Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 58

Horace is called on to swear, after Asinius had sworn to give up his "Ningle."

"Now, master Horace, you must be a more horrible swearer; for your oath must be, like your wits, of many colours; and like a broker's book, of many parcels."

Horace offers to swear till his hairs stand up on end, to be rid of this sting. "Oh, this sting!" alluding to the nettles. "'Tis not your sting of conscience, is it?" asks one. In the inventory of his oaths, there is poignant satire, with strong humour; and it probably exhibits some foibles in the literary habits of our bard.

He swears "Not to hang himself, even if he thought any man could write plays as well as himself; not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests stolen from the _Temple's Revels_; not to sit in a gallery, when your comedies have entered their actions, and there make vile and bad faces at every line, to make men have an eye to you, and to make players afraid; not to venture on the stage, when your play is ended, and exchange courtesies and compliments with gallants to make all the house rise and cry--'That's Horace that's he that pens and purges humours.' When you bid all your friends to the marriage of a poor couple, that is to say, your Wits and Necessities--_alias_, a poet's Whitsun-ale--you shall swear that, within three days after, you shall not abroad, in bookbinders' shops, brag that your viceroys, or tributary-kings, have done homage to you, or paid quarterage.

Moreover, when a knight gives you his pa.s.sport to travel in and out to his company, and gives you money for G.o.d's sake--you will swear not to make scald and wry-mouthed jests upon his knighthood. When your plays are misliked at court, you shall not cry Mew! like a puss-cat, and say, you are glad you write out of the courtier's element; and in brief, when you sup in taverns, amongst your betters, you shall swear not to dip your manners in too much sauce; nor, at table, to fling epigrams or play-speeches about you."

The king observes, that

--------------------He whose pen Draws both corrupt and clear blood from all men Careless what vein he p.r.i.c.ks; let him not rave When his own sides are struck; blows, blows do crave.

Such were the bitter apples which Jonson, still in his youth, plucked from the tree of his broad satire, that branched over all ranks in society. That even his intrepidity and hardiness felt the incessant attacks he had raised about him, appears from the close of the Apologetical Epilogueto "The Poetaster;" where, though he replies with all the consciousness of genius, and all its haughtiness, he closes with a determination to give over the composition of comedies! This, however, like all the vows of a poet, was soon broken; and his masterpieces were subsequently produced.

_Friend._ Will you not answer then the libels?

_Author._ No.

_Friend._ Nor the Untrussers.

_Author._ Neither.

_Friend._ You are undone, then.

_Author._ With whom?

_Friend._ The world.

_Author._ The bawd!

_Friend._ It will be taken to be stupidity or tameness in you.

_Author._ But they that have incensed me, can in soul Acquit me of that guilt. They know I dare To spurn or baffle them; or squirt their eyes With ink or urine: or I could do worse, Arm'd with Archilochus' fury, write iambicks, Would make the desperate lashers hang themselves.--

His Friend tells him that he is accused that "all his writing is mere railing;" which Jonson n.o.bly compares to "the salt in the old comedy;"

that they say, that he is slow, and "scarce brings forth a play a year."

_Author._ ------------'Tis true, I would they could not say that I did that.

He is angry that their

------------Base and beggarly conceits Should carry it, by the mult.i.tude of voices, Against the most abstracted work, opposed To the stufft nostrils of the drunken rout.--

And then exclaims with admirable enthusiasm--

O this would make a learn'd and liberal soul To rive his stained quill up to the back, And d.a.m.n his long-watch'd labours to the fire; Things, that were born, when none but the still night, And the dumb candle, saw his pinching throes.

And again, alluding to these mimics--

This 'tis that strikes me silent, seals my lips, And apts me rather to sleep out my time, Than I would waste it in contemned strifes With these vile Ibides, these unclean birds, That make their mouths their clysters, and still purge From their hot entrails.[395] But I leave the monsters To their own fate. And since the Comic Muse Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try If Tragedy have a more kind aspect.

Leave me! There's something come into my thought That must and shall be sung, high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull a.s.s's hoof.

_Friend._ I reverence these raptures, and obey them.

Such was the n.o.ble strain in which Jonson replied to his detractors in the town and to his rivals about him. Yet this poem, composed with all the dignity and force of the bard, was not suffered to be repeated. It was stopped by authority. But Jonson, in preserving it in his works, sends it "TO POSTERITY, that it may make a difference between their manners that provoked me then, and mine that neglected them ever."

FOOTNOTES:

[396] This work was not given to the public till 1724, a small quarto, with a fine portrait of Brooke. More than a century had elapsed since its forcible suppression. Anstis printed it from the fair MS. which Brooke had left behind him. The author's paternal affection seemed fondly to imagine its child might be worthy of posterity, though calumniated by its contemporaries.

[397] "Verum enimver de his et hoc genere hominum ne verb.u.m amplius addam, tabellam tamen summi illius artificis Apellis, c.u.m colorum vivacitate depingere non possim, verbis leviter adumbrabo et proponam, ut Antiphilus noster, suique similes, et qui calumniis credunt, hanc, et in hac seipsos semel simulque intueantur.

"Ad dextram sedet quidam, quia credulus, auribus praelongis insignis, quales fere illae Midae feruntur. Manum porrigit procul accedenti Calumniae. Circ.u.mstant eum mulierculae duae, Ignorantia ac Suspicio. Adit aliunde propius Calumnia eximie compta, vultu ipso et gestu corporis efferens rabiem, et iram aestuanti conceptam pectore prae se ferens: sinistra facem tenens flammantem, dextra sec.u.m adolescentem capillis arreptum, ma.n.u.s ad superos tendentem, obtestantemque immortalium deorum fidem, trahit. Anteit vir pallidus, in specium impurus, acie oculorum minime hebeti, caeterum plane iis similis, qui gravi aliquo morbo contabuerunt. Hic livor est, ut facile conjicias. Quin, et mulierculae aliquot Insidiae et Fallaciae ut comites Calumniam comitantur. Harum est munus, dominam hortari, instruere, comere, et subornare. A tergo, habitu lugubri, pullato, laceroque Poenitentia subsequitur, quae capite in tergum deflexo, c.u.m lachrymis, ac pudore procul venientem Veritatem agnoscit, et excipit."

[398] A _Fletcher_ is a maker of bows and arrows.--ASH.

[399] Brooke died at the old mansion opposite the Roman town of Reculver in Kent. The house is still known as Brooke-farm; and the original gateway of decorative brickwork still exists. He was buried in Reculver Church, now destroyed, where a mural monument was erected to his memory, having a rhyming inscription, which told the reader:--

"Fifteenth October he was last alive, One thousand six hundred and twenty-five, Seaventy-three years bore he fortune's harms, And forty-five an officer of armes."

Brooke was originally a painter-stainer. His enmity to Camden appears to have originated in the appointment of the latter to the office of Clarencieux on the death of Richard Lee; he believing himself to be qualified for the place by greater knowledge, and by his long connexion with the College of Arms.

His mode of righting himself lacked judgment, and he was twice suspended from his office, and was even attempted to be expelled therefrom.--ED.

[400] In Anstis's edition of "A Second Discoverie of Errors in the Much-commended 'Britannia,' &c.," 1724, the reader will find all the pa.s.sages in the "Britannia" of the edition of 1594 to which Brooke made exceptions, placed column-wise with the following edition of it in 1600. It is, as Anstis observes, a debt to truth, without making any reflections.

[401] There is a sensible observation in the old "Biographia Britannica" on Brooke. "From the splenetic attack originally made by Rafe Brooke upon the 'Britannia' arose very _great advantages to the public_, by the shifting and bringing to light as good, perhaps a better and more authentic account of our n.o.bility, than had been given at that time of those in any other country of Europe."--p. 1135.

CAMDEN AND BROOKE.

Literary, like political history, is interested in the cause of an obscure individual, when deprived of his just rights--character of CAMDEN--BROOKE'S "Discovery of Errors" in the "Britannia"--his work disturbed in the printing--afterwards enlarged, but never suffered to be published--whether BROOKE'S motive was personal rancour!--the persecuted author becomes vindictive--his keen reply to CAMDEN--CAMDEN'S beautiful picture of calumny--BROOKE furnishes a humorous companion-piece--CAMDEN'S want of magnanimity and justice--when great authors are allowed to suppress the works of their adversary, the public receives the injury and the insult.

In the literary as well as the political commonwealth, the cause of an obscure individual violently deprived of his just rights is a common one. We protest against the power of genius itself, when it strangles rather than wrestles with its adversary, or combats in mail against a naked man. The general interests of literature are involved by the illegitimate suppression of a work, of which the purpose is to correct another, whatever may be the invective which accompanies the correction: nor are we always to a.s.sign to malignant motives even this spirit of invective, which, though it betrays a contracted genius, may also show the earnestness of an honest one.

The quarrel between CAMDEN, the great author of the "Britannia," and BROOKE, the "York Herald," may ill.u.s.trate these principles. It has. .h.i.therto been told to the shame of the inferior genius; but the history of Brooke was imperfectly known to his contemporaries. Crushed by oppression, his tale was marred in the telling. A century sometimes pa.s.ses away before the world can discover the truth even of a private history.

Brooke is aspersed as a man of the meanest talents, insensible to the genius of Camden, rankling with envy at his fame, and correcting the "Britannia" out of mere spite.

When the history of Brooke is known, and his labours fairly estimated, we shall blame him much less than he has been blamed; and censure Camden, who has escaped all censure, and whose conduct, in the present instance, was dest.i.tute of magnanimity and justice.

The character of the author of "Britannia" is great, and this error of his feelings, now first laid to his charge, may be attributed as much to the weakness of the age as to his own extreme timidity, and perhaps to a little pride. Conscious as was Camden of enlarged views, we can easily pardon him for the contempt he felt, when he compared them with the subordinate ones of his cynical adversary.

Camden possessed one of those strongly directed minds which early in life plan some vast labour, while their imagination and their industry feed on it for many successive years; and they shed the flower and sweetness of their lives in the preparation of a work which at its maturity excites the grat.i.tude of their nation. His pa.s.sion for our national antiquities discovered itself even in his school-days, grew up with him at the University; and, when afterwards engaged in his public duties as master at Westminster school, he there composed his "Britannia," "at spare hours, and on festival days." To the perpetual care of his work, he voluntarily sacrificed all other views in life, and even drew himself away from domestic pleasures; for he refused marriage and preferments, which might interrupt his beloved studies!

The work at length produced, received all the admiration due to so great an enterprise; and even foreigners, as the work was composed in the universal language of learning, could sympathise with Britons, when they contemplated the stupendous labour. Camden was honoured by the t.i.tles (for the very names of ill.u.s.trious genius become such), of the Varro, the Strabo, and the Pausanias of Britain.