Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 27

This claims a tear! Never were the agonies of literary disappointment more pathetically told.

But as it is impossible to have known poor deluded Stockdale, and not to have laughed at him more than to have wept for him--so the catastrophe of this author's literary life is as finely in character as all the acts. That catastrophe, of course, is his last poem.

After many years his poetical demon having been chained from the world, suddenly broke forth on the reports of a French invasion. The narrative shall proceed in his own inimitable manner.

"My poetical spirit excited me to write my poem of 'The Invincible Island.' I never found myself in a happier disposition to compose, nor ever wrote with more pleasure. I presumed warmly to hope that unless _inveterate prejudice and malice_ were as invincible as our island itself, it would have _the diffusive circulation_ which I earnestly desired.

"Flushed with this idea--borne impetuously along _by ambition and by hope, though they had often deluded me_, I set off in the mail-coach from Durham for London, on the 9th of December, 1797, at midnight, and in a severe storm. On my arrival in town my poem was advertised, printed, and published with great expedition. It was printed for Clarke in New Bond-street. For several days the sale was very promising; and my bookseller as well as myself entertained sanguine hopes; _but the demand for the poem relaxed gradually_! From this last of many literary misfortunes, I inferred that _prejudice_ and _malignity_, in my fate as an _author_, seemed, indeed, to be invincible."

The catastrophe of the poet is much better told than anything in the poem, which had not merit enough to support that interest which the temporary subject had excited.

Let the fate of Stockdale instruct some, and he will not have written in vain the "Memoirs of his Life and Writings." I have only turned the literary feature to our eye; it was combined with others, equally striking, from the same mould in which that was cast. Stockdale imagined he possessed an intuitive knowledge of human nature. He says, "everything that const.i.tuted my nature, my acquirements, my habits, and my fortune, conspired to let in upon me a complete knowledge of human nature." A most striking proof of this knowledge is his parallel, after the manner of Plutarch, between Charles XII. and himself! He frankly confesses there were some points in which he and the Swedish monarch did not exactly resemble each other. He thinks, for instance, that the King of Sweden had a somewhat more fervid and original genius than himself, and was likewise a little more robust in his person--but, subjoins Stockdale,

"Of our reciprocal fortune, achievements, and conduct, some parts will be to _his_ advantage, and some to _mine_."

Yet in regard to _Fame_, the main object between him and Charles XII., Stockdale imagined that his own

"Will not probably take its fixed and immoveable station, and shine with its expanded and permanent splendour, till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines his tomb!"

POPE hesitated at deciding on the durability of his poetry. PRIOR congratulates himself that he had not devoted all his days to rhymes.

STOCKDALE imagines his fame is to commence at the very point (the tomb) where genius trembles its own may nearly terminate!

To close this article, I could wish to regale the poetical Stockdales with a delectable morsel of fraternal biography; such would be the life, and its memorable close, of ELKANAH SETTLE, who imagined himself to be a great poet, when he was placed on a level with Dryden by the town-wits, (gentle spirits!) to vex genius.

Settle's play of _The Empress of Morocco_ was the very first "adorned with sculptures."[140] However, in due time, the Whigs despising his rhymes, Settle tried his prose for the Tories; but he was a magician whose enchantments never charmed. He at length obtained the office of the city poet, when lord mayors were proud enough to have laureates in their annual pageants.

When Elkanah Settle published any _party poem_, he sent copies round to the chiefs of the party, accompanied with addresses, to extort pecuniary presents. He had latterly one standard _Elegy_ and _Epithalamium_ printed off with blanks, which, by the ingenious contrivance of filling up with the names of any considerable person who died or was married, no one who was going out of life or entering it _could pa.s.s scot-free_ from the _tax levied by his hacknied muse_.

The following letter accompanied his presentation copy to the Duke of Somerset, of a poem, in Latin and English, on the Hanover succession, when Elkanah wrote for the Whigs, as he had for the Tories:--

"SIR,--Nothing but the greatness of the subject could encourage my presumption in laying the enclosed Essay at your Grace's feet, being, with all profound humility, your Grace's most dutiful servant,

"E. SETTLE."

In the latter part of his life Settle dropped still lower, and became the poet of a booth at Bartholomew Fair, and composed drolls, for which the rival of Dryden, it seems, had a genius!--but it was little respected--for two great personages, "Mrs. Mynns and her daughter, Mrs. Leigh," approving of their great poet's happy invention in one of his own drolls, "St. George for England," of a green dragon, as large as life, insisted, as the tyrant of old did to the inventor of the brazen bull, that the first experiment should be made on the artist himself, and Settle was tried in his own dragon; he crept in with all his genius, and did "act the dragon, enclosed in a case of green leather of his own invention." The circ.u.mstance is recorded in the lively verse of Young, in his "Epistle to Pope concerning the authors of the age."

Poor Elkanah, all other changes past, For bread in Smithfield dragons hiss'd at last, Spit streams of fire to make the butchers gape, And found his manners suited to his shape; Such is the fate of talents misapplied, So lived your prototype, and so he died.

FOOTNOTES:

[137] An elegant poet of our times alludes, with due feeling, to these personal sacrifices. Addressing Poetry, he exclaims--

"In devotion to thy heavenly charms, I clasp'd thy altar with my infant arms; For thee neglected the wide field of wealth; The toils of interest, and the sports of health."

How often may we lament that poets are too apt "to clasp the altar with infant arms." Goldsmith was near forty when he published his popular poems--and the greater number of the most valued poems were produced in mature life. When the poet begins in "infancy," he too often contracts a habit of writing verses, and sometimes, in all his life, never reaches poetry.

[138] Vol. ii. p. 355.

[139] My old favourite cynic, with all his rough honesty and acute discrimination, Anthony Wood, engraved a sketch of Stockdale when he etched with his aqua-fortis the personage of a brother:--"This Edward Waterhouse wrote a rhapsodical, indigested, whimsical work; and not in the least to be taken into the hand of any sober scholar, unless it be to make him laugh or wonder at the simplicity of some people. He was a c.o.c.k-brained man, and afterwards took orders."

[140] It was published in quarto in 1673, and has engravings of the princ.i.p.al scene in each act, and a frontispiece representing the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens, where it was first acted publicly; it had been played twice at court before this, by n.o.ble actors, "persons of such birth and honour," says Settle, "that they borrowed no greatness from the characters they acted." The prologues were written by Lords Mulgrave and Rochester, and the utmost _eclat_ given to the five long acts of rhyming bombast, which was declared superior to any work of Dryden's. As City Poet afterwards Settle composed the pageants, speeches, and songs for the Lord Mayor's Shows from 1691 to 1708. Towards the close of his career he became impoverished, and wrote from necessity on all subjects. One of his plays, composed for Mrs. Mynns' booth in Bartholomew Fair, has been twice printed, though both editions are now uncommonly rare. It is called the "Siege of Troy;" and its popularity is attested by Hogarth's print of Southwark Fair, where outside of Lee and Harper's great theatrical booth is exhibited a painting of the Trojan horse, and the announcement "The Siege of Troy is here."--ED.

QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

OR,

SOME MEMOIRS FOR OUR LITERARY HISTORY.

"The use and end of this Work I do not so much design for curiosity, or satisfaction of those that are the lovers of learning, but chiefly for a more grave and serious purpose: which is, that it will _make learned men wise in the use and administration of learning_."--LORD BACON, "Of Learning."

PREFACE.

THE QUARRELS OF AUTHORS may be considered as a continuation of the CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS; and both, as some Memoirs for Literary History.

These Quarrels of Authors are not designed to wound the Literary Character, but to expose the secret arts of calumny, the malignity of witty ridicule, and the evil prepossessions of unjust hatreds.

The present, like the preceding work, includes other subjects than the one indicated by the t.i.tle, and indeed they are both subservient to a higher purpose--that of our Literary History.

There is a French work, ent.i.tled "Querelles Litteraires," quoted in "Curiosities of Literature," many years ago. Whether I derive the idea of the present from the French source I cannot tell. I could point out a pa.s.sage in the great Lord BACON which might have afforded the hint.

But I am inclined to think that what induced me to select this topic was the interest which JOHNSON has given to the literary quarrels between _Dryden_ and _Settle_, _Dennis_ and _Addison_, &c.; and which Sir WALTER SCOTT, who, amid the fresh creations of fancy, could delve for the buried truths of research, has thrown into his narrative of the quarrel of _Dryden_ and _Luke Milbourne_.

From the French work I could derive no aid; and my plan is my own. I have fixed on each literary controversy to ill.u.s.trate some principle, to portray some character, and to investigate some topic. Almost every controversy which occurred opened new views. With the subject, the character of the author connected itself; and with the character were a.s.sociated those events of his life which reciprocally act on each other. I have always considered an author as a human being, who possesses at once two sorts of lives, the intellectual and the vulgar: in his books we trace the history of his mind, and in his actions those of human nature. It is this combination which interests the philosopher and the man of feeling; which provides the richest materials for reflection; and all those original details which spring from the const.i.tuent principles of man. JOHNSON'S pa.s.sion for literary history, and his great knowledge of the human heart, inspired at once the first and the finest model in this cla.s.s of composition.

The Philosophy of Literary History was indeed the creation of BAYLE.

He was the first who, by attempting a _critical dictionary_, taught us to think, and to be curious and vast in our researches. He enn.o.bled a collection of facts by his reasonings, and exhibited them with the most miscellaneous ill.u.s.trations; and thus conducting an apparently humble pursuit with a higher spirit, he gave a new turn to our studies. It was felt through Europe; and many celebrated authors studied and repeated BAYLE. This father of a numerous race has an English as well as a French progeny.

JOHNSON wrote under many disadvantages; but, with scanty means, he has taught us a great end. Dr. BIRCH was the contemporary of JOHNSON. He excelled his predecessors; and yet he forms a striking contrast as a literary historian. BIRCH was no philosopher, and I adduce him as an instance how a writer, possessing the most ample knowledge, and the most vigilant curiosity--one practised in all the secret arts of literary research in public repositories and in private collections, and eminently skilled in the whole science of bibliography--may yet fail with the public. The diligence of BIRCH has perpetuated his memory by a monument of MSS., but his, touch was mortal to genius! He palsied the character which could never die; heroes sunk pusillanimously under his hand; and in his torpid silence, even MILTON seemed suddenly deprived of his genius.

I have freely enlarged in the _notes_ to this work; a practice which is objectionable to many, but indispensable perhaps in this species of literary history.

The late Mr. c.u.mBERLAND, in a conversation I once held with him on this subject, triumphantly exclaimed, "You will not find a single note through the whole volume of my 'Life.' I never wrote a note. The ancients never wrote notes; but they introduced into their text all which was proper for the reader to know."

I agreed with that elegant writer, that a fine piece of essay-writing, such as his own "Life," required notes no more than his novels and his comedies, among which it may be cla.s.sed. I observed that the ancients had no literary history; this was the result of the discovery of printing, the inst.i.tution of national libraries, the general literary intercourse of Europe, and some other causes which are the growth almost of our own times. The ancients have written history without producing authorities.

Mr. c.u.mBERLAND was then occupied on a review of Fox's History; and of CLARENDON, which lay open before him,--he had been complaining, with all the irritable feelings of a dramatist, of the frequent suspensions, and the tedious minuteness of his story.

I observed that _notes_ had not then been discovered. Had Lord CLARENDON known their use, he had preserved the unity of design in his text. His Lordship has unskilfully filled it with all that historical furniture his diligence had collected, and with those minute discussions which his anxiety for truth, and his lawyer-like mode of scrutinising into facts and substantiating evidence, ama.s.sed. Had these been cast into _notes_, and were it now possible to pa.s.s them over in the present text, how would the story of the n.o.ble historian clear up! The greatness of his genius will appear when disenc.u.mbered of its unwieldy and misplaced accompaniments.

If this observation be just, it will apply with greater force to literary history itself, which, being often the mere history of the human mind, has to record opinions as well as events--to discuss as well as to narrate--to show how accepted truths become suspicious--or to confirm what has. .h.i.therto rested in obscure uncertainty, and to balance contending opinions and opposite facts with critical nicety.

The multiplied means of our knowledge now opened to us, have only rendered our curiosity more urgent in its claims, and raised up the most diversified objects. These, though accessories to the leading one of our inquiries, can never melt together in the continuity of a text.

It is to prevent all this disorder, and to enjoy all the usefulness and the pleasure of this various knowledge, which has produced the invention of _notes_ in literary history. All this forms a sort of knowledge peculiar to the present more enlarged state of literature.

Writers who delight in curious and rare extracts, and in the discovery of new facts and new views of things, warmed by a fervour of research which brings everything nearer to our eye and close to our touch, study to throw contemporary feelings in their page. Such rare extracts and such new facts BAYLE eagerly sought, and they delighted JOHNSON; but all this luxury of literature can only be produced to the public eye in the variegated forms of _notes_.