The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume IV Part 1

The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753).

by Theophilus Cibber.

Vol. IV.

Dedicated to the Right Honourable PHILIP Earl of CHESTERFIELD.

Correctly printed in a neat Pocket Volume (Price Bound Three Shillings,)

The Second Edition of

LES MOEURS; or, MANNERS. Accurately Translated from the French.

Wherein the Principles of Morality, or Social Duties, viz. Piety, Wisdom, Prudence, Fort.i.tude, Justice, Temperance, Love, Friendship, Humanity, &c. &c. are described in all their Branches; the Obligations of them shewn to consist in our Nature, and the Enlargement of them strongly enforc'd. Here Parents are taught, that, giving Birth to a Child, scarcety ent.i.tles them to that honourable Name, without a strict Discharge of Parental Duties; the Friend will find, there are a thousand other Decorums, besides the doing of a Favour, to ent.i.tle him to the tender Name of Friend; and the Good natur'd Man will find, he ought to extend that Quality beyond the Bounds of his own Neighbourhood or Party.

The Whole wrote in a manner entirely New and Entertaining, and enliven'd with real Characters, drawn from life, and fited to instill the Principles of all Social Virtues into tender Minds.

Printed for W. Johnston at the Golden-Ball in St. Paul's Church-Yard.

THE LIVES OF THE POETS.

PETER MOTTEAUX,

A French gentleman, born and educated at Rohan, in Normandy. He came over into England, was a considerable trader, and resided here many years. He is said to have possessed no inconsiderable share of wit, and humour; and, besides a translation of Don Quixote, several Songs, Prologues and Epilogues, together with a Poem on Tea, dedicated to the Spectator, (see Vol. VII. Numb. 552) he is author of the following dramatic pieces.

1. Love's a Jest, a Comedy; acted at the new Theatre, in little Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, 1696. In the two scenes, where love is made a jest, some pa.s.sages are taken from Italian writers.

2. The Loves of Mars and Venus; a Masque set to Music, performed at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, 1696; dedicated to colonel Codrington. The story from Ovid.

3. The Novelty, or every Act a Play; consisting of Pastoral, Comedy, Masque, Tragedy, and Farce, after the Italian manner; acted at the Theatre in little Lincoln's-Inn Fields 1697.

The model of this play is formed upon Sir William Davenant's Play-House to be let: But neither of them met with much success.

4. Europe's Revels for the Peace, and his Majesty's Happy Return, a Musical Interlude, performed at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, 1697.

5. Beauty in Distress, a Tragedy; acted at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, 1698. There is some poetry in this play; and in the multiplicity of its incidents, he has followed the example of the British Poets. Before this piece, there is prefixed a discourse on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of plays; written originally in French, by the learned father Ca.s.saro, divinity professor at Paris; sent by a friend to Mr. Motteaux.

6. The Island Princess, or the Generous Portugueze; made into an Opera, and performed at the Theatre-Royal 1701. The music by Mr.

Daniel Purcell, Mr. Clark, and Mr. Leveridge. The greatest part of the play is taken from Fletcher's Island Princess. Scene the Spice Island.

7. The Four Seasons, or Love in every Age; a musical Interlude, set to Music by Mr. Jeremiah Clark; printed with the musical Entertainments of the above Opera. 8. Britain's Happiness, a musical Interlude; performed at both the Theatres, being part of the entertainment, subscribed for by the n.o.bility. Scene a prospect of Dover castle and the sea. This Interlude was long before designed, only as an introduction to an Opera; which if ever finished was to have been called the Loves of Europe, every act shewing the manner of the different nations in their addresses to the fair-s.e.x; of which he has informed us in his prefatory epistle.

9. Thomyris Queen of Scythia, an Opera; translated from the Italian; performed at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields.

10. The Temple of Love, a Pastoral Opera, from the Italian; performed at the Queen's Theatre in the Hay-market, by her majesty's servants, 1706. Scene Arcadia. Time of action, the same with that of the representation.

11. Love Dragoon'd, a Farce.

This gentleman, who seems to have led a very comfortable life, his circ.u.mstances being easy, was unfortunate in his death; for he lost his life in a disorderly house, in the parish of St. Clement Danes, not without suspicion of having been murthered; which accident happened to him, on his birth day in the 58th year of his age, 1718.

His body was interred in his own parish church, being that of St. Mary Ax, in the city of London.

Mrs. MANLEY,

The celebrated auth.o.r.ess of the Atalantis, was born in Hampshire, in one of those islands which formerly belonged to France, of which her father Sir Roger Manley was governor; who afterwards enjoyed the same post in other places in England. He was the second son of an ancient family; the better part of his estate was ruined in the civil war by his firm adherence to Charles I. He had not the satisfaction of ever being taken notice of, nor was his loyalty acknowledged at the restoration. The governor was a brave gallant man, of great honour and integrity.

He became a scholar in the midst of the camp, having left the university at the age of sixteen, to follow the fortunes of Charles I. His temper had too much of the Stoic in it to attend much to the interest of his family. After a life spent in the civil and foreign wars, he began to love ease and retirement, devoting himself to his study, and the charge of his little post, without following the court; his great virtue and modesty, debaring him from solliciting favours from such persons as were then at the helm of affairs, his deserts were buried, and forgotten. In this solitude he wrote several tracts for his own amus.e.m.e.nt, particularly his Latin Commentaries of the Civil Wars of England. He was likewise author of the first volume of that admired work, the Turkish Spy. One Dr. Midgley, an ingenious physician, related to the family by marriage, had the charge of looking over his papers. Amongst them he found that ma.n.u.script, which he reserved to his proper use, and by his own pen, and the a.s.sistance of some others, continued the work till the eighth volume was finished, without having the honesty to acknowledge the author of the first.

The governor likewise wrote the History of the Rebellion in England, Scotland and Ireland; wherein the most material pa.s.sages, battles, sieges, policies, and stratagems of war, are impartially related on both sides, from the year 1640, to the beheading of the duke of Monmouth 1688, in three parts, printed in octavo, in the year 1691.

His daughter, our auth.o.r.ess, received an education suitable to her birth, and gave very early discoveries of a genius, not only above her years, but much superior to what is usually to be found amongst her own s.e.x. She had the misfortune to lose her mother, while she was yet an infant, a circ.u.mstance, which laid the foundation of many calamities, which afterwards befell her.

The brother of Sir Roger Manley, who was of principles very opposite to his, joined with the Parliamentarian party; and after Charles I.

had suffered, he engaged with great zeal in the cause of those who were for settling a new form of government, in which, however, they were disappointed by the address of Cromwell, who found means to transfer the government into his own hands, and in place of inst.i.tuting a republic, restored monarchy under another name, and erected a tyranny as dangerous, perhaps, in its consequences, as that which he had contributed to overthrow. During these heats and divisions, Mr. Manley, who adhered to the most powerful party, was fortunate enough to ama.s.s an estate, and purchased a t.i.tle; but these, upon the restoration, reverted back to the former possessor; so that he was left with several small children unprovided for. The eldest of these orphans, Sir Roger Manley took under his protection, bestowed a very liberal education on him, and endeavoured to inspire his mind with other principles, than those he had received from his father.

This young gentleman had very promising parts, but under the appearance of an open simplicity, he concealed the most treacherous hypocrisy. Sir Roger, who had a high opinion of his nephew's honour, as well as of his great abilities, on his death-bed bequeathed to him the care of our auth.o.r.ess, and her youngest sister.

This man had from nature a very happy address, formed to win much upon the hearts of unexperienced girls; and his two cousins respected him greatly. He placed them at the house of an old, out-of-fashion aunt, who had been a keen partizan of the royal cause during the civil wars; she was full of the heroic stiffness of her own times, and would read books of Chivalry, and Romances with her spectacles.

This sort of conversation, much infected the mind of our poetess, and fill'd her imagination with lovers, heroes, and princes; made her think herself in an inchanted region, and that all the men who approached her were knights errant. In a few years the old aunt died, and left the two young ladies without any controul; which as soon as their cousin Mr. Manley heard, he hasted into the country, to visit them; appeared in deep mourning, as he said for the death of his wife; upon which the young ladies congratulated him, as they knew his wife was a woman of a most turbulent temper, and ill fitted to render the conjugal life tolerable.

This gentleman, who had seen a great deal of the world, and was acquainted with all the artifices of seducing, lost no time in making love to his cousin, who was no otherwise pleased with it, than as it answered something to the character she had found in those books, which had poisoned and deluded her dawning reason. Soon after these protestations of love were made, the young lady fell into a fever, which was like to prove fatal to her life.

The lover and her sister never quitted the chamber for sixteen nights, nor took any other repose than throwing themselves alternately upon a little pallet in the same room. Having in her nature a great deal of grat.i.tude, and a very tender sense of benefits; she promised upon her recovery to marry her guardian, which as soon as her health was sufficiently restored, she performed in the presence of a maid servant, her sister, and a gentleman who had married a relation. In a word, she was married, possessed, and ruin'd.

The husband of our poetess brought her to London, fixed her in a remote quarter of it, forbad her to stir out of doors, or to receive the visits of her sister, or any other relations, friends, or acquaintance. This usage, she thought exceeding barbarous, and it grieved her the more excessively, since she married him only because she imagined he loved and doated on her to distraction; for as his person was but ordinary, and his age disproportioned, being twenty-years older than she, it could not be imagined that she was in love with him.--She was very uneasy at being kept a prisoner; but her husband's fondness and jealousy was made the pretence. She always loved reading, to which she was now more than ever obliged, as so much time lay upon her hands: Soon after she proved with child, and so perpetually ill, that she implored her husband to let her enjoy the company of her sister and friends. When he could have no relief from her importunity (being a.s.sured that in seeing her relations, she must discover his barbarous deceit) he thought it was best to be himself the relator of his villany; he fell upon his knees before her, with so much seeming confusion, distress and anguish, that she was at a loss to know what could mould his stubborn heart to such contrition. At last, with a thousand well counterfeited tears, and sighs, he stabb'd her with the wounding relation of his wife's being still alive; and with a hypocrite's pangs conjured her to have some mercy on a lost man as he was, in an obstinate, inveterate pa.s.sion, that had no alternative but death, or possession.

He urged, that could he have supported the pain of living without her, he never would have made himself so great a villain; but when the absolute question was, whether he should destroy himself, or betray her, self-love had turned the ballance, though not without that anguish to his soul, which had poisoned all his delights, and planted daggers to stab his peace. That he had a thousand times started in his sleep with guilty apprehensions; the form of her honoured father perpetually haunting his troubled dreams, reproaching him as a traitor to that trust which in his departing moments he had reposed in him; representing to his tortured imagination the care he took of his education, more like a father than an uncle, with which he had rewarded him by effecting the perdition of his favourite daughter, who was the lovely image of his benefactor.

With this artful contrition he endeavoured to sooth his injured wife: But what soothing could heal the wounds she had received? Horror!

amazement! sense of honour lost! the world's opinion! ten thousand distresses crowded her distracted imagination, and she cast looks upon the conscious traitor with horrible dismay! Her fortune was in his hands, the greatest part of which was already lavished away in the excesses of drinking and gaming. She was young, unacquainted with the world; had never experienced necessity, and knew no arts of redressing it; so that thus forlorn and distressed, to whom could she run for refuge, even from want, and misery, but to the very traitor that had undone her. She was acquainted with none that could or would espouse her cause, a helpless, useless load of grief and melancholy! with child! disgraced! her own relations either unable, or unwilling to relieve her.

Thus was she detained by unhappy circ.u.mstances, and his prevailing arts to wear away three wretched years with him, in the same house, though she most solemnly protests, and she has a right to be believed, that no persuasion could ever again reconcile her to his impious arms.

Whenever she cast her eyes upon her son, it gave a mortal wound to her peace: The circ.u.mstances of his birth glared full on her imagination; she saw him, in future, upbraided with his father's treachery, and his mother's misfortunes. Thus forsaken of all the world, in the very morning of her life, when all things should have been gay, and promising, she wore away three wretched years. Mean time her betrayer had procured for himself a considerable employment; the duties of which obliged him to go into the country where his first wife lived.

He took leave of his injured innocent, with much seeming tenderness; and made the most sacred protestations, that he would not suffer her, nor her child ever to want.

He endeavoured to persuade her to accompany him into the country, and to seduce, and quiet her conscience, shewed her a celebrated piece written in defence of Polygamy, and Concubinage: When he was gone, he soon relapsed into his former extravagances, forgot his promise of providing for his child, and its mother; and inhumanly left them a prey to indigence and oppression. The lady was only happy in being released from the killing anguish, of every day having before her eyes the object of her undoing.

When she again came abroad into the world, she was looked upon with cold indifference; that which had been her greatest misfortune, was imputed to her as the most enormous guilt; and she was every where sneered at, avoided, and despised. What pity is it, that an unfortunate, as well as a false step, should d.a.m.n a woman's fame!

In what respect was Mrs. Manley to blame? In what particular was she guilty? to marry her cousin, who pa.s.sionately professed love to her, and who solemnly vowed himself a widower, could not be guilt; on the other hand, it had prudence and grat.i.tude for its basis. Her continuing in the house with him after he had made the discovery, cannot be guilt, for by doing so, she was prevented from being exposed to such necessities as perhaps would have produced greater ruin. When want and beggary stare a woman in the face, especially one accustomed to the delicacies of life, then indeed is virtue in danger; and they who escape must have more than human a.s.sistance.

Our poetess now perceived, that together with her reputation, she had lost all the esteem, that her conversation and abilities might have else procured her; and she was reduced to the deplorable necessity of a.s.sociating with those whose fame was blasted by their indiscretion, because the more sober and virtuous part of the s.e.x did not care to risk their own characters, by being in company with one so much suspected, and against whom the appearance of guilt was too strong.