Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 50

[331] Alluding to a ridiculous rumour, that the King was to receive foreign troops by a Danish fleet.

[332] Col. Urrey, _alias_ Hurrey, deserted the Parliament, and went over to the King; afterwards deserted the King, and discovered to the Parliament all he knew of the King's forces.--_See Clarendon._

[333] This Sir William Brereton, or, as Clarendon writes the name, Bruerton, was the famous Cheshire knight, whom Cleveland characterizes as one of those heroes whose courage lies in their teeth. "Was Brereton," says the loyal satirist, "to fight with his teeth, as he in all other things resembles the beast, he would have odds of any man at this weapon. He's a terrible slaughterman at a Thanksgiving dinner. Had he been cannibal enough to have eaten those he vanquished, his gut would have made him valiant." And in "Loyal Songs" his valiant appet.i.te is noticed:

"But, oh! take heed lest he do eat The Rump all at one dinner!"

And Aulicus, we see, accuses him of concealing his bravery in a hayrick. It is always curious and useful to confer the writers of intemperate times one with another. Lord Clarendon, whose great mind was incapable of descending to scurrility, gives a very different character to this pot-valiant and hayrick runaway; for he says, "It cannot be denied but Sir William Brereton, and the other gentlemen of that party, albeit their educations and course of life had been very different from their present engagements, and for the most part very unpromising in matters of war, and therefore were too much contemned enemies, executed their commands with notable sobriety and indefatigable industry (virtues not so well practised in the King's quarters), insomuch as the best soldiers who encountered with them had no cause to despise them."--_Clarendon_, vol. ii. p. 147.

[334] "The Scotch Dove" seems never to have recovered from this metamorphosis, but ever after, among the newsmen, was known to be only a Widgeon. His character is not very high in "The Great a.s.sizes."

"The innocent _Scotch Dove_ did then advance, Full sober in his wit and countenance: And, though his book contain'd not mickle scence, Yet his endictment shew'd no great offence.

Great wits to perils great, themselves expose Oft-times; but the _Scotch Dove_ was none of those.

In many words he little matter drest, And did laconick brevity detest.

But while his readers did expect some Newes, They found a Sermon--"

The Scotch Dove desires to meet the cla.s.sical Aulicus in the duel of the pen:--

------------"to turn me loose, A _Scottish Dove_ against a _Roman Goose_."

"The Scotch Dove" is condemned "to cross the seas, or to repa.s.se the Tweede." They all envy him his "easy mulet," but he wofully exclaims at the hard sentence,

"For if they knew that _home_ as well as he, They'd rather die than there imprison'd be!"

[335] This stroke alludes to a rumour of the times, noticed also by Clarendon, that Pym died of the _morbus pediculosus_.

[336] "Peard, a bold lawyer of little note."--_Clarendon._

[337] These divines were as ready with the sword as the pen; thus, we are told in "The Impartial Scout" for July, 1650--"The ministers are now as active in the military discipline as formerly they were in the gospel profession, Parson Ennis, Parson Brown, and about thirty other ministers having received commissions to be majors and captains, who now hold forth the Bible in one hand, and the sword in the other, telling the soldiery that they need not fear what man can do against them--that G.o.d is on their side--and that He hath prepared an engine in heaven to break and blast the designs of all covenant-breakers."--ED.

POLITICAL CRITICISM

ON LITERARY COMPOSITIONS.

ANTHONY WOOD and LOCKE--MILTON and SPRAT--BURNET and his History--PRIOR and ADDISON--SWIFT and STEELE--WAGSTAFFE and STEELE--STEELE and ADDISON--HOOKE and MIDDLETON--GILBERT WAKEFIELD--MARVEL and MILTON--CLARENDON and MAY.

VOLTAIRE, in his letters on our nation, has. .h.i.t off a marked feature in our national physiognomy. "So violent did I find parties in London, that I was a.s.sured by several that the Duke of MARLBOROUGH was a coward, and Mr. POPE a fool."

A foreigner indeed could hardly expect that in collecting the characters of English authors by English authors (a labour which has long afforded me pleasure often interrupted by indignation)--in a word, that a cla.s.s of literary history should turn out a collection of personal quarrels. Would not this modern Baillet, in his new _Jugemens des Scavans_, so ingeniously inquisitive but so infinitely confused, require to be initiated into the mysteries of that spirit of party peculiar to our free country!

All that boiling rancour which sputters against the thoughts, the style, the taste, the moral character of an author, is often nothing more than practising what, to give it a name, we may call _Political Criticism in Literature_; where an author's literary character is attacked solely from the accidental circ.u.mstance of his differing in opinion from his critics on subjects unconnected with the topics he treats of.

Could Anthony Wood, had he not been influenced by this political criticism, have sent down LOCKE to us as "a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented, prating and troublesome?"[338] But Locke was the antagonist of FILMER, that advocate of arbitrary power; and Locke is described "as bred under a fanatical tutor," and when in Holland, as one of those who under the Earl of Shaftesbury "stuck close to him when discarded, and carried on the _trade of faction_ beyond and within the seas several years after." In the great original genius, born, like BACON and NEWTON, to create a new era in the history of the human mind, this political literary critic, who was not always deficient in his perceptions of genius, could only discover "a trader in faction," though in his honesty he acknowledges him to be "a noted writer."

A more ill.u.s.trious instance of party-spirit operating against works of genius is presented to us in the awful character of MILTON. From earliest youth to latest age endowed with all the characteristics of genius; fervent with all the inspirations of study; in all changes still the same great literary character as Velleius Paterculus writes of one of his heroes--"Aliquando fortuna, semper animo maximus:" while in his own day, foreigners, who usually antic.i.p.ate posterity, were inquiring after Milton, it is known how utterly disregarded he lived at home. The divine author of the "Paradise Lost" was always connected with the man for whom a reward was offered in the _London Gazette_.

But in their triumph, the lovers of monarchy missed their greater glory, in not separating for ever the republican Secretary of State from the rival of Homer.

That the genius of Milton pined away in solitude, and that all the consolations of fame were denied him during his life, from this political criticism on his works, is generally known; but not perhaps that this spirit propagated itself far beyond the poet's tomb. I give a remarkable instance. Bishop Sprat, who surely was capable of feeling the poetry of Milton, yet from political antipathy retained such an abhorrence of his _name_, that when the writer of the Latin Inscription on the poet JOHN PHILIPS, in describing his versification, applied to it the term _Miltono_, Sprat ordered it to be erased, as polluting a monument raised in a church.[339] A mere critical opinion on versification was thus sacrificed to political feeling:--a stream indeed which in its course has hardly yet worked itself clear. It could only have been the strong political feeling of Warton which could have induced him to censure the prose of Milton with such asperity, while he closed his critical eyes on its resplendent pa.s.sages, which certainly he wanted not the taste to feel,--for he caught in his own pages, occasionally, some of the reflected warmth.

This feeling took full possession of the mind of Johnson, who, with all the rage of political criticism on subjects of literature, has condemned the finest works of Milton, and in one of his terrible paroxysms has demonstrated that the Samson Agonistes is "a tragedy which ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded." Had not Johnson's religious feelings fortunately interposed between Milton and his "Paradise," we should have wanted the present n.o.ble effusion of his criticism; any other Epic by Milton had probably sunk beneath his vigorous sophistry, and his tasteless sarcasm. Lauder's attack on Milton was hardily projected, on a prospect of encouragement, from this political criticism on the literary character of Milton; and he succeeded as long as he could preserve the decency of the delusion.

The Spirit of Party has touched with its plague-spot the character of Burnet; it has mildewed the page of a powerful mind, and tainted by its suspicions, its rumours, and its censures, his probity as a man.

Can we forbear listening to all the vociferations which faction has thrown out? Do we not fear to trust ourselves amid the multiplicity of his facts? And when we are familiarised with the variety of his historical portraits, are we not startled when it is suggested that "they are tinged with his own pa.s.sions and his own weaknesses?" Burnet has indeed made "his humble appeal to the great G.o.d of Truth" that he has given it as fully as he could find it; and he has expressed his abhorrence of "a lie in history," so much greater a sin than a lie in common discourse, from its lasting and universal nature. Yet these hallowing protestations have not saved him! A cloud of witnesses, from different motives, have risen up to attaint his veracity and his candour; while all the Tory wits have ridiculed his style, impatiently inaccurate, and uncouthly negligent, and would sink his vigour and ardour, while they expose the meanness and poverty of his genius. Thus the literary and the moral character of no ordinary author have fallen a victim to party-feeling.[340]

But this victim to political criticism on literature was himself criminal, and has wreaked his own party feelings on the _Papist_ Dryden, and the _Tory_ Prior; Dryden he calls, in the most unguarded language, "a monster of immodesty and impurity of all sorts." There had been a literary quarrel between Dryden and Burnet respecting a translation of Varillas' "History of Heresies;" Burnet had ruined the credit of the papistical author while Dryden was busied on the translation; and as Burnet says, "he has wreaked his malice on me for spoiling his three months' labour." In return, he kindly informs Dryden, alluding to his poem of "The Hind and the Panther," "that he is the author of the _worst_ poem the age has produced;" and that as for "his morals, it is scarce possible to grow a worse man than he was"--a personal style not to be permitted in any controversy, but to bring this pa.s.sion on the hallowed ground of history, was not "casting away his shoe" in the presence of the divinity of truth.[341] It could only have been the spirit of party which induced Burnet, in his History, to mention with contempt and pretended ignorance so fine a genius as "_one Prior_, who had been Jersey's secretary." It was the same party-feeling in the Tory Prior, in his elegant "Alma," where he has interwoven so graceful a wreath for Pope, that could sneer at the fine soliloquy of the Roman Cato of the Whig Addison:

I hope you would not have me die _Like simple Cato in the play_, For anything that he can say.

It was the same spirit which would not allow that Garth was the author of his celebrated poem--

Garth did not write his own Dispensary,

as Pope ironically alludes to the story of the times:--a contemporary wit has recorded this literary injury, by repeating it.[342] And Swift, who once exclaimed to Pope, "The deuce take party!" was himself the greatest sinner of them all. He, once the familiar friend of Steele till party divided them, not only emptied his shaft of quivers against his literary character, but raised the horrid yell of the war-whoop in his inhuman exultation over the unhappy close of the desultory life of a man of genius. Bitterly has he written--

From perils of a hundred jails, Withdrew to starve, and die in Wales.

When Steele published "The Crisis," Swift attacked the author in so exquisite a piece of grave irony, that I am tempted to transcribe his inimitable parallels of a triumvirate composed of the writer of the _Flying Post_, Dunton the literary projector, and poor Steele: the one, the Iscariot of hackney scribes; the other a crack-brained scribbling bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed. The following is a specimen of that powerful irony in which Swift excelled all other writers; that fine Cervantic humour, that provoking coolness which Swift preserves while he is panegyrising the objects of his utter contempt.

"Among the present writers on the Whig side, I can recollect but _three_ of any great distinction, which are the _Flying Post_, Mr.

Dunton, and the Author of 'The Crisis.' The first of these seems to have been much sunk in reputation since the sudden retreat of the only true, genuine, original author, Mr. Ridpath, who is celebrated by the _Dutch Gazetteer_ as one of _the best pens in England_. Mr. Dunton hath been longer and more conversant in books than any of the three, as well as more voluminous in his productions: however, having employed his studies in so great a variety of other subjects, he hath, I think, but lately turned his genius to politics. His famous tract ent.i.tled 'Neck or Nothing' must be allowed to be the shrewdest piece, and written with the most spirit of any which hath appeared from that side since the change of the ministry. It is indeed a most cutting satire upon the Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke; and I wonder none of our friends ever undertook to answer it. I confess I was at first of the same opinion with several good judges, who from the style and manner suppose it to have issued from the sharp pen of the Earl of Nottingham; and I am still apt to think it might receive his lordship's last hand. The third and princ.i.p.al of this triumvirate is the author of 'The Crisis,' who, although he must yield to the _Flying Post_ in knowledge of the world and skill in politics, and to Mr.

Dunton in keenness of satire and variety of reading, hath yet other qualities enough to denominate him a writer of a superior cla.s.s to either, provided he would a little regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the grammatical part, and get some information on the subject he intends to handle."[343]

So far this fine ironical satire may be inspected as a model; the polished weapon he strikes with so gracefully, is allowed by all the laws of war; but the political criticism on the literary character, the party feeling which degrades a man of genius, is the drop of poison on its point.

Steele had declared in the "Crisis" that he had always maintained an inviolable respect for the clergy. Swift (who perhaps was aimed at in this instance, and whose character, since the publication of "The Tale of a Tub," lay under a suspicion of an opposite tendency) turns on Steele with all the vigour of his wit, and all the causticity of retort:--

"By this he would insinuate that those papers among the _Tatlers_ and _Spectators_, where the whole order is abused, were not his own. I will appeal to all who know the flatness of his style, and the barrenness of his invention, whether he doth not grossly prevaricate?

_Was he ever able to walk without his leading-strings, or swim without bladders, without being discovered by his hobbling or his sinking?_"

Such was the attack of Swift, which was pursued in the _Examiner_, and afterwards taken up by another writer. This is one of the evils resulting from the wantonness of genius: it gives a contagious example to the minor race; its touch opens a new vein of invention, which the poorer wits soon break into; the loose sketch of a feature or two from its rapid hand is sufficient to become a minute portrait, where not a hair is spared by the caricaturist. This happened to Steele, whose literary was to be sacrificed to his political character; and this superstructure was confessedly raised on the malicious hints we have been noticing. That the _Examiner_ was the seed-plot of "The Character of Richard St--le, Esq.," appears by its opening--"It will be no injury, I am persuaded, to the _Examiner_ to _borrow him_ a little (Steele), upon promise of returning him safe, as children do their playthings, when their mirth is over, and, they have done with them."

The author of the "Character of Richard St--le, Esq.," was Dr.

Wagstaffe, one of those careless wits[344] who lived to repent a crazy life of wit, fancy, and hope, and an easy, indolent one, whose genial hours force up friends like hot-house plants, that bloom and flower in the spot where they are raised, but will not endure the change of place and season--this wit caught the tone of Swift, and because, as his editor tells us, "he had some friends in the ministry, and thought he could not take a better way to oblige them than by showing his dislike to a gentleman who had so much endeavoured to oppose them," he sat down to write a libel with all the best humour imaginable; for, adds this editor, "he was so far from having any personal pique or enmity against Mr. Steele, that at the time of his writing he did not so much as know him, even by sight." This principle of "having some friends in the ministry," and not "any knowledge" of the character to be attacked, has proved a great source of invention to our political adventurers;--thus Dr. Wagstaffe was fully enabled to send down to us a character where the moral and literary qualities of a genius, to whom this country owes so much as the father of periodical papers, are immolated to his political purpose. This severe character pa.s.sed through several editions. However the careless Steele might be willing to place the elaborate libel to the account of party writings, if he did not feel disturbed at reproaches and accusations, which are confidently urged, and at critical animadversions, to which the negligence of his style sometimes laid him too open, his insensibility would have betrayed a depravity in his morals and taste which never entered into his character.[345]

Steele was doomed even to lose the friendship of Addison amid political discords; but on that occasion Steele showed that his taste for literature could not be injured by political animosity. It was at the close of Addison's life, and on occasion of the Peerage Bill, Steele published "The Plebeian," a cry against enlarging the aristocracy. Addison replied with "The Old Whig," Steele rejoined without alluding to the person of his opponent. But "The Old Whig"

could not restrain his political feelings, and contemptuously described "little d.i.c.ky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets."

Steele replied with his usual warmth; but indignant at the charge of "va.s.salage," he says, "I will end this paper, by firing every free breast with that n.o.ble exhortation of the tragedian--

Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights, The generous plan of power deliver'd down From age to age, &c."

Thus delicately he detects the anonymous author, and thus energetically commends, while he reproves him!

Hooke (a Catholic), after he had written his "Roman History,"

published "Observations on Vertot, Middleton, &c., on the Roman Senate," in which he particularly treated Dr. Middleton with a disrespect for which the subject gave no occasion: this was attributed to the Doctor's _offensive_ letter from Rome. Spelman, in replying to this concealed motive of the Catholic, reprehends him with equal humour and bitterness for his desire of _roasting a Protestant parson_.

Our taste, rather than our pa.s.sions, is here concerned; but the moral sense still more so. The malice of faction has long produced this literary calamity; yet great minds have not always degraded themselves; not always resisted the impulse of their finer feelings, by hardening them into insensibility, or goading them in the fury of a misplaced revenge. How delightful it is to observe Marvell, the Presbyterian and Republican wit, with that generous temper that instantly discovers the alliance of genius, warmly applauding the great work of Butler, which covered his own party with odium and ridicule. "He is one of an excellent wit," says Marvell, "and whoever dislikes the choice of his subject, cannot but commend the performance."[346]