English Lands Letters and Kings Part 18

_Old Juvenilia._

[Sidenote: Sandford & Merton.]

I cannot pa.s.s from this epoch, without saying somewhat concerning that tide of literature for young people which set in strongly about those times. There was _Sandford and Merton_, for instance; can it be that the moderns are growing up to maturity without a knowledge of the wise inculcations of that eminently respectable work? Sixty years ago it was a stunning book for all good boys, and for the good sisters of good boys. Whoever was at the head of his cla.s.s was pretty apt to {272} get _Sandford and Merton_; whoever had a birthday present was very likely to get _Sandford and Merton_; if a good aunt was in search of a proper New Year's gift for a lad the bookseller was almost sure to recommend _Sandford and Merton_; and when a boy went away to school, some considerate friend was very certain to pop a copy of _Sandford and Merton_ into his satchel.

It is in the guise of a great lumbering narrative--supposed to be true--into which are whipped a score or more of little stories, each one capped with a bouncing moral. Thus, there is an ill-natured boy going out for a day's scrimmage, and playing his tricks--on a poor girl, and a blind beggar, and a lame beggar, and a farmer, and a donkey. This goes on very well for awhile; but at last the tables are turned, and he gets bitten by the blind beggar, and beaten by the lame beggar, and thrashed by the farmer, and is thrown by the donkey, and a large dog seizes him by the leg; this latter is printed in capitals, and there is a picture of it. At last, in bed, and with watery eyes, the boy reflects--that "no one can long hurt others with impunity;" so he determined to "behave {273} better for the future." Is it any wonder that those who had access to such instructive tales a half a century ago should have grown up to be excellent men!

This book of _Sandford and Merton_ was written by Thomas Day,[5] an eccentric rich man (the world of to-day would have called him a crank), who had a fine place near to Putney on the Thames, who sympathized strongly with Americans in Revolutionary times; who was also a disciple of Rousseau, and undertook to educate a young girl--two of them in fact, one being a foundling--so that he might have a wife of his own training, after the Rousseau standard; but the young persons did not train as he wished; so he found his mate otherwheres.

Another comfit of a book for young people, but with fewer plums of romance in it, was _Evenings at Home_ by Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld.

I am sure the very name must bring up tender memories to a great many; for it was a current book down to a time when respectable, and even mirth-loving {274} people, _did_ pa.s.s their evenings at home, and enjoyed doing so. The book commands even now, in some old-fashioned households, about the same sort of consecration which is given to an antique blue and white china tea-pot--not nearly so fine as the newer French ones--but which by the aid of a little imagination can be put to very pretty simmer of old times and tunes.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Barbauld.]

Mrs. Barbauld[6] was worthier than this book; she was a sister of Dr.

Aikin--had distinction for great beauty in her youth; married a French clergyman of small parts and weak mind, whose intellect, in his later years, went wholly awry and made her home a martyrdom for her, against which she struggled bravely. That home was for a time out at Hampstead, only a half hour's drive from London, and she knew people worth knowing there; Fox and Johnson among the rest--though {275} Johnson did give her a big slap for marrying as she did and for teaching an infant school.[7] She wrote poetry too, one verse at least which Wordsworth greatly admired, and with condescension declared that he would have liked to be the author of such a verse himself. I cite the verse (with some of the context), which is from an apostrophe to _Life_; doubtless suggested by the

"Animula, vagula, blandula"

of Adrian, to which allusion has been made in a previous chapter; but the good woman's evolution of the thought is curiously different from that of Pope:--

"Life! I know not what thou art.

But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met, I own to me's a secret yet.

But this I know, when thou art fled Where'er they lay these limbs, this head, No clod so valueless shall be As all that then remains of me.

O whither, whither dost thou fly, Where bend unseen thy trackless course,

{276}

And in this strange divorce, Ah, tell where I must seek this compound I?

Life! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then--steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not--Good night; but in some brighter clime Bid me--Good morning."

I cannot part from this excellent old friend of British boys, without calling to mind her ardent Whiggism, and her very p.r.o.nounced advocacy of the American cause, in her last poem of _Eighteen hundred and eleven_; the republican sympathies alienated a good many of her Tory friends, and brought to her temporary disrepute. Wherefor, I think, patriotic American boys may, on some coming fourth of July, fling their caps into the air for the kindly, brave-speaking Mrs. Barbauld, and for her _Evenings at Home_!

{277}

_Miss Edgeworth._

[Sidenote: An Irish story-teller.]

You may be sure that I have not forgotten Miss Edgeworth, who was a good friend of Mrs. Barbauld, and who scored Dr. Johnson and Boswell too, for the printing of their slurs upon Miss Aikin.[8]

I suspect it would not be an easy task to bring young people, nowadays, to much enthusiasm about Miss Edgeworth[9] and her books; and yet if I were to tell all that "we fellows" used to think about her when her _Popular Tales_, and her delightful _Parent's a.s.sistant_, with its stories exactly of the right length--about Lazy Lawrence, and Simple Susan, and the False Key, and Tarlton--were in vogue, I am afraid you would give me very little credit for critical sagacity. A most proper and interesting old lady we reckoned her, and do still. I for one never counted on her being {278} young; it seemed to me that she must have been born straight into the severities of middle age and of story-telling. I could never imagine her at a game of romps, or buying candies on the sly. Though I had never seen her portrait--and no one else, for that matter--yet I knew the face--as well as that of my own grandmother; and what a good, kind, serene, motherly face it was!

There was dignity in it, however; no boy would have thought of approaching her without a study of his deportment; he would see to it that his shoe-lacings were tied and his waistcoat b.u.t.tons all in place--else, a shake of the head that would have made the cap-strings, and the frisette, and the starched ruffles shiver. But we must not speak lightly of the auth.o.r.ess, to whom thousands of elderly people owe so much of instruction and of entertainment.

[Sidenote: Miss Edgeworth.]

She was the daughter of an Irish gentleman who made a runaway match at Gretna Green, Maria Edgeworth being a child of that irregular marriage; and her father being widowed shortly after, married three other wives[10] successively, whose {279} children filled the great house at Edgeworthtown in Ireland, where the auth.o.r.ess grew up (though born in England), and where she came to that knowledge of Irish character and habit which gives distinction and the greatest charm to her books.

Scott read them gleefully and admiringly, and as he himself confesses, took a hint from them, to put Scottish character into story, as this English-Irish lady had put Irish character into hers; and he says in his first outspoken preface to the _Waverley_ series--that Miss Edgeworth in "making the English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-hearted neighbors may truly be said to have done more toward completing the union than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up." Such laurels were enough for her fame--did not braver ones grow out of the thumb-worn edges of her books. I think it would be safe to distrust the honor and directness of purpose of any boy or man who, after reading--has either scorn or dread of Maria Edgeworth.

One will not find startling things in her {280} writing; nor will you find great brilliancy of execution--nor the pretty banter and delicate English humor, and finer touches which belong to Miss Austen: but you will find orderly progress and a good orderly story--illuminated by flashes of Irish wit, and glowing through and through with the kindness of a heart which never saw suffering without sympathy, and never any joys of even the most vulgar, without a tender satisfaction. Add to this a shrewd common sense--which never lost its way in romantic pitfalls, and an unblinking honesty, and charity of purpose--always making itself felt, and always driving a nail--and you have an array of qualities which will, I think, keep good Miss Edgeworth's name alive for a long period to come. Few people will have the courage to invest in the whole of her score of volumes octavo. It is hardly to be advised; but you may wisely choose a sprinkling of them; her _Frank_, for instance--her _Rackrent_--her _Ormond_, and a volume or two of her shorter tales, which will bravely hold their own amongst all the goody books of a later generation.

Two specimens of that Irish humor, which she {281} is so apt at reporting, and which shine by their pretty flicker of unconsciousness, I must cite: the first is that of the politician--a charming type of our munic.i.p.al Milesians--who resented highly his non-appointment to some fat place, after unwearied support of the government, "against his conscience, in a most honorable manner." The second is that of the hopeful old Irish dame, who trusted she might die upon a fete day, when the gates of Heaven were opened wide, and a poor "body might slip in unbeknownst."

For our good friend, Miss Edgeworth, we believe that those gates were wide open, on every day of the year.

_Some Early Romanticism._

[Sidenote: Early Romanticism.]

While that clever and attractive Miss Jane Austen was engaged upon her stories in her quiet study in Steventon, Hampshire, there was opened upon England, by certain other ladies, a new sluice of literature--from which some phosph.o.r.escent sparkles are still distinguishable in our {282} time--in brilliant red and yellow covers. I allude to the _Children of the Abbey_, by Miss Roche[11] (an Irish-French lady, who lived in Waterford, Ireland), to _Thaddeus of Warsaw_ and the _Scottish Chiefs_ by Miss Jane Porter, and the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ by Mrs.

Radcliffe, of London.[12]

Very few middle-aged readers have pa.s.sed their lives without hearing of these books; the chances are strong that most of such readers have dipped into them; and if people dipped at all, before the age of fourteen, they were pretty apt to undergo complete submergence.

From ten to twelve was--as nearly as I now recollect--about the susceptible age for the _Children of the Abbey_; and if the book came into the {283} hands of one of a bevy of boys or girls, in such tender years, it was pretty apt to run through them all, eruptively--like measles.

It was a book that even young people had an inclination to put under cover, if detected or liable to be detected in the reading of it; and elderly people so caught were understood to be only "glancing at it;"

the sentiment is so very profuse and gushing. None of us like to make a show of our allegiance to Master Cupid. Miss Roche wrote other books--but none beside the _Children of the Abbey_ have come down to us in the yellow and red of sixpenny form; for which we ought to be thankful.

_Thaddeus of Warsaw_ had more excuse in the expression of tender sympathies for Poland and all Polish people, at a crisis in the history of that unfortunate kingdom. The success of the book was immense.

Kosciusko sent his portrait and a medal to the author; she was made member of foreign societies, received gold crosses of honor; and oddly enough, even from America there came, under the guiding providence of Mr. John {284} Harper,[13] then I believe Mayor of the City of New York, an elegant carved armchair, trimmed with crimson plush, to testify "the admiring grat.i.tude of the American people" to the author of _Thaddeus of Warsaw_. The book, by its amazing popularity, and by the entertaining way in which it marshals its romantic effulgencies in favor of a great cause, may very naturally suggest that other, later and larger enlistment of all the forces of good story-telling, which--fifty years thereafter--in the hands of an American lady (Mrs.

Stowe) contributed to a larger cause, and with more abiding results.

_The Scottish Chiefs_ has less of gusto than the Polish novel--and as I took occasion to say when we were at that date of Scottish history--is full of bad anachronisms, and of historical untruths. Yet there is a good bracing air of the Highlands in parts of it, and an ebullient martial din of broadswords and of gathering clans which go far to redeem its maudlin sentiment. Mrs. Radcliffe's _Mysteries of Udolpho_ had more of the {285} conventionally artistic qualities than either of those last named, though never so infectiously popular. There are gloomy Italian chieftains in it, splendid dark fellows with swords and pistols and plumes to match; and there are purple sunsets and ma.s.sive castles with secret pa.s.sages and stairs; and marks of b.l.o.o.d.y fingers, and papers that are to be signed--or not signed; and one ineffable young lady--Emily, I think, is her name--who by her spiritual presence and lovely features serves to light up all the gloom and the mystery and makes the castle, and the dark woods, and the reeking vaults, and the secret paths all blossom like a rose. I cannot advise the reading of the book.

_Vathek._

[Sidenote: Wm. Beckford.]

When poor Chatterton--of whom we had speech not far back--was near to starving in London, he made one desperate effort to secure the favor and patronage of the Lord Mayor of the city, who was a very rich West India merchant, by the name of Beckford. Chatterton did gain an interview; did get promise of aid, and win strongly upon the {286} good will of the Lord Mayor; but unfortunately his honor died only a few days thereafter. Had he lived, the young poet might have had a totally different career; and had he lived, the only son and heir of this benevolent Mayor,--William Beckford,[14] then a boy of ten,--would have had a different bringing up. At twenty, this youth printed--though he did not publish--some journals of continental travel which he had conducted in the spirit and with the large accompaniments of a young man who loves the splendor of life, and who had at command an annual revenue of six hundred thousand dollars, at that day said to be the largest moneyed income in England. What a little fragment of this sum which was squandered upon that splendid trail of travel through Europe would have made poor Chatterton happy! But young Beckford was by no means a brainless spendthrift; he had strong intellectual apt.i.tudes; was a scholar in a certain limited yet true sense; and when twenty-two only, had written (in French) {287} that strange, weird romance of _Vathek_; well worth your reading on a spare day, and which in its English version has made his fame, and keeps his name alive, now that his great houses and moneys are known and reverenced no more.

It is an Eastern story, with all the glow, color, and splendors of the days of the good _Haroun al Raschid_ in it. There are crime and love in it too; and phantoms and beautiful women, and terrific punishment of the wicked. Vathek, the hero, who might be Beckford himself, wanders through a world of delights, where evil phantoms and genii a.s.sail him, and fascinating maidens allure him; and after adventures full of escapes and dangers and feastings, in which he listens to the melody of lutes and quaffs the delicious wine of Schiraz, he reaches at last, in company with the lovely Mironihar, the great hall of Eblis; here we come to something horrific and Dantesque--something which I am sure had its abiding influence upon the work of Edgar Poe.

"The place, though roofed with a vaulted ceiling, was so s.p.a.cious and lofty that at first they took it for an immeasurable plain. But their eyes at length growing familiar with {288} the grandeur of surrounding objects, they extended their view to those at a distance, and discovered rows of columns and arcades which gradually diminished till they terminated in a point radiant as the sun when he darts his last beams athwart the ocean.... The pavement, which was strewed over with gold-dust and saffron, exhaled so subtle an odor as almost overpowered them.... In the midst of this immense hall a vast mult.i.tude was incessantly pa.s.sing, who severally kept their right hands on their hearts, without once regarding anything around them. They had all the livid paleness of death. Their eyes deep sunk in their sockets, resembled those phosphoric meteors that glimmer by night in places of interment."

And afterward, when a royal sufferer, who from livid lips had made warning exhortation to these wanderers, lifts his right hand in supplication, Vathek sees--through his bosom which was "transparent as crystal"--his heart enveloped in flames. Perhaps Hawthorne, in certain pa.s.sages of the _Scarlet Letter_, may have had these red, burning hearts of this famous Hall of Eblis in mind.

Beckford wrote also a very interesting account of certain religious houses in Portugal which were the wonder of old days and are a wonder now. At Cintra, the picturesque suburb of Lisbon, he {289} established a great Moorish country house within sight of the sea. Byron gives a glimpse of this in _Childe Harold_:--