Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 8

[52] "Gentleman's Magazine," vol. lvii. p. 876.

[53] His "Defence of the Oratory" is a curious performance. He pretends to derive his own from great authority. "St. Paul is related, Acts 28, to have dwelt _two whole years in his own hired house_, and to have received all that came in unto him, teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him. This was at _Rome_, and doubtless was his practice in his other travels, there being the same reason in the thing to produce elsewhere the like circ.u.mstances." He proceeds to show "the calumnies and reproaches, and the novelty and impiety, with which Christianity, at its first setting out, was charged, as a mean, abject inst.i.tution, not only useless and unserviceable, but pernicious to the public and its professors, as the refuse of the world."--Of the false accusations raised against Jesus--all this he applies to himself and his oratory--and he concludes, that "Bringing men to think rightly will always be reckoned a depraving of their minds by those who are desirous to keep them in a mistake, and who measure all truth by the standard of their own narrow opinions, views, and pa.s.sions. The principles of this inst.i.tution are those of right reason: the first ages of Christianity; true facts, clear criticism, and polite literature--if these corrupt the mind, to find a place where the mind will not be corrupted will be impracticable."

Thus speciously could "the Orator" reason, raising himself to the height of apostolical purity. And when he was accused that he _did all for lucre_, he retorted, that "some _do nothing_ for it;" and that "he preached more charity sermons than any clergyman in the kingdom."

[54] He once advertised an oration on marriage, which drew together an overflowing a.s.sembly of females, at which, solemnly shaking his head, he told the ladies, that "he was afraid, that oftentimes, as well as now, they came to church in hopes to get husbands, rather than be instructed by the preacher;" to which he added a piece of wit not quite decent. He congregated the trade of shoemakers, by offering to show the most expeditious method of making shoes: he held out a boot, and cut off the leg part. He gave a lecture, which he advertised was "for the instruction of those who do not like it; it was on the philosophy, history, and great use of _Nonsense_ to the learned, political, and polite world, who excel in it."

[55] Dr. Cobden, one of George the Second's chaplains, having, in 1748, preached a sermon at St. James's from these words, "Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness," it gave so much displeasure, that the doctor was struck out of the list of chaplains; and the next Sat.u.r.day the following parody of his text appeared as a motto to Henley's advertis.e.m.e.nt:

"Away with the wicked before the king, And away with the wicked behind him; His throne it will bless With righteousness, And we shall know where to find him."

CHALMER'S "Biographical Dictionary."

[56] The history of the closing years of Henley's life is thus given in "The History of the Robin Hood Society," 1764, a political club, whose debates he occasionally enlivened:--"The Orator, with various success, still kept up his _Oratory_, _King George's_, or _Charles's Chapel_, as he differently termed it, till the year 1759, when he died. At its first establishment it was amazingly crowded, and money flowed in upon him apace; and between whiles it languished and drooped: but for some years before its author's death it dwindled away so much, and fell into such an hectic state, that the few friends of it feared its decease was very near. The doctor, indeed, kept it up to the last, determined it should live as long as he did, and actually exhibited many evenings to empty benches. Finding no one at length would attend, he admitted the acquaintances of his door-keeper, runner, mouth-piece, and some other of his followers, gratis. On the 13th of October, however, the doctor died, and the Oratory ceased; no one having iniquity or impudence sufficient to continue it on."--ED.

[57] Hogarth has preserved his features in the parson who figures so conspicuously in his "Modern Midnight Conversation." His off-hand style of discourse is given in the _Gray's-Inn Journal_, 1753 (No. 18), in an imaginary meeting of the political Robin Hood Society, where he figures as Orator Bronze, and exclaims:--"I am pleased to see this a.s.sembly--you're a twig from me; a chip of the old block at Clare Market;--I am the old block, invincible; _coup de grace_ as yet unanswered.

We are brother rationalists; logicians upon fundamentals! I love ye all--I love mankind in general--give me some of that porter."--ED.

THE MALADIES OF AUTHORS.

The practice of every art subjects the artist to some particular inconvenience, usually inflicting some malady on that member which has been over-wrought by excess: nature abused, pursues man into his most secret corners, and avenges herself. In the athletic exercises of the ancient Gymnasium, the pugilists were observed to become lean from their hips downwards, while the superior parts of their bodies, which they over-exercised, were prodigiously swollen; on the contrary, the racers were meagre upwards, while their feet acquired an unnatural dimension. The secret source of life seems to be carried forwards to those parts which are making the most continued efforts.

In all sedentary labours, some particular malady is contracted by every worker, derived from particular postures of the body and peculiar habits. Thus the weaver, the tailor, the painter, and the gla.s.s-blower, have all their respective maladies. The diamond-cutter, with a furnace before him, may be said almost to live in one; the slightest air must be shut out of the apartment, lest it scatter away the precious dust--a breath would ruin him!

The a.n.a.logy is obvious;[58] and the author must partic.i.p.ate in the common fate of all sedentary occupations. But his maladies, from the very nature of the delicate organ of thinking, intensely exercised, are more terrible than those of any other profession; they are more complicated, more hidden in their causes, and the mysterious union and secret influence of the faculties of the soul over those of the body, are visible, yet still incomprehensible; they frequently produce a perturbation in the faculties, a state of acute irritability, and many sorrows and infirmities, which are not likely to create much sympathy from those around the author, who, at a glance, could have discovered where the pugilist or the racer became meagre or monstrous: the intellectual malady eludes even the tenderness of friendship.

The more obvious maladies engendered by the life of a student arise from over-study. These have furnished a curious volume to Tissot, in his treatise "On the Health of Men of Letters;" a book, however, which chills and terrifies more than it does good.

The unnatural fixed postures, the perpetual activity of the mind, and the inaction of the body; the brain exhausted with a.s.siduous toil deranging the nerves, vitiating the digestive powers, disordering its own machinery, and breaking the calm of sleep by that previous state of excitement which study throws us into, are some of the calamities of a studious life: for like the ocean when its swell is subsiding, the waves of the mind too still heave and beat; hence all the small feverish symptoms, and the whole train of hypochondriac affections, as well as some acute ones.[59]

Among the correspondents of the poets Hughes and Thomson, there is a pathetic letter from a student. Alexander Bayne, to prepare his lectures, studied fourteen hours a-day for eight months successively, and wrote 1,600 sheets. Such intense application, which, however, not greatly exceeds that of many authors, brought on the bodily complaints he has minutely described, with "all the dispiriting symptoms of a nervous illness, commonly called vapours, or lowness of spirits."

Bayne, who was of an athletic temperament, imagined he had not paid attention to his diet, to the lowness of his desk, and his habit of sitting with a particular compression of the body; in future all these were to be avoided. He prolonged his life for five years, and, perhaps, was still flattering his hopes of sharing one day in the literary celebrity of his friends, when, to use his words, "the same illness made a fierce attack upon me again, and has kept me in a very bad state of inactivity and disrelish of all my ordinary amus.e.m.e.nts:"

those _amus.e.m.e.nts_ were his serious _studies_. There is a fascination in literary labour: the student feeds on magical drugs; to withdraw him from them requires nothing less than that greater magic which could break his own spells. A few months after this letter was written Bayne died on the way to Bath, a martyr to his studies.

The excessive labour on a voluminous work, which occupies a long life, leaves the student with a broken const.i.tution, and his sight decayed or lost. The most admirable observer of mankind, and the truest painter of the human heart, declares, "The corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthy tabernacle weigheth down the _mind that museth on many things_." Of this cla.s.s was old Randle Cotgrave, the curious collector of the most copious dictionary of old French and old English words and phrases. The work is the only treasury of our genuine idiom. Even this labour of the lexicographer, so copious and so elaborate, must have been projected with rapture, and pursued with pleasure, till, in the progress, "the mind was musing on many things."

Then came the melancholy doubt, that drops mildew from its enveloping wings over the voluminous labour of a laborious author, whether he be wisely consuming his days, and not perpetually neglecting some higher duties or some happier amus.e.m.e.nts. Still the enchanted delver sighs, and strikes on in the glimmering mine of hope. If he live to complete the great labour, it is, perhaps, reserved for the applause of the next age; for, as our great lexicographer exclaimed, "In this gloom of solitude I have protracted my work, till those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds;" but, if it be applauded in his own, that praise has come too late for him whose literary labour has stolen away his sight. Cotgrave had grown blind over his dictionary, and was doubtful whether this work of his laborious days and nightly vigils was not a superfluous labour, and nothing, after all, but a "poor bundle of words." The reader may listen to the gray-headed martyr addressing his patron, Lord Burghley:

"I present to your lordship an account of the _expense of many hours_, which, in your service, and to mine own benefit, _might have been otherwise employed_. My desires have aimed at more substantial marks; but _mine eyes_ failed them, and forced me to _spend out their vigour in this bundle of words_, which may be unworthy of your lordship's great patience, and, perhaps, _ill-suited to the expectation of others_."

A great number of young authors have died of over-study. An intellectual enthusiasm, accompanied by const.i.tutional delicacy, has swept away half the rising genius of the age. Curious calculators have affected to discover the average number of infants who die under the age of five years: had they investigated those of the children of genius who perish before their thirtieth year, we should not be less amazed at this waste of man. There are few scenes more afflicting, nor which more deeply engage our sympathy, than that of a youth, glowing with the devotion of study, and resolute to distinguish his name among his countrymen, while death is stealing on him, touching with premature age, before he strikes the last blow.

The author perishes on the very pages which give a charm to his existence. The fine taste and tender melancholy of Headley, the fervid genius of Henry Kirke White, will not easily pa.s.s away; but how many youths as n.o.ble-minded have not had the fortune of Kirke White to be commemorated by genius, and have perished without their fame! Henry Wharton is a name well known to the student of English literature; he published historical criticisms of high value; and he left, as some of the fruits of his studies, sixteen volumes of MS., preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. These great labours were pursued with the ardour that only could have produced them; the author had not exceeded his thirtieth year when he sank under his continued studies, and perished a martyr to literature. Our literary history abounds with instances of the sad effects of an over indulgence in study: that agreeable writer, Howel, had nearly lost his life by an excess of this nature, studying through long nights in the depth of winter. This severe study occasioned an imposthume in his head; he was eighteen days without sleep; and the illness was attended with many other afflicting symptoms. The eager diligence of Blackmore, protracting his studies through the night, broke his health, and obliged him to fly to a country retreat. Harris, the historian, died of a consumption by midnight studies, as his friend Hollis mentions. I shall add a recent instance, which I myself witnessed: it is that of John Macdiarmid. He was one of those Scotch students whom the golden fame of Hume and Robertson attracted to the metropolis. He mounted the first steps of literary adventure with credit; and pa.s.sed through the probation of editor and reviewer, till he strove for more heroic adventures. He published some volumes, whose subjects display the aspirings of his genius: "An Inquiry into the Nature of Civil and Military Subordination;" another into "the System of Military Defence." It was during these labours I beheld this inquirer, of a tender frame, emaciated, and study-worn, with hollow eyes, where the mind dimly shone like a lamp in a tomb. With keen ardour he opened a new plan of biographical politics. When, by one who wished the author was in better condition, the dangers of excess in study were brought to his recollection, he smiled, and, with something of a mysterious air, talked of unalterable confidence in the powers of his mind; of the indefinite improvement in our faculties: and, with this enfeebled frame, considered himself capable of continuous labour. His whole life, indeed, was one melancholy trial. Often the day cheerfully pa.s.sed without its meal, but never without its page. The new system of political biography was advancing, when our young author felt a paralytic stroke. He afterwards resumed his pen; and a second one proved fatal. He lived just to pa.s.s through the press his "Lives of British Statesmen," a splendid quarto, whose publication he owed to the generous temper of a friend, who, when the author could not readily procure a publisher, would not see the dying author's last hope disappointed.

Some research and reflection are combined in this literary and civil history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but it was written with the blood of the author, for Macdiarmid died of over-study and exhaustion.

Among the maladies of poor authors, who procure a precarious existence by their pen, one, not the least considerable, is their old age; their flower and maturity of life were shed for no human comforts; and old age is the withered root. The late THOMAS MORTIMER, the compiler, among other things, of that useful work, "The Student's Pocket Dictionary," felt this severely--he himself experienced no abatement of his ardour, nor deficiency in his intellectual powers, at near the age of eighty;--but he then would complain "of the paucity of literary employment, and the preference given to young adventurers." Such is the _youth_, and such the _old age_ of ordinary authors!

FOOTNOTES:

[58] Hawkesworth, in the second paper of the "Adventurer," has composed, from his own feelings, an elegant description of intellectual and corporeal labour, and the sufferings of an author, with the uncertainty of his labour and his reward.

[59] Dr. Fuller's "Medicina Gymnastica, or, a treatise concerning the power of Exercise, with respect to the Animal OEconomy, fifth edition, 1718," is useful to remind the student of what he is apt to forget; for the object of this volume is to _subst.i.tute exercise for medicine_. He wrote the book before he became a physician. He considers horse-riding as the best and n.o.blest of all exercises, it being "a mixed exercise, partly active and partly pa.s.sive, while other sorts, such as walking, running, stooping, or the like, require some labour and more strength for their performance." Cheyne, in his well-known treatise of "The English Malady," published about twenty years after Fuller's work, acknowledges that riding on horseback is the best of all exercises, for which he details his reasons.

"Walking," he says, "though it will answer the same end, yet is it more laborious and tiresome;" but amus.e.m.e.nt ought always to be combined with the exercise of a student; the mind will receive no refreshment by a solitary walk or ride, unless it be agreeably withdrawn from all thoughtfulness and anxiety; if it continue studying in its recreations, it is the sure means of obtaining neither of its objects--a friend, not an author, will at such a moment be the better companion.

The last chapter in Fuller's work contains much curious reading on the ancient physicians, and their gymnastic courses, which Asclepiades, the pleasantest of all the ancient physicians, greatly studied; he was most fortunate in the invention of exercises to supply the place of much physic, and (says Fuller) no man in any age ever had the happiness to obtain so general an applause; Pliny calls him the delight of mankind. Admirable physician, who had so many ways, it appears, to make physic agreeable! He invented the _lecti pensiles_, or hanging beds, that the sick might be rocked to sleep; which took so much at that time, that they became a great luxury among the Romans.

Fuller judiciously does not recommend the gymnastic courses, because horse-riding, for persons of delicate const.i.tutions, is preferable; he discovers too the reason why the ancients did not introduce this mode of exercise--it arose from the simple circ.u.mstance of their not knowing the use of stirrups, which was a later invention. Riding with the ancients was, therefore, only an exercise for the healthy and the robust; a horse without stirrups was a formidable animal for a valetudinarian.

LITERARY SCOTCHMEN.

What literary emigrations from the North of young men of genius, seduced by a romantic pa.s.sion for literary fame, and lured by the golden prospects which the happier genius of some of their own countrymen opened on them. A volume might be written on literary Scotchmen, who have perished immaturely in this metropolis; little known, and slightly connected, they have dropped away among us, and scarcely left a vestige in the wrecks of their genius. Among them some authors may be discovered who might have ranked, perhaps, in the first cla.s.ses of our literature. I shall select four out of as many hundred, who were not entirely unknown to me; a romantic youth--a man of genius--a brilliant prose writer--and a labourer in literature.

ISSAC RITSON (not the poetical antiquary) was a young man of genius, who perished immaturely in this metropolis by attempting to exist by the efforts of his pen.

In early youth he roved among his native mountains, with the battles of Homer in his head, and his bow and arrow in his hand; in calmer hours, he nearly completed a spirited version of Hesiod, which constantly occupied his after-studies; yet our minstrel-archer did not less love the severer sciences.

Selected at length to rise to the eminent station of the Village Schoolmaster,--from the thankless office of pouring cold rudiments into heedless ears, RITSON took a poetical flight. It was among the mountains and wild scenery of Scotland that our young Homer, picking up fragments of heroic songs, and composing some fine ballad poetry, would, in his wanderings, recite them with such pa.s.sionate expression, that he never failed of auditors; and found even the poor generous, when their better pa.s.sions were moved. Thus he lived, like some old troubadour, by his rhymes, and his chants, and his virelays; and, after a year's absence, our bard returned in the triumph of verse.

This was the most seducing moment of life; RITSON felt himself a laureated Petrarch; but he had now quitted his untutored but feeling admirers, and the child of fancy was to mix with the everyday business of life.

At Edinburgh he studied medicine, lived by writing theses for the idle and the incompetent, and composed a poem on Medicine, till at length his hopes and his ambition conducted him to London. But the golden age of the imagination soon deserted him in his obscure apartment in the glittering metropolis. He attended the hospitals, but these were crowded by students who, if they relished the science less, loved the trade more: he published a hasty version of Homer's Hymn to Venus, which was good enough to be praised, but not to sell; at length his fertile imagination, withering over the taskwork of literature, he resigned fame for bread; wrote the preface to Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, compiled medical articles for the Monthly Review; and, wasting fast his ebbing spirits, he retreated to an obscure lodging at Islington, where death relieved a hopeless author, in the twenty-seventh year of his life.

The following unpolished lines were struck off at a heat in trying his pen on the back of a letter; he wrote the names of the Sister Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos--the sudden recollection of his own fate rushed on him--and thus the rhapsodist broke out:--

I wonder much, as yet ye're spinning, Fates!

What threads yet twisted out for me, old jades!

Ah, Atropos! perhaps for me thou spinn'st Neglect, contempt, and penury and woe; Be't so; whilst that foul fiend, the spleen, And moping melancholy spare me, all the rest I'll bear, as should a man; 'twill do me good, And teach me what no better fortune could, Humility, and sympathy with others' ills.

--------------Ye destinies, I love you much; ye flatter not my pride.

Your mien, 'tis true, is wrinkled, hard, and sour; Your words are harsh and stern; and sterner still Your purposes to me. Yet I forgive Whatever you have done, or mean to do.

Beneath some baleful planet born, I've found, In all this world, no friend with fostering hand To lead me on to science, which I love Beyond all else the world could give; yet still Your rigour I forgive; ye are not yet my foes; My own untutor'd will's my only curse.

We grasp asphaltic apples; blooming poison!

We love what we should hate; how kind, ye Fates, To thwart our wishes! O you're kind to scourge!

And flay us to the bone to make us feel!--

Thus deeply he enters into his own feelings, and abjures his errors, as he paints the utter desolation of the soul while falling into the grave opening at his feet.

The town was once amused almost every morning by a series of humorous or burlesque poems by a writer under the a.s.sumed name of _Matthew Bramble_--he was at that very moment one of the most moving spectacles of human melancholy I have ever witnessed.

It was one evening I saw a tall, famished, melancholy man enter a bookseller's shop, his hat flapped over his eyes, and his whole frame evidently feeble from exhaustion and utter misery. The bookseller inquired how he proceeded in his new tragedy. "Do not talk to me about my tragedy! Do not talk to me about my tragedy! I have indeed more tragedy than I can bear at home!" was the reply, and the voice faltered as he spoke. This man was Matthew Bramble, or rather--M'DONALD, the author of the tragedy of Vimonda, at that moment the writer of comic poetry--his tragedy was indeed a domestic one, in which he himself was the greatest actor amid his disconsolate family; he shortly afterwards perished. M'Donald had walked from Scotland with no other fortune than the novel of "The Independent"

in one pocket, and the tragedy of "Vimonda" in the other. Yet he lived some time in all the bloom and flush of poetical confidence.

Vimonda was even performed several nights, but not with the success the romantic poet, among his native rocks, had conceived was to crown his anxious labours--the theatre disappointed him--and afterwards, to his feelings, all the world!

LOGAN had the dispositions of a poetic spirit, not cast in a common mould; with fancy he combined learning, and with eloquence philosophy.

His claims on our sympathy arise from those circ.u.mstances in his life which open the secret sources of the calamities of authors; of those minds of finer temper, who, having tamed the heat of their youth by the patient severity of study, from causes not always difficult to discover, find their favourite objects and their fondest hopes barren and neglected. It is then that the thoughtful melancholy, which const.i.tutes so large a portion of their genius, absorbs and consumes the very faculties to which it gave birth.