Part 1

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ESSAYS ABOUT MEN, WOMEN, AND BOOKS

* * * * * *

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

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IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN, AND OTHER ESSAYS.

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OBITER DICTA. First Series. OBITER DICTA. Second Series. ESSAYS ABOUT MEN, WOMEN, & BOOKS. RES JUDICATÆ.

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MISCELLANIES.

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COLLECTED ESSAYS.

Vol. I. contains: OBITER DICTA. Series I. OBITER DICTA. Series II.

Vol. II. contains: MEN, WOMEN, AND BOOKS. RES JUDICATÆ.

ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.

* * * * * *

MEN, WOMEN, AND BOOKS

by

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

Author of ‘Obiter Dicta,’ etc.

London: Elliot Stock 62, Paternoster Row, E.C. 1910

CONTENTS

PAGE DEAN SWIFT 1

LORD BOLINGBROKE 16

STERNE 28

DR. JOHNSON 38

RICHARD CUMBERLAND 47

ALEXANDER KNOX AND THOMAS DE QUINCEY 58

HANNAH MORE 70

MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF 81

SIR JOHN VANBRUGH 96

JOHN GAY 109

ROGER NORTH’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 121

BOOKS OLD AND NEW 134

BOOK-BINDING 147

POETS LAUREATE 157

PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES 167

THE BONÂ-FIDE TRAVELLER 176

‘HOURS IN A LIBRARY’ 189

AMERICANISMS AND BRITICISMS 199

AUTHORS AND CRITICS 210

DEAN SWIFT.

Of writing books about Dean Swift there is no end. I make no complaint, because I find no fault; I express no wonder, for I feel none. The subject is, and must always remain, one of strange fascination. We have no author like the Dean of St. Patrick’s. It has been said of Wordsworth that good-luck usually attended those who have written about him. The same thing may be said, with at least equal truth, about Swift. There are a great many books about him, and with few exceptions they are all interesting.

A man who has had his tale told both by Johnson and by Scott ought to be comprehensible. Swift has been, on the whole, lucky with his more recent biographers. Dr. Craik’s is a judicious life, Mitford’s an admirable sketch, Forster’s a valuable fragment; Mr. Leslie Stephen never fails to get to close quarters with his subject. Then there are anecdotes without end--all bubbling with vitality--letters, and journals. And yet, when you have read all that is to be read, what are you to say--what to think?

No fouler pen than Swift’s has soiled our literature. His language is horrible from first to last. He is full of odious images, of base and abominable allusions. It would be a labour of Hercules to cleanse his pages. His love-letters are defaced by his incurable coarseness. This habit of his is so inveterate that it seems a miracle he kept his sermons free from his blackguard phrases. It is a question not of morality, but of decency, whether it is becoming to sit in the same room with the works of this divine. How the good Sir Walter ever managed to see him through the press is amazing. In this matter Swift is inexcusable.

Then his unfeeling temper, his domineering brutality--the tears he drew, the discomfort he occasioned.

‘Swift, dining at a house, where the part of the tablecloth which was next him happened to have a small hole, tore it as wide as he could, and ate his soup through it; his reason for such behaviour was, as he said, to mortify the lady of the house, and to teach her to pay a proper attention to housewifery.’

One is glad to know he sometimes met his match. He slept one night at an inn kept by a widow lady of very respectable family, Mrs. Seneca, of Drogheda. In the morning he made a violent complaint of the sheets being dirty.

‘Dirty, indeed!’ exclaimed Mrs. Seneca; ‘you are the last man, doctor, that should complain of dirty sheets.’

And so, indeed, he was, for he had just published the ‘Lady’s Dressing-room,’ a very dirty sheet indeed.

Honour to Mrs. Seneca, of Drogheda!

This side of the account needs no vouching; but there is another side.

In 1705 Addison made a present of his book of travels to Dr. Swift, in the blank leaf of which he wrote the following words:

‘To Dr. Jonathan Swift, The most agreeable companion, The truest friend, And the greatest genius of his age.’

Addison was not lavish of epithets. His geese, Ambrose Philips excepted, were geese, not swans. His testimony is not to be shaken--and what a testimony it is!

Then there is Stella’s Swift. As for Stella herself, I have never felt I knew enough about her to join very heartily in Thackeray’s raptures: ‘Who has not in his mind an image of Stella? Who does not love her? Fair and tender creature! Pure and affectionate heart.... Gentle lady! so lovely, so loving, so unhappy.... You are one of the saints of English story.’ This may be so, but all I feel I know about Stella is, that Swift loved her. That is certain, at all events.

‘If this be error, and upon we proved, I never writ, and no man ever loved.’

The verses to Stella are altogether lovely:

‘But, Stella, say what evil tongue Reports you are no longer young, That Time sits with his scythe to mow Where erst sat Cupid with his bow, That half your locks are turned to gray I’ll ne’er believe a word they say. ’Tis true, but let it not be known, My eyes are somewhat dimmish grown.’

And again:

‘Oh! then, whatever Heaven intends, Take pity on your pitying friends! Nor let your ills affect your mind To fancy they can be unkind. Me, surely me, you ought to spare Who gladly would your suffering share, Or give my scrap of life to you And think it far beneath your due; You, to whose care so oft I owe That I’m alive to tell you so.’

We are all strangely woven in one piece, as Shakespeare says. These verses of Swift irresistibly remind their readers of Cowper’s lines to Mrs. Unwin.

Swift’s prose is famous all the world over. To say anything about it is superfluous. David Hume indeed found fault with it. Hume paid great attention to the English language, and by the time he died had come to write it with much facility and creditable accuracy; but Swift is one of the masters of English prose. But how admirable also is his poetry--easy, yet never slipshod! It lacks one quality only--imagination. There is not a fine phrase, a magical line to be found in it, such as may occasionally be found in--let us say--Butler. Yet, as a whole, Swift is a far more enjoyable poet than Butler.

Swift has unhappily written some abominable verses, which ought never to have been set up in type; but the ‘Legion Club,’ the verses on his own death, ‘Cadenus and Vanessa,’ the ‘Rhapsody on Poetry,’ the tremendous lines on the ‘Day of Judgment,’ and many others, all belong to enjoyable poetry, and can never lose their freshness, their charm, their vitality. Amongst the poets of the eighteenth century Swift sits secure, for he can never go out of fashion.

His hatred of mankind seems genuine; there is nothing _falsetto_ about it. He is always in sober, deadly earnest when he abuses his fellow-men. What an odd revenge we have taken! His gospel of hatred, his testament of woe--his ‘Gulliver,’ upon which he expended the treasures of his wit, and into which he instilled the concentrated essence of his rage--has become a child’s book, and has been read with wonder and delight by generations of innocents. After all, it is a kindly place, this planet, and the best use we have for our cynics is to let them amuse the junior portion of our population.

I only know one good-humoured anecdote of Swift; it is very slight, but it is fair to tell it. He dined one day in the company of the Lord Keeper, his son, and their two ladies, with Mr. Cæsar, Treasurer of the Navy, at his house in the City. They happened to talk of Brutus, and Swift said something in his praise, and then, as it were, suddenly recollecting himself, said:

‘Mr. Cæsar, I beg your pardon.’

One can fancy this occasioning a pleasant ripple of laughter.

There is another story I cannot lay my hands on to verify, but it is to this effect: Faulkner, Swift’s Dublin publisher, years after the Dean’s death, was dining with some friends, who rallied him upon his odd way of eating some dish--I think, asparagus. He confessed Swift had told him it was the right way; therefore, they laughed the louder, until Faulkner, growing a little angry, exclaimed:

‘I tell you what it is, gentlemen: if you had ever dined with the Dean, you would have eaten your asparagus as he bade you.’

Truly a wonderful man--imperious, masterful. Yet his state is not kingly like Johnson’s--it is tyrannical, sinister, forbidding.

Nobody has brought out more effectively than Mr. Churton Collins[A] Swift’s almost ceaseless literary activity. To turn over Scott’s nineteen volumes is to get some notion of it. It is not a pleasant task, for Swift was an unclean spirit; but he fascinates and makes the reader long to peep behind the veil, and penetrate the secret of this horrible, yet loveable, because beloved, man. Mr. Collins is rather short with this longing on the part of the reader. He does not believe in any secret; he would have us believe that it is all as plain as a pikestaff. Swift was never mad, and was never married. Stella was a well-regulated damsel, who, though she would have liked very much to have been Mrs. Dean, soon recognised that her friend was not a marrying man, and was, therefore, well content for the rest of her days to share his society with Mrs. Dingley. Vanessa was an ill-regulated damsel, who had not the wit to see that her lover was not a marrying man, and, in the most vulgar fashion possible, thrust herself most inconveniently upon his notice, received a snubbing, took to drink, and died of the spleen. As for the notion that Swift died mad, Mr. Collins conceives himself to get rid of that by reprinting a vague and most inconclusive letter of Dr. Bucknill’s. The mystery and the misery of Swift’s life have not been got rid of by Mr. Collins. He has left them where he found them--at large. He complains, perhaps justly, that Scott never took the trouble to form any clear impression of Swift’s character. Yet we must say that we understand Sir Walter’s Swift better than we do Mr. Collins’. Whether the Dean married Stella can never be known. For our part, we think he did not; but to assert positively that no marriage took place, as Mr. Collins does, is to carry dogmatism too far.

A good deal of fault has lately been found with Thackeray’s lecture on Swift. We still think it both delightful and just. The rhapsody about Stella, as I have already hinted, is not to our mind. Rhapsodies about real women are usually out of place. Stella was no saint, but a quick-witted, sharp-tongued hussy, whose fate it was to win the love and pacify the soul of the greatest Englishman of his time--for to call Swift an Irishman is sheer folly. But, apart from this not unnatural slip, what, I wonder, is the matter with Thackeray’s lecture, regarded, not as a storehouse of facts, or as an estimate of Swift’s writings, but as a sketch of character? Mr. Collins says quite as harsh things about Swift as are to be found in Thackeray’s lecture, but he does not attempt, as Thackeray does, to throw a strong light upon this strange and moving figure. It is a hard thing to attempt--failure in such a case is almost inevitable; but I do not think Thackeray did fail. An ounce of mother-wit is often worth a pound of clergy. Insight is not always the child of study. But here, again, the matter should be brought to the test by each reader for himself. Read Thackeray’s lecture once again.

What can be happier or truer than his comparison of Swift with a highwayman disappointed of his plunder?

‘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. The mails wait 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 in his own country.’

Thackeray’s criticism is severe, but is it not just? Are we to stand by and hear our nature libelled, and our purest affections beslimed, without a word of protest? ‘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.’ So would I. But no one of the Dean’s numerous critics was more keenly alive than Thackeray to the majesty and splendour of Swift’s genius, and to his occasional flashes of tenderness and love. That amazing person, Lord Jeffrey, in one of his too numerous contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_, wrote of the poverty of Swift’s style. Lord Jeffrey was, we hope, a professional critic, not an amateur.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] ‘Jonathan Swift,’ by J. Churton Collins: Chatto & Windus, 1893.

LORD BOLINGBROKE.

The most accomplished of all our political rascals, Lord Bolingbroke, who once, if the author of ‘Animated Nature’ is to be believed, ran naked through the Park, has, in his otherwise pinchbeck ‘Reflections in Exile,’ one quaint fancy. He suggests that the exile, instead of mourning the deprivation of the society of his friends, should take a pencil (the passage is not before me) and make a list of his acquaintances, and then ask himself which of the number he wants to see at the moment. It is, no doubt, always wise to be particular. Delusion as well as fraud loves to lurk in generalities.

As for this Bolingbroke himself, that he was a consummate scoundrel is now universally admitted; but his mental qualifications, though great, still excite differences of opinion. Even those who are comforted by his style and soothed by the rise and fall of his sentences, are fain to admit that had his classic head been severed from his shoulders a rogue would have met with his deserts. He has been long since stripped of all his fine pretences, and, morally speaking, runs as naked through the pages of history as erst he did (according to Goldsmith) across Hyde Park.

That Bolingbroke had it in him to have been a great Parliamentarian is certain. He knew ‘the nature of that assembly,’ and that ‘they grow, like hounds, fond of the man who shows them sport, and by whose halloo they are used to be encouraged.’ Like the rascally lawyer in ‘Guy Mannering,’ Mr. Gilbert Glossin, he could do a good piece of work when so minded. But he was seldom so minded, and consequently he failed to come up to the easy standard of his day, and thus brought it about that by his side Sir Robert Walpole appears in the wings and aspect of an angel.

St. John has now nothing to wear but his wit and his style; these still find admirers amongst the judicious.

Mr. Churton Collins, who has written a delightful book about Bolingbroke, and also about Voltaire in England, has a great notion of Bolingbroke’s literary merits, and extols them with ardour. He is not likely to be wrong, but, none the less, it is lawful to surround yourself with the seven stately quartos which contain Bolingbroke’s works and letters, and ask yourself whether Mr. Collins is right.

Of all Lord Bolingbroke’s published writings, none is better than his celebrated Letter to Wyndham, recounting his adventures in France, whither he betook himself hastily after Queen Anne’s death, and where he joined the Pretender. Here he is not philosophizing, but telling a tale, varnished it may be, but sparkling with malice, wit, and humour. Well may Mr. Collins say, ‘Walpole never produced a more amusing sketch than the picture of the Pretender’s Court at Paris and of the Privy Council in the Bois de Boulogne’; but when he proceeds further and adds, ‘Burke never produced anything nobler than the passage which commences with the words “The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government,”’ I am glad to ejaculate, ‘Indeed he did!’

Here is the passage:

‘The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government, and the pilot and the Minister are in similar circumstances. It seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course, and they both arrive at their ports by means which frequently seem to carry them from it. But, as the work advances, the conduct of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and, when it is once consummated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he could have done the same. But, on the other hand, a man who proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards, who begins every day something new and carries nothing on to perfection, may impose a while on the world, but, a little sooner or later, the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther than living from day to day.’

A fine passage, most undoubtedly, and an excellent homily for Ministers. No one but a dabbler in literature will be apt to think he could have done the same--but noble with the nobility of Burke? A noble passage ought to do more for a reader than compel his admiration or win his assent; it should leave him a little better than it found him, with a warmer heart and a more elevated mind.

Mr. Collins also refers with delight to a dissertation on Eloquence, to be found in the ‘Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism,’ and again expresses a doubt whether it would be possible to select anything finer from the pages of Burke.

The passage is too long to be quoted; it begins thus:

‘Eloquence has charms to lead mankind, and gives a nobler superiority than power that every dunce may use, or fraud that every knave may employ.’

And then follows a good deal about Demosthenes and Cicero, and other talkers of old time.

This may or may not be a fine passage; but if we allow it to be the former, we cannot admit that as it flows it fertilizes.

Bolingbroke and Chesterfield are two of the remarkable figures of the first half of the last century. They are both commonly called ‘great,’ to distinguish them from other holders of the same titles. Their accomplishments were as endless as their opportunities. They were the most eloquent men of their time, and both possessed that insight into things, that distinction of mind, we call genius. They were ready writers, and have left ‘works’ behind them full of wit and gracious expressions; but neither the one nor the other has succeeded in lodging himself in the general memory. The ill-luck which drove them out of politics has pursued them down the path of letters, though the frequenters of that pleasant track are wisely indifferent to the characters of dead authors who still give pleasure.

No shrewder men ever sat upon a throne than the first two Georges, monarchs of this realm. The second George hated Chesterfield, and called him ‘a tea-table scoundrel.’ The phrase sticks. There _is_ something petty about this great Lord Chesterfield. The first George, though wholly illiterate, yet took it upon himself to despise Bolingbroke, philosopher though he was, and dismissed an elaborate effusion of his as ‘_bagatelles_.’ Here again the phrase sticks, and not even the beautiful type and lordly margins of Mallet’s edition of Lord Bolingbroke’s writings, or the stately periods of that nobleman himself, can drive the royal verdict out of my ears. There is nothing real about these writings save their colossal impudence, as when, for example, in his letter on the State of Parties on the accession of George I., he solemnly denies that there was any design during the four last years of Queen Anne’s reign to set aside the Hanover succession, and, in support of his denial, quotes himself as a man who, if there had been anything of the sort, must have known of it. By the side of this man the perfidy of Thurlow or of Wedderburn shows white as wool.

By the aid of his own wits and a cunning wife, and assisted by the growing hatred of corruption, Bolingbroke, towards the close of his long life, nearly succeeded in securing some measure of oblivion of his double-dyed treachery. He managed to inflame the ‘Young England’ of the period with his picture of a ‘Patriot King,’ and if he had only put into the fire his lucubrations about Christianity he might have accomplished his exit from a world he had made worse for seventy-five years with a show of decency. But he did not do so; the ‘cur Mallet’ was soon ready with his volumes, and then the memory of Bolingbroke was exposed to the obloquy which in this country is (or was) the heritage of the heterodox.

Horace Walpole, who hated Bolingbroke, as he was in special duty bound to do, felt this keenly. He was glad Bolingbroke was gibbeted, but regretted that he should swing on a wrong count in the indictment.

Writing to Sir Horace Mann, Walpole says:

‘You say you have made my Lord Cork give up my Lord Bolingbroke. It is comical to see how he is given up here since the best of his writings, his metaphysical divinity, has been published. While he betrayed and abused every man who trusted him, or who had forgiven him, or to whom he was obliged, he was a hero, a patriot, a philosopher, and the greatest genius of the age; the moment his “Craftsmen” against Moses and St. Paul are published we have discovered he was the worst man and the worst writer in the world. The grand jury have presented his works, and as long as there are any parsons he will be ranked with Tindal and Toland--nay, I don’t know whether my father won’t become a rubric martyr for having been persecuted by him.’

My sympathies are with Walpole, although, when he pronounces Bolingbroke’s metaphysical divinity to be the best of his writings, I cannot agree.

Mr. Collins’ book is a most excellent one, and if anyone reads it because of my recommendation he will owe me thanks. Mr. Collins values Pope not merely for his poetry, but for his philosophy also, which he cadged from Bolingbroke. The ‘Essay on Man’ is certainly better reading than anything Bolingbroke ever wrote--though what may be the value of its philosophy is a question which may well stand over till after the next General Election, or even longer.

STERNE.