Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 42

[273] He has described this intercourse of his enemies at court with the king, where, when this punishment was suggested, "a generous personage, altogether unknown to me, being present, bravely and frankly interposed, saying, that 'whatever I was, I was a Roman; that Englishmen were not so precipitously to be condemned to so exemplary a punishment; that representing that book to be a libel against the king was too remote a consequence to be admitted of in a nation free-born, and governed by laws, and tender of ill precedents.'" It was a n.o.ble speech, in the relaxed politics of the court of Charles II. He who made it deserved to have had his name more explicitly told: he is designated as "that excellent Englishman, the great ornament of this age, nation, and House of Commons; he whose single worth balanceth much of the debaucheries, follies, and impertinences of the kingdom."--_A Reply unto the Letter written to Mr. Henry Stubbe, Oxford, 1671_, p. 20.

[274] Stubbe gives some curious information on this subject. Harvey published his Treatise at Frankfort, 1628, but Caesalpinus's work had appeared in 1593. Harvey adopted the notion, and more fully and perspicuously proved it. I shall give what Stubbe says. "Harvey, in his two Answers to Riolan, nowhere a.s.serts the invention so to himself, as to deny that he had the intimation or notion from Caesalpinus; and his silence I take for a tacit confession. His _ambition of glory_ made him _willing to be thought the author of a paradox_ he had so ill.u.s.trated, and brought upon the stage, where _it lay unregarded_, and in all probability buried in oblivion; yet such was his modesty, as not to vindicate it to himself by telling a lie."--STUBBE'S _Censure_, &c., p. 112.

I give this literary anecdote, as it enters into the history of most discoveries, of which the _improvers_, rather than the _inventors_, are usually the most known to the world. Bayle, who wrote much later than Stubbe, a.s.serts the same, and has preserved the entire pa.s.sage, art. _Caesalpinus_. It is said Harvey is more expressly indebted to a pa.s.sage in Servetus, which Wotton has given in the preface to his "Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning," edition 1725. The notion was probably then afloat, and each alike contributed to its development. Thus it was disputed with Copernicus, whether his great discovery of a fixed sun, and the earth wheeling round that star, was his own; others had certainly observed it; yet the invention was still Copernican: for that great genius alone corrected, extended, and gave perfection to a hint, till it expanded to a system.

So gradual have often been the great inventions of genius.

What others _conjectured_, and some _discovered_, Harvey _demonstrated_. The fate of Harvey's discovery is a curious instance of that patience and fort.i.tude which genius must too often exert in respect to itself. Though Harvey lived to his eightieth year, he hardly witnessed his great discovery established before he died; and it has been said, that he was the only one of his contemporaries who lived to see it in some repute. No physician adopted it; and when it got into vogue, they then disputed whether he was the inventor! Sir William Temple denied not only the discovery, but the doctrine of the Circulation of the Blood. "Sense can hardly allow it; which,"

says he, "in this dispute must be satisfied as well as reason, before mankind will concur."

[275] Stubbe has an eloquent pa.s.sage, which describes the philosophy of science. The new Experimental School had perhaps too wholly rejected some virtues of the old one; the cultivation of the human understanding, as well as the mere observation on the facts that they collected; an error which has not been entirely removed.

"That art of reasoning by which the prudent are discriminated from fools, which methodiseth and facilitates our discourses, which informs us of the validity of consequences and the probability of arguments, and manifests the fallacies of impostors; that art which gives life to solid eloquence, and which renders Statesmen, Divines, Physicians, and Lawyers accomplished; how is this cried down and vilified by the ignoramuses of these days! What contempt is there raised upon the disputative Ethics of Aristotle and the Stoics; and those moral instructions, which have produced the Alexanders and the Ptolemies, the Pompeys and the Ciceroes, are now slighted in comparison of _day-labouring_! Did we live at Sparta, where the daily employments were the exercises of substantial virtue and gallantry, and _men_, like _setting dogs_, were rather _bred up_ unto, than _taught_ reason and worth, it were a more tolerable proposal (though the different policy of these times would not admit of it); but this _working_, so recommended, is but the _feeding of carp in the air_, &c. As for the study of Politics, and all critical learning, these are either pedantical, or tedious, to those who have _a shorter way of studying men_."--_Preface to "Legends no Histories."_

[276] "Legends no Histories," p. 5.

[277] Dr. King was allied to the families of Clarendon and Rochester; he took a degree as Doctor of Civil Law, and soon got into great practice. "He afterwards went with the Earl of Pembroke, Lord-Lieutenant, to Ireland, where he became Judge Advocate, Sole Commissioner of the Prizes, Keeper of the Records, Vicar-General to the Lord Primate of Ireland; was countenanced by persons of the highest rank, and might have made a fortune.

But so far was he from heaping up riches, that he returned to England with no other treasure than a few merry poems and humorous essays, and returned to his student's place in Christ Church."--_Enc. Brit._ He was a.s.sisted by Bolingbroke; but when his patronage failed, Swift procured him the situation of editor to "Barber's Gazette." He ultimately took to drinking; Lintot the bookseller, told Pope, "I remember Dr. King could write verses in a tavern three hours after he could not speak." His last patron was Lord Clarendon, and he died in apartments he had provided for him in London, Dec. 25, 1712, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey at the expense of his lordship.--ED.

[278] Sloane describes Clark, the famous posture-master, "Phil.

Trans." No. 242, certainly with the wildest grammar, but with many curious particulars; the gentleman in one of Dr. King's Dialogues inquires the secretary's opinion of the causes of this man's wonderful pliability of limbs; a question which Sloane had thus solved, with colloquial ease: it depended upon "bringing the body to it, by using himself to it."

In giving an account of "a child born without a brain"--"Had it lived long enough," said King, "it would have made an excellent publisher of Philosophical Transactions!"

Sloane presented the Royal Society with "a figure of a Chinese, representing one of that nation using an ear-picker, and expressing great satisfaction therein."--"Whatever pleasure," said that learned physician, "the Chinese may take in thus picking their ears, I am certain most people in these parts, who have had their hearing impaired, have had such misfortune first come to them by picking their ears too much."--He is so _curious_, says King, that the secretary took as much satisfaction in looking upon the ear-picker, as the Chinese could do in picking their ears!

But "What drowning is"--that "Hanging is only apoplexy!" that "Men cannot swallow when they are dead!" that "No fish die of fevers!" that "Hogs s--t soap, and cows s--t fire!" that the secretary had "Sh.e.l.ls, called _Blackmoor's-teeth_, I suppose from their _whiteness_!" and the learned RAY'S, that grave naturalist, incredible description of "a very curious little instrument!" I leave to the reader and Dr. King.

[279] Sir Hans Sloane was unhappily not insensible to these ludicrous a.s.saults, and in the preface to his "History of Jamaica,"

1707, a work so highly prized for its botanical researches, absolutely antic.i.p.ated this fatal facetiousness, for thus he delivers himself:--"Those who strive to make ridiculous anything of this kind, and think themselves great wits, but are very ignorant, and understand nothing of the argument, these, if one were afraid of them, and consulted his own ease, might possibly hinder the publication of any such work, the efforts to be expected from them, making possibly some impression upon persons of equal dispositions; but considering that I have the approbation of others, whose judgment, knowledge, &c., I have great reason to value; and considering that these sorts of men have been in all ages ready to do the like, not only to ordinary persons and their equals, but even to abuse their prince and blaspheme their Maker, I shall, as I have ever since I seriously considered this matter, think of and treat them with the greatest contempt."

[280] Dr. King's dispersed works have fortunately been collected by Mr. Nichols, with ample ill.u.s.trations, in three vols. 8vo, 1776. The "Useful Transactions in Philosophy and other sorts of Learning," form a collection of ludicrous dissertations of Antiquarianism, Natural Philosophy, Criticism, &c., where his own peculiar humour combines with his curious reading. [In this he burlesqued the proceedings of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies with some degree of spirit and humour.

By turning vulgar lines into Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon, a learned air is given to some papers on childish subjects.

One learned doctor communicates to another "an Essay proving, by arguments philosophical, that millers, falsely so reputed, are not thieves, with an interesting argument that taylors likewise are not so." A Welsh schoolmaster sends some "natural observations" made in Wales, in direct imitation of the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1707, and with humorous love for genealogy, reckons that in his school, "since the flood, there have been 466, and I am the 467th master: before the flood, they living long, there were but two--Rice ap Evan Dha the good, and Davie ap Shones Gonnah the naught, in whose time the flood came." The first paper of the collection is an evident jest on John Bagford and his gatherings for the history of printing, now preserved among the ma.n.u.scripts of the British Museum. It purports to be "an Essay on the invention of samplers, communicated by Mrs. Judith Bagford, with an account of her collections for the same:" and written in burlesque of a paper in the "Philosophical Transactions" for April, 1697. It is a most elaborate performance, deducing with mock-seriousness the origin of samplers from the ancient tales of Arachne, who "set forth the whole story of her wrongs in needlework, and sent it to her sister;" and our author adds, with much humour, "it is very remarkable that the memory of this story does at present continue, for there are no samplers, which proceed in any measure beyond the first rudiments, but have a tree and a nightingale sitting on it." Such were the jests of the day against the Royal philosophers.] He also invented _satirical and humorous indexes_, not the least facetious parts of his volumes. King had made notes on more than 20,000 books and MSS., and his _Adversaria_, of which a portion has been preserved, is not inferior in curiosity to the literary journals of Gibbon, though it wants the investigating spirit of the modern philosopher.

SIR JOHN HILL,

WITH THE ROYAL SOCIETY, FIELDING, SMART, &c.

A Parallel between Orator HENLEY and Sir JOHN HILL--his love of the Science of Botany, with the fate of his "Vegetable System"--ridicules scientific Collectors; his "Dissertation on Royal Societies," and his "Review of the Works of the Royal Society"--compliments himself that he is NOT a Member--successful in his attacks on the Experimentalists, but loses his spirit in encountering the Wits--"The Inspector"--a paper war with FIELDING--a literary stratagem--battles with SMART and WOODWARD--HILL appeals to the Nation for the Office of Keeper of the Sloane Collection--closes his life by turning Empiric--Some Epigrams on HILL--his Miscellaneous Writings.

In the history of literature we discover some who have opened their career with n.o.ble designs, and with no deficient powers, yet unblest with stoic virtues, having missed, in their honourable labours, those rewards they had antic.i.p.ated, they have exhibited a sudden transition of character, and have left only a name proverbial for its disgrace.

Our own literature exhibits two extraordinary characters, indelibly marked by the same traditional odium. The wit and acuteness of Orator HENLEY, and the science and vivacity of the versatile Sir JOHN HILL, must separate them from those who plead the same motives for abjuring all moral restraint, without having ever furnished the world with a single instance that they were capable of forming n.o.bler views.

This _orator_ and this _knight_ would admit of a close parallel;[281]

both as modest in their youth as afterwards remarkable for their effrontery. Their youth witnessed the same devotedness to study, with the same inventive and enterprising genius. Hill projected and pursued a plan of botanical travels, to form a collection of rare plants: the patronage he received was too limited, and he suffered the misfortune of having antic.i.p.ated the national taste for the science of botany by half a century. Our young philosopher's valuable "Treatise on Gems,"

from Theophrastus, procured for him the warm friendship of the eminent members of the Royal Society. To this critical period of the lives of Henley and of Hill, their resemblance is striking; nor is it less from the moment the surprising revolution in their characters occurred.

Pressed by the wants of life, they lost its decencies. Henley attempted to poise himself against the University; Hill against the Royal Society. Rejected by these learned bodies, both these Cains of literature, amid their luxuriant ridicule of eminent men, still evince some claims to rank among them. The one prost.i.tuted his genius in his "Lectures;" the other, in his "Inspectors." Never two authors were more constantly pelted with epigrams, or buffeted in literary quarrels. They have met with the same fate; covered with the same odium. Yet Sir John Hill, this despised man, after all the fertile absurdities of his literary life, performed more for the improvement of the "Philosophical Transactions," and was the cause of diffusing a more general taste for the science of botany, than any other contemporary. His real ability extorts that regard which his misdirected ingenuity, instigated by vanity, and often by more worthless motives, had lost for him in the world.[282]

At the time that Hill was engaged in several large compilations for the booksellers, his employers were desirous that the honours of an F.R.S. should ornament his t.i.tle-page. This versatile genius, however, during these graver works, had suddenly emerged from his learned garret, and, in the shape of a fashionable lounger, rolled in his chariot from the Bedford to Ranelagh; was visible at routs; and sate at the theatre a tremendous arbiter of taste, raising about him tumults and divisions;[283] and in his "Inspectors," a periodical paper which he published in the _London Daily Advertiser_, retailed all the great matters relating to himself, and all the little matters he collected in his rounds relating to others. Among other personalities, he indulged his satirical fluency on the scientific collectors. The Antiquarian Society were twitted as medal-sc.r.a.pers and antediluvian knife-grinders; conchologists were turned into c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l merchants; and the naturalists were made to record pompous histories of stickle-hacks and c.o.c.kchafers. Cautioned by Martin Folkes, President of the Royal Society,[284] not to attempt his election, our enraged comic philosopher, who had preferred his jests to his friends, now discovered that he had lost three hundred at once. Hill could not obtain three signatures to his recommendation. Such was the real, but, as usual, not the ostensible, motive of his formidable attack on the Royal Society. He produced his "Dissertation on Royal Societies, in a letter from a Sclavonian n.o.bleman to his friend," 1751; a humorous prose satire, exhibiting a ludicrous description of a tumultuous meeting at the Royal Society, contrasted with the decorum observed in the French Academy; and moreover, he added a _conversazione_ in a coffee-house between some of the members.

Such was the declaration of war, in a first act of hostility; but the pitched-battle was fought in "A Review of the Works of the Royal Society, in eight parts," 1751. This literary satire is nothing less than a quarto volume, resembling, in its form and manner, the Philosophical Transactions themselves; printed as if for the convenience of members to enable them to bind the "Review" with the work reviewed. Voluminous pleasantry incurs the censure of that tedious trifling which it designs to expose. In this literary facetia, however, no inconsiderable knowledge is interspersed with the ridicule. Perhaps Hill might have recollected the successful attempts of Stubbe on the Royal Society, who contributed that curious knowledge which he pretended the Royal Society wanted; and with this knowledge he attempted to combine the humour of Dr. King.[285]

Hill's rejection from the Royal Society, to another man would have been a puddle to step over; but he tells a story, and cleanly pa.s.ses on, with impudent adroitness.[286]

Hill, however, though he used all the freedom of a satirist, by exposing many ridiculous papers, taught the Royal Society a more cautious selection. It could, however, obtain no forgiveness from the parties it offended; and while the respectable men whom Hill had the audacity to attack, Martin Folkes, the friend and successor of Newton, and Henry Baker, the naturalist, were above his censure,--his own reputation remained in the hands of his enemies. While Hill was gaining over the laughers on his side, that volatile populace soon discovered that the fittest object to be laughed at was our literary Proteus himself.

The most egregious egotism alone could have induced this versatile being, engaged in laborious works, to venture to give the town the daily paper of _The Inspector_, which he supported for about two years. It was a light scandalous chronicle all the week, with a seventh-day sermon. His utter contempt for the genius of his contemporaries, and the bold conceit of his own, often rendered the motley pages amusing. _The Inspector_ became, indeed, the instrument of his own martyrdom; but his impudence looked like magnanimity; for he endured, with undiminished spirit, the most biting satires, the most wounding epigrams, and more palpable castigations.[287] His vein of pleasantry ran more freely in his attacks on the Royal Society than in his other literary quarrels. When Hill had not to banter ridiculous experimentalists, but to encounter wits, his reluctant spirit soon bowed its head. Suddenly even his pertness loses its vivacity; he becomes drowsy with dulness, and, conscious of the dubiousness of his own cause, he skulks away terrified: he felt that the mask of quackery and impudence which he usually wore was to be pulled off by the hands now extended against him.

A humorous warfare of wit opened between Fielding, in his _Covent-Garden Journal_, and Hill, in his _Inspector_. _The Inspector_ had made the famous lion's head, at the Bedford, which the genius of Addison and Steele had once animated, the receptacle of his wit; and the wits a.s.serted, of this now _inutile lignum_, that it was reduced to a mere state of _blockheadism_. Fielding occasionally gave a facetious narrative of a paper war between the forces of Sir Alexander Drawcansir, the literary hero of the _Covent-Garden Journal_, and the army of Grub-street; it formed an occasional literary satire. Hill's lion, no longer Addison's or Steele's, is not described without humour.

Drawcansir's "troops are kept in awe by a strange mixed monster, not much unlike the famous chimera of old. For while some of our Reconnoiterers tell us that this monster has the appearance of a lion, others a.s.sure us that his ears are much longer than those of that generous beast."

Hill ventured to notice this attack on his "blockhead;" and, as was usual with him, had some secret history to season his defence with.

"The author of 'Amelia,' whom I have only once seen, told me, at that accidental meeting, he held the present set of writers in the utmost contempt; and that, in his character of Sir Alexander Drawcansir, he should treat them in the most unmerciful manner. He a.s.sured me he had always excepted me; and after honouring me with some encomiums, he proceeded to mention a conduct which would be, he said, useful to both; this was, the amusing our readers with a mock fight; giving blows that would not hurt, and sharing the advantage in silence."[288]

Thus, by reversing the fact, Hill contrived to turn aside the frequent stories against him by a momentary artifice, arresting or dividing public opinion. The truth was, more probably, as Fielding relates it, and the story, as we shall see, then becomes quite a different affair.

At all events, Hill incurred the censure of the traitor who violates a confidential intercourse.

And if he lies not, must at least betray.

POPE.

Fielding lost no time in reply. To have brought down the _Inspector_ from his fastnesses into the open field, was what our new General only wanted: a battle was sure to be a victory. Our critical Drawcansir has performed his part, with his indifferent puns, but his natural facetiousness.

"It being reported to the General that a _hill_ must be levelled, before the Bedford coffee-house could be taken, orders were given; but this was afterwards found to be a mistake; for this _hill_ was only a little paltry _dunghill_, and had long before been levelled with the dirt. The General was then informed of a report which had been spread by his _lowness_, the Prince of Billingsgate, in the Grub-street army, that his Excellency had proposed, by a _secret treaty_ with that Prince, to carry on the war only in appearance, and so to betray the common cause; upon which his Excellency said with a smile:--'If the betrayer of a private treaty could ever deserve the least credit, yet his Lowness here must proclaim himself either a liar or a fool. None can doubt but that he is the former, if he hath feigned this treaty; and I think few would scruple to call him the latter, if he had rejected it.' The General then declared the fact stood thus:--'His Lowness came to my tent on an affair of his own. I treated him, though a commander in the enemy's camp, with civility, and even kindness. I told him, with the utmost good-humour, I should attack his Lion; and that he might, if he pleased, in the same manner defend him; from which, said I, no great loss can happen on either side--'"

_The Inspector_ slunk away, and never returned to the challenge.

During his inspectorship, he invented a whimsical literary stratagem, which ended in his receiving a castigation more lasting than the honours performed on him at Ranelagh by the cane of a warm Hibernian.

Hill seems to have been desirous of abusing certain friends whom he had praised in the _Inspectors_; so volatile, like the loves of coquettes, are the literary friendships of the "Scribleri." As this could not be done with any propriety there, he published the first number of a new paper, ent.i.tled _The Impertinent_. Having thus relieved his private feelings, he announced the cessation of this new enterprise in his _Inspectors_, and congratulated the public on the ill reception it had given to the _Impertinent_, applauding them for their having shown by this that "their indignation was superior to their curiosity." With impudence all his own, he adds--"It will not be easy to say too much in favour of the candour of the town, which has despised a piece that cruelly and unjustly attacked Mr. Smart the poet." What innocent soul could have imagined that _The Impertinent_ and _The Inspector_ were the same individual? The style is a specimen of _persiflage_; the thin sparkling thought; the pert vivacity, that looks like wit without wit; the glittering bubble, that rises in emptiness;--even its author tells us, in _The Inspector_, it is "the most pert, the most pretending," &c.[289]

Smart, in return for our Ja.n.u.s-faced critic's treatment, balanced the amount of debtor and creditor with a pungent Dunciad _The Hilliad_.

Hill, who had heard of the rod in pickle, antic.i.p.ated the blow, to break its strength; and, according to his adopted system, introduced himself and Smart, with a story of his having recommended the bard to his bookseller, "who took him into salary on my approbation. I betrayed him into the profession, and having starved upon it, he has a right to abuse me." This story was formally denied by an advertis.e.m.e.nt from Newbery, the bookseller.

"The Hilliad" is a polished and pointed satire. The hero is thus exhibited on earth, and in heaven.

On earth, "a tawny sibyl," with "an old striped curtain--"

And tatter'd tapestry o'er her shoulders hung-- Her loins with patchwork cincture were begirt, That more than spoke diversity of dirt.

Twain were her teeth, and single was her eye-- Cold palsy shook her head----

with "moon-struck madness," awards him all the wealth and fame she could afford him for sixpence; and closes her o.r.g.a.s.m with the sage admonition--