English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Part 35

JUNIUS.--Among the most significant and instructive writings to the student of English history, in the earlier part of the reign of George III., is a series of letters written by a person, or by several persons in combination, whose _nom de plume_ was Junius. These letters specified the errors and abuses of the government, were exceedingly bold in denunciation and bitter in invective. The letters of Junius were forty-four in number, and were addressed to Mr. Woodfall, the proprietor of _The Public Advertiser_, a London newspaper, in which they were published. Fifteen others in the same vein were signed Philo-Junius; and there are besides sixty-two notes addressed by Junius to his publisher.

The princ.i.p.al letters signed Junius were addressed to ministers directly, and the first, on the _State of the Nation_, was a manifesto of the grounds of his writing and his purpose. It was evident that a bold censor had sprung forth; one acquainted with the secret movements of the government, and with the foibles and faults of the princ.i.p.al statesmen: they writhed under his lash. Some of the more gifted attempted to answer him, and, as in the case of Sir William Draper, met with signal discomfiture. Vigorous efforts were made to discover the offender, but without success; and as to his first patriotic intentions he soon added personal spite, the writer found that his life would not be safe if his secret were discovered. The rage of parties has long since died away, and the writer or writers have long been in their graves, but the curious secret still remains, and has puzzled the brains of students to the present day. Allibone gives a list of forty-two persons to whom the letters were in whole or in part ascribed, among whom are Colonel Barre, Burke, Lord Chatham, General Charles Lee, Horne Tooke, Wilkes, Horace Walpole, Lord Lyttleton, Lord George Sackville, and Sir Philip Francis.

Pamphlets and books have been written by hundreds upon this question of authorship, and it is not yet by any means definitely settled. The concurrence of the most intelligent investigators is in favor of Sir Philip Francis, because of the handwriting being like his, but slightly disguised; because he and Junius were alike intimate with the government workings in the state department and in the war department, and took notes of speeches in the House of Lords; because the letters came to an end just before Francis was sent to India; and because, indecisive as these claims are, they are stronger than those of any other suspected author. Macaulay adds to these: "One of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis was Junius is the _moral_ resemblance between the two men."

It is interesting to notice that the ministry engaged Dr. Johnson to answer the _forty-second_ letter, in which the king is especially arraigned. Johnson's answer, published in 1771, is ent.i.tled _Thoughts on the Late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands_. Of Junius he says: "He cries havoc without reserve, and endeavors to let slip the dogs of foreign and civil war, ignorant whither they are going, and careless what maybe their prey." "It is not hard to be sarcastic in a mask; while he walks like Jack the giant-killer, in a coat of darkness, he may do much mischief with little strength." "Junius is an unusual phenomenon, on which some have gazed with wonder and some with terror; but wonder and terror are transitory pa.s.sions. He will soon be more closely viewed, or more attentively examined, and what folly has taken for a comet, that from its flaming hair shook pestilence and war, inquiry will find to be only a meteor formed by the vapors of putrefying democracy, and kindled into flame by the effervescence of interest struggling with conviction, which, after having plunged its followers into a bog, will leave us inquiring why we regarded it."

Whatever the moral effect of the writings of Junius, as exhibited by silent influence in the lapse of years, the schemes he proposed and the party he championed alike failed of success. His farewell letter to Woodfall bears date the 19th of January, 1773. In that letter he declared that "he must be an idiot to write again; that he had meant well by the cause and the public; that both were given up; that there were not ten men who would act steadily together on any question."[35] But one thing is sure: he has enriched the literature with public letters of rare sagacity, extreme elegance of rhetoric and great logical force, and has presented a problem always curious and interesting for future students,--not yet solved, in spite of Mr. Chabot's recent book,[36] and every day becoming more difficult of solution,--_Who was Junius_?

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

THE LITERARY FORGERS IN THE ANTIQUARIAN AGE.

The Eighteenth Century. James Macpherson. Ossian. Thomas Chatterton.

His Poems. The Verdict. Suicide. The Cause.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

The middle of the eighteenth century is marked as a period in which, while other forms of literature flourished, there arose a taste for historic research. Not content with the _actual_ in poetry and essay and pamphlet, there was a looking back to gather up a record of what England had done and had been in the past, and to connect, in logical relation, her former with her latter glory. It was, as we have seen, the era of her great historians, Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson, who, upon the chronicles, and the abundant but scattered material, endeavored to construct philosophic history; it was the day of her greatest moralists, Adam Smith, Tucker, and Paley, and of research in metaphysics and political economy. In this period Bishop Percy collected the ancient English ballads, and also historic poems from the Chinese and the Runic; in it Warton wrote his history of poetry. Dr. Johnson, self-reliant and laborious, was producing his dictionary, and giving limits and coherence to the language. Mind was on the alert, not only subsidizing the present, but looking curiously into the past. I have ventured to call it the antiquarian age. In 1751, the Antiquarian Society of London was firmly established; men began to collect armor and relics: in this period grew up such an antiquary as Mr. Oldbuck, who curiously sought out every relic of the Roman times,--armor, fosses, and _praetoria_,--and found, with much that was real, many a fraud or delusion. It was an age which, in the words of old Walter Charleton, "despised the present as an innovation, and slighted the future, like the madman who fell in love with Cleopatra."

There was manifestly a great temptation to adventurous men--with sufficient learning, and with no high notion of honor--to creep into the distant past; to enact, in mask and domino, its literary parts, and endeavor to deceive an age already enthusiastic for antiquity.

Thus, in the third century, if we may believe the Scotch and Irish traditions, there existed in Scotland a great chieftain named Fion na Gael--modernized into Fingal--who fought with Cuthullin and the Irish warriors, and whose exploits were, as late as the time of which we have been speaking, the theme of rude ballads among the highlands and islands of Scotland. To find and translate these ballads was charming and legitimate work for the antiquarian; to counterfeit them, and call them by the name of a bard of that period, was the great temptation to the literary forger. Of such a bard, too, there was a tradition. As brave as were the deeds of Fingal, their fame was not so great as that of his son Ossian, who struck a lofty harp as he recounted his father's glory. Could the real poems be found, they would verify the lines:

From the barred visor of antiquity Reflected shines the eternal light of Truth As from a mirror.

And if they could not be found, they might be counterfeited. This was undertaken by Doctor James Macpherson. Catering to the spirit of the age, he reproduced the songs of Ossian and the lofty deeds of Fingal.

Again, we have referred, in an early part of this work, to the almost barren expanse in the highway of English literature from the death of Chaucer to the middle of the sixteenth century; this barrenness was due, as we saw, to the turbulence of those years--civil war, misgovernment, a time of b.l.o.o.d.y action rather than peaceful authorship. Here, too, was a great temptation for some gifted but oblique mind to supply a partial literature for that bare period; a literature which, entirely fabricated, should yet bear all the characteristics of the history, language, customs, manners, and religion of that time.

This attempt was made by Thomas Chatterton, an obscure, ill-educated lad, without means or friends, but who had a master-mind, and would have accomplished some great feat in letters, had he not died, while still very young, by his own hand.

Let us examine these frauds in succession: we shall find them of double historic value, as literary efforts in one age designed to represent the literature of a former age.

JAMES MACPHERSON.--James Macpherson was born at Ruthven, a village in Inverness-shire, in 1738. Being intended for the ministry, he received a good preliminary education, and became early interested in the ancient Gaelic ballads and poetic fragments still floating about the Highlands of Scotland. By the aid of Mr. John Home, the author of _Douglas_, and his friends Blair and Ferguson, he published, in 1760, a small volume of sixty pages ent.i.tled, _Fragments of Ancient Poetry translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language_. They were heroic and harmonious, and were very well received: he had catered to the very spirit of the age. At first, there seemed to be no doubt as to their genuineness. It was known to tradition that this northern Fingal had fought with Severus and Caracalla, on the banks of the Carun, and that blind Ossian had poured forth a flood of song after the fight, and made the deeds immortal. And now these songs and deeds were echoing in English ears,--the thrumming of the harp which told of "the stream of those olden years, where they have so long hid, in their mist, their many-colored sides." (_Cathloda_, Duan III.)

So enthusiastically were these poems received, that a subscription was raised to enable Macpherson to travel in the Highlands, and collect more of this lingering and beautiful poetry.

Gray the poet, writing to William Mason, in 1760, says: "These poems are in everybody's mouth in the Highlands; have been handed down from father to son. We have therefore set on foot a subscription of a guinea or two apiece, in order to enable Mr. Macpherson to recover this poem (Fingal), and other fragments of antiquity."

FINGAL.--On his return, in 1762, he published _Fingal_, and, in the same volume, some smaller poems. This Fingal, which he calls "an ancient epic poem" in six duans or books, recounts the deliverance of Erin from the King of Lochlin. The next year, 1763, he published _Temora_. Among the earlier poems, in all which Fingal is the hero, are pa.s.sages of great beauty and touching pathos. Such, too, are found in _Carricthura and Carthon, the War of Inis-thona_, and the _Songs of Selma_. After reading these, we are pleasantly haunted with dim but beautiful pictures of that Northern coast where "the blue waters rolled in light," "when morning rose In the east;" and again with ghostly moonlit scenes, when "night came down on the sea, and Rotha's Bay received the ship." "The wan, cold moon rose in the east; sleep descended upon the youths; their blue helmets glitter to the beam; the fading fire decays; but sleep did not rest on the king; he rode in the midst of his arms, and slowly ascended the hill to behold the flame of Sarno's tower. The flame was dim and distant; the moon hid her red face in the east. A blast came from the mountain; on its wings was the spirit of Loda." In _Carthon_ occurs that beautiful address to the Sun, which we are fortunate in knowing, from other sources than Macpherson, is a tolerably correct translation of a real original. If we had that alone, it would be a revelation of the power of Ossian, and of the apt.i.tudes of a people who could enjoy it. It is not within our scope to quote from the veritable Ossian, or to expose the bombast and fustian, tumid diction and swelling sound of Macpherson, of which the poems contain so much.

As soon as a stir was made touching the authenticity of the poems, a number of champions sprang up on both sides: among those who favored Macpherson, was Dr. Hugh Blair, who wrote the critical dissertation usually prefixed to the editions of Ossian, and who compares him favorably to Homer. First among the incredulous, as might be expected, was Dr.

Samuel Johnson, who, in his _Journey to the Hebrides_, lashes Macpherson for his imposture, and his insolence in refusing to show the original.

Johnson was threatened by Macpherson with a beating, and he answered: "I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian ... I thought your book an imposture; I think it an imposture still ... Your rage I defy ... You may print this if you will."

Proofs of the imposture were little by little discovered by the critics.

There were some real fragments in his first volume; but even these he had altered, and made symmetrical, so as to disguise their original character.

Ossian would not have known them. As for Fingal, in its six duans, with captional arguments, it was made up from a few fragments, and no such poem ever existed. It was Macpherson's from beginning to end.

The final establishment of the forgery was not simply by recourse to scholars versed in the Celtic tongues, but the Highland Society appointed a committee in 1767, whose duty it was to send to the Highland pastors a circular, inquiring whether they had heard in the original the poems of Ossian, said to be translated by Macpherson; if so, where and by whom they had been written out or repeated: whether similar fragments still existed, and whether there were persons living who could repeat them; whether, to their knowledge, Macpherson had obtained such poems in the Highlands; and for any information concerning the personality of Fingal and Ossian.

CRITICISM.--The result was as follows: Certain Ossianic poems did exist, and some ma.n.u.scripts of ancient ballads and bardic songs. A few of these had formed the foundation of Macpherson's so-called translations of the earlier pieces; but he had altered and added to them, and joined them with his own fancies in an arbitrary manner.

_Fingal_ and _Temora_ were also made out of a few fragments; but in their epic and connected form not only did not exist, but lack the bardic character and construction entirely.

Now that the critics had the direction of the chase made known, they discovered that Macpherson had taken his imagery from the Bible, of which Ossian was ignorant; from cla.s.sic authors, of whom he had never heard; and from modern sources down to his own day.

Then Macpherson's Ossian--which had been read with avidity and translated into many languages, while it was considered an antique gem only reset in English--fell into disrepute, and was unduly despised when known to be a forgery.

It is difficult to conceive why he did not produce the work as his own, with a true story of its foundation: it is not so difficult to understand why, when he was detected, he persisted in the falsehood. For what it really is, it must be partially praised; and it will remain not only as a literary curiosity, but as a work of unequal but real merit. It was greatly admired by Napoleon and Madame de Stael, and, in endeavoring to consign it to oblivion, the critics are greatly in the wrong.

Macpherson resented any allusion to the forgery, and any leading question concerning it. He refused, at first, to produce the originals; and when he did say where they might be found, the world had decided so strongly against him, that there was no curiosity to examine them. He at last maintained a sullen silence; and, dying suddenly, in 1796, left no papers which throw light upon the controversy. The subject is, however, still agitated. Later writers have endeavored to reverse the decision of his age, without, however, any decided success. For much information concerning the Highland poetry, the reader is referred to _A Summer in Skye_, by Alexander Smith.

OTHER WORKS.--His other princ.i.p.al work was a _Translation of the Iliad of Homer_ in the Ossianic style, which was received with execration and contempt. He also wrote _A History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover_, which Fox--who was, however, prejudiced--declared to be full of impudent falsehoods.

Of his career little more need be said: he was too shrewd a man to need sympathy; he took care of himself. He was successful in his pecuniary schemes; as agent of the Nabob of Arcot, he had a seat in parliament for ten years, and was quite unconcerned what the world thought of his literary performances. He had achieved notoriety, and enjoyed it.

But, unfortunately, his forgery did fatal injury by its example; it inspired Chatterton, the precocious boy, to make another attempt on public credulity. It opened a seductive path for one who, inspired by the adventure and warned by the causes of exposure, might make a better forgery, escape detection, and gain great praise in the antiquarian world.

THOMAS CHATTERTON.--With this name, we accost the most wonderful story of its kind in any literature; so strange, indeed, that we never take it up without trying to discover some new meaning in it. We hope, against hope, that the forgery is not proved.

Chatterton was born in Bristol, on the Avon, in 1752, of poor parents, but early gave signs of remarkable genius, combined with a prurient ambition.

A friend who wished to present him with an earthen-ware cup, asked him what device he would have upon it. "Paint me," he answered, "an angel with wings and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world." He learned his alphabet from an old music-book; at eight years of age he was sent to a charity-school, and he spent his little pocket-money at a circulating library, the books of which he literally devoured.

At the early age of eleven he wrote a piece of poetry, and published it in the _Bristol Journal_ of January 8, 1763; it was ent.i.tled _On the last Epiphany, or Christ coming to Judgment_, and the next year, probably, a _Hymn to Christmas-day_, of which the following lines will give an idea:

How shall we celebrate his name, Who groaned beneath a life of shame, In all afflictions tried?

The soul is raptured to conceive A truth which being must believe; The G.o.d eternal died.

My soul, exert thy powers, adore; Upon Devotion's plumage soar To celebrate the day.

The G.o.d from whom creation sprung Shall animate my grateful tongue, From Him I'll catch the lay.

Some member of the Chatterton family had, for one hundred and fifty years, held the post of s.e.xton in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe at Bristol; and at the time of which we write his uncle was s.e.xton. In the muniment-room of the church were several coffers, containing old papers and parchments in black letter, some of which were supposed to be of value. The chests were examined by order of the vestry; the valuable papers were removed, and of the rest, as perquisites of the s.e.xton, some fell into the hands of Chatterton's father. The boy, who had been, upon leaving school, articled to an attorney, and had thus become familiar with the old English text, caught sight of these, and seemed then to have first formed the plan of turning them to account, as _The Rowlie papers_.