Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 3

As he proceeded in forming these volumes, I suspect, either that his mind became a little disordered, or that he discovered that mere literature found but penurious patrons in "the Few;" for, attempting to gain over all cla.s.ses of society, he varied his investigations, and courted attention, by writing on law, physic, divinity, as well as literary topics. By his account--

"The avarice of booksellers, and the stinginess of hard-hearted patrons, had driven him into a cursed company of door-keeping herds, to meet the irrational brutality of those uneducated mischievous animals called footmen, house-porters, poetasters, mumpers, apothecaries, attorneys, and such like beasts of prey," who were, like himself, sometimes barred up for hours in the menagerie of a great man's antechamber. In his addresses to Drs. Mead and Freind, he declares--"My misfortunes drive me to publish my writings for a poor livelihood; and nothing but the utmost necessity could make any man in his senses to endeavour at it, in a method so burthensome to the modesty and education of a scholar."

In French he dedicates to George I.; and in the Harleian MSS. I discovered a long letter to the Earl of Oxford, by our author, in French, with a Latin ode. Never was more innocent bribery proffered to a minister! He composed what he calls _Stricturae Pindaricae_ on the "Mughouses," then political clubs;[26] celebrates English authors in the same odes, and inserts a political Latin drama, called "Pallas Anglicana." Maevius and Bavius were never more indefatigable! The author's intellect gradually discovers its confusion amidst the loud cries of penury and despair.

To paint the distresses of an author soliciting alms for a book which he presents--and which, whatever may be its value, comes at least as an evidence that the suppliant is a learned man--is a case so uncommon, that the invention of the novelist seems necessary to fill up the picture. But Myles Davies is an artist in his own simple narrative.

Our author has given the names of several of his unwilling customers:--

"Those squeeze-farthing and h.o.a.rd-penny ignoramus doctors, with several great personages who formed excuses for not accepting my books; or they would receive them, but give nothing for them; or else deny they had them, or remembered anything of them; and so gave me nothing for my last present of books, though they kept them _gratis et ingratiis_.

"But his Grace of the Dutch extraction in Holland (said to be akin to Mynheer Vander B--nck) had a peculiar grace in receiving my present of books and odes, which, being bundled up together with a letter and ode upon his Graceship, and carried in by his porter, I was bid to call for an answer five years hence. I asked the porter what he meant by that? I suppose, said he, four or five days hence; but it proved five or six months after, before I could get any answer, though I had writ five or six letters in French with fresh odes upon his Graceship, and an account where I lived, and what n.o.blemen had accepted of my present. I attended about the door three or four times a week all that time constantly from twelve to four or five o'clock in the evening; and walking under the fore windows of the parlours, once that time his and her Grace came after dinner to stare at me, with open windows and shut mouths, but filled with fair water, which they spouted with so much dexterity that they twisted the water through their teeth and mouth-skrew, to flash near my face, and yet just to miss me, though my nose could not well miss the natural flavour of the orange-water showering so very near me. Her Grace began the water-work, but not very gracefully, especially for an English lady of her description, airs, and qualities, to make a stranger her spitting-post, who had been guilty of no other offence than to offer her husband some writings.--His Grace followed, yet first stood looking so wistfully towards me, that I verily thought he had a mind to throw me a guinea or two for all these indignities, and two or three months' then sleeveless waiting upon him--and accordingly I advanced to address his Grace to remember the poor author; but, instead of an answer, he immediately undams his mouth, out fly whole showers of lymphatic rockets, which had like to have put out my mortal eyes."

Still he was not disheartened, and still applied for his bundle of books, which were returned to him at length unopened, with "half a guinea upon top of the cargo," and "with a desire to receive no more.

I plucked up courage, murmuring within myself--

'Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.'"

He sarcastically observes,

"As I was still jogging on homewards, I thought that a great many were called _their Graces_, not for any grace or favour they had truly deserved with G.o.d or man, but for the same reason of contraries, that the _Parcae_ or Destinies, were so called, because they spared none, or were not truly the _Parcae, quia non parcebant_."

Our indigent and indignant author, by the faithfulness of his representations, mingles with his anger some ludicrous scenes of literary mendicity.

"I can't choose (now I am upon the fatal subject) but make one observation or two more upon the various rencontres and adventures I met withall, in presenting my books to those who were likely to accept of them for their own information, or for that of helping a poor scholar, or for their own vanity or ostentation.

"Some parsons would hollow to raise the whole house and posse of the domestics to raise a poor _crown_; at last all that flutter ends in sending Jack or Tom out to change a guinea, and then 'tis reckoned over half-a-dozen times before the fatal crown can be picked out, which must be taken as it is given, with all the parade of almsgiving, and so to be received with all the active and pa.s.sive ceremonial of mendication and alms-receiving--as if the books, printing and paper, were worth nothing at all, and as if it were the greatest charity for them to touch them or let them be in the house; 'For I shall never read them,' says one of the five-shilling-piece chaps; 'I have no time to look in them,' says another; ''Tis so much money lost,' says a grave dean; 'My eyes being so bad,' said a bishop, 'that I can scarce read at all.' 'What do you want with me?' said another; 'Sir, I presented you the other day with my _Athenae Britannicae_, being the last part published.' 'I don't want books, take them again; I don't understand what they mean.' 'The t.i.tle is very plain,' said I, 'and they are writ mostly in English.' 'I'll give you a crown for both the volumes.' 'They stand me, sir, in more than that, and 'tis for a bare subsistence I present or sell them; how shall I live?' 'I care not a farthing for that; live or die, 'tis all one to me.' 'd.a.m.n my master!'

said Jack, ''twas but last night he was commending your books and your learning to the skies; and now he would not care if you were starving before his eyes; nay, he often makes game at your clothes, though he thinks you the greatest scholar in England.'"

Such was the life of a learned mendicant author! The scenes which are here exhibited appear to have disordered an intellect which had never been firm; in vain our author attempted to adapt his talents to all orders of men, still "To the crazy ship all winds are contrary."

FOOTNOTES:

[20] This author, now little known but to the student of our rarer early poets, was a native of Shrewsbury, and had served in the army. He wrote a large number of poetical pieces, all now of the greatest rarity; their names have been preserved by that industrious antiquary Joseph Ritson, in his _Bibliographia Poetica_. The princ.i.p.al one was termed "The Worthiness of Wales," and is written in laudation of the Princ.i.p.ality. He was frequently employed to supply verses for Court Masques and Pageantry. He composed "all the devises, pastimes, and plays at Norwich" when Queen Elizabeth was entertained there; as well as gratulatory verses to her at Woodstock. He speaks of his mind as "never free from studie," and his body "seldom void of toyle"--"and yet both of them neither brought greate benefits to the life, nor blessing to the soule" he adds, in the words of a man whose hope deferred has made his heart sick!--ED.

[21] _Villanellas_, or rather "_Villanescas_, are properly country rustic songs, but commonly taken for ingenious ones made in imitation of them."--PINEDA.

[22] This practice of dedications had indeed flourished before; for authors had even prefixed numerous dedications to the same work, or dedicated to different patrons the separate divisions. Fuller's "Church History" is disgraced by the introduction of twelve t.i.tle-pages, besides the general one; with as many particular dedications, and no less than fifty or sixty inscriptions, addressed to benefactors; for which he is severely censured by Heylin. It was an expedient to procure dedication fees; for publishing books by _subscription_ was an art not then discovered.

[23] The price of the dedication of a play was even fixed, from five to ten guineas, from the Revolution to the time of George I., when it rose to twenty--but sometimes a bargain was to be struck--when the author and the play were alike indifferent.

Even on these terms could vanity be gratified with the coa.r.s.e luxury of panegyric, of which every one knew the price.

[24] This circ.u.mstance was so notorious at the time, that it occasioned a poetical satire in a dialogue between Motteux and his patron Henningham--preserved in that vast flower-bed or dunghill, for it is both, of "Poems on Affairs of State," vol.

ii. 251. The patron, in his zeal to omit no possible distinction that could attach to him, had given one circ.u.mstance which no one but himself could have known, and which he thus regrets:

"PATRON.

I must confess I was to blame That one particular to name; The rest could never have been known, _I made the style so like thy own_.

POET.

I beg your pardon, Sir, for that!

PATRON.

Why d----e what would you be at?

_I writ below myself_, you sot!

Avoiding figures, tropes, what not; For fear I should my fancy _raise Above the level of thy plays_!"

[25] "_Athenae Britannicae_, or a Critical History of the Oxford and Cambridge Writers and Writings, with those of the Dissenters and Romanists, as well as other Authors and Worthies, both Domestic and Foreign, both Ancient and Modern. Together with an occasional freedom of thought, in criticising and comparing the parallel qualifications of the most eminent authors and their performances, both in MS. and print, both at home and abroad. By M. D. London, 1716." On the first volume of this series, Dr. Farmer, a bloodhound of unfailing scent in curious and obscure English books, has written on the leaf "This is the only copy I have met with." Even the great bibliographer, Baker, of Cambridge, never met but with three volumes (the edition at the British Museum is in seven), sent him as a great curiosity by the Earl of Oxford, and now deposited in his collection at St. John's College. Baker has written this memorandum in the first volume: "Few copies were printed, so the work has become scarce, and for that reason will be valued. The book in the greatest part is borrowed from modern historians, but yet contains some things more uncommon, and not easily to be met with." How superlatively rare must be the English volumes which the eyes of Farmer and Baker never lighted on!

[26] These clubs are described in Macky's "Journey through England,"

1724. He says they were formed to uphold the Royalist party on the accession of King George I. "This induced a set of gentlemen to establish _Mughouses_ in all the corners of this great city, for well-affected tradesmen to meet and keep up the spirit of loyalty to the Protestant succession," and to be ready to join their forces for the suppression of the other party. "Many an encounter they had, till at last the Parliament was obliged by a law to put an end to this city strife, which had this good effect, that upon the pulling down of the Mughouse in Salisbury Court, for which some boys were hanged on this act, the city has not been troubled with them since." It was the custom in these houses to allow no other drink but ale to be consumed, which was brought in mugs of earthenware; a chairman was elected, and he called on the members of the company for songs, which were generally party ballads of a strongly-worded kind, as may be seen in the small collection printed in 1716, ent.i.tled "A Collection of State Songs, Poems, &c., published since the Rebellion, and sung in the several Mughouses in the cities of London and Westminster."--ED.

COWLEY.

OF HIS MELANCHOLY.

The mind of COWLEY was beautiful, but a querulous tenderness in his nature breathes not only through his works, but influenced his habits and his views of human affairs. His temper and his genius would have opened to us, had not the strange decision of Sprat and Clifford withdrawn that full correspondence of his heart which he had carried on many years. These letters were suppressed because, as Bishop Sprat acknowledges, "in this kind of prose Mr. Cowley was excellent! They had a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of familiarity." And then the florid writer runs off, that, "in letters, where the souls of men should appear undressed, in that negligent habit they may be fit to be seen by one or two in a chamber, but not to go abroad into the streets." A false criticism: which not only has proved to be so since their time by Mason's "Memoirs of Gray," but which these friends of Cowley might have themselves perceived, if they had recollected that the Letters of Cicero to Atticus form the most delightful chronicles of the heart--and the most authentic memorials of the man. Peck obtained one letter of Cowley's, preserved by Johnson, and it exhibits a remarkable picture of the miseries of his poetical solitude. It is, perhaps, not too late to inquire whether this correspondence was destroyed as well as suppressed? Would Sprat and Clifford have burned what they have told us they so much admired?[27]

Fortunately for our literary sympathy, the fatal error of these fastidious critics has been in some degree repaired by the admirable genius himself whom they have injured. When Cowley retreated from society, he determined to draw up an apology for his conduct, and to have dedicated it to his patron, Lord St. Albans. His death interrupted the entire design; but his Essays, which Pope so finely calls "the language of his heart," are evidently parts of these precious Confessions. All of Cowley's tenderest and undisguised feelings have therefore not perished. These Essays now form a species of composition in our language, a mixture of prose and verse--the man with the poet--the self-painter has sat to himself, and, with the utmost simplicity, has copied out the image of his soul.

Why has this poet twice called himself _the melancholy Cowley_? He employed no poetical _cheville_[28] for the metre of a verse which his own feelings inspired.

Cowley, at the beginning of the Civil War, joined the Royalists at Oxford; followed the queen to Paris; yielded his days and his nights to an employment of the highest confidence, that of deciphering the royal correspondence; he transacted their business, and, almost divorcing himself from his neglected muse, he yielded up for them the tranquillity so necessary to the existence of a poet. From his earliest days he tells us how the poetic affections had stamped themselves on his heart, "like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, which, with the tree, will grow proportionably."

He describes his feelings at the court:--

"I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life the nearer I came to it--that beauty which I did not fall in love with when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw it was adulterate. I met with several great persons whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired. I was in a crowd of good company, in business of great and honourable trust; I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences that ought to be desired by a man of my condition; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect:--

Well then! I now do plainly see, This busie world and I shall ne'er agree!"

After several years' absence from his native country, at a most critical period, he was sent over to mix with that trusty band of loyalists, who, in secrecy and in silence, were devoting themselves to the royal cause. Cowley was seized on by the ruling powers. At this moment he published a preface to his works, which some of his party interpreted as a relaxation of his loyalty. He has been fully defended. Cowley, with all his delicacy of temper, wished sincerely to retire from all parties; and saw enough among the fiery zealots of his own, to grow disgusted even with Royalists.

His wish for retirement has been half censured as cowardice by Johnson; but there was a tenderness of feeling which had ill-formed Cowley for the cunning of party intriguers, and the company of little villains. About this time he might have truly distinguished himself as "The melancholy Cowley."

I am only tracing his literary history for the purpose of this work: but I cannot pa.s.s without noticing the fact, that this abused man, whom his enemies were calumniating, was at this moment, under the disguise of a doctor of physic, occupied by the novel studies of botany and medicine; and as all science in the mind of the poet naturally becomes poetry, he composed his books on plants in Latin verse.

At length came the Restoration, which the poet zealously celebrated in his "Ode" on that occasion. Both Charles the First and Second had promised to reward his fidelity with the mastership of the Savoy; but, Wood says, "he lost it by certain persons enemies of the muses." Wood has said no more; and none of Cowley's biographers have thrown any light on the circ.u.mstance: perhaps we may discover this literary calamity.

That Cowley caught no warmth from that promised sunshine which the new monarch was to scatter in prodigal gaiety, has been distinctly told by the poet himself; his muse, in "The Complaint," having reproached him thus:--

Thou young prodigal, who didst so loosely waste Of all thy youthful years, the good estate-- Thou changeling then, bewitch'd with noise and show, Wouldst into courts and cities from me go-- Go, renegado, cast up thy account-- Behold the public storm is spent at last; The sovereign is toss'd at sea no more, And thou, with all the n.o.ble company, Art got at last to sh.o.r.e-- But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see, All march'd up to possess the promis'd land; Thou still alone (alas!) dost gaping stand Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand.