Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 6

Even in his old age--for our chain must not drop a link--his native brutality never forsook him. Thomson and Pope charitably supported the veteran Zoilus at a benefit play; and Savage, who had nothing but a verse to give, returned them very poetical thanks in the name of Dennis. He was then blind and old, but his critical ferocity had no old age; his surliness overcame every grateful sense, and he swore as usual, "They could be no one's but that _fool_ Savage's"--an evidence of his sagacity and brutality![40] This was, perhaps, the last peevish snuff shaken from the dismal link of criticism; for, a few days after, was the redoubted Dennis numbered with the mighty dead.

He carried the same fierceness into his style, and commits the same ludicrous extravagances in literary composition as in his manners. Was Pope really sore at the Zoilian style? He has himself spared me the trouble of exhibiting Dennis's gross personalities, by having collected them at the close of the Dunciad--specimens which show how low false wit and malignity can get to by hard pains. I will throw into the note a curious ill.u.s.tration of the anti-poetical notions of a mechanical critic, who has no wing to dip into the hues of the imagination.[41]

In life and in literature we meet with men who seem endowed with an obliquity of understanding, yet active and busy spirits; but, as activity is only valuable in proportion to the capacity that puts all in motion, so, when ill directed, the intellect, warped by nature, only becomes more crooked and fantastical. A kind of frantic enthusiasm breaks forth in their actions and their language, and often they seem ferocious when they are only foolish. We may thus account for the manners and style of Dennis, pushed almost to the verge of insanity, and acting on him very much like insanity itself--a circ.u.mstance which the quick vengeance of wit seized on, in the humorous "Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the Frenzy of Mr.

John Dennis, an officer of the Custom-house."[42]

It is curious to observe that Dennis, in the definition of genius, describes himself; he says--"Genius is caused by a _furious joy_ and _pride of soul_ on the conception of an extraordinary hint. Many men have their _hints_ without their motions of _fury and pride of soul_, because they want fire enough to agitate their spirits; and these we call cold writers. Others, who have a great deal of fire, but have not excellent organs, feel the fore-mentioned _motions_, without the extraordinary _hints_; and these we call fustian writers." His _motions_ and his _hints_, as he describes them, in regard to cold or fustian writers, seem to include the extreme points of his own genius.

Another feature strongly marks the race of the Dennises. With a half-consciousness of deficient genius, they usually idolize some chimera, by adopting some extravagant principle; and they consider themselves as original when they are only absurd.

Dennis had ever some misshapen idol of the mind, which he was perpetually caressing with the zeal of perverted judgment or monstrous taste. Once his frenzy ran against the Italian Opera; and in his "Essay on Public Spirit," he ascribes its decline to its unmanly warblings. I have seen a long letter by Dennis to the Earl of Oxford, written to congratulate his lordship on his accession to power, and the high hopes of the nation; but the greater part of the letter runs on the Italian Opera, while Dennis instructs the Minister that the national prosperity can never be effected while this general corruption of the three kingdoms lies open!

Dennis has more than once recorded two material circ.u.mstances in the life of a true critic; these are his _ill-nature_ and the _public neglect_.

"I make no doubt," says he, "that upon the perusal of the critical part of these letters, the _old accusation_ will be brought against me, and there will be a _fresh outcry_ among thoughtless people that I am _an ill-natured man_."

He entertained exalted opinions of his own powers, and he deeply felt their public neglect.

"While others," he says in his tracts, "have been _too much encouraged_, I have been _too much neglected_"--his favourite system, that religion gives princ.i.p.ally to great poetry its spirit and enthusiasm, was an important point, which, he says, "has been left to be treated by _a person who has the honour of being your lordship's countryman_--your lordship knows that persons _so much and so long oppressed as I have been_ have been always allowed to _say things concerning themselves_ which in others might be offensive."

His vanity, we see, was equal to his vexation, and as he grew old he became more enraged; and, writing too often without Aristotle or Locke by his side, he gave the town pure Dennis, and almost ceased to be read. "The oppression" of which he complains might not be less imaginary than his alarm, while a treaty was pending with France, that he should be delivered up to the Grand Monarque for having written a tragedy, which no one could read, against his majesty.

It is melancholy, but it is useful, to record the mortifications of such authors. Dennis had, no doubt, laboured with zeal which could never meet a reward; and, perhaps, amid his critical labours, he turned often with an aching heart from their barren contemplation to that of the tranquillity he might have derived from an humbler avocation.

It was not literature, then, that made the mind coa.r.s.e, brutalising the habits and inflaming the style of Dennis. He had thrown himself among the walks of genius, and aspired to fix himself on a throne to which Nature had refused him a legitimate claim. What a lasting source of vexation and rage, even for a long-lived patriarch of criticism!

Accustomed to suspend the scourge over the heads of the first authors of the age, he could not sit at a table or enter a coffee-house without exerting the despotism of a literary dictator. How could the mind that had devoted itself to the contemplation of masterpieces, only to reward its industry by detailing to the public their human frailties, experience one hour of amenity, one idea of grace, one generous impulse of sensibility?

But the poor critic himself at length fell, really more the victim of his criticisms than the genius he had insulted. Having incurred the public neglect, the blind and helpless Cacus in his den sunk fast into contempt, dragged on a life of misery, and in his last days, scarcely vomiting his fire and smoke, became the most pitiable creature, receiving the alms he craved from triumphant genius.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] It is curious to observe that Kippis, who cla.s.sifies with the pomp of enumeration his heap of pamphlets, imagines that, as Blackmore's Epic is consigned to oblivion, so likewise must be the criticism, which, however, he confesses he could never meet with. An odd fate attends Dennis's works: his criticism on a bad work ought to survive it, as good works have survived his criticisms.

[38] See in Dennis's "Original Letters" one to Tonson, ent.i.tled, "On the conspiracy against the reputation of Mr. Dryden." It was in favour of _folly_ against _wisdom_, _weakness_ against _power_, &c.; _Pope_ against _Dryden_. He closes with a well-turned period. "Wherever genius runs through a work, I forgive its faults; and wherever that is wanting, no beauties can touch me. Being struck by Mr. Dryden's genius, I have no eyes for his errors; and I have no eyes for his enemies'

beauties, because I am not struck by their genius."

[39] In the narrative of his frenzy (quoted p. 56), his _personnel_ is thus given. "His aspect was furious, his eyes were rather fiery than lively, which he rolled about in an uncommon manner. He often opened his mouth as if he would have uttered some matter of importance, but the sound seemed lost inwardly.

His beard was grown, which they told me he would not suffer to be shaved, believing the modern dramatic poets had corrupted all the barbers of the town to take the first opportunity of cutting his throat. His eyebrows were grey, long, and grown together, which he knit with indignation when anything was spoken, insomuch that he seemed not to have smoothed his forehead for many years."--ED.

[40] There is an epigram on Dennis by Savage, which Johnson has preserved in his Life; and I feel it to be a very correct likeness, although Johnson censures Savage for writing an epigram against Dennis, while he was living in great familiarity with the critic. Perhaps that was the happiest moment to write the epigram. The anecdote in the text doubtless prompted "the fool" to take this fair revenge and just chastis.e.m.e.nt. Savage has brought out the features strongly, in these touches--

"Say what revenge on Dennis can be had, Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad.

On one so poor you cannot take the law, On one so old your sword you scorn to draw.

Uncaged then, let the harmless monster rage, Secure in dulness, madness, want, and age!"

[41] Dennis points his heavy cannon of criticism and thus bombards that aerial edifice, the "Rape of the Lock." He is inquiring into the nature of _poetical machinery_, which, he oracularly p.r.o.nounces, should be religious, or allegorical, or political; a.s.serting the "Lutrin" of Boileau to be a trifle only in appearance, covering the deep political design of reforming the Popish Church!--With the yard of criticism he takes measure of the slender graces and tiny elegance of Pope's aerial machines, as "less considerable than the _human persons_, which is _without precedent_.

Nothing can be so contemptible as the _persons_ or so foolish as the understandings of these _hobgoblins_.

Ariel's speech is one continued impertinence. After he has talked to them of black omens and dire disasters that threaten his heroine, those bugbears dwindle to the breaking a piece of china, to staining a petticoat, the losing a fan, or a bottle of sal volatile--and what makes Ariel's speech more ridiculous is the _place_ where it is spoken, on the sails and cordage of Belinda's barge." And then he compares the Sylphs to the Discord of Homer, whose feet are upon the earth, and head in the skies. "They are, indeed, beings so diminutive that they bear the same proportion to the rest of the intellectual that _Eels in vinegar_ do to the rest of the material world; the latter are only to be seen through microscopes, and the former only through the false optics of a Rosicrucian understanding." And finally, he decides that "these diminutive beings are only _Sawney_ (that is, Alexander Pope), taking the change; for it is he, a little lump of flesh, that talks, instead of a little spirit." Dennis's profound gravity contributes an additional feature of the burlesque to these heroi-comic poems themselves, only that Dennis cannot be playful, and will not be good-humoured.

On the same tasteless principle he decides on the improbability of that incident in the "Conscious Lovers" of Steele, raised by Bevil, who, having received great obligations from his father, has promised not to marry without his consent. On this Dennis, who rarely in his critical progress will stir a foot without authority, quotes four formidable pages from Locke's "Essay on Government," to prove that, at the age of discretion, a man is free to dispose of his own actions! One would imagine that Dennis was arguing like a special pleader, rather than developing the involved action of an affecting drama. Are there critics who would p.r.o.nounce Dennis to be a very _sensible_ brother? It is here too he calls Steele "a twopenny author," alluding to the price of the "Tatlers"--but this cost Dennis dear!

[42] "The narrative of the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis," published in the Miscellanies of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, and said to have been written by Pope, is a grave banter on his usual violence. It professes to be the account of the physician who attended him at the request of a servant, who describes the first attack of his madness coming on when "a poor simple child came to him from the printers; the boy had no sooner entered the room, but he cried out 'the devil was come!'" The constant idiosyncrasy he had that his writings against France and the Pope might endanger his liberty, is amusingly hit off; "he perpetually starts and runs to the window when any one knocks, crying out ''Sdeath! a messenger from the French King; I shall die in the Bastile!'"--ED.

DISAPPOINTED GENIUS

TAKES A FATAL DIRECTION BY ITS ABUSE.

How the moral and literary character are reciprocally influenced, may be traced in the character of a personage peculiarly apposite to these inquiries. This worthy of literature is ORATOR HENLEY, who is rather known traditionally than historically.[43] He is so overwhelmed with the echoed satire of Pope, and his own extravagant conduct for many years, that I should not care to extricate him, had I not discovered a feature in the character of Henley not yet drawn, and const.i.tuting no inferior calamity among authors.

Henley stands in his "gilt tub" in the Dunciad; and a portrait of him hangs in the picture-gallery of the Commentary. Pope's verse and Warburton's notes are the pickle and the bandages for any Egyptian mummy of dulness, who will last as long as the pyramid that encloses him. I shall transcribe, for the reader's convenience, the lines of Pope:--

Embrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands; How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue!

How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung!

Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson, preach in vain.

Oh! great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once, and Zany of thy age![44]

It will surprise when I declare that this buffoon was an indefatigable student, a proficient in all the learned languages, an elegant poet, and, withal, a wit of no inferior cla.s.s. It remains to discover why "the Preacher" became "the Zany."

Henley was of St. John's College, Cambridge, and was distinguished for the ardour and pertinacity of his studies; he gave evident marks of genius. There is a letter of his to the "Spectator," signed _Peter de Quir_, which abounds with local wit and quaint humour.[45] He had not attained his twenty-second year when he published a poem, ent.i.tled "Esther, Queen of Persia,"[46] written amid graver studies; for three years after, Henley, being M.A., published his "Complete Linguist,"

consisting of grammars of ten languages.

The poem itself must not be pa.s.sed by in silent notice. It is preceded by a learned preface, in which the poet discovers his intimate knowledge of oriental studies, with some etymologies from the Persic, the Hebrew, and the Greek, concerning the name and person of Ahasuerus, whom he makes to be Xerxes. The close of this preface gives another unexpected feature in the character of him who, the poet tells us, was "embrowned with _native_ bronze"--an unaffected modesty!

Henley, alluding to a Greek paraphrase of Barnes, censures his faults with acrimony, and even apologises for them, by thus gracefully closing the preface: "These can only be alleviated by one plea, the youth of the author, which is a circ.u.mstance I hope the candid will consider in favour of the present writer!"

The poem is not dest.i.tute of imagination and harmony.

The pomp of the feast of Ahasuerus has all the luxuriance of Asiatic splendour; and the circ.u.mstances are selected with some fancy.

The higher guests approach a room of state, Where tissued couches all around were set Labour'd with art; o'er ivory tables thrown, Embroider'd carpets fell in folds adown.

The bowers and gardens of the court were near, And open lights indulged the breathing air.

Pillars of marble bore a silken sky, While cords of purple and fine linen tie In silver rings, the azure canopy.

Distinct with diamond stars the blue was seen, And earth and seas were feign'd in emerald green; A globe of gold, ray'd with a pointed crown, Form'd in the midst almost a real sun.

Nor is Henley less skilful in the elegance of his sentiments, and in his development of the human character. When Esther is raised to the throne, the poet says--

And Esther, though in robes, is Esther still.

And then sublimely exclaims--

The heroic soul, amidst its bliss or woe, Is never swell'd too high, nor sunk too low; Stands, like its origin above the skies, Ever the same great self, sedately wise; Collected and prepared in every stage To scorn a courting world, or bear its rage.