A too zealous application to work has destroyed many men both of talent and genius; it produces different effects in different individuals, according to their respective temperaments: while it drove Robert Seymour to frenzy, it killed John Leech—a man of far finer imaginative faculties—with the terrible pangs of angina pectoris. Differently endowed as they were, both belonged to the order of men so touchingly described by Manfred:—
| “There is an order Of mortals on the earth, who do become Old in their youth, and die ere middle age Without the violence of warlike death; Some perishing of pleasure, some of study, Some worn with toil, some of mere weariness, Some of disease, and some insanity, And some of wither’d or of broken hearts; For this last is a malady which slays More than are numbered in the lists of fate.”[107] |
The coadjutorship of distinguished artists and authors has led to more than one strange controversy. Those who have read Forster’s “Life of Dickens” will remember the curious claim which George Cruikshank preferred after Dickens’ death to be the suggester of the story of “Oliver Twist,” and the unceremonious mode in which Mr. Forster disposed of that pretension. We have referred elsewhere to the edifying controversy between George Cruikshank and Harrison Ainsworth, in relation to the origin of the latter’s novels of the “Miser’s Daughter” and “The Tower of London.” The republication of Seymour’s “Humorous Sketches” in 1866, led to a very curious claim on the part of his friends, in which they sought to establish the fact that he was the originator and inventor of the incidents of “Pickwick.” This claim happily was made while Dickens was yet alive, and was very promptly and satisfactorily disposed of by himself in a letter which he wrote to the Athenæum on the 20th of March, 1866. Author and artist have long since gone to their rest; and the plan which the author of this work proposed when he sat down to write the story of Robert Seymour, was to place that artist in the position which he believes him to occupy in the ranks of British graphic humourists, and not to rake up or revive the memory of a somewhat painful controversy. Of the claim itself we would simply remark, that not only was it made in all sincerity by those who loved and cherished the memory of Robert Seymour, but that to a certain extent the claim has a foundation of fact to rest upon; for who will deny that had not Seymour communicated his idea to Chapman, and Chapman introduced the artist to Dickens, the “Pickwick Papers” themselves would have remained unwritten. In this sense, but in this sense only, therefore, Robert Seymour was the undoubted originator of “Pickwick.” He was an artist of great power, talent, and ability; and it seems to us that those only detract from his fame who, in a kind but mistaken spirit of zeal, would claim for him any other position than that which he so justly and honestly earned for himself, as one of the most talented of English graphic satirists.
[97] “Greville Memoirs.” vol. i. p. 180.
[98] Ibid., p. 207.
[99] His theory, as stated in a book which he published, was this: that as all men are born in moral sin, so they have about them a physical depravity in the form of an acrid humour, which, flying about the system, at length finds vent in diseases which afflict or terminate existence. He professed by the means afterwards explained to bring this acrid humour to the surface, and having thus expelled the cause of disease, to put an end to every bodily ailment.
[100] In allusion to a complex piece of machinery he said (in his book) he had invented, which when complete would cost him two thousand guineas. This machine, said Long, alias O’Driscoll, “will search all the body, and cut away all the diseased parts, leaving the patient perfectly sound and well.”
[101] We found a curtailed copy of these amusing verses in one of the jeux d’esprit of the time, called “Valpurgis; or, the Devil’s Festival” (William Kidd, 6, Old Bond Street, 1831), illustrated by Seymour. With the exception of one immaterial verse, we now give the complete poem; in the ring of the verses the reader will have no difficulty in recognising the hand of the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, subsequently author of the “Ingoldsby Legends.”
[102] Anstey’s “Pleader’s Guide,” Bk. 2nd (1810).