with other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa.” A few of these quaint old figures still remain in London town. You may still see there, and over its old hostel in Ludgate Hill, the “Belle Sauvage” to whom the _Spectator_ so pleasantly alludes in that paper; and who was, probably, no other than the sweet American Pocahontas, who rescued from death the daring Captain Smith. There is the “Lion’s Head’” down whose jaws the _Spectator’s_ own letters were passed; and over a great banker’s in Fleet Street, the effigy of the wallet, which the founder of the firm bore when he came into London a country boy. People this street, so ornamented with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship’s great Prayer-book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries that are silent now). Fancy the beaux thronging to the chocolate-houses, tapping their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their periwigs appearing over the red curtains. Fancy Saccharissa beckoning and smiling from the upper windows, and a crowd of soldiers brawling and bustling at the door—gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as bluff Harry left them, with their ruffs and velvet flat caps. Perhaps the king’s Majesty himself is going to St. James’s as we pass. If he is going to Parliament, he is in his coach-and-eight, surrounded by his guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise his Majesty only uses a chair, with six footmen walking before, and six yeomen of the guard at the sides of the sedan. The officers in waiting follow the king in coaches. It must be rather slow work.

Our _Spectator_ and _Tatler_ are full of delightful glimpses of the town life of those days. In the company of that charming guide, we may go to the opera, the comedy, the puppet show, the auction, even the cockpit: we can take boat at Temple Stairs, and accompany Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator to Spring Garden—it will be called Vauxhall a few years since, when Hogarth will paint for it. Would you not like to step back into the past, and be introduced to Mr. Addison?—not the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq., George I’s Secretary of State, but to the delightful painter of contemporary manners; the man who, when in good humour himself, was the pleasantest companion in all England. I should like to go into Lockit’s with him, and drink a bowl along with Sir R. Steele (who has just been knighted by King George, and who does not happen to have any money to pay his share of the reckoning). I should not care to follow Mr. Addison to his secretary’s office in Whitehall. There we get into politics. Our business is pleasure, and the town, and the coffee-house, and the theatre, and the Mall. Delightful _Spectator!_ kind friend of leisure hours! happy companion! true Christian gentleman! How much greater, better, you are than the king Mr. Secretary kneels to!

You can have foreign testimony about old-world London, if you like; and my before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron de Pöllnitz, will conduct us to it. “A man of sense,” says he, “or a fine gentleman, is never at a loss for company in London, and this is the way the latter passes his time. He rises late, puts on a frock, and, leaving his sword at home, takes his cane, and goes where he pleases. The Park is commonly the place where he walks, because ’tis the Exchange for men of quality. ’Tis the same thing as the Tuileries at Paris, only the Park has a certain beauty of simplicity which cannot be described. The grand walk is called the Mall; is full of people at every hour of the day, but especially at morning and evening, when their Majesties often walk with the royal family, who are attended only by a half-dozen yeomen of the guard, and permit all persons to walk at the same time with them. The ladies and gentlemen always appear in rich dresses, for the English, who, twenty years ago, did not wear gold lace but in their army, are now embroidered and bedaubed as much as the French. I speak of persons of quality; for the citizen still contents himself with a suit of fine cloth, a good hat and wig, and fine linen. Everybody is well clothed here, and even the beggars don’t make so ragged an appearance as they do elsewhere.” After our friend, the man of quality, has had his morning or undress walk in the Mall, he goes home to dress, and then saunters to some coffee-house or chocolate-house frequented by the persons he would see. “For ’tis a rule with the English to go once a day at least to houses of this sort, where they talk of business and news, read the papers, and often look at one another without opening their lips. And ’tis very well they are so mute: for were they all as talkative as people of other nations, the coffee-houses would be intolerable, and there would be no hearing what one man said where they are so many. The chocolate-house in St. James’s Street, where I go every morning to pass away the time, is always so full that a man can scarce turn about in it.”

Delightful as London city was, King George I liked to be out of it as much as ever he could; and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blücher 100 years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down from St. Paul’s, and sighed out, “_Was für Plunder!_” The German women plundered; the German secretaries plundered; the German cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch’s maxim. He was not a lofty monarch, certainly: he was not a patron of the fine arts: but he was not a hypocrite, he was not revengeful, he was not extravagant. Though a despot in Hanover, he was a moderate ruler in England. His aim was to leave it to itself as much as possible, and to live out of it as much as he could. His heart was in Hanover. When taken ill on his last journey, as he was passing through Holland, he thrust his livid head out of the coach-window, and gasped out, “Osnaburg, Osnaburg!” He was more than fifty years of age when he came amongst us: we took him because we wanted him, because he served our turn; we laughed at his uncouth German ways, and sneered at him. He took our loyalty for what it was worth; laid hands on what money he could; kept us assuredly from Popery and wooden shoes. I, for one, would have been on his side in those days. Cynical, and selfish, as he was, he was better than a king out of St. Germains with the French king’s orders in his pocket, and a swarm of Jesuits in his train.

The Fates are supposed to interest themselves about royal personages; and so this one had omens and prophecies specially regarding him. He was said to be much disturbed at a prophecy that he should die very soon after his wife; and sure enough, pallid Death, having seized upon the luckless princess in her castle of Ahlden, presently pounced upon H.M. King George I, in his travelling chariot, on the Hanover road. What postilion can outride that pale horseman? It is said, George promised one of his left-handed widows to come to her after death, if leave were granted to him to revisit the glimpses of the moon; and soon after his demise, a great raven actually flying or hopping in at the Duchess of Kendal’s window at Twickenham, she chose to imagine the king’s spirit inhabited these plumes, and took special care of her sable visitor. Affecting metempsychosis—funereal royal bird! How pathetic is the idea of the duchess weeping over it! When this chaste addition to our English aristocracy died, all her jewels, her plate, her plunder went over to her relations in Hanover. I wonder whether her heirs took the bird, and whether it is still flapping its wings over Herrenhausen?

The days are over in England of that strange religion of king-worship, when priests flattered princes in the Temple of God; when servility was held to be ennobling duty; when beauty and youth tried eagerly for royal favour; and woman’s shame was held to be no dishonour. Mended morals and mended manners in Courts and people, are among the priceless consequences of the freedom which George I came to rescue and secure. He kept his compact with his English subjects; and if he escaped no more than other men and monarchs from the vices of his age, at least we may thank him for preserving and transmitting the liberties of ours. In our free air, royal and humble homes have alike been purified; and Truth, the birthright of high and low among us, which quite fearlessly judges our greatest personages, can only speak of them now in words of respect and regard. There are stains in the portrait of the first George, and traits in it which none of us need admire; but, among the nobler features are justice, courage, moderation—and these we may recognize ere we turn the picture to the wall.

George The Second

On the afternoon of the 14th of June, 1727, two horsemen might have been perceived galloping along the road from Chelsea to Richmond. The foremost, cased in the jackboots of the period, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and very corpulent cavalier; but, by the manner in which he urged his horse, you might see that he was a bold as well as a skilful rider. Indeed, no man loved sport better; and in the hunting-fields of Norfolk, no squire rode more boldly after the fox, or cheered Ringwood and Sweettips more lustily, than he who now thundered over the Richmond road.

He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and asked to see the owner of the mansion. The mistress of the house and her ladies, to whom our friend was admitted, said he could not be introduced to the master, however pressing the business might be. The master was asleep after his dinner; he always slept after his dinner: and woe be to the person who interrupted him! Nevertheless, our stout friend of the jackboots put the affrighted ladies aside, opened the forbidden door of the bedroom, wherein upon the bed lay a little gentleman; and here the eager messenger knelt down in his jackboots.

He on the bed started up, and with many oaths and a strong German accent asked who was there, and who dared to disturb him?

“I am Sir Robert Walpole,” said the messenger. The awakened sleeper hated Sir Robert Walpole. “I have the honour to announce to your Majesty that your royal father, King George I, died at Osnaburg, on Saturday last, the 10th inst.”

“_Dat is one big lie!_” roared out his sacred Majesty King George II: but Sir Robert Walpole stated the fact, and from that day until three-and-thirty years after, George, the second of the name, ruled over England.

How the king made away with his father’s will under the astonished nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury; how he was a choleric little sovereign; how he shook his fist in the face of his father’s courtiers; how he kicked his coat and wig about in his rages, and called everybody thief, liar, rascal, with whom he differed: you will read in all the history books; and how he speedily and shrewdly reconciled himself with the bold minister, whom he had hated during his father’s life, and by whom he was served during fifteen years of his own with admirable prudence, fidelity, and success. But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should have had the Pretender back again. But for his obstinate love of peace, we should have had wars, which the nation was not strong enough nor united enough to endure. But for his resolute counsels and good-humoured resistance we might have had German despots attempting a Hanoverian regimen over us: we should have had revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in place of a quarter of a century of peace, freedom, and material prosperity, such as the country never enjoyed, until that corrupter of Parliaments, that dissolute tipsy cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, patriot, and statesman governed it. In religion he was little better than a heathen; cracked ribald jokes at bigwigs and bishops, and laughed at High Church and Low. In private life the old pagan revelled in the lowest pleasures: he passed his Sundays tippling at Richmond; and his holidays bawling after dogs, or boozing at Houghton with boors over beef and punch. He cared for letters no more than his master did: he judged human nature so meanly that one is ashamed to have to own that he was right, and that men could be corrupted by means so base. But, with his hireling House of Commons, he defended liberty for us; with his incredulity he kept Church-craft down. There were parsons at Oxford as double-dealing and dangerous as any priests out of Rome, and he routed them both. He gave Englishmen no conquests, but he gave them peace, and ease, and freedom; the three per cents nearly at par; and wheat at five-and six-and-twenty shillings a quarter.

Ave Caesar

It was lucky for us that our first Georges were not more high-minded men; especially fortunate that they loved Hanover so much as to leave England to have her own way. Our chief troubles began when we got a king who gloried in the name of Briton, and, being born in the country, proposed to rule it. He was no more fit to govern England than his grandfather and great-grandfather, who did not try. It was righting itself during their occupation. The dangerous, noble old spirit of cavalier loyalty was dying out; the stately old English High Church was emptying itself: the questions dropping, which, on one side and the other;—the side of loyalty, prerogative, church, and king;—the side of right, truth, civil and religious freedom,—had set generations of brave men in arms. By the time when George III came to the throne, the combat between loyalty and liberty was come to an end; and Charles Edward, old, tipsy, and childless, was dying in Italy.

Those who are curious about European Court history of the last age know the memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth, and what a Court was that of Berlin, where George II’s cousins ruled sovereign. Frederick the Great’s father knocked down his sons, daughters, officers of state; he kidnapped big men all Europe over to make grenadiers of; his feasts, his parades, his wine parties, his tobacco parties, are all described. Jonathan Wild the Great in language, pleasures, and behaviour, is scarcely more delicate than this German sovereign. Louis XV, his life, and reign, and doings, are told in a thousand French memoirs. Our George II, at least, was not a worse king than his neighbours. He claimed and took the royal exemption from doing right which sovereigns assumed. A dull little man of low tastes he appears to us in England; yet Hervey tells us that this choleric prince was a great sentimentalist, and that his letters—of which he wrote prodigious quantities—were quite dangerous in their powers of fascination. He kept his sentimentalities for his Germans and his queen. With us English, he never chose to be familiar. He has been accused of avarice, yet he did not give much money, and did not leave much behind him. He did not love the fine arts, but he did not pretend to love them. He was no more a hypocrite about religion than his father. He judged men by a low standard; yet, with such men as were near him, was he wrong in judging as he did? He readily detected lying and flattery, and liars and flatterers were perforce his companions. Had he been more of a dupe he might have been more amiable. A dismal experience made him cynical. No boon was it to him to be clear-sighted, and see only selfishness and flattery round about him. What could Walpole tell him about his Lords and Commons, but that they were all venal? Did not his clergy, his courtiers, bring him the same story? Dealing with men and women in his rude, sceptical way, he comes to doubt about honour, male and female, about patriotism, about religion. “He is wild, but he fights like a man,” George I, the taciturn, said of his son and successor. Courage George II certainly had. The Electoral Prince, at the head of his father’s contingent, had approved himself a good and brave soldier under Eugene and Marlborough. At Oudenarde he specially distinguished himself. At Malplaquet the other claimant to the English throne won but little honour. There was always a question about James’s courage. Neither then in Flanders, nor afterwards in his own ancient kingdom of Scotland, did the luckless Pretender show much resolution. But dapper little George had a famous tough spirit of his own, and fought like a Trojan. He called out his brother of Prussia, with sword and pistol; and I wish, for the interest of romancers in general, that that famous duel could have taken place. The two sovereigns hated each other with all their might; their seconds were appointed; the place of meeting was settled; and the duel was only prevented by strong representations made to the two, of the European laughter which would have been caused by such a transaction.

Whenever we hear of dapper George at war, it is certain that he demeaned himself like a little man of valour. At Dettingen his horse ran away with him, and with difficulty was stopped from carrying him into the enemy’s lines. The king, dismounting from the fiery quadruped, said bravely: “Now I know I shall not run away;” and placed himself at the head of the foot, drew his sword, brandishing it at the whole of the French army, and calling out to his own men to come on, in bad English, but with the most famous pluck and spirit. In ’45, when the Pretender was at Derby, and many people began to look pale, the king never lost his courage—not he. “Pooh! don’t talk to me that stuff!” he said, like a gallant little prince as he was, and never for one moment allowed his equanimity, or his business, or his pleasures, or his travels, to be disturbed. On public festivals he always appeared in the hat and coat he wore on the famous day of Oudenarde; and the people laughed, but kindly, at the odd old garment, for bravery never goes out of fashion.

In private life the prince showed himself a worthy descendant of his father. In this respect, so much has been said about the first George’s manners, that we need not enter into a description of the son’s German harem. In 1705 he married a princess remarkable for beauty, for cleverness, for learning, for good temper—one of the truest and fondest wives ever prince was blessed with, and who loved him and was faithful to him, and he, in his coarse fashion, loved her to the last. It must be told to the honour of Caroline of Anspach, that, at the time when German princes thought no more of changing their religion than you of altering your cap, she refused to give up Protestantism for the other creed, although an Archduke, afterwards to be an Emperor, was offered to her for a bridegroom. Her Protestant relations in Berlin were angry at her rebellious spirit; it was they who tried to convert her (it is droll to think that Frederick the Great, who had no religion at all, was known for a long time in England as the Protestant hero), and these good Protestants set upon Caroline a certain Father Urban, a very skilful Jesuit, and famous winner of souls. But she routed the Jesuit; and she refused Charles VI; and she married the little Electoral Prince of Hanover, whom she tended with love, and with every manner of sacrifice, with artful kindness, with tender flattery, with entire self-devotion, thenceforward until her life’s end.

When George I made his first visit to Hanover, his son was appointed regent during the royal absence. But this honour was never again conferred on the Prince of Wales; he and his father fell out presently. On the occasion of the christening of his second son, a royal row took place, and the prince, shaking his fist in the Duke of Newcastle’s face, called him a rogue, and provoked his august father. He and his wife were turned out of St. James’s, and their princely children taken from them, by order of the royal head of the family. Father and mother wept piteously at parting from their little ones. The young ones sent some cherries, with their love, to papa and mamma; the parents watered the fruit with tears. They had no tears thirty-five years afterwards, when Prince Frederick died—their eldest son, their heir, their enemy.

The king called his daughter-in-law “_cette diablesse madame la princesse_”. The frequenters of the latter’s Court were forbidden to appear at the king’s: their royal highnesses going to Bath, we read how the courtiers followed them thither, and paid that homage in Somersetshire which was forbidden in London. That phrase of “_cette diablesse madame la princesse_” explains one cause of the wrath of her royal papa. She was a very clever woman: she had a keen sense of humour: she had a dreadful tongue: she turned into ridicule the antiquated sultan and his hideous harem. She wrote savage letters about him home to members of her family. So, driven out from the royal presence, the prince and princess set up for themselves in Leicester Fields, “where,” says Walpole, “the most promising of the young gentlemen of the next party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new Court.” Besides Leicester House, they had their lodge at Richmond, frequented by some of the pleasantest company of those days. There were the Herveys, and Chesterfield, and little Mr. Pope from Twickenham, and with him, sometimes, the savage Dean of St. Patrick’s, and quite a bevy of young ladies, whose pretty faces smile on us out of history. There was Lepell, famous in ballad song; and the saucy, charming Mary Bellenden, who would have none of the Prince of Wales’s fine compliments, who folded her arms across her breast, and bade H.R.H. keep off; and knocked his purse of guineas into his face, and told him she was tired of seeing him count them. He was not an august monarch, this Augustus. Walpole tells how, one night at the royal card-table, the playful princesses pulled a chair away from under Lady Deloraine, who, in revenge, pulled the king’s from under him, so that his Majesty fell on the carpet. In whatever posture one sees this royal George, he is ludicrous somehow; even at Dettingen, where he fought so bravely, his figure is absurd—calling out in his broken English, and lunging with his rapier, like a fencing-master. In contemporary caricatures, George’s son, “the Hero of Culloden,” is also made an object of considerable fun, as witness the following picture of him defeated by the French (1757) at Hastenbeck:

I refrain to quote from Walpole regarding George—for those charming volumes are in the hands of all who love the gossip of the last century. Nothing can be more cheery than Horace’s letters. Fiddles sing all through them: wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle there: never was such a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair as that through which he leads us. Hervey, the next great authority, is a darker spirit. About him there is something frightful: a few years since his heirs opened the lid of the Ickworth box; it was as if a Pompeii was opened to us—the last century dug up, with its temples and its games, its chariots, its public places—lupanaria. Wandering through that city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and struggling—rouged, and lying, and fawning—I have wanted some one to be friends with. I have said to friends conversant with that history, Show me some good person about that Court; find me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute, gay people, some one being that I can love and regard. There is that strutting little sultan, George II; there is that hunchbacked, beetle-browed Lord Chesterfield; there is John Hervey, with his deadly smile, and ghastly, painted face—I hate them. There is Hoadly, cringing from one bishopric to another: yonder comes little Mr. Pope, from Twickenham, with his friend, the Irish dean, in his new cassock, bowing too, but with rage flashing from under his bushy eyebrows, and scorn and hate quivering in his smile. Can you be fond of these? Of Pope I might: at least I might love his genius, his wit, his greatness, his sensibility—with a certain conviction that at some fancied slight, some sneer which he imagined, he would turn upon me and stab me. Can you trust the queen? She is not of our order: their very position makes kings and queens lonely. One inscrutable attachment that inscrutable woman has. To that she is faithful, through all trial, neglect, pain, and time. Save her husband, she really cares for no created being. She is good enough to her children, and even fond enough of them: but she would chop them all up into little pieces to please him. In her intercourse with all around her, she was perfectly kind, gracious, and natural; but friends may die, daughters may depart, she will be as perfectly kind and gracious to the next set. If the king wants her, she will smile upon him, be she ever so sad; and walk with him, be she ever so weary; and laugh at his brutal jokes, be she in ever so much pain of body or heart. Caroline’s devotion to her husband is a prodigy to read of. What charm had the little man? What was there in those wonderful letters of thirty pages long, which he wrote to her when he was absent, and to his mistresses at Hanover, when he was in London with his wife? Why did Caroline, the most lovely and accomplished princess of Germany, take a little red-faced staring princeling for a husband, and refuse an emperor? Why, to her last hour, did she love him so? She killed herself because she loved him so. She had the gout, and would plunge her feet in cold water in order to walk with him. With the film of death over her eyes, writhing in intolerable pain, she yet had a livid smile and a gentle word for her master. You have read the wonderful history of that death-bed? How she bade him marry again, and the reply the old king blubbered out, “_Non, non: j’aurai des maitresses_.” There never was such a ghastly farce. I watch the astonishing scene—I stand by that awful bedside, wondering at the ways in which God has ordained the lives, loves, rewards, successes, passions, actions, ends of his creatures—and can’t but laugh, in the presence of death, and with the saddest heart. In that often-quoted passage from Lord Hervey, in which the queen’s death-bed is described, the grotesque horror of the details surpasses all satire: the dreadful humour of the scene is more terrible than Swift’s blackest pages, or Fielding’s fiercest irony. The man who wrote the story had something diabolical about him: the terrible verses which Pope wrote respecting Hervey, in one of his own moods of almost fiendish malignity, I fear are true. I am frightened as I look back into the past, and fancy I behold that ghastly, beautiful face; as I think of the queen writhing on her death-bed, and crying out, “Pray!—pray!”—of the royal old sinner by her side, who kisses her dead lips with frantic grief, and leaves her to sin more;—of the bevy of courtly clergymen, and the archbishop, whose prayers she rejects, and who are obliged for propriety’s sake to shuffle off the anxious inquiries of the public, and vow that her Majesty quitted this life “in a heavenly frame of mind”. What a life!—to what ends devoted! What a vanity of vanities! It is a theme for another pulpit than the lecturer’s. For a pulpit?—I think the part which pulpits play in the deaths of kings is the most ghastly of all the ceremonial: the lying eulogies, the blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the simulated grief, the falsehood and sycophancies—all uttered in the name of Heaven in our State churches: these monstrous threnodies have been sung from time immemorial over kings and queens, good, bad, wicked, licentious. The State parson must bring out his commonplaces; his apparatus of rhetorical black-hangings. Dead king or live king, the clergyman must flatter him—announce his piety whilst living, and when dead, perform the obsequies of “our most religious and gracious king”.

I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious king’s favourite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5,000_l._ (She betted him 5,000_l._ that he would not be made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration? As I peep into George II’s St. James’s, I see crowds of cassocks rustling up the back-stairs of the ladies of the Court; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps; that godless old king yawning under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing. Discoursing about what?—about righteousness and judgement? Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the king is chattering in German almost as loud as the preacher; so loud that the clergyman—it may be one Dr. Young, he who wrote _Night Thoughts_, and discoursed on the splendours of the stars, the glories of heaven, and utter vanities of this world—actually burst out crying in his pulpit because the Defender of the Faith and dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to him! No wonder that the clergy were corrupt and indifferent amidst this indifference and corruption. No wonder that sceptics multiplied and morals degenerated, so far as they depended on the influence of such a king. No wonder that Whitfield cried out in the wilderness, that Wesley quitted the insulted temple to pray on the hillside. I look with reverence on those men at that time. Which is the sublimer spectacle—the good John Wesley, surrounded by his congregation of miners at the pit’s mouth, or the queen’s chaplains mumbling through their morning office in their ante-room, under the picture of the great Venus, with the door opened into the adjoining chamber, where the queen is dressing, talking scandal to Lord Hervey, or uttering sneers at Lady Suffolk, who is kneeling with the basin at her mistress’s side? I say I am scared as I look round at this society—at this king, at these courtiers, at these politicians, at these bishops—at this flaunting vice and levity. Whereabouts in this Court is the honest man? Where is the pure person one may like? The air stifles one with its sickly perfumes. There are some old-world follies and some absurd ceremonials about our Court of the present day, which I laugh at, but as an Englishman, contrasting it with the past, shall I not acknowledge the change of to-day? As the mistress of St. James’s passes me now, I salute the sovereign, wise, moderate, exemplary of life; the good mother; the good wife; the accomplished lady; the enlightened friend of art; the tender sympathizer in her people’s glories and sorrows.

Of all the Court of George and Caroline, I find no one but Lady Suffolk with whom it seems pleasant and kindly to hold converse. Even the misogynist Croker, who edited her letters, loves her, and has that regard for her with which her sweet graciousness seems to have inspired almost all men and some women who came near her. I have noted many little traits which go to prove the charms of her character (it is not merely because she is charming, but because she is characteristic, that I allude to her). She writes delightfully sober letters. Addressing Mr. Gay at Tunbridge (he was, you know, a poet, penniless and in disgrace), she says: “The place you are in, has strangely filled your head with physicians and cures; but, take my word for it, many a fine lady has gone there to drink the waters without being sick; and many a man has complained of the loss of his heart, who had it in his own possession. I desire you will keep yours; for I shall not be very fond of a friend without one, and I have a great mind you should be in the number of mine.”

When Lord Peterborough was seventy years old, that indomitable youth addressed some flaming love-, or rather gallantry-, letters to Mrs. Howard—curious relics they are of the romantic manner of wooing sometimes in use in those days. It is not passion; it is not love; it is gallantry: a mixture of earnest and acting; high-flown compliments, profound bows, vows, sighs, and ogles, in the manner of the Clelie romances, and Millamont and Doricourt in the comedy. There was a vast elaboration of ceremonies and etiquette, of raptures—a regulated form for kneeling and wooing which has quite passed out of our downright manners. Henrietta Howard accepted the noble old earl’s philandering; answered the queer love-letters with due acknowledgement; made a profound curtsey to Peterborough’s profound bow; and got John Gay to help her in the composition of her letters in reply to her old knight. He wrote her charming verses, in which there was truth as well as grace. “O wonderful creature!” he writes:—

O wonderful creature, a woman of reason! Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season! When so easy to guess who this angel should be, Who would think Mrs. Howard ne’er dreamt it was she?

The great Mr. Pope also celebrated her in lines not less pleasant, and painted a portrait of what must certainly have been a delightful lady:—

I know a thing that’s most uncommon— Envy, be silent and attend!— I know a reasonable woman, Handsome, yet witty, and a friend:

Not warp’d by passion, aw’d by rumour, Not grave through pride, or gay through folly: An equal mixture of good humour And exquisite soft melancholy.

Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir? Yes, she has one, I must aver— When all the world conspires to praise her, The woman’s deaf, and does not hear!

Even the women concurred in praising and loving her. The Duchess of Queensberry bears testimony to her amiable qualities, and writes to her: “I tell you so and so, because you love children, and to have children love you.” The beautiful, jolly Mary Bellenden, represented by contemporaries as “the most perfect creature ever known”, writes very pleasantly to her “dear Howard”, her “dear Swiss”, from the country, whither Mary had retired after her marriage, and when she gave up being a maid of honour. “How do you do, Mrs. Howard?” Mary breaks out. “How do you do, Mrs. Howard? that is all I have to say. This afternoon I am taken with a fit of writing; but as to matter, I have nothing better to entertain you, than news of my farm. I therefore give you the following list of the stock of eatables that I am fatting for my private tooth. It is well known to the whole county of Kent, that I have four fat calves, two fat hogs, fit for killing, twelve promising black pigs, two young chickens, three fine geese, with thirteen eggs under each (several being duck-eggs, else the others do not come to maturity); all this, with rabbits, and pigeons, and carp in plenty, beef and mutton at reasonable rates. Now, Howard, if you have a mind to stick a knife into anything I have named, say so!”

A jolly set must they have been, those maids of honour. Pope introduces us to a whole bevy of them, in a pleasant letter. “I went,” he says, “by water to Hampton Court, and met the Prince, with all his ladies, on horseback, coming from hunting. Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepell took me into protection, contrary to the laws against harbouring Papists, and gave me a dinner, with something I liked better, an opportunity of conversation with Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life of a maid of honour was of all things the most miserable, and wished that all women who envied it had a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham of a morning, ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark on the forehead from an uneasy hat—all this may qualify them to make excellent wives for hunters. As soon as they wipe off the heat of the day, they must simper an hour and catch cold in the princess’s apartment; from thence to dinner with what appetite they may; and after that till midnight, work, walk, or think which way they please. No lone house in Wales, with a mountain and rookery, is more contemplative than this Court. Miss Lepell walked with me three or four hours by moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality but the king, who gave audience to the vice-chamberlain all alone under the garden wall.”

I fancy it was a merrier England, that of our ancestors, than the island which we inhabit. People high and low amused themselves very much more. I have calculated the manner in which statesmen and persons of condition passed their time—and what with drinking, and dining, and supping, and cards, wonder how they got through their business at all. They played all sorts of games, which, with the exception of cricket and tennis, have quite gone out of our manners now. In the old prints of St. James’s Park, you still see the marks along the walk, to note the balls when the Court played at Mall. Fancy Birdcage Walk now so laid out, and Lord John and Lord Palmerston knocking balls up and down the avenue! Most of those jolly sports belong to the past, and the good old games of England are only to be found in old novels, in old ballads, or the columns of dingy old newspapers, which say how a main of cocks is to be fought at Winchester between the Winchester men and the Hampton men; or how the Cornwall men and the Devon men are going to hold a great wrestling match at Totnes, and so on.

A hundred and twenty years ago there were not only country towns in England, but people who inhabited them. We were very much more gregarious; we were amused by very simple pleasures. Every town had its fair, every village its wake. The old poets have sung a hundred jolly ditties about great cudgel-playings, famous grinning through horse-collars, great maypole meetings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run races clad in very light attire; and the kind gentry and good parsons thought no shame in looking on. Dancing bears went about the country with pipe and tabor. Certain well-known tunes were sung all over the land for hundreds of years, and high and low rejoiced in that simple music. Gentlemen who wished to entertain their female friends constantly sent for a band. When Beau Fielding, a mighty fine gentleman, was courting the lady whom he married, he treated her and her companion at his lodgings to a supper from the tavern, and after supper they sent out for a fiddler—three of them. Fancy the three, in a great wainscoted room, in Covent Garden or Soho, lighted by two or three candles in silver sconces, some grapes and a bottle of Florence wine on the table, and the honest fiddler playing old tunes in quaint old minor keys, as the Beau takes out one lady after the other, and solemnly dances with her!

The very great folks, young noblemen, with their governors, and the like, went abroad and made the great tour; the home satirists jeered at the Frenchified and Italian ways which they brought back; but the greater number of people never left the country. The jolly squire often had never been twenty miles from home. Those who did go went to the baths, to Harrogate, or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. Old letters are full of these places of pleasure. Gay writes to us about the fiddlers at Tunbridge; of the ladies having merry little private balls amongst themselves; and the gentlemen entertaining them by turns with tea and music. One of the young beauties whom he met did not care for tea: “We have a young lady here,” he says, “that is very particular in her desires. I have known some young ladies, who, if ever they prayed, would ask for some equipage or title, a husband or matadores: but this lady, who is but seventeen, and has 30,000_l._ to her fortune, places all her wishes on a pot of good ale. When her friends, for the sake of her shape and complexion, would dissuade her from it, she answers, with the truest sincerity, that by the loss of shape and complexion she could only lose a husband, whereas ale is her passion.”

Every country town had its assembly-room—mouldy old tenements, which we may still see in deserted inn-yards, in decayed provincial cities, out of which the great wen of London has sucked all the life. York, at assize time, and throughout the winter, harboured a large society of northern gentry. Shrewsbury was celebrated for its festivities. At Newmarket, I read of “a vast deal of good company, besides rogues and blacklegs”; at Norwich, of two assemblies, with a prodigious crowd in the hall, the rooms, and the gallery. In Cheshire (it is a maid of honour of Queen Caroline who writes, and who is longing to be back at Hampton Court, and the fun there) I peep into a country house, and see a very merry party: “We meet in the work-room before nine, eat and break a joke or two till twelve, then we repair to our own chambers and make ourselves ready, for it cannot be called dressing. At noon the great bell fetches us into a parlour, adorned with all sorts of fine arms, poisoned darts, several pair of old boots and shoes worn by men of might, with the stirrups of King Charles I, taken from him at Edgehill,”—and there they have their dinner, after which comes dancing and supper.

As for Bath, all history went and bathed and drank there. George II and his queen, Prince Frederick and his Court, scarce a character one can mention of the early last century, but was seen in that famous Pump-room where Beau Nash presided, and his picture hung between the busts of Newton and Pope:

This picture, placed these busts between, Gives satire all its strength: Wisdom and Wit are little seen, But Folly at full length.

I should like to have seen the Folly. It was a splendid, embroidered, be-ruffled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled, impertinent Folly, and knew how to make itself respected. I should like to have seen that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots (he actually had the audacity to walk about Bath in boots!), with his blue ribbon and stars, and a cabbage under each arm, and a chicken in his hand, which he had been cheapening for his dinner. Chesterfield came there many a time and gambled for hundreds, and grinned through his gout. Mary Wortley was there, young and beautiful; and Mary Wortley, old, hideous, and snuffy. Miss Chudleigh came there, slipping away from one husband, and on the look-out for another. Walpole passed many a day there; sickly, supercilious, absurdly dandified, and affected; with a brilliant wit, a delightful sensibility; and for his friends, a most tender, generous, and faithful heart. And if you and I had been alive then, and strolling down Milsom Street—hush! we should have taken our hats off, as an awful, long, lean, gaunt figure, swathed in flannels, passed by in its chair, and a livid face looked out from the window—great fierce eyes staring from under a bushy, powdered wig, a terrible frown, a terrible Roman nose—and we whisper to one another, “There he is! There’s the great commoner! There is Mr. Pitt!” As we walk away, the abbey bells are set a-ringing; and we meet our testy friend Toby Smollett, on the arm of James Quin the actor, who tells us that the bells ring for Mr. Bullock, an eminent cowkeeper from Tottenham, who has just arrived to drink the waters; and Toby shakes his cane at the door of Colonel Ringworm—the Creole gentleman’s lodgings next his own—where the colonel’s two negroes are practising on the French horn.

When we try to recall social England, we must fancy it playing at cards for many hours every day. The custom is wellnigh gone out among us now, but fifty years ago was general, fifty years before that almost universal, in the country. “Gaming has become so much the fashion,” writes Seymour, the author of the _Court Gamester_, “that he who in company should be ignorant of the games in vogue, would be reckoned low-bred, and hardly fit for conversation.” There were cards everywhere. It was considered ill-bred to read in company. “Books were not fit articles for drawing-rooms,” old ladies used to say. People were jealous, as it were, and angry with them. You will find in Hervey that George II was always furious at the sight of books; and his queen, who loved reading, had to practise it in secret in her closet. But cards were the resource of all the world. Every night, for hours, kings and queens of England sat down and handled their majesties of spades and diamonds. In European Courts, I believe the practice still remains, not for gambling, but for pastime. Our ancestors generally adopted it. “Books! prithee, don’t talk to me about books,” said old Sarah Marlborough. “The only books I know are men and cards.” “Dear old Sir Roger de Coverley sent all his tenants a string of hogs’ puddings and a pack of cards at Christmas,” says the _Spectator_, wishing to depict a kind landlord. One of the good old lady writers in whose letters I have been dipping cries out, “Sure, cards have kept us women from a great deal of scandal!” Wise old Johnson regretted that he had not learnt to play. “It is very useful in life,” he says; “it generates kindness, and consolidates society.” David Hume never went to bed without his whist. We have Walpole, in one of his letters, in a transport of gratitude for the cards. “I shall build an order to Pam,” says he, in his pleasant dandified way, “for the escape of my charming Duchess of Grafton.” The duchess had been playing cards at Rome, when she ought to have been at a cardinal’s concert, where the floor fell in, and all the monsignors were precipitated into the cellar. Even the Nonconformist clergy looked not unkindly on the practice. “I do not think,” says one of them, “that honest Martin Luther committed sin by playing at backgammon for an hour or two after dinner, in order by unbending his mind to promote digestion.” As for the High Church parsons, they all played, bishops and all. On Twelfth Day the Court used to play in state. “This being Twelfth Day, his Majesty, the Prince of Wales, and the Knights Companions of the Garter, Thistle, and Bath, appeared in the collars of their respective orders. Their Majesties, the Prince of Wales, and three eldest Princesses, went to the Chapel Royal, preceded by the heralds. The Duke of Manchester carried the sword of state. The king and prince made offering at the altar of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, according to the annual custom. At night their Majesties played at hazard with the nobility, for the benefit of the groom-porter; and ’twas said the king won 600 guineas; the queen, 360; Princess Amelia, twenty; Princess Caroline, ten; the Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Portmore, several thousands.”

Let us glance at the same chronicle, which is of the year 1731, and see how others of our forefathers were engaged.

“Cork, 15th January.—This day, one Tim Croneen was, for the murder and robbery of Mr. St. Leger and his wife, sentenced to be hanged two minutes, then his head to be cut off, and his body divided in four quarters, to be placed in four crossways. He was servant to Mr. St. Leger, and committed the murder with the privity of the servant-maid, who was sentenced to be burned; also of the gardener, whom he knocked on the head, to deprive him of his share of the booty.”

“January 3.—A postboy was shot by an Irish gentleman on the road near Stone, in Staffordshire, who died in two days, for which the gentleman was imprisoned.”

“A poor man was found hanging in a gentleman’s stables at Bungay, in Norfolk, by a person who cut him down, and running for assistance, left his penknife behind him. The poor man recovering, cut his throat with the knife; and a river being nigh, jumped into it; but company coming, he was dragged out alive, and was like to remain so.”

“The Honourable Thomas Finch, brother to the Earl of Nottingham, is appointed ambassador at the Hague, in the room of the Earl of Chesterfield, who is on his return home.”

“William Cowper, Esq., and the Rev. Mr. John Cowper, chaplain in ordinary to her Majesty, and rector of Great Berkhampstead, in the county of Hertford, are appointed clerks of the commissioners of bankruptcy.”

“Charles Creagh, Esq., and —— Macnamara, Esq., between whom an old grudge of three years had subsisted, which had occasioned their being bound over about fifty times for breaking the peace, meeting in company with Mr. Eyres, of Galloway, they discharged their pistols, and all three were killed on the spot—to the great joy of their peaceful neighbours, say the Irish papers.”

“Wheat is 26_s._ to 28_s._, and barley 20_s._ to 22_s._ a quarter; three per cents, 92; best loaf sugar, 9-1/4_d._; Bohea, 12_s._ to 14_s._; Pekoe, 18_s._, and Hyson, 35_s._ per pound.”

“At Exon was celebrated with great magnificence the birthday of the son of Sir W. Courtney, Bart., at which more than 1,000 persons were present. A bullock was roasted whole; a butt of wine and several tuns of beer and cider were given to the populace. At the same time Sir William delivered to his son, then of age, Powdram Castle, and a great estate.”

“Charlesworth and Cox, two solicitors, convicted of forgery, stood on the pillory at the Royal Exchange. The first was severely handled by the populace, but the other was very much favoured, and protected by six or seven fellows who got on the pillory to protect him from the insults of the mob.”

“A boy killed by falling upon iron spikes, from a lamppost, which he climbed to see Mother Needham stand in the pillory.”

“Mary Lynn was burned to ashes at the stake for being concerned in the murder of her mistress.”

“Alexander Russell, the foot soldier, who was capitally convicted for a street robbery in January sessions, was reprieved for transportation; but having an estate fallen to him, obtained a free pardon.”

“The Lord John Russell married to the Lady Diana Spencer, at Marlborough House. He has a fortune of 30,000_l._ down, and is to have 100,000_l._ at the death of the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough, his grandmother.”

“March 1 being the anniversary of the queen’s birthday, when her Majesty entered the forty-ninth year of her age, there was a splendid appearance of nobility at St. James’s. Her Majesty was magnificently dressed, and wore a flowered muslin head-edging, as did also her Royal Highness. The Lord Portmore was said to have had the richest dress, though an Italian Count had twenty-four diamonds instead of buttons.”

New clothes on the birthday were the fashion for all loyal people. Swift mentions the custom several times. Walpole is constantly speaking of it; laughing at the practice, but having the very finest clothes from Paris, nevertheless. If the king and queen were unpopular, there were very few new clothes at the Drawing-room. In a paper in the _True Patriot_, No. 3, written to attack the Pretender, the Scotch, French, and Popery, Fielding supposes the Scotch and the Pretender in possession of London, and himself about to be hanged for loyalty,—when, just as the rope is round his neck, he says: “My little girl entered my bedchamber, and put an end to my dream by pulling open my eyes, and telling me that the tailor had just brought home my clothes for his Majesty’s birthday.” In his _Temple Beau_, the beau is dunned for a birthday suit of velvet, 40_l._ Be sure that Mr. Harry Fielding was dunned too.

The public days, no doubt, were splendid, but the private Court life must have been awfully wearisome. “I will not trouble you,” writes Hervey to Lady Sundon, “with any account of our occupations at Hampton Court. No mill-horse ever went in a more constant track, or a more unchanging circle; so that by the assistance of an almanac for the day of the week, and a watch for the hour of the day, you may inform yourself fully, without any other intelligence but your memory, of every transaction within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levées, and audiences fill the morning. At night the king plays at commerce and backgammon, and the queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly gauntlet, the queen pulling her hood, and the Princess Royal rapping her knuckles. The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline. Lord Grantham strolls from one room to another (as Dryden says), like some discontented ghost that oft appears, and is forbid to speak; and stirs himself about as people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it burn brisker. At last the king gets up; the pool finishes; and everybody has their dismission. Their Majesties retire to Lady Charlotte and my Lord Lifford; my Lord Grantham, to Lady Frances and Mr. Clark: some to supper, some to bed; and thus the evening and the morning make the day.”

The king’s fondness for Hanover occasioned all sorts of rough jokes among his English subjects, to whom _Sauerkraut_ and sausages have ever been ridiculous objects. When our present Prince Consort came among us, the people bawled out songs in the streets indicative of the absurdity of Germany in general. The sausage-shops produced enormous sausages which we might suppose were the daily food and delight of German princes. I remember the caricatures at the marriage of Prince Leopold with the Princess Charlotte. The bridegroom was drawn in rags. George III’s wife was called by the people a beggarly German duchess; the British idea being that all princes were beggarly except British princes. King George paid us back. He thought there were no manners out of Germany. Sarah Marlborough once coming to visit the princess, whilst her Royal Highness was whipping one of the roaring royal children, “Ah!” says George, who was standing by, “you have no good manners in England, because you are not properly brought up when you are young.” He insisted that no English cooks could roast, no English coachman could drive: he actually questioned the superiority of our nobility, our horses, and our roast beef!

Whilst he was away from his beloved Hanover, everything remained there exactly as in the prince’s presence. There were 800 horses in the stables, there was all the apparatus of chamberlains, Court-marshals, and equerries; and Court assemblies were held every Saturday, where all the nobility of Hanover assembled at what I can’t but think a fine and touching ceremony. A large armchair was placed in the assembly-room, and on it the king’s portrait. The nobility advanced, and made a bow to the armchair, and to the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and spoke under their voices before the august picture, just as they would have done had the King Churfürst been present himself.

He was always going back to Hanover. In the year 1729, he went for two whole years, during which Caroline reigned for him in England, and he was not in the least missed by his British subjects. He went again in ’35 and ’36; and between the years 1740 and 1755 was no less than eight times on the Continent, which amusement he was obliged to give up at the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War. Here every day’s amusement was the same. “Our life is as uniform as that of a monastery,” writes a courtier whom Vehse quotes. “Every morning at eleven, and every evening at six, we drive in the heat to Herrenhausen, through an enormous linden avenue; and twice a day cover our coats and coaches with dust. In the king’s society there never is the least change. At table, and at cards, he sees always the same faces, and at the end of the game retires into his chamber. Twice a week there is a French theatre; the other days there is play in the gallery. In this way, were the king always to stop in Hanover, one could make a ten years’ calendar of his proceedings; and settle beforehand what his time of business, meals, and pleasure would be.”

The old pagan kept his promise to his dying wife. Lady Yarmouth was now in full favour, and treated with profound respect by the Hanover society, though it appears rather neglected in England when she came among us. In 1740, a couple of the king’s daughters went to see him at Hanover; Anna, the Princess of Orange (about whom, and whose husband and marriage-day, Walpole and Hervey have left us the most ludicrous descriptions), and Maria of Hesse-Cassel, with their respective lords. This made the Hanover Court very brilliant. In honour of his high guests, the king gave several fêtes; among others, a magnificent masked ball, in the green theatre at Herrenhausen—the garden theatre, with linden and box for screen, and grass for a carpet, where the Platens had danced to George and his father the late sultan. The stage and a great part of the garden were illuminated with coloured lamps. Almost the whole Court appeared in white dominos, “like,” says the describer of the scene, “like spirits in the Elysian fields. At night, supper was served in the gallery with three great tables, and the king was very merry. After supper dancing was resumed, and I did not get home till five o’clock by full daylight to Hanover. Some days afterwards we had in the opera-house at Hanover, a great assembly. The king appeared in a Turkish dress; his turban was ornamented with a magnificent agraffe of diamonds; the Lady Yarmouth was dressed as a sultana; nobody was more beautiful than the Princess of Hesse.” So, while poor Caroline was resting in her coffin, dapper little George, with his red face and his white eyebrows and goggle-eyes, at sixty years of age, is dancing a pretty dance with Madame Walmoden, and capering about dressed up like a Turk! For twenty years more, that little old Bajazet went on in this Turkish fashion, until the fit came which choked the old man, when he ordered the side of his coffin to be taken out, as well as that of poor Caroline’s who had preceded him, so that his sinful old bones and ashes might mingle with those of the faithful creature. O strutting Turkey-cock of Herrenhausen! O naughty little Mahomet! in what Turkish paradise are you now, and where be your painted houris? So Countess Yarmouth appeared as a sultana, and his Majesty in a Turkish dress wore an agraffe of diamonds, and was very merry, was he? Friends! he was your fathers’ king as well as mine—let us drop a respectful tear over his grave.

He said of his wife that he never knew a woman who was worthy to buckle her shoe: he would sit alone weeping before her portrait, and when he had dried his eyes, he would go off to his Walmoden and talk of her. On the 25th day of October, 1760, he being then in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and the thirty-fourth of his reign, his page went to take him his royal chocolate, and behold! the most religious and gracious king was lying dead on the floor. They went and fetched Walmoden; but Walmoden could not wake him. The sacred Majesty was but a lifeless corpse. The king was dead; God save the king! But, of course, poets and clergymen decorously bewailed the late one. Here are some artless verses, in which an English divine deplored the famous departed hero, and over which you may cry or you may laugh, exactly as your humour suits:—

While at his feet expiring Faction lay, No contest left but who should best obey; Saw in his offspring all himself renewed; The same fair path of glory still pursued; Saw to young George Augusta’s care impart Whate’er could raise and humanize the heart; Blend all his grandsire’s virtues with his own, And form their mingled radiance for the throne— No farther blessing could on earth be given— The next degree of happiness was—heaven!

If he had been good, if he had been just, if he had been pure in life, and wise in council, could the poet have said much more? It was a parson who came and wept over this grave, with Walmoden sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the poor old man slumbering below. Here was one who had neither dignity, learning, morals, nor wit—who tainted a great society by a bad example; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, low, and sensual; and Mr. Porteus, afterwards my Lord Bishop Porteus, says the earth was not good enough for him, and that his only place was heaven! Bravo, Mr. Porteus! The divine who wept these tears over George II’s memory wore George III’s lawn. I don’t know whether people still admire his poetry or his sermons.

George The Third

We have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during that long period, would occupy our allotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat and separation; to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution; to grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Napoleon; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old society, with its courtly splendours, has to pass away; generations of statesmen to rise and disappear; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson’s and Wellington’s glory; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne’s time to sink into their graves; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise; Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theatre. Steam has to be invented; kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored. Napoleon to be but an episode, and George III is to be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people through all these revolutions of thought, government, society; to survive out of the old world into ours.

When I first saw England, she was in mourning for the young Princess Charlotte, the hope of the empire. I came from India as a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way home, where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and hills until we reached a garden, where we saw a man walking. “That is he,” said the black man: “that is Bonaparte! He eats three sheep every day, and all the little children he can lay hands on!” There were people in the British dominions besides that poor Calcutta serving-man, with an equal horror of the Corsican ogre.

With the same childish attendant, I remember peeping through the colonnade at Carlton House, and seeing the abode of the great Prince Regent. I can see yet the Guards pacing before the gates of the place. The place? What place? The palace exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is but a name now. Where be the sentries who used to salute as the Royal chariots drove in and out? The chariots, with the kings inside, have driven to the realms of Pluto; the tall Guards have marched into darkness, and the echoes of their drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace once stood, a hundred little children are paddling up and down the steps to St. James’s Park. A score of grave gentlemen are taking their tea at the Athenaeum Club; as many grizzly warriors are garrisoning the United Service Club opposite. Pall Mall is the great social Exchange of London now—the mart of news, of politics, of scandal, of rumour—the English forum, so to speak, where men discuss the last dispatch from the Crimea, the last speech of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. And, now and then, to a few antiquarians, whose thoughts are with the past rather than with the present, it is a memorial of old times and old people, and Pall Mall is our Palmyra. Look! About this spot, Tom of Ten Thousand was killed by Königsmarck’s gang. In that great red house Gainsborough lived, and Culloden Cumberland, George III’s uncle. Yonder is Sarah Marlborough’s palace, just as it stood when that termagant occupied it. At 25, Walter Scott used to live; at the house, now No. 79, and occupied by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn, comedian.

How often has Queen Caroline’s chair issued from under yonder arch! All the men of the Georges have passed up and down the street. It has seen Walpole’s chariot and Chatham’s sedan; and Fox, Gibbon, Sheridan, on their way to Brookes’s; and stately William Pitt stalking on the arm of Dundas; and Hanger and Tom Sheridan reeling out of Raggett’s; and Byron limping into Wattier’s; and Swift striding out of Bury Street; and Mr. Addison and Dick Steele, both perhaps a little the better for liquor; and the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement; and Johnson counting the posts along the streets, after dawdling before Dodsley’s window; and Horry Walpole hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just bought out at Christie’s; and George Selwyn sauntering into White’s.

In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a mass of correspondence by no means so brilliant and witty as Walpole’s, or so bitter and bright as Hervey’s, but as interesting, and even more descriptive of the time, because the letters are the work of many hands. You hear more voices speaking, as it were, and more natural than Horace’s dandified treble, and Sporus’s malignant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters—as one looks at Reynolds’s noble pictures illustrative of those magnificent times and voluptuous people—one almost hears the voice of the dead past; the laughter and the chorus; the toast called over the brimming cups; the shout at the racecourse or the gaming-table; the merry joke frankly spoken to the laughing fine lady. How fine those ladies were, those ladies who heard and spoke such coarse jokes; how grand those gentlemen!

I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentleman, has almost vanished off the face of the earth, and is disappearing like the beaver or the Red Indian. We can’t have fine gentlemen any more, because we can’t have the society in which they lived. The people will not obey: the parasites will not be as obsequious as formerly: children do not go down on their knees to beg their parents’ blessing: chaplains do not say grace and retire before the pudding: servants do not say “your honour” and “your worship” at every moment: tradesmen do not stand hat in hand as the gentleman passes: authors do not wait for hours in gentlemen’s ante-rooms with a fulsome dedication, for which they hope to get five guineas from his lordship. In the days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt’s under-secretaries did not dare to sit down before him; but Mr. Pitt, in his turn, went down on his gouty knees to George II; and when George III spoke a few kind words to him, Lord Chatham burst into tears of reverential joy and gratitude; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and so great the distinctions of rank. Fancy Lord John Russell or Lord Palmerston on their knees whilst the sovereign was reading a dispatch, or beginning to cry because Prince Albert said something civil!

At the accession of George III, the patricians were yet at the height of their good fortune. Society recognized their superiority, which they themselves pretty calmly took for granted. They inherited not only titles and estates, and seats in the House of Peers, but seats in the House of Commons. There were a multitude of Government places, and not merely these, but bribes of actual 500_l._ notes, which Members of the House took not much shame in assuming. Fox went into Parliament at 20: Pitt was just of age: his father not much older. It was the good time for Patricians. Small blame to them if they took and enjoyed, and over-enjoyed, the prizes of politics, the pleasures of social life.

In these letters to Selwyn, we are made acquainted with a whole society of these defunct fine gentlemen: and can watch with a curious interest a life, which the novel-writers of that time, I think, have scarce touched upon. To Smollett, to Fielding even, a lord was a lord: a gorgeous being with a blue ribbon, a coroneted chair, and an immense star on his bosom, to whom commoners paid reverence. Richardson, a man of humbler birth than either of the above two, owned that he was ignorant regarding the manners of the aristocracy, and besought Mrs. Donnellan, a lady who had lived in the great world, to examine a volume of _Sir Charles Grandison_, and point out any errors which she might see in this particular. Mrs. Donnellan found so many faults, that Richardson changed colour; shut up the book; and muttered that it were best to throw it in the fire. Here, in Selwyn, we have the real original men and women of fashion of the early time of George III. We can follow them to the new club at Almack’s: we can travel over Europe with them: we can accompany them not only to the public places, but to their country-houses and private society. Here is a whole company of them; wits and prodigals; some persevering in their bad ways; some repentant, but relapsing; beautiful ladies, parasites, humble chaplains, led captains. Those fair creatures whom we love in Reynolds’s portraits, and who still look out on us from his canvases with their sweet calm faces and gracious smiles—those fine gentlemen who did us the honour to govern us; who inherited their boroughs; took their ease in their patent places; and slipped Lord North’s bribes so elegantly under their ruffles—we make acquaintance with a hundred of these fine folks, hear their talk and laughter, read of their loves, quarrels, intrigues, debts, duels, divorces; can fancy them alive if we read the book long enough. We can attend at Duke Hamilton’s wedding, and behold him marry his bride with the curtain-ring: we can peep into her poor sister’s death-bed: we can see Charles Fox cursing over the cards, or March bawling out the odds at Newmarket: we can imagine Burgoyne tripping off from St. James’s Street to conquer the Americans, and slinking back into the club somewhat crestfallen after his beating: we can see the young king dressing himself for the Drawing-room and asking ten thousand questions regarding all the gentlemen: we can have high life or low, the struggle at the Opera to behold the Violetta or the Zamperini—the Macaronis and fine ladies in their chairs trooping to the masquerade or Madame Cornelys’s—the crowd at Drury Lane to look at the body of Miss Ray, whom Parson Hackman has just pistolled—or we can peep into Newgate, where poor Mr. Rice the forger is waiting his fate and his supper. “You need not be particular about the sauce for his fowl,” says one turnkey to another: “for you know he is to be hanged in the morning.” “Yes,” replies the second janitor, “but the chaplain sups with him, and he is a terrible fellow for melted butter.”

Selwyn has a chaplain and parasite, one Dr. Warner, than whom Plautus, or Ben Jonson, or Hogarth, never painted a better character. In letter after letter he adds fresh strokes to the portrait of himself, and completes a portrait not a little curious to look at now that the man has passed away; all the foul pleasures and gambols in which he revelled, played out; all the rouged faces into which he leered, worms and skulls; all the fine gentlemen whose shoebuckles he kissed, laid in their coffins. This worthy clergyman takes care to tell us that he does not believe in his religion, though, thank Heaven, he is not so great a rogue as a lawyer. He goes on Mr. Selwyn’s errands, any errands, and is proud, he says, to be that gentleman’s proveditor. He waits upon the Duke of Queensberry—old Q.—and exchanges pretty stories with that aristocrat. He comes home “after a hard day’s christening”, as he says, and writes to his patron before sitting down to whist and partridges for supper. He revels in the thoughts of ox-cheek and burgundy—he is a boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his master’s shoes with explosions of laughter and cunning smack and gusto, and likes the taste of that blacking as much as the best claret in old Q.’s cellar. He has Rabelais and Horace at his greasy fingers’ ends. He is inexpressibly mean, curiously jolly; kindly and good-natured in secret—a tender-hearted knave, not a venomous lickspittle. Jesse says, that at his chapel in Long Acre, “he attained a considerable popularity by the pleasing, manly, and eloquent style of his delivery.” Was infidelity endemic, and corruption in the air? Around a young king, himself of the most exemplary life and undoubted piety, lived a Court society as dissolute as our country ever knew. George II’s bad morals bore their fruit in George III’s early years; as I believe that a knowledge of that good man’s example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity, and God-fearing life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the country and purify the whole nation.

After Warner, the most interesting of Selwyn’s correspondents is the Earl of Carlisle, grandfather of the amiable nobleman at present Viceroy in Ireland. The grandfather, too, was Irish Viceroy, having previously been treasurer of the king’s household; and, in 1778, the principal commissioner for treating, consulting, and agreeing upon the means of quieting the divisions subsisting in his Majesty’s colonies, plantations, and possessions in North America. You may read his lordship’s manifestos in the _Royal New York Gazette_. He returned to England, having by no means quieted the colonies; and speedily afterwards the _Royal New York Gazette_ somehow ceased to be published.

This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one of the English fine gentlemen who were wellnigh ruined by the awful debauchery and extravagance which prevailed in the great English society of those days. Its dissoluteness was awful: it had swarmed over Europe after the Peace; it had danced, and raced, and gambled in all the Courts. It had made its bow at Versailles; it had run its horses on the plain of Sablons, near Paris, and created the Anglomania there: it had exported vast quantities of pictures and marbles from Rome and Florence: it had ruined itself by building great galleries and palaces for the reception of the statues and pictures: it had brought over singing-women and dancing-women from all the operas of Europe, on whom my lords lavished their thousands, whilst they left their honest wives and honest children languishing in the lonely, deserted splendours of the castle and park at home.

Besides the great London society of those days, there was another unacknowledged world, extravagant beyond measure, tearing about in the pursuit of pleasure; dancing, gambling, drinking, singing; meeting the real society in the public places (at Ranelaghs, Vauxhalls, and Ridottos, about which our old novelists talk so constantly), and outvying the real leaders of fashion, in luxury, and splendour, and beauty. For instance, when the famous Miss Gunning visited Paris as Lady Coventry, where she expected that her beauty would meet with the applause which had followed her and her sister through England, it appears she was put to flight by an English lady still more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain Mrs. Pitt took a box at the opera opposite the countess; and was so much handsomer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out that this was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coventry quitted Paris in a huff. The poor thing died presently of consumption, accelerated, it was said, by the red and white paint with which she plastered those luckless charms of hers. (We must represent to ourselves all fashionable female Europe, at that time, as plastered with white, and raddled with red.) She left two daughters behind her, whom George Selwyn loved (he was curiously fond of little children), and who are described very drolly and pathetically in these letters, in their little nursery, where passionate little Lady Fanny, if she had not good cards, flung hers into Lady Mary’s face; and where they sat conspiring how they should receive a new mother-in-law whom their papa presently brought home. They got on very well with their mother-in-law, who was very kind to them; and they grew up, and they were married, and they were both divorced afterwards—poor little souls! Poor painted mother, poor society, ghastly in its pleasures, its loves, its revelries!

As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak about him: because, though he was a wild and weak commissioner at one time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost ten thousand pounds at a sitting—“five times more,” says the unlucky gentleman, “than I ever lost before;” though he swore he never would touch a card again; and yet, strange to say, went back to the table and lost still more: yet he repented of his errors, sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good country gentleman, and returned to the good wife and the good children whom he had always loved with the best part of his heart. He had married at one-and-twenty. He found himself, in the midst of a dissolute society, at the head of a great fortune. Forced into luxury, and obliged to be a great lord and a great idler, he yielded to some temptations, and paid for them a bitter penalty of manly remorse; from some others he fled wisely, and ended by conquering them nobly. But he always had the good wife and children in his mind, and they saved him. “I am very glad you did not come to me the morning I left London,” he writes to G. Selwyn, as he is embarking for America. “I can only say, I never knew till that moment of parting, what grief was.” There is no parting now, where they are. The faithful wife, the kind, generous gentleman, have left a noble race behind them: an inheritor of his name and titles, who is beloved as widely as he is known; a man most kind, accomplished, gentle, friendly, and pure; and female descendants occupying high stations and embellishing great names; some renowned for beauty, and all for spotless lives, and pious matronly virtues.

Another of Selwyn’s correspondents is the Earl of March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry, whose life lasted into this century; and who certainly as earl or duke, young man or greybeard, was not an ornament to any possible society. The legends about old Q. are awful. In _Selwyn_, in _Wraxall_, and contemporary chronicles, the observer of human nature may follow him, drinking, gambling, intriguing to the end of his career; when the wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan died, as wicked and unrepentant as he had been at the hottest season of youth and passion. There is a house in Piccadilly, where they used to show a certain low window at which old Q. sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile glasses the women as they passed by.

There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy, sleepy George Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present credit. “Your friendship,” writes Carlisle to him, “is so different from anything I have ever met with or seen in the world, that when I recollect the extraordinary proofs of your kindness, it seems to me like a dream.” “I have lost my oldest friend, and acquaintance, G. Selwyn,” writes Walpole to Miss Berry: “I really loved him, not only for his infinite wit, but for a thousand good qualities.” I am glad, for my part, that such a lover of cakes and ale should have had a thousand good qualities—that he should have been friendly, generous, warm-hearted, trustworthy. “I rise at six,” writes Carlisle to him, from Spa (a great resort of fashionable people in our ancestors’ days), “play at cricket till dinner, and dance in the evening, till I can scarcely crawl to bed at eleven. There is a life for you! You get up at nine; play with Raton your dog till twelve, in your dressing-gown; then creep down to White’s; are five hours at table; sleep till supper-time; and then make two wretches carry you in a sedan-chair, with three pints of claret in you, three miles for a shilling.” Occasionally, instead of sleeping at White’s, George went down and snoozed in the House of Commons by the side of Lord North. He represented Gloucester for many years, and had a borough of his own, Ludgershall, for which, when he was too lazy to contest Gloucester, he sat himself. “I have given directions for the election of Ludgershall to be of Lord Melbourne and myself,” he writes to the Premier, whose friend he was, and who was himself as sleepy, as witty, and as good-natured as George.

If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men’s failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal’s natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle? In these letters of Lord Carlisle’s from which I have been quoting, there is many a just complaint made by the kind-hearted young nobleman of the state which he is obliged to keep; the magnificence in which he must live; the idleness to which his position as a peer of England bound him. Better for him had he been a lawyer at his desk, or a clerk in his office;—a thousand times better chance for happiness, education, employment, security from temptation. A few years since the profession of arms was the only one which our nobles could follow. The Church, the Bar, medicine, literature, the arts, commerce, were below them. It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England: the working educated men, away from Lord North’s bribery in the senate; the good clergy not corrupted into parasites by hopes of preferment; the tradesmen rising into manly opulence; the painters pursuing their gentle calling; the men of letters in their quiet studies; these are the men whom we love and like to read of in the last age. How small the grandees and the men of pleasure look beside them! how contemptible the story of the George III Court squabbles are beside the recorded talk of dear old Johnson! What is the grandest entertainment at Windsor, compared to a night at the club over its modest cups, with Percy and Langton, and Goldsmith, and poor Bozzy at the table? I declare I think, of all the polite men of that age, Joshua Reynolds was the finest gentleman. And they were good, as well as witty and wise, those dear old friends of the past. Their minds were not debauched by excess, or effeminate with luxury. They toiled their noble day’s labour: they rested, and took their kindly pleasure: they cheered their holiday meetings with generous wit and hearty interchange of thought: they were no prudes, but no blush need follow their conversation: they were merry, but no riot came out of their cups. Ah! I would have liked a night at the “Turk’s Head”, even though bad news had arrived from the colonies, and Doctor Johnson was growling against the rebels; to have sat with him and Goldy; and to have heard Burke, the finest talker in the world; and to have had Garrick flashing in with a story from his theatre!—I like, I say, to think of that society; and not merely how pleasant and how wise, but how _good_ they were. I think it was on going home one night from the club that Edmund Burke—his noble soul full of great thoughts, be sure, for they never left him; his heart full of gentleness—was accosted by a poor wandering woman, to whom he spoke words of kindness; and moved by the tears of this Magdalen, perhaps having caused them by the good words he spoke to her, he took her home to the house of his wife and children, and never left her until he had found the means of restoring her to honesty and labour. O you fine gentlemen! you Marches, and Selwyns, and Chesterfields, how small you look by the side of these great men! Good-natured Carlisle plays at cricket all day, and dances in the evening “till he can scarcely crawl”, gaily contrasting his superior virtue with George Selwyn’s “carried to bed by two wretches at midnight with three pints of claret in him”. Do you remember the verses—the sacred verses—which Johnson wrote on the death of his humble friend, Levett?

Well tried through many a varying year, See Levett to the grave descend; Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend.

In misery’s darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh, Where hopeless anguish poured the groan, And lonely want retired to die.

No summons mocked by chill delay, No petty gain disdained by pride, The modest wants of every day The toil of every day supplied.

His virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void: And sure the Eternal Master found His single talent well employed.

Whose name looks the brightest now, that of Queensberry the wealthy duke, or Selwyn the wit, or Levett the poor physician?

I hold old Johnson (and shall we not pardon James Boswell some errors for embalming him for us?) to be the great supporter of the British Monarchy and Church during the last age—better than whole benches of bishops, better than Pitts, Norths, and the great Burke himself. Johnson had the ear of the nation: his immense authority reconciled it to loyalty, and shamed it out of irreligion. When George III talked with him, and the people heard the great author’s good opinion of the sovereign, whole generations rallied to the king. Johnson was revered as a sort of oracle; and the oracle declared for Church and King. What a humanity the old man had! He was a kindly partaker of all honest pleasures: a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. “What, boys, are you for a frolic?” he cries, when Topham Beauclerc comes and wakes him up at midnight: “I’m with you,” And away he goes, tumbles on his homely old clothes, and trundles through Covent Garden with the young fellows. When he used to frequent Garrick’s theatre, and had “the liberty of the scenes”, he says, “all the actresses knew me, and dropped me a curtsy as they passed to the stage.” That would make a pretty picture: it is a pretty picture in my mind, of youth, folly, gaiety, tenderly surveyed by wisdom’s merciful, pure eyes.

George III and his queen lived in a very unpretending but elegant-looking house, on the site of the hideous pile under which his granddaughter at present reposes. The king’s mother inhabited Carlton House, which contemporary prints represent with a perfect paradise of a garden, with trim lawns, green arcades, and vistas of classic statues. She admired these in company with my Lord Bute, who had a fine classic taste, and sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea in the pleasant green arbours along with that polite nobleman. Bute was hated with a rage of which there have been few examples in English history. He was the butt for everybody’s abuse; for Wilkes’s devilish mischief; for Churchill’s slashing satire; for the hooting of the mob that roasted the boot, his emblem, in a thousand bonfires; that hated him because he was a favourite and a Scotchman, calling him “Mortimer”, “Lothario”, I know not what names, and accusing his royal mistress of all sorts of crimes—the grave, lean, demure, elderly woman, who, I dare say, was quite as good as her neighbours. Chatham lent the aid of his great malice to influence the popular sentiment against her. He assailed, in the House of Lords, “the secret influence, more mighty than the Throne itself, which betrayed and clogged every administration.” The most furious pamphlets echoed the cry. “Impeach the king’s mother,” was scribbled over every wall at the Court end of the town, Walpole tells us. What had she done? What had Frederick, Prince of Wales, George’s father, done, that he was so loathed by George II and never mentioned by George III? Let us not seek for stones to batter that forgotten grave, but acquiesce in the contemporary epitaph over him:—

Here lies Fred, Who was alive, and is dead. Had it been his father, I had much rather. Had it been his brother, Still better than another. Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her. Had it been the whole generation, Still better for the nation. But since ’tis only Fred, Who was alive, and is dead, There’s no more to be said.

The widow with eight children round her, prudently reconciled herself with the king, and won the old man’s confidence and goodwill. A shrewd, hard, domineering, narrow-minded woman, she educated her children according to her lights, and spoke of the eldest as a dull, good boy: she kept him very close: she held the tightest rein over him: she had curious prejudices and bigotries. His uncle, the burly Cumberland, taking down a sabre once, and drawing it to amuse the child—the boy started back and turned pale. The prince felt a generous shock: “What must they have told him about me?” he asked.

His mother’s bigotry and hatred he inherited with the courageous obstinacy of his own race; but he was a firm believer where his fathers had been freethinkers, and a true and fond supporter of the Church, of which he was the titular defender. Like other dull men, the king was all his life suspicious of superior people. He did not like Fox; he did not like Reynolds; he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke; he was testy at the idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. He loved mediocrities; Benjamin West was his favourite painter; Beattie was his poet. The king lamented, not without pathos, in his after-life, that his education had been neglected. He was a dull lad brought up by narrow-minded people. The cleverest tutors in the world could have done little probably to expand that small intellect, though they might have improved his tastes, and taught his perceptions some generosity.

But he admired as well as he could. There is little doubt that a letter, written by the little Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz,—a letter containing the most feeble commonplaces about the horrors of war, and the most trivial remarks on the blessings of peace, struck the young monarch greatly, and decided him upon selecting the young princess as the sharer of his throne, I pass over the stories of his juvenile loves—of Hannah Lightfoot, the Quaker, to whom they say he was actually married (though I don’t know who has ever seen the register)—of lovely black-haired Sarah Lennox, about whose beauty Walpole has written in raptures, and who used to lie in wait for the young prince, and make hay at him on the lawn of Holland House. He sighed and he longed, but he rode away from her. Her picture still hangs in Holland House, a magnificent masterpiece of Reynolds, a canvas worthy of Titian. She looks from the castle window, holding a bird in her hand, at black-eyed young Charles Fox, her nephew. The royal bird flew away from lovely Sarah. She had to figure as bridesmaid at her little Mecklenburg rival’s wedding, and died in our own time a quiet old lady, who had become the mother of the heroic Napiers.

They say the little princess who had written the fine letter about the horrors of war—a beautiful letter without a single blot, for which she was to be rewarded, like the heroine of the old spelling-book story—was at play one day with some of her young companions in the gardens of Strelitz, and that the young ladies’ conversation was, strange to say, about husbands. “Who will take such a poor little princess as me?” Charlotte said to her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very moment the postman’s horn sounded, and Ida said, “Princess! there is the sweetheart.” As she said, so it actually turned out. The postman brought letters from the splendid young King of all England, who said, “Princess! because you have written such a beautiful letter, which does credit to your head and heart, come and be Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the true wife of your most obedient servant, George!” So she jumped for joy; and went upstairs and packed all her little trunks; and set off straightway for her kingdom in a beautiful yacht, with a harpsichord on board for her to play upon, and around her a beautiful fleet, all covered with flags and streamers, and the distinguished Madame Auerbach complimented her with an ode, a translation of which may be read in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ to the present day:—

Her gallant navy through the main, Now cleaves its liquid way. There to their queen a chosen train Of nymphs due reverence pay.

Europa, when conveyed by Jove To Crete’s distinguished shore, Greater attention scarce could prove, Or be respected more.

They met, and they were married, and for years they led the happiest, simplest lives sure ever led by married couple. It is said the king winced when he first saw his homely little bride; but, however that may be, he was a true and faithful husband to her, as she was a faithful and loving wife. They had the simplest pleasures—the very mildest and simplest—little country dances, to which a dozen couple were invited, and where the honest king would stand up and dance for three hours at a time to one tune; after which delicious excitement they would go to bed without any supper (the Court people grumbling sadly at that absence of supper), and get up quite early the next morning, and perhaps the next night have another dance; or the queen would play on the spinet—she played pretty well, Haydn said—or the king would read to her a paper out of the _Spectator_, or perhaps one of Ogden’s sermons. O Arcadia! what a life it must have been! There used to be Sunday drawing-rooms at Court; but the young king stopped these, as he stopped all that godless gambling whereof we have made mention. Not that George was averse to any innocent pleasures, or pleasures which he thought innocent. He was a patron of the arts, after his fashion; kind and gracious to the artists whom he favoured, and respectful to their calling. He wanted once to establish an Order of Minerva for literary and scientific characters; the knights were to take rank after the knights of the Bath, and to sport a straw-coloured ribbon and a star of sixteen points. But there was such a row amongst the _literati_ as to the persons who should be appointed, that the plan was given up, and Minerva and her star never came down amongst us.

He objected to painting St. Paul’s, as Popish practice; accordingly, the most clumsy heathen sculptures decorate that edifice at present. It is fortunate that the paintings, too, were spared, for painting and drawing were wofully unsound at the close of the last century; and it is far better for our eyes to contemplate whitewash (when we turn them away from the clergyman) than to look at Opie’s pitchy canvases, or Fuseli’s livid monsters.

And yet there is one day in the year—a day when old George loved with all his heart to attend it—when I think St. Paul’s presents the noblest sight in the whole world: when five thousand charity children, with cheeks like nosegays, and sweet, fresh voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world—coronations, Parisian splendours, Crystal Palace openings, Pope’s chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani—but think in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children’s Day. _Non Angli, sed angeli_. As one looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents: as the first note strikes: indeed one may almost fancy that cherubs are singing.

Of church music the king was always very fond, showing skill in it both as a critic and a performer. Many stories, mirthful and affecting, are told of his behaviour at the concerts which he ordered. When he was blind and ill he chose the music for the Ancient Concerts once, and the music and words which he selected were from _Samson Agonistes_, and all had reference to his blindness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would beat time with his music-roll as they sang the anthem in the Chapel Royal. If the page below was talkative or inattentive, down would come the music-roll on young scapegrace’s powdered head. The theatre was always his delight. His bishops and clergy used to attend it, thinking it no shame to appear where that good man was seen. He is said not to have cared for Shakespeare or tragedy much; farces and pantomimes were his joy; and especially when clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously that the lovely princess by his side would have to say, “My gracious monarch, do compose yourself.” But he continued to laugh, and at the very smallest farces, as long as his poor wits were left him.

There is something to me exceedingly touching in that simple early life of the king’s. As long as his mother lived—a dozen years after his marriage with the little spinet-player—he was a great, shy, awkward boy, under the tutelage of that hard parent. She must have been a clever, domineering, cruel woman. She kept her household lonely and in gloom, mistrusting almost all people who came about her children. Seeing the young Duke of Gloucester silent and unhappy once, she sharply asked him the cause of his silence. “I am thinking,” said the poor child. “Thinking, sir! and of what?” “I am thinking if ever I have a son I will not make him so unhappy as you make me.” The other sons were all wild, except George. Dutifully every evening George and Charlotte paid their visit to the king’s mother at Carlton House. She had a throat complaint, of which she died; but to the last persisted in driving about the streets to show she was alive. The night before her death the resolute woman talked with her son and daughter-in-law as usual, went to bed, and was found dead there in the morning. “George, be a king!” were the words which she was for ever croaking in the ears of her son: and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to be.

He did his best; he worked according to his lights; what virtue he knew, he tried to practise; what knowledge he could master, he strove to acquire. He was for ever drawing maps, for example, and learned geography with no small care and industry. He knew all about the family histories and genealogies of his gentry, and pretty histories he must have known. He knew the whole _Army __ List_; and all the facings, and the exact number of the buttons, and all the tags and laces, and the cut of all the cocked hats, pigtails, and gaiters in his army. He knew the _personnel_ of the Universities; what doctors were inclined to Socinianism, and who were sound Churchmen; he knew the etiquettes of his own and his grandfather’s Courts to a nicety, and the smallest particulars regarding the routine of ministers, secretaries, embassies, audiences; the humblest page in the ante-room, or the meanest helper in the stables or kitchen. These parts of the royal business he was capable of learning, and he learned. But, as one thinks of an office, almost divine, performed by any mortal man—of any single being pretending to control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order the implicit obedience of brother millions, to compel them into war at his offence or quarrel; to command, “In this way you shall trade, in this way you shall think; these neighbours shall be your allies whom you shall help, these others your enemies whom you shall slay at my orders; in this way you shall worship God;”—who can wonder that, when such a man as George took such an office on himself, punishment and humiliation should fall upon people and chief?

Yet there is something grand about his courage. The battle of the king with his aristocracy remains yet to be told by the historian who shall view the reign of George more justly than the trumpery panegyrists who wrote immediately after his decease. It was he, with the people to back him, who made the war with America; it was he and the people who refused justice to the Roman Catholics; and on both questions he beat the patricians. He bribed: he bullied: he darkly dissembled on occasion: he exercised a slippery perseverance, and a vindictive resolution, which one almost admires as one thinks his character over. His courage was never to be beat. It trampled North under foot: it bent the stiff neck of the younger Pitt: even his illness never conquered that indomitable spirit. As soon as his brain was clear, it resumed the scheme, only laid aside when his reason left him: as soon as his hands were out of the strait-waistcoat, they took up the pen and the plan which had engaged him up to the moment of his malady. I believe it is by persons believing themselves in the right that nine-tenths of the tyranny of this world has been perpetrated. Arguing on that convenient premiss, the Dey of Algiers would cut off twenty heads of a morning; Father Dominic would burn a score of Jews in the presence of the most Catholic King, and the Archbishops of Toledo and Salamanca sing Amen. Protestants were roasted, Jesuits hung and quartered at Smithfield, and witches burned at Salem, and all by worthy people, who believed they had the best authority for their actions.

And so, with respect to old George, even Americans, whom he hated and who conquered him, may give him credit for having quite honest reasons for oppressing them. Appended to Lord Brougham’s biographical sketch of Lord North are some autograph notes of the king, which let us most curiously into the state of his mind. “The times certainly require,” says he, “the concurrence of all who wish to prevent anarchy. I have no wish but the prosperity of my own dominions, therefore I must look upon all who would not heartily assist me as bad men, as well as bad subjects.” That is the way he reasoned. “I wish nothing but good, therefore every man who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel.” Remember that he believed himself anointed by a Divine commission; remember that he was a man of slow parts and imperfect education; that the same awful will of Heaven which placed a crown upon his head, which made him tender to his family, pure in his life, courageous and honest, made him dull of comprehension, obstinate of will, and at many times deprived him of reason. He was the father of his people; his rebellious children must be flogged into obedience. He was the defender of the Protestant faith; he would rather lay that stout head upon the block than that Catholics should have a share in the government of England. And you do not suppose that there are not honest bigots enough in all countries to back kings in this kind of statesmanship? Without doubt the American war was popular in England. In 1775 the address in favour of coercing the colonies was carried by 304 to 105 in the Commons, by 104 to 29 in the House of Lords. Popular?—so was the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes popular in France: so was the massacre of St. Bartholomew: so was the Inquisition exceedingly popular in Spain.

Wars and revolutions are, however, the politician’s province. The great events of this long reign, the statesmen and orators who illustrated it, I do not pretend to make the subjects of an hour’s light talk.(187) Let us return to our humbler duty of Court gossip. Yonder sits our little queen, surrounded by many stout sons and fair daughters whom she bore to her faithful George. The history of the daughters, as little Miss Burney has painted them to us, is delightful. They were handsome—she calls them beautiful; they were most kind, loving, and ladylike; they were gracious to every person, high and low, who served them. They had many little accomplishments of their own. This one drew: that one played the piano: they all worked most prodigiously, and fitted up whole suites of rooms—pretty, smiling Penelopes,—with their busy little needles. As we picture to ourselves the society of eighty years ago, we must imagine hundreds of thousands of groups of women in great high caps, tight bodies, and full skirts, needling away, whilst one of the number, or perhaps a favoured gentleman in a pigtail, reads out a novel to the company. Peep into the cottage at Olney, for example, and see there Mrs. Unwin and Lady Hesketh, those high-bred ladies, those sweet, pious women, and William Cowper, that delicate wit, that trembling pietist, that refined gentleman, absolutely reading out _Jonathan Wild_ to the ladies! What a change in our manners, in our amusements, since then!

Lord North, Mr. Fox

Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke

King George’s household was a model of an English gentleman’s household. It was early; it was kindly; it was charitable; it was frugal; it was orderly; it must have been stupid to a degree which I shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all the princes ran away from the lap of that dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined at stated intervals. Day after day was the same. At the same hour at night the king kissed his daughters’ jolly cheeks; the princesses kissed their mother’s hand; and Madame Thielke brought the royal nightcap. At the same hour the equerries and women in waiting had their little dinner, and cackled over their tea. The king had his backgammon or his evening concert; the equerries yawned themselves to death in the ante-room; or the king and his family walked on Windsor slopes, the king holding his darling little princess Amelia by the hand; and the people crowded round quite good-naturedly; and the Eton boys thrust their chubby cheeks under the crowd’s elbows; and the concert over, the king never failed to take his enormous cocked-hat off, and salute his band, and say, “Thank you, gentlemen.”

A Little Rebel

A quieter household, a more prosaic life than this of Kew or Windsor, cannot be imagined. Rain or shine, the king rode every day for hours; poked his red face into hundreds of cottages round about, and showed that shovel hat and Windsor uniform to farmers, to pig-boys, to old women making apple dumplings; to all sorts of people, gentle and simple, about whom countless stories are told. Nothing can be more undignified than these stories. When Haroun Alraschid visits a subject incog., the latter is sure to be very much the better for the caliph’s magnificence. Old George showed no such royal splendour. He used to give a guinea sometimes: sometimes feel in his pockets and find he had no money: often ask a man a hundred questions: about the number of his family, about his oats and beans, about the rent he paid for his house, and ride on. On one occasion he played the part of King Alfred, and turned a piece of meat with a string at a cottager’s house. When the old woman came home, she found a paper with an enclosure of money, and a note written by the royal pencil: “Five guineas to buy a jack.” It was not splendid, but it was kind and worthy of Farmer George. One day, when the king and queen were walking together, they met a little boy—they were always fond of children, the good folks—and patted the little white head. “Whose little boy are you?” asks the Windsor uniform. “I am the king’s beefeater’s little boy,” replied the child. On which the king said, “Then kneel down, and kiss the queen’s hand.” But the innocent offspring of the beefeater declined this treat. “No,” said he, “I won’t kneel, for if I do, I shall spoil my new breeches.” The thrifty king ought to have hugged him and knighted him on the spot. George’s admirers wrote pages and pages of such stories about him. One morning, before anybody else was up, the king walked about Gloucester town; pushed over Molly the housemaid who was scrubbing the doorsteps with her pail; ran upstairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms; and then trotted down to the bridge, where, by this time, a dozen of louts were assembled. “What! is this Gloucester New Bridge?” asked our gracious monarch; and the people answered him, “Yes, your Majesty.” “Why, then, my boys,” said he, “let us have a huzzay!” After giving them which intellectual gratification, he went home to breakfast. Our fathers read these simple tales with fond pleasure; laughed at these very small jokes; liked the old man who poked his nose into every cottage; who lived on plain wholesome roast and boiled; who despised your French kickshaws; who was a true hearty old English gentleman. You may have seen Gilray’s famous print of him—in the old wig, in the stout old hideous Windsor uniform—as the King of Brobdingnag, peering at a little Gulliver, whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in the other he has an opera-glass, through which he surveys the pygmy? Our fathers chose to set up George as the type of a great king; and the little Gulliver was the great Napoleon. We prided ourselves on our prejudices; we blustered and bragged with absurd vainglory; we dealt to our enemy a monstrous injustice of contempt and scorn; we fought him with all weapons, mean as well as heroic. There was no lie we would not believe; no charge of crime which our furious prejudice would not credit. I thought at one time of making a collection of the lies which the French had written against us, and we had published against them during the war: it would be a strange memorial of popular falsehood.

Their majesties were very sociable potentates: and the Court Chronicler tells of numerous visits which they paid to their subjects, gentle and simple: with whom they dined; at whose great country-houses they stopped; or at whose poorer lodgings they affably partook of tea and bread-and-butter. Some of the great folks spent enormous sums in entertaining their sovereigns. As marks of special favour, the king and queen sometimes stood as sponsors for the children of the nobility. We find Lady Salisbury was so honoured in the year 1786; and in the year 1802, Lady Chesterfield. The _Court News_ relates how her ladyship received their Majesties on a state bed “dressed with white satin and a profusion of lace: the counterpane of white satin embroidered with gold, and the bed of crimson satin lined with white”. The child was first brought by the nurse to the Marchioness of Bath, who presided as chief nurse. Then the marchioness handed baby to the queen. Then the queen handed the little darling to the Bishop of Norwich, the officiating clergyman; and, the ceremony over, a cup of caudle was presented by the earl to his Majesty on one knee, on a large gold waiter, placed on a crimson velvet cushion. Misfortunes would occur in these interesting genuflectory ceremonies of royal worship. Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe, a very fat, puffy man, in a most gorgeous Court suit, had to kneel, Cumberland says, and was so fat and so tight that he could not get up again. “Kneel, sir, kneel!” cried my lord in waiting to a country mayor who had to read an address, but who went on with his compliment standing. “Kneel, sir, kneel!” cries my lord, in dreadful alarm. “I can’t!” says the mayor, turning round; “don’t you see I have got a wooden leg?” In the capital _Burney Diary and Letters_, the home and Court life of good old King George and good old Queen Charlotte are presented at portentous length. The king rose every morning at six: and had two hours to himself. He thought it effeminate to have a carpet in his bedroom. Shortly before eight, the queen and the royal family were always ready for him, and they proceeded to the king’s chapel in the castle. There were no fires in the passages: the chapel was scarcely alight; princesses, governesses, equerries grumbled and caught cold: but cold or hot, it was their duty to go: and, wet or dry, light or dark, the stout old George was always in his place to say Amen to the chaplain.

The queen’s character is represented in _Burney_ at full length. She was a sensible, most decorous woman; a very grand lady on state occasions, simple enough in ordinary life; well read as times went, and giving shrewd opinions about books; stingy, but not unjust; not generally unkind to her dependants, but invincible in her notions of etiquette, and quite angry if her people suffered ill-health in her service. She gave Miss Burney a shabby pittance, and led the poor young woman a life which well-nigh killed her. She never thought but that she was doing Burney the greatest favour, in taking her from freedom, fame, and competence, and killing her off with languor in that dreary Court. It was not dreary to her. Had she been servant instead of mistress, her spirit would never have broken down: she never would have put a pin out of place, or been a moment from her duty. _She_ was not weak, and she could not pardon those who were. She was perfectly correct in life, and she hated poor sinners with a rancour such as virtue sometimes has. She must have had awful private trials of her own: not merely with her children, but with her husband, in those long days about which nobody will ever know anything now; when he was not quite insane; when his incessant tongue was babbling folly, rage, persecution; and she had to smile and be respectful and attentive under this intolerable ennui. The queen bore all her duties stoutly, as she expected others to bear them. At a state christening, the lady who held the infant was tired and looked unwell, and the Princess of Wales asked permission for her to sit down. “Let her stand,” said the queen, flicking the snuff off her sleeve. _She_ would have stood, the resolute old woman, if she had had to hold the child till his beard was grown. “I am seventy years of age,” the queen said, facing a mob of ruffians who stopped her sedan: “I have been fifty years Queen of England, and I never was insulted before.” Fearless, rigid, unforgiving little queen! I don’t wonder that her sons revolted from her.

Of all the figures in that large family group which surrounds George and his queen, the prettiest, I think, is the father’s darling, the Princess Amelia, pathetic for her beauty, her sweetness, her early death, and for the extreme passionate tenderness with which her father loved her. This was his favourite amongst all the children: of his sons, he loved the Duke of York best. Burney tells a sad story of the poor old man at Weymouth, and how eager he was to have this darling son with him. The king’s house was not big enough to hold the prince; and his father had a portable house erected close to his own, and at huge pains, so that his dear Frederick should be near him. He clung on his arm all the time of his visit: talked to no one else; had talked of no one else for some time before. The prince, so long expected, stayed but a single night. He had business in London the next day, he said. The dullness of the old king’s Court stupefied York and the other big sons of George III. They scared equerries and ladies, frightened the modest little circle, with their coarse spirits and loud talk. Of little comfort, indeed, were the king’s sons to the king.

But the pretty Amelia was his darling; and the little maiden, prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet image to look on. There is a family picture in _Burney_, which a man must be very hard-hearted not to like. She describes an after-dinner walk of the royal family at Windsor:—“It was really a mighty pretty procession,” she says. “The little princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted with the parade, and turning from side to side to see everybody as she passed; for all the terracers stand up against the walls, to make a clear passage for the royal family the moment they come in sight. Then followed the king and queen, no less delighted with the joy of their little darling. The Princess Royal leaning on Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, the Princess Augusta holding by the Duchess of Ancaster, the Princess Elizabeth led by Lady Charlotte Bertie, followed. Office here takes place of rank,” says Burney,—to explain how it was that Lady E. Waldegrave, as lady of the bed-chamber, walked before a duchess;—“General Budé, and the Duke of Montague, and Major Price as equerry, brought up the rear of the procession.” One sees it; the band playing its old music, the sun shining on the happy, loyal crowd; and lighting the ancient battlements, the rich elms, and purple landscape, and bright greensward; the royal standard drooping from the great tower yonder; as old George passes, followed by his race, preceded by the charming infant, who caresses the crowd with her innocent smiles.

“On sight of Mrs. Delany, the king instantly stopped to speak to her; the queen, of course, and the little princess, and all the rest, stood still. They talked a good while with the sweet old lady, during which time the king once or twice addressed himself to me. I caught the queen’s eye, and saw in it a little surprise, but by no means any displeasure, to see me of the party. The little princess went up to Mrs. Delany, of whom she is very fond, and behaved like a little angel to her. She then, with a look of inquiry and recollection, came behind Mrs. Delany to look at me. ‘I am afraid,’ said I, in a whisper, and stooping down, ‘your Royal Highness does not remember me?’ Her answer was an arch little smile, and a nearer approach, with her lips pouted out to kiss me.”

The princess wrote verses herself, and there are some pretty plaintive lines attributed to her, which are more touching than better poetry:—

Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, I laughed, and danced, and talked, and sung: And, proud of health, of freedom vain, Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain: Concluding, in those hours of glee, That all the world was made for me.

But when the hour of trial came, When sickness shook this trembling frame, When folly’s gay pursuits were o’er, And I could sing and dance no more, It then occurred, how sad ’twould be Were this world only made for me.

The poor soul quitted it—and ere yet she was dead the agonized father was in such a state, that the officers round about him were obliged to set watchers over him, and from November, 1810, George III ceased to reign. All the world knows the story of his malady: all history presents no sadder figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary Parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly Courts. I have seen his picture as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apartment of his daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse-Hombourg—amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast—the star of his famous Order still idly shining on it. He was not only sightless: he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had; in one of which, the queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn, and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled.

What preacher need moralize on this story; what words save the simplest are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory. “O brothers,” I said to those who heard me first in America—“O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue—O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest: dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne; buffeted by rude hands; with his children in revolt; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely; our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, ‘Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little!’ ”

Vex not his ghost—oh! let him pass—he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer!

Hush, Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march! Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy!

George The Fourth

In Twiss’s amusing _Life of Eldon_, we read how, on the death of the Duke of York, the old chancellor became possessed of a lock of the defunct prince’s hair; and so careful was he respecting the authenticity of the relic, that Bessy Eldon his wife sat in the room with the young man from Hamlet’s, who distributed the ringlet into separate lockets, which each of the Eldon family afterwards wore. You know how, when George IV came to Edinburgh, a better man than he went on board the royal yacht to welcome the king to his kingdom of Scotland, seized a goblet from which his majesty had just drunk, vowed it should remain for ever as an heirloom in his family, clapped the precious glass in his pocket, and sat down on it and broke it when he got home. Suppose the good sheriff’s prize unbroken now at Abbotsford, should we not smile with something like pity as we beheld it? Suppose one of those lockets of the No-Popery prince’s hair offered for sale at Christie’s, _quot libras e duce summo invenies?_ how many pounds would you find for the illustrious duke? Madame Tussaud has got King George’s coronation robes; is there any man now alive who would kiss the hem of that trumpery? He sleeps since thirty years: do not any of you, who remember him, wonder that you once respected and huzza’d and admired him?

To make a portrait of him at first seemed a matter of small difficulty. There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it: with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this very desk perform a recognizable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him through old magazines and newspapers, having him here at a ball, there at a public dinner, there at races and so forth, you find you have nothing—nothing but a coat and wig and a mask smiling below it—nothing but a great simulacrum. His sire and grandsires were men. One knows what they were like: what they would do in given circumstances: that on occasion they fought and demeaned themselves like tough good soldiers. They had friends whom they liked according to their natures; enemies whom they hated fiercely; passions, and actions, and individualities of their own. The sailor king who came after George was a man: the Duke of York was a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. But this George, what was he? I look through all his life, and recognize but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt’s best nutty brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then nothing. I know of no sentiment that he ever distinctly uttered. Documents are published under his name, but people wrote them—private letters, but people spelt them. He put a great “George P.” or “George R.” at the bottom of the page and fancied he had written the paper: some bookseller’s clerk, some poor author, some _man_ did the work; saw to the spelling, cleaned up the slovenly sentences, and gave the lax maudlin slipslop a sort of consistency. He must have had an individuality: the dancing-master whom he emulated, nay, surpassed—the wig-maker who curled his toupee for him—the tailor who cut his coats, had that. But, about George, one can get at nothing actual. That outside, I am certain, is pad and tailor’s work; there may be something behind, but what? We cannot get at the character; no doubt never shall. Will men of the future have nothing better to do than to unswathe and interpret that royal old mummy? I own I once used to think it would be good sport to pursue him, fasten on him, and pull him down. But now I am ashamed to mount and lay good dogs on, to summon a full field, and then to hunt the poor game.

On the 12th August, 1762, the forty-seventh anniversary of the accession of the House of Brunswick to the English throne, all the bells in London pealed in gratulation, and announced that an heir to George III was born. Five days afterwards the king was pleased to pass letters patent under the great seal, creating H.R.H. the Prince of Great Britain, Electoral Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Duke of Cornwall and Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.

All the people at his birth thronged to see this lovely child; and behind a gilt china-screen railing in St. James’s Palace, in a cradle surmounted by the three princely ostrich feathers, the royal infant was laid to delight the eyes of the lieges. Among the earliest instances of homage paid to him, I read that “a curious Indian bow and arrows were sent to the prince from his father’s faithful subjects in New York”. He was fond of playing with these toys: an old statesman, orator, and wit of his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s time, never tired of his business, still eager in his old age to be well at Court, used to play with the little prince, and pretend to fall down dead when the prince shot at him with his toy bow and arrows—and get up and fall down dead over and over again—to the increased delight of the child. So that he was flattered from his cradle upwards; and before his little feet could walk, statesmen and courtiers were busy kissing them.

There is a pretty picture of the royal infant—a beautiful buxom child—asleep in his mother’s lap; who turns round and holds a finger to her lip, as if she would bid the courtiers around respect the baby’s slumbers. From that day until his decease, sixty-eight years after, I suppose there were more pictures taken of that personage than of any other human being who ever was born and died—in every kind of uniform and every possible Court dress—in long fair hair, with powder, with and without a pigtail—in every conceivable cocked-hat—in dragoon uniform—in Windsor uniform—in a field-marshal’s clothes—in a Scotch kilt and tartans, with dirk and claymore (a stupendous figure)—in a frogged frock-coat with a fur collar and tight breeches and silk stockings—in wigs of every colour, fair, brown, and black—in his famous coronation robes finally, with which performance he was so much in love that he distributed copies of the picture to all the Courts and British embassies in Europe, and to numberless clubs, town-halls, and private friends. I remember as a young man how almost every dining-room had his portrait.

There is plenty of biographical tattle about the prince’s boyhood. It is told with what astonishing rapidity he learned all languages, ancient and modern; how he rode beautifully, sang charmingly, and played elegantly on the violoncello. That he was beautiful was patent to all eyes. He had a high spirit: and once, when he had had a difference with his father, burst into the royal closet and called out, “Wilkes and liberty for ever!” He was so clever, that he confounded his very governors in learning; and one of them, Lord Bruce, having made a false quantity in quoting Greek, the admirable young prince instantly corrected him. Lord Bruce could not remain a governor after this humiliation; resigned his office, and, to soothe his feelings, was actually promoted to be an earl! It is the most wonderful reason for promoting a man that ever I heard. Lord Bruce was made an earl for a blunder in prosody; and Nelson was made a baron for the victory of the Nile.

Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and millions which in the course of his brilliant existence this single prince consumed. Besides his income of 50,000_l._, 70,000_l._, 100,000_l._, 120,000_l._ a year, we read of three applications to Parliament: debts to the amount of 160,000_l._, of 650,000_l._; besides mysterious foreign loans, whereof he pocketed the proceeds. What did he do for all this money? Why was he to have it? If he had been a manufacturing town, or a populous rural district, or an army of five thousand men, he would not have cost more. He, one solitary stout man, who did not toil, nor spin, nor fight,—what had any mortal done that he should be pampered so?

In 1784, when he was twenty-one years of age, Carlton Palace was given to him, and furnished by the nation with as much luxury as could be devised. His pockets were filled with money: he said it was not enough; he flung it out of window: he spent 10,000_l._ a year for the coats on his back. The nation gave him more money, and more, and more. The sum is past counting. He was a prince, most lovely to look on, and christened Prince Florizel on his first appearance in the world. That he was the handsomest prince in the whole world was agreed by men, and alas! by many women.

I suppose he must have been very graceful. There are so many testimonies to the charm of his manner, that we must allow him great elegance and powers of fascination. He, and the King of France’s brother, the Count d’Artois, a charming young prince who danced deliciously on the tight-rope—a poor old tottering exiled king, who asked hospitality of King George’s successor, and lived awhile in the palace of Mary Stuart—divided in their youth the title of first gentleman of Europe. We in England of course gave the prize to _our_ gentleman. Until George’s death the propriety of that award was scarce questioned or the doubters voted rebels and traitors. Only the other day I was reading in the reprint of the delightful _Noctes_ of Christopher North. The health of THE KING is drunk in large capitals by the loyal Scotsman. You would fancy him a hero, a sage, a statesman, a pattern for kings and men. It was Walter Scott who had that accident with the broken glass I spoke of anon. He was the king’s Scottish champion, rallied all Scotland to him, made loyalty the fashion, and laid about him fiercely with his claymore upon all the prince’s enemies. The Brunswicks had no such defenders as those two Jacobite commoners, old Sam Johnson the Lichfield chapman’s son, and Walter Scott, the Edinburgh lawyer’s.

Nature and circumstance had done their utmost to prepare the prince for being spoiled: the dreadful dullness of papa’s Court, its stupid amusements, its dreary occupations, the maddening humdrum, the stifling sobriety of its routine, would have made a scapegrace of a much less lively prince. All the big princes bolted from that castle of ennui where old King George sat, posting up his books and droning over his Handel; and old Queen Charlotte over her snuff and her tambour-frame. Most of the sturdy, gallant sons settled down after sowing their wild oats, and became sober subjects of their father and brother—not ill liked by the nation, which pardons youthful irregularities readily enough, for the sake of pluck, and unaffectedness, and good humour.

The boy is father of the man. Our prince signalized his entrance into the world by a feat worthy of his future life. He invented a new shoebuckle. It was an inch long and five inches broad. “It covered almost the whole instep, reaching down to the ground on either side of the foot.” A sweet invention! lovely and useful as the prince on whose foot it sparkled. At his first appearance at a Court ball, we read that “his coat was pink silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat white silk, embroidered with various-coloured foil, and adorned with a profusion of French paste. And his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand in number, with a button and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a new military style”. What a Florizel! Do these details seem trivial? They are the grave incidents of his life. His biographers say that when he commenced housekeeping in that splendid new palace of his, the Prince of Wales had some windy projects of encouraging literature, science, and the arts; of having assemblies of literary characters; and societies for the encouragement of geography, astronomy, and botany. Astronomy, geography, and botany! Fiddlesticks! French ballet-dancers, French cooks, horse-jockeys, buffoons, procurers, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, china, jewel, and gimcrack merchants—these were his real companions. At first he made a pretence of having Burke and Pitt and Sheridan for his friends. But how could such men be serious before such an empty scapegrace as this lad? Fox might talk dice with him, and Sheridan wine; but what else had these men of genius in common with their tawdry young host of Carlton House? That ribble the leader of such men as Fox and Burke! That man’s opinions about the constitution, the India Bill, justice to the Catholics—about any question graver than the button for a waistcoat or the sauce for a partridge—worth anything! The friendship between the prince and the Whig chiefs was impossible. They were hypocrites in pretending to respect him, and if he broke the hollow compact between them, who shall blame him? His natural companions were dandies and parasites. He could talk to a tailor or a cook; but, as the equal of great statesmen, to set up a creature, lazy, weak, indolent, besotted, of monstrous vanity, and levity incurable—it is absurd. They thought to use him, and did for awhile; but they must have known how timid he was; how entirely heartless and treacherous, and have expected his desertion. His next set of friends were mere table companions, of whom he grew tired too; then we hear of him with a very few select toadies, mere boys from school or the Guards, whose sprightliness tickled the fancy of the worn-out voluptuary. What matters what friends he had? He dropped all his friends; he never could have real friends. An heir to the throne has flatterers, adventurers who hang about him, ambitious men who use him; but friendship is denied him.

And women, I suppose, are as false and selfish in their dealings with such a character as men. Shall we take the Leporello part, flourish a catalogue of the conquests of this royal Don Juan, and tell the names of the favourites to whom, one after the other, George Prince flung his pocket-handkerchief? What purpose would it answer to say how Perdita was pursued, won, deserted, and by whom succeeded? What good in knowing that he did actually marry Mrs. FitzHerbert according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church; that her marriage settlements have been seen in London; that the names of the witnesses to her marriage are known. This sort of vice that we are now come to presents no new or fleeting trait of manners. Debauchees, dissolute, heartless, fickle, cowardly, have been ever since the world began. This one had more temptations than most, and so much may be said in extenuation for him.

It was an unlucky thing for this doomed one, and tending to lead him yet farther on the road to the deuce, that, besides being lovely, so that women were fascinated by him; and heir apparent, so that all the world flattered him; he should have a beautiful voice, which led him directly in the way of drink: and thus all the pleasant devils were coaxing on poor Florizel; desire, and idleness, and vanity, and drunkenness, all clashing their merry cymbals and bidding him come on.

We first hear of his warbling sentimental ditties under the walls of Kew Palace by the moonlight banks of Thames, with Lord Viscount Leporello keeping watch lest the music should be disturbed.

Singing after dinner and supper was the universal fashion of the day. You may fancy all England sounding with choruses, some ribald, some harmless, but all occasioning the consumption of a prodigious deal of fermented liquor.

The jolly Muse her wings to try no frolic flights need take, But round the bowl would dip and fly, like swallows round a lake,

sang Morris in one of his gallant Anacreontics, to which the prince many a time joined in chorus, and of which the burden is,—

And that I think’s a reason fair to drink and fill again.

This delightful boon companion of the prince’s found “a reason fair” to forgo filling and drinking, saw the error of his ways, gave up the bowl and chorus, and died retired and religious. The prince’s table no doubt was a very tempting one. The wits came and did their utmost to amuse him. It is wonderful how the spirits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an aroma, when a great man is at the head of the table. Scott, the loyal cavalier, the king’s true liegeman, the very best _raconteur_ of his time, poured out with an endless generosity his store of old-world learning, kindness, and humour. Grattan contributed to it his wondrous eloquence, fancy, feeling. Tom Moore perched upon it for awhile, and piped his most exquisite little love-tunes on it, flying away in a twitter of indignation afterwards, and attacking the prince with bill and claw. In such society, no wonder the sitting was long, and the butler tired of drawing corks. Remember what the usages of the time were, and that William Pitt, coming to the House of Commons after having drunk a bottle of port wine at his own house, would go into Bellamy’s with Dundas, and help finish a couple more.

You peruse volumes after volumes about our prince, and find some half-dozen stock stories—indeed not many more—common to all the histories. He was good-natured; an indolent, voluptuous prince, not unkindly. One story, the most favourable to him of all, perhaps, is that as Prince Regent he was eager to hear all that could be said in behalf of prisoners condemned to death, and anxious, if possible, to remit the capital sentence. He was kind to his servants. There is a story common to all the biographies, of Molly the housemaid, who, when his household was to be broken up, owing to some reforms which he tried absurdly to practise, was discovered crying as she dusted the chairs because she was to leave a master who had a kind word for all his servants. Another tale is that of a groom of the prince’s being discovered in corn and oat peculations, and dismissed by the personage at the head of the stables; the prince had word of John’s disgrace, remonstrated with him very kindly, generously reinstated him, and bade him promise to sin no more—a promise which John kept. Another story is very fondly told of the prince as a young man hearing of an officer’s family in distress, and how he straightway borrowed six or eight hundred pounds, put his long fair hair under his hat, and so disguised carried the money to the starving family. He sent money, too, to Sheridan on his death-bed, and would have sent more had not death ended the career of that man of genius. Besides these, there are a few pretty speeches, kind and graceful, to persons with whom he was brought in contact. But he turned upon twenty friends. He was fond and familiar with them one day, and he passed them on the next without recognition. He used them, liked them, loved them perhaps in his way, and then separated from them. On Monday he kissed and fondled poor Perdita, and on Tuesday he met her and did not know her. On Wednesday he was very affectionate with that wretched Brummell, and on Thursday forgot him; cheated him even out of a snuff-box which he owed the poor dandy; saw him years afterwards in his downfall and poverty, when the bankrupt Beau sent him another snuff-box with some of the snuff he used to love, as a piteous token of remembrance and submission, and the king took the snuff, and ordered his horses and drove on, and had not the grace to notice his old companion, favourite, rival, enemy, superior. In _Wraxall_ there is some gossip about him. When the charming, beautiful, generous Duchess of Devonshire died—the lovely lady whom he used to call his dearest duchess once, and pretend to admire as all English society admired her—he said, “Then we have lost the best-bred woman in England.” “Then we have lost the kindest heart in England,” said noble Charles Fox. On another occasion, when three noblemen were to receive the Garter, says _Wraxall_, “a great personage observed that never did three men receive the order in so characteristic a manner. The Duke of A. advanced to the sovereign with a phlegmatic, cold, awkward air like a clown; Lord B. came forward fawning and smiling like a courtier; Lord C. presented himself easy, unembarrassed, like a gentleman!” These are the stories one has to recall about the prince and king—kindness to a housemaid, generosity to a groom, criticism on a bow. There _are_ no better stories about him: they are mean and trivial, and they characterize him. The great war of empires and giants goes on. Day by day victories are won and lost by the brave. Torn, smoky flags and battered eagles are wrenched from the heroic enemy and laid at his feet; and he sits there on his throne and smiles, and gives the guerdon of valour to the conqueror. He! Elliston the actor, when the _Coronation_ was performed, in which he took the principal part, used to fancy himself the king, burst into tears, and hiccup a blessing on the people. I believe it is certain about George IV, that he had heard so much of the war, knighted so many people, and worn such a prodigious quantity of marshal’s uniforms, cocked-hats, cock’s feathers, scarlet and bullion in general, that he actually fancied he had been present in some campaigns, and, under the name of General Brock, led a tremendous charge of the German legion at Waterloo.

He is dead but thirty years, and one asks how a great society could have tolerated him? Would we bear him now? In this quarter of a century, what a silent revolution has been working! how it has separated us from old times and manners! How it has changed men themselves! I can see old gentlemen now among us, of perfect good breeding, of quiet lives, with venerable grey heads, fondling their grandchildren; and look at them, and wonder at what they were once. That gentleman of the grand old school, when he was in the 10th Hussars, and dined at the prince’s table, would fall under it night after night. Night after night, that gentleman sat at Brookes’s or Raggett’s over the dice. If, in the petulance of play or drink, that gentleman spoke a sharp word to his neighbour, he and the other would infallibly go out and try to shoot each other the next morning. That gentleman would drive his friend Richmond the black boxer down to Moulsey, and hold his coat, and shout and swear, and hurrah with delight, whilst the black man was beating Dutch Sam the Jew. That gentleman would take a manly pleasure in pulling his own coat off, and thrashing a bargeman in a street row. That gentleman has been in a watchhouse. That gentleman, so exquisitely polite with ladies in a drawing-room, so loftily courteous, if he talked now as he used among men in his youth, would swear so as to make your hair stand on end. I met lately a very old German gentleman, who had served in our army at the beginning of the century. Since then he has lived on his own estate, but rarely meeting with an Englishman, whose language—the language of fifty years ago that is—he possesses perfectly. When this highly bred old man began to speak English to me, almost every other word he uttered was an oath: as they used it (they swore dreadfully in Flanders) with the Duke of York before Valenciennes, or at Carlton House over the supper and cards. Read Byron’s letters. So accustomed is the young man to oaths that he employs them even in writing to his friends, and swears by the post. Read his account of the doings of young men at Cambridge, of the ribald professors, one of whom “could pour out Greek like a drunken helot”, and whose excesses surpassed even those of the young men. Read Matthews’s description of the boyish lordling’s housekeeping at Newstead, the skull-cup passed round, the monks’ dresses from the masquerade warehouse, in which the young scapegraces used to sit until daylight, chanting appropriate songs round their wine. “We come to breakfast at two or three o’clock,” Matthews says. “There are gloves and foils for those who like to amuse themselves, or we fire pistols at a mark in the hall, or we worry the wolf.” A jolly life truly! The noble young owner of the mansion writes about such affairs himself in letters to his friend, Mr. John Jackson, pugilist, in London.

All the prince’s time tells a similar strange story of manners and pleasure. In _Wraxall_ we find the prime minister himself, the redoubted William Pitt, engaged in high jinks with personages of no less importance than Lord Thurlow the lord chancellor, and Mr. Dundas the treasurer of the navy. _Wraxall_ relates how these three statesmen, returning after dinner from Addiscombe, found a turnpike open and galloped through it without paying the toll. The turnpike man, fancying they were highwaymen, fired a blunderbuss after them, but missed them; and the poet sang,—

How as Pitt wandered darkling o’er the plain, His reason drown’d in Jenkinson’s champagne, A rustic’s hand, but righteous fate withstood, Had shed a premier’s for a robber’s blood.

Here we have the treasurer of the navy, the lord high chancellor, and the prime minister, all engaged in a most undoubted lark. In Eldon’s _Memoirs_, about the very same time, I read that the Bar loved wine, as well as the woolsack. Not John Scott himself; he was a good boy always; and though he loved port wine, loved his business and his duty and his fees a great deal better.

He has a Northern Circuit story of those days, about a party at the house of a certain Lawyer Fawcett, who gave a dinner every year to the counsel.

“On one occasion,” related Lord Eldon, “I heard Lee say, ‘I cannot leave Fawcett’s wine. Mind, Davenport, you will go home immediately after dinner, to read the brief in that cause that we have to conduct to-morrow.’

“ ‘Not I,’ said Davenport. ‘Leave my dinner and my wine to read a brief! No, no, Lee; that won’t do.’

“ ‘Then,’ said Lee, ‘what is to be done? who else is employed?’

“_Davenport._—‘Oh! young Scott.’

“Lee.—‘Oh! he must go. Mr. Scott, you must go home immediately, and make yourself acquainted with that cause, before our consultation this evening.’ ”

“This was very hard upon me; but I did go, and there was an attorney from Cumberland, and one from Northumberland, and I do not know how many other persons. Pretty late, in came Jack Lee, as drunk as he could be.

“ ‘I cannot consult to-night; I must go to bed,’ he exclaimed, and away he went. Then came Sir Thomas Davenport.

“ ‘We cannot have a consultation to-night, Mr. Wordsworth’ (Wordsworth, I think, was the name; it was a Cumberland name), shouted Davenport. ‘Don’t you see how drunk Mr. Scott is? it is impossible to consult.’ Poor me! who had scarce had any dinner, and lost all my wine—I was so drunk that I could not consult! Well, a verdict was given against us, and it was all owing to Lawyer Fawcett’s dinner. We moved for a new trial; and I must say, for the honour of the Bar, that those two gentlemen, Jack Lee and Sir Thomas Davenport, paid all the expenses between them of the first trial. It is the only instance I ever knew, but they did. We moved for a new trial (on the ground, I suppose, of the counsel not being in their senses), and it was granted. When it came on, the following year, the judge rose and said,—

“ ‘Gentlemen, did any of you dine with Lawyer Fawcett yesterday? for, if you did, I will not hear this cause till next year.’

“There was great laughter. We gained the cause that time.”

On another occasion, at Lancaster, where poor Bozzy must needs be going the Northern Circuit, “we found him,” says Mr. Scott, “lying upon the pavement inebriated. We subscribed a guinea at supper for him, and a half-crown for his clerk”—(no doubt there was a large Bar, and that Scott’s joke did not cost him much),—“and sent him, when he waked next morning, a brief, with instructions to move for what we denominated the writ of _quare adhaesit pavimento?_ with observations duly calculated to induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the necessity of granting it, to the judge before whom he was to move.” Boswell sent all round the town to attorneys for books, that might enable him to distinguish himself—but in vain. He moved, however, for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge was perfectly astonished, and the audience amazed. The judge said, “I never heard of such a writ—what can it be that adheres _pavimento_? Are any of you gentlemen at the Bar able to explain this?”

The Bar laughed. At last one of them said,—

“My lord, Mr. Boswell last night _adhaesit pavimento_. There was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement.”

The canny old gentleman relishes these jokes. When the Bishop of Lincoln was moving from the deanery of St. Paul’s, he says he asked a learned friend of his, by name Will Hay, how he should move some especially fine claret, about which he was anxious.

“Pray, my lord bishop,” says Hay, “how much of the wine have you?”

The bishop said six dozen.

“If that is all,” Hay answered, “you have but to ask me six times to dinner, and I will carry it all away myself.”

There were giants in those days; but this joke about wine is not so fearful as one perpetrated by Orator Thelwall, in the heat of the French Revolution, ten years later, over a frothing pot of porter. He blew the head off, and said, “This is the way I would serve all kings.”

Now we come to yet higher personages, and find their doings recorded in the blushing pages of timid little Miss Burney’s _Memoirs_. She represents a prince of the blood in quite a royal condition. The loudness, the bigness, boisterousness, creaking boots and rattling oaths, of the young princes, appeared to have frightened the prim household of Windsor, and set all the tea-cups twittering on the tray. On the night of a ball and birthday, when one of the pretty, kind princesses was to come out, it was agreed that her brother, Prince William Henry, should dance the opening minuet with her, and he came to visit the household at their dinner.

“At dinner, Mrs. Schwellenberg presided, attired magnificently; Miss Goldsworthy, Mrs. Stanforth, Messrs. Du Luc and Stanhope, dined with us; and while we were still eating fruit, the Duke of Clarence entered.

“He was just risen from the king’s table, and waiting for his equipage to go home and prepare for the ball. To give you an idea of the energy of his royal highness’s language, I ought to set apart an objection to writing, or rather intimating, certain forcible words, and beg leave to show you in genuine colours a royal sailor.

“We all rose, of course, upon his entrance, and the two gentlemen placed themselves behind their chairs, while the footmen left the room. But he ordered us all to sit down, and called the men back to hand about some wine. He was in exceeding high spirits, and in the utmost good humour. He placed himself at the head of the table, next Mrs. Schwellenberg, and looked remarkably well, gay, and full of sport and mischief; yet clever withal, as well as comical.

“ ‘Well, this is the first day I have ever dined with the king at St. James’s on his birthday. Pray, have you all drunk his majesty’s health?’

“ ‘No, your royal highness; your royal highness might make dem do dat,’ said Mrs. Schwellenberg.

“ ‘Oh, by ——, I will! Here, you’ (to the footman). ‘bring champagne; I’ll drink the king’s health again, if I die for it. Yes, I have done it pretty well already; so has the king, I promise you! I believe his majesty was never taken such good care of before; we have kept his spirits up, I promise you; we have enabled him to go through his fatigues; and I should have done more still, but for the ball and Mary;—I have promised to dance with Mary. I must keep sober for Mary.’ ”

Indefatigable Miss Burney continues for a dozen pages reporting H.R.H.’s conversation, and indicating, with a humour not unworthy of the clever little author of _Evelina_, the increasing state of excitement of the young sailor prince, who drank more and more champagne, stopped old Mrs. Schwellenberg’s remonstrances by giving the old lady a kiss, and telling her to hold her potato-trap, and who did not “keep sober for Mary”. Mary had to find another partner that night, for the royal William Henry could not keep his legs.

Will you have a picture of the amusements of another royal prince? It is the Duke of York, the blundering general, the beloved commander-in-chief of the army, the brother with whom George IV had had many a midnight carouse, and who continued his habits of pleasure almost till death seized his stout body.

In Pückler Muskau’s _Letters_, that German prince describes a bout with H.R.H., who in his best time was such a powerful toper that “six bottles of claret after dinner scarce made a perceptible change in his countenance”.

“I remember,” says Pückler, “that one evening,—indeed, it was past midnight,—he took some of his guests, among whom were the Austrian ambassador, Count Meervelt, Count Beroldingen, and myself, into his beautiful armoury. We tried to swing several Turkish sabres, but none of us had a very firm grasp; whence it happened that the duke and Meervelt both scratched themselves with a sort of straight Indian sword so as to draw blood. Meervelt then wished to try if the sword cut as well as a Damascus, and attempted to cut through one of the wax candles that stood on the table. The experiment answered so ill, that both the candles, candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and were extinguished. While we were groping in the dark and trying to find the door, the duke’s aide de camp stammered out in great agitation, ‘By G——, sir, I remember the sword is poisoned.!’

“You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded at this intelligence! Happily, on further examination, it appeared that claret, and not poison, was at the bottom of the colonel’s exclamation.”

And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in which Clarence and York, and the very highest personage of the realm, the great Prince Regent, all play parts. The feast took place at the Pavilion at Brighton, and was described to me by a gentleman who was present at the scene. In Gilray’s caricatures, and amongst Fox’s jolly associates, there figures a great nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called Jockey of Norfolk in his time, and celebrated for his table exploits. He had quarrelled with the prince, like the rest of the Whigs; but a sort of reconciliation had taken place; and now, being a very old man, the prince invited him to dine and sleep at the Pavilion, and the old duke drove over from his castle of Arundel with his famous equipage of grey horses, still remembered in Sussex.

The Prince of Wales had concocted with his royal brothers a notable scheme for making the old man drunk. Every person at table was enjoined to drink wine with the duke—a challenge which the old toper did not refuse. He soon began to see that there was a conspiracy against him; he drank glass for glass; he overthrew many of the brave. At last the First Gentleman of Europe proposed bumpers of brandy. One of the royal brothers filled a great glass for the duke. He stood up and tossed off the drink. “Now,” says he, “I will have my carriage, and go home.” The prince urged upon him his previous promise to sleep under the roof where he had been so generously entertained. “No,” he said, he had had enough of such hospitality. A trap had been set for him; he would leave the place at once and never enter its doors more.

The carriage was called, and came; but, in the half-hour’s interval, the liquor had proved too potent for the old man; his host’s generous purpose was answered, and the duke’s old grey head lay stupefied on the table. Nevertheless, when his post-chaise was announced, he staggered to it as well as he could, and stumbling in, bade the postilions drive to Arundel. They drove him for half an hour round and round the Pavilion lawn; the poor old man fancied he was going home. When he awoke that morning he was in bed at the prince’s hideous house at Brighton. You may see the place now for sixpence: they have fiddlers there every day; and sometimes buffoons and mountebanks hire the Riding House and do their tricks and tumbling there. The trees are still there, and the gravel walks round which the poor old sinner was trotted. I can fancy the flushed faces of the royal princes as they support themselves at the portico pillars, and look on at old Norfolk’s disgrace; but I can’t fancy how the man who perpetrated it continued to be called a gentleman.

From drinking, the pleased Muse now turns to gambling, of which in his youth our prince was a great practitioner. He was a famous pigeon for the play-men; they lived upon him. Egalité Orleans, it was believed, punished him severely. A noble lord, whom we shall call the Marquis of Steyne, is said to have mulcted him in immense sums. He frequented the clubs, where play was then almost universal; and, as it was known his debts of honour were sacred, whilst he was gambling Jews waited outside to purchase his notes of hand. His transactions on the turf were unlucky as well as discreditable: though I believe he, and his jockey, and his horse Escape, were all innocent in that affair which created so much scandal.

Arthur’s, Almack’s, Bootle’s, and White’s were the chief clubs of the young men of fashion. There was play at all, and decayed noblemen and broken-down senators fleeced the unwary there. In Selwyn’s _Letters_ we find Carlisle, Devonshire, Coventry, Queensberry, all undergoing the probation. Charles Fox, a dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late times—lost 200,000_l._ at play. Gibbon tells of his playing for twenty-two hours at a sitting, and losing 500_l._ an hour. That indomitable punter said that the greatest pleasure in life, after winning, was losing. What hours, what nights, what health did he waste over the devil’s books! I was going to say what peace of mind; but he took his losses very philosophically. After an awful night’s play, and the enjoyment of the greatest pleasure but _one_ in life, he was found on a sofa tranquilly reading an Eclogue of Virgil.

Play survived long after the wild prince and Fox had given up the dice-box. The dandies continued it. Byron, Brummell—how many names could I mention of men of the world who have suffered by it! In 1837 occurred a famous trial which pretty nigh put an end to gambling in England. A peer of the realm was found cheating at whist, and repeatedly seen to practise the trick called _sauter la coupe_. His friends at the clubs saw him cheat, and went on playing with him. One greenhorn, who had discovered his foul play, asked an old hand what he should do. “Do!” said the Mammon of Unrighteousness, “_back him, you fool_.” The best efforts were made to screen him. People wrote him anonymous letters and warned him; but he would cheat, and they were obliged to find him out. Since that day, when my lord’s shame was made public, the gaming-table has lost all its splendour. Shabby Jews and blacklegs prowl about racecourses and tavern parlours, and now and then inveigle silly yokels with greasy packs of cards in railroad ears; but Play is a deposed goddess, her worshippers bankrupt, and her table in rags.

So is another famous British institution gone to decay—the Ring: the noble practice of British boxing, which in my youth was still almost flourishing.

The prince, in his early days, was a great patron of this national sport, as his grand-uncle Culloden Cumberland had been before him; but, being present at a fight at Brighton, where one of the combatants was killed, the prince pensioned the boxer’s widow, and declared he never would attend another battle. “But, nevertheless,”—I read in the noble language of Pierce Egan (whose smaller work on Pugilism I have the honour to possess),—“he thought it a manly and decided English feature, which ought not to be destroyed. His majesty had a drawing of the sporting characters in the Fives Court placed in his boudoir, to remind him of his former attachment and support of true courage; and when any fight of note occurred after he was king, accounts of it were read to him by his desire.” That gives one a fine image of a king taking his recreation;—at ease in a royal dressing-gown;—too majestic to read himself, ordering the prime minister to read him accounts of battles: how Cribb punched Molyneux’s eye, or Jack Randall thrashed the Game Chicken.

Where my prince _did_ actually distinguish himself was in driving. He drove once in four hours and a half from Brighton to Carlton House—fifty-six miles. All the young men of that day were fond of that sport. But the fashion of rapid driving deserted England; and, I believe, trotted over to America. Where are the amusements of our youth? I hear of no gambling now but amongst obscure ruffians; of no boxing but amongst the lowest rabble. One solitary four-in-hand still drove round the parks in London last year; but that charioteer must soon disappear. He was very old; he was attired after the fashion of the year 1825. He must drive to the banks of Styx ere long,—where the ferry-boat waits to carry him over to the defunct revellers, who boxed and gambled and drank and drove with King George.

The bravery of the Brunswicks, that all the family must have it, that George possessed it, are points which all English writers have agreed to admit; and yet I cannot see how George IV should have been endowed with this quality. Swaddled in feather-beds all his life, lazy, obese, perpetually eating and drinking, his education was quite unlike that of his tough old progenitors. His grandsires had confronted hardship and war, and ridden up and fired their pistols undaunted into the face of death. His father had conquered luxury, and overcome indolence. Here was one who never resisted any temptation; never had a desire but he coddled and pampered it; if ever he had any nerve, frittered it away among cooks, and tailors, and barbers, and furniture-mongers, and opera dancers. What muscle would not grow flaccid in such a life—a life that was never strung up to any action—an endless Capua without any campaign—all fiddling, and flowers, and feasting, and flattery, and folly? When George III was pressed by the Catholic question and the India Bill, he said he would retire to Hanover rather than yield upon either point; and he would have done what he said. But, before yielding, he was determined to fight his ministers and Parliament; and he did, and he beat them. The time came when George IV was pressed too upon the Catholic claims: the cautious Peel had slipped over to that side; the grim old Wellington had joined it; and Peel tells us, in his _Memoirs_, what was the conduct of the king. He at first refused to submit; whereupon Peel and the duke offered their resignations, which their gracious master accepted. He did these two gentlemen the honour, Peel says, to kiss them both when they went away. (Fancy old Arthur’s grim countenance and eagle beak as the monarch kisses it!) When they were gone he sent after them, surrendered, and wrote to them a letter begging them to remain in office, and allowing them to have their way. Then his Majesty had a meeting with Eldon, which is related at curious length in the latter’s _Memoirs_. He told Eldon what was not true about his interview with the new Catholic converts; utterly misled the old ex-chancellor; cried, whimpered, fell on his neck, and kissed him too. We know old Eldon’s own tears were pumped very freely. Did these two fountains gush together? I can’t fancy a behaviour more unmanly, imbecile, pitiable. This a Defender of the Faith! This a chief in the crisis of a great nation! This an inheritor of the courage of the Georges! Many of my hearers no doubt have journeyed to the pretty old town of Brunswick, in company with that most worthy, prudent, and polite gentleman, the Earl of Malmesbury, and fetched away Princess Caroline for her longing husband, the Prince of Wales, Old Queen Charlotte would have had her eldest son marry a niece of her own, that famous Louisa of Strelitz, afterwards Queen of Prussia, and who shares with Marie Antoinette in the last age the sad pre-eminence of beauty and misfortune. But George III had a niece at Brunswick: she was a richer princess than her Serene Highness of Strelitz:—in fine, the Princess Caroline was selected to marry the heir to the English throne. We follow my Lord Malmesbury in quest of her; we are introduced to her illustrious father and royal mother; we witness the balls and fêtes of the old Court; we are presented to the princess herself, with her fair hair, her blue eyes, and her impertinent shoulders—a lively, bouncing, romping princess, who takes the advice of her courtly English mentor most generously and kindly. We can be present at her very toilette, if we like, regarding which, and for very good reasons, the British courtier implores her to be particular. What a strange Court! What a queer privacy of morals and manners do we look into! Shall we regard it as preachers and moralists, and cry, Woe, against the open vice and selfishness and corruption; or look at it as we do at the king in the pantomime, with his pantomime wife, and pantomime courtiers, whose big heads he knocks together, whom he pokes with his pantomime sceptre, whom he orders to prison under the guard of his pantomime beefeaters, as he sits down to dine on his pantomime pudding? It is grave, it is sad, it is theme most curious for moral and political speculation; it is monstrous, grotesque, laughable, with its prodigious littlenesses, etiquettes, ceremonials, sham moralities; it is as serious as a sermon, and as absurd and outrageous as Punch’s puppet-show.

Malmesbury tells us of the private life of the duke, Princess Caroline’s father, who was to die, like his warlike son, in arms against the French; presents us to his courtiers, his favourite; his duchess, George III’s sister, a grim old princess, who took the British envoy aside, and told him wicked old stories of wicked old dead people and times; who came to England afterwards when her nephew was regent, and lived in a shabby furnished lodging, old, and dingy, and deserted, and grotesque, but somehow royal. And we go with him to the duke to demand the princess’s hand in form, and we hear the Brunswick guns fire their adieux of salute, as H.R.H. the Princess of Wales departs in the frost and snow; and we visit the domains of the Prince Bishop of Osnaburg—the Duke of York of our early time; and we dodge about from the French revolutionists, whose ragged legions are pouring over Holland and Germany, and gaily trampling down the old world to the tune of _Ça ira_; and we take shipping at Slade, and we land at Greenwich, where the princess’s ladies and the prince’s ladies are in waiting to receive her royal highness.

What a history follows! Arrived in London, the bridegroom hastened eagerly to receive his bride. When she was first presented to him, Lord Malmesbury says she very properly attempted to kneel. He raised her gracefully enough, embraced her, and turning round to me, said,—

“Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.”

I said, “Sir, had you not better have a glass of water?”

Upon which, much out of humour, he said, with an oath, “No; I will go to the queen.”

What could be expected from a wedding which had such a beginning—from such a bridegroom and such a bride? I am not going to carry you through the scandal of that story, or follow the poor princess through all her vagaries; her balls and her dances, her travels to Jerusalem and Naples, her jigs, and her junketings, and her tears. As I read her trial in history, I vote she is not guilty. I don’t say it is an impartial verdict; but as one reads her story the heart bleeds for the kindly, generous, outraged creature. If wrong there be, let it lie at his door who wickedly thrust her from it. Spite of her follies, the great, hearty people of England loved, and protected, and pitied her. “God bless you! we will bring your husband back to you,” said a mechanic one day, as she told Lady Charlotte Bury with tears streaming down her cheeks. They could not bring that husband back; they could not cleanse that selfish heart. Was hers the only one he had wounded? Steeped in selfishness, impotent for faithful attachment and manly enduring love,—had it not survived remorse, was it not accustomed to desertion?

Malmesbury gives us the beginning of the marriage story;—how the prince reeled into chapel to be married; how he hiccupped out his vows of fidelity—you know how he kept them; how he pursued the woman whom he had married; to what a state he brought her; with what blows he struck her; with what malignity he pursued her; what his treatment of his daughter was; and what his own life. _He_ the first gentleman of Europe! There is no stronger satire on the proud English society of that day, than that they admired George.

No, thank God, we can tell of better gentlemen; and whilst our eyes turn away, shocked, from this monstrous image of pride, vanity, weakness, they may see in that England over which the last George pretended to reign, some who merit indeed the title of gentlemen, some who make our hearts beat when we hear their names, and whose memory we fondly salute when that of yonder imperial manikin is tumbled into oblivion. I will take men of my own profession of letters. I will take Walter Scott, who loved the king, and who was his sword and buckler, and championed him like that brave Highlander in his own story, who fights round his craven chief. What a good gentleman! What a friendly soul, what a generous hand, what an amiable life was that of the noble Sir Walter! I will take another man of letters, whose life I admire even more,—an English worthy, doing his duty for fifty noble years of labour, day by day storing up learning, day by day working for scant wages, most charitable out of his small means, bravely faithful to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn from his path for popular praise or princes’ favour;—I mean _Robert Southey_. We have left his old political landmarks miles and miles behind; we protest against his dogmatism; nay, we begin to forget it and his politics: but I hope his life will not be forgotten, for it is sublime in its simplicity, its energy, its honour, its affection. In the combat between Time and Thalaba, I suspect the former destroyer has conquered. Kehama’s curse frightens very few readers now; but Southey’s private letters are worth piles of epics, and are sure to last among us, as long as kind hearts like to sympathize with goodness and purity, and love and upright life. “If your feelings are like mine,” he writes to his wife, “I will not go to Lisbon without you, or I will stay at home, and not part from you. For though not unhappy when away, still without you I am not happy. For your sake, as well as my own and little Edith’s, I will not consent to any separation; the growth of a year’s love between her and me, if it please God she should live, is a thing too delightful in itself, and too valuable in its consequences, to be given up for any light inconvenience on your part or mine.... On these things we will talk at leisure; only, dear, dear Edith, _we must not part!_”

This was a poor literary gentleman. The First Gentleman in Europe had a wife and daughter too. Did he love them so? Was he faithful to them? Did he sacrifice ease for them, or show them the sacred examples of religion and honour? Heaven gave the Great English Prodigal no such good fortune. Peel proposed to make a baronet of Southey; and to this advancement the king agreed. The poet nobly rejected the offered promotion.

“I have,” he wrote, “a pension of 200_l._ a year, conferred upon me by the good offices of my old friend C. Wynn, and I have the laureateship. The salary of the latter was immediately appropriated, as far as it went, to a life insurance for 3,000_l._, which, with an earlier insurance, is the sole provision I have made for my family. All beyond must be derived from my own industry. Writing for a livelihood, a livelihood is all that I have gained; for, having also something better in view, and never, therefore, having courted popularity, nor written for the mere sake of gain, it has not been possible for me to lay by anything. Last year, for the first time in my life, I was provided with a year’s expenditure beforehand. This exposition may show how unbecoming and unwise it would be to accept the rank which, so greatly to my honour, you have solicited for me.”

How noble his poverty is, compared to the wealth of his master! His acceptance even of a pension was made the object of his opponents’ satire: but think of the merit and modesty of this state pensioner; and that other enormous drawer of public money, who receives 100,000_l._ a year, and comes to Parliament with a request for 650,000_l._ more!

Another true knight of those days was Cuthbert Collingwood; and I think, since Heaven made gentlemen, there is no record of a better one than that. Of brighter deeds, I grant you, we may read performed by others; but where of a nobler, kinder, more beautiful life of duty, of a gentler, truer heart? Beyond dazzle of success and blaze of genius, I fancy shining a hundred and a hundred times higher, the sublime purity of Collingwood’s gentle glory. His heroism stirs British hearts when we recall it. His love, and goodness, and piety make one thrill with happy emotion. As one reads of him and his great comrade going into the victory with which their names are immortally connected, how the old English word comes up, and that old English feeling of what I should like to call Christian honour! What gentlemen they were, what great hearts they had! “We can, my dear Coll,” writes Nelson to him, “have no little jealousies; we have only one great object in view,—that of meeting the enemy, and getting a glorious peace for our country.” At Trafalgar, when the _Royal Sovereign_ was pressing alone into the midst of the combined fleets, Lord Nelson said to Captain Blackwood: “See how that noble fellow Collingwood takes his ship into action! How I envy him!” The very same throb and impulse of heroic generosity was beating in Collingwood’s honest bosom. As he led into the fight, he said: “What would Nelson give to be here!”

After the action of the 1st of June, he writes:—“We cruised for a few days, like disappointed people looking for what they could not find, _until the morning of little Sarah’s birthday_, between eight and nine o’clock, when the French fleet, of twenty-five sail of the line, was discovered to windward. We chased them, and they bore down within about five miles of us. The night was spent in watching and preparation for the succeeding day; and many a blessing did I send forth to my Sarah, lest I should never bless her more. At dawn, we made our approach on the enemy, then drew up, dressed our ranks, and it was about eight when the admiral made the signal for each ship to engage her opponent, and bring her to close action; and then down we went under a crowd of sail, and in a manner that would have animated the coldest heart, and struck terror into the most intrepid enemy. The ship we were to engage was two ahead of the French admiral, so we had to go through his fire and that of two ships next to him, and received all their broadsides two or three times, before we fired a gun. It was then near ten o’clock. I observed to the admiral, that about that time our wives were going to church, but that I thought the peal we should ring about the Frenchman’s ears would outdo their parish bells.”

There are no words to tell what the heart feels in reading the simple phrases of such a hero. Here is victory and courage, but love sublimer and superior. Here is a Christian soldier spending the night before battle in watching and preparing for the succeeding day, thinking of his dearest home, and sending many blessings forth to his Sarah, “lest he should never bless her more.” Who would not say Amen to his supplication? It was a benediction to his country—the prayer of that intrepid loving heart.

We have spoken of a good soldier and good men of letters as specimens of English gentlemen of the age just past: may we not also—many of my elder hearers, I am sure, have read, and fondly remember his delightful story—speak of a good divine, and mention Reginald Heber as one of the best of English gentlemen? The charming poet, the happy possessor of all sorts of gifts and accomplishments, birth, wit, fame, high character, competence—he was the beloved parish priest in his own home of Hoderel, “counselling his people in their troubles, advising them in their difficulties, comforting them in distress, kneeling often at their sick-beds at the hazard of his own life; exhorting, encouraging where there was need; where there was strife the peacemaker; where there was want the free giver.”

When the Indian bishopric was offered to him he refused at first; but after communing with himself (and committing his case to the quarter whither such pious men are wont to carry their doubts), he withdrew his refusal, and prepared himself for his mission and to leave his beloved parish. “Little children, love one another, and forgive one another,” were the last sacred words he said to his weeping people. He parted with them, knowing, perhaps, he should see them no more. Like those other good men of whom we have just spoken, love and duty were his life’s aim. Happy he, happy they who were so gloriously faithful to both! He writes to his wife those charming lines on his journey:—

If thou, my love, wert by my side, my babies at my knee, How gladly would our pinnace glide o’er Gunga’s mimic sea!

I miss thee at the dawning grey, when, on our deck reclined, In careless ease my limbs I lay and woo the cooler wind.

I miss thee when by Gunga’s stream my twilight steps I guide; But most beneath the lamp’s pale beam I miss thee by my side.

I spread my books, my pencil try, the lingering noon to cheer; But miss thy kind approving eye, thy meek attentive ear.

But when of morn and eve the star beholds me on my knee, I feel, though thou art distant far, thy prayers ascend for me.

Then on! then on! where duty leads my course be onward still,— O’er broad Hindostan’s sultry meads, o’er bleak Almorah’s hill.

That course nor Delhi’s kingly gates, nor wild Malwah detain, For sweet the bliss us both awaits by yonder western main.

Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, across the dark blue sea: But ne’er were hearts so blithe and gay as there shall meet in thee!

Is it not Collingwood and Sarah, and Southey and Edith? His affection is part of his life. What were life without it? Without love, I can fancy no gentleman.

How touching is a remark Heber makes in his _Travels through India_, that on inquiring of the natives at a town, which of the governors of India stood highest in the opinion of the people, he found that, though Lord Wellesley and Warren Hastings were honoured as the two greatest men who had ever ruled this part of the world, the people spoke with chief affection of Judge Cleaveland, who had died, aged twenty-nine, in 1784. The people have built a monument over him, and still hold a religious feast in his memory. So does his own country still tend with a heart’s regard the memory of the gentle Heber.

And Cleaveland died in 1784, and is still loved by the heathen, is he? Why, that year 1784 was remarkable in the life of our friend the First Gentleman of Europe. Do you not know that he was twenty-one in that year, and opened Carlton House with a grand ball to the nobility and gentry, and doubtless wore that lovely pink coat which we have described. I was eager to read about the ball, and looked to the old magazines for information. The entertainment took place on the 10th February. In the _European Magazine_ of March, 1784, I came straightway upon it:—

“The alterations at Carlton House being finished, we lay before our readers a description of the state apartments as they appeared on the 10th instant, when H.R.H. gave a grand ball to the principal nobility and gentry.... The entrance to the state room fills the mind with an inexpressible idea of greatness and splendour.

“The state chair is of a gold frame, covered with crimson damask; on each corner of the feet is a lion’s head, expressive of fortitude and strength; the feet of the chair have serpents twining round them, to denote wisdom. Facing the throne, appears the helmet of Minerva; and over the windows, glory is represented by St. George with a superb gloria.

“But the saloon may be styled the _chef-d’œuvre_, and in every ornament discovers great invention. It is hung with a figured lemon satin. The window-curtains, sofas, and chairs are of the same colour. The ceiling is ornamented with emblematical paintings, representing the Graces and Muses, together with Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, and Paris. Two ormolu chandeliers are placed here. It is impossible by expression to do justice to the extraordinary workmanship, as well as design, of the ornaments. They each consist of a palm, branching out in five directions for the reception of lights. A beautiful figure of a rural nymph is represented entwining the stems of the tree with wreaths of flowers. In the centre of the room is a rich chandelier. To see this apartment _dans son plus beau jour_, it should be viewed in the glass over the chimney-piece. The range of apartments from the saloon to the ballroom, when the doors are open, formed one of the grandest spectacles that ever was beheld.”

In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, for the very same month and year—March, 1784—is an account of another festival, in which another great gentleman of English extraction is represented as taking a principal share:—

“According to order, H.E. the Commander-in-Chief was admitted to a public audience of Congress; and, being seated, the president, after a pause, informed him that the United States assembled were ready to receive his communications. Whereupon he arose, and spoke as follows:—

“ ‘Mr. President,—The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place, I present myself before Congress to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country.

“ ‘Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, I resign the appointment I accepted with diffidence; which, however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the nation, and the patronage of Heaven. I close this last act of my official life, by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them to His holy keeping. Having finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action; and, bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take my leave of the employments of my public life.’ To which the President replied:—

“ ‘Sir, having defended the standard of liberty in the New World, having taught a lesson useful to those who inflict and those who feel oppression, you retire with the blessings of your fellow citizens; though the glory of your virtues will not terminate with your military command, but will descend to remotest ages.’ ”

Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed:—the opening feast of Prince George in London, or the resignation of Washington? Which is the noble character for after-ages to admire;—yon fribble dancing in lace and spangles, or yonder hero who sheathes his sword after a life of spotless honour, a purity unreproached, a courage indomitable, and a consummate victory? Which of these is the true gentleman? What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to have lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to keep your honour virgin; to have the esteem of your fellow citizens, and the love of your fireside; to bear good fortune meekly; to suffer evil with constancy; and through evil or good to maintain truth always? Show me the happy man whose life exhibits these qualities, and him we will salute as gentleman, whatever his rank may be; show me the prince who possesses them, and he may be sure of our love and loyalty. The heart of Britain still beats kindly for George III,—not because he was wise and just, but because he was pure in life, honest in intent, and because according to his lights he worshipped Heaven. I think we acknowledge in the inheritrix of his sceptre, a wiser rule, and a life as honourable and pure; and I am sure the future painter of our manners will pay a willing allegiance to that good life, and be loyal to the memory of that unsullied virtue.

FOOTNOTES

1 The influence of Scott on Thackeray is undoubted and freely confessed. But I cannot fall in with “certain persons of distinction” in making _Esmond_ very specially indebted to _Woodstock_. _Woodstock_ is a very great book in itself and amazing when one knows its circumstances: but it is, even for Scott, very specially and exclusively _objective_. _Esmond_ is subjective also in the highest degree.

2 This form, which he used elsewhere than in the _Biographia Literaria_, is better than _esemplastic_ which he employed there.

3 The justice or accuracy of his individual presentments and even of his general view of the time is quite another matter. We may touch on part of it presently. But the real point is that the whole is of a piece at least _in potentia_: that it gives a world that might have existed.

4 The lectures on the _Humourists_ were, of course, delivered before _Esmond_ was published; but, in another sense, they are only aftercrops or by-products. The notes, sometimes very interesting, are James Hannay’s.

5 As might perhaps have been expected from its original appearance, not piecemeal but in the regular three-volume form, _Esmond_ was not very much altered by its author in later issues. There was, indeed, a “revised” edition in 1858, in which a considerable number of minor changes, nearly all for the better, were made. These have been carefully considered, but in practically every case there was really nothing to do but to follow them silently. For it would be absurd, in the present edition, to chronicle solemnly the rectification of mere misprints like “H_o_xton” for “H_e_xton”, or the change from “was never” to “never was”. In some points of orthography “Chelse_a_” and “Chelse_y_”, for instance, Thackeray never reached full consistency, and he has sometimes been caught in the intricacies of the Castlewood relations and nomenclature, &c. So, too, Walcote, which is near _Wells_ at first, moves to the neighbourhood of _Winchester_ later; and there are other characteristic oversights. But, on the whole, there is little need of comment, and none of variants, save in a very few instances, where the “revised” edition seems to have been altered for the worse.

On the other hand, in recent editions of Thackeray, published by his representatives, considerable alterations to _The English Humourists_, &c., in text and notes have been introduced, dates being changed in accordance with later researches, quotations (in which Thackeray was pretty lax) adjusted to their originals, and so forth. As the chief authorities consulted in making these alterations were the late Sir Leslie Stephen, Mr. Austin Dobson, and Mr. Sidney Lee, there need not be much question as to their accuracy: and it perhaps shows undue hardihood in the present editor not to adopt them. But it seems to him that Thackeray’s books are not so much text-books of history, literary and other, where accuracy is the first point, as literature, where it is not. Such corrections could be most properly introduced in the notes of a fuller commentated edition: less so, it may seem, in an almost unannotated text. In particular, Thackeray’s _mis_quotations (they are not seldom distinct improvements) sometimes directly form the basis of his own remarks, which become less apposite if the citations are corrected.

As the text of this volume has few original illustrations some miscellaneous sketches are added to it.

6 Lionel Tipton, created Baron Bergamot, ann. 1686, Gentleman Usher of the Back Stairs, and afterwards appointed Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King’s Posset (on the decease of George, second Viscount Castlewood), accompanied his Majesty to St. Germains, where he died without issue. No Groom of the Posset was appointed by the Prince of Orange, nor hath there been such an officer in any succeeding reign.

7 To have this rank of marquis restored in the family had always been my lady viscountess’s ambition; and her old maiden aunt, Barbara Topham, the goldsmith’s daughter, dying about this time, and leaving all her property to Lady Castlewood, I have heard that her ladyship sent almost the whole of the money to King James, a proceeding which so irritated my Lord Castlewood that he actually went to the parish church, and was only appeased by the marquis’s title which his exiled majesty sent to him in return for the 15,000_l._ his faithful subject lent him.

8 Ὄ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς βροτοὶ αἰτιόωνται, ἐξ ἡμέων γάρ φασι κάκ᾽ ἔμμεναι; οἱ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπὲρ μόρον ἄλγε᾽ ἔχουσιν.

9 My mistress before I went this campaign sent me John Lockwood out of Walcote, who hath ever since remained with me.—H. E.

10 This passage in the memoirs of Esmond is written on a leaf inserted into the MS. book, and dated 1744, probably after he had heard of the duchess’s death.

11 Our grandfather’s hatred of the Duke of Marlborough appears all through his account of these campaigns. He always persisted that the duke was the greatest traitor and soldier history ever told of: and declared that he took bribes on all hands during the war. My lord marquis (for so we may call him here, though he never went by any other name than Colonel Esmond) was in the habit of telling many stories which he did not set down in his memoirs, and which he had from his friend the Jesuit, who was not always correctly informed, and who persisted that Marlborough was looking for a bribe of two millions of crowns before the campaign of Ramillies.

And our grandmother used to tell us children, that on his first presentation to my lord duke, the duke turned his back upon my grandfather; and said to the duchess, who told my lady dowager at Chelsea, who afterwards told Colonel Esmond—“Tom Esmond’s bastard has been to my levee: he has the hang-dog look of his rogue of a father”—an expression which my grandfather never forgave. He was as constant in his dislikes as in his attachments; and exceedingly partial to Webb, whose side he took against the more celebrated general. We have General Webb’s portrait now at Castlewood, Va.

12 ’Tis not thus _woman loves_: Col. E. hath owned to this folly for a _score of women_ besides.—R.

13 And, indeed, so was his to them, a thousand, thousand times more charming, for where was his equal?—R.

14 See Appendix, p. 464.

15 What indeed? Ps. xci. 2. 3, 7.—R. E.

16 The managers were the bishop, who cannot be hurt by having his name mentioned, a very active and loyal Nonconformist divine, a lady in the highest favour at Court, with whom Beatrix Esmond had communication, and two noblemen of the greatest rank, and a Member of the House of Commons, who was implicated in more transactions than one in behalf of the Stuart family.

17 There can be very little doubt that the doctor, mentioned by my dear father, was the famous Dr. Arbuthnot.—R. E. W.

18 My dear father saith quite truly, that his manner towards our sex was uniformly courteous. From my infancy upwards, he treated me with an extreme gentleness, as though I was a little lady. I can scarce remember (though I tried him often) ever hearing a rough word from him, nor was he less grave and kind in his manner to the humblest negresses on his estate. He was familiar with no one except my mother, and it was delightful to witness up to the very last days the confidence between them. He was obeyed eagerly by all under him; and my mother and all her household lived in a constant emulation to please him, and quite a terror lest in any way they should offend him. He was the humblest man, with all this; the least exacting, the most easily contented; and Mr. Benson, our minister at Castlewood, who attended him at the last, ever said—“I know not what Colonel Esmond’s doctrine was, but his life and death were those of a devout Christian.”—R. E. W.

19 This remark shows how unjustly and contemptuously even the best of men will sometimes judge of our sex. Lady Esmond had no intention of triumphing over her daughter; but from a sense of duty alone pointed out her deplorable wrong.—R. E.

20 In London we addressed the prince as royal highness invariably; though the women persisted in giving him the title of king.

21 The anecdote is frequently told of our performer, Rich.

22 He was from a younger branch of the Swifts of Yorkshire. His grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Swift, Vicar of Goodrich, in Herefordshire, suffered for his loyalty in Charles I’s time. That gentleman married Elizabeth Dryden, a member of the family of the poet. Sir Walter Scott gives, with his characteristic minuteness in such points, the exact relationship between these famous men. Swift was “the son of Dryden’s second cousin”. Swift, too, was the enemy of Dryden’s reputation. Witness the _Battle of the Books_:—“The difference was greatest among the horse” says he of the moderns, “where every private trooper pretended to the command, from Tasso and Milton to Dryden and Withers.” And in _Poetry, a Rhapsody_, he advises the poetaster to—

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

“Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet,” was the phrase of Dryden to his kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such matters.

23 “Miss Hetty” she was called in the family—where her face, and her dress, and Sir William’s treatment of her, all made the real fact about her birth plain enough. Sir William left her a thousand pounds.

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

Behold a proof of Irish sense: Here Irish wit is seen; When nothing’s left that’s worth defence, They build a magazine!

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

26 Dr. Wilde’s book was written on the occasion of the remains of Swift and Stella being brought to the light of day—a thing which happened in 1835, when certain works going on in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, afforded an opportunity of their being examined. One hears with surprise of these skulls “going the rounds” of houses, and being made the objects of _dilettante_ curiosity. The larynx of Swift was actually carried off! Phrenologists had a low opinion of his intellect, from the observations they took.

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

27 “He [Dr. Johnson] seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice against Swift; for I once took the liberty to ask him if Swift had personally offended him, and he told me he had not.”—BOSWELL’S _Tour to the Hebrides_.

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

Other occasions there were when a bold face gave the Dean pause, even after his Irish almost-royal position was established. But he brought himself into greater danger on a certain occasion, and the amusing circumstances may be once more repeated here. He had unsparingly lashed the notable Dublin lawyer, Mr. Serjeant Bettesworth—

So, at the bar, the booby Bettesworth, Though half a crown out-pays his sweat’s worth, Who knows in law nor text nor margent, Calls Singleton his brother-serjeant!

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

“_In what regiment, pray?_” asked Swift.

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

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

30 “An anecdote which, though only told by Mrs. Pilkington, is well attested, bears, that the last time he was in London he went to dine with the Earl of Burlington, who was but newly married. The earl, it is supposed, being willing to have a little diversion, did not introduce him to his lady nor mention his name. After dinner said the Dean, ‘Lady Burlington, I hear you can sing; sing me a song.’ The lady looked on this unceremonious manner of asking a favour with distaste, and positively refused. He said, ‘She should sing, or he would make her. Why, madam, I suppose you take me for one of your poor English hedge-parsons; sing when I bid you.’ As the earl did nothing but laugh at this freedom, the lady was so vexed that she burst into tears and retired. His first compliment to her when he saw her again was, ‘Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you last?’ To which she answered with great good humour, ‘No, Mr. Dean; I’ll sing for you if you please.’ From which time he conceived a great esteem for her.”—SCOTT’S _Life_. “He had not the least tincture of vanity in his conversation. He was, perhaps, as he said himself, too proud to be vain. When he was polite, it was in a manner entirely his own. In his friendships he was constant and undisguised. He was the same in his enmities.”—ORRERY.

31 “I make no figure but at Court, where I affect to turn from a lord to the meanest of my acquaintances.”—_Journal to Stella._

“I am plagued with bad authors, verse and prose, who send me their books and poems, the vilest I ever saw; but I have given their names to my man, never to let them see me.”—_Journal to Stella._

The following curious paragraph illustrates the life of a courtier:—

“Did I ever tell you that the lord treasurer hears ill with the left ear just as I do?... I dare not tell him that I am so, sir; _for fear he should think that I counterfeited to make my court!_”—_Journal to Stella._

32 The war of pamphlets was carried on fiercely on one side and the other; and the Whig attacks made the ministry Swift served very sore. Bolingbroke laid hold of several of the Opposition pamphleteers, and bewails their “factitiousness” in the following letter:—

“BOLINGBROKE TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

“Whitehall, July 23rd, 1712.

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

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

“It must be acknowledged that the bad practices of printers have been such as to deserve the severest animadversion from the public.... The adverse party, full of rage and leisure since their fall, and unanimous in their cause, employ a set of writers by subscription, who are well versed in all the topics of defamation, and have a style and genius levelled to the generality of their readers.... However, the mischiefs of the press were too exorbitant to be cured by such a remedy as a tax upon small papers, and a bill for a much more effectual regulation of it was brought into the House of Commons, but so late in the session that there was no time to pass it, for there always appeared an unwillingness to cramp overmuch the liberty of the press.”

But to a clause in the proposed bill, that the names of authors should be set to every printed book, pamphlet, or paper, his reverence objects altogether, for, says he, “beside the objection to this clause from the practice of pious men, who, in publishing excellent writings for the service of religion, have chosen, _out of an humble Christian spirit, to conceal their names_, it is certain that all persons of true genius or knowledge have an invincible modesty and suspicion of themselves upon first sending their thoughts into the world.”

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

Journal. Letter XIX

“London, March 25th, 1710-11.

“... We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing him pickled in a trough this fortnight for twopence a piece; and the fellow that showed would point to his body and say, ‘See, gentlemen, this is the wound that was given him by his grace the Duke of Ormond;’ and, ‘This is the wound,’ &c.; and then the show was over, and another set of rabble came in. ’Tis hard that our laws would not suffer us to hang his body in chains, because he was not tried; and in the eye of the law every man is innocent till then.”

Journal. Letter XXVII

“London, July 25th, 1711.

“I was this afternoon with Mr. Secretary at his office, and helped to hinder a man of his pardon, who is condemned for a rape. The under-secretary was willing to save him; but I told the secretary he could not pardon him without a favourable report from the judge; besides he was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue, and deserved hanging for something else, and so he shall swing.”

33 It was his constant practice to keep his birthday as a day of mourning.

34 “These devils of Grub Street rogues, that write the _Flying Post_ and _Medley_ in one paper, will not be quiet. They are always mauling Lord Treasurer, Lord Bolingbroke, and me. We have the dog under prosecution, but Bolingbroke is not active enough; but I hope to swinge him. He is a Scotch rogue, one Ridpath. They get out upon bail, and write on. We take them again, and get fresh bail; so it goes round.”—_Journal to Stella._

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

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

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

“A short paper, printed at Bristol, and reprinted here, reports Mr. Wood to say ‘that he wonders at the impudence and insolence of the Irish, in refusing his coin.’ When, by the way, it is the true English people of Ireland who refuse it, although we take it for granted that the Irish will do so too whenever they are asked.”—SCOTT’S _Swift_, vol. iv, p. 143.

He goes further, in a good-humoured satirical paper, _On Barbarous Denominations in Ireland_, where (after abusing, as he was wont, the Scotch cadence, as well as expression), he advances to the “_Irish brogue_”, and speaking of the “censure” which it brings down, says:—

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

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

36 “The style of his conversation was very much of a piece with that of his writings, concise and clear and strong. Being one day at a sheriff’s feast, who amongst other toasts called out to him, ‘Mr. Dean. The trade of Ireland!’ he answered quick: ‘Sir, I drink no memories!’

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

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

Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae!”

—DR. DELANY, _Observations upon Lord Orrery’s __“__Remarks, &c. of Swift__”_. London, 1754.

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

38 “The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and fortunate in their expression, when they placed a man’s happiness in the tranquillity of his mind and indolence of body; for while we are composed of both, I doubt both must have a share in the good or ill we feel. As men of several languages say the same things in very different words, so in several ages, countries, constitutions of laws and religion, the same thing seems to be meant by very different expressions; what is called by the Stoics apathy, or dispassion; by the sceptics, indisturbance; by the Molinists, quietism; by common men, peace of conscience,—seems all to mean but great tranquillity of mind.... For this reason Epicurus passed his life wholly in his garden: there he studied, there he exercised, there he taught his philosophy; and, indeed, no other sort of abode seems to contribute so much to both the tranquillity of mind and indolence of body, which he made his chief ends. The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise of working or walking, but, above all, the exemption from cares and solicitude, seem equally to favour and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease both of the body and mind.... Where Paradise was has been much debated, and little agreed; but what sort of place is meant by it may perhaps easier be conjectured. It seems to have been a Persian word, since Xenophon and other Greek authors mention it as what was much in use and delight among the kings of those eastern countries. Strabo describing Jericho: ‘Ibi est palmetum, cui immixtae sunt etiam ahae stirpes hortenses, locus ferax palmis abundans, spatio stadiorum centum, totus irriguus: ibi est Regis Balsami paradisus.’ ”—_Essay on Gardens._

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

“I thought it very prudent in a gentleman of my friends in Staffordshire, who is a great lover of his garden, to pretend no higher, though his soil be good enough, than to the perfection of plums; and in these (by bestowing south walls upon them) he has very well succeeded, which he could never have done in attempts upon peaches and grapes; and _a good plum is certainly better than an ill peach_.”

39 SWIFT’S THOUGHTS ON HANGING.

(_Directions to Servants._)

“To grow old in the office of a footman is the highest of all indignities; therefore, when you find years coming on without hopes of place at Court, a command in the army, a succession to the stewardship, an employment in the revenue (which two last you cannot obtain without reading and writing), or running away with your master’s niece or daughter, I directly advise you to go upon the road, which is the only post of honour left you: there you will meet many of your old comrades, and live a short life and a merry one, and making a figure at your exit, wherein I will give you some instructions.

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

40 “He continued in Sir William Temple’s house till the death of that great man.”—_Anecdotes of the Family of Swift_, by the DEAN.

“It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to himself.”—Preface to _Temple’s Works_.

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

“I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d—— ailed him on Sunday: I made him a very proper speech; told him I observed he was much out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the cause, but would be glad to see he was in better; and one thing I warned him of—never to appear cold to me, for I would not be treated like a schoolboy; that I had felt too much of that in my life already” [_meaning Sir William Temple_] &c. &c.—_Journal to Stella._

“I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple because he might have been Secretary of State at fifty; and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment.”—_Ibid._

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

“Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite well. I was playing at _one-and-thirty_ with him and his family the other night. He gave us all twelvepence a piece to begin with; it put me in mind of Sir William Temple.”—_Ibid._

“I thought I saw Jack Temple [_nephew to Sir William_] and his wife pass by me to-day in their coach; but I took no notice of them. I am glad I have wholly shaken off that family.”—_S. to S. Sept., 1710._

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

A conversation on the Dean’s pamphlets excited one of the Doctor’s liveliest sallies. “One, in particular, praised his _Conduct of the Allies_.—Johnson: ‘Sir, his _Conduct of the Allies_ is a performance of very little ability.... Why, sir, Tom Davies might have written the _Conduct of the Allies_!’ ”—BOSWELL’S _Life of Johnson_.

42 “Whenever he fell into the company of any person for the first time, it was his custom to try their tempers and disposition by some abrupt question that bore the appearance of rudeness. If this were well taken, and answered with good humour, he afterwards made amends by his civilities. But if he saw any marks of resentment, from alarmed pride, vanity, or conceit, he dropped all further intercourse with the party. This will be illustrated by an anecdote of that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. After supper, the Dean having decanted a bottle of wine, poured what remained into a glass, and seeing it was muddy, presented it to Mr. Pilkington to drink it. ‘For,’ said he, ‘I always keep some poor parson to drink the foul wine for me.’ Mr. Pilkington, entering into his humour, thanked him, and told him ‘he did not know the difference, but was glad to get a glass at any rate.’ ‘Why then,’ said the Dean, ‘you shan’t, for I’ll drink it myself. Why, —— take you, you are wiser than a paltry curate whom I asked to dine with me a few days ago; for upon my making the same speech to him, he said, he did not understand such usage, and so walked off without his dinner. By the same token, I told the gentleman who recommended him to me, that the fellow was a blockhead, and I had done with him.’ ”—SHERIDAN’S _Life of Swift_.

43 FROM THE ARCHBISHOP OF CASHELL.

“Cashell, May 31st, 1735

“DEAR SIR,—

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

“I am truly concerned at the account you give me of your health. Without doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can take to recover your flesh; and I do not know, except in one stage, where you can choose a road so suited to your circumstances, as from Dublin hither. You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at every ten or twelve miles’ end. From Kilkenny hither is twenty long miles, bad road, and no inns at all: but I have an expedient for you. At the foot of a very high hill, just midway, there lives in a neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is not poor; his wife is allowed to be the best little woman in the world. Her chickens are the fattest, and her ale the best in all the country. Besides, the parson has a little cellar of his own, of which he keeps the key, where he always has a hogshead of the best wine that can be got, in bottles well corked, upon their side; and he cleans, and pulls out the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with a coach; if you be tired, you shall stay all night; if not, after dinner we will set out about four, and be at Cashell by nine; and by going through fields and by-ways, which the parson will show us, we shall escape all the rocky and stony roads that lie between this place and that, which are certainly very bad. I hope you will be so kind as to let me know a post or two before you set out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, that I may have all things prepared for you. It may be, if you ask him, Cope will come: he will do nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, I shall add no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth, your most faithful and obedient servant,

“THEO. CASHELL.”

44 “Mr. Swift lived with him [Sir William Temple] some time, but resolving to settle himself in some way of living, was inclined to take orders. However, although his fortune was very small, he had a scruple of entering into the Church merely for support.”—_Anecdotes of the Family of Swift_, by the DEAN.

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

46 “London, April 10th, 1713.

“Lady Masham’s eldest boy is very ill: I doubt he will not live; and she stays at Kensington to nurse him, which vexes us all. She is so excessively fond, it makes me mad. She should never leave the queen, but leave everything, to stick to what is so much the interest of the public, as well as her own....”—_Journal._

47 “My health is somewhat mended, but at best I have an ill head and an aching heart.”—_In May, 1719._

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

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

“If a Struldbrug happened to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore. For the law thinks it to be a reasonable indulgence that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who more improved them by reading and conversation.... All of us who had the happiness of her friendship agreed unanimously, that in an afternoon’s or evening’s conversation she never failed before we parted of delivering the best thing that was said in the company. Some of us have written down several of her sayings, or what the French call _bons mots_, wherein she excelled beyond belief.”

The specimens on record, however, in the Dean’s paper called _Bons Mots de Stella_, scarcely bear out this last part of the panegyric. But the following prove her wit:

“A gentleman, who had been very silly and pert in her company, at last began to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A bishop sitting by comforted him—that he should be easy, because ‘the child was gone to heaven’. ‘No, my lord,’ said she; ‘that is it which most grieves him, because he is sure never to see his child there.’

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

“A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty. He was at a loss; but she solved the difficulty, by saying, ‘the doctor’s nails grew dirty by scratching himself.’

“A quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked; it had a broad brim, and a label of paper about its neck. ‘What is that?’—said she—‘my apothecary’s son!’ The ridiculous resemblance, and the suddenness of the question, set us all a-laughing.”—_Swift’s Works_, SCOTT’S ed., vol. ix, 295-6.

52 “I am so hot and lazy after my morning’s walk, that I loitered at Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s, where my best gown and periwig was, and _out of mere listlessness dine there, very often_; so I did to-day.”—_Journal to Stella._ Mrs. Vanhomrigh, Vanessa’s mother, was the widow of a Dutch merchant who held lucrative appointments in King William’s time. The family settled in London in 1709, and had a house in Bury Street, St. James’s—a street made notable by such residents us Swift and Steele; and, in our own time, Moore and Crabbe.

53 “Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress; impatient to be admired; very romantic in her turn of mind; superior, in her own opinion, to all her sex; full of pertness, gaiety, and pride; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but far from being either beautiful or genteel;... happy in the thoughts of being reported Swift’s concubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife.”—LORD ORRERY.

54 “You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said, as often as you can get the better of your inclinations so much; or as often as you remember there was such a one in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last: I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more;, but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you’d not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you; for when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but so much regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me; and believe I cannot help telling you this and live.”—VANESSA. (M. 1714.)

55 “If we consider Swift’s behaviour, so far only as it relates to women, we shall find that he looked upon them rather as busts than as whole figures.”—ORRERY.

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

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

“Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account), showed the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden while a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well; and his account of her corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to her _embonpoint_. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company; her constant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden.... She avoided company, and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called ‘Vanessa’s bower’. Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot.... There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey.... In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener’s account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them.”—SCOTT’S _Swift_, vol. i, pp. 246-7. “... But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the object of her affections—to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connexion with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long elicited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him—then in Ireland—‘If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, _except ’tis what is inconsistent with mine_.’ Her silence and patience under this state of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe for Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival’s health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa’s impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connexion. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean; and full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh’s inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival’s letter of interrogatories, and, without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was liable, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table, and, instantly leaving the house, remounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished, hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived the last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks.”—SCOTT.

56 “M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. Il n’a pas, à la verité, la gaîté du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la raison, le choix, le bon goût qui manquent à notre curé de Meudon. Ses vers sont d’un goût singulier, et presque inimitable; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose; mais pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit voyage dans son pays.”—VOLTAIRE, _Lettres sur les Anglais_, Let. 22.

57 The following is a _conspectus_ of them:—

ADDISON.—Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper of the Records in Ireland; Lord of Trade; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively.

STEELE.—Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians; Commissioner of “Forfeited Estates in Scotland”.

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

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

CONGREVE.—Commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches; Commissioner for Wine Licences; place in the Pipe-office; post in the Custom-house; Secretary of Jamaica.

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

JOHN DENNIS.—A place in the Custom-house. “En Angleterre ... les lettres sont plus en honneur qu’ici.”—

VOLTAIRE, _Lettres sur les Anglais_, Let. 20.

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

59 “PIPE.—_Pipe_, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the _great roll_.

“PIPE-_Office_ is an office in which a person called the _Clerk of the Pipe_ makes out leases of crown lands, by warrant, from the Lord-Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer.

“Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c.”—REES, _Cyclopaed._ Art. PIPE.

“PIPE-_Office_.—Spelman thinks so called because the papers were kept in a large _pipe_ or cask.

“These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty’s Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the _pipe_ ... because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small _pipes_ or quills.”—BACON, _The Office of Alienations_.

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

60 “It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in the least, nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His place in the Custom-house, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year.”—_Biog. Brit._, Art. CONGREVE.

61 Dryden addressed his “twelfth epistle” to “My dear friend Mr. Congreve,” on his comedy called _The Double Dealer_, in which he says—

Great Jonson did by strength of judgement please; Yet, doubling Fletcher’s force, he wants his case. In differing talents both adorn’d their age: One for the study, t’other for the stage. But both to Congreve justly shall submit, One match’d in judgement, both o’ermatched in wit. In him all beauties of this age we see, &c. &c.

The _Double Dealer_, however, was not so palpable a hit as the _Old Bachelor_, but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our “swell” applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the _Epistle Dedicatory_ to the “Right Honourable Charles Montague.”

“I was conscious,” said he, “where a true critic might have put me upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack, ... but I have not heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer.” He goes on—

“But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected. How can I help it? It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.... I should be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than _to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood_.”

62 “Instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave behind me a memorial of my friendship, with one of the most valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country—one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer—and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of Mr. Congreve and of—A. POPE.”—_Postscript to Translation of the Iliad of Homer._ Mar. 25, 1720.

63 “When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said, he had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for our author, and generally took him under his protection in his high authoritative manner.”—THOS. DAVIES, _Dramatic Miscellanies_.

64 “Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess showed us a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle.”—DR. YOUNG (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

65 “A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it.”—THOS. DAVIES, _Dramatic Miscellanies_.

66 The sum Congreve left her was 200_l._, as is said in the _Dramatic Miscellanies_ of Tom Davies; where are some particulars about this charming actress and beautiful woman.

She had a “lively aspect”, says Tom, on the authority of Cibber, and “such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired everybody with desire”. “Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of them her lovers.”

Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. “In _Tamerlane_, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla....; Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in his _Love for Love_; in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the _Mourning Bride_; and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the _Way of the World_. Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not very distant from the real character of Congreve.”—_Dramatic Miscellanies_, vol. iii, 1784.

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

67 Johnson calls his legacy the “accumulation of attentive parsimony, which,” he continues, “though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress.”—_Lives of the Poets._

68 He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called “Amendments of Mr. Collier’s False and Imperfect Citations,” &c. A specimen or two are subjoined:—

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

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

“If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures.... I will only call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it.

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

“Congreve,” says Dr. Johnson, “a very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security.... The dispute was protracted through two years; but at last Comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labours in the reformation of the theatre.”—_Life of Congreve._

69 The scene of Valentine’s pretended madness in _Love for Love_ is a splendid specimen of Congreve’s daring manner:—

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

_Jeremy._—Yes, Sir; he says he’ll favour it, and mistake her for _Angelica_.

_Scandal._—It may make us sport.

_Foresight._—Mercy on us!

_Valentine._—Husht—interrupt me not—I’ll whisper predictions to thee, and thou shalt prophesie;—I am truth, and can teach thy tongue a new trick,—I have told thee what’s passed—now I’ll tell what’s to come:—Dost thou know what will happen to-morrow? Answer me not—for I will tell thee. To-morrow knaves will thrive thro’ craft, and fools thro’ fortune; and honesty will go as it did, frost-nipt in a summer suit. Ask me questions concerning tomorrow.

_Scandal._—Ask him, _Mr. Foresight_.

_Foresight._—Pray what will be done at Court?

_Valentine._—_Scandal_ will tell you;—I am truth, I never come there.

_Foresight._—In the city?

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

_Foresight._—I am married.

_Valentine._—Poor creature! Is your wife of Covent Garden _Parish_?

_Foresight._—No; St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.

_Valentine._—Alas, poor man! his eyes are sunk, and his hands shrivelled; his legs dwindled, and his back bow’d. Pray, pray, for a metamorphosis—change thy shape, and shake off age; get the _Medea’s_ kettle and be boiled anew; come forth with lab’ring callous hands, and chine of steel, and _Atlas’_ shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the calves of twenty chairmen, and make the pedestals to stand erect upon, and look matrimony in the face. Ha, ha, ha! That a man should have a stomach to a wedding supper, when the pidgeons ought rather to be laid to his feet! ha, ha, ha!

_Foresight._—His frenzy is very high now, _Mr. Scandal_.

_Scandal._—I believe it is a spring-tide.

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

_Valentine._—Oh! why would _Angelica_ be absent from my eyes so long?

_Jeremy._—She’s here, Sir.

_Mrs. Foresight._—Now, Sister!

_Mrs. Frail._—O Lord! what must I say?

_Scandal._—Humour him, Madam, by all means.

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

_Mrs. Frail._—How d’ye, Sir? Can I serve you?

_Valentine._—Hark’ee—I have a secret to tell you. _Endymion_ and the moon shall meet us on _Mount Latmos_, and we’ll be married in the dead of night. But say not a word. _Hymen_ shall put his torch into a dark lanthorn, that it may be secret; and Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail; and Argus’s hundred eyes be shut—ha! Nobody shall know, but _Jeremy._

_Mrs. Frail._—No, no; we’ll keep it secret; it shall be done presently.

_Valentine._—The sooner the better. _Jeremy_, come hither—closer—that none may overhear us. _Jeremy_, I can tell you news; _Angelica_ is turned nun, and I am turning friar, and yet we’ll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part; for she’ll meet me two hours hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won’t see one another’s faces ’till we have done something to be ashamed of, and then we’ll blush once for all....

_Enter_ TATTLE.

_Tattle._—Do you know me, _Valentine_?

_Valentine._—You!—who are you? No, I hope not.

_Tattle._—I am _Jack Tattle_, your friend.

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

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

_Angelica._—Do you know me, _Valentine_?

_Valentine._—Oh, very well.

_Angelica._—Who am I?

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

_Tattle._—Ay! pr’ythee, what’s that?

_Valentine._—Why, to keep a secret.

_Tattle._—O Lord!

_Valentine._—Oh, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she should tell, yet she is not to be believed.

_Tattle._—Hah! Good again, faith.

_Valentine._—I would have musick. Sing me the song that I like.—CONGREVE, _Love for Love_.

There is a _Mrs. Nickleby_, of the year 1700, in Congreve’s comedy of _The Double Dealer_, in whose character the author introduces some wonderful traits of roguish satire. She is practised on by the gallants of the play, and no more knows how to resist them than any of the ladies above quoted could resist Congreve.

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

_Mellefont._—Where am I? Is it day? and am I awake? Madam—

_Lady Plyant._—O Lord, ask me the question! I’ll swear I’ll deny it—therefore don’t ask me; nay, you shan’t ask me, I swear I’ll deny it. O Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face; I warrant I am as red as a turkey-cock; O fie, cousin Mellefont!

_Mellefont._—Nay, madam, hear me; I mean——

_Lady Plyant._—Hear you? No, no; I’ll deny you first, and hear you afterwards. For one does not know how one’s mind may change upon hearing—hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are fallible. I won’t trust my honour, I assure you; my honour is infallible and uncomatable.

_Mellefont._—For heaven’s sake, madam——

_Lady Plyant._—Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of Heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart? May be, you don’t think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don’t think it a sin; but still, my honour, if it were no sin ——. But, then, to marry my daughter for the convenience of frequent opportunities—I’ll never consent to that: as sure as can be, I’ll break the match.

_Mellefont._—Death and amazement! Madam, upon my knees——

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