THE
LIFE OF WILLIAM SOMERVILLE.
* * * * *
There is a chapter in an old history of Iceland which has often moved merriment. The title of it is, "Concerning Snakes in Iceland," and the contents are, "Snakes in Iceland there are none." We suspect, when our "Life of William Somerville" is ended, not a few will find in it a parallel for that comprehensive chapter, although we strenuously maintain that the fault of an insipid and uninteresting life is not always to be charged on the biographer.
In "Sartor Resartus" our readers remember an epitaph, somewhat coarse, although disguised in good dog-Latin, upon a country squire, and his sayings and doings in this world. We have not a copy of that work at hand, and cannot quote the epitaph, nor would we, though we could, since even the dog-Latin is too plain and perspicuous for many readers. We recommend those, however, who choose to turn it up; and they will find in it (with the exception of the writing of "the Chase") the full history of William Somerville, of whom we know little, but that he was born, that he hunted, ate, drank, and died.
He was born in 1682; but in what month, or on what day, we are not informed. His estate was in Warwickshire, its name Edston, and he had inherited it from a long line of ancestors. His family prided itself upon being the first family in the county. He himself boasts of having been born on the banks of Avon, which has thus at least produced two poets, of somewhat different calibre indeed—the one a deer-stealer, and the other a fox-hunter—Shakspeare and Somerville. Somerville was educated at Winchester School, and was afterwards elected fellow of New College. From his studies—of his success in which we know nothing—he returned to his native county, and there, says Johnson, "was distinguished as a poet, a gentleman, and a skilful and useful justice of the peace;"—we may add, as a jovial companion and a daring fox-hunter. His estate brought him in about £1500 a-year, but his extravagance brought him into pecuniary distresses, which weighed upon his mind, plunged him into intemperate habits, and hurried him away in his 60th year. Shenstone, who knew him well, thus mourns aver his departure in one of his letters:—"Our old friend Somerville is dead; I did not imagine I could have been so sorry as I find myself on this occasion. Sublatum quoerimus, I can now excuse all his foibles; impute them to age and to distressed circumstances. The last of these considerations wrings my very soul to think on; for a man of high spirit, conscious of having (at least in one production) generally pleased the world, to be plagued and threatened by wretches that are low in every sense; to be forced to drink himself into pains of the body in order to get rid of the pains of the mind, is a misery."
Somerville died July 19, 1742, and was buried at Wotton, near Henley-on-Arden. His estate went to Lord Somerville in Scotland, but his mother, who lived to a great age, had a jointure of £600. He describes himself, in verses addressed to Allan Ramsay, as
"A squire, well-born and six feet high."
He seems, from the affection and sympathy discovered for him by Shenstone, to have possessed the virtues as well as the vices of the squirearchy of that age; their frankness, sociality, and heart, as well as their improvidence and tendency to excess; and may altogether be called a sublimated Squire Western.
As to his poetry, much of it is beneath criticism. His "Fables," "Tales," "Hobbinol, or Rural Games," &c., have all in them poetical lines, but cannot, as a whole, be called poetry. He wrote some verses, entitled "Address to Addison," on the latter purchasing an estate in Warwickshire (he gave his Countess £4000 in exchange for it). In this there are two lines which Dr Johnson highly commends, saying "They are written with the most exquisite delicacy of praise; they exhibit one of those happy strokes that are seldom attained."—Here is this bepraised couplet:—
"When panting virtue her last efforts made,
You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid."
Clio, of course, refers to Addison's signatures in the "Spectator," consisting of the four letters composing the name of the Muse of History, used in alternation. We cannot coincide in Johnson's encomium. The allusion is, we think, at once indecent and obscure; and what, after all, does it say, but that Addison's papers aided the struggling cause of virtue?
In the same verses we find a fulsome and ridiculous preference of Addison to Shakspeare!
"In heaven he sings, on earth your Muse supplies
The important loss, and heals our weeping eyes;
Correctly great, she melts each flinty heart,
With EQUAL GENIUS, but SUPERIOR ART."
Surely the force of falsehood and flattery can go no further.
It is a pleasure to turn from these small and shallow things to the "Chase," which, if not a great poem, is founded on a most poetical subject, and which, here and there, sparkles into fine fancy. Dr Johnson truly remarks, that Somerville "set a good example to men of his own class, by devoting a part of his time to elegant knowledge, and has shewn, by the subjects which his poetry has adorned, that it is practicable to be at once a skilful sportsman and a man of letters." But besides this purpose to be the poet—and hitherto he has been almost the sole poet of the squirearchy, as considered apart from the aristocracy—Somerville has the merit of being inspired by a genuine love for the subject. He writes directly from the testimony of his own eyes, and the impulses of his own heart. He has obviously had the mould of his poem suggested by Thomson's "Seasons," but it is the mould only; the thoughts and feelings which are poured into it are his own. He loves the giddy ride over stock and stone, hedge and petty precipice; the invigoration which the keen breath of autumn or winter, like that of a sturdy veteran, gives the animal spirits; the animated aspect of the "assembled jockeyship of half a province;" the wild music of hounds, and horns, and hollas, vieing with each other in mirth and loudness; the breathless interest of the start; the emulous pant of the coursers; the excitement of the moment when the fox appears; the sweeping tumult of the pursuit; the dreamlike rapidity with which five-barred gates are cleared, the yellow or naked woods are passed, and the stubble-ridges "swallowed up in the fierceness and rage" of the rushing steeds; the indifference of those engaged in the headlong sport to the danger or even the death of their companions; the lengthening and deepening howl of the hounds as they near their prey; the fierce silence of the dying victim; and the fiercer shout of victory which announces to the echoes that the brush is won, and the glorious (or inglorious) day's work is over;—all this Somerville loves, and has painted with considerable power. In the course of the poem, he sings also of the mysteries of the dog-kennel—pursues the blood-hound on his track of death—describes a stag-hunt in Windsor Forest—paints the fearful phenomena of canine madness—hunts the hare in a joyous spirit—and goes down after the otter into its watery recesses, and watches its divings and devious motions as with the eyes of a sea-eagle. And, besides, (here also imitating Thomson,) he is led away from the comparatively tame "Chase" of England to the more dangerous and more inspiring sports of other lands, where "the huntsmen are up in Arabia," in pursuit of the wolf, where the bear is bayed amidst forests dark as itself, where the leopard is snared by its own image in a mirror, where the lion falls roaring into the prepared pit, and where the "Chase" is pursued on a large scale by assembled princes amidst the jungles of India.
We doubt not, however, that, were a genuine poet of this age taking up the "Chase" as a subject for song, and availing himself of the accounts of recent travellers, themselves often true poets, such as Lloyd, Livingstone, Cumming Bruce, and Charles Boner, (see the admirable "Chamois Hunting in Bavaria" of the latter,) he would produce a strain incomparably higher than Somerville's. Wilson, at least, as we know from his "Christopher in his Sporting Jacket," and many other articles in Maga, was qualified, in part by nature and in part by extensive experience, to have written such a poem. Indeed, one sentence of his is superior to anything in the "Chase." Speaking of the charge of the cruelty of chasing such an insignificant animal as a fox, he says, "What though it be but a smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first tallyho, reynard is rarely seen till he is run in upon—once, perhaps, in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an idea that is pursued on a whirlwind of horses, to a storm of canine music, worthy both of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African sands." We do not answer for the humanity of this description, but it certainly seems to us to exhaust the subject of the chase, alike in its philosophy and its poetry.[1]