Books and Authors Part 14

FONTENELLE'S INSENSIBILITY.

Fontenelle, who lived till within one month of a century, was very rarely known to laugh or cry, and even boasted of his insensibility. One day, a certain _bon-vivant_ Abbe came unexpectedly to dine with him. The Abbe was fond of asparagus dressed with b.u.t.ter; Fontenelle, also, had a great _gout_ for the vegetable, but preferred it dressed with oil.

Fontenelle said, that, for such a friend, there was no sacrifice he would not make; and that he should have half the dish of asparagus which he had ordered for himself, and that half, moreover, should be dressed with b.u.t.ter. While they were conversing together, the poor Abbe fell down in a fit of apoplexy; upon which Fontenelle instantly scampered down stairs, and eagerly bawled out to his cook, "The whole with oil! the whole with oil, as at first!"

PAINS AND TOILS OF AUTHORSHIP.

The craft of authorship is by no means so easy of practice as is generally imagined by the thousands who aspire to its practice. Almost all our works, whether of knowledge or of fancy, have been the product of much intellectual exertion and study; or, as it is better expressed by the poet--

"the well-ripened fruits of wise decay."

Pope published nothing until it had been a year or two before him, and even then his printer's proofs were very full of alterations; and, on one occasion, Dodsley, his publisher, thought it better to have the whole recomposed than make the necessary corrections. Goldsmith considered four lines a day good work, and was seven years in beating out the pure gold of the _Deserted Village_. Hume wrote his _History of England_ on a sofa, but he went quietly on correcting every edition till his death. Robertson used to write out his sentences on small slips of paper; and, after rounding them and polishing them to his satisfaction, he entered them in a book, which, in its turn, underwent considerable revision. Burke had all his princ.i.p.al works printed two or three times at a private press before submitting them to his publisher. Akenside and Gray were indefatigable correctors, labouring every line; and so was our prolix and more imaginative poet, Thomson. On comparing the first and latest editions of the _Seasons_, there will be found scarcely a page which does not bear evidence of his taste and industry. Johnson thinks the poems lost much of their raciness under this severe regimen, but they were much improved in fancy and delicacy; the episode of Musidora, "the solemnly ridiculous bathing scene," as Campbell terms it, was almost entirely rewritten. Johnson and Gibbon were the least laborious in arranging their _copy_ for the press. Gibbon sent the first and only MS. of his stupendous work (the _Decline and Fall_) to his printer; and Johnson's high-sounding sentences were written almost without an effort.

Both, however, lived and moved, as it were, in the world of letters, thinking or caring of little else--one in the heart of busy London, which he dearly loved, and the other in his silent retreat at Lausanne.

Dryden wrote hurriedly, to provide for the day; but his _Absalom and Achitophel_, and the beautiful imagery of the _Hind and Panther_, must have been fostered with parental care. St. Pierre copied his _Paul and Virginia_ nine times, that he might render it the more perfect. Rousseau was a very c.o.xcomb in these matters: the amatory epistles, in his new _Heloise_, he wrote on fine gilt-edged card-paper, and having folded, addressed, and sealed them, he opened and read them in the solitary woods of Clairens, with the mingled enthusiasm of an author and lover.

Sheridan watched long and anxiously for bright thoughts, as the MS. of his _School for Scandal_, in its various stages, proves. Burns composed in the open air, the sunnier the better; but he laboured hard, and with almost unerring taste and judgment, in correcting.[10]

Lord Byron was a rapid composer, but made abundant use of the pruning-knife. On returning one of his proof sheets from Italy, he expressed himself undecided about a single word, for which he wished to subst.i.tute another, and requested Mr. Murray to refer it to Mr. Gifford, then editor of the _Quarterly Review_. Sir Walter Scott evinced his love of literary labour by undertaking the revision of the whole of the _Waverley_ Novels--a goodly freightage of some fifty or sixty volumes.

The works of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, and Moore, and the occasional variations in their different editions, mark their love of the touching.

Southey was, indeed, unwearied after his kind--a true author of the old school. The bright thoughts of Campbell, which sparkle like polished lances, were manufactured with almost equal care; he was the Pope of our contemporary authors.[11] Allan Cunningham corrected but little, yet his imitations of the elder lyrics are perfect centos of Scottish feeling and poesy. The loving, laborious lingering of Tennyson over his poems, and the frequent alterations--not in every case improvements--that appear in successive editions of his works, are familiar to all his admirers.

[10] "I have seen," says a Correspondent of the _Inverness Courier_, "a copy of the second edition of Burns's 'Poems,' with the blanks filled up, and numerous alterations made in the poet's handwriting: one instance, not the most delicate, but perhaps the most amusing and characteristic will suffice. After describing the gambols of his 'Twa Dogs,' their historian refers to their sitting down in coa.r.s.e and rustic terms. This, of course, did not suit the poet's Edinburgh patrons, and he altered it to the following:--

'Till tired at last, and doucer grown, Upon a knowe they sat them down.'

Still this did not please his fancy; he tried again, and hit it off in the simple, perfect form in which it now stands:--

'Until wi' daffin weary grown, Upon a knowe they sat them down.'"

[11] Campbell's alterations were, generally, decided improvements; but in one instance he failed lamentably. The n.o.ble peroration of Lochiel is familiar to most readers:--

"Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, With his back to the field and his feet to the foe; And leaving in battle no blot on his name, Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame."

In the quarto edition of _Gertrude of Wyoming_, when the poet collected and reprinted his minor pieces, this lofty sentiment was thus stultified:--

"Shall victor exult in the battle's acclaim, Or look to yon heaven from the death-bed of fame."

The original pa.s.sage, however, was wisely restored in the subsequent editions.

JOE MILLER AT COURT.

Joe Miller, (Mottley,) was such a favourite at court, that Caroline, queen of George II., commanded a play to be performed for his benefit; the queen disposed of a great many tickets at one of her drawing-rooms, and most of them were paid for in gold.

COLLINS' INSANITY.

Much has been said of the state of insanity to which the author of the _Ode to the Pa.s.sions_ was ultimately reduced; or rather, as Dr. Johnson happily describes it, "a depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right, without the power of pursuing it." What Johnson has further said on this melancholy subject, shows perhaps more nature and feeling than anything he ever wrote; and yet it is remarkable that among the causes to which the poet's malady was ascribed, he never hints at the most exciting of the whole. He tells us how Collins "loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters;" how he "delighted to roam through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens." But never does he seem to have imagined how natural it was for a mind of such a temperament to give an Eve to the Paradise of his Creation. Johnson, in truth, though, as he tells us, he gained the confidence of Collins, was not just the man into whose ear a lover would choose to pour his secrets. The fact was, Collins was greatly attached to a young lady who did not return his pa.s.sion; and there seems to be little doubt, that to the consequent disappointment, preying on his mind, was due much of that abandonment of soul which marked the close of his career. The object of his pa.s.sion was born the day before him; and to this circ.u.mstance, in one of his brighter moments, he made a most happy allusion. A friend remarking to the luckless lover, that his was a hard case, Collins replied, "It is so, indeed; for I came into the world _a day after the fair_."

MOORE'S EPIGRAM ON ABBOTT.

Mr. Speaker Abbott having spoken in slighting terms of some of Moore's poems, the poet wrote, in return, the following biting epigram:

"They say he has no heart; but I deny it; He _has_ a heart--and gets his speeches by it."

NEGROES AT HOME.

When Lord Byron was in Parliament, a pet.i.tion setting forth, and calling for redress for, the wretched state of the Irish peasantry, was one evening presented to the House of Lords, and very coldly received. "Ah!"

said Lord Byron, "what a misfortune it was for the Irish that they were not born black! they would then have had plenty of friends in both Houses"--referring to the great interest at the time being taken by some philanthropic members in the condition and future of the negroes in our West Indian colonies.

A STRING OF JERROLD'S JOKES.

At a club of which Jerrold was a member, a fierce Jacobite, and a friend, as fierce, of the Orange cause, were arguing noisily, and disturbing less excitable conversationalists. At length the Jacobite, a brawny Scot, brought his fist down heavily upon the table, and roared at his adversary, "I tell you what it is, sir, I spit upon your King William!" The friend of the Prince of Orange rose, and roared back to the Jacobite, "And I, sir, spit upon your James the Second!" Jerrold, who had been listening to the uproar in silence, hereupon rang the bell, and shouted "Waiter, spittoons for two!"

At an evening party, Jerrold was looking at the dancers, when, seeing a very tall gentleman waltzing with a remarkably short lady, he said to a friend at hand, "Humph! there's the mile dancing with the milestone!"

An old lady was in the habit of talking to Jerrold in a gloomy, depressing manner, presenting to him only the sad side of life. "Hang it," said Jerrold, one day, after a long and sombre interview, "she would not allow that there was a bright side to the moon."

Jerrold said to an ardent young gentleman, who burned with desire to see himself in print: "Be advised by me, young man: don't take down the shutters before there is something in the windows."

While Jerrold was discussing one day, with Mr. Selby, the vexed question of adapting dramatic pieces from the French, that gentleman insisted upon claiming some of his characters as strictly original creations. "Do you remember my Baroness in _Ask No Questions_?" said Mr. Selby. "Yes, indeed; I don't think I ever saw a piece of yours without being struck by your _barrenness_," was the retort.--_Mark Lemon's Jest-book._

CONCEITED ALARMS OF DENNIS.

John Dennis, the dramatist, had a most extravagant and enthusiastic opinion of his tragedy of _Liberty a.s.serted_. He imagined that there were in it some strokes on the French nation so severe, that they would never be forgiven; and that, in consequence, Louis XIV. would never make peace with England unless the author was given up as a sacrifice to the national resentment. Accordingly, when the congress for the negotiation of the Peace of Utrecht was in contemplation, the terrified Dennis waited on the Duke of Marlborough, who had formerly been his patron, to entreat the intercession of his Grace with the plenipotentiaries, that they should not consent to his surrender to France being made one of the conditions of the treaty. The Duke gravely told the dramatist that he was sorry to be unable to do this service, as he had no influence with the Ministry of the day; but, he added, that he thought Dennis' case not quite desperate, for, said his Grace, "I have taken no care to get myself excepted in the articles of peace, and yet I cannot help thinking that I have done the French almost as much damage as Mr. Dennis himself."

At another time, when Dennis was visiting at a gentleman's house on the Suss.e.x coast, and was walking on the beach, he saw a vessel, as he imagined, sailing towards him. The self-important timidity of Dennis saw in this incident a reason for the greatest alarm for himself, and distrust of his friend. Supposing he was betrayed, he made the best of his way to London, without even taking leave of his host, whom he believed to have lent himself to a plot for delivering him up as a captive to a French vessel sent on purpose to carry him off.