English Lands Letters and Kings Part 13

If I mention Pitt,[3] it is only because you will find in your historical reading, his name always coupled with that of Fox; but he never went to our Literary Club; had little companionship with literary men; yet he had keen scholarship--within a somewhat limited range--and an insatiate ambition. He was tall, spare, pale-faced, haughty, with a contempt for sentiment, and a contempt for money; and of intellect--all compact. At an age when many are still at college, he had made amazing speeches in Parliament; not profuse, not swollen with words, not rhetorical--but clear, sharp, polished, strenuous, with now and then the glitter of some apt and resonant line from his cla.s.sics.[4]

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His perspicuous and never-failing flow of language was due, not a little, to an early habit of translating at sight, from Greek and Latin orators, under direction of his father the Earl of Chatham--not taught by this great master to give slavish word for word translation; but as apt and polished and vigorous a rendering as he could accomplish, without any surrender, or mal-presentment of the leading thoughts. Nor do I know any cla.s.s-room exercise, nowadays, which would so test and amplify a young student's vocabulary, or teach him better the easy and forcible use of his own language. But, to have its full disciplinary power, it should be a loud, _ore rotunda_ rendering--not a {194} mere lip-service; a launch, straight out from sh.o.r.es, into whatever waters or wilds the heathen orators may be sailing upon, and a full showing of their changing drift--whether in the eddies of a playful irony, or under the driving sweep of their storms of denunciation.

Singularly apart from literary men, and most literary influences, Macaulay has objected (perhaps with some reason) to Pitt's cruel disregard of Dr. Johnson's needs and longings in his latter years; it would have been a charming thing, for instance, for the son of Chatham to put a Government ship at the service of the invalided philosopher, for a voyage under Italian skies; but with Pitt, the large political ends which were taking shape in his mind, and in process of evolution, blinded him to lesser and personal or kindly interests. A nod of the obstinate old king would have counted for more than a tragedy of _Irene_. All his cla.s.sicism was but a weapon to smite with, or from which to forge the links of those shining parentheses by which he strangled an opponent. Nothing beyond or below the cool, considerate humanities of the cultured, self-poised gentleman {195} (unless we except some rare outbreak of petulance) belongs to this great orator, who could thrust one through with a rapier held by the best rules of fence; and who never did or could say a word so warm as to touch a friend or make an enemy forget his courtliness. Guiding the political fate of England through a period of such strain, as demanded more nerve and more discretion than any period of a century before, or of a century thereafter--admired by all, and loved by very few, Pitt died quite alone, in a little cottage on Wimbledon Common[5]--even his servants had left;--died too of old age; an old age that grew out of his tormenting labors and ambitions--before he was fifty.

_An Orator and Playwright._

[Sidenote: Sheridan.]

Sheridan is another name about which you have a better right to hear, since he was a favorite member of the Turk's Head coterie, and is a distinct literary survivor of that epoch.[6] He was {196} son of Thomas Sheridan, author of a life of Swift and of a now rarely cited English Dictionary. The son Richard, after studying at Harrow, and afterward with his father, made a runaway match with a beautiful Miss Linley; and he continued doing runaway things all his life. A duel which his sharp marriage provoked, gave him material for his early play of _The Rivals_,--a play which has come to renewed popularity in our day, and country, under the pleasant humor of Jefferson. _The School for Scandal_ is another of his comedies which makes its appearance from year to year: and Charles Surface and Lady Teazle--no less than Mrs.

Malaprop, and Lydia Languish, are people who hang by, very persistently, and with whom we are pretty sure to make acquaintance at some time in our lives.

Mrs. Sheridan proved a much better wife than the conditions of the marriage promised; and I suppose that she was, in a way, contented with the ribbons and fine gowns, and equipages he {197} provided for her (when he could); and with his unctuous, tender speeches, and his fame, and an occasional tap under the chin,--and with his forgetfulness of her when he went to the clubs, or the green-room, or the tavern--as he did very often, and stayed very late. Indeed "staying late," was the ruin of him. But this language into which I have fallen--not without warrant--should not convey the idea that this man was a commonplace, dissolute spendthrift; far from it. His spendings were sublimated by a crazy splendor of ungovernable and ill-regulated generosities, in which his Irish nature bubbled over; and his dissipation wore always the blazon of high social cheer; his excesses not sordid or grovelling, but they carried a quasi air of distinction, and were illuminated by the glow of his easy talk and the flashes of his wit.

His wildest spendings were always made without shamefacedness; but, on the contrary, with a bold alacrity, that gave a.s.surance of riches as heaped up as those of an Arabian Night's tale. That wife of his, too--with her peachy tint, her faery grace, and her syren voice--seemed {198} altogether a fit portion and adornment of the oriental profusion he always coveted and always owed for. His longings and ambitions were pitched upon a high key--a key to which his social apt.i.tudes were charmingly attuned; and there was a time early in his career when it was a distinction to have the privilege of entree at his beautiful home in Orchard Street, Portman Square, to share his sybaritic tastes, and to listen to the siren who warbled there.

At twenty-four this favorite of fortune had written that play which drew all London to see Captain Absolute; at twenty-five he had become half owner of that great theatre of Drury Lane, from whose till the hands of Garrick had drawn out a great fortune, and from which Richard Sheridan was to draw, often--more than was fairly in it. Meantime he had inspired, and, in connection with his father-in-law, had composed, the comic opera of the _Duenna_, whose success was enormous, and whose bouncing bits of lyrical jingle have come quivering through all the _couloirs_ of intervening days, to ours: instance,--

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"I ne'er could any l.u.s.tre see In eyes that would not look on me.

Is her hand so soft and pure?

I must press it to be sure."

Then comes the _School for Scandal_, and--two years later--the _Critic_; and always the steaming suppers and the singing of many sirens, and deeper thrusts into the till of Old Drury; stockholders may wince and creditors too; but who shall gainsay or doubt the imperial genius who is winged with victory? Garrick, whose days of conquest are nearly over--is his friend; so is Burke, won by his wit, and by his rolling Irish r's; Goldsmith acknowledges his sovereignty: Dr. Johnson veils dislike of his radicalism and of his tirades against taxation, as he welcomes him to the Club.

In 1780, while still under thirty, he entered Parliament (for Stafford) and posed there for new conquests. There came frequent occasions for the interjection of his witty collocation of apothegms, lighted by his brilliant elocution; but there was not much in his parliamentary career to attract national attention until the debates opened with reference to the Warren Hastings impeachment. {200} These offered topics which appealed to his emotional nature, and under the indoctrination and the coaching of Burke, he made such appeal for the far-off, down-trodden princesses of India as electrified the nation. "Whatever the acuteness of the bar, the dignity of the Senate, or the morality of the pulpit could furnish [in eloquence] had not been equal to it." This was the verdict of so good a judge as Burke. Yet, reading this speech--or so much of it as the records show--or those others which followed,[7] when the great trial had opened in Westminster Hall, we find it hard to understand the enthusiasm of the old plaudits. There is wit, indeed, in whatever work warms him to a glow; old truisms get a setting in his oratorio reaches which make them gleam like diamonds; but there is none of that logical method {201} which wraps one around with convictions; but in place of it a beautiful ma.s.s of rhetorical spray, that delights and refreshes and pa.s.ses--like a summer cloud.

Meanwhile the suppers abound, and so do the debts: that siren wife, who had kept his accounts, and made extracts and filled his note-books (and his flasks), pa.s.ses away. It is a shock that does not rally his forces, but rather disperses them. He is _lie_ in these times with the Prince of Wales; dines with him; wines with him. Who shall say he does not troll with him some of the piquant s.n.a.t.c.hes of his own verse? As this:

"A b.u.mper of good liquor Will end a contest quicker Than justice, judge, or vicar; So fill a cheerful gla.s.s And let good humor pa.s.s.

But if more deep the quarrel, Why, sooner drain the barrel Than be the hateful fellow That's crabbed when he's mellow."

He _did_ drain the barrel; he did fall from all his dizzy eminence; he did die a drunkard of the grosser sort; without money, almost without {202} friends.[8] There was a great rally of coronets at his funeral, and a pompous procession of those who went to bury him at Westminster.

You will find his name there, in the Poets' Corner of the Abbey, and will give to his memory your wonder and your pity; but not, I think, much veneration.

_The Boy Chatterton._

[Sidenote: Chatterton.]

We shift the scenes now for a new episode in our little story of letters, although we are under the same murky sky of London. George the Third is just finishing the first decade of his long reign; most of the clubmen of whom we have spoken are still alive, and go up, with more or less of regularity, to pay their court to Dr. Johnson; but we have our eye specially upon a pale, handsome-faced, long-haired lad, not beyond the schooling age, who knows nothing of courts or clubs, who has stolen away from the thraldom of a small {203} attorney's office in Bristol, in the West of England, to come up to London and face the world there, and try to conquer it. He does not know the task he has undertaken. His brain, indeed, is full of fine fancies; he has the poetic fervor in full flow upon him. He has left a mother and a sister--whom he loves dearly--his only near relatives; and he writes to that mother under date of May, 1770:

"I am settled, and in such a settlement as I would desire. I get four guineas a month by one magazine; shall engage to write a History of England, or other pieces, which will more than double that sum.

Occasional essays for the daily papers would more than support me.

What a glorious prospect!"

And, again, a few weeks later to his sister:

"I employ my money now in fitting myself fashionably, as my profession (of letters) obliges me to frequent the places of best resort. But I have engaged to live with a gentleman, the brother of a lord, who is going to advance pretty deeply into the bookselling branches. I shall have lodging and boarding, genteel and elegant, gratis. I shall have likewise no inconsiderable premium. I will send you two silks this summer, and expect, in answer to this, what colors you prefer....

Essay writing has this advantage: you are sure of constant pay; and when you have once wrote a piece which makes the author inquired after, you may bring the booksellers to your own terms."

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Ah, how young he was! If only those first literary dreams and hopes could be realized, which nestle in the brains of so many--what silks--what houses--what gold--what fame! Yet this stripling not yet eighteen could write. I will give you a taste of his quality--in verses shorn of some of the old words he put in them for sake of disguise:--

"The budding floweret blushes at the light, The meads are sprinkled with the yellow hue, In daisied mantles is the mountain dight, The nesh young cowslip bendeth with the dew; The trees enleafed, into heaven straught, When gentle winds do blow, to whistling din are brought.

The evening comes and brings the dew along, The ruddy welkin sheeneth to the eyne; Around the ale stake minstrels sing their song; Young ivy round the door-post doth entwine.

I lay me on the gra.s.s; yet, to my will Albeit all is fair, there lacketh something still."[9]

And again, of a different order, this--from the same long poem:--

"O sing unto my Roundelay, O drop the briny tear with me, Dance no more at Holy day Like a running river be.

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My Love is dead, Gone to his death bed, All under the willow tree.

Come with acorn cup and thorn Drain my hearte's blood away; Life and all its good I scorn, Dance by night or feast by day.

My love is dead Gone to his death-bed All under the willow tree."

Well, this is the poetry of the marvellous boy Chatterton[10]--fragments of which you will find in all the anthologies. That last tender letter to his sister, which I set before you--so gleeful, with promise of silks and of brilliant essays, was written on the last day of the month of May, 1770; and on the 24th of August--not three months later--after three days of starvation enforced by a poverty of which his pride would not let him tell, he took poison and made an end of his career.

Few knew of this; few knew that there had {206} been any such adventurer in London; fewer yet, knew what poems--br.i.m.m.i.n.g, many of them, with fine fancies--he had left behind him.

A few months after, at the first annual dinner of the newly founded Royal Academy of Art, Goldsmith,[11] being present, talked at table of a certain extraordinary lad who had come up the year before from Bristol--and had died the summer past--literally of starvation--leaving behind him certain wonderful poems, which in their phrases, he said, had an air of great antiquity. And Horace Walpole being also present--he never omitted being present at a Royal Society dinner, when it was possible for him to go--overhearing the talk and the name, said (we may fancy), "Bless me, young Chatterton, to be sure!--I had some correspondence with the young man; nice poems--but apocryphal--poor fellow; dead is he--starved, eh? dear me?--shocking--quite so!" and I suppose that he took snuff and dusted his ruffles thereafter, and then toyed with his delicate gla.s.s of fine old Sercial Madeira. This was like {207} Walpole--wantonly like him. There had been a correspondence, as he condescendingly admitted, that I will tell you of.

This Bristol boy, growing up in sight of Durdham downs, and the gorge of the Avon and blue hills of Wales--with poetic visions haunting him--had somehow come upon old parchments--perhaps out of the muniment rooms of St. Mary's Redcliffe church, where his father had been s.e.xton; he had been captivated by the quaint lettering, and awed by the odor of sanct.i.ty; and straightway imaged to himself an old mediaeval priest, to be clothed upon with his own poetic sensibilities, and in the rusty phrases of the fourteenth century, to unfold to the world the poetic yearnings and aspirations that were seething in the brain of this wonderful boy. The ancient Dictionaries and old copies of Chaucer supplied the language; the antique parchments gave local allusions and the nomenclature; and for inspiration and motive--the winds that blew from over Chepstow and Tintern Abbey, and Caerleon, and whistled round the b.u.t.tresses of St. Mary's Redcliffe--supplied more than enough. So began {208} the modern antique poems of Thomas Rowley; not a new device in the literary world; for Macpherson, whom we shall encounter presently, only a few years before had launched some of the "Ossian"

poems, to the great wonderment and puzzle of the literary world; and Walpole, still earlier, had claimed a false antiquity and Neapolitan origin for his _Castle of Otranto_. To Walpole, therefore, the eager boy sent some fragments of his Rowley poems, which Walpole courteously acknowledged, and asked for a continuance of such favors. Poor Chatterton, presuming on this courtesy wrote again, declaring his dependent condition--apprenticed to a scrivener, and with mother and sister dependent on him--but believing that with G.o.d's help, and the encouragement of his distinguished patron, he might find the way to other and better Rowley poems.

Meantime Walpole, through his scholarly friend the poet Gray, had come to doubt the antiquity of Rowley's verse; and the plebeianism of this correspondent has shocked his gentility. He replies coolly, therefore; expresses doubts of the Rowley authorship, and advises poor Chatterton to keep {209} by his apprenticeship at the scriveners. This sets the young poet's blood on fire; he will go to London; he will win his way; he will smite the Philistines hip and thigh. And--as I have told you--he did go; did work; did struggle. But it is a great self-seeking world he has to face, full throughout of thwarting circ.u.mstance. Yet courage and pride hold him up--hold him up for months against terrific odds; at least he will tell nothing of his griefs. Thus his last pennies, which should have gone for bread, go to carry little love-tokens to the dear ones he has left. So lost is he in his little Holborn chamber, in that great seething, turbulent whirl of London, that he thinks--even as he mixes his death potion--they will never know; they will never hear: "Gone"--that is all! But they do know: and for them it is to chant broken-hearted the refrain of his own roundelay,

My love is dead, Gone to his death bed All under the willow tree.

It is not alone for reason of the romantic aspects of the story that I have given you this glimpse of the boy Chatterton, but because there was really {210} much literary merit and great promise in his work; in some respects, he reminds us of our American Poe--the same disposition to deal with mysteries, the same uncontrolled ardors, the same haughty pride; and although Chatterton's range in all rhythmic art was far below that of Poe, and although he did not carry so bold and venturous a step as the American into the region of _diableries_, he had perhaps more varied fancies and more homely tendernesses. The antique gloss which he put upon his work was unworthy his genius; helping no way save to stimulate curiosity, and done with a crudeness which, under the light of modern philologic study, would have deceived no one. But under this varnish of archaeologic fustian and mould, there is show of an imaginative power and of a high poetic instinct, which will hold critical respect[12] and regard as long as English poetry shall be read.