Literary Character of Men of Genius / Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions

by Isaac Disraeli

LITERARY MISCELLANIES.

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MISCELLANISTS.

Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature, and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of original genius. This delightful province has been termed in Germany the Æsthetic, from a Greek term signifying sentiment or feeling. Æsthetic critics fathom the depths, or run with the current of an author's thoughts, and the sympathies of such a critic offer a supplement to the genius of the original writer. Longinus and Addison are Æsthetic critics. The critics of the adverse school always look for a precedent, and if none is found, woe to the originality of a great writer!

Very elaborate criticisms have been formed by eminent writers, in which great learning and acute logic have only betrayed the absence of the Æsthetic faculty. Warburton called Addison an empty superficial writer, destitute himself of an atom of Addison's taste for the beautiful; and Johnson is a flagrant instance that great powers of reasoning are more fatal to the works of imagination than had ever been suspected.

By one of these learned critics was Montaigne, the venerable father of modern Miscellanies, called "a bold ignorant fellow." To thinking readers, this critical summary will appear mysterious; for Montaigne had imbibed the spirit of all the moral writers of antiquity; and although he has made a capricious complaint of a defective memory, we cannot but wish the complaint had been more real; for we discover in his works such a gathering of knowledge that it seems at times to stifle his own energies. Montaigne was censured by Scaliger, as Addison was censured by Warburton; because both, like Socrates, smiled at that mere erudition which consists of knowing the thoughts of others and having no thoughts of our own. To weigh syllables, and to arrange dates, to adjust texts, and to heap annotations, has generally proved the absence of the higher faculties. When a more adventurous spirit of this herd attempts some novel discovery, often men of taste behold, with indignation, the perversions of their understanding; and a Bentley in his Milton, or a Warburton on a Virgil, had either a singular imbecility concealed under the arrogance of the scholar, or they did not believe what they told the public; the one in his extraordinary invention of an interpolating editor, and the other in his more extraordinary explanation of the Eleusinian mysteries. But what was still worse, the froth of the head became venom, when it reached the heart.

Montaigne has also been censured for an apparent vanity, in making himself the idol of his lucubrations. If he had not done this, he had not performed the promise he makes at the commencement of his preface. An engaging tenderness prevails in these naïve expressions which shall not be injured by a version. "Je l'ay voué à la commodité particulière de mes parens et amis; à ce que m'ayans perdu (ce qu'ils out à faire bientost) ils y puissent retrouver quelques traicts de mes humeurs, et que par ce moyen ils nourrissent plus entière et plus vifue la conoissance qu'ils out eu de moi."

Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they are writers, and remember they are men, will be our favourites. He who writes from the heart, will write to the heart; every one is enabled to decide on his merits, and they will not be referred to learned heads, or a distant day. "Why," says Boileau, "are my verses read by all? it is only because they speak truths, and that I am convinced of the truths I write."

Why have some of our fine writers interested more than others, who have not displayed inferior talents? Why is Addison still the first of our essayists? he has sometimes been excelled in criticisms more philosophical, in topics more interesting, and in diction more coloured. But there is a personal charm in the character he has assumed in his periodical Miscellanies, which is felt with such a gentle force, that we scarce advert to it. He has painted forth his little humours, his individual feelings, and eternised himself to his readers. Johnson and Hawkesworth we receive with respect, and we dismiss with awe; we come from their writings as from public lectures, and from Addison's as from private conversations. Montaigne preferred those of the ancients, who appear to write under a conviction of what they said; the eloquent Cicero declaims but coldly on liberty, while in the impetuous Brutus may be perceived a man who is resolved to purchase it with his life. We know little of Plutarch; yet a spirit of honesty and persuasion in his works expresses a philosophical character capable of imitating, as well as admiring, the virtues he records.

Sterne perhaps derives a portion of his celebrity from the same influence; he interests us in his minutest motions, for he tells us all he feels. Richardson was sensible of the power with which these minute strokes of description enter the heart, and which are so many fastenings to which the imagination clings. He says, "If I give speeches and conversations, I ought to give them justly; for the humours and characters of persons cannot be known, unless I repeat what they say, and their manner of saying." I confess I am infinitely pleased when Sir William Temple acquaints us with the size of his orange-trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to equal those of France; with his having had the honour to naturalise in this country four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distribution of them, because "he ever thought all things of this kind the commoner they are the better." In a word, with his passionate attachment to his garden, where he desired his heart to be buried, of his desire to escape from great employments, and having passed five years without going to town, where, by the way, "he had a large house always ready to receive him." Dryden has interspersed many of these little particulars in his prosaic compositions, and I think that his character and dispositions may be more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered notices, than by any biographical account which can now be given of this man of genius.

From this agreeable mode of writing, a species of compositions may be discriminated, which seems above all others to identify the reader with the writer; compositions which are often discovered in a fugitive state, but to which their authors were prompted by the fine impulses of genius, derived from the peculiarity of their situation. Dictated by the heart, or polished with the fondness of delight, these productions are impressed by the seductive eloquence of genius, or attach us by the sensibility of taste. The object thus selected is no task imposed on the mind of the writer for the mere ambition of literature, but is a voluntary effusion, warm with all the sensations of a pathetic writer. In a word, they are the compositions of genius, on a subject in which it is most deeply interested; which it revolves on all its sides, which it paints in all its tints, and which it finishes with the same ardour it began. Among such works may be placed the exiled Bolingbroke's "Reflections upon Exile;" the retired Petrarch and Zimmerman's Essays on "Solitude;" the imprisoned Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy;" the oppressed Pierius Valerianus's Catalogue of "Literary Calamities;" the deformed Hay's Essay on "Deformity;" the projecting De Foe's "Essays on Projects;" the liberal Shenstone's Poem on "Economy."

We may respect the profound genius of voluminous writers; they are a kind of painters who occupy great room, and fill up, as a satirist expresses it, "an acre of canvas." But we love to dwell on those more delicate pieces,—a group of Cupids; a Venus emerging from the waves; a Psyche or an Aglaia, which embellish the cabinet of the man of taste.

It should, indeed, be the characteristic of good Miscellanies, to be multifarious and concise. Usbek, the Persian of Montesquieu, is one of the profoundest philosophers, his letters are, however, but concise pages. Rochefoucault and La Bruyère are not superficial observers of human nature, although they have only written sentences. Of Tacitus it has been finely remarked by Montesquieu, that "he abridged everything because he saw everything." Montaigne approves of Plutarch and Seneca, because their loose papers were suited to his dispositions, and where knowledge is acquired without a tedious study. "It is," said he, "no great attempt to take one in hand, and I give over at pleasure, for they have no sequel or connexion." La Fontaine agreeably applauds short compositions:

Les longs ouvrages me font peur;
Loin d'épuiser une matière,
On n'en doit prendre que la fleur;

and Old Francis Osborne has a coarse and ludicrous image in favour of such opuscula; he says, "Huge volumes, like the ox roasted whole at Bartholomew fair, may proclaim plenty of labour and invention, but afford less of what is delicate, savoury, and well concocted, than smaller pieces." To quote so light a genius as the enchanting La Fontaine, and so solid a mind as the sensible Osborne, is taking in all the climates of the human mind; it is touching at the equator, and pushing on to the pole.

Montaigne's works have been called by a cardinal "The Breviary of Idlers." It is therefore the book of man; for all men are idlers; we have hours which we pass with lamentation, and which we know are always returning. At those moments miscellanists are conformable to all our humours. We dart along their airy and concise page; and their lively anecdote or their profound observation are so many interstitial pleasures in our listless hours.

The ancients were great admirers of miscellanies; Aulus Gellius has preserved a copious list of titles of such works. These titles are so numerous, and include such gay and pleasing descriptions, that we may infer by their number that they were greatly admired by the public, and by their titles that they prove the great delight their authors experienced in their composition. Among the titles are "a basket of flowers;" "an embroidered mantle;" and "a variegated meadow." Such a miscellanist as was the admirable Erasmus deserves the happy description which Plutarch with an elegant enthusiasm bestows on Menander: he calls him the delight of philosophers fatigued with study; that they have recourse to his works as to a meadow enamelled with flowers, where the sense is delighted by a purer air; and very elegantly adds, that Menander has a salt peculiar to himself, drawn from the same waters that gave birth to Venus.

The Troubadours, Conteurs, and Jongleurs, practised what is yet called in the southern parts of France, Le guay Saber, or the gay science. I consider these as the Miscellanists of their day; they had their grave moralities, their tragical histories, and their sportive tales; their verse and their prose. The village was in motion at their approach; the castle was opened to the ambulatory poets, and the feudal hypochondriac listened to their solemn instruction and their airy fancy. I would call miscellaneous composition LE GUAY SABER, and I would have every miscellaneous writer as solemn and as gay, as various and as pleasing, as these lively artists of versatility.

Nature herself is most delightful in her miscellaneous scenes. When I hold a volume of miscellanies, and run over with avidity the titles of its contents, my mind is enchanted, as if it were placed among the landscapes of Valais, which Rousseau has described with such picturesque beauty. I fancy myself seated in a cottage amid those mountains, those valleys, those rocks, encircled by the enchantments of optical illusion. I look, and behold at once the united seasons—"All climates in one place, all seasons in one instant." I gaze at once on a hundred rainbows, and trace the romantic figures of the shifting clouds. I seem to be in a temple dedicated to the service of the Goddess VARIETY.

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PREFACES.

I declare myself infinitely delighted by a preface. Is it exquisitely written? no literary morsel is more delicious. Is the author inveterately dull? it is a kind of preparatory information, which may be very useful. It argues a deficiency in taste to turn over an elaborate preface unread; for it is the attar of the author's roses; every drop distilled at an immense cost. It is the reason of the reasoning, and the folly of the foolish.

I do not wish, however, to conceal that several writers, as well as readers, have spoken very disrespectfully of this species of literature. That fine writer Montesquieu, in closing the preface to his "Persian Letters," says, "I do not praise my 'Persians;' because it would be a very tedious thing, put in a place already very tedious of itself; I mean a preface." Spence, in the preface to his "Polymetis," informs us, that "there is not any sort of writing which he sits down to with so much unwillingness as that of prefaces; and as he believes most people are not much fonder of reading them than he is of writing them, he shall get over this as fast as he can." Pelisson warmly protested against prefatory composition; but when he published the works of Sarrasin, was wise enough to compose a very pleasing one. He, indeed, endeavoured to justify himself for acting against his own opinions, by this ingenious excuse, that, like funeral honours, it is proper to show the utmost regard for them when given to others, but to be inattentive to them for ourselves.

Notwithstanding all this evidence, I have some good reasons for admiring prefaces; and barren as the investigation may appear, some literary amusement can be gathered.

In the first place, I observe that a prefacer is generally a most accomplished liar. Is an author to be introduced to the public? the preface is as genuine a panegyric, and nearly as long a one, as that of Pliny's on the Emperor Trajan. Such a preface is ringing an alarum bell for an author. If we look closer into the characters of these masters of ceremony, who thus sport with and defy the judgment of their reader, and who, by their extravagant panegyric, do considerable injury to the cause of taste, we discover that some accidental occurrence has occasioned this vehement affection for the author, and which, like that of another kind of love, makes one commit so many extravagances.

Prefaces are indeed rarely sincere. It is justly observed by Shenstone, in his prefatory Essay to the "Elegies," that "discourses prefixed to poetry inculcate such tenets as may exhibit the performance to the greatest advantage. The fabric is first raised, and the measures by which we are to judge of it are afterwards adjusted." This observation might be exemplified by more instances than some readers might choose to read. It will be sufficient to observe with what art both Pope and Fontenelle have drawn up their Essays on the nature of Pastoral Poetry, that the rules they wished to establish might be adapted to their own pastorals. Has accident made some ingenious student apply himself to a subordinate branch of literature, or to some science which is not highly esteemed—look in the preface for its sublime panegyric. Collectors of coins, dresses, and butterflies, have astonished the world with eulogiums which would raise their particular studies into the first ranks of philosophy.

It would appear that there is no lie to which a prefacer is not tempted. I pass over the commodious prefaces of Dryden, which were ever adapted to the poem and not to poetry, to the author and not to literature.

The boldest preface-liar was Aldus Manutius, who, having printed an edition of Aristophanes, first published in the preface that Saint Chrysostom was accustomed to place this comic poet under his pillow, that he might always have his works at hand. As, in that age, a saint was supposed to possess every human talent, good taste not excepted, Aristophanes thus recommended became a general favourite. The anecdote lasted for nearly two centuries; and what was of greater consequence to Aldus, quickened the sale of his Aristophanes. This ingenious invention of the prefacer of Aristophanes at length was detected by Menage.

The insincerity of prefaces arises whenever an author would disguise his solicitude for his work, by appearing negligent, and even undesirous of its success. A writer will rarely conclude such a preface without betraying himself. I think that even Dr. Johnson forgot his sound dialectic in the admirable Preface to his Dictionary. In one part he says, "having laboured this work with so much application, I cannot but have some degree of parental fondness." But in his conclusion he tells us, "I dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise." I deny the doctor's "frigidity." This polished period exhibits an affected stoicism, which no writer ever felt for the anxious labour of a great portion of life, addressed not merely to a class of readers, but to literary Europe.

But if prefaces are rarely sincere or just, they are, notwithstanding, literary opuscula in which the author is materially concerned. A work with a poor preface, like a person who comes with an indifferent recommendation, must display uncommon merit to master our prejudices, and to please us, as it were, in spite of ourselves. Works ornamented by a finished preface, such as Johnson not infrequently presented to his friends or his booksellers, inspire us with awe; we observe a veteran guard placed in the porch, and we are induced to conclude from this appearance that some person of eminence resides in the place itself.

The public are treated with contempt when an author professes to publish his puerilities. This Warburton did, in his pompous edition of Shakspeare. In the preface he informed the public, that his notes "were among his younger amusements, when he turned over these sort of writers." This ungracious compliment to Shakspeare and the public, merited that perfect scourging which our haughty commentator received from the sarcastic "Canons of Criticism."[A] Scudery was a writer of some genius, and great variety. His prefaces are remarkable for their gasconades. In his epic poem of Alaric, he says, "I have such a facility in writing verses, and also in my invention, that a poem of double its length would have cost me little trouble. Although it contains only eleven thousand lines, I believe that longer epics do not exhibit more embellishments than mine." And to conclude with one more student of this class, Amelot de la Houssaie, in the preface to his translation of "The Prince" of Machiavel, instructs us, that "he considers his copy as superior to the original, because it is everywhere intelligible, and Machiavel is frequently obscure." I have seen in the play-bills of strollers, a very pompous description of the triumphant entry of Alexander into Babylon; had they said nothing about the triumph, it might have passed without exciting ridicule; and one might not so maliciously have perceived how ill the four candle-snuffers crawled as elephants, and the triumphal car discovered its want of a lid. But having pre-excited attention, we had full leisure to sharpen our eye. To these imprudent authors and actors we may apply a Spanish proverb, which has the peculiar quaintness of that people, Aviendo pregonado vino, venden vinagre: "Having cried up their wine, they sell us vinegar."

[Footnote A: See the essay on Warburton and his disputes in "Quarrels of
Authors,"—ED.]

A ridiculous humility in a preface is not less despicable. Many idle apologies were formerly in vogue for publication, and formed a literary cant, of which now the meanest writers perceive the futility. A literary anecdote of the Romans has been preserved, which is sufficiently curious. One Albinus, in the preface to his Roman History, intercedes for pardon for his numerous blunders of phraseology; observing that they were the more excusable, as he had composed his history in the Greek language, with which he was not so familiar as his maternal tongue. Cato severely rallies him on this; and justly observes, that our Albinus had merited the pardon he solicits, if a decree of the senate had compelled him thus to have composed it, and he could not have obtained a dispensation. The avowal of our ignorance of the language we employ is like that excuse which some writers make for composing on topics in which they are little conversant. A reader's heart is not so easily mollified; and it is a melancholy truth for literary men that the pleasure of abusing an author is generally superior to that of admiring him. One appears to display more critical acumen than the other, by showing that though we do not choose to take the trouble of writing, we have infinitely more genius than the author. These suppliant prefacers are described by Boileau.

Un auteur à genoux dans une humble préface
Au lecteur qu'il ennuie a beau demander grace;
Il ne gagnera rien sur ce juge irrité,
Qui lui fait son procès de pleine autorité.

Low in a humble preface authors kneel;
In vain, the wearied reader's heart is steel.
Callous, that irritated judge with awe,
Inflicts the penalties and arms the law.

The most entertaining prefaces in our language are those of Dryden; and though it is ill-naturedly said, by Swift, that they were merely formed

To raise the volume's price a shilling,

yet these were the earliest commencements of English criticism, and the first attempt to restrain the capriciousness of readers, and to form a national taste. Dryden has had the candour to acquaint us with his secret of prefatory composition; for in that one to his Tales he says, "the nature of preface-writing is rambling; never wholly out of the way, nor in it. This I have learnt from the practice of honest Montaigne." There is no great risk in establishing this observation as an axiom in literature; for should a prefacer loiter, it is never difficult to get rid of lame persons, by escaping from them; and the reader may make a preface as concise as he chooses.

It is possible for an author to paint himself in amiable colours, in this useful page, without incurring the contempt of egotism. After a writer has rendered himself conspicuous by his industry or his genius, his admirers are not displeased to hear something relative to him from himself. Hayley, in the preface to his poems, has conveyed an amiable feature in his personal character, by giving the cause of his devotion to literature as the only mode by which he could render himself of some utility to his country. There is a modesty in the prefaces of Pope, even when this great poet collected his immortal works; and in several other writers of the most elevated genius, in a Hume and a Robertson, which becomes their happy successors to imitate, and inferior writers to contemplate with awe.

There is in prefaces a due respect to be shown to the public and to ourselves. He that has no sense of self-dignity, will not inspire any reverence in others; and the ebriety of vanity will he sobered by the alacrity we all feel in disturbing the dreams of self-love. If we dare not attempt the rambling prefaces of a Dryden, we may still entertain the reader, and soothe him into good-humour, for our own interest. This, perhaps, will be best obtained by making the preface (like the symphony to an opera) to contain something analogous to the work itself, to attune the mind into a harmony of tone.[A]

[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i., for an article on
Prefaces.]

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STYLE.

Every period of literature has its peculiar style, derived from some author of reputation; and the history of a language, as an object of taste, might be traced through a collection of ample quotations from the most celebrated authors of each period.

To Johnson may be attributed the establishment of our present refinement, and it is with truth he observes of his "Rambler," "That he had laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations, and that he has added to the elegance of its construction and to the harmony of its cadence." In this description of his own refinement in style and grammatical accuracy, Johnson probably alluded to the happy carelessness of Addison, whose charm of natural ease long afterwards he discovered. But great inelegance of diction disgraced our language even so late as in 1736, when the "Inquiry into the Life of Homer" was published. That author was certainly desirous of all the graces of composition, and his volume by its singular sculptures evinces his inordinate affection for his work. This fanciful writer had a taste for polished writing, yet he abounds in expressions which now would be considered as impure in literary composition. Such vulgarisms are common—the Greeks fell to their old trade of one tribe expelling another—the scene is always at Athens, and all the pother is some little jilting story—the haughty Roman snuffed at the suppleness. If such diction had not been usual with good writers at that period, I should not have quoted Blackwall. Middleton, in his "Life of Cicero," though a man of classical taste, and an historian of a classical era, could not preserve himself from colloquial inelegances; the greatest characters are levelled by the poverty of his style. Warburton, and his imitator Hurd, and other living critics of that school, are loaded with familiar idioms, which at present would debase even the style of conversation.

Such was the influence of the elaborate novelty of Johnson, that every writer in every class servilely copied the Latinised style, ludicrously mimicking the contortions and re-echoing the sonorous nothings of our great lexicographer; the novelist of domestic life, or the agriculturist in a treatise on turnips, alike aimed at the polysyllabic force, and the cadenced period. Such was the condition of English style for more than twenty years.

Some argue in favour of a natural style, and reiterate the opinion of many great critics that proper ideas will be accompanied by proper words; but though supported by the first authorities, they are not perhaps sufficiently precise in their definition. Writers may think justly, and yet write without any effect; while a splendid style may cover a vacuity of thought. Does not this evident fact prove that style and thinking have not that inseparable connexion which many great writers have pronounced? Milton imagined that beautiful thoughts produce beautiful expression. He says,

Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers.

Writing is justly called an art; and Rousseau says, it is not an art easily acquired. Thinking may be the foundation of style, but it is not the superstructure; it is the marble of the edifice, but not its architecture. The art of presenting our thoughts to another, is often a process of considerable time and labour; and the delicate task of correction, in the development of ideas, is reserved only for writers of fine taste. There are several modes of presenting an idea; vulgar readers are only susceptible of the strong and palpable stroke: but there are many shades of sentiment, which to seize on and to paint is the pride and the labour of a skilful writer. A beautiful simplicity itself is a species of refinement, and no writer more solicitously corrected his works than Hume, who excels in this mode of composition. The philosopher highly approves of Addison's definition of fine writing, who says, that it consists of sentiments which are natural, without being obvious. This is a definition of thought rather than of composition. Shenstone has hit the truth; for fine writing he defines to be generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts and a laboured style. Addison was not insensible to these charms, and he felt the seductive art of Cicero when he said, that "there is as much difference in apprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language and that of a common author, as in seeing an object by the light of a taper, or by the light of the sun."

Mannerists in style, however great their powers, rather excite the admiration than the affection of a man of taste; because their habitual art dissipates that illusion of sincerity, which we love to believe is the impulse which places the pen in the hand of an author. Two eminent literary mannerists are Cicero and Johnson. We know these great men considered their eloquence as a deceptive art; of any subject, it had been indifferent to them which side to adopt; and in reading their elaborate works, our ear is more frequently gratified by the ambitious magnificence of their diction, than our heart penetrated by the pathetic enthusiasm of their sentiments. Writers who are not mannerists, but who seize the appropriate tone of their subject, appear to feel a conviction of what they attempt to persuade their reader. It is observable, that it is impossible to imitate with uniform felicity the noble simplicity of a pathetic writer; while the peculiarities of a mannerist are so far from being difficult, that they are displayed with nice exactness by middling writers, who, although their own natural manner had nothing interesting, have attracted notice by such imitations. We may apply to some monotonous mannerists these verses of Boileau:

Voulez-vous du public mériter les amours?
Sans cesse en écrivant variez vos discours.
On lit peu ces auteurs nés pour nous ennuier,
Qui toujours sur un ton semblent psalmodier.

Would you the public's envied favours gain?
Ceaseless, in writing, variegate the strain;
The heavy author, who the fancy calms,
Seems in one tone to chant his nasal psalms.

Every style is excellent, if it be proper; and that style is most proper which can best convey the intentions of the author to his reader. And, after all, it is STYLE alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style; facts, scientific discoveries, and every kind of information, may be seized by all, but an author's diction cannot be taken from him. Hence very learned writers have been neglected, while their learning has not been lost to the world, by having been given by writers with more amenity. It is therefore the duty of an author to learn to write as well as to learn to think; and this art can only be obtained by the habitual study of his sensations, and an intimate acquaintance with the intellectual faculties. These are the true prompters of those felicitous expressions which give a tone congruous to the subject, and which invest our thoughts with all the illusion, the beauty, and motion of lively perception.

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GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSON.

We should not censure artists and writers for their attachment to their favourite excellence. Who but an artist can value the ceaseless inquietudes of arduous perfection; can trace the remote possibilities combined in a close union; the happy arrangement and the novel variation? He not only is affected by the performance like the man of taste, but is influenced by a peculiar sensation; for while he contemplates the apparent beauties, he traces in his own mind those invisible processes by which the final beauty was accomplished. Hence arises that species of comparative criticism which one great author usually makes of his own manner with that of another great writer, and which so often causes him to be stigmatised with the most unreasonable vanity.

The character of GOLDSMITH, so underrated in his own day, exemplifies this principle in the literary character. That pleasing writer, without any perversion of intellect or inflation of vanity, might have contrasted his powers with those of JOHNSON, and might, according to his own ideas, have considered himself as not inferior to his more celebrated and learned rival.

Goldsmith might have preferred the felicity of his own genius, which like a native stream flowed from a natural source, to the elaborate powers of Johnson, which in some respects may be compared to those artificial waters which throw their sparkling currents in the air, to fall into marble basins. He might have considered that he had embellished philosophy with poetical elegance; and have preferred the paintings of his descriptions, to the terse versification and the pointed sentences of Johnson. He might have been more pleased with the faithful representations of English manners in his "Vicar of Wakefield," than with the borrowed grandeur and the exotic fancy of the Oriental Rasselas. He might have believed, what many excellent critics have believed, that in this age comedy requires more genius than tragedy; and with his audience he might have infinitely more esteemed his own original humour, than Johnson's rhetorical declamation. He might have thought, that with inferior literature he displayed superior genius, and with less profundity more gaiety. He might have considered that the facility and vivacity of his pleasing compositions were preferable to that art, that habitual pomp, and that ostentatious eloquence, which prevail in the operose labours of Johnson. No one might be more sensible than himself, that he, according to the happy expression of Johnson (when his rival was in his grave), "tetigit et ornavit." Goldsmith, therefore, without any singular vanity, might have concluded, from his own reasonings, that he was not an inferior writer to Johnson: all this not having been considered, he has come down to posterity as the vainest and the most jealous of writers; he whose dispositions were the most inoffensive, whose benevolence was the most extensive, and whose amiableness of heart has been concealed by its artlessness, and passed over in the sarcasms and sneers of a more eloquent rival, and his submissive partisans.

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SELF-CHARACTERS.

There are two species of minor biography which may be discriminated; detailing our own life and portraying our own character. The writing our own life has been practised with various success; it is a delicate operation, a stroke too much may destroy the effect of the whole. If once we detect an author deceiving or deceived, it is a livid spot which infects the entire body. To publish one's own life has sometimes been a poor artifice to bring obscurity into notice; it is the ebriety of vanity, and the delirium of egotism. When a great man leaves some memorial of his days, the grave consecrates the motive. There are certain things which relate to ourselves, which no one can know so well; a great genius obliges posterity when he records them. But they must be composed with calmness, with simplicity, and with sincerity; the biographic sketch of Hume, written by himself, is a model of Attic simplicity. The Life of Lord Herbert is a biographical curiosity. The Memoirs of Sir William Jones, of Priestley, and of Gibbon, offer us the daily life of the student; and those of Colley Cibber are a fine picture of the self-painter. We have some other pieces of self-biography, precious to the philosopher.[A]

[Footnote A: One of the most interesting is that of Grifford, appended to his translation of Juvenal; it is a most remarkable record of the struggles of its author in early life, told with candour and simplicity.— ED.]

The other species of minor biography, that of portraying our own character, could only have been invented by the most refined and the vainest nation. The French long cherished this darling egotism; and have a collection of these self-portraits in two bulky volumes. The brilliant Fléchier, and the refined St. Evremond, have framed and glazed their portraits. Every writer then considered his character as necessary as his preface. The fashion seems to have passed over to our country; Farquhar has drawn his character in a letter to a lady; and others of our writers have given us their own miniatures.

There was, as a book in my possession will testify, a certain verse-maker of the name of Cantenac, who, in 1662, published in the city of Paris a volume, containing some thousands of verses, which were, as his countrymen express it, de sa façon, after his own way. He fell so suddenly into the darkest and deepest pit of oblivion, that not a trace of his memory would have remained, had he not condescended to give ample information of every particular relative to himself. He has acquainted us with his size, and tells us, "that it is rare to see a man smaller than himself. I have that in common with all dwarfs, that if my head only were seen, I should be thought a large man." This atom in creation then describes his oval and full face; his fiery and eloquent eyes: his vermil lips; his robust constitution, and his effervescent passions. He appears to have been a most petulant, honest, and diminutive being.

The description of his intellect is the object of our curiosity. "I am as ambitious as any person can be; but I would not sacrifice my honour to my ambition. I am so sensible to contempt, that I bear a mortal and implacable hatred against those who contemn me, and I know I could never reconcile myself with them; but I spare no attentions for those I love; I would give them my fortune and my life. I sometimes lie; but generally in affairs of gallantry, where I voluntarily confirm falsehoods by oaths, without reflection, for swearing with me is a habit. I am told that my mind is brilliant, and that I have a certain manner in turning a thought which is quite my own. I am agreeable in conversation, though I confess I am often troublesome; for I maintain paradoxes to display my genius, which savour too much of scholastic subterfuges. I speak too often and too long; and as I have some reading, and a copious memory, I am fond of showing whatever I know. My judgment is not so solid as my wit is lively. I am often melancholy and unhappy; and this sombrous disposition proceeds from my numerous disappointments in life. My verse is preferred to my prose; and it has been of some use to me in pleasing the fair sex; poetry is most adapted to persuade women; but otherwise it has been of no service to me, and has, I fear, rendered me unfit for many advantageous occupations, in which I might have drudged. The esteem of the fair has, however, charmed away my complaints. This good fortune has been obtained by me, at the cost of many cares, and an unsubdued patience; for I am one of those who, in affairs of love, will suffer an entire year, to taste the pleasures of one day."

This character of Cantenac has some local features; for an English poet would hardly console himself with so much gaiety. The Frenchman's attachment to the ladies seems to be equivalent to the advantageous occupations he had lost. But as the miseries of a literary man, without conspicuous talents, are always the same at Paris as in London, there are some parts of this character of Cantenac which appear to describe them with truth. Cantenac was a man of honour; as warm in his resentment as his gratitude; but deluded by literary vanity, he became a writer in prose and verse, and while he saw the prospects of life closing on him, probably considered that the age was unjust. A melancholy example for certain volatile and fervent spirits, who, by becoming authors, either submit their felicity to the caprices of others, or annihilate the obscure comforts of life, and, like him, having "been told that their mind is brilliant, and that they have a certain manner in turning a thought," become writers, and complain that they are "often melancholy, owing to their numerous disappointments." Happy, however, if the obscure, yet too sensible writer, can suffer an entire year, for the enjoyment of a single day! But for this, a man must have been born in France.

* * * * *

ON READING.

Writing is justly denominated an art; I think that reading claims the same distinction. To adorn ideas with elegance is an act of the mind superior to that of receiving them; but to receive them with a happy discrimination is the effect of a practised taste.

Yet it will be found that taste alone is not sufficient to obtain the proper end of reading. Two persons of equal taste rise from the perusal of the same book with very different notions: the one will have the ideas of the author at command, and find a new train of sentiment awakened; while the other quits his author in a pleasing distraction, but of the pleasures of reading nothing remains but tumultuous sensations.

To account for these different effects, we must have recourse to a logical distinction, which appears to reveal one of the great mysteries in the art of reading. Logicians distinguish between perceptions and ideas. Perception is that faculty of the mind which notices the simple impression of objects: but when these objects exist in the mind, and are there treasured and arranged as materials for reflection, then they are called ideas. A perception is like a transient sunbeam, which just shows the object, but leaves neither light nor warmth; while an idea is like the fervid beam of noon, which throws a settled and powerful light.

Many ingenious readers complain that their memory is defective, and their studies unfruitful. This defect arises from their indulging the facile pleasures of perceptions, in preference to the laborious habit of forming them into ideas. Perceptions require only the sensibility of taste, and their pleasures are continuous, easy, and exquisite. Ideas are an art of combination, and an exertion of the reasoning powers. Ideas are therefore labours; and for those who will not labour, it is unjust to complain, if they come from the harvest with scarcely a sheaf in their hands.

There are secrets in the art of reading which tend to facilitate its purposes, by assisting the memory, and augmenting intellectual opulence. Some our own ingenuity must form, and perhaps every student has peculiar habits of study, as, in sort-hand, almost every writer has a system of his own.

It is an observation of the elder Pliny (who, having been a voluminous compiler, must have had great experience in the art of reading), that there was no book so bad but which contained something good. To read every book would, however, be fatal to the interest of most readers; but it is not always necessary, in the pursuits of learning, to read every book entire. Of many books it is sufficient to seize the plan, and to examine some of their portions. Of the little supplement at the close of a volume, few readers conceive the utility; but some of the most eminent writers in Europe have been great adepts in the art of index reading. I, for my part, venerate the inventor of indexes; and I know not to whom to yield the preference, either to Hippocrates, who was the first great anatomiser of the human body, or to that unknown labourer in literature, who first laid open the nerves and arteries of a book. Watts advises the perusal of the prefaces and the index of a book, as they both give light on its contents.

The ravenous appetite of Johnson for reading is expressed in a strong metaphor by Mrs. Knowles, who said, "he knows how to read better than any one; he gets at the substance of a book directly: he tears out the heart of it." Gibbon has a new idea in the "Art of Reading;" he says "we ought not to attend to the order of our books so much as of our thoughts. The perusal of a particular work gives birth perhaps to ideas unconnected with the subject it treats; I pursue these ideas, and quit my proposed plan of reading." Thus in the midst of Homer he read Longinus; a chapter of Longinus led to an epistle of Pliny; and having finished Longinus, he followed the train of his ideas of the sublime and beautiful in the "Enquiry" of Burke, and concluded by comparing the ancient with the modern Longinus.

There are some mechanical aids in reading which may prove of great utility, and form a kind of rejuvenescence of our early studies. Montaigne placed at the end of a book which he intended not to reperuse, the time he had read it, with a concise decision on its merits; "that," says he, "it may thus represent to me the air and general idea I had conceived of the author, in reading the work." We have several of these annotations. Of Young the poet it is noticed, that whenever he came to a striking passage he folded the leaf; and that at his death, books have been found in his library which had long resisted the power of closing: a mode more easy than useful; for after a length of time they must be again read to know why they were folded. This difficulty is obviated by those who note in a blank leaf the pages to be referred to, with a word of criticism. Nor let us consider these minute directions as unworthy the most enlarged minds: by these petty exertions, at the most distant periods, may learning obtain its authorities, and fancy combine its ideas. Seneca, in sending some volumes to his friend Lucilius, accompanies them with notes of particular passages, "that," he observes, "you who only aim at the useful may be spared the trouble of examining them entire." I have seen books noted by Voltaire with a word of censure or approbation on the page itself, which was his usual practice; and these volumes are precious to every man of taste. Formey complained that the books he lent Voltaire were returned always disfigured by his remarks; but he was a writer of the old school.[A]

[Footnote A: The account of Oldys and his manuscripts, in the third volume of the "Curiosities of Literature," will furnish abundant proof of the value of such disfigurations when the work of certain hands.—ED.]

A professional student should divide his readings into a uniform reading which is useful, and into a diversified reading which is pleasant. Guy Patin, an eminent physician and man of letters, had a just notion of this manner. He says, "I daily read Hippocrates, Galen, Fernel, and other illustrious masters of my profession; this I call my profitable readings. I frequently read Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, Seneca, Tacitus, and others, and these are my recreations." We must observe these distinctions; for it frequently happens that a lawyer or a physician, with great industry and love of study, by giving too much into his diversified readings, may utterly neglect what should be his uniform studies.

A reader is too often a prisoner attached to the triumphal car of an author of great celebrity; and when he ventures not to judge for himself, conceives, while he is reading the indifferent works of great authors, that the languor which he experiences arises from his own defective taste. But the best writers, when they are voluminous, have a great deal of mediocrity.

On the other side, readers must not imagine that all the pleasures of composition depend on the author, for there is something which a reader himself must bring to the book that the book may please. There is a literary appetite, which the author can no more impart than the most skilful cook can give an appetency to the guests. When Cardinal Richelieu said to Godeau, that he did not understand his verses, the honest poet replied that it was not his fault. The temporary tone of the mind may be unfavourable to taste a work properly, and we have had many erroneous criticisms from great men, which may often be attributed to this circumstance. The mind communicates its infirm dispositions to the book, and an author has not only his own defects to account for, but also those of his reader. There is something in composition like the game of shuttlecock, where if the reader do not quickly rebound the feathered cock to the author, the game is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work falls extinct.

A frequent impediment in reading is a disinclination in the mind to settle on the subject; agitated by incongruous and dissimilar ideas, it is with pain that we admit those of the author. But on applying ourselves with a gentle violence to the perusal of an interesting work, the mind soon assimilates to the subject; the ancient rabbins advised their young students to apply themselves to their readings, whether they felt an inclination or not, because, as they proceeded, they would find their disposition restored and their curiosity awakened.

Readers may be classed into an infinite number of divisions; but an author is a solitary being, who, for the same reason he pleases one, must consequently displease another. To have too exalted a genius is more prejudicial to his celebrity than to have a moderate one; for we shall find that the most popular works are not the most profound, but such as instruct those who require instruction, and charm those who are not too learned to taste their novelty. Lucilius, the satirist, said, that he did not write for Persius, for Scipio, and for Rutilius, persons eminent for their science, but for the Tarentines, the Consentines, and the Sicilians. Montaigne has complained that he found his readers too learned, or too ignorant, and that he could only please a middle class, who have just learning enough to comprehend him. Congreve says, "there is in true beauty something which vulgar souls cannot admire." Balzac complains bitterly of readers,—"A period," he cries, "shall have cost us the labour of a day; we shall have distilled into an essay the essence of our mind; it may be a finished piece of art; and they think they are indulgent when they pronounce it to contain some pretty things, and that the style is not bad!" There is something in exquisite composition which ordinary readers can never understand.

Authors are vain, but readers are capricious. Some will only read old books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern publications; while others will only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book, because they are acquainted with the author; by which the reader may be more injured than the author: others not only read the book, but would also read the man; by which the most ingenious author may be injured by the most impertinent reader.

* * * * *

ON HABITUATING OURSELVES TO AN INDIVIDUAL PURSUIT.

Two things in human life are at continual variance, and without escaping from the one we must be separated from the other; and these are ennui and pleasure. Ennui is an afflicting sensation, if we may thus express it, from a want of sensation; and pleasure is greater pleasure according to the quantity of sensation. That sensation is received in proportion to the capacity of our organs; and that practice, or, as it has been sometimes called, "educated feeling," enlarges this capacity, is evident in such familiar instances as those of the blind, who have a finer tact, and the jeweller, who has a finer sight, than other men who are not so deeply interested in refining their vision and their touch. Intense attention is, therefore, a certain means of deriving more numerous pleasures from its object.

Hence it is that the poet, long employed on a poem, has received a quantity of pleasure which no reader can ever feel. In the progress of any particular pursuit, there are a hundred fugitive sensations which are too intellectual to be embodied into language. Every artist knows that between the thought that first gave rise to his design, and each one which appears in it, there are innumerable intermediate evanescences of sensation which no man felt but himself. These pleasures are in number according to the intenseness of his faculties and the quantity of his labour.

It is so in any particular pursuit, from the manufacturing of pins to the construction of philosophical systems. Every individual can exert that quantity of mind necessary to his wants and adapted to his situation; the quality of pleasure is nothing in the present question: for I think that we are mistaken concerning the gradations of human felicity. It does at first appear, that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel a more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting his team; or a poet experience a higher gratification in modulating verses than a trader in arranging sums. But the happiness of the ploughman and the trader may be as satisfactory as that of the astronomer and the poet. Our mind can only he conversant with those sensations which surround us, and possessing the skill of managing them, we can form an artificial felicity; it is certain that what the soul does not feel, no more affects it than what the eye does not see. It is thus that the trader, habituated to humble pursuits, can never be unhappy because he is not the general of an army; for this idea of felicity he has never received. The philosopher who gives his entire years to the elevated pursuits of mind, is never unhappy because he is not in possession of an Indian opulence, for the idea of accumulating this exotic splendour has never entered the range of his combinations. Nature, an impartial mother, renders felicity as perfect in the school-boy who scourges his top, as in the astronomer who regulates his star. The thing contained can only be equal to the container; a full glass is as full as a full bottle; and a human soul may be as much satisfied in the lowest of human beings as in the highest.

In the progress of an individual pursuit, what philosophers call the associating or suggesting idea is ever busied, and in its beautiful effects genius is most deeply concerned; for besides those trains of thought the great artist falls into during his actual composition, a distinct habit accompanies real genius through life in the activity of his associating idea, when not at his work; it is at all times pressing and conducting his spontaneous thoughts, and every object which suggests them, however apparently trivial or unconnected towards itself, making what it wills its own, while instinctively it seems inattentive to whatever has no tendency to its own purposes.

Many peculiar advantages attend the cultivation of one master passion or occupation. In superior minds it is a sovereign that exiles others, and in inferior minds it enfeebles pernicious propensities. It may render us useful to our fellow-citizens, and it imparts the most perfect independence to ourselves. It is observed by a great mathematician, that a geometrician would not be unhappy in a desert.

This unity of design, with a centripetal force, draws all the rays of our existence; and often, when accident has turned the mind firmly to one object, it has been discovered that its occupation is another name for happiness; for it is a mean of escaping from incongruous sensations. It secures us from the dark vacuity of soul, as well as from the whirlwind of ideas; reason itself is a passion, but a passion full of serenity.

It is, however, observable of those who have devoted themselves to an individual object, that its importance is incredibly enlarged to their sensations. Intense attention magnifies like a microscope; but it is possible to apologise for their apparent extravagance from the consideration, that they really observe combinations not perceived by others of inferior application. That this passion has been carried to a curious violence of affection, literary history affords numerous instances. In reading Dr. Burney's "Musical Travels," it would seem that music was the prime object of human life; Richardson, the painter, in his treatise on his beloved art, closes all by affirming, that "Raphael is not only equal, but superior to a Virgil, or a Livy, or a Thucydides, or a Homer!" and that painting can reform our manners, increase our opulence, honour, and power. Denina, in his "Revolutions of Literature," tells us that to excel in historical composition requires more ability than is exercised by the excelling masters of any other art; because it requires not only the same erudition, genius, imagination, and taste, necessary for a poet, a painter, or a philosopher, but the historian must also have some peculiar qualifications; this served as a prelude to his own history.[A] Helvetius, an enthusiast in the fine arts and polite literature, has composed a poem on Happiness; and imagines that it consists in an exclusive love of the cultivation of letters and the arts. All this shows that the more intensely we attach ourselves to an individual object, the more numerous and the more perfect are our sensations; if we yield to the distracting variety of opposite pursuits with an equal passion, our soul is placed amid a continual shock of ideas, and happiness is lost by mistakes.

[Footnote A: One of the most amusing modern instances occurs in the Preface to the late Peter Buchan's annotated edition of "Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland" (2 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1828), in which he declares—"no one has yet conceived, nor has it entered the mind of man, what patience, perseverance, and general knowledge are necessary for an editor of a Collection of Ancient Ballads."—ED.]

* * * * *

ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE.

"All is said," exclaims the lively La Bruyère; but at the same moment, by his own admirable Reflections, confutes the dreary system he would establish. An opinion of the exhausted state of literature has been a popular prejudice of remote existence; and an unhappy idea of a wise ancient, who, even in his day, lamented that "of books there is no end," has been transcribed in many books. He who has critically examined any branch of literature has discovered how little of original invention is to be found even in the most excellent works. To add a little to his predecessors satisfies the ambition of the first geniuses. The popular notion of literary novelty is an idea more fanciful than exact. Many are yet to learn that our admired originals are not such as they mistake them to be; that the plans of the most original performances have been borrowed; and that the thoughts of the most admired compositions are not wonderful discoveries, but only truths, which the ingenuity of the author, by arranging the intermediate and accessary ideas, has unfolded from that confused sentiment, which those experience who are not accustomed to think with depth, or to discriminate with accuracy. This Novelty in Literature is, as Pope defines it,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.

Novelty, in its rigid acceptation, will not be found in any judicious production.

Voltaire looked on everything as imitation. He observes that the most original writers borrowed one from another, and says that the instruction we gather from books is like fire—we fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, and communicate it to others, till it becomes the property of all. He traces some of the finest compositions to the fountainhead; and the reader smiles when he perceives that they have travelled in regular succession through China, India, Arabia, and Greece, to France and to England.

To the obscurity of time are the ancients indebted for that originality in which they are imagined to excel, but we know how frequently they accuse each other; and to have borrowed copiously from preceding writers was not considered criminal by such illustrious authors as Plato and Cicero. The Æneid of Virgil displays little invention in the incidents, for it unites the plan of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Our own early writers have not more originality than modern genius may aspire to reach. To imitate and to rival the Italians and the French formed their devotion. Chaucer, Gower, and Gawin Douglas, were all spirited imitators, and frequently only masterly translators. Spenser, the father of so many poets, is himself the child of the Ausonian Muse. Milton is incessantly borrowing from the poetry of his day. In the beautiful Masque of Comus he preserved all the circumstances of the work he imitated. Tasso opened for him the Tartarean Gulf; the sublime description of the bridge may be found in Sadi, who borrowed it from the Turkish theology; the paradise of fools is a wild flower, transplanted from the wilderness of Ariosto. The rich poetry of Gray is a wonderful tissue, woven on the frames, and composed with the gold threads, of others. To Cervantes we owe Butler; and the united abilities of three great wits, in their Martinus Scriblerus, could find no other mode of conveying their powers but by imitating at once Don Quixote and Monsieur Oufle. Pope, like Boileau, had all the ancients and moderns in his pay; the contributions he levied were not the pillages of a bandit, but the taxes of a monarch. Swift is much indebted for the plans of his two very original performances: he owes the "Travels of Gulliver" to the "Voyages of Cyrano de Bergerac to the Sun and Moon;" a writer, who, without the acuteness of Swift, has wilder flashes of fancy; Joseph Warton has observed many of Swift's strokes in Bishop Godwin's "Man in the Moon," who, in his turn, must have borrowed his work from Cyrano. "The Tale of a Tub" is an imitation of such various originals, that they are too numerous here to mention. Wotton observed, justly, that in many places the author's wit is not his own. Dr. Ferriar's "Essay on the Imitations of Sterne" might be considerably augmented. Such are the writers, however, who imitate, but remain inimitable!

Montaigne, with honest naïveté, compares his writings to a thread that binds the flowers of others; and that, by incessantly pouring the waters of a few good old authors into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper. The good old man elsewhere acquaints us with a certain stratagem of his own invention, consisting of his inserting whole sentences from the ancients, without acknowledgment, that the critics might blunder, by giving nazardes to Seneca and Plutarch, while they imagined they tweaked his nose. Petrarch, who is not the inventor of that tender poetry of which he is the model, and Boccaccio, called the father of Italian novelists, have alike profited by a studious perusal of writers, who are now only read by those who have more curiosity than taste. Boiardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariosto, Boiardo. The madness of Orlando Furioso, though it wears, by its extravagance, a very original air, is only imitated from Sir Launcelot in the old romance of "Morte Arthur," with which, Warton observes, it agrees in every leading circumstance; and what is the Cardenio of Cervantes but the Orlando of Ariosto? Tasso has imitated the Iliad, and enriched his poem with episodes from the Æneid. It is curious to observe that even Dante, wild and original as he appears, when he meets Virgil in the Inferno, warmly expresses his gratitude for the many fine passages for which he was indebted to his works, and on which he says he had "long meditated." Molière and La Fontaine are considered to possess as much originality as any of the French writers; yet the learned Ménage calls Molière "un grand et habile picoreur;" and Boileau tells us that La Fontaine borrowed his style and matter from Marot and Rabelais, and took his subjects from Boccaccio, Poggius, and Ariosto. Nor was the eccentric Rabelais the inventor of most of his burlesque narratives; and he is a very close imitator of Folengo, the inventor of the macaronic poetry, and not a little indebted to the old Facezie of the Italians. Indeed Marot, Villon, as well as those we have noticed, profited by the authors anterior to the age of Francis I. La Bruyère incorporates whole passages of Publius Syrus in his work, as the translator of the latter abundantly shows. To the "Turkish Spy" was Montesquieu beholden for his "Persian Letters," and a numerous crowd are indebted to Montesquieu. Corneille made a liberal use of Spanish literature; and the pure waters of Racine flowed from the fountains of Sophocles and Euripides.

This vein of imitation runs through the productions of our greatest authors. Vigneul de Marville compares some of the first writers to bankers who are rich with the assembled fortunes of individuals, and would be often ruined were they too hardly drawn on.

* * * * *

VERS DE SOCIÉTÉ

Pliny, in an epistle to Tuscus, advises him to intermix among his severer studies the softening charms of poetry; and notices a species of poetical composition which merits critical animadversion. I shall quote Pliny in the language of his elegant translator. He says, "These pieces commonly go under the title of poetical amusements; but these amusements have sometimes gained as much reputation to their authors as works of a more serious nature. It is surprising how much the mind is entertained and enlivened by these little poetical compositions, as they turn upon subjects of gallantry, satire, tenderness, politeness, and everything, in short, that concerns life, and the affairs of the world."

This species of poetry has been carried to its utmost perfection by the French. It has been discriminated by them, from the mass of poetry, under the apt title of "Poésies légères," and sometimes it has been significantly called "Vers de Société." The French writers have formed a body of this fugitive poetry which no European nation can rival; and to which both the language and genius appear to be greatly favourable.

The "Poésies légères" are not merely compositions of a light and gay turn, but are equally employed as a vehicle for tender and pathetic sentiment. They are never long, for they are consecrated to the amusement of society. The author appears to have composed them for his pleasure, not for his glory; and he charms his readers, because he seems careless of their approbation.

Every delicacy of sentiment must find its delicacy of expression, and every tenderness of thought must be softened by the tenderest tones. Nothing trite or trivial must enfeeble and chill the imagination; nor must the ear be denied its gratification by a rough or careless verse. In these works nothing is pardoned; a word may disturb, a line may destroy the charm.

The passions of the poet may form the subjects of his verse. It is in these writings he delineates himself; he reflects his tastes, his desires, his humours, his amours, and even his defects. In other poems the poet disappears under the feigned character he assumes; here alone he speaks, here he acts. He makes a confidant of the reader, interests him in his hopes and his sorrows; we admire the poet, and conclude with esteeming the man. The poem is the complaint of a lover, or a compliment to a patron, a vow of friendship, or a hymn of gratitude.

These poems have often, with great success, displayed pictures of manners; for here the poet colours the objects with all the hues of social life. Reflection must not be amplified, for these are pieces devoted to the fancy; a scene may be painted throughout the poem; a sentiment must be conveyed in a verse. In the "Grongar Hill" of Dyer we discover some strokes which may serve to exemplify this criticism. The poet, contemplating the distant landscape, observes—

A step methinks may pass the stream,
So little distant dangers seem;
So we mistake the future's face,
Eyed through Hope's deluding glass.

It must not be supposed that, because these poems are concise, they are of easy production; a poet's genius may not be diminutive because his pieces are so; nor must we call them, as a fine sonnet has been called, a difficult trifle. A circle may be very small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a larger one. To such compositions we may apply the observation of an ancient critic, that though a little thing gives perfection, yet perfection is not a little thing.

The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.

Genius will not always be sufficient to impart that grace of amenity. Many of the French nobility, who cultivated poetry, have therefore oftener excelled in these poetical amusements than more professed poets. France once delighted in the amiable and ennobled names of Nivernois, Boufflers, and St. Aignan; they have not been considered as unworthy rivals of Chaulieu and Bernard, of Voltaire and Gresset.

All the minor odes of Horace, and the entire Anacreon, are compositions of this kind; effusions of the heart, and pictures of the imagination, which were produced in the convivial, the amatory, and the pensive hour. Our nation has not always been successful in these performances; they have not been kindred to its genius. With Charles II. something of a gayer and more airy taste was communicated to our poetry, but it was desultory and incorrect. Waller, both by his habits and his genius, was well adapted to excel in this lighter poetry; and he has often attained the perfection which the state of the language then permitted. Prior has a variety of sallies; but his humour is sometimes gross, and his versification is sometimes embarrassed. He knew the value of these charming pieces, and he had drunk of this Burgundy in the vineyard itself. He has some translations, and some plagiarisms; but some of his verses to Chloe are eminently airy and pleasing. A diligent selection from our fugitive poetry might perhaps present us with many of these minor poems; but the "Vers de Société" form a species of poetical composition which may still be employed with great success.

* * * * *

THE GENIUS OF MOLIÈRE.

The genius of comedy not only changes with the age, but appears different among different people. Manners and customs not only vary among European nations, but are alike mutable from one age to another, even in the same people. These vicissitudes are often fatal to comic writers; our old school of comedy has been swept off the stage: and our present uniformity of manners has deprived our modern writers of those rich sources of invention when persons living more isolated, society was less monotonous; and Jonson and Shadwell gave us what they called "the humours,"—that is, the individual or particular characteristics of men.[A]

[Footnote A: Aubrey has noted this habit of our two greatest dramatists, when speaking of Shakspeare he says—"The humour of the constable in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he happened to take at Grendon in Bucks; which is the roade from London to Stratford; and there was living that constable in 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men dayly, wherever they came." Shadwell, whose best plays were produced in the reign of Charles II., was a professed imitator of the style of Jonson; and so closely described the manners of his day that he was frequently accused of direct personalities, and obliged to alter one of his plays, The Humorists, to avoid an outcry raised against him. Sir Walter Scott has recorded, in the Preface to his "Fortunes of Nigel," the obligation he was under to Shadwell's comedy, The Squire of Alsatia, for the vivid description it enabled him to give of the lawless denizens of the old Sanctuary of Whitefriars.—ED.]

But however tastes and modes of thinking may be inconstant, and customs and manners alter, at bottom the groundwork is Nature's, in every production of comic genius. A creative genius, guided by an unerring instinct, though he draws after the contemporary models of society, will retain his pre-eminence beyond his own age and his own nation; what was temporary and local disappears, but what appertains to universal nature endures. The scholar dwells on the grotesque pleasantries of the sarcastic Aristophanes, though the Athenian manners, and his exotic personages, have long vanished.

MOLIÈRE was a creator in the art of comedy; and although his personages were the contemporaries of Louis the Fourteenth, and his manners, in the critical acceptation of the term, local and temporary, yet his admirable genius opened that secret path of Nature, which is so rarely found among the great names of the most literary nations. CERVANTES remains single in Spain; in England SHAKSPEARE is a consecrated name; and centuries may pass away before the French people shall witness another MOLIÈRE.

The history of this comic poet is the tale of powerful genius creating itself amidst the most adverse elements. We have the progress of that self-education which struck out an untried path of its own, from the time Molière had not yet acquired his art to the glorious days when he gave his country a Plautus in his farce, a Terence in his composition, and a Menander in his moral truths. But the difficulties overcome, and the disappointments incurred, his modesty and his confidence, and, what was not less extraordinary, his own domestic life in perpetual conflict with his character, open a more strange career, in some respects, than has happened to most others of the high order of his genius.

It was long the fate of Molière to experience that restless importunity of genius which feeds on itself, till it discovers the pabulum it seeks. Molière not only suffered that tormenting impulse, but it was accompanied by the unhappiness of a mistaken direction. And this has been the lot of some who for many years have thus been lost to themselves and to the public.

A man born among the obscure class of the people, thrown among the itinerant companies of actors—for France had not yet a theatre—occupied to his last hours by too devoted a management of his own dramatic corps; himself, too, an original actor in the characters by himself created; with no better models of composition than the Italian farces all' improvista, and whose fantastic gaiety he, to the last, loved too well; becomes the personal favourite of the most magnificent monarch, and the intimate of the most refined circles. Thoughtful observer of these new scenes and new personages, he sports with the affected précieuses and the flattering marquises as with the naïve ridiculousness of the bourgeois, and the wild pride and egotism of the parvenus; and with more profound designs and a hardier hand unmasks the impostures of false pretenders in all professions. His scenes, such was their verity, seem but the reflections of his reminiscences. His fertile facility when touching on transient follies; his wide comprehension, and his moralising vein, in his more elevated comedy, display, in this painter of man, the poet and the philosopher, and, above all, the great moral satirist. Molière has shown that the most successful reformer of the manners of a people is a great comic poet.

The youth Pocquelin—this was his family name—was designed by the tapissier, his father, to be the heir of the hereditary honours of an ancient standing, which had maintained the Pocquelins through four or five generations by the articles of a furnishing upholsterer. His grandfather was a haunter of the small theatres of that day, and the boy often accompanied this venerable critic of the family to his favourite recreations. The actors were usually more excellent than their pieces; some had carried the mimetic art to the perfection of eloquent gesticulation. In these loose scenes of inartificial and burlesque pieces was the genius of Molière cradled and nursed. The changeful scenes of the Théâtre de Bourgogne deeply busied the boy's imagination, to the great detriment of the tapisserie of all the Pocquelins.

The father groaned, the grandfather clapped, the boy remonstrated till, at fourteen years of age, he was consigned, as "un mauvais sujet" (so his father qualified him), to a college of the Jesuits at Paris, where the author of the "Tartuffe" passed five years, studying—for the bar!

Philosophy and logic were waters which he deeply drank; and sprinklings of his college studies often pointed the satire of his more finished comedies. To ridicule false learning and false taste one must be intimate with the true.

On his return to the metropolis the old humour broke out at the representation of the inimitable Scaramouch of the Italian theatre. The irresistible passion drove him from his law studies, and cast young Pocquelin among a company of amateur actors, whose fame soon enabled them not to play gratuitously. Pocquelin was the manager and the modeller, for under his studious eye this company were induced to imitate Nature with the simplicity the poet himself wrote.

The prejudices of the day, both civil and religious, had made these private theatres—no great national theatre yet existing—the resource only of the idler, the dissipated, and even of the unfortunate in society. The youthful adventurer affectionately offered a free admission to the dear Pocquelins. They rejected their entrées with horror, and sent their genealogical tree, drawn afresh, to shame the truant who had wantoned into the luxuriance of genius. To save the honour of the parental upholsterers Pocquelin concealed himself under the immortal name of Molière.

The future creator of French comedy had now passed his thirtieth year, and as yet his reputation was confined to his own dramatic corps—a pilgrim in the caravan of ambulatory comedy. He had provided several temporary novelties. Boileau regretted the loss of one, Le Docteur Amoureux; and in others we detect the abortive conceptions of some of his future pieces. The severe judgment of Molière suffered his skeletons to perish; but, when he had discovered the art of comic writing, with equal discernment he resuscitated them.

Not only had Molière not yet discovered the true bent of his genius, but, still more unfortunate, he had as greatly mistaken it as when he proposed turning avocat, for he imagined that his most suitable character was tragic. He wrote a tragedy, and he acted in a tragedy; the tragedy he composed was condemned at Bordeaux; the mortified poet flew to Grenoble; still the unlucky tragedy haunted his fancy; he looked on it with paternal eyes, in which there were tears. Long after, when Racine, a youth, offered him a very unactable tragedy,[A] Molière presented him with his own: —"Take this, for I am convinced that the subject is highly tragic, notwithstanding my failure." The great dramatic poet of France opened his career by recomposing the condemned tragedy of the comic wit in La Thébaïde. In the illusion that he was a great tragic actor, deceived by his own susceptibility, though his voice denied the tones of passion, he acted in one of Corneille's tragedies, and quite allayed the alarm of a rival company on the announcement. It was not, however, so when the author-actor vivified one of his own native personages; then, inimitably comic, every new representation seemed to be a new creation.

[Footnote A: The tragedy written by Racine was called Théagenè et Chariclée, and founded on the tale by Heliodorus. It was the first attempt of its author, and submitted by him to Molière, while director of the Theatre of the Palais Royal; the latter had no favourable impression of its success if produced, but suggested La Thébaïde as a subject for his genius, and advanced the young poet 100 louis while engaged on his work, which was successfully produced in 1664.—ED.]

It is a remarkable feature, though not perhaps a singular one, in the character of this great comic writer, that he was one of the most serious of men, and even of a melancholic temperament. One of his lampooners wrote a satirical comedy on the comic poet, where he figures as "Molière hypochondre." Boileau, who knew him intimately, happily characterised Molière as le Contemplateur. This deep pensiveness is revealed in his physiognomy.

The genius of Molière, long undiscovered by himself, in its first attempts in a higher walk did not move alone; it was crutched by imitation, and it often deigned to plough with another's heifer. He copied whole scenes from Italian comedies and plots from Italian novelists: his sole merit was their improvement. The great comic satirist, who hereafter was to people the stage with a dramatic crowd who were to live on to posterity, had not yet struck at that secret vein of originality—the fairy treasure which one day was to cast out such a prodigality of invention. His two first comedies, L'Etourdi and Le Dépit Amoureux, which he had only ventured to bring out in a provincial theatre, were grafted on Italian and Spanish comedy. Nothing more original offered to his imagination than the Roman, the Italian, and the Spanish drama; the cunning adroit slave of Terence; the tricking, bustling Gracioso of modern Spain; old fathers, the dupes of some scapegrace, or of their own senile follies, with lovers sighing at cross-purposes. The germ of his future powers may, indeed, be discovered in these two comedies, for insensibly to himself he had fallen into some scenes of natural simplicity. In L'Etourdi, Mascarille, "le roi des serviteurs," which Molière himself admirably personated, is one of those defunct characters of the Italian comedy no longer existing in society; yet, like our Touchstone, but infinitely richer, this new ideal personage still delights by the fertility of his expedients and his perpetual and vigorous gaiety. In Le Dépit Amoureux is the exquisite scene of the quarrel and reconciliation of the lovers. In this fine scene, though perhaps but an amplification of the well-known ode of Horace, Donec gratus eram tibi, Molière consulted his own feelings, and betrayed his future genius.

It was after an interval of three or four years that the provincial celebrity of these comedies obtained a representation at Paris; their success was decisive. This was an evidence of public favour which did not accompany Molière's more finished productions, which were so far unfortunate that they were more intelligible to the few; in fact, the first comedies of Molière were not written above the popular taste; the spirit of true comedy, in a profound knowledge of the heart of man, and in the delicate discriminations of individual character, was yet unknown. Molière was satisfied to excel his predecessors, but he had not yet learned his art.

The rising poet was now earnestly sought after; a more extended circle of society now engaged his contemplative habits. He looked around on living scenes no longer through the dim spectacles of the old comedy, and he projected a new species, which was no longer to depend on its conventional grotesque personages and its forced incidents; he aspired to please a more critical audience by making his dialogue the conversation of society, and his characters its portraits.

Introduced to the literary coterie of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, a new view opened on the favoured poet. To occupy a seat in this envied circle was a distinction in society. The professed object of this reunion of nobility and literary persons, at the hôtel of the Marchioness of Rambouillet, was to give a higher tone to all France, by the cultivation of the language, the intellectual refinement of their compositions, and last, but not least, to inculcate the extremest delicacy of manners. The recent civil dissensions had often violated the urbanity of the court, and a grossness prevailed in conversation which offended the scrupulous. This critical circle was composed of both sexes. They were to be the arbiters of taste, the legislators of criticism, and, what was less tolerable, the models of genius. No work was to be stamped into currency which bore not the mint-mark of the hôtel.

In the annals of fashion and literature no coterie has presented a more instructive and amusing exhibition of the abuses of learning, and the aberrations of ill-regulated imaginations, than the Hôtel de Rambouillet, by its ingenious absurdities. Their excellent design to refine the language, the manners, and even morality itself, branched out into every species of false refinement; their science ran into trivial pedantries, their style into a fantastic jargon, and their spiritualising delicacy into the very puritanism of prudery. Their frivolous distinction between the mind and the heart, which could not always be made to go together, often perplexed them as much as their own jargon, which was not always intelligible, even to the initiated. The French Academy is said to have originated in the first meetings of the Hôtel de Rambouillet; and it is probable that some sense and taste, in its earliest days, may have visited this society, for we do not begin such refined follies without some show of reason.

The local genius of the hôtel was feminine, though the most glorious men of the literature of France were among its votaries. The great magnet was the famed Mademoiselle Scudery, whose voluminous romances were their code; and it is supposed these tomes preserve some of their lengthened conversaziones. In the novel system of gallantry of this great inventor of amorous and metaphysical "twaddle," the ladies were to be approached as beings nothing short of celestial paragons; they were addressed in a language not to be found in any dictionary but their own, and their habits were more fantastic than their language: a sort of domestic chivalry formed their etiquette. Their baptismal names were to them profane, and their assumed ones were drawn from the folio romances—those Bibles of love. At length all ended in a sort of Freemasonry of gallantry, which had its graduated orders, and whoever was not admitted into the mysteries was not permitted to prolong his existence—that is, his residence among them. The apprenticeship of the craft was to be served under certain Introducers to Ruelles.

Their card of invitation was either a rondeau or an enigma, which served as a subject to open conversation. The lady received her visitors reposing on that throne of beauty, a bed placed in an alcove; the toilet was magnificently arranged. The space between the bed and the wall was called the Ruelle[A], the diminutive of la Rue; and in this narrow street, or "Fop's alley," walked the favoured. But the chevalier who was graced by the honorary title of l'Alcoviste, was at once master of the household and master of the ceremonies. His character is pointedly defined by St. Evremond, as "a lover whom the Précieuse is to love without enjoyment, and to enjoy in good earnest her husband with aversion." The scene offered no indecency to such delicate minds, and much less the impassioned style which passed between les chères, as they called themselves. Whatever offered an idea, of what their jargon denominated charnelle, was treason and exile. Years passed ere the hand of the elected maiden was kissed by its martyr. The celebrated Julia d'Angennes was beloved by the Duke de Montausier, but fourteen years elapsed ere she would yield a "yes." When the faithful Julia was no longer blooming, the Alcoviste duke gratefully took up the remains of her beauty.

[Footnote A: In a portion of the ancient Louvre, still preserved amid the changes to which it has been subjected, is the old wainscoted bedroom of the great Henry IV., with the carved recess, and the ruelle, as described above: it is a most interesting fragment of regal domestic life.—ED.]

Their more curious project was the reform of the style of conversation, to purify its grossness, and invent novel terms for familiar objects. Ménage drew up a "Petition of the Dictionaries," which, by their severity of taste, had nearly become superannuated. They succeeded better with the marchandes des modes and the jewellers, furnishing a vocabulary excessively précieuse, by which people bought their old wares with new names. At length they were so successful in their neology, that with great difficulty they understood one another. It is, however, worth observation, that the orthography invented by the précieuses—who, for their convenience, rejected all the redundant letters in words—was adopted, and is now used; and their pride of exclusiveness in society introduced the singular term s'encanailler, to describe a person who haunted low company, while their morbid purity had ever on their lips the word obscénité, terms which Molière ridicules, but whose expressiveness has preserved them in the language.

Ridiculous as some of these extravagances now appear to us, they had been so closely interwoven with the elegance of the higher ranks, and so intimately associated with genius and literature, that the veil of fashion consecrated almost the mystical society, since we find among its admirers the most illustrious names of France.

Into this elevated and artificial circle of society our youthful and unsophisticated poet was now thrown, with a mind not vitiated by any prepossessions of false taste, studious of nature and alive to the ridiculous. But how was the comic genius to strike at the follies of his illustrious friends—to strike, but not to wound? A provincial poet and actor to enter hostilely into the sacred precincts of these Exclusives? Tormented by his genius Molière produced Les Précieuses Ridicules, but admirably parried, in his preface, any application to them, by averring that it was aimed at their imitators—their spurious mimics in the country. The Précieuses Ridicules was acted in the presence of the assembled Hôtel de Rambouillet with immense applause. A central voice from the pit, anticipating the host of enemies and the fame of the reformer of comedy, exclaimed, "Take courage, Molière, this is true comedy." The learned Ménage was the only member of the society who had the good sense to detect the drift; he perceived the snake in the grass. "We must now," said this sensible pedant (in a remote allusion to the fate of idolatry and the introduction of Christianity) to the poetical pedant, Chapelain, "follow the counsel which St. Rémi gave to Clovis—we must burn all that we adored, and adore what we have burned." The success of the comedy was universal; the company doubled their prices; the country gentry flocked to witness the marvellous novelty, which far exposed that false taste, that romance-impertinence, and that sickly affectation which had long disturbed the quiet of families. Cervantes had not struck more adroitly at Spanish rodomontade.

At this universal reception of the Précieuses Ridicules, Molière, it is said, exclaimed—"I need no longer study Plautus and Terence, nor poach in the fragments of Menander; I have only to study the world." It may be doubtful whether the great comic satirist at that moment caught the sudden revelation of his genius, as he did subsequently in his Tartuffe, his Misanthrope, his Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and others. The Précieuses Ridicules was the germ of his more elaborate Femmes Savantes, which was not produced till after an interval of twelve years.

Molière returned to his old favourite canevas, or plots of Italian farces and novels, and Spanish comedies, which, being always at hand, furnished comedies of intrigue. L'Ecole des Maris is an inimitable model of this class.

But comedies which derive their chief interest from the ingenious mechanism of their plots, however poignant the delight of the artifice of the denouement, are somewhat like an epigram, once known, the brilliant point is blunted by repetition. This is not the fate of those representations of men's actions, passions, and manners, in the more enlarged sphere of human nature, where an eternal interest is excited, and will charm on the tenth repetition.

No! Molière had not yet discovered his true genius; he was not yet emancipated from his old seductions. A rival company was reputed to have the better actors for tragedy, and Molière resolved to compose an heroic drama on the passion of jealousy—a favourite one on which he was incessantly ruminating. Don Garcie de Navarre, ou Le Prince Jaloux, the hero personated by himself, terminated by the hisses of the audience.

The fall of the Prince Jaloux was nearly fatal to the tender reputation of the poet and the actor. The world became critical: the marquises, and the précieuses, and recently the bourgeois, who were sore from Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu Imaginaire, were up in arms; and the rival theatre maliciously raised the halloo, flattering themselves that the comic genius of their dreaded rival would be extinguished by the ludicrous convulsed hiccough to which Molière was liable in his tragic tones, but which he adroitly managed in his comic parts.

But the genius of Molière was not to be daunted by cabals, nor even injured by his own imprudence. Le Prince Jaloux was condemned in February, 1661, and the same year produced L'Ecole des Maris and Les Fâcheux. The happy genius of the poet opened on his Zoiluses a series of dramatic triumphs.

Foreign critics—Tiraboschi and Schlegel—have depreciated the Frenchman's invention, by insinuating that were all that Molière borrowed taken from him, little would remain of his own. But they were not aware of his dramatic creation, even when he appropriated the slight inventions of others; they have not distinguished the eras of the genius of Molière, and the distinct classes of his comedies. Molière had the art of amalgamating many distinct inventions of others into a single inimitable whole. Whatever might be the herbs and the reptiles thrown into the mystical caldron, the incantation of genius proved to be truly magical.

Facility and fecundity may produce inequality, but, when a man of genius works, they are imbued with a raciness which the anxious diligence of inferior minds can never yield. Shakspeare, probably, poured forth many scenes in this spirit. The multiplicity of the pieces of Molière, their different merits, and their distinct classes—all written within the space of twenty years—display, if any poet ever did, this wonder-working faculty. The truth is, that few of his comedies are finished works; he never satisfied himself, even in his most applauded productions. Necessity bound him to furnish novelties for his theatre; he rarely printed any work. Les Fâcheux, an admirable series of scenes, in three acts, and in verse, was "planned, written, rehearsed, and represented in a single fortnight." Many of his dramatic effusions were precipitated on the stage; the humorous scenes of Monsieur de Pourceaugnac were thrown out to enliven a royal fête.

This versatility and felicity of composition made everything with Molière a subject for comedy. He invented two novelties, such as the stage had never before witnessed. Instead of a grave defence from the malice of his critics, and the flying gossip of the court circle, Molière found out the art of congregating the public to The Quarrels of Authors. He dramatised his critics. In a comedy without a plot, and in scenes which seemed rather spoken than written, and with characters more real than personated, he displayed his genius by collecting whatever had been alleged to depreciate it; and La Critique de L'Ecole des Femmes is still a delightful production. This singular drama resembles the sketch-book of an artist, the croquis of portraits—the loose hints of thoughts, many of which we discover were more fully delineated in his subsequent pieces. With the same rapid conception he laid hold of his embarrassments to furnish dramatic novelties as expeditiously as the king required. Louis XIV. was himself no indifferent critic, and more than once suggested an incident or a character to his favourite poet. In L'Impromptu de Versailles, Molière appears in his own person, and in the midst of his whole company, with all the irritable impatience of a manager who had no piece ready. Amidst this green-room bustle Molière is advising, reprimanding, and imploring, his "ladies and gentlemen." The characters in this piece are, in fact, the actors themselves, who appear under their own names; and Molière himself reveals many fine touches of his own poetical character, as well as his managerial. The personal pleasantries on his own performers, and the hints for plots, and the sketches of character which the poet incidentally throws out, form a perfect dramatic novelty. Some of these he himself subsequently adopted, and others have been followed up by some dramatists without rivalling Molière. The Figaro of Beaumarchais is a descendant of the Mascarille of Molière; but the glory of rivalling Molière was reserved for our own stage. Sheridan's Critic, or a Tragedy Rehearsed, is a congenial dramatic satire with these two pieces of Molière.

The genius of Molière had now stepped out of the restricted limits of the old comedy; he now looked on the moving world with other eyes, and he pursued the ridiculous in society. These fresher studies were going on at all hours, and every object was contemplated with a view to comedy. His most vital characters have been traced to living originals, and some of his most ludicrous scenes had occurred in reality before they delighted the audience. Monsieur Jourdain had expressed his astonishment, "qu'il faisait de la prose," in the Count de Soissons, one of the uneducated noblemen devoted to the chase. The memorable scene between Trissotin and Vadius, their mutual compliments terminating in their mutual contempt, had been rehearsed by their respective authors—the Abbé Cottin and Ménage. The stultified booby of Limoges, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, and the mystified millionaire, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, were copied after life, as was Sganarelle, in Le Médecin malgré lui. The portraits in that gallery of dramatic paintings, Le Misanthrope, have names inscribed under them; and the immortal Tartuffe was a certain bishop of Autun. No dramatist has conceived with greater variety the female character; the women of Molière have a distinctness of feature, and are touched with a freshness of feeling. Molière studied nature, and his comic humour is never checked by that unnatural wit where the poet, the more he discovers himself, the farther he removes himself from the personage of his creation. The quickening spell which hangs over the dramas of Molière is this close attention to nature, wherein he greatly resembles our Shakspeare, for all springs from its source. His unobtrusive genius never occurs to us in following up his characters, and a whole scene leaves on our mind a complete but imperceptible effect.

The style of Molière has often been censured by the fastidiousness of his native critics, as bas and du style familier. This does not offend the foreigner, who is often struck by its simplicity and vigour. Molière preferred the most popular and naïve expressions, as well as the most natural incidents, to a degree which startled the morbid delicacy of fashion and fashionable critics. He had frequent occasions to resist their petty remonstrances; and whenever Molière introduced an incident, or made an allusion of which he knew the truth, and which with him had a settled meaning, this master of human life trusted to his instinct and his art.

This pure and simple taste, ever rare at Paris, was the happy portion of the genius of this Frenchman. Hence he delighted to try his farcical pieces, for we cannot imagine that they were his more elevated comedies, on his old maid-servant. This maid, probably, had a keen relish for comic humour, for once when Molière read to her the comedy of another writer as his own, she soon detected the trick, declaring that it could not be her master's. Hence, too, our poet invited even children to be present on such rehearsals, and at certain points would watch their emotions. Hence, too, in his character of manager, he taught his actors to study nature. An actress, apt to speak freely, told him, "You torment us all; but you never speak to my husband." This man, originally a candle-snuffer, was a perfect child of nature, and acted the Thomas Diaforius, in Le Malade Imaginaire. Molière replied, "I should be sorry to say a word to him; I should spoil his acting. Nature has provided him with better lessons to perform his parts than any which I could give him." We may imagine Shakspeare thus addressing his company, had the poet been also the manager.

A remarkable incident in the history of the genius of Molière is the frequent recurrence of the poet to the passion of jealousy. The "jaundice in the lover's eye," he has painted with every tint of his imagination. "The green-eyed monster" takes all shapes, and is placed in every position. Solemn, or gay, or satirical, he sometimes appears in agony, but often scorns to make its "trifles light as air," only ridiculous as a source of consolation. Was Le Contemplateur comic in his melancholy, or melancholy in his comic humour?

The truth is, that the poet himself had to pass through those painful stages which he has dramatised. The domestic life of Molière was itself very dramatic; it afforded Goldoni a comedy of five acts, to reveal the secrets of the family circle of Molière; and l'Abbate Chiari, an Italian novelist and playwright, has taken for a comic subject, Molière, the Jealous Husband.

The French, in their "petite morale" on conjugal fidelity, appear so tolerant as to leave little sympathy for the real sufferer. Why should they else have treated domestic jealousy as a foible for ridicule, rather than a subject for deep passion? Their tragic drama exhibits no Othello, nor their comedy a Kitely, or a Suspicious Husband. Molière, while his own heart was the victim, conformed to the national taste, by often placing the object on its comic side. Domestic jealousy is a passion which admits of a great diversity of subjects, from the tragic or the pathetic, to the absurd and the ludicrous. We have them all in Molière. Molière often was himself "Le Cocu Imaginaire;" he had been in the position of the guardian in L'Ecole des Maris. Like Arnolphe in L'Ecole des Femmes, he had taken on himself to rear a young wife who played the same part, though with less innocence; and like the Misanthrope, where the scene between Alceste and Celimène is "une des plus fortes qui existant au théâtre," he was deeply entangled in the wily cruelties of scornful coquetry, and we know that at times he suffered in "the hell of lovers" the torments of his own Jealous Prince.

When this poet cast his fate with a troop of comedians, as the manager, and whom he never would abandon, when at the height of his fortune, could he avoid accustoming himself to the relaxed habits of that gay and sorrowful race, who, "of imagination all compact," too often partake of the passions they inspire in the scene? The first actress, Madame Béjard, boasted that, with the exception of the poet, she had never dispensed her personal favours but to the aristocracy. The constancy of Molière was interrupted by another actress, Du Parc; beautiful but insensible, she only tormented the poet, and furnished him with some severe lessons for the coquetry of his Celimène, in Le Misanthrope. The facility of the transition of the tender passion had more closely united the susceptible poet to Mademoiselle de Brie. But Madame Béjard, not content to be the chief actress, and to hold her partnership in "the properties," to retain her ancient authority over the poet, introduced, suddenly, a blushing daughter, some say a younger sister, who had hitherto resided at Avignon, and who she declared was the offspring of the count of Modena, by a secret marriage. Armande Béjard soon attracted the paternal attentions of the poet. She became the secret idol of his retired moments, while he fondly thought that he could mould a young mind, in its innocence, to his own sympathies. The mother and the daughter never agreed. Armande sought his protection; and one day rushing into his study, declared that she would marry her friend. The elder Béjard freely consented to avenge herself on De Brie. De Brie was indulgent, though "the little creature," she observed, was to be yoked to one old enough to be her father. Under the same roof were now heard the voices of the three females, and Molière meditating scenes of feminine jealousies.

Molière was fascinated by his youthful wife; her lighter follies charmed: two years riveted the connubial chains. Molière was a husband who was always a lover. The actor on the stage was the very man he personated. Mademoiselle Molière, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. With what fervour the poet feels her neglect! with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend who would have dissolved the spell!

The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows than slights. Mademoiselle had the art of persuading Molière that he was only his own "cocu imaginaire;" but these domestic embarrassments multiplied. Mademoiselle, reckless of the distinguished name she bore, while she gratified her personal vanity by a lavish expenditure, practised that artful coquetry which attracted a crowd of loungers. Molière found no repose in his own house, and retreated to a country-house, where, however, his restless jealousy often drove him back to scenes which he trembled to witness. At length came the last argument of outraged matrimony—he threatened confinement. To prevent a public rupture, Molière consented to live under the same roof, and only to meet at the theatre. Weak only in love, however divided from his wife, Molière remained her perpetual lover. He said, in confidence, "I am born with every disposition to tenderness. When I married, she was too young to betray any evil inclinations. My studies were devoted to her, but I soon discovered her indifference. I ascribed it to her temper; her foolish passion for Count Guiche made too much noise to leave me even this apparent tranquillity. I resolved to live with her as an honourable man, whose reputation does not depend on the bad conduct of his wife. My kindness has not changed her, but my compassion has increased. Those who have not experienced these delicate emotions have never truly loved. In her absence her image is before me; in her presence, I am deprived of all reflection; I have no longer eyes for her defects; I only view her amiable. Is not this the last extreme of folly? And are you not surprised that I, reasoning as I do, am only sensible of the weakness which I cannot throw off?"

Few men of genius have left in their writings deeper impressions of their personal feelings than Molière. With strong passions in a feeble frame, he had duped his imagination that, like another Pygmalion, he would create a woman by his own art. In silence and agony he tasted the bitter fruits of the disordered habits of the life of a comedian, a manager, and a poet. His income was splendid; but he himself was a stranger to dissipation. He was a domestic man, of a pensive and even melancholy temperament. Silent and reserved, unless in conversation with that more intimate circle whose literature aided his genius, or whose friendship consoled for his domestic disturbances, his habits were minutely methodical; the strictest order was observed throughout his establishment; the hours of dinner, of writing, of amusement, were allotted, and the slightest derangement in his own apartment excited a morbid irritability which would interrupt his studies for whole days.

Who, without this tale of Molière, could conjecture, that one skilled in the workings of our nature would have ventured on the perilous experiment of equalizing sixteen years against forty—weighing roses against grey locks—to convert a wayward coquette, through her capricious womanhood, into an attached wife? Yet, although Mademoiselle could cherish no personal love for the intellectual being, and hastened to change the immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she seems to have been impressed by a perfect conviction of his creative genius. When the Archbishop of Paris, in the pride of prelacy, refused the rites of sepulture to the corpse of Molière THE ACTOR, it was her voice which reminded the world of Molière THE POET, exclaiming—"Have they denied a grave to the man to whom Greece would have raised an altar!"

* * * * *

THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE.

The "Memoirs of the poet Racine," composed by his son, who was himself no contemptible poet, may be classed among those precious pieces of biography so delightful to the philosopher who studies human nature, and the literary man whose curiosity is interested in the history of his republic. Such, works are rare, and rank in merit next to autobiographies. Such biographical sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, contain what we often regret is wanting in the more regular life of a professed biographer. These desultory memoirs interest by their warmth, their more personal acquaintance with the hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which give so much life to the individual character.

The prominent feature in the character of Racine was an excessive tenderness of feeling; his profound sensibility even to its infirmity, the tears which would cover his face, and the agony in his heart, were perhaps national. But if this sensibility produced at times the softest emotions, if it made him the poet of lovers, and even the poet of imagination, it also rendered him too feelingly alive to criticism, it embittered his days with too keen a perception of the domestic miseries which all men must alike undergo.

During a dramatic performance at St. Cyr, the youthful representative of Esther suddenly forgot her part; the agitated poet exclaimed, "Oh, mademoiselle, you are ruining my piece!" Terrified at this reprimand, the young actress wept; the poet flew to her, wiped away her tears, and with contagious sympathy shed tears himself. "I do not hesitate," says Louis Racine, "to relate such minute circumstances, because this facility of shedding tears shows the goodness of the heart, according to the observation of the ancients—

[Greek:] "agathohi d aridakryes andres."

This morbid state of feeling made his whole literary life uneasy; unjust criticism affected him as much as the most poignant, and there was nothing he dreaded more than that his son should become a writer of tragedies. "I will not dissimulate," he says, addressing his son, "that in the heat of composition we are not sometimes pleased with ourselves; but you may believe me, when the day after we look over our work, we are astonished not to find that excellence we admired in the evening; and when we reflect that even what we find good ought to be still better, and how distant we are still from perfection, we are discouraged and dissatisfied. Besides all this, although the approbation I have received has been very flattering, the least adverse criticism, even miserable as it might be, has always occasioned me more vexation than all the praise I received could give me pleasure." And, again, he endeavours to impress on him that the favour he received from the world he owed not to his verses. "Do not imagine that they are my verses that attract all these kindnesses. Corneille composes verses a hundred times finer than mine, but no one regards him. His verses are only applauded from the mouths of the actors. I do not tire men of the world by reciting my works; I never allude to them; I endeavour to amuse them with matters which please them. My talent in their company is, not to make them feel that I have any genius, but to show them that they possess some themselves. When you observe the duke pass several hours with me, you would be surprised, were you present, that he frequently quits me without my having uttered three words; but gradually I put him in a humour of chatting, and he leaves me more satisfied with himself than with me." When Rochefoucault said that Boileau and Racine had only one kind of genius, and could only talk about their own poetry, it is evident that the observation should not have extended to Racine, however it might to Boileau. It was Racine's excessive sensibility which made him the finest dramatic reciter. The celebrated actress, Mademoiselle Champmeslé,[A] the heroine of his tragedies, had no genius whatever for the stage, but she had beauty, voice, and memory. Racine taught her first to comprehend the verses she was going to recite, showed her the appropriate gesture, and gave her the variable tones, which he even sometimes noted down. His pupil, faithful to her lessons, though a mere actress of art, on the stage seemed inspired by passion; and as she, thus formed and fashioned, naturally only played thus effectively in the dramas of her preceptor, it was supposed that love for the poet inspired the actress.

[Footnote A: Racine first met this actress at the Marquis de Sevigné's petit soupers; so much lamented by his more famous mother in one of her admirable letters, who speaks of "the Racines and the Despreaux's" who assisted his prodigality. In one of Madame de Sevigné's letters, dated in 1672, she somewhat rashly declares, "Racine now writes his dramas, not for posterity, but for Mademoiselle Champmeslé:" she had then forsaken the marquis for the poet, who wrote Roxane in Bajazet expressly for her. —ED.]

When Racine read aloud he diffused his own enthusiasm once with Boileau and Nicole, amid a literary circle, they talked of Sophocles, whom Racine greatly admired, but from whom he had never dared to borrow a tragic subject. Taking up a Greek Sophocles, and translating the OEdipus, the French poet became so deeply imbued with the Greek tragedian, that his auditors caught all the emotions of terror and pity. "I have seen," says one of those auditors, "our best pieces represented by our best actors, but never anything approached the agitation which then came over us; and to this distant day I have never lost the recollection of Racine, with the volume in his hand, full of emotion, and we all breathlessly pressing around him."

It was the poet's sensibility that urged him to make the most extraordinary sacrifice that ever poet made; he wished to get rid entirely of that poetical fame to which he owed everything, and which was at once his pleasure, his pride, and his property. His education had been a religious one, in the Port-Royal;[A] but when Nicole, one of that illustrious fraternity, with undistinguishing fanaticism, had once asserted that all dramatic writers were public poisoners of souls, Racine, in the pride and strength of his genius, had eloquently repelled the denouncement. But now, having yet only half run his unrivalled course, he turned aside, relinquished its glory, repented of his success, and resolved to write no more tragedies.[B] He determined to enter into the austere order of the Chartreux; but his confessor, more rational than his penitent, assured him that a character so feeling as his own, and so long accustomed to the world, could not endure that terrible solitude. He advised him to marry a woman of a serious turn, and that little domestic occupations would withdraw him from the passion he seemed most to dread, that of writing verses.

[Footnote A: For an account of this very celebrated religious foundation, its fortunes and misfortunes, see the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 94.—ED.]

[Footnote B: Racine ultimately conceived an aversion for his dramatic offspring, and could never be induced to edit a proper edition of his works, or even give a few lessons in declamation to a juvenile princess, who selected his Andromaque for the subject, perhaps out of compliment to the poet, whose first visit became in consequence his last.—ED.]

The marriage of Racine was an act of penance—neither love nor interest had any share in the union. His wife was a good sort of woman, but perhaps the most insensible of her sex; and the properest person in the world to mortify the passion of literary glory, and the momentary exultation of literary vanity.[A] It is scarcely credible, but most certainly true, since her own son relates the fact, that the wife of Racine had neither seen acted, nor ever read, nor desired to read, the tragedies which had rendered her husband so celebrated throughout Europe; she had only learned some of their titles in conversation. She was as insensible to fortune as to fame. One day, when Racine returned from Versailles, with the princely gift from Louis XIV. of a purse of 1000 louis, he hastened to embrace his wife, and to show her the treasure. But she was full of trouble, for one of the children for two days had not studied. "We will talk of this another time," exclaimed the poet; "at present let us be happy." But she insisted he ought instantly to reprimand this child, and continued her complaints; while Boileau in astonishment paced to and fro, perhaps thinking of his Satire on Women, and exclaiming, "What insensibility! Is it possible that a purse of 1000 louis is not worth a thought!" This stoical apathy did not arise in Madame Racine from the grandeur, but the littleness, of her mind. Her prayer-books and her children were the sole objects that interested this good woman. Racine's sensibility was not mitigated by his marriage; domestic sorrows weighed heavily on his spirits: when the illness of his children agitated him, he sometimes exclaimed, "Why did I expose myself to all this? Why was I persuaded not to be a Chartreux?"—His letters to his children are those of a father and a friend; kind exhortations, or pathetic reprimands; he enters into the most domestic detail, while he does not conceal from them the mediocrity of their fortune. "Had you known him in his family," said Louis Racine, "you would be more alive to his poetical character, you would then know why his verses are always so full of sentiment. He was never more pleased than when, permitted to be absent from the court, he could come among us to pass a few days. Even in the presence of strangers he dared to be a father, and used to join us in our sports. I well remember our processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I the rector, and the author of 'Athaliah,' chanting with us, carried the cross."

[Footnote A: The lady he chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family was of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described as possessing any marked personal attractions.—ED.]

At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days. He was naturally of a melancholic temperament, apt to dwell on objects which occasion pain, rather than on those which exhilarate. Louis Racine observes that his character resembled Cicero's description of himself, more inclined to dread unfortunate events, than to hope for happy ones; semper magis ad versos rerum exitus metuens quam sperans secundos. In the last incident of his life his extreme sensibility led him to imagine as present a misfortune which might never have occurred.

Madame de Maintenon, one day in conversation with the poet, alluded to the misery of the people. Racine observed it was the usual consequence of long wars: the subject was animating, and he entered into it with all that enthusiasm peculiar to himself. Madame de Maintenon was charmed with his eloquent effusion, and requested him to give her his observations in writing, assuring him they should not go out of her hand. She was reading his memoir when the king entered her apartment; he took it up, and, after having looked over a few pages, he inquired with great quickness who was the author. She replied it was a secret; but the king was peremptory, and the author was named. The king asked with great dissatisfaction, "Is it because he writes the most perfect verses, that he thinks that he is able to become a statesman?"

Madame de Maintenon told the poet all that had passed, and declined to receive his visits for the present. Racine was shortly after attacked with violent fever. In the languor of recovery he addressed Madame de Maintenon to petition to have his pension freed from some new tax; and he added an apology for his presumption in suggesting the cause of the miseries of the people, with an humiliation that betrays the alarms that existed in his mind. The letter is too long to transcribe, but it is a singular instance how genius can degrade itself when it has placed all its felicity on the varying smiles of those we call the great. Well might his friend Boileau, who had nothing of his sensibility nor imagination, exclaim, with his good sense, of the court:—

Quel séjour étranger, et pour vous et pour moi!

Racine afterwards saw Madame de Maintenon walking in the gardens of Versailles; she drew aside into a retired allée to meet him; she exhorted him to exert his patience and fortitude, and told him that all would end well. "No, madam," he replied, "never!" "Do you then doubt," she said, "either my heart, or my influence?" He replied, "I acknowledge your influence, and know your goodness to me; but I have an aunt who loves me in quite a different manner. That pious woman every day implores God to bestow on me disgrace, humiliation, and occasions for penitence, and she has more influence than you." As he said these words, the sound of a carriage was heard; "The king is coming!" said Madame de Maintenon; "hide yourself!"

To this last point of misery and degradation was this great genius reduced. Shortly after he died, and was buried at the feet of his master in the chapel of the studious and religious society of Port-Royal.

The sacred dramas of Esther and Athaliah were among the latter productions of Racine. The fate of Athaliah, his masterpiece, was remarkable. The public imagined that it was a piece written only for children, as it was performed by the young scholars of St. Cyr, and received it so coldly that Racine was astonished and disgusted.[A] He earnestly requested Boileau's opinion, who maintained it was his capital work. "I understand these things," said he, "and the public y reviendra." The prediction was a true one, but it was accomplished too late, long after the death of the author; it was never appreciated till it was publicly performed.

[Footnote A: They were written at the request of Madame de Maintenon, for the pupils of her favourite establishment at St. Cyr; she was anxious that they should be perfect in declamation, and she tried them with the poet's Andromaque, but they recited it with so much passion and feeling that they alarmed their patroness, who told Racine "it was so well done that she would be careful they should never act that drama again," and urged him to write plays on sacred subjects expressly for their use. He had not written a play for upwards of ten years; he now composed his Esther, making that character a flattering reflection of Maintenon's career.—ED.]

Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the booksellers. Boileau particularly, though fond of money, was so delicate on this point that he gave all his works away. It was this that made him so bold in railing at those authors qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages d'un libraire, and he declared that he had only inserted these verses,

Je sai qu'un noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime
Tirer de son travail un tribut légitime,

to console Racine, who had received some profits from the printing of his tragedies. Those profits were, however, inconsiderable; the truth is, the king remunerated the poets.

Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed by Colbert for six hundred livres, to give him the means of continuing his studies of the belles-lettres. He received, by an account found among his papers, above forty thousand livres from the cassette of the king, by the hand of the first valet-de-chambre. Besides these gifts, Racine had a pension of four thousand livres as historiographer, and another pension as a man of letters.

Which is the more honourable? to crouch for a salary brought by the hand of the first valet-de-chambre, or to exult in the tribute offered by the public to an author?

* * * * *

OF STERNE.

Cervantes is immortal—Rabelais and STERNE have passed away to the curious.

These fraternal geniuses alike chose their subjects from their own times. Cervantes, with the innocent design of correcting a temporary folly of his countrymen, so that the very success of the design might have proved fatal to the work itself; for when he had cut off the heads of the Hydra, an extinct monster might cease to interest the readers of other times, and other manners. But Cervantes, with judgment equal to his invention, and with a cast of genius made for all times, delighted his contemporaries and charms his posterity. He looked to the world and collected other follies than the Spanish ones, and to another age than the administration of the duke of Lerma; with more genuine pleasantry than any writer from the days of Lucian, not a solitary spot has soiled the purity of his page; while there is scarcely a subject in human, nature for which we might not find some apposite illustration. His style, pure as his thoughts, is, however, a magic which ceases to work in all translations, and Cervantes is not Cervantes in English or in French; yet still he retains his popularity among all the nations of Europe; which is more than we can say even of our Shakspeare!

Rabelais and Sterne were not perhaps inferior in genius, and they were read with as much avidity and delight as the Spaniard. "Le docte Rabelais" had the learning which the Englishman wanted; while unhappily Sterne undertook to satirise false erudition, which requires the knowledge of the true. Though the Papemanes, on whom Rabelais has exhausted his grotesque humour and his caustic satire, have not yet walked off the stage, we pay a heavy price in the grossness of his ribaldry and his tiresome balderdash for odd stories and flashes of witty humour. Rabelais hardly finds readers even in France, with the exception of a few literary antiquaries. The day has passed when a gay dissolute abbe could obtain a rich abbey by getting Rabelais by heart, for the perpetual improvement of his patron—and Rabelais is now little more than a Rabelais by tradition.[A]

[Footnote A: The clergy were not so unfavourable to Rabelais as might have been expected. He was through life protected by the Cardinal Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who employed him in various important negotiations; and it is recorded of him that he refused a scholar admittance to his table because he had not read his works. This familiarity with his grotesque romance was also shared by Cardinal Duprat, who is said to have always carried a copy of it with him, as if it was his breviary. The anecdote of the priest who obtained promotion from a knowledge of his works is given in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 10.—ED.]

In my youth the world doted on Sterne! Martin Sherlock ranks him among "the luminaries of the century." Forty years ago, young men in their most facetious humours never failed to find the archetypes of society in the Shandy family—every good-natured soul was uncle Toby, every humorist was old Shandy, every child of Nature was Corporal Trim! It may now be doubted whether Sterne's natural dispositions were the humorous or the pathetic: the pathetic has survived!

There is nothing of a more ambiguous nature than strong humour, and Sterne found it to be so; and latterly, in despair, he asserted that "the taste for humour is the gift of heaven!" I have frequently observed how humour, like the taste for olives, is even repugnant to some palates, and have witnessed the epicure of humour lose it all by discovering how some have utterly rejected his favourite relish! Even men of wit may not taste humour! The celebrated Dr. Cheyne, who was not himself deficient in originality of thinking with great learning and knowledge, once entrusted to a friend a remarkable literary confession. Dr. Cheyne assured him that "he could not read 'Don Quixote' with any pleasure, nor had any taste for 'Hudibras' or 'Gulliver;' and that what we call wit and humour in these authors he considered as false ornaments, and never to be found in those compositions of the ancients which we most admire and esteem."[A] Cheyne seems to have held Aristophanes and Lucian monstrously cheap! The ancients, indeed, appear not to have possessed that comic quality that we understand as humour, nor can I discover a word which exactly corresponds with our term humour in any language, ancient or modern. Cervantes excels in that sly satire which hides itself under the cloak of gravity, but this is not the sort of humour which so beautifully plays about the delicacy of Addison's page; and both are distinct from the broader and stronger humour of Sterne.

[Footnote A: This friend, it now appears, was Dr. King, of Oxford, whose anecdotes have recently been published. This curious fact is given in a strange hodge-podge, entitled "The Dreamer;" a remarkable instance where a writer of learning often conceives that to be humour, which to others is not even intelligible!]

The result of Dr. Cheyne's honest confession was experienced by Sterne, for while more than half of the three kingdoms were convulsed with laughter at his humour, the other part were obdurately dull to it. Take, for instance, two very opposite effects produced by "Tristram Shandy" on a man of strong original humour himself, and a wit who had more delicacy and sarcasm than force and originality. The Rev. Philip Skelton declared that "after reading 'Tristram Shandy,' he could not for two or three days attend seriously to his devotion, it filled him with so many ludicrous ideas." But Horace Walpole, who found his "Sentimental Journey" very pleasing, declares that of "his tiresome 'Tristram Shandy,' he could never get through three volumes."

The literary life of Sterne was a short one: it was a blaze of existence, and it turned his head. With his personal life we are only acquainted by tradition. Was the great sentimentalist himself unfeeling, dissolute, and utterly depraved? Some anecdotes which one of his companions[A] communicated to me, confirm Garrick's account preserved in Dr. Bumey's collections, that "He was more dissolute in his conduct than his writings, and generally drove every female away by his ribaldry. He degenerated in London like an ill-transplanted shrub; the incense of the great spoiled his head, and their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud —an invalid in body and mind." Warburtou declared that "he was an irrecoverable scoundrel." Authenticated facts are, however, wanting for a judicious summary of the real character of the founder of sentimental writing. An impenetrable mystery hangs over his family conduct; he has thrown many sweet domestic touches in his own memoirs and letters addressed to his daughter: but it would seem that he was often parted from his family. After he had earnestly solicited the return of his wife from France, though she did return, he was suffered to die in utter neglect.

[Footnote A: Caleb Whitefoord, the wit once famed for his invention of cross-readings, which, appeared under the name of "Papirius Cursor.">[

His sermons have been observed to be characterised by an air of levity; he attempted this unusual manner. It was probably a caprice which induced him to introduce one of his sermons in "Tristram Shandy;" it was fixing a diamond in black velvet, and the contrast set off the brilliancy. But he seems then to have had no design of publishing his "Sermons." One day, in low spirits, complaining to Caleb Whitefoord of the state of his finances, Caleb asked him, "if he had no sermons like the one in 'Tristram Shandy?'" But Sterne had no notion that "sermons" were saleable, for two preceding ones had passed unnoticed. "If you could hit on a striking title, take my word for it that they would go down." The next day Sterne made his appearance in raptures. "I have it!" he cried: "Dramatic Sermons by Torick." With great difficulty he was persuaded to drop this allusion to the church and the playhouse![A]

[Footnote A: He published these two volumes of discourses under the title of "Yorick's Sermons," because, as he stated in his preface, it would "best serve the booksellers' purpose, as Yorick's name is possibly of the two the more known;" but, fearing the censure of the world, he added a second title-page with his own name, "to ease the minds of those who see a jest, and the danger which lurks under it, where no jest is meant." All this did not free Sterne from much severe criticism.—ED.]

We are told in the short addition to his own memoirs, that "he submitted to fate on the 18th day of March, 1768, at his lodgings in Bond-street." But it does not appear to have been noticed that Sterne died with neither friend nor relation by his side! a hired nurse was the sole companion of the man whose wit found admirers in every street, but whose heart, it would seem, could not draw one to his death-bed. We cannot say whether Sterne, who had long been dying, had resolved to practise his own principle,—when he made the philosopher Shandy, who had a fine saying for everything, deliver his opinion on death—that "there is no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groan? and convulsions—and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains in a dying man's room. Strip it of these, what is it?" I find the moment of his death described in a singular book, the "Life of a Foot-man." I give it with all its particulars. "In the month of January, 1768, we set off for London. We stopped for some time at Almack's house in Pall-Mall. My master afterwards took Sir James Gray's house in Clifford-street, who was going ambassador to Spain. He now began house-keeping, hired a French cook, a house-maid, and kitchen-maid, and kept a great deal of the best company. About this time, Mr Sterne, the celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond-street. He was sometimes called 'Tristram Shandy,' and sometimes 'Yorick;' a very great favourite of the gentlemen's. One day my master had company to dinner who were speaking about him: the Duke of Roxburgh, the Earl of March, the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Hume, and Mr. James. 'John,' said my master, 'go and inquire how Mr. Sterne is to-day.' I went, returned, and said,—I went to Mr. Sterne's lodging; the mistress opened the door; I inquired how he did. She told me to go up to the nurse; I went into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten minutes; but in five he said, 'Now it is come!' He put up his hand as if to stop a blow, and died in a minute. The gentlemen were all very sorry, and lamented him very much[A]."

[Footnote A: "Travels in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, during a series of thirty years and upwards, by John Macdonald, a cadet of the family of Kippoch, in Invernesshire, who after the ruin of his family, in 1765, was thrown, when a child, on the wide world, &c. Printed for the author, 1790."—He served a number of noblemen and gentlemen in the humble station of a footman. There is such an air of truth and sincerity throughout the work that I entertain no doubt of its genuineness.]

Such is the simple narrative of the death of this wit[A]! Some letters and papers of Sterne are now before me which reveal a piece of secret history of our sentimentalist. The letters are addressed to a young lady of the name of De Fourmantel, whose ancestors were the Berangers de Fourmantel, who during the persecution of the French Protestants by Louis XIV. emigrated to this country: they were entitled to extensive possessions in St. Domingo, but were excluded by their Protestantism. The elder sister became a Catholic, and obtained the estates; the younger adopted the name of Beranger, and was a governess to the Countess of Bristol. The paper states that Catherine de Fourmantel formed an attachment to Sterne, and that it was the expectation of their friends that they would be united; but that on a visit Sterne became acquainted with a lady, whom he married, in the space of one month, after having paid his addresses to Miss de Fourmantel for five years. The consequence was, the total derangement of intellect of this young lady. She was confined in a private madhouse. Sterne twice saw her there; and from observation on her state drew the "Maria" whom he has so pathetically described. The elder sister, at the instigation of the father of the communicator of these letters, came to England, and took charge of the unhappy Maria, who died at Paris. "For many years," says the writer of this statement, "my mother had the handkerchief Sterne alludes to." The anxious wish of Sterne was to have his letters returned to him. In this he failed; and such as they are, without date, either of time or place, they are now before me.

[Footnote A: Sterne was buried in the ground belonging to the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, situated in the Bayswater Road. His funeral was "attended only by two gentlemen in a mourning coach, no bell tolling;" and his grave has been described as "distinguished by a plain headstone, set up with an unsuitable inscription, by a tippling fraternity of Freemasons." In 1761, long before his death, was published a satire on the tendencies of his writings, mixed with a good deal of personal censure, in a pamphlet entitled "A Funeral Discourse, occasioned by the much lamented death of Mr. Yorick, preached before a very mixed society of Jemmies, Jessamies, Methodists, and Christians, at a nocturnal meeting in Petticoat Lane; by Christopher Flagellan, A.M." As one of the minor "Curiosities of Literature" this tract is worth noting; its author, in a preface, says that "it has been maliciously, or rather stupidly, reported that the late Mr. Sterne, alias Yorick, is not dead; but that, on the contrary, he is writing a fifth and sixth, and has carried his plan as far as a fiftieth and sixtieth volume of the book called 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy;' but they are rather to be attributed to his ghastly ghost, which is said to walk the purlieus of Covent Garden and Drury Lane."—ED.]

The billets-doux are unquestionably authentic, but the statement is inaccurate. I doubt whether the narrative be correct in stating that Sterne married after an acquaintance of one month; for he tells us in his Memoirs that he courted his wife for two years; he, however, married in 1741. The "Sermon of Elijah," which he presents to Miss de Fourmantel in one of these letters, was not published till 1747. Her disordered mind could not therefore have been occasioned by the sudden marriage of Sterne. A sentimental intercourse evidently existed between them. He perhaps sought in her sympathy, consolation for his domestic infelicity; he communicates to her the minutest events of his early fame; and these letters, which certainly seem very like love-letters, present a picture of his life in town in the full flower of his fame eager with hope and flushed with success.

LETTER I.

"My dear Kitty,—I beg you will accept of the inclosed sermon, which I do not make you a present of merely because it was wrote by myself, but because there is a beautiful character in it of a tender and compassionate mind in the picture given of Elijah. Read it, my dear Kitty, and believe me when I assure you that I see something of the same kind and gentle disposition in your heart which I have painted in the prophet's, which has attached me so much to you and your interests, that I shall live and die

"Your affectionate and faithful servant,

"Laurence Sterne.

"P.S.—If possible, I will see you this afternoon before I go to Mr. Fothergil's. Adieu, dear friend,—I had the pleasure to drink your health last night."

LETTER II.

"My dear Kitty,—If this billet catches you in bed, you are a lazy, sleepy little slut, and I am a giddy, foolish, unthinking fellow, for keeping you so late up—but this Sabbath is a day of rest, at the same time that it is a day of sorrow; for I shall not see my dear creature to-day, unless you meet me at Taylor's half an hour after twelve; but in this do as you like. I have ordered Matthew to turn thief, and steal you a quart of honey; what is honey to the sweetness of thee, who art sweeter than all the flowers it comes from! I love you to distraction, Kitty, and will love you on so to eternity—so adieu, and believe, what time will only prove me, that I am,

"Yours."

LETTER III.

"My dear Kitty,—I have sent you a pot of sweetmeats and a pot of honey —neither of them half so sweet as yourself—but don't be vain upon this, or presume to grow sour upon this character of sweetness I give you; for if you do I shall send you a pot of pickles (by way of contraries) to sweeten you up, and bring you to yourself again—whatever changes happen to you, believe me that I am unalterably yours, and according to your motto, such a one, my dear Kitty,

"Qui ne changera pas qu'en mourant.

"L.S."

He came up to town in 1760, to publish the two first volumes of 'Shandy,' of which the first edition had appeared at York the preceding year.

LETTER IV.

"London, May 8.

"My dear Kitty,—I have arrived here safe and sound—except for the hole in my heart which you have made, like a dear enchanting slut as you are. —I shall take lodgings this morning in Piccadilly or the Haymarket, and before I send this letter will let you know where to direct a letter to me, which letter I shall wait for by the return of the post with great impatience.

"I have the greatest honours paid me, and most civilities shown me that were ever known from the great; and am engaged already to ten noblemen and men of fashion to dine. Mr. Garrick pays me all and more honour than I could look for: I dined with him to-day, and he has prompted numbers of great people to carry me to dine with them—he has given me an order for the liberty of his boxes, and of every part of his house, for the whole season; and indeed leaves nothing undone that can do me either service or credit. He has undertaken the whole management of the booksellers, and will procure me a great price—but more of this in my next.

"And now, my dear girl, let me assure you of the truest friendship for you that ever man bore towards a woman—wherever I am, my heart is warm towards you, and ever shall be, till it is cold for ever. I thank you for the kind proof you gave me of your desire to make my heart easy in ordering yourself to be denied to you know who—while I am so miserable to be separated from my dear, dear Kitty, it would have stabbed my soul to have thought such a fellow could have the liberty of coming near you.—I therefore take this proof of your love and good principles most kindly— and have as much faith and dependence upon you in it, as if I was at your elbow—would to God I was at this moment—for I am sitting solitary and alone in my bedchamber (ten o'clock at night after the play), and would give a guinea for a squeeze of your hand. I send my soul perpetually out to see what you are a-doing—wish I could convey my body with it—adieu, dear and kind girl. Ever your kind friend and affectionate admirer.

"I go to the oratorio this night. My service to your mamma."

LETTER V.

"My dear Kitty,—Though I have but a moment's time to spare, I would not omit writing you an account of my good fortune; my Lord Fauconberg has this day given me a hundred and sixty pounds a year, which I hold with all my preferment; so that all or the most part of my sorrows and tears are going to be wiped away.—I have but one obstacle to my happiness now left —and what that is you know as well as I.[A]

"I long most impatiently to see my dear Kitty. I had a purse of guineas given me yesterday by a bishop—all will do well in time.

"From morning to night my lodgings, which by the bye are the genteelest in town,[B] are full of the greatest company.—I dined these two days with two ladies of the bedchamber—then with Lord Buckingham, Lord Edgcumb, Lord Winchelsea, Lord Littleton, a bishop, &c. &c.

"I assure you, my dear Kitty, that Tristram is the fashion.—Pray to God I may see my dearest girl soon and well.—Adieu.

"Your affectionate friend,

"L. STERNE."

[Footnote A: Can this allude to the death of his wife?—that very year he tells his daughter he had taken a house at York, "for your mother and yourself.">[

[Footnote B: They were the second house from St. Alban's Street, Pall
Mall.]

* * * * *

HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH.

The rarest of literary characters is such an historian as Gibbon; but we know the price which he paid for his acquisitions—unbroken and undeviating studies. Wilkes, a mere wit, could only discover the drudgery of compilation in the profound philosopher and painter of men and of nations. A speculative turn of mind, delighting in generalising principles and aggregate views, is usually deficient in that closer knowledge, without which every step we take is on the fairy-ground of conjecture and theory, very apt to shift its unsubstantial scenes. The researchers are like the inhabitants of a city who live among its ancient edifices, and are in the market-places and the streets: but the theorists, occupied by perspective views, with a more artist-like pencil may impose on us a general resemblance of things; but often shall we find in those shadowy outlines how the real objects are nearly, if not wholly lost—for much is given which is fanciful, and much omitted which is true.

Of our two popular historians, Hume and Robertson, alike in character but different in genius, it is much to be lamented that neither came to their tasks with the previous studies of half a life; and their speculative or theoretical histories are of so much the less value whenever they are deficient in that closer research which can be obtained only in one way; not the most agreeable to those literary adventurers, for such they are, however high they rank in the class of genius, who grasp at early celebrity, and depend more on themselves than on their researches.

In some curious letters to the literary antiquary Dr. Birch, Eobertson acknowledges "my chief object is to adorn, as far as I am capable of adorning, the history of a period which deserves to be better known," He probably took his lesson from Voltaire, the reigning author of that day, and a great favourite with Robertson. Voltaire indeed tells us, that no writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw any interest into a history; that we must know to paint and excite the passions; and that a history, like a dramatic piece, must have situation, intrigue, and catastrophe; an observation which, however true, at least shows that there can be but a moderate quantity of truth in such agreeable narratives. Robertson's notion of adorning history was the pleasing labour of genius—it was to amplify into vastness, to colour into beauty, and to arrange the objects of his meditation with a secret artifice of disposition. Such an historian is a sculptor, who, though he display a correct semblance of nature, is not less solicitous to display the miracles of his art, and enlarges his figures to a colossal dimension. Such is theoretical history.

The theoretical historian communicates his own character to his history; and if, like Robertson, he be profound and politic, he detects the secret motives of his actors, unravels the webs of cabinet councils, explains projects that were unknown, and details stratagems which never took place. When we admire the fertile conceptions of the Queen Regent, of Elizabeth, and of Bothwell, we are often defrauding Robertson of whatever admiration may be due to such deep policy.

When Hume received from Dr. Birch Forbes's Manuscripts and Murdin's State-papers, in great haste he writes to his brother historian:—"What I wrote you with regard to Mary, &c., was from the printed histories and papers. But I am now sorry to tell you that by Murdin's State-papers, the matter is put beyond all question. I got these papers during the holidays by Dr. Birch's means; and as soon as I read them I ran to Millar, and desired him very earnestly to stop the publication of your history till I should write to you, and give you an opportunity of correcting a mistake so important; but he absolutely refused compliance. He said that your book was now finished; that the whole narrative of Mary's trial must be wrote over again; that it was uncertain whether the new narrative could be brought within the same compass with the old: that this change would require the cancelling a great many sheets; that there were scattered passages through the volumes founded on your theory." What an interview was this of Andrew Millar and David Hume! truly the bibliopole shone to greater advantage than the two theoretical historians! And so the world had, and eagerly received, what this critical bookseller declared "required the new printing (that is, the new writing) of a great part of the edition!"

When this successful history of Scotland invited Robertson to pursue this newly-discovered province of philosophical or theoretical history, he was long irresolute in his designs, and so unpractised in those researches he was desirous of attempting, that his admirers would have lost his popular productions, had not a fortunate introduction to Dr. Birch, whose life had been spent in historical pursuits, enabled the Scottish historian to open many a clasped book, and to drink of many a sealed fountain. Robertson was long undecided whether to write the history of Greece, of Leo X., that of William III. and Queen Anne, or that of Charles V., and perhaps many other subjects.

We have a curious letter of Lord Orford's, detailing the purport of a visit Robertson paid to him to inquire after materials for the reigns of William and Anne; he seemed to have little other knowledge than what he had taken upon trust. "I painted to him," says Lord Orford, "the difficulties and the want of materials—but the booksellers will out-argue me." Both the historian and "the booksellers" had resolved on another history: and Robertson looked upon it as a task which he wished to have set to him, and not a glorious toil long matured in his mind. But how did he come prepared to the very dissimilar subjects he proposed? When he resolved to write the history of Charles V., he confesses to Dr. Birch: "I never had access to any copious libraries, and do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors; but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. Your erudition and knowledge of hooks is infinitely superior to mine, and I doubt not but you will be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books; but at the same time, when one writes upon any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it upon which he can lay his hands." This avowal proves that Robertson knew little of the history of Charles V. till he began the task; and he further confesses that "he had no knowledge of the Spanish or German," which, for the history of a Spanish monarch and a German emperor, was somewhat ominous of the nature of the projected history.

Yet Robertson, though he once thus acknowledged, as we see, that he "never had access to any copious libraries, and did not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors," seems to have acquired from his friend, Dr. Birch, who was a genuine researcher in manuscripts as well as printed books, a taste even for bibliographical ostentation, as appears by that pompous and voluminous list of authors prefixed to his "History of America;" the most objectionable of his histories, being a perpetual apology for the Spanish Government, adapted to the meridian of the court of Madrid, rather than to the cause of humanity, of truth, and of philosophy. I understand, from good authority, that it would not be difficult to prove that our historian had barely examined them, and probably had never turned over half of that deceptive catalogue. Birch thought so, and was probably a little disturbed at the overwhelming success of our eloquent and penetrating historian, while his own historical labours, the most authentic materials of history, but not history itself, hardly repaid the printer. Birch's publications are either originals, that is, letters or state-papers; or they are narratives drawn from originals, for he never wrote but from manuscripts. They are the true materia historica.

Birch, however, must have enjoyed many a secret triumph over our popular historians, who had introduced their beautiful philosophical history into our literature; the dilemma in which they sometimes found themselves must have amused him. He has thrown out an oblique stroke at Bobertson's "pomp of style, and fine eloquence," "which too often tend to disguise the real state of the facts."[A] When he received from Robertson the present of his "Charles V.," after the just tribute of his praise, he adds some regret that the historian had not been so fortunate as to have seen Burghley's State-papers, "published since Christmas," and a manuscript trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, in Lord Boyston's possession. Alas! such is the fate of speculative history; a Christmas may come, and overturn the elaborate castle in the air. Can we forbear a smile when we hear Robertson, who had projected a history of British America, of which we possess two chapters, when the rebellion and revolution broke out, congratulate himself that he had not made any further progress? "It is lucky that my American History was not finished before this event; how many plausible theories that I should have been entitled to form are contradicted by what has now happened!" A fair confession!

[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 387.]

Let it not be for one moment imagined that this article is designed to depreciate the genius of Hume and Robertson, who are the noblest of our modern authors, and exhibit a perfect idea of the literary character.

Forty-four years ago, I transcribed from their originals the correspondence of the historian with the literary antiquary. For the satisfaction of the reader, I here preserve these literary relics.

Letters between Dr. Birch and Dr. W. Robertson, relative to the Histories of Scotland and of Charles V.

"TO DR. BIRCH.

"Gladsmuir, 19 Sept. 1757.

"Reverent Sir,—Though I have not the good fortune to be known to you personally, I am so happy as to be no stranger to your writings, to which I have been indebted for much useful instruction. And as I have heard from my friends, Sir David Dalrymple and Mr. Davidson, that your disposition to oblige was equal to your knowledge, I now presume to write to you and to ask your assistance without any apology.

"I have been engaged for some time in writing the history of Scotland from the death of James V. to the accession of James VI. to the throne of England. My chief object is to adorn (as far as I am capable of adorning) the history of a period which, on account of the greatness of the events, and their close connection with the transactions in England, deserves to be better known. But as elegance of composition, even where a writer can attain that, is but a trivial merit without historical truth and accuracy, and as the prejudices and rage of factions, both religious and political, have rendered almost every fact, in the period which I have chosen, a matter of doubt or of controversy, I have therefore taken all the pains in my power to examine the evidence on both sides with exactness. You know how copious the materia, historian in this period is. Besides all the common historians and printed collections of papers, I have consulted several manuscripts which are to be found in this country. I am persuaded that there are still many manuscripts worth my seeing to be met with in England, and for that reason I propose to pass some time in London this winter. I am impatient, however, to know what discoveries of this kind I may expect, and what are the treasures before me, and with regard to this I beg leave to consult you.

"I was afraid for some time that Dr. Forbes's Collections had been lost upon his death, but I am glad to find by your 'Memoirs' that they are in the possession of Mr. Yorke. I see likewise that the 'Dépêches de Beaumont' are in the hands of the same gentleman. But I have no opportunity of consulting your 'Memoirs' at present, and I cannot remember whether the 'Dépêches de Fenelon' be still preserved or not. I see that Carte has made a great use of them in a very busy period from 1563 to 1576. I know the strength of Carte's prejudices so well, that I dare say many things may be found there that he could not see, or would not publish. May I beg the favour of you to let me know whether Fenelon's papers be yet extant and accessible, and to give me some general idea of what Dr. Forbes's Collections contain with regard to Scotland, and whether the papers they consist of are different from those published by Haynes, Anderson, &c. I am far from desiring that you should enter into any detail that would be troublesome to you, but some short hint of the nature of these Collections would be extremely satisfying to my curiosity, and I shall esteem it a great obligation laid upon me.

"I have brought my work almost to a conclusion. If you would be so good as to suggest anything that you thought useful for me to know or to examine into, I shall receive your directions with great respect and gratitude.

"I am, with sincere esteem,

"Rev'd Sir, Y'r m. ob. & m. h. S'r,

"Wm. ROBERTSON."

TO DR. BIRCH.

"Edinburgh, 1 Jan. 1759.

"Dear Sir,—If I had not considered a letter of mere compliment as an impertinent interruption to one who is so busy as you commonly are, I would long before this have made my acknowledgments to you for the civilities which you was so good as to show me while I was in London. I had not only a proof of your obliging disposition, but I reaped the good effects of it.

"The papers to which I got access by your means, especially those from Lord Royston, have rendered my work more perfect than it could have otherwise been. My history is now ready for publication, and I have desired Mr. Millar to send you a large paper copy of it in my name, which I beg you may accept as a testimony of my regard and of my gratitude. He will likewise transmit to you another copy, which I must entreat you to present to my Lord Royston, with such acknowledgments of his favours toward me as are proper for me to make. I have printed a short appendix of original papers. You will observe that there are several inaccuracies in the press work. Mr. Millar grew impatient to have the book published, so that it was impossible to send down the proofs to me. I hope, however, the papers will be abundantly intelligible. I published them only to confirm my own system, about particular facts, not to obtain the character of an antiquarian. If, upon perusing the book, you discover any inaccuracies, either with regard to style or facts, whether of great or of small importance, I will esteem it a very great favour if you'll be so good as to communicate them to me. I shall likewise be indebted to you, if you'll let me know what reception the book meets with among the literati of your acquaintance. I hope you will be particularly pleased with the critical dissertation at the end, which is the production of a co-partnership between me and your friend Mr. Davidson. Both Sir D. Dalrymple and he offer compliments to you. If Dean Tucker be in town this winter, I beg you will offer my compliments to him.

"I am, w. great regard, Dr. Sir,

"Y'r m. obed't. & rust. o. ser't.,

"WILLIAM ROBERTSON.

"My address is, one of the ministers of Ed."

TO DR. BIRCH.

"Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1759.

"Dear Sir,—I beg leave once more to have recourse to your good nature and to your love of literature, and to presume upon putting you to a piece of trouble. After considering several subjects for another history, I have at last fixed upon the reign of Charles V., which contains the first establishment of the present political system of Europe. I have begun to labour seriously upon my task. One of the first things requisite was to form a catalogue of books which must be consulted. As I never had access to very copious libraries, I do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors, but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down just in the order which they occurred to me, or as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. I beg you would be so good as to look it over, and as your erudition and knowledge of books is infinitely superior to mine, I doubt not but you'll be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books, but at the same time when one writes upon any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it, upon which he can lay his hands. I am sufficiently master of French and Italian; but have no knowledge of the Spanish or German tongues. I flatter myself that I shall not suffer much by this, as the two former languages, together with the Latin, will supply me with books in abundance. Mr. Walpole informed me some time ago, that in the catalogue of Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, there is a volume of papers relating to Charles V., it is No. 295. I do not expect much from it, but it would be extremely obliging if you would take the trouble of looking into it and of informing me in general what it contains. In the catalogue I have inclosed, this mark × is prefixed to all the books which I can get in this country; if you yourself, or any friend with whom you can use freedom, have any of the other books in my list, and will be so good as to send them to Mr. Millar, he will forward them to me, and I shall receive them with great gratitude and return them with much punctuality. I beg leave to offer compliments to all our common friends, and particularly to Dean Tucker, if he be in town this season. I wish it were in my power to confer any return for all the trouble you have taken in my behalf—"

FROM DR. BIRCH TO THE REV. DR. ROBERTSON, AT EDINBURGH.

"London, 3 Jany. 1760.

"Dear Sir,—Your letter of the 13 Dec'r. was particularly agreeable to me, as it acquainted me with your resolution to resume your historic pen, and to undertake a subject which, from its importance and extent, and your manner of treating it, will be highly acceptable to the public.

"I have perused your list of books to be consulted on this occasion; and after transcribing it have delivered it to Mr. Millar; and shall now make some additions to it.

"The new 'Histoire d'Allemagne' by Father Barre, chancellor of the University of Paris, published a few years ago in several volumes in 4^to., is a work of very good credit, and to be perused by you; as is likewise the second edition of 'Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire & du Droit public d'Allemagne,' just printed at Paris, and formed upon the plan of President Henault's 'Nouvel Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire de France,' in which the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II. will be proper to be seen by you.

"The 'Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cardinal Granvelle,' by Father Rosper Levesque, a Benedictin monk, which were printed at Paris in two vol's. 12^o. in 1753, contain some particulars relating to Charles V. But this performance is much less curious than it might have been, considering that the author had the advantage of a vast collection, above an hundred volumes of the Cardinal's original papers, at Besançon. Among these are the papers of his eminence's father, who was chancellor and minister to the Emperor Charles V.

"Bishop Burnet, in the 'Summary of Affairs before the Restoration,' prefixed to his 'History of his Own Time,' mentions a life of Frederick Elector Palatine, who first reformed the Palatinate, as curiously written by Hubert Thomas Leodius. This book, though a very rare one, is in my study and shall be sent to you. You will find in it many facts relating to your Emperor. The manuscript was luckily saved when the library of Heydelberg was plundered and conveyed to the Vatican after the taking of that city in 1622, and it was printed in 1624, at Francfort, in 4^to. The writer had been secretary and councillor to the elector.

"Another book which I shall transmit to you is a valuable collection of state papers, made by Mons'r. Rivier, and printed at Blois, in 1665, in two vols. f^o. They relate to the reigns of Francis I., Henry II., and Francis II. of France. The indexes will direct you to such passages as concern the Emperor.

"As Mons'r. Amelot de la Houssaic, who was extremely conversant in modern history, has, in the 1st. tome of his 'Mémoires Historiques Politiques et Littéraires,' from p. 156 to 193, treated of Charles V., I shall add that book to my parcel.

"Varillas's 'Life of Henry II. of France' should be looked into, though that historian has not at present much reputation for exactness and veracity.

"Dr. Fiddes, in his 'Life of Cardinal Wolsey,' has frequent occasion to introduce the Emperor, his contemporary, of which Bayle in his Dictionary gives us an express article and not a short one, for it consists of eight of his pages.

"Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's preceptor, when he was secretary to S'r. Richard Morysin amb. from K. Edward VI. to the imperial court, wrote to a friend of his 'a report and discourse of the affairs and state of Germany and the Emperor Charles's court.' This was printed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but the copies of that edition are now very rare. However this will be soon made public, being reprinted in an edition of all the author's English works now in the press.

"The 'Epîtres des Princes,' translated from the Italian by Belleforest, will probably supply you with some few things to your purpose.

"Vol. 295 among the Harleian MSS. contains little remarkable except some letters from Henry VIII's amb'r. in Spain, in 1518, of which, you may see an abstract in the printed catalogue.

"In Dr. Hayne's 'Collection of State Papers in the Hatfield History,' p. 56, is a long letter of the lord of the council of Henry VIII., in 1546, to his amb'r. with the Emperor."

TO DR. BIRCH.

Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College of Edinburgh, Oct. 8, 1765.

" . . . I have met with many interruptions in carrying on my 'Charles V.,' partly from bad health, and partly from the avocations arising from performing the duties of my office. But I am now within sight of land. The historical part of the work is finished, and I am busy with a preliminary book, in which I propose to give a view of the progress in the state of society, laws, manners, and arts, from the irruption of the barbarous nations to the beginning of the sixteenth century. This is a laborious undertaking; but I flatter myself that I shall be able to finish it in a few months. I have kept the books you was so good as to send me, and shall return them carefully as soon as my work is done."

* * * * *

OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY THE DEATHS OF THE AUTHORS.

In those "Dances of Death" where every profession is shown as taken by surprise in the midst of their unfinished tasks, where the cook is viewed in flight, oversetting his caldron of soup, and the physician, while inspecting his patient's urinal, is himself touched by the grim visitor, one more instance of poor mortality may be added in the writers of works designed to be pursued through a long series of volumes. The French have an appropriate designation for such works, which they call "ouvrages de longue haleine," and it has often happened that the haleine has closed before the work.

Works of literary history have been particularly subject to this mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, and human life has not yielded a sufficient portion for the communication of extensive acquirement! After years of reading and writing, the literary historian, who in his innumerable researches is critical as well as erudite, has still to arbitrate between conflicting opinions; to resolve on the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at remote researches:—but he dies, and leaves his favourite volumes little more than a project!

Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general forgetfulness of the nature of all human concerns in the mind of the antiquary, who is so busied with other times and so interested for other persons than those about him. "It is the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have mortality always before him."

A few illustrious scholars have indeed escaped the fate reserved for most of their brothers. A long life, and the art of multiplying that life not only by an early attachment to study, but by that order and arrangement which shortens our researches, have sufficed for a MURATORI. With such a student time was a great capital, which he knew to put out at compound interest; and this Varro of the Italians, who performed an infinite number of things in the circumscribed period of ordinary life, appears not to have felt any dread of leaving his voluminous labours unfinished, but rather of wanting one to begin. This literary Alexander thought he might want a world to conquer! Muratori was never perfectly happy unless employed in two large works at the same time, and so much dreaded the state of literary inaction, that he was incessantly importuning his friends to suggest to him objects worthy of his future composition. The flame kindled in his youth burned clear in his old age; and it was in his senility that he produced the twelve quartos of his Annali d'Italia as an addition to his twenty-nine folios of his Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, and the six folios of the Antiquitates Medii Ævi! Yet these vast edifices of history are not all which this illustrious Italian has raised for his fatherland. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works has drawn an admirable character of Muratori.

But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied the labours of the literary worthies of this order. TIRABOSCHI indeed lived to complete his great national history of Italian literature; but, unhappily for us, WARTON, after feeling his way through the darker ages of our poetry, and just conducting us to a brighter region, in planning the map of the country of which he had only a Pisgah view, expires amid his volumes! Our poetical antiquary led us to the opening gates of the paradise of our poetry, when, alas! they closed on him and on us! The most precious portion of Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment.

Life passes away in collecting materials—the marble lies in blocks—and sometimes a colonnade is erected, or even one whole side of a palace indicates the design of the architect. Count MAZZUCHELLI, early in life, formed a noble but too mighty a project, in which, however, he considerably advanced. This was an historical and critical account of the memoirs and the writings of Italian authors; he even commenced the publication in alphabetical order, but the six invaluable folios we possess only contain the authors the initial letters of whose names are A and B! This great literary historian had finished for the press other volumes, which the torpor of his descendants has suffered to lie in a dormant state. Rich in acquisition, and judicious in his decisions, the days of the patriotic Mazzuchelli were freely given to the most curious and elegant researches in his national literature; his correspondence is said to consist of forty volumes; with eight of literary memoirs, besides the lives of his literary contemporaries;—but Europe has been defrauded of the hidden treasures.

The history of BAILLET'S "Jugemens des Sçavans sur les Principaux Ouvrages des Auteurs," or Decisions of the Learned on the Learned, is a remarkable instance how little the calculations of writers of research serve to ascertain the period of their projected labour. Baillet passed his life in the midst of the great library of the literary family of the Lamoignons, and as an act of gratitude arranged a classified catalogue in thirty-two folio volumes; it indicated not only what any author had professedly composed on any subject, but also marked those passages relative to the subject which other writers had touched on. By means of this catalogue, the philosophical patron of Baillet at a single glance discovered the great results of human knowledge on any object of his inquiries. This catalogue, of equal novelty and curiosity, the learned came to study, and often transcribed its precious notices. Amid this world of books, the skill and labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical opinions of the learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the progress of his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary, sketched one of the most magnificent plans of literary history. This instructive project has been preserved by Monnoye in his edition. It consists of six large divisions, with innumerable subdivisions. It is a map of the human mind, and presents a view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few can conceive. The project was too vast for an individual; it now occupies seven quartos, yet it advanced no farther than the critics, translators, and poets, forming little more than the first, and a commencement of the second great division; to more important classes the laborious projector never reached!

Another literary history is the "Bibliothèque Françoise" of GOUJET, left unfinished by his death. He had designed a classified history of French literature; but of its numerous classes he has only concluded that of the translators, and not finished the second he had commenced, of the poets. He lost himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and consumed sixteen years on his eighteen volumes!

A great enterprise of the BENEDICTINES, the "Histoire Littéraire de la France," now consists of twelve large quartos, which even its successive writers have only been able to carry down to the close of the twelfth century![A]

[Footnote A: This work has been since resumed.]

DAVID CLEMENT, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed the most extensive bibliography which had ever appeared; this history of books is not a barren nomenclature, the particulars and dissertations are sometimes curious: but the diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed as far as the letter H! The alphabetical order which some writers have adopted has often proved a sad memento of human life! The last edition of our own "Biographia Britannica," feeble, imperfect, and inadequate as the writers were to the task the booksellers had chosen them to execute, remains still a monument which every literary Englishman may blush to see so hopelessly interrupted.

When LE GRAND D'AUSSY, whose "Fabliaux" are so well known, adopted, in the warmth of antiquarian imagination, the plan suggested by the Marquis de Paulmy, first sketched in the Mélanges tirés d'une grande Bibliothèque, of a picture of the domestic life of the French people from their earliest periods, the subject broke upon him like a vision; it had novelty, amusement, and curiosity: "le sujet m'en parut neuf, riche et piquant." He revelled amid the scenes of their architecture, the interior decorations of their houses, their changeable dress, their games, and recreations; in a word, on all the parts which were most adapted to amuse the fancy. But when he came to compose the more detailed work, the fairy scene faded in the length, the repetition, and the never-ending labour and weariness; and the three volumes which we now possess, instead of sports, dresses, and architecture, exhibit only a very curious, but not always a very amusing, account of the food of the French nation.

No one has more fully poured out his vexation of spirit—he may excite a smile in those who have never experienced this toil of books and manuscripts—but he claims the sympathy of those who would discharge their public duties so faithfully to the public. I shall preserve a striking picture of these thousand task-works, coloured by the literary pangs of the voluminous author, who is doomed never to finish his curious work:—

"Endowed with a courage at all proofs, with health which, till then, was unaltered, and which excess of labour has greatly changed, I devoted myself to write the lives of the learned of the sixteenth century. Renouncing all kinds of pleasure, working ten to twelve hours a-day, extracting, ceaselessly copying; after this sad life I now wished to draw breath, turn over what I had amassed, and arrange it. I found myself possessed of many thousands of bulletins, of which the longest did not exceed many lines. At the sight of this frightful chaos, from which I was to form a regular history, I must confess that I shuddered; I felt myself for some time in a stupor and depression of spirits; and now actually that I have finished this work, I cannot endure the recollection of that moment of alarm without a feeling of involuntary terror. What a business is this, good God, of a compiler! In truth, it is too much condemned; it merits some regard. At length I regained courage; I returned to my researches: I have completed my plan, though every day I was forced to add, to correct, to change my facts as well as my ideas; SIX times has my hand re-copied my work; and, however fatiguing this may be, it certainly is not that portion of my task which has cost me most."

The history of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" of the late Dr. Watt may serve as a mortifying example of the length of labour and the brevity of life. To this gigantic work the patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty years; he had just arrived at the point of publication, when death folded down his last page; the son who, during the last four years, had toiled under the direction of his father, was chosen to occupy his place. The work was in the progress of publication, when the son also died; and strangers now reap the fruits of their combined labours.

One cannot forbear applying to this subject of voluminous designs, which must be left unfinished, the forcible reflection of Johnson on the planting of trees: "There is a frightful interval between the seed and timber. He that calculates the growth of trees has the unwelcome remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit himself; and, when he rejoices to see the stem arise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down."

* * * * *

OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED.

It is amusing enough to discover that things, now considered among the most useful and even agreeable acquisitions of domestic life, on their first introduction ran great risks of being rejected, by the ridicule or the invective which they encountered. The repulsive effect produced on mankind by the mere strangeness of a thing, which at length we find established among our indispensable conveniences, or by a practice which has now become one of our habits, must be ascribed sometimes to a proud perversity in our nature; sometimes to the crossing of our interests, and to that repugnance to alter what is known for that which has not been sanctioned by our experience. This feeling has, however, within the latter half century considerably abated; but it proves, as in higher matters, that some philosophical reflection is required to determine on the usefulness, or the practical ability, of every object which comes in the shape of novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man had never discovered the practice of washing his hands, but cleansed them as animals do their paws, he would for certain have ridiculed and protested against the inventor of soap, and as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted the invention. A reader, unaccustomed to minute researches, might be surprised, had he laid before him the history of some of the most familiar domestic articles which, in their origin, incurred the ridicule of the wits, and had to pass through no short ordeal of time in the strenuous opposition of the zealots against domestic novelties. The subject requires no grave investigation; we will, therefore, only notice a few of universal use. They will sufficiently demonstrate that, however obstinately man moves in "the march of intellect," he must be overtaken by that greatest of innovators—Time itself; and that, by his eager adoption of what he had once rejected, and by the universal use of what he once deemed unuseful, he will forget, or smile at the difficulties of a former generation, who were baffled in their attempts to do what we all are now doing.

Forks are an Italian invention; and in England were so perfect a novelty in the days of Queen Bess, that Fynes Moryson, in his curious "Itinerary," relating a bargain with the patrone of a vessel which was to convey him from Venice to Constantinople, stipulated to be fed at his table, and to have "his glass or cup to drink in peculiar to himself, with his knife, spoon, fork." This thing was so strange that he found it necessary to describe it.[A] It is an instrument "to hold the meat while he cuts it; for they hold it ill-manners that one should touch the meat with his hands."[B] At the close of the sixteenth century were our ancestors eating as the Turkish noblesse at present do, with only the free use of their fingers, steadying their meat and conveying it to their mouths by their mere manual dexterity. They were, indeed, most indelicate in their habits, scattering on the table-cloth all their bones and parings. To purify their tables, the servant bore a long wooden "voiding-knife," by which he scraped the fragments from the table into a basket, called "a voider." Beaumont and Fletcher describe the thing,

They sweep the table with a wooden dagger.

[Footnote A: Modern research has shown that forks were not so entirely unknown as was imagined when the above was written. In vol. xxvii. of the "Archaeologia," published by the Society of Antiquaries, is an engraving of a fork and spoon of the Anglo-Saxon era; they were found with fragments of ornaments in silver and brass, all of which had been deposited in a box, of which there were some decayed remains; together with about seventy pennies of sovereigns from Coenwolf, King of Mercia (A.D. 796), to Ethelstan (A.D. 878, 890). The inventories of royal and noble persons in the middle ages often name forks. They were made of precious materials, and sometimes adorned with jewels like those named in the inventory of the Duke of Normandy, in 1363, "une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et aux deux fonts deux saphirs;" and in the inventory of Charles V. of France, in 1380, "une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, où il y a ij balays et X perles." Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the dessert, to lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers Gaveston, the celebrated favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver forks to eat pears with; and the Duchess of Orleans, in 1390, had one fork of gold to take sops from wine (à prendre la soupe où vin). They appear to have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted as now, to lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the person in decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and then only by the highest classes; hence their comparative rarity.—Ed.]

[Footnote B: Moryson's "Itinerary," part i, p. 208.]

Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the little man who first taught us, as Ben Jonson describes its excellence—

—the laudable use of forks,
To the sparing of napkins.

This personage is well-known to have been that odd compound, Coryat the traveller, the perpetual butt of the wits. He positively claims this immortality. "I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this FORKED cutting of meat, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home." Here the use of forks was, however, long ridiculed; it was reprobated in Germany, where some uncleanly saints actually preached against the unnatural custom "as an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers." It is a curious fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St. Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle between the old members, zealous for their traditions, and the young reformers, for their fingers.[A] The allusions to the use of the fork, which we find in all the dramatic writers through the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and novelty. The fork does not appear to have been in general use before the Restoration! On the introduction of forks there appears to have been some difficulty in the manner they were to be held and used. In The Fox, Sir Politic Would-be, counselling Peregrine at Venice, observes—

—Then you must learn the use
And handling of your silver fork at meals.

[Footnote A: I find this circumstance concerning forks mentioned in the
"Dictionnaire de Trevoux.">[

Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn it, or there is more than one way in which it may be practised. D'Archenholtz, in his "Tableau de l'Angleterre" asserts that "an Englishman may be discovered anywhere, if he be observed at table, because he places his fork upon the left side of his plate; a Frenchman, by using the fork alone without the knife; and a German, by planting it perpendicularly into his plate; and a Russian, by using it as a toothpick."

Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger brothers of the table, and seem to have been borrowed from the nice manners of the stately Venetians. This implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same anathema as the fantastical ornament of "the complete Signor," the Italianated Englishman. How would the writers, who caught "the manners as they rise," have been astonished that now no decorous person would be unaccompanied by what Massinger in contempt calls

Thy case of toothpicks and thy silver fork!

Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things; few but the macaroni's of the day, as the dandies were then called, would venture to display them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without incurring the brand of effeminacy; and they were vulgarly considered as the characteristics of a person whom the mob then hugely disliked—namely, a mincing Frenchman. At first a single umbrella seems to have been kept at a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion—lent as a coach or chair in a heavy shower—but not commonly carried by the walkers. The Female Tatler advertises "the young gentleman belonging to the custom-house, who, in fear of rain, borrowed the umbrella from Wilks' Coffee-house, shall the next time be welcome to the maid's pattens." An umbrella carried by a man was obviously then considered an extreme effeminacy. As late as in 1778, one John Macdonald, a footman, who has written his own life, informs us, that when he carried "a fine silk umbrella, which he had brought from Spain, he could not with any comfort to himself use it; the people calling out 'Frenchman! why don't you get a coach?'" The fact was, that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true esprit de corps, were clamorous against this portentous rival. This footman, in 1778, gives us further Information:—"At this time there were no umbrellas worn in London, except in noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, where there was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gentleman, if it rained, between the door and their carriage." His sister was compelled to quit his arm one day, from the abuse he drew down on himself by his umbrella. But he adds that "he persisted for three months, till they took no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners began to use theirs, and then the English. Now it is become a great trade in London."[A] The state of our population might now, in some degree, be ascertained by the number of umbrellas.

[Footnote A: Umbrellas are, However, an invention of great antiquity, and may be seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Assyria. They are also depicted on early Greek vases. But the most curious fact connected with their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom, appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In Cædmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings. The form is precisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above, they were an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century.—Ed.]

Coaches, on their first invention, offered a fruitful source of declamation, as an inordinate luxury, particularly among the ascetics of monkish Spain. The Spanish biographer of Don John of Austria, describing that golden age, the good old times, when they only used "carts drawn by oxen, riding in this manner to court," notices that it was found necessary to prohibit coaches by a royal proclamation, "to such a height was this infernal vice got, which has done so much injury to Castile." In this style nearly every domestic novelty has been attacked. The injury inflicted on Castile by the introduction of coaches could only have been felt by the purveyors of carts and oxen for a morning's ride. The same circumstances occurred in this country. When coaches began to be kept by the gentry, or were hired out, a powerful party found their "occupation gone!" Ladies would no longer ride on pillions behind their footmen, nor would take the air, where the air was purest, on the river. Judges and counsellors from their inns would no longer be conveyed by water to Westminster Hall, or jog on with all their gravity on a poor palfrey. Considerable bodies of men were thrown out of their habitual employments—the watermen, the hackneymen, and the saddlers. Families were now jolted, in a heavy wooden machine, into splendour and ruin. The disturbance and opposition these coaches created we should hardly now have known, had not Taylor, the Water-poet[A] and man, sent down to us an invective against coaches, in 1623, dedicated to all who are grieved with "the world running on wheels."

[Footnote A: Taylor was originally a Thames waterman, hence the term "Water-poet" given him. His attack upon coaches was published with this quaint title, "The world runnes on wheeles, or, odds, betwixt carts and coaches." It is an unsparing satire.—Ed.]

Taylor, a humorist and satirist, as well as waterman, conveys some information in this rare tract of the period when coaches began to be more generally used—"Within our memories our nobility and gentry could ride well-mounted, and sometimes walk on foot gallantly attended with fourscore brave fellows in blue coats, which was a glory to our nation far greater than forty of these leathern timbrels. Then the name of a coach was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of coaches; there were but few in those times, and they were deadly foes to sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when in the whole kingdom there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, for both appeared at the same time." It appears that families, for the sake of their exterior show, miserably contracted their domestic establishment; for Taylor, the Water-poet, complains that when they used formerly to keep from ten to a hundred proper serving-men, they now made the best shift, and for the sake of their coach and horses had only "a butterfly page, a trotting footman, and a stiff-drinking coachman, a cook, a clerk, a steward, and a butler, which hath forced an army of tall fellows to the gatehouses," or prisons. Of one of the evil effects of this new fashion of coach-riding this satirist of the town wittily observes, that, as soon as a man was knighted, his lady was lamed for ever, and could not on any account be seen but in a coach. As hitherto our females had been accustomed to robust exercise, on foot or on horseback, they were now forced to substitute a domestic artificial exercise in sawing billets, swinging, or rolling the great roller in the alleys of their garden. In the change of this new fashion they found out the inconvenience of a sedentary life passed in their coaches.[A]

[Footnote A: Stow, in his "Chronicles," has preserved the date of the first introduction of coaches into England, as well as the name of the first driver, and first English coachmaker. "In the year 1564 Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. After a while divers great ladies, with as great jealousie of the queen's displeasure, made them coaches, and rid in them up and down the country, to the great admiration of all the beholders; but then, by little and little, they grew usual among the nobility and others of sorte, and within twenty years became a great trade of coachmaking;" and he also notes that in the year of their introduction to England "Walter Rippon made a coche for the Earl of Rutland, which was the first coche that was ever made in England."—ED.]

Even at this early period of the introduction of coaches, they were not only costly in the ornaments—in velvets, damasks, taffetas, silver and gold lace, fringes of all sorts—but their greatest pains were in matching their coach-horses. "They must be all of a colour, longitude, latitude, cressitude, height, length, thickness, breadth (I muse they do not weigh them in a pair of balances); and when once matched with a great deal of care, if one of them chance to die, then is the coach maimed till a meet mate be found, whose corresponding may be as equivalent to the surviving palfrey, in all respects, as like as a broom to a besom, barm to yeast, or codlings to boiled apples." This is good natural humour. He proceeds —"They use more diligence in matching their coach-horses than in the marriage of their sons and daughters." A great fashion, in its novelty, is often extravagant; true elegance and utility are never at first combined; good sense and experience correct its caprices. They appear to have exhausted more cost and curiosity in their equipages, on their first introduction, than since they have become objects of ordinary use. Notwithstanding this humorous invective on the calamity of coaches, and that "housekeeping never decayed till coaches came into England; and that a ten-pound rent now was scarce twenty shillings then, till the witchcraft of the coach quickly mounted the price of all things." The Water-poet, were he now living, might have acknowledged that if, in the changes of time, some trades disappear, other trades rise up, and in an exchange of modes of industry the nation loses nothing. The hands which, like Taylor's, rowed boats, came to drive coaches. These complainers on all novelties, unawares always answer themselves. Our satirist affords us a most prosperous view of the condition of "this new trade of coachmakers, as the gainfullest about the town. They are apparelled in sattins and velvets, are masters of the parish, vestrymen, and fare like the Emperor Heliogabalus and Sardanapalus—seldom without their mackeroones, Parmisants (macaroni, with Parmesan cheese, I suppose), jellies and kickshaws, with baked swans, pastries hot or cold, red-deer pies, which they have from their debtors, worships in the country!" Such was the sudden luxurious state of our first great coachmakers! to the deadly mortification of all watermen, hackneymen, and other conveyancers of our loungers, thrown out of employ!

Tobacco.—It was thought, at the time of its introduction, that the nation would be ruined by the use of tobacco. Like all novel tastes the newly-imported leaf maddened all ranks among us, "The money spent in smoke is unknown," said a writer of that day, lamenting over this "new trade of tobacco, in which he feared that there were more than seven thousand tobacco-houses." James the First, in his memorable "Counterblast to Tobacco," only echoed from the throne the popular cry; but the blast was too weak against the smoke, and vainly his paternal majesty attempted to terrify his liege children that "they were making a sooty kitchen in their inward parts, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco-eaters, that after their death were opened." The information was perhaps a pious fraud. This tract, which has incurred so much ridicule, was, in truth, a meritorious effort to allay the extravagance of the moment. But such popular excesses end themselves; and the royal author might have left the subject to the town-satirists of the day, who found the theme inexhaustible for ridicule or invective.

Coal.—The established use of our ordinary fuel, coal, may be ascribed to the scarcity of wood in the environs of the metropolis. Its recommendation was its cheapness, however it destroys everything about us. It has formed an artificial atmosphere which envelopes the great capital, and it is acknowledged that a purer air has often proved fatal to him who, from early life, has only breathed in sulphur and smoke. Charles Fox once said to a friend, "I cannot live in the country; my constitution is not strong enough." Evelyn poured out a famous invective against "London Smoke." "Imagine," he cries, "a solid tentorium or canopy over London, what a mass of smoke would then stick to it! This fuliginous crust now comes down every night on the streets, on our houses, the waters, and is taken into our bodies. On the water it leaves a thin web or pellicle of dust dancing upon the surface of it, as those who bath in the Thames discern, and bring home on their bodies." Evelyn has detailed the gradual destruction it effects on every article of ornament and price; and "he heard in France, that those parts lying south-west of England, complain of being infected with smoke from our coasts, which injured their vines in flower." I have myself observed at Paris, that the books exposed to sale on stalls, however old they might be, retained their freshness, and were in no instance like our own, corroded and blackened, which our coal-smoke never fails to produce. There was a proclamation, so far back as Edward the First, forbidding the use of sea-coal in the suburbs, on a complaint of the nobility and gentry, that they could not go to London on account of the noisome smell and thick air. About 1550, Hollingshed foresaw the general use of sea-coal from the neglect of cultivating timber. Coal fires have now been in general use for three centuries. In the country they persevered in using wood and peat. Those who were accustomed to this sweeter smell declared that they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of his clothes, to have come from coal-fires. It must be acknowledged that our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed over good reasons why we ought not to have preferred it. But man accommodates himself even to an offensive thing whenever his interest predominates.

Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into graver topics, we should have a copious chapter to write of the opposition to new discoveries. Medical history supplies no unimportant number. On the improvements in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior professors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that they attempted to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by the graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the principles and conclusions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which had been approved of so many ages, to be overturned by any person. In phlebotomy we have a curious instance. In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed on the other. A great physician insisted on a contrary practice; a civil war of opinion divided Spain; at length, they had recourse to courts of law; the novelists were condemned; they appealed to the emperor, Charles the Fifth; he was on the point of confirming the decree of the court, when the Duke of Savoy died of a pleurisy, having been legitimately bled. This puzzled the emperor, who did not venture on a decision.

The introduction of antimony and the jesuits' bark also provoked legislative interference; decrees and ordinances were issued, and a civil war raged among the medical faculty, of which Guy Patin is the copious historian. Vesalius was incessantly persecuted by the public prejudices against dissection; Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood led to so protracted a controversy, that the great discovery was hardly admitted even in the latter days of the old man; Lady Wortley Montague's introduction of the practice of inoculation met the same obstinate resistance as, more recently, that of vaccination startled the people. Thus objects of the highest importance to mankind, on their first appearance, are slighted and contemned. Posterity smiles at the ineptitude of the preceding age, while it becomes familiar with those objects which that age has so eagerly rejected. Time is a tardy patron of true knowledge.

A nobler theme is connected with the principle we have here but touched on—the gradual changes in public opinion—the utter annihilation of false notions, like those of witchcraft, astrology, spectres, and many other superstitions of no remote date, the hideous progeny of imposture got on ignorance, and audacity on fear. But one impostor reigns paramount, the plausible opposition to novel doctrines which may be subversive of some ancient ones; doctrines which probably shall one day be as generally established as at present they are utterly decried, and which the interests of corporate bodies oppose with all their cumbrous machinery; but artificial machinery becomes perplexed in its movements when worn out by the friction of ages.

* * * * *

DOMESTICITY; OR, A DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS.

The characteristics of servants have been usually known by the broad caricatures of the satirists of every age, and chiefly by the most popular—the writers of comedy. According to these exhibitions, we must infer that the vices of the menial are necessarily inherent to his condition, and consequently that this vast multitude in society remain ever in an irrecoverably ungovernable state. We discover only the cunning depredator of the household; the tip-toe spy, at all corners—all ear, all eye: the parasitical knave—the flatterer of the follies, and even the eager participator of the crimes, of his superior. The morality of servants has not been improved by the wonderful revelations of Swift's "Directions," where the irony is too refined, while it plainly inculcates the practice. This celebrated tract, designed for the instruction of the masters, is more frequently thumbed in the kitchen, as a manual for the profligate domestic. Servants have acknowledged that some of their base doings have been suggested to them by their renowned satirist.

Bentham imagined, that were all the methods employed by thieves and rogues described and collected together, such a compilation of their artifices and villanies would serve to put us on our guard. The theorist of legislation seems often to forget the metaphysical state of man. With the vitiated mind, that latent sympathy of evil which might never have been called forth but by the occasion, has often evinced how too close an inspection of crime may grow into criminality itself. Hence it is, that when some monstrous and unusual crime has been revealed to the public, it rarely passes without a sad repetition. A link in the chain of the intellect is struck, and a crime is perpetrated which else had not occurred.

Listen to the counsels which one of the livery gives a brother, more stupid but more innocent than himself. I take the passage from that extraordinary Spanish comedy, in twenty-five acts, the Spanish Bawd. It was no doubt designed to expose the arts and selfishness of the domestic, yet we should regret that the Spanish Bawd was as generally read by servants as Swift's "Directions":—

"Serve not your master with this foolish loyalty and ignorant honesty, thinking to find firmness on a false foundation, as most of these masters now-a-days are. Gain friends, which is a during and lasting commodity; live not on hopes, relying on the vain promises of masters. The masters love more themselves than their servants, nor do they amiss; and the like love ought servants to bear to themselves. Liberality was lost long ago— rewards are grown out of date. Every one is now for himself, and makes the best he can of his servant's service, serving his turn, and therefore they ought to do the same, for they are less in substance. Thy master is one who befools his servants, and wears them out to the very stumps, looking for much service at their hands. Thy master cannot be thy friend, such difference is there of estate and condition between you two."

This passage, written two centuries ago, would find an echo of its sentiments in many a modern domestic. These notions are sacred traditions among the livery. We may trace them from Terence and Plautus, as well as Swift and Mandeville. Our latter great cynic has left a frightful picture of the state of the domestics, when it seems "they had experienced professors among them, who could instruct the graduates in iniquity seven hundred illiberal arts how to cheat, impose upon, and find out the blind side of their masters." The footmen, in Mandeville's day, had entered into a society together, and made laws to regulate their wages, and not to carry burdens above two or three pounds weight, and a common fund was provided to maintain any suit at law against any rebellious master. This seems to be a confederacy which is by no means dissolved.

Lord Chesterfield advises his son not to allow his upper man to doff his livery, though this valet was to attend his person, when the toilet was a serious avocation requiring a more delicate hand and a nicer person than he who was to walk before his chair, or climb behind his coach. This searching genius of philosophy and les petites moeurs solemnly warned that if ever this man were to cast off the badge of his order, he never would resume it. About this period the masters were menaced by a sort of servile war. The famous farce of High Life below Stairs exposed with great happiness the impudence and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured clans. It roused them into the most barefaced opposition; and, as ever happens to the few who press unjust claims on the many, in the result worked the reform they so greatly dreaded.[A] One of the grievances in society was then an anomalous custom, for it was only practised in our country, of a guest being highly taxed in dining with a family whose establishment admitted of a numerous train. Watchful of the departure of the guest, this victim had to pass along a line of domestics, arranged in the hall, each man presenting the visitor with some separate article, of hat, gloves, coat and cane, claiming their "vails." It would not have been safe to refuse even those who, with nothing to present, still held out the hand, for their attentions to the diner-out.[B]

[Footnote A: The farce was produced in 1759, when it was the custom to admit any servant in livery free to the upper gallery, as they were supposed to be in attendance on their masters. Their foibles and dishonesty being so completely hit off in the play incensed them greatly; and they created such an uproar that it was resolved to exclude them in future. In Edinburgh the opposition to the play produced still greater scenes of violence, and the lives of some of the performers were threatened. It at last became necessary for their masters to stop this outbreak on the part of their servants; and alter the whole system of the household economy which led to such results.—ED.]

[Footnote B: These vails, supposed to be the free gratuity of the invited to the servants of the inviter, were ultimately so managed that persons paid servants by that mode only—levying a kind of black-mail on their friends, which ran through all society. "The wages are nothing," says a noble lady's servant in one of Smollet's novels, "but the vails are enormous." The consequence was, that masters and mistresses had little control over them; they are said in some instances to have paid for their places, as some servants do at inns, where the situation was worth having, owing to the large parties given, and gaming, then so prevalent, being well-attended. It was ended by a mutual understanding all over the three kingdoms, after the riots which resulted from the production of the play noted above.—ED.]

When a slave was deemed not a person, but a thing marketable and transferable, the single principle judged sufficient to regulate the mutual conduct of the master and the domestic was, to command and to obey. It seems still the sole stipulation exacted by the haughty from the menial. But this feudal principle, unalleviated by the just sympathies of domesticity, deprives authority of its grace, and service of its zeal. To be served well, we should be loved a little; the command of an excellent master is even grateful, for the good servant delights to be useful. The slave repines, and such is the domestic destitute of any personal attachment for his master. Whoever was mindful of the interests of him whose beneficence is only a sacrifice to his pomp? The master dresses and wages highly his pampered train; but this is the calculated cost of state-liveries, of men measured by a standard, for a Hercules in the hall, or an Adonis for the drawing-room; but at those times, when the domestic ceases to be an object in the public eye, he sinks into an object of sordid economy, or of merciless caprice. His personal feelings are recklessly neglected. He sleeps where there is neither light nor air; he is driven when he is already exhausted; he begins the work of midnight, and is confined for hours with men like himself, who fret, repine, and curse. They have their tales to compare together; their unhallowed secrets to disclose. The masters and the mistresses pass by them in review, and little deem they how oft the malignant glance or the malicious whisper follow their airy steps. To shorten such tedious hours, the servants familiarise themselves with every vicious indulgence, for even the occupation of such domestics is little more than a dissolute idleness. A cell in Newgate does not always contain more corruptors than a herd of servants congregated in our winter halls. It is to be lamented that the modes of fashionable life demand the most terrible sacrifices of the health, the happiness, and the morals of servants. Whoever perceives that he is held in no esteem stands degraded in his own thoughts. The heart of the simple throbs with this emotion; but it hardens the villain who would rejoice to avenge himself: it makes the artful only the more cunning; it extorts from the sullen a cold unwilling obedience, and it stings even the good-tempered into insolence.

South, as great a wit as a preacher, has separated, by an awful interval, the superior and the domestic. "A servant dwells remote from all knowledge of his lord's purposes; he lives as a kind of foreigner under the same roof; a domestic, yet a foreigner too." This exhibits a picture of feudal manners. But the progress of society in modern Europe has since passed through a mighty evolution. In the visible change of habits, of feelings, of social life, the humble domestic has approximated to, and communicated more frequently even with "his lord." The domestic is now not always a stranger to "his lord's purposes," but often their faithful actor—their confidential counsellor—the mirror in which his lordship contemplates on his wishes personified.

This reflection, indeed, would have violated the dignity of the noble friend of Swift, Lord Orrery. His lordship censures the laughter in "Rabelais' easy chair" for having directed such intense attention to affairs solely relating to servants. "Let him jest with dignity, and let him be ironical upon useful subjects, leaving poor slaves to eat their porridge, or drink their small beer, in such vessels as they shall think proper." This lordly criticism has drawn down the lightning of Sir Walter Scott:—"The noble lord's feelings of dignity deemed nothing worthy of attention that was unconnected with the highest orders of society." Such, in truth, was too long the vicious principle of those monopolists of personal distinction, the mere men of elevated rank.

Metropolitan servants, trained in depravity, are incapacitated to comprehend how far the personal interests of servants are folded up with the interests of the house they inhabit. They are unconscious that they have any share in the welfare of the superior, save in the degree that the prosperity of the master contributes to the base and momentary purposes of the servant. But in small communities we perceive how the affections of the master and the domestic may take root. Look in an ancient retired family, whose servants often have been born under the roof they inhabit, and where the son is serving where the father still serves; and sometimes call the sacred spot of their cradle and their grave by the proud and endearing term of "our house." We discover this in whole countries where luxury has not removed the classes of society at too wide distances from each other, to deaden their sympathies. We behold this in agrestic Switzerland, among its villages and its pastures; in France, among its distant provinces; in Italy, in some of its decayed cities; and in Germany, where simple manners and strong affections mark the inhabitants of certain localities. Holland long preserved its primitive customs; and there the love of order promotes subordination, though its free institutions have softened the distinctions in the ranks of life, and there we find a remarkable evidence of domesticity. It is not unusual in Holland for servants to call their masters uncle, their mistresses aunt, and the children of the family their cousins. These domestics participating in the comforts of the family, become naturalized and domiciliated; and their extraordinary relatives are often adopted by the heart. An heroic effort of these domestics has been recorded; it occurred at the burning of the theatre at Amsterdam, where many rushed into the flames, and nobly perished in the attempt to save their endeared families.

It is in limited communities that the domestic virtues are most intense; all concentrating themselves in their private circles, in such localities there is no public—no public which extorts so many sacrifices from the individual. Insular situations are usually remarkable for the warm attachment and devoted fidelity of the domestic, and the personal regard of families for their servants. This genuine domesticity is strikingly displayed in the island of Ragusa, on the coast of Dalmatia: for there they provide for the happiness of the humble friends of the house. Boys, at an early age, are received into families, educated in writing, reading, and arithmetic. Some only quit their abode, in which they were almost born, when tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime enterprise. They form a race of men who are much sought after for servants; and the term applied to them of "Men of the Gulf," is a sure recommendation of character for unlimited trust and unwearying zeal.

The mode of providing for the future comforts of their maidens is a little incident in the history of benevolence, which we must regret is only practised in such limited communities. Malte-Brun, in his "Annales des Voyages," has painted a scene of this nature, which may read like some romance of real life. The girls, after a service of ten years, on one great holiday, an epoch in their lives, receive the ample reward of their good conduct. On that happy day the mistress and all the friends of the family prepare for the maiden a sort of dowry or marriage-portion. Every friend of the house sends some article; and the mistress notes down the gifts, that she may return the same on a similar occasion. The donations consist of silver, of gowns, of handkerchiefs, and other useful articles for a young woman. These tributes of friendship are placed beside a silver basin, which contains the annual wages of the servant; her relatives from the country come, accompanied by music, carrying baskets covered with ribbons and loaded with fruits, and other rural delicacies. They are received by the master himself, who invites them to the feast, where the company assemble, and particularly the ladies. All the presents are reviewed. The servant introduced kneels to receive the benediction of her mistress, whose grateful task is then to deliver a solemn enumeration of her good qualities, concluding by announcing to the maiden that, having been brought up in the house, if it be her choice to remain, from henceforward she shall be considered as one of the family. Tears of affection often fall during this beautiful scene of true domesticity, which terminates with a ball for the servants, and another for the superiors. The relatives of the maiden return homewards with their joyous musicians; and, if the maiden prefers her old domestic abode, she receives an increase of wages, and at a succeeding period of six years another jubilee provides her second good fortune. Let me tell one more story of the influence of this passion of domesticity in the servant;—its merit equals its novelty. In that inglorious attack on Buenos Ayres, where our brave soldiers were disgraced by a recreant general, the negroes, slaves as they were, joined the inhabitants to expel the invaders. On this signal occasion the city decreed a public expression of their gratitude to the negroes, in a sort of triumph, and at the same time awarded the freedom of eighty of their leaders. One of them, having shown his claims to the boon, declared, that to obtain his freedom had all his days formed the proud object of his wishes: his claim was indisputable; yet now, however, to the amazement of the judges, he refused his proffered freedom! The reason he alleged was a singular refinement of heartfelt sensibility:—"My kind mistress," said the negro, "once wealthy, has fallen into misfortunes in her infirm old age. I work to maintain her, and at intervals of leisure she leans on my arm to take the evening air. I will not be tempted to abandon her, and I renounce the hope of freedom that she may know she possesses a slave who never will quit her side."

Although I have been travelling out of Europe to furnish some striking illustrations of the powerful emotion of domesticity, it is not that we are without instances in the private history of families among ourselves. I have known more than one where the servant has chosen to live without wages, rather than quit the master or the mistress in their decayed fortunes; and another where the servant cheerfully worked to support her old lady to her last day.

Would we look on a very opposite mode of servitude, turn to the United States. No system of servitude was ever so preposterous. A crude notion of popular freedom in the equality of ranks abolished the very designation of "servant," substituting the fantastic term of "helps." If there be any meaning left in this barbarous neologism, their aid amounts to little; their engagements are made by the week, and they often quit their domicile without the slightest intimation.

Let none, in the plenitude of pride and egotism, imagine that they exist independent of the virtues of their domestics. The good conduct of the servant stamps a character on the master. In the sphere of domestic life they must frequently come in contact with them. On this subordinate class, how much the happiness and even the welfare of the master may rest! The gentle offices of servitude began in his cradle, and await him at all seasons and in all spots, in pleasure or in peril. Feelingly observes Sir Walter Scott—"In a free country an individual's happiness is more immediately connected with the personal character of his valet, than with that of the monarch himself." Let the reflection not be deemed extravagant if I venture to add, that the habitual obedience of a devoted servant is a more immediate source of personal comfort than even the delightfulness of friendship and the tenderness of relatives—for these are but periodical; but the unbidden zeal of the domestic, intimate with our habits, and patient of our waywardness, labours for us at all hours. It is those feet which hasten to us in our solitude; it is those hands which silently administer to our wants. At what period of life are even the great exempt from the gentle offices of servitude?

Faithful servants have never been commemorated by more heartfelt affection than by those whose pursuits require a perfect freedom from domestic cares. Persons of sedentary occupations, and undisturbed habits, abstracted from the daily business of life, must yield unlimited trust to the honesty, while they want the hourly attentions and all the cheerful zeal, of the thoughtful domestic. The mutual affections of the master and the servant have often been exalted into a companionship of feelings.

When Madame de Genlis heard that POPE had raised a monument not only to his father and to his mother, but also to the faithful servant who had nursed his earliest years, she was so suddenly struck by the fact, that she declared that "This monument of gratitude is the more remarkable for its singularity, as I know of no other instance." Our churchyards would have afforded her a vast number of tomb-stones erected by grateful masters to faithful servants;[A] and a closer intimacy with the domestic privacy of many public characters might have displayed the same splendid examples. The one which appears to have so strongly affected her may be found on the east end of the outside of the parish church of Twickenham. The stone bears this inscription:—

To the memory of
MARY BEACH,
who died November 5, 1725, aged 78.
ALEXANDER POPE,
whom she nursed in his infancy,
and constantly attended for thirty-eight years,
Erected this stone
In gratitude to a faithful Servant.

[Footnote A: Even our modern cemeteries perpetuate this feeling, and exhibit many grateful EPITAPHS ON SERVANTS.]

The original portrait of SHENSTONE was the votive gift of a master to his servant, for, on its back, written by the poet's own hand, is the following dedication:—"This picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by her master, William Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her fidelity.—W.S." We might refer to many similar evidences of the domestic gratitude of such masters to old and attached servants. Some of these tributes may be familiar to most readers. The solemn author of the "Night Thoughts" inscribed an epitaph over the grave of his man-servant; the caustic GIFFORD poured forth an effusion to the memory of a female servant, fraught with a melancholy tenderness which his muse rarely indulged.

The most pathetic, we had nearly said, and had said justly, the most sublime, development of this devotion of a master to his servant, is a letter addressed by that powerful genius MICHAEL ANGELO to his friend Vasari, on the death of Urbino, an old and beloved servant.[A] Published only in the voluminous collection of the letters of Painters, by Bottari, it seems to have escaped general notice. We venture to translate it in despair: for we feel that we must weaken its masculine yet tender eloquence.

[Footnote A: It is delightful to note the warm affection displayed by the great sculptor toward his old servant on his death-bed. The man who would beard princes and the pope himself, when he felt it necessary to assert his independent character as an artist, and through life evinced a somewhat hard exterior, was soft as a child in affectionate attention to his dying domestic, anticipating all his wants by a personal attendance at his bedside. This was no light service on the part of Michael Angelo, who was himself at the time eighty-two years of age.—ED.]

MICHAEL ANGELO TO VASARI.

"My Dear George,—I can but write ill, yet shall not your letter remain without my saying something. You know how Urbino has died. Great was the grace of God when he bestowed on me this man, though now heavy be the grievance and infinite the grief. The grace was that when he lived he kept me living; and in dying he has taught me to die, not in sorrow and with regret, but with a fervent desire of death. Twenty and six years had he served me, and I found him a most rare and faithful man; and now that I had made him rich, and expected to lean on him as the staff and the repose of my old age, he is taken from me, and no other hope remains than that of seeing him again in Paradise. A sign of God was this happy death to him; yet, even more than this death, were his regrets increased to leave me in this world the wretch of many anxieties, since the better half of myself has departed with him, and nothing is left for me than this loneliness of life."

Even the throne has not been too far removed from this sphere of humble humanity, for we discover in St. George's Chapel a mural monument erected by order of one of our late sovereigns as the memorial of a female servant of a favourite daughter. The inscription is a tribute of domestic affection in a royal bosom, where an attached servant became a cherished inmate.

King George III.
Caused to be interred near this place the body of
MARY GASCOIGNE,
Servant to the Princess Amelia;
and this stone
to be inscribed in testimony of his grateful sense
of the faithful services and attachment
of an amiable young woman to
his beloved Daughter.

This deep emotion for the tender offices of servitude is not peculiar to the refinement of our manners, or to modern Europe; it is not the charity of Christianity alone which has hallowed this sensibility, and confessed this equality of affection, which the domestic may participate: monumental inscriptions, raised by grateful masters to the merits of their slaves, have been preserved in the great collections of Graevius and Gruter.[A]

[Footnote A: There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who consecrate "to themselves and their servants" the sepulchres they erect in their own lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided from those who had served them faithfully. An instance of affectionate regard to the memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collection at Nismes; it is an inscription by one Sextus Arius Varcis, to Hermes, "his best servant" (servo optimo). Fabretti has preserved an inscription which records the death of a child, T. Alfacius Scantianius, by one Alfacius Severus, his master, by which it appears he was the child of an old servant, who was honoured by bearing the prenomen of the master, and who is also styled in the epitaph "his sweetest freedman" (liberto dulcissimo).—ED.]

* * * * *

PRINTED LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM.

Printed Letters, without any attention to the selection, is so great a literary evil, that it has excited my curiosity to detect the first modern who obtruded such formless things on public attention. I conjectured that, whoever he might be, he would be distinguished for his egotism and his knavery. My hypothetical criticism turned out to be correct. Nothing less than the audacity of the unblushing Pietro Aretino could have adventured on this project; he claims the honour, and the critics do not deny it, of being the first who published Italian letters. Aretino had the hardihood to dedicate one volume of his letters to the King of England, another to the Duke of Florence; a third to Hercules of Este, a relative of Pope Julius Third—evidently insinuating that his letters were worthy to be read by the royal and the noble.

Among these letters there is one addressed to Mary, Queen of England, on her resuscitation of the ancient faith, which offers a very extraordinary catalogue of the ritual and ceremonies of the Romish church. It is indeed impossible to translate into Protestant English the multiplied nomenclature of offices which involve human life in never-ceasing service. As I know not where we can find so clear a perspective of this amazing contrivance to fetter with religious ceremonies the freedom of the human mind, I present the reader with an accurate translation of it:—

"Pietro Aretino to the Queen of England.

"The voices of Psalms, the sound of Canticles, the breath of Epistles, and the Spirit of Gospels, had need unloose the language of my words in congratulating your superhuman Majesty on having not only restored conscience to the minds and hearts of Englishmen and taken deceitful heresy away from them, but on bringing it to pass, when it was least hoped for, that charity and faith were again born and raised up in them; on which sudden conversion triumphs our sovereign Pontiff Julius, the College, and the whole of the clergy, so that it seems in Rome as if the shades of the old Cæsars with visible effect showed it in their very statues; meanwhile the pure mind of his most blessed Holiness canonizes you, and marks you in the catalogue among the Catharines and Margarets, and dedicates you," &c.

"The stupor of so stupendous a miracle is not the stupefaction of stupid wonder; and all proceeds from your being in the grace of God in every deed, whose incomprehensible goodness is pleased with seeing you, in holiness of life and innocence of heart, cause to be restored in those proud countries, solemnity to Easters, abstinence to Lents, sobriety to Fridays, parsimony to Saturdays, fulfilment to vows, fasts to vigils, observances to seasons, chrism to creatures, unction to the dying, festivals to saints, images to churches, masses to altars, lights to lamps, organs to quires, benedictions to olives, robings to sacristies, and decencies to baptisms; and that nothing may be wanting (thanks to your pious and most entire nature), possession has been regained to offices, of hours; to ceremonies, of incense; to reliques, of shrines; to the confessed, of absolutions; to priests, of habits; to preachers, of pulpits; to ecclesiastics, of pre-eminences; to scriptures, of interpreters; to hosts, of communions; to the poor, of alms; to the wretched, of hospitals; to virgins, of monasteries; to fathers, of convents; to the clergy, of orders; to the defunct, of obsequies; to tierces, noons, vespers, complins, ave-maries, and matins, the privileges of daily and nightly bells."

The fortunate temerity of Aretino gave birth to subsequent publications by more skilful writers. Nicolo Franco closely followed, who had at first been the amanuensis of Aretino, then his rival, and concluded his literary adventures by being hanged at Rome; a circumstance which at the time must have occasioned regret that Franco had not, in this respect also, been an imitator of his original, a man equally feared, flattered, and despised.

The greatest personages and the most esteemed writers of that age were perhaps pleased to have discovered a new and easy path to fame; and since it was ascertained that a man might become celebrated by writings never intended for the press, and which it was never imagined could confer fame on the writers, volumes succeeded volumes, and some authors are scarcely known to posterity but as letter-writers. We have the too-elaborate epistles of BEMBO, secretary to Leo X., and the more elegant correspondence of ANNIBAL CARO; a work which, though posthumous, and published by an affectionate nephew, and therefore too undiscerning a publisher, is a model of familiar letters.

These collections, being found agreeable to the taste of their readers, novelty was courted by composing letters more expressly adapted to public curiosity. The subjects were now diversified by critical and political topics, till at length they descended to one more level with the faculties, and more grateful to the passions of the populace of readers —Love! Many grave personages had already, without being sensible of the ridiculous, languished through tedious odes and starch sonnets. DONI, a bold literary projector, who invented a literary review both of printed and manuscript works, with not inferior ingenuity, published his love-letters; and with the felicity of an Italian diminutive, he fondly entitled them "Pistolette Amorose del Doni," 1552, 8vo. These Pistole were designed to be little epistles, or billets-doux, but Doni was one of those fertile authors who have too little time of their own to compose short works. Doni was too facetious to be sentimental, and his quill was not plucked from the wing of Love. He was followed by a graver pedant, who threw a heavy offering on the altar of the Graces; PARABOSCO, who in six books of "Lettere Amorose," 1565, 8vo. was too phlegmatic to sigh over his inkstand.

Denina mentions LEWIS PASQUALIGO of Venice as an improver of these amatory epistles, by introducing a deeper interest and a more complicate narrative. Partial to the Italian literature, Denina considers this author as having given birth to those novels in the form of letters, with which modern Europe has been inundated; and he refers the curious in literary researches, for the precursors of these epistolary novels, to the works of those Italian wits who flourished in the sixteenth century.

"The Worlds" of DONI, and the numerous whimsical works of ORTENSIO LANDI, and the "Circe" of GELLI, of which we have more than one English translation, which, under their fantastic inventions, cover the most profound philosophical views, have been considered the precursors of the finer genius of "The Persian Letters," that fertile mother of a numerous progeny, of D'Argens and others.

The Italians are justly proud of some valuable collections of letters, which seem peculiar to themselves, and which may be considered as the works of artists. They have a collection of "Lettere di Tredici Uomini Illustri," which appeared in 1571; another more curious, relating to princes—"Lettere de' Principi le quali o si scrivono da Principi a Principi, o ragionano di Principi;" Tenezia, 1581, in 3 vols. quarto.

But a treasure of this kind, peculiarly interesting to the artist, has appeared in mere recent times, in seven quarto volumes, consisting of the original letters of the great painters, from the golden age of Leo X., gradually collected by BOTTARI, who published them in separate volumes. They abound in the most interesting facts relative to the arts, and display the characteristic traits of their lively writers. Every artist will turn over with delight and curiosity these genuine effusions; chronicles of the days and the nights of their vivacious brothers.

It is a little remarkable that he who claims to be the first satirist in the English language, claims also, more justly perhaps, the honour of being the first author who published familiar letters. In the dedication of his Epistles to Prince Henry, the son of James the First, Bishop HALL claims the honour of introducing "this new fashion of discourse by epistles, new to our language, usual to others; and as novelty is never without plea of use, more free, more familiar." Of these epistles, in six decades, many were written during his travels. We have a collection of Donne's letters abounding with his peculiar points, at least witty, if not natural.

As we became a literary nation, familiar letters served as a vehicle for the fresh feelings of our first authors. Howell, whose Epistolæ bears his name, takes a wider circumference in "Familiar Letters, domestic and foreign, historical, political, and philosophical, upon emergent occasions." The "emergent occasions" the lively writer found in his long confinement in the Fleet—that English Parnassus! Howell is a wit, who, in writing his own history, has written that of his times; he is one of the few whose genius, striking in the heat of the moment only current coin, produces finished medals for the cabinet. His letters are still published. The taste which had now arisen for collecting letters, induced Sir Tobie Mathews, in 1660, to form a volume, of which many, if not all, are genuine productions of their different writers.

The dissipated elegance of Charles II. inspired freedom in letter-writing. The royal emigrant had caught the tone of Voiture. We have some few letters of the wits of this court, but that school of writers, having sinned in gross materialism, the reaction produced another of a more spiritual nature, in a romantic strain of the most refined sentiment. Volumes succeeded volumes from pastoral and heroic minds. Katherine Philips, in the masquerade-dress of "The Matchless Orinda," addressed Sir Charles Cottrel, her grave "Poliarchus;" while Mrs. Behn, in her loose dress, assuming the nymph-like form of "Astræa," pursued a gentleman, concealed in a domino, under the name of "Lycidas."

Before our letters reached to nature and truth, they were strained by one more effort after novelty; a new species appeared, "From the Dead to the Living," by Mrs. Rowe: they obtained celebrity. She was the first who, to gratify the public taste, adventured beyond the Styx; the caprice of public favour has returned them to the place whence they came.

The letters of Pope were unquestionably written for the public eye. Partly accident, and partly persevering ingenuity, extracted from the family chests the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who long remained the model of letter-writing. The letters of Hughes and Shenstone, of Gray, Cowper, Walpole, and others, self-painters, whose indelible colours have given an imperishable charm to these fragments of the human mind, may close our subject; printed familiar letters now enter into the history of our literature.