The Age of Pope Part 17

Thus his essay on the _Freedom of Wit and Humour_ is chiefly written in defence of raillery in the discussion of serious subjects, when managed 'with good breeding,' and for 'a liberty in decent language to question everything' amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as the antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and perfection of nature, and considers that evil only exists in our ignorance. Mr. Leslie Stephen, whose impartiality in estimating an author like Shaftesbury will not be questioned, calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer, whose rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality which redeems him from contempt.'

Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place in the history of literature and of philosophy is an important one. Seed springs up quickly when the soil is prepared for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief in the perfectibility of human nature through the aid of culture, appealed, as Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury men have a natural instinct for virtue, and the sense of what is beautiful enables the virtuoso to reject what is evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a man once see that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or the hope of reward. He found salvation for the world in a cultivated taste, but had no gospel for the men whose tastes were not cultivated.

Voltaire sneered at the optimism of the _Essay on Man_ and of the _Characteristics_. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who made the fable fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke a prey to vexation and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known; mis-shapen in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always a burden to himself, and hara.s.sed by a hundred enemies to his very last moment.'

[Sidenote: Bernard de Mandeville (1670?-1733).]

Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by his _Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits_ (1723). The book opens with a poem in doggrel verse called _The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest_, the purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous, they ceased to be successful. He closes with the moral that

'To enjoy the world's conveniences, Be famed in war, yet live in ease, Without great vices is a vain Utopia, seated in the brain.

Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live, While we the benefits receive.'

In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at least claim the credit of being outspoken, and he does not scruple to say that modesty is a sham and that what seems like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I often,' he says, 'compare the virtues of good men to your large china jars; they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them, and you will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'

While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he regards it as essential to the well-being of society. The degradation of the race excites his amus.e.m.e.nt, and the fact that he cannot see a way of escape from it, causes no regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of a man who believed neither in present nor future good 'Two systems,' he says, 'cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and mine. His notions, I confess, are generous and refined. They are a high compliment to human kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of inspiring us with the most n.o.ble sentiments concerning the dignity of our exalted nature. What pity it is that they are not true.'

The author of the _Fable of the Bees_ writes coa.r.s.ely for coa.r.s.e readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory merit the infamy generally awarded to them.[57] The book was attacked by Warburton and Law, and with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the second Dialogue of _Alciphron_. But the bishop, to use a homely phrase, does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of arguing that virtue and goodness are realities, while evil, being unreal and antagonistic to man's nature, is an enemy to be fought against and conquered, Berkeley takes a lower ground, and is content to show in his reply to Mandeville that virtue is more profitable to a state than vice. He annihilates many of Mandeville's arguments in a masterly style, but it was left to the author of the _Serious Call_ to strike at the root of Mandeville's fallacy, and to show how the seat of virtue, if I may apply Hooker's n.o.ble words with regard to law, 'is the bosom of G.o.d, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.'

[Sidenote: Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751).]

The life of Henry St. John was a ma.s.s of contradictions. He was a brilliant politician who affected to be a wise statesman, a traitor to his country while pretending to be a patriot, an orator whose lips distilled honied phrases which his actions belied, a man of insatiable ambition who masked as a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a faithless friend, and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature and a large faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the meanest vices. A Secretary of State at thirty-two, no man probably ever entered upon public life with brighter prospects, and the secret of all his failures was due to the want of character. 'Few people,' says Lord Hervey, 'ever believed him without being deceived or trusted him without being betrayed; he was one to whom prosperity was no advantage, and adversity no instruction.'

It is said that his genius as an orator was of a high order and this we can believe the more readily since the style of his works is distinctly oratorical. In speech so much depends upon voice and manner that it is possible for a shallow thinker to be an extremely attractive speaker; Bolingbroke's speeches have not been preserved, and we may therefore continue, if we please, to hold with Pitt, that they are the most desirable of all the lost fragments of literature; his writings, far more showy than solid, do not convey a lofty impression of intellectual power. Obvious truths and well-worn truisms are uttered in high-sounding words, but in no department of thought can it be said that Bolingbroke breaks new ground. Much that he wrote was for the day and died with it, and if his more ambitious efforts, written with an eye to posterity, cannot justly be described as unreadable, they contain comparatively little which makes them worthy to be read.

His defence of his conduct in _A Letter to Sir William Windham_, written in 1717, but not published until after the author's death, though worthless as a defence, is a fine piece of special pleading in Bolingbroke's best style. It could deceive no one acquainted with the part played by the author before the death of Queen Anne, and afterwards in exile, but it afforded him an opportunity for attacking his former colleague, Oxford, with all the weapons available by an unscrupulous and powerful a.s.sailant. He declares in this letter that he preferred exile rather than to make common cause with the man whom he abhorred. Writing of Oxford as a colleague in the government of the country he observes in a skilfully turned pa.s.sage:

'The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government; and the pilot and the minister are in similar circ.u.mstances. It seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course, and they both arrive at their port by means which frequently seem to carry them from it. But as the work advances the conduct of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and when it is once consummated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he could have done the same. But on the other hand the man who proposes no such object, who subst.i.tutes artifice in the place of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by both, who begins every day something new, and carries nothing on to perfection, may impose awhile on the world: but a little sooner or a little later the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther than living from day to day. Which of these pictures resembles Oxford most you will determine.'

It has been said with somewhat daring exaggeration, that Burke never produced anything n.o.bler than this pa.s.sage, and the writer regards the whole composition of the _Letter to Windham_ as almost faultless.[58]

That it is Bolingbroke's masterpiece may be readily admitted, but in this _Letter_, as elsewhere, the merits of Bolingbroke's style are those of the popular orator who conceals repet.i.tions, contradictory statements, and emptiness of thought under a dazzling display of rhetoric. That he had splendid gifts and exhibited an extraordinary ingenuity of resource was acknowledged by friend and foe. At one time taking a distinguished part in European affairs, at another artfully intriguing, sometimes posing as a moralist and philosopher while a slave to debauchery, and at other times affecting a love of retirement while a slave to ambition--Bolingbroke acted a part which made him one of the most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew how to fascinate men of greater genius than he possessed, and how to guide men intellectually his superiors. The witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke is now comparatively despised, as a man of letters he is generally regarded as a brilliant pretender, and if his name survives in the history of literature it is chiefly due to the friendship of Pope. Unfortunately the memory of this celebrated friendship is a.s.sociated with one of the most ign.o.ble acts of Bolingbroke's life. When Pope lay dying, Bolingbroke wept over his friend exclaiming, 'O great G.o.d, what is man!'

and Spence relates that upon telling his lordship how Pope whenever he was sensible said something kindly of his friends as if his humanity outlasted his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, '"It has so! I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than"--sinking his head and losing himself in tears.' His sorrow was speedily changed to anger. Pope, no doubt in admiration of his friend's genius, had privately printed 1,500 copies of his _Patriot King_, one of Bolingbroke's ablest but most sophistical works. The philosopher had only allowed a few copies to be printed for his friends, and the discovery of Pope's conduct roused his indignation. In 1749 he put a corrected copy of the work into Mallet's hands for publication with an advertis.e.m.e.nt in which Pope is treated with contempt. He had not the courage to a.s.sail the memory of his friend openly, and hired an unprincipled man to do it. The poet had acted trickily, after his wonted habit, though in all likelihood with the design of doing Bolingbroke a service. It was a fault to be forgiven by a friend, but Bolingbroke, after nursing his anger for five years, gave vent to it in this contemptible and underhand way. He died two years afterwards, and in 1754 the posthumous publication of Bolingbroke's _Philosophical Writings_ by Mallet, aroused a storm of indignation in the country, which his debauchery and political immorality had failed to excite.

Johnson's saying on the occasion is well-known:

'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.'

The most noteworthy estimate of Bolingbroke's character made in our day comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,[59] who describes as follows his position as a man of letters. 'He handled the great and difficult instrument of written language with such freedom and copiousness, such vivacity and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and falsetto, he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only below the three or four highest masters of English prose. Yet of all the characters in our history Bolingbroke must be p.r.o.nounced to be most of a charlatan; of all the writing in our literature, his is the hollowest, the flashiest, the most insincere.' This is true. By his 'execution,' consummate though it be, he is unable to conceal his insincerity and shallowness.

'Bolingbroke,' said Lord Shelburne, was 'all surface,' and in that sentence his character is written.

'People seem to think,' said Carlyle, 'that a style can be put off or put on, not like a skin, but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it,--exact type of the nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death?'

Two years after the publication of the _Philosophical Writings_, Edmund Burke, then a young man of twenty-four, published _A Vindication of Natural Society_, in a _Letter to Lord----. By a late n.o.ble writer_, in which Lord Bolingbroke's style is imitated, and his arguments against revealed religion applied to exhibit 'the miseries and evils arising to mankind from every species of Artificial Society.' So close is the imitation of Bolingbroke's style and mode of argument in this piece of irony, that it was for a time believed to be a genuine production, and Mallet found it necessary to disavow it publicly.

Of Bolingbroke's Works, the _Dissertation on Parties_ appeared in 1735.

_Letters on Patriotism_, and _Idea of a Patriot King_, in 1749; _Letters on the Study of History_, in 1752; _Letter to Sir W. Windham_, 1753, and the _Philosophical Writings_, as already stated, in 1754.

Chronologically, therefore, he would belong to the Handbook which deals with the latter half of the century, were it not that his most important works were posthumous, and that Bolingbroke's intimate relations with Pope place him among the most conspicuous figures belonging to Pope's age.

[Sidenote: George Berkeley (1685-1753).]

Among the men of high intellect who flourished in the age of Pope, George Berkeley is one of the most distinguished. Born in 1685 of poor parents, in a cottage near Dysert Castle, in Kilkenny, he went up to Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700, and there, first as student, and afterwards as tutor, he remained for thirteen years. In the course of them he was ordained, and gained a fellowship. In 1709 he published his _Essay on Vision_, and in the following year the _Principles of Human Knowledge_, works which thus early made him famous as a philosopher, and a puzzle to many who failed to understand his 'new principle' with regard to the existence of matter.

In 1712 Berkeley visited England, probably for the first time, and was introduced to the London wits. Already in these youthful days there was in him much of that magic power which some men exercise unconsciously and irresistibly. Swift felt the spell, called Berkeley a great philosopher, and spoke of him to all the Ministers; while Atterbury, upon being asked what he thought of him, exclaimed: 'So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels till I saw this gentleman.' An incident occurred, it is conjectured during the course of this visit, which led to memorable results. He dined once with Swift at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, and met her daughter Hester. Many years later, _Vanessa_ destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour, and left half of her property to Berkeley. While in London the future bishop was warmly welcomed by Steele, and wrote several essays for him in the _Guardian_ against the Freethinkers, and especially against Anthony Collins (1676-1729), whose arguments in his _Discourse on Freethinking_ (1713) are ridiculed in the _Scriblerus Memoirs_. Collins, it may be observed here, wrote a treatise several years later on the _Grounds of the Christian Religion_ (1724) which called forth thirty-five answers.

During this visit Berkeley also published one of his most original works, _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_, a book marked by that consummate beauty of style for which he is distinguished.

In November, 1713, the Earl of Peterborough was sent on an emba.s.sage to the King of Sicily, and on Swift's recommendation took Berkeley with him as his chaplain and secretary. Ten months were spent on this occasion in France and Italy. Another continental tour followed, in the course of which Berkeley wrote to Arbuthnot of his ascent of Vesuvius, and to Pope of his life at Naples. Five years were spent abroad, and he returned to England to learn of the failure of the South Sea Scheme. In his _Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (1721), the main argument is the obvious one, that national salvation is only to be secured by individual uprightness. He deplores 'the trifling vanity of apparel'

which we have learned from France, advocates the revival of sumptuary laws, considers that we are 'doomed to be undone' by luxury, and by the want of public spirit, and declares that 'neither Venice nor Paris, nor any other town in any part of the world ever knew such an expensive ruinous folly as our masquerade.'

In the summer of this year he was again in London, and Pope asked him to spend a week in his 'Tusculum.' One promotion followed another until Berkeley became Dean of Derry, with an income of from 1,500 to 2,000 a year. He did not hold this dignified position long, having conceived the magnificent but Utopian idea of founding a Missionary College in the Bermudas--the 'Summer Isles' celebrated in the verse of Waller and of Marvell--for the conversion of America.

And now Berkeley exhibited his amazing power of influencing other men.

The members of the Scriblerus Club laughed at the Dean's project, but so powerful was his eloquence, that 'those who came to scoff remained to subscribe.' Moreover, with Sir Robert Walpole as Prime Minister, he actually obtained a grant from the State of 20,000 in order to carry out the project, the king gave a charter, and to crown all, Sir Robert put his own name down for 200 on the list of subscribers. 'The scheme,'

says Mr. Balfour, 'seems now so impracticable that we may well wonder how any single person, let alone the representatives of a whole nation, could be found to support it. In order that religion and learning might flourish in America, the seeds of them were to be cast in some rocky islets severed from America by nearly six hundred miles of stormy ocean.

In order that the inhabitants of the mainland and of the West Indian colonies might equally benefit by the new university, it was to be placed in such a position that neither could conveniently reach it.'[60]

Berkeley, who had recently married, left England for Rhode Island, where he stayed for about three years and wrote _Alciphron_ (1732), in which he attacks the freethinkers under the t.i.tle of _Minute Philosophers_.

Then on learning from Walpole that the promised money 'would most undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits public convenience' which would be never, he returned to England, and through the Queen's influence was made Bishop of Cloyne. In that diocese eighteen years of his life were spent. In the course of them he published the _Querist_ (1735-1737), an _Essay on the Social State of Ireland_ (1744), and, in the same year, _Siris_, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in _The Fleece_, became instantly popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all the women read it, and understand it no more than if it were intelligible.' Editions of _Siris_ followed each other in rapid succession, and it was translated into French and German. The work is that of an enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour calls 'a certain quality of moral elevation and speculative diffidence alien both to the literature and the life of the eighteenth century.' Berkeley had himself the profoundest faith in the panacea which he advocated. 'From my representing tar water,' he writes, 'as good for so many things, some, perhaps, many conclude it is good for nothing. But charity obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, howsoever it may be taken. Men may conjecture and object as they please, but I appeal to time and experience.'

In his latter days Berkeley, feeling his health failing, desired to resign his bishopric and retire to Oxford, and there--while still bishop of Cloyne, for the king would not accept his resignation--the philosopher, who was blest, to use Shakespeare's fine epithet, with a 'tender-hefted nature,' pa.s.sed away in 1753, leaving behind him one of the most fragrant of memories.

That Berkeley was a philosophical thinker from his earliest manhood is evident from his _Commonplace Book_ published for the first time in the Clarendon Press edition of his works (vol. iv., pp. 419-502).

He delighted in recondite thought as much as most young men delight in action, and as a philosopher he is said to have commenced his studies with Locke, whose famous _Essay_ appeared in 1690. Of Plato, too, Berkeley was an ardent admirer, and the spirit of Plato pervades his works. His _Essay towards a New Theory of Vision_ contains some intimations of the famous metaphysical theory which was developed a little later in the _Treatise on Human Knowledge_.

A good deal of foolish ridicule was excited by this book. Berkeley was supposed to maintain the absurd paradox that sensible things do not exist at all. The reader will remember how Dr. Johnson undertook to refute the postulate by striking his foot against a stone, while James Beattie (1735-1803), the poet and moral philosopher, in a volume for which he was rewarded with a pension of 200 a year, denounced Berkeley's philosophy as 'scandalously absurd.' 'If,' he writes, 'I were permitted to propose one clownish question, I would fain ask ...

Where is the harm of my believing that if I were to fall down yonder precipice and break my neck, I should be no more a man of this world? My neck, Sir, may be an idea to you, but to me it is a reality, and a very important one too. Where is the harm of my believing that if in this severe weather I were to neglect to throw (what you call) the idea of a coat over the ideas of my shoulders, the idea of cold would produce the idea of such pain and disorder as might possibly terminate in my real death? What great offence shall I commit against G.o.d or man, church or state, philosophy or common sense if I continue to believe that material food will nourish me, though the idea of it will not, that the real sun will warm and enlighten me, though the liveliest idea of him will do neither; and that if I would obtain here peace of mind and self-approbation, I must not only form ideas of compa.s.sion, justice and generosity, but also really exert those virtues in external performance?'[61]

Beattie continues in this foolish strain to throw contempt upon a system which he had not taken the trouble to understand, and upon one of the sanest and n.o.blest of English philosophers, and he does so without a thought that the absurdity is due to his own ignorance and not to the theory of Berkeley. The author of the _Minstrel_ was an honest man and a respectable poet, but he prided himself too much on what he called common sense, and failed to see that in the search after truth other and even higher faculties may be also needed. Moreover, Berkeley, so far from being an enemy to common sense, endeavours, as he says, to vindicate it, although in so doing, he 'may perhaps be obliged to use some _ambages_ and ways of speech not common.' A significant pa.s.sage may be quoted from the _Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ (1713) in ill.u.s.tration of his method and style so far indeed as a short extract can ill.u.s.trate an argument sustained by a long course of reasoning.

'_Phil._ As I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of things, so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing should be really perceived by my senses, and at the same time not really exist is to me a plain contradiction; since I cannot prescind or abstract even in thought, the existence of a sensible thing from its being perceived. Wood, stones, fire, water, flesh, iron, and the like things, which I name and discourse of, are things that I know. And I should not have known them but that I perceived them by my senses; and things perceived by the senses are immediately perceived; and things immediately perceived are ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they are actually perceived there can be no doubt of their existence....

I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.

'_Hyl._ Not so fast, _Philonous_; you say you cannot conceive how sensible things should exist without the mind. Do you not?

'_Phil._ I do.

'_Hyl._ Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist?

'_Phil._ I can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny sensible things an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds. Now, it is plain they have an existence exterior to my mind; since I find them by experience to be independent of it. There is therefore some other mind wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them; as likewise they did before my birth, and would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily follows there is an _omnipresent, eternal Mind_, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, and according to such rules, as He Himself hath ordained, and are by us termed the _Laws of Nature_.'

'Truth is the cry of all,' says Berkeley in the final paragraph of _Siris_, 'but the game of a few. Certainly, where it is the chief pa.s.sion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views, nor is it contented with a little ardour, active perhaps to pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as youth, the latter growth as well as firstfruits at the altar of truth.'

Elsewhere in this famous treatise he writes:

'It cannot be denied that with respect to the universe of things we in this mortal state are like men educated in Plato's cave, looking on shadows with our backs turned to the light. But though our light be dim and our situation bad, yet if the best use be made of both, perhaps something may be seen. Proclus, in his commentary on the theology of Plato, observes there are two sorts of philosophers. The one placed body first in the order of beings, and made the faculty of thinking depend thereupon, supposing that the principles of all things are corporeal; that body most really or princ.i.p.ally exists, and all other things in a secondary sense and by virtue of that. Others making all corporeal things to be dependent upon soul or mind, think this to exist in the first place, and primary senses and the being of bodies to be altogether derived from, and presuppose that of the mind.'

This was Berkeley's creed, and his great aim throughout is to prove the phenomenal nature of the things of sense, or in other words the non-existence of independent matter. He makes, he says, not the least question that the things we see and touch really exist, but what he does question is the existence of matter apart from its perception to the mind. Hobbes said that the body accounted for the mind, and that matter was the deepest thing in the universe, while to Berkeley the only true reality consists in what is spiritual and eternal.

'The great idealist,' says an able writer, 'certainly never denied the existence of matter in the sense in which Johnson understood it. As the touched, the seen, the heard, the smelled, the tasted, he admitted and maintained its existence as readily and completely as the most illiterate and unsophisticated of mankind,' and he adds that the peculiar endowment for which Berkeley was distinguished 'far beyond his predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost every philosopher who has succeeded him, was the eye he had _for facts_, and the singular pertinacity with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon them.'[62]