Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges Part 47

Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of peers and Members of Parliament in Anne's and George's time? Were they all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the watch? How was it that the young gentlemen from the University got such a prodigious number of places? A lad composed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king a.s.sailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene complimented, or the reverse; and the party in power was presently to provide for the young poet; and a commissionership, or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an emba.s.sy, or a clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A wonderful fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby's. What have men of letters got in _our_ time? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time or empire-but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many others, who got public employment, and pretty little pickings out of the public purse.(57) The wits of whose names we shall treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the king's coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter-day coming round for them.

They all began at school or college in the regular way, producing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public events, battles, sieges, court marriages and deaths, in which the G.o.ds of Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invocations, according to the fashion of the time in France and in England. "Aid us Mars, Bacchus, Apollo," cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough.

"_Accourez, chastes nymphes de Parna.s.se_," says Boileau, celebrating the Grand Monarch. "_Des sons que ma lyre enfante_, marquez-en bien la cadence, _et vous, vents, faites silence! je vais parler de __ Louis!_"

Schoolboys' themes and foundation exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country newspaper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a n.o.bleman? In the past century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves at these queer compositions; and some got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses.

William Congreve's(58) Pindaric Odes are still to be found in _Johnson's Poets_, that now unfrequented poets' corner, in which so many forgotten bigwigs have a niche-but though he was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve's wit and humour which first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded, that his first play, the _Old Bachelor_, brought our author to the notice of that great patron of English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax, who being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity, instantly made him one of the Commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe-office, and likewise a post in the Custom-house of the value of 600_l._

A commissionership of hackney-coaches-a post in the Custom-house-a place in the Pipe-office, and all for writing a comedy! Doesn't it sound like a fable, that place in the Pipe-office?(59) _Ah, l'heureux temps que celui de ces fables!_ Men of letters there still be: but I doubt whether any Pipe-offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago.

Words, like men, pa.s.s current for a while with the public, and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places in society; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers at school, and will permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary "swell" of his age. In my copy of _Johnson's Lives_ Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. "I am the great Mr.

Congreve," he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve.(60) From the beginning of his career until the end everybody admired him. Having got his education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift, he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to the law; but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. Dryden(61) declared that he was equal to Shakespeare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him, "Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review the _Aeneis_, and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavoured to correct."

The "excellent young man" was but three- or four-and-twenty when the great Dryden thus spoke of him: the greatest literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a school of wits, who daily gathered round his chair and tobacco-pipe at Will's. Pope dedicated his _Iliad_ to him;(62) Swift, Addison, Steele, all acknowledge Congreve's rank, and lavish compliments upon him. Voltaire went to wait upon him as on one of the Representatives of Literature-and the man who scarce praises any other living person, who flung abuse at Pope, and Swift, and Steele, and Addison-the Grub Street Timon, old John Dennis,(63) was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve; and said, that when he retired from the stage, Comedy went with him.

Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in the drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses; as much beloved in the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle,(64) the heroine of all his plays, the favourite of all the town of her day-and the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, Marlborough's daughter, had such an admiration of him, that when he died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him,(65) and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed just as the great Congreve's gouty feet were dressed in his great lifetime. He saved some money by his Pipe-office, and his Custom-house office, and his Hackney-coach office, and n.o.bly left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it,(66) but to the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, who didn't.(67)

How can I introduce to you that merry and shameless Comic Muse who won him such a reputation? Nell Gwynn's servant fought the other footman for having called his mistress a bad name; and in like manner, and with pretty like epithets, Jeremy Collier attacked that G.o.dless, reckless Jezebel, the English comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn's man's fellow-servants called Nell Gwynn's man's mistress. The servants of the theatre, Dryden, Congreve,(68) and others, defended themselves with the same success, and for the same cause which set Nell's lackey fighting. She was a disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic Muse. She came over from the Continent with Charles (who chose many more of his female friends there) at the Restoration-a wild, dishevelled Las, with eyes bright with wit and wine-a saucy court-favourite that sat at the king's knees, and laughed in his face, and when she showed her bold cheeks at her chariot-window, had some of the n.o.blest and most famous people of the land bowing round her wheel. She was kind and popular enough, that daring Comedy, that audacious poor Nell-she was gay and generous, kind, frank, as such people can afford to be: and the men who lived with her and laughed with her, took her pay and drank her wine, turned out when the Puritans hooted her, to fight and defend her. But the jade was indefensible, and it is pretty certain her servants knew it.

There is life and death going on in everything: truth and lies always at battle. Pleasure is always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is always crying Psha, and sneering. A man in life, a humourist in writing about life, sways over to one principle or the other, and laughs with the reverence for right and the love of truth in his heart, or laughs at these from the other side. Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious business to Harlequin? I have read two or three of Congreve's plays over before speaking of him; and my feelings were rather like those, which I daresay most of us here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sall.u.s.t's house and the relics of an orgy, a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast of a dancing girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester, a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone tw.a.n.gs his moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve muse is dead, and her song choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once revelled in its mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse over the frolic and daring, the wit, scorn, pa.s.sion, hope, desire, with which that empty bowl once fermented. We think of the glances that allured, the tears that melted, of the bright eyes that shone in those vacant sockets; and of lips whispering love, and cheeks dimpling with smiles, that once covered yon ghastly yellow framework. They used to call those teeth pearls once. See! there's the cup she drank from, the gold chain she wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge for her cheeks, her looking-gla.s.s, and the harp she used to dance to. Instead of a feast we find a gravestone, and in place of a mistress, a few bones!

Reading in these plays now, is like shutting your ears and looking at people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling and retreating, the _cavalier seul_ advancing upon those ladies-those ladies and men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, after which everybody bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we can't understand that comic dance of the last century-its strange gravity and gaiety, its decorum or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlike life; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too.

I'm afraid it's a heathen mystery, symbolizing a Pagan doctrine; protesting, as the Pompeians very likely were, a.s.sembled at their theatre and laughing at their games-as Sall.u.s.t and his friends, and their mistresses protested-crowned with flowers, with cups in their hands, against the new, hard, ascetic, pleasure-hating doctrine, whose gaunt disciples, lately pa.s.sed over from the Asian sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, were for breaking the fair images of Venus, and flinging the altars of Bacchus down.

I fancy poor Congreve's theatre is a temple of Pagan delights, and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worship, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites from temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for having the young wife: in the ballad, when the poet bid his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying: in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, who is opportunely asleep; and when seduced by the invitations of the rosy youth she comes forward to the footlights, and they perform on each other's tiptoes that _pas_ which you all know, and which is only interrupted by old grandpapa awaking from his doze at the pasteboard chalet (whither he returns to take another nap in case the young people get an encore): when Harlequin, splendid in youth, strength, and agility, arrayed in gold and a thousand colours, springs over the heads of countless perils, leaps down the throat of bewildered giants, and, dauntless and splendid, dances danger down: when Mr. Punch, that G.o.dless old rebel, breaks every law and laughs at it with odious triumph, outwits his lawyer, bullies the beadle, knocks his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman-don't you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch's puppet-show-the Pagan protest? Doesn't it seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment? Look how the lovers walk and hold each other's hands and whisper! Sings the chorus-"There is nothing like love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty of your spring-time. Look! how old age tries to meddle with merry sport! Beat him with his own crutch, the wrinkled old dotard! There is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty, there is nothing like strength.

Strength and valour win beauty and youth. Be brave and conquer. Be young and happy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! Would you know the _segreto per esser felice_? Here it is, in a smiling mistress and a cup of Falernian." As the boy tosses the cup and sings his song-hark! what is that chaunt coming nearer and nearer? What is that dirge which _will_ disturb us? The lights of the festival burn dim-the cheeks turn pale-the voice quavers-and the cup drops on the floor. Who's there? Death and Fate are at the gate, and they _will_ come in.

Congreve's comic feast flares with lights, and round the table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets and attendants as dissolute as their mistresses-perhaps the very worst company in the world. There doesn't seem to be a pretence of morals. At the head of the table sits Mirabel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited on by English imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling is to be irresistible, and to conquer everywhere. Like the heroes of the chivalry story, whose long-winded loves and combats they were sending out of fashion, they are always splendid and triumphant-overcome all dangers, vanquish all enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands, usurers are the foes these champions contend with. They are merciless in old age, invariably, and an old man plays the part in the dramas, which the wicked enchanter or the great blundering giant performs in the chivalry tales, who threatens and grumbles and resists-a huge stupid obstacle always overcome by the knight. It is an old man with a money-box: Sir Belmour his son or nephew spends his money and laughs at him. It is an old man with a young wife whom he locks up: Sir Mirabel robs him of his wife, trips up his gouty old heels and leaves the old hunx-the old fool, what business has he to h.o.a.rd his money, or to lock up blushing eighteen?

Money is for youth, love is for youth; away with the old people. When Millamant is sixty, having of course divorced the first Lady Millamant, and married his friend Doricourt's granddaughter out of the nursery-it will be his turn; and young Belmour will make a fool of him. All this pretty morality you have in the comedies of William Congreve, Esq. They are full of wit. Such manners as he observes, he observes with great humour; but ah! it's a weary feast that banquet of wit where no love is.

It palls very soon; sad indigestions follow it and lonely blank headaches in the morning.

I can't pretend to quote scenes from the splendid Congreve's plays(69)-which are undeniably bright, witty, and daring-any more than I could ask you to hear the dialogue of a witty bargeman and a brilliant fishwoman exchanging compliments at Billingsgate; but some of his verses-they were amongst the most famous lyrics of the time, and p.r.o.nounced equal to Horace by his contemporaries-may give an idea of his power, of his grace, of his daring manner, his magnificence in compliment, and his polished sarcasm. He writes as if he was so accustomed to conquer, that he has a poor opinion of his victims. Nothing's new except their faces, says he: "every woman is the same." He says this in his first comedy, which he wrote languidly(70) in illness, when he was an "excellent young man". Richelieu at eighty could have hardly said a more excellent thing.

When he advances to make one of his conquests it is with a splendid gallantry, in full uniform and with the fiddles playing, like Grammont's French dandies attacking the breach of Lerida.

"Cease, cease to ask her name," he writes of a young lady at the Wells at Tunbridge, whom he salutes with a magnificent compliment-

Cease, cease to ask her name, The crowned Muse's n.o.blest theme, Whose glory by immortal fame Shall only sounded be.

But if you long to know, Then look round yonder dazzling row, Who most does like an angel show You may be sure 'tis she.

Here are lines about another beauty, who perhaps was not so well pleased at the poet's manner of celebrating her-

When Lesbia first I saw, so heavenly fair, With eyes so bright and with that awful air, I thought my heart would durst so high aspire As bold as his who s.n.a.t.c.hed celestial fire.

But soon as e'er the beauteous idiot spoke, Forth from her coral lips such folly broke; Like balm the trickling nonsense heal'd my wound, And what her eyes enthralled, her tongue unbound.

Amoret is a cleverer woman than the lovely Lesbia, but the poet does not seem to respect one much more than the other; and describes both with exquisite satirical humour-

Fair Amoret is gone astray, Pursue and seek her every lover; I'll tell the signs by which you may The wandering shepherdess discover.

Coquet and coy at once her air, Both studied, though both seem neglected; Careless she is with artful care, Affecting to be unaffected.

With skill her eyes dart every glance, Yet change so soon you'd ne'er suspect them; For she'd persuade they wound by chance, Though certain aim and art direct them.

She likes herself, yet others hates For that which in herself she prizes; And, while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing which she despises.

What could Amoret have done to bring down such shafts of ridicule upon her? Could she have resisted the irresistible Mr. Congreve? Could anybody?

Could Sabina, when she woke and heard such a bard singing under her window. See, he writes-

See! see, she wakes-Sabina wakes!

And now the sun begins to rise: Less glorious is the morn, that breaks From his bright beams, than her fair eyes.

With light united day they give; But different fates ere night fulfil: How many by his warmth will live!

How many will her coldness kill!

Are you melted? Don't you think him a divine man? If not touched by the brilliant Sabina, hear the devout Selinda:-

Pious Selinda goes to prayers, If I but ask her favour; And yet the silly fool's in tears, If she believes I'll leave her: Would I were free from this restraint, Or else had hopes to win her: Would she could make of me a saint, Or I of her a sinner!

What a conquering air there is about these! What an irresistible Mr.

Congreve it is! Sinner! of course he will be a sinner, the delightful rascal! Win her; of course he will win her, the victorious rogue! He knows he will: he must-with such a grace, with such a fashion, with such a splendid embroidered suit-you see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously turned out, pa.s.sing a fair jewelled hand through his dishevelled periwig, and delivering a killing ogle along with his scented billet. And Sabina?

What a comparison that is between the nymph and the sun! The sun gives Sabina the _pas_, and does not venture to rise before her ladyship: the morn's _bright beams_ are less glorious than her _fair eyes_: but before night everybody will be frozen by her glances: everybody but one lucky rogue who shall be nameless: Louis Quatorze in all his glory is hardly more splendid than our Phoebus Apollo of the Mall and Spring Garden.(71)

When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve, the latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation, and in this perhaps the great Congreve was not far wrong.(72) A touch of Steele's tenderness is worth all his finery-a flash of Swift's lightning-a beam of Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry play-house taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he was undoubtedly a pretty fellow.(73)

We have seen in Swift a humorous philosopher, whose truth frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We have had in Congreve a humorous observer of another school, to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and whose ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) when the time comes. We come now to a humour that flows from quite a different heart and spirit-a wit that makes us laugh and leaves us good and happy; to one of the kindest benefactors that society has ever had, and I believe you have divined already that I am about to mention Addison's honoured name.

From reading over his writings, and the biographies which we have of him, amongst which the famous article in the _Edinburgh Review_(74) may be cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer and moralist of the last age, raised by the love and the marvellous skill and genius of one of the most ill.u.s.trious artists of our own; looking at that calm, fair face, and clear countenance-those chiselled features pure and cold, I can't but fancy that this great man, in this respect, like him of whom we spoke in the last lecture, was also one of the lonely ones of the world. Such men have very few equals, and they don't herd with those. It is in the nature of such lords of intellect to be solitary-they are in the world but not of it; and our minor struggles, brawls, successes, pa.s.s under them.

Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fort.i.tude not tried beyond easy endurance, his affections not much used, for his books were his family, and his society was in public; admirably wiser, wittier, calmer, and more instructed than almost every man with whom he met, how could Addison suffer, desire, admire, feel much? I may expect a child to admire me for being taller or writing more cleverly than she; but how can I ask my superior to say that I am a wonder when he knows better than I? In Addison's days you could scarcely show him a literary performance, a sermon, or a poem, or a piece of literary criticism, but he felt he could do better. His justice must have made him indifferent. He didn't praise, because he measured his compeers by a higher standard than common people have.(75) How was he who was so tall to look up to any but the loftiest genius? He must have stooped to put himself on a level with most men. By that profusion of graciousness and smiles, with which Goethe or Scott, for instance, greeted almost every literary beginner, every small literary adventurer who came to his court and went away charmed from the great king's audience, and cuddling to his heart the compliment which his literary majesty had paid him-each of the two good-natured potentates of letters brought their star and ribbon into discredit. Everybody had his majesty's orders. Everybody had his Majesty's cheap portrait, on a box surrounded with diamonds worth twopence a-piece. A very great and just and wise man ought not to praise indiscriminately, but give his idea of the truth. Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Pinkethman: Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Doggett the actor, whose benefit is coming off that night: Addison praises Don Saltero: Addison praises Milton with all his heart, bends his knee and frankly pays homage to that imperial genius.(76) But between those degrees of his men his praise is very scanty. I don't think the great Mr. Addison liked young Mr. Pope, the Papist, much; I don't think he abused him. But when Mr. Addison's men abused Mr. Pope, I don't think Addison took his pipe out of his mouth to contradict them.(77)

Addison's father was a clergyman of good repute in Wiltshire, and rose in the Church.(78) His famous son never lost his clerical training and scholastic gravity, and was called "a parson in a tye-wig"(79) in London afterwards at a time when tye-wigs were only worn by the laity, and the fathers of theology did not think it decent to appear except in a full bottom. Having been at school at Salisbury, and the Charterhouse, in 1687, when he was fifteen years old he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where he speedily began to distinguish himself by the making of Latin verses. The beautiful and fanciful poem of _The Pigmies and the Cranes_ is still read by lovers of that sort of exercise; and verses are extant in honour of King William, by which it appears that it was the loyal youth's custom to toast that sovereign in b.u.mpers of purple Lyaeus; and many more works are in the collection, including one on the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which was so good that Montague got him a pension of 300_l._ a year, on which Addison set out on his travels.

During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at his fingers' ends when he travelled in Italy.(80) His patron went out of office, and his pension was unpaid: and hearing that this great scholar, now eminent and known to the _literati_ of Europe (the great Boileau,(81) upon perusal of Mr.

Addison's elegant hexameters, was first made aware that England was not altogether a barbarous nation)-hearing that the celebrated Mr. Addison, of Oxford, proposed to travel as governor to a young gentleman on the grand tour, the great Duke of Somerset proposed to Mr. Addison to accompany his son, Lord Hartford.

Mr. Addison was delighted to be of use to his grace and his lordship, his grace's son, and expressed himself ready to set forth.

His grace the Duke of Somerset now announced to one of the most famous scholars of Oxford and Europe that it was his gracious intention to allow my Lord Hartford's tutor one hundred guineas per annum. Mr. Addison wrote back that his services were his grace's, but he by no means found his account in the recompense for them. The negotiation was broken off. They parted with a profusion of _congees_ on one side and the other.

Addison remained abroad for some time, living in the best society of Europe. How could he do otherwise? He must have been one of the finest gentlemen the world ever saw: at all moments of life serene and courteous, cheerful and calm.(82) He could scarcely ever have had a degrading thought. He might have omitted a virtue or two, or many, but could not have had many faults committed for which he need blush or turn pale. When warmed into confidence, his conversation appears to have been so delightful that the greatest wits sat wrapt and charmed to listen to him.