Part 15

Of course, the work was an allegory, a double allegory, so to speak; for besides having a general meaning to his story, he had a special one which referred to living people, such as the Queen, Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Grey, and so on. The whole poem, therefore, is rather complicated, and in great contrast to the well-arranged plots which Chaucer had woven into his stories. The general idea was that in a certain happy country there reigned a great Queen Gloriana, around whose presence had gathered a body of brave and fearless knights. The queen decided to hold a feast for twelve days, and on each day an adventure was to be undertaken by one of these knights for the purpose of righting some wrong, releasing some captive, or succouring some oppressed person. Spenser purposed to tell of these several adventures in twelve books, but only six were finished. Now if in "The Faerie Queene" we attempt to unravel the very knotted allegory, we shall soon get into difficulties, for Spenser's greatest gifts did not lie in his power of making a clear story, but in his perfectly chosen language, his lofty thoughts, and the never-failing music of his verse. So the wisest plan, I think, is to read the romances for their own beauty without trying to find a hidden meaning in every line, and even so, we shall everywhere discover rich gems.

It is strange that in spite of all the fame which "The Faerie Queene" gave the poet, it brought him neither wealth nor even work, and he "tourned back to his sheepe" in Ireland. He married, and poured out his joy in an exquisite song called "Epithalamion." Besides this, he wrote more books of his great work, many sonnets and hymns, and a treatise on Ireland. He was made Sheriff of Cork, and altogether his worldly affairs prospered; for Burleigh was dead, and it was Burleigh who had always checked the Queen's generosity towards him, "saying a song needed not such liberal payment." Suddenly a fresh and violent rebellion broke out in Ireland. Spenser's castle was attacked and set on fire; his little child was burned to death; and all his valued possessions were destroyed. He came back to London with his wife, homeless, penniless, broken-hearted. Over the next few months a veil is drawn; how it came to pass that his many friends and admirers knew nothing of his sufferings, or knowing did not raise a hand to help him, remains a mystery. This is certain, that he died of grief and for lack of bread in a street near Westminster. After his death, indeed, his friends came to the fore once more. The Earl of Essex paid all the expenses of his funeral, which took place in the Abbey. Poets and writers flocked to his grave-side, throwing on to his coffin their songs of woe. We may take it for granted that Shakespeare was among the mourners, and with him were all the brightest spirits of the day. Truly the broken-hearted poet was well honoured on that last event of his life. At some period of his career, probably near the end, he had written a poem on "Change and Mutabilitie." God grant that in those bitter closing days he found the ray of hope he thus did sing of:--

"Then gin I think on that which Nature sayd, Of that same time when no more Change shall be, But stedfast rest of all things firmly stayd, Upon the Pillars of Eternitie, That is contrayr to Mutabilitie. For all that moveth does in change delight: But thenceforth all shall rest eternally With Him, that is the God of Sabbaoth hight: O that great Sabbaoth God, grant me that Sabbaoth's sight."

True it is that Spenser, the herald of the Elizabethan day, gives to the Poets' Corner the reflected glory of that period, but we can never cease to regret that Shakespeare, its crown and its sun, lies so far away from Westminster. Only the Abbey seems a fitting monument to that great mind, our king of English literature.

"Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive while still thy books doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give."

So wrote Ben Jonson. With that thought, and the fact that, a hundred and twenty years after his death, a memorial to Shakespeare was put up in the Poets' Corner by public subscription, we must rest content. Ben Jonson himself was buried here, having in his imperious way demanded of the king "eighteen inches of ground in the Abbey," and so he remained in death "a child of Westminster." He had been educated at Westminster School, this turbulent, strong-spirited lad, with Border blood in him, who could never settle down to the trade of a builder, to which he had been apprenticed, and who was heard of among actors and playwriters. He was the friend of Shakespeare; indeed, it is said that the great man not only warmly praised his first play, "Every Man in his Humour," but acted in it himself at the Globe Theatre. Jonson produced a great number of plays and a still greater number of court masques. He was a master of plot, and everything he wrote was full of force and personality. Such a fiery character as his could hardly fail to lead him into a series of quarrels; but, in spite of this, he was held by his large circle of friends to be "the prince of good fellows," and the words, "O rare Ben Jonson," carved on his tomb by order of Sir John Young, "who, walking here when the grave was covering, gave the fellow eighteenpence to cut it," is an epitaph that came from the hearts of those who loved him and recognised his genius. Francis Beaumont, another Elizabethan playwriter, and the intimate friend of the whole group of dramatists, lies here; as does Michael Drayton, who wrote more than one hundred thousand lines of verse, and who, despite the fact that he was always quarrelling with his booksellers, whom he described as "a company of base knaves I scorn to kick," was known among his contemporaries as the "all-loved Drayton." Abraham Cowley, held in his day to be a great poet, had a magnificent funeral and a most flattering epitaph, but though one enthusiastic admirer went so far as to declare that the Great Fire left the Abbey untouched because Fate would that Cowley's tomb should be preserved, his works did not long survive him. Close to him was laid John Dryden, who as a boy had been well whipped by the great Doctor Busby. He says himself that he "endeavoured to write good English," and he produced several plays and some excellent political satires. He was not a great poet, but he had the knack of reasoning well in verse, of choosing apt words, and of writing vigorously. And we must remember that he lived in the days of the later Stuarts, when poets had well-nigh forgotten the sweet music of the Elizabethan age. Near to his tomb stands the bust of his bitter enemy, Shadwell, of whom he had written:--

"Shadwell alone of all my sons is he Who stands confirmed in all stupidity. The rest to some faint meaning made pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense."

Even so did the Abbey unite these rival poets-laureate.

Another satirist, Samuel Butler, has a monument, but not a tomb, in the Abbey. He also died in abject poverty, and of him these lines were written, which apply to more than one of those commemorated in the Poets' Corner:--

"When Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give. Behold him starved to death and turned to dust, Presented with a monumental bust. The poet's fate is here in emblem shown: He asked for bread, and he received a stone."

Thomas May, the historian; Davenant, the Royalist poet-laureate; Sir John Denham, a Royalist versifier, and John Phillips, a devoted imitator of Milton, are little more than names to us; but then we must remember that, with few exceptions, neither the poets nor the poetry of that period which ended with the death of William III. have lived on through our literature. With the accession of Anne there came a burst of new life, and the next great name we come to in the Abbey is that of Joseph Addison, the most charming of our prose writers. To find his grave, however, we must leave the Poets' Corner and go to General Monk's vault in Henry VII.'s Chapel. For here, close to his friend Charles Montagu, Lord Keeper, he of "piercing wit, gentle irony, and sparkling humour," the regular contributor to our two earliest newspapers, the _Tattler_ and the _Spectator_, was buried. His own words, from an article in the _Spectator_ when it was about twelve days old, best describe both the man and his aims: "It is with much satisfaction that I hear this great city enquiring day by day after these my papers, and receiving my morning lectures with a becoming seriousness and attention. My publisher tells me that already three thousand of them are distributed every day, so that if I allow twenty readers to every paper, I may reckon about threescore thousand disciples in London and Westminster, who, I hope, will take care to distinguish themselves from the thoughtless herd of their ignorant and unattentive brethren. I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit and to temper wit with morality.... I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day, till I have recovered them from that desperate state of folly and vice into which the age is fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men, and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses." Then, having given his general aim, he goes on to especially commend his paper to all well-regulated families; to those gentlemen of leisure who consider the world a theatre, and desire to form a right judgment of those who are the actors on it; and to those "poor souls called the blanks of society, who are altogether unfurnished with ideas, who ask the first men they meet if there is any news stirring, and who know not what to talk about till twelve o'clock in the morning, by which time they are pretty good judges of the weather, and know which way the wind sets;" while finally he appeals to the female world: "I have often thought," he says, "that there has not been sufficient pains taken to find out proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them rather as they are women than as they are reasonable creatures. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right adjusting of their hair the principal employment of their lives. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women, though I know there are multitudes of those that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, and that join all the beauties of mind to the ornaments of dress. I hope to increase the number of those by publishing this daily paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an innocent entertainment, and by that means at least divert the minds of my female readers from far greater trifles."

Faithfully and yet very pleasantly did Addison carry out his scheme. His humour was always kindly, his good sense was unvarying, his thoughts were always generous and true, and his easy unaffected language completed the charm. Instead of dropping to the level of his readers, he raised them to the much higher level on which he himself stood, and this without dull lecturing or violent denunciations. Religion, duty, love, honour, purity, truth, kindliness, and public-spiritedness were all real things to him, and he sought to make them everywhere realities too, gilding his little moral pills so cleverly, that until they were swallowed no one knew they were pills, and then they left nothing but a sweet taste behind.

"About an age ago," he writes, "it was the fashion in England for every one who would be thought religious to throw as much sanctity as possible into his face. The saint was of a sorrowful countenance, and generally was eaten up with melancholy. I do not presume to tax such characters with hypocrisy, as is done too frequently, that being a vice which, I think, none but He who knows the secrets of men's hearts should pretend to discover in another. But I think they would do well to consider whether such a behaviour does not deter men from religion.... In short, those who represent religion in so unamiable a light are like the spies sent out by Moses to make a discovery in the Land of Promise, when by their reports they discouraged the people from entering upon it. Those that show us the joys, the cheerfulness, the good-humour that naturally spring up in this happy state are like the spies bringing along with them clusters of grapes and delicious fruits that so invited their companions into the pleasant country which produced them."

Two of his articles have Westminster Abbey for their subject. On one occasion Addison, as the Spectator, goes there for a walk, and thus describes his feelings:--"I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the Cloisters and the Church ... And I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries were crumbled one against the other; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same heap of matter.... Some of the monuments were covered with such extravagant epitaphs that, if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends bestowed on him. There were others so excessively modest that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew so that they are not understood once in a twelvemonth. I found there were poets which had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets.... Sir Cloudesley Shovel's monument gave me great offence. Instead of the brave, rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, show an infinitely greater taste.... The monuments of their admirals which have been erected at the public expense represent them like themselves, and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of seaweed, shells, and coral. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those that we must quickly follow. 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. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."

The next visit Spectator paid to the Abbey was in the company of Sir Roger de Coverley, his own creation, that gentleman of ancient descent, whose "singularities proceeded from his good sense, and were contradictions to the manners of the world only as he thought the world was in the wrong," and who was such a great lover of mankind, with such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, so cheerful, gay, and hearty, that "his tenants grew rich, his servants were satisfied, all young women professed love to him, and the young men were glad of his company." The squire was now spending one of his frequent visits to London, and informed the Spectator that having read his paper on Westminster Abbey, he should like to go there with him, never having visited the tombs since he read history.

"As we went up the body of the church, the knight pointed at the trophies on one of the new monuments, and cried out, 'A brave man! I warrant him!' Passing afterwards by Sir Cloudesley Shovel, he flung his head that way, and cried, 'Sir Cloudesley Shovel, a very gallant man!' As we stood before Busby's tomb the knight uttered himself again after the same manner. 'Doctor Busby, a great man! He whipped my grandfather; I should have gone to him myself, if I had not been a blockhead. A very great man!' Among several other figures he was very well pleased to see the statesman Cecil upon his knees.... Sir Roger, in the next place, laid his hand upon Edward III.'s sword, and leaning upon the pommel of it gave us the whole history of the Black Prince, concluding that, in Sir Richard Baker's opinion, Edward III. was one of the greatest princes that ever sat upon the English throne. We were then shown Edward the Confessor's tomb, upon which Sir Roger acquainted us that he was the first who touched for the evil, and afterwards Henry IV.'s, upon which he shook his head, and told us there was fine reading in the casualties of that reign. Our conductor then pointed to that monument where there is the figure of one of our English kings without a head, and upon giving us to know that the head, which was of beaten silver, had been stolen away years before, 'Some Whig, I warrant you!' says Sir Roger. 'You ought to lock your kings up better. They will carry off the body, too, if you don't take care!' The glorious names of Queen Elizabeth and Henry V. gave the knight great opportunities of shining. For my own part, I could not but be pleased to see the knight show such an honest passion for the glory of his country, and such a respectful gratitude to the memory of its princes."

Addison died when under fifty years of age, and the story goes that in his last moments he sent for young Lord Warwick, his stepson.

"Dear sir," said the lad, "any commands you may give me, I shall hold most sacred."

"See in what peace a Christian can die," answered the older man tenderly.

Years before, in his first letter as Spectator, he had written these honest words, "If I can in any way contribute to the improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain." And the knowledge that he had been true to this pure ambition brought him a calm content in that hour when all the things of this life vanished into the dim background.

His funeral in the Abbey has been thus vividly described by Tickell, his friend:--

"Can I forget the dismal night that gave My soul's best part for ever to the grave? How silent did his old companions tread, By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead. Through breathing statues, then unheeded things, Through rows of warriors and through walks of kings! What awe did the slow solemn march inspire, The pealing organ and the pausing choir; The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid And the last words that dust to dust conveyed! While speechless o'er the closing grave we bend-- Accept those tears, thou dear departed friend! Oh, gone for ever, take this last adieu, And sleep in peace next thy loved Montagu."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*GARRICK, JOHNSON, AND SHERIDAN*

Near together and under the shadow of Shakespeare's monument lie three men whose lives brought them into close contact with each other: David Garrick, the actor and manager; Dr. Samuel Johnson, the critic and conversationalist; and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, prince of playwriters and parliamentary orators. Little Davy Garrick was the first of the trio on whom the curtain fell, and his funeral in the Abbey, which took place on the 1st of February 1779, was a most imposing one. The streets were crowded with people gathered to see the last of him they had so delighted in applauding. The procession extended far down into the Strand; players from Drury Lane and Covent Garden mourned the kindliest and most lovable of comrades; seven carriages were filled with the members of the Literary Club, and round the grave stood Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox, Sheridan, Dr. Johnson, with many another distinguished man. That was a day of triumph for the English stage. True, indeed, other players had been buried in Westminster--Anne Oldfield, who lies in the nave; Anne Bracegirdle and Mr. Cibber, whose graves are in the cloisters--but the death of David Garrick was accounted a national loss, and all desired to honour him, under whose wise guidance "the drama had risen from utter chaos into order, fine actors had been trained, fine plays had been written for the fine actors to act, and fine, never-failing audiences had assembled to see the fine plays which the fine actors had acted." It has often been said that even had he been neither an actor nor a public character his name would have gone down to future generations as a perfect English gentleman, so great was the spell of his charm and his influence. He was born in an inn at Hereford in the year 1716, the son of a penniless officer in the dragoons, who had married Miss Isabella Clough, the equally penniless daughter of the vicar-choral of Lichfield Cathedral. The lieutenant had to serve at Gibraltar, and little David, a bright lad, ever ready with a witty answer, got his early education in a free school at Lichfield, presided over by a master who used the rod freely, "to save his boys from the gallows," as he assured them for their comfort. An older boy at the same school was Samuel Johnson, the son of a highly respected bookseller in Lichfield. In spite of the great difference in their ages, he became David's friend, and together they used to patronise such plays as the companies of strolling players brought within their reach, the acting taking place in such barns as were available. David, full of enterprise, organised and drilled a little company of his own when he was barely eleven, which company performed a play called "The Recruiting Officer," to the admiration of a large and interested audience, composed mainly of parents. But funds did not allow of many such pastimes, and a year later David was sent out to Portugal to work in the office of an uncle, a prosperous wine merchant there. Never was boy more unfit for the daily routine of an office, a fact which, fortunately, his uncle soon recognised, for in a few months he was back again in Lichfield, slightly in disgrace, it is true, and was sent to his old school that "discipline might repair his deficiencies."