Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 19

After all his voluminous literature, and his refined politics, Toland lived and died the life of an Author by Profession, in an obscure lodging at a country carpenter's, in great distress. He had still one patron left, who was himself poor, Lord Molesworth, who promised him, if he lived,

"Bare necessaries. These are but cold comfort to a man of your spirit and desert; but 'tis all I dare promise! 'Tis an ungrateful age, and we must bear with it the best we may till we can mend it."

And his lordship tells of his unsuccessful application to some Whig lord for Toland; and concludes,

"'Tis a sad monster of a man, and not worthy of further notice."

I have observed that Toland had strong nerves; he neither feared controversies, nor that which closes all. Having examined his ma.n.u.scripts, I can sketch a minute picture of the last days of our "author by profession." At the carpenter's lodgings he drew up a list of all his books--they were piled on four chairs, to the amount of 155--most of them works which evince the most erudite studies; and as Toland's learning has been very lightly esteemed, it may be worth notice that some of his MSS. were transcribed in Greek.[118] To this list he adds--"I need not recite those in the closet with the unbound books and pamphlets; nor my trunk, wherein are all my papers and MSS."

I perceive he circulated his MSS. among his friends, for there is a list by him as he lent them, among which are ladies as well as gentlemen, _esprits forts_!

Never has author died more in character than Toland; he may be said to have died with a busy pen in his hand. Having suffered from an unskilful physician, he avenged himself in his own way; for there was found on his table an "Essay on Physic without Physicians." The dying patriot-trader was also writing a preface for a political pamphlet on _the danger of mercenary Parliaments_; and the philosopher was composing his own epitaph--one more proof of the ruling pa.s.sion predominating in death; but why should a _Pantheist_ be solicitous to perpetuate his genius and his fame! I shall transcribe a few lines; surely they are no evidence of Atheism!

Omnium Literarum excultor, ac linguarum plus decem sciens; Veritatis propugnator, Libertatis a.s.sertor; nullus autem sectator aut cliens, nec minis, nec malis est inflexus, quin quam elegit, viam perageret; utili honestum anteferens.

Spiritus c.u.m aethereo patre, a quo prodiit olim, conjungitur; corpus item, Naturae cedens, in materno gremio reponitur.

Ipse vero aeternum est resurrecturus, at idem futurus TOLANDUS nunquam.[119]

One would have imagined that the writer of his own panegyrical epitaph would have been careful to have transmitted to posterity a copy of his features; but I know of no portrait of Toland. His patrons seem never to have been generous, nor his disciples grateful; they mortified rather than indulged the egotism of his genius. There appeared, indeed, an elegy, shortly after the death of Toland, so ingeniously contrived, that it is not clear whether he is eulogised or ridiculed.

Amid its solemnity these lines betray the sneer. "Has," exclaimed the eulogist of the ambiguous philosopher,

Each jarring element gone angry home?

And _Master Toland_ a _Non-ens_ become?

LOCKE, with all the prescient sagacity of that clear understanding which penetrated under the secret folds of the human heart, antic.i.p.ated the life of Toland at its commencement. He admired the genius of the man; but, while he valued his parts and learning, he dreaded their result. In a letter I find these pa.s.sages, which were then so prophetic, and are now so instructive:--

"If his exceeding great value of himself do not deprive the world of that usefulness that his parts, if rightly conducted, might be of, I shall be very glad.--The hopes young men give of what use they will make of their parts is, to me, the encouragement of being concerned for them; but, _if vanity increases with age, I always fear whither it will lead a man_."

FOOTNOTES:

[110] Toland was born in Ireland, in 1669, of Roman Catholic parents, but became a zealous opponent of that faith before he was sixteen; after which he finished his education at Glasgow and Edinburgh; he retired to study at Leyden, where he formed the acquaintance of Leibnitz and other learned men. His first book, published in 1696, and ent.i.tled "Christianity not Mysterious," was met by the strongest denunciation from the pulpit, was "presented" by the grand jury of Middles.e.x, and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman by the Parliament of Ireland. He was henceforth driven for employ to literature; and in 1699 was engaged by the Duke of Newcastle to edit the "Memoirs of Denzil, Lord Hollis;" and afterwards by the Earl of Oxford on a new edition of Harrington's "Oceana." He then visited the Courts of Berlin and Hanover. He published many works on politics and religion, the latter all remarkable for their deistical tendencies, and died in March, 1722, at the age of 53.--ED.

[111] These letters will interest every religious person; they may be found in Toland's posthumous works, vol. ii. p. 295.

[112] Toland pretends to prove that "there is nothing in the Christian Religion, not only which is contrary to reason, but even which is above it."--He made use of some arguments (says Le Clerc) that were drawn from Locke's Treatise on the Human Understanding. I have seen in MS. a finished treatise by Locke on Religion, addressed to Lady Shaftesbury; Locke gives it as a translation from the French. I regret my account is so imperfect; but the possessor may, perhaps, be induced to give it to the public. The French philosophers have drawn their first waters from English authors; and Toland, Tindale, and Woolston, with Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Locke, were among their earliest acquisitions.

[113] In examining the original papers of Toland, which are preserved, I found some of his agreements with booksellers. For his description of Epsom he was to receive only four guineas in case 1000 were sold. He received ten guineas for his pamphlet on Naturalising the Jews, and ten guineas more in case Bernard Lintott sold 2000. The words of this agreement run thus: "Whenever Mr. Toland calls for ten guineas, after the first of February next, I promise to pay them, if I _cannot show_ that 200 of the copies remain unsold." What a sublime person is an author! What a misery is authorship! The great philosopher who creates systems that are to alter the face of his country, must stand at the counter to count out 200 unsold copies!

[114] Des Maiseaux frees Toland from this calumny, and hints at his own personal knowledge of the author--but he does not know what a foreign writer authenticates, that this blasphemous address to Bacchus is a parody of a prayer in the Roman ritual, written two centuries before by a very proper society of _Pantheists_, a club of drunkards!

[115] Warburton has well described Des Maiseaux: "All the Life-writers we have had are, indeed, strange insipid creatures. The verbose tasteless Frenchman seems to lay it down as a principle that every life must be a book, and what is worse, it proves a book without a life; for what do we know of Boileau, after all his tedious stuff?"

[116] One of these philosophical conferences has been preserved by Beausobre, who was indeed the party concerned. He inserted it in the "Bibliotheque Germanique," a curious literary journal, in 50 volumes, written by L'Enfant, Beausobre, and Formey. It is very copious, and very curious, and is preserved in the General Dictionary, art. Toland. The parties, after a warm contest, were very wisely interrupted by the Queen, when she discovered they had exhausted their learning, and were beginning to rail at each other.

[117] A political society which obtained its name from the malt liquors consumed at its meetings, and which was popularly termed October from the month when it was usually brewed. This club advocated the claims of the House of Hanover, and may have originated the Mughouses noted in p. 32.--ED.

[118] I subjoin, for the gratification of the curious, the t.i.tles of a few of these books. "Spanhemii Opera;" "Clerici Pentateuchus;"

"Constantini Lexicon Graeco-Latinum;" "Fabricii Codex Apocryphus Vet. et Nov. Test.;" "Synesius de Regno;" "Historia Imaginum Coelestium Gosselini," 16 volumes; "Caryophili Dissertationes;" "Vonde Hardt Ephemerides Philologicae;"

"Trismegisti Opera;" "Recoldus, et alia Mahomedica;" all the Works of Buxtorf; "Salviani Opera;" "Reland de Relig.

Mahomedica;" "Galli Opuscula Mythologica;" "Apollodori Bibliotheca;" "Palingenius;" "Apuleius;" and every cla.s.sical author of antiquity. As he was then employed in his curious history of the Druids, of which only a specimen is preserved, we may trace his researches in the following books: "Luydii Archaeologia Britannica;" "Old Irish Testament," &c.; "Maccurtin's History of Ireland;" "O'Flaherty's Ogygia;"

"Epistolarum Hibernicarum;" "Usher's Religion of the ancient Irish;" "Brand's Isles of Orkney and Zetland;" "Pezron's Antiquites des Celtes."

There are some singular papers among these fragments. One t.i.tle of a work is "Priesthood without Priestcraft; or Superst.i.tion distinguished from Religion, Dominion from Order, and Bigotry from Reason, in the most princ.i.p.al Controversies about Church government, which at present divide and deform Christianity." He has composed "A Psalm before Sermon in praise of Asinity." There are other singular t.i.tles and works in the ma.s.s of his papers.

[119]

A lover of all literature, and knowing more than ten languages; a champion for truth, an a.s.sertor of liberty, but the follower or dependant of no man; nor could menaces nor fortune bend him; the way he had chosen he pursued, preferring honesty to his interest.

His spirit is joined with its ethereal father from whom it originally proceeded; his body likewise, yielding to Nature, is again laid in the lap of its mother: but he is about to rise again in eternity, yet never to be the same TOLAND more.

GENIUS THE DUPE OF ITS Pa.s.sIONS.

POPE said that STEELE, though he led a careless and vicious life, had nevertheless a love and reverence for virtue. The life of Steele was not that of a retired scholar; hence his moral character becomes more instructive. He was one of those whose hearts are the dupes of their imaginations, and who are hurried through life by the most despotic volition. He always preferred his caprices to his interests; or, according to his own notion, very ingenious, but not a little absurd, "he was always of the humour of preferring the state of his mind to that of his fortune." The result of this principle of moral conduct was, that a man of the most admirable abilities was perpetually acting like a fool, and, with a warm attachment to virtue, was the frailest of human beings.

In the first act of his life we find the seed that developed itself in the succeeding ones. His uncle could not endure a hero for his heir: but Steele had seen a marching regiment; a sufficient reason with him to enlist as a private in the horse-guards: c.o.c.king his hat, and putting on a broad-sword, jack-boots, and shoulder-belt, with the most generous feelings he forfeited a very good estate.--At length Ensign Steele's frank temper and wit conciliated esteem, and extorted admiration, and the ensign became a favourite leader in all the dissipations of the town. All these were the ebullitions of genius, which had not yet received a legitimate direction. Amid these orgies, however, it was often pensive, and forming itself; for it was in the height of these irregularities that Steele composed his "Christian Hero," a moral and religious treatise, which the contritions of every morning dictated, and to which the disorders of every evening added another penitential page. Perhaps the genius of Steele was never so ardent and so pure as at this period; and in his elegant letter to his commander, the celebrated Lord Cutts, he gives an interesting account of the origin of this production, which none but one deeply imbued with its feelings could have so forcibly described.

"_Tower Guard, March 23, 1701._

"MY LORD,--The address of the following papers is so very much due to your lordship, that they are but a mere report of what has pa.s.sed upon my guard to my commander; for they were writ upon duty, when the mind was perfectly disengaged, and at leisure, in the silent watch of the night, to run over the busy dream of the day; and the vigilance which obliges us to suppose an enemy always near us, has awakened a sense that there is a restless and subtle one which constantly attends our steps, and meditates our ruin."[120]

To this solemn and monitory work he prefixed his name, from this honourable motive, that it might serve as "a standing testimony against himself, and make him ashamed of understanding, and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so quite contrary a life." Do we not think that no one less than a saint is speaking to us? And yet he is still nothing more than Ensign Steele! He tells us that this grave work made him considered, who had been no undelightful companion, as a disagreeable fellow--and "The Christian Hero," by his own words, appears to have fought off several fool-hardy geniuses who were for "trying their valour on him," supposing a saint was necessarily a poltroon. Thus "The Christian Hero," finding himself slighted by his loose companions, sat down and composed a most laughable comedy, "The Funeral;" and with all the frankness of a man who cares not to hide his motives, he tells us, that after his religious work he wrote the comedy because "nothing can make the town so fond of a man as a successful play."[121] The historian who had to record such strange events, following close on each other, as an author publishing a book of piety, and then a farce, could never have discovered the secret motive of the versatile writer, had not that writer possessed the most honest frankness.

Steele was now at once a man of the town and its censor, and wrote lively essays on the follies of the day in an enormous black peruke which cost him fifty guineas! He built an elegant villa, but, as he was always inculcating economy, he dates from "The Hovel." He detected the fallacy of the South Sea scheme, while he himself invented projects, neither inferior in magnificence nor in misery. He even turned alchemist, and wanted to coin gold, merely to distribute it.

The most striking incident in the life of this man of volition, was his sudden marriage with a young lady who attended his first wife's funeral--struck by her angelical beauty, if we trust to his raptures.

Yet this sage, who would have written so well on the choice of a wife, united himself to a character the most uncongenial to his own; cold, reserved, and most anxiously prudent in her attention to money, she was of a temper which every day grew worse by the perpetual imprudence and thoughtlessness of his own. He calls her "Prue" in fondness and reproach; she was Prudery itself! His adoration was permanent, and so were his complaints; and they never parted but with bickerings--yet he could not suffer her absence, for he was writing to her three or four pa.s.sionate notes in a day, which are dated from his office, or his bookseller's, or from some friend's house--he has risen in the midst of dinner to despatch a line to "Prue," to a.s.sure her of his affection since noon.[122]--Her presence or her absence was equally painful to him.

Yet Steele, gifted at all times with the susceptibility of genius, was exercising the finest feelings of the heart; the same generosity of temper which deluded his judgment, and invigorated his pa.s.sions, rendered him a tender and pathetic dramatist; a most fertile essayist; a patriot without private views; an enemy whose resentment died away in raillery; and a friend, who could warmly press the hand that chastised him. Whether in administration, or expelled the House; whether affluent, or flying from his creditors; in the fulness of his heart he, perhaps, secured his own happiness, and lived on, like some wits, extempore. But such men, with all their virtues and all their genius, live only for themselves.

Steele, in the waste of his splendid talents, had raised sudden enmities and transient friendships. The world uses such men as Eastern travellers do fountains; they drink their waters, and when their thirst is appeased, turn their hacks on them. Steele lived to be forgotten. He opened his career with folly; he hurried through it in a tumult of existence; and he closed it by an involuntary exile, amid the wrecks of his fortune and his mind.

Steele, in one of his numerous periodical works, the twelfth number of the "Theatre," has drawn an exquisite contrast between himself and his friend Addison: it is a cabinet picture. Steele's careful pieces, when warm with his subject, had a higher spirit, a richer flavour, than the equable softness of Addison, who is only beautiful.

"There never was a more strict friendship than between these gentlemen; nor had they ever any difference but what proceeded from their different way of pursuing the same thing: the one, with patience, foresight, and temperate address, always waited and stemmed the torrent; while the other often plunged himself into it, and was as often taken out by the temper of him who stood weeping on the bank for his safety, whom he could not dissuade from leaping into it. Thus these two men lived for some years last past, shunning each other, but still preserving the most pa.s.sionate concern for their mutual welfare.

But when they met, they were as unreserved as boys; and talked of the greatest affairs, upon which they saw where they differed, without pressing (what they knew impossible) to convert each other."

If Steele had the honour of the invention of those periodical papers which first enlightened the national genius by their popular instruction, he is himself a remarkable example of the moral and the literary character perpetually contending in the man of volition.

FOOTNOTES:

[120] Mr. Nichols's "Epistolary Correspondence of Sir Richard Steele,"

vol. i. p. 77.

[121] Steele has given a delightful piece of self-biography towards the end of his "Apology for Himself and his Writings," p. 80, 4to.

[122] In the "Epistolary Correspondence of Sir Richard Steele," edition of 1809, are preserved these extraordinary love-despatches; "Prue" used poor Steele at times very ill; indeed Steele seems to have conceived that his warm affections were all she required, for Lady Steele was usually left whole days in solitude, and frequently in want of a guinea, when Steele could not raise one. He, however, sometimes remonstrates with her very feelingly. The following note is an instance:--