Or underneath th' umbrella's oily shed,
Safe thro' the wet, on clinking pattens tread.'
Gay's Trivia, 1716, i. 209-212.
Confinement; he wrote 'Earnest Advice' and 'Moral Reflections' to Everybody on Everything. To misuse Ben Jonson's words of Shakespeare, 'He flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.' One entire pamphlet on bread was dictated in the space of a forenoon, says his secretary and biographer Pugh. When it is further explained that it consisted of two hundred law sheets, or ninety octavo pages, it is obvious that the excellent author's powers as a pamphleteer must have been preternatural. But it is hardly surprising to find even his admirer admitting that his ideas were not well arranged, and that his style was undeniably diffuse.
This latter quality is aptly illustrated by a volume which lies before us, being in fact the identical record of those travels in England by which Johnson asserted that Mr. Hanway had lost the celebrity he had acquired by his 'Travels in Persia.' The very title of the book—a privately printed quarto—is as long as that of 'Pamela.' It runs thus,—'A Journal of Eight Days Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston upon Thames; through South-am ton, Wiltshire, etc. With Miscellaneous Thoughts, Moral and Religious; in a Series of Sixty-four Letters: Addressed to two Ladies of the Partie. To which is added, An Essay on tea, considered as 'pernicious to Health, obstructing Industry, and impoverishing the Nation: With an Account of its Growth, and great Consumption in these Kingdoms. With several political Reflections; and Thoughts on Public Love. In Twenty-five Letters to the same Ladies. By a Gentleman of the Partie. London: H. Woodfall, 1756.' The 'Partie,' by the way, if we are to trust Wale's emblematic frontispiece, must have been limited to the writer and these two ladies, discreetly disguised in the 'Contents' as 'Mrs. D.' and 'Mrs. O.'
Why, as remarked by an ingenious 'Monthly Reviewer,' it should be necessary to tell 'Mrs. D.' and 'Mrs. O.' (whom the artist shows us conversing agreeably with Mr. Hanway under an awning in a two-oared boat) what, having been of the 'Partie,' they probably knew quite as well as he did, is not explained. But on the other hand, it may be contended that he really tells them very little, since the 'Moral and Religious' reflections almost entirely swallow up the Travels. 'On every occurrence,' says the critic quoted, 'he expatiates, and indulges in reflection. The appearance of an inn upon the road suggests... an eulogium on temperance; the confusion of a disappointed Landlady gives rise to a Letter on Resentment; and the view of a company of soldiers furnishes out materials for an Essay on War.' The company of soldiers was Lord George Bentinck's regiment of infantry on their march to Essex; and one sighs to think with what a bustle of full-blooded humanity—what a 'March to Finchley' of incident—the author of a 'Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon' would have filled the storied page. But Mr. Hanway is not the least penitent; rather is he proud of his reticence. He specially expresses his gratitude to the hostess 'who gave occasion for my thoughts on resentment, a subject far more interesting than whether a battle was fought at this, or any other place, five hundred years ago.' (If 'Mrs. D.' and 'Mrs. O.' were really of this opinion, they must have been curiously constituted.) 'Can you bear with this medley of both worlds?' he asks them on another occasion, and it is not easy to reply except by saying that there is too much of one and too little of the other. To pass Bevis Mount with the barest mention of Lord Peterborough; to come to Amesbury and 'Prior's Kitty' and be fobbed off with 'a pious rhapsody;' to stop at Stockbridge for which Steele was member when he was expelled from Parliament, only to enter upon fifty pages of indiscriminate reflections on Public Love, Self-examination, the Vanity of Life, and half a dozen other instructive but irrelevant subjects,—these things, indeed, are hard to bear, especially as they are not recommended by any particular distinction of matter or manner. 'Tho' his opinions are generally true,' says the critic already quoted, 'and his regard for virtue seems very sincere, yet these alone are not, at this day, sufficient to defend the cause of truth; stile, elegance, and all the allurements of good writing, must be called in aid: especially if the age be in reality, as it is represented by this Author, averse to everything that but seems to be serious.' 'Novelty of thought,' he says again, 'and elegance of expression, are what we chiefly require, in treating on topics with which the public are already acquainted: but the art of placing trite materials in new and striking lights, cannot be reckoned among the excellencies of this Gentleman; who generally enforces his opinions by arguments rather obvious than new, and that convey more conviction than pleasure to the Reader.'
Why, with the book before us, we should borrow from an anonymous writer in the 'Monthly Review,' requires a word of explanation. The reviewer was Oliver Goldsmith, at this time an unknown scribbler, working as 'general utility man' to Mr. Ralph Griffiths the bookseller, who owned the magazine. Goldsmith devotes most of his notice to the 'Essay on Tea,' the scope of which is sufficiently indicated by its title. But the 'Essay on Tea' also engaged the attention of a better known though not greater critic, Samuel Johnson, whose 'corruption was raised' (as the Scotch say) by this bulky if not weighty indictment of his darling beverage. Johnson's critique was in the 'Literary Magazine.' At the outset he makes candid and characteristic profession of faith. 'He is,' he says, 'a hardened and shameless Tea-drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant, whose kettle has scarcely time to cool, who with Tea amuses the evening, with Tea solaces the midnight, and with Tea welcomes the morning.' The arguments on either side are now of little moment, though Hanway, as a merchant, is better worth hearing on the commercial aspect of the Tea question than on things in general. But the review greatly irritated him. An unfortunate remark dropped by Johnson about the religious education of the children in the Foundling stung him into an angry retort in the 'Gazetteer,'—a retort to which (according to Boswell) Johnson made the only rejoinder he is ever known to have offered to anything that was written against him. As may be expected, it was not a document from which his opponent could extract much personal gratification; but it is not otherwise remarkable.
That the criticism of Johnson and Goldsmith was not wholly undeserved must, it is feared, be conceded. Even in days less book-burdened, and more patient of tedium than our own, to string half a dozen pamphlets of platitudes upon the slenderest of threads, and call it the 'Journal of a Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston-upon-Thames,' could scarcely have been tolerable. Yet Johnson allowed to the author the 'merit of meaning well.' Hanway's benevolence was, in truth, unquestioned. His sincerity was beyond suspicion, and his services to his fellow-creatures were considerable. His misfortune was that, like many excellent persons, his sense of humour was imperfect, and his infirmity of digression chronic. He was, moreover, the victim of the common delusion that to teach and to preach are interchangeable terms. His biographer Pugh, who admits that, with all his good qualities, he had a 'certain singularity of thought and manners,' gives some curious details as to his habits and costume. In order to be always ready for polite society, he usually appeared in dress clothes, including a large French bag (which duly figures in Wale's frontispiece) and a chapeau bras with a gold button. 'When it rained, a small parapluie defended his face and wig.' His customary garb was a suit of rich dark brown, lined with ermine, to which he added a small gold-hilted sword. He was extremely susceptible to cold, and habitually wore three pairs of stockings. He was an active pedestrian, although he possessed an equipage called a 'solo' (which we take to be the equivalent of Sterne's Désobligeante). Among his other characteristics was the embellishment of his house in Red Lion Square in such a way as to prompt and promote improving conversation in those unhappy intermissions of talk which come about while the card-tables are being set, and so forth. The decorations in the drawing-room were not without a certain mildly-moral ingenuity. They consisted of portraits of Adrienne Le Couvreur and five other famous beauties, in frames united by a carved and gilded ribbon inscribed with passages in praise of beauty. Above these was placed a statue of Humility; below, a mirror just convex enough to reduce the female spectator to the scale of the portraits, and round the frame of this was painted,—
'Wert thou, my daughter, fairest of the seven;
Think on the progress of devouring Time,