“By this he would insinuate that those papers among the Tatlers and Spectators, where the whole order is abused, were not his own. I will appeal to all who know the flatness of his style, and the barrenness of his invention, whether he doth not grossly prevaricate? Was he ever able to walk without his leading-strings, or swim without bladders, without being discovered by his hobbling or his sinking?”
Such was the attack of Swift, which was pursued in the Examiner, and afterwards taken up by another writer. This is one of the evils resulting from the wantonness of genius: it gives a contagious example to the minor race; its touch opens a new vein of invention, which the poorer wits soon break into; the loose sketch of a feature or two from its rapid hand is sufficient to become a minute portrait, where not a hair is spared by the caricaturist. This happened to Steele, whose literary was to be sacrificed to his political character; and this superstructure was confessedly raised on the malicious hints we have been noticing. That the Examiner was the seed-plot of “The Character of Richard St—le, Esq.,” appears by its opening—“It will be no injury, I am persuaded, to the Examiner to borrow him a little (Steele), upon promise of returning him safe, as children do their playthings, when their mirth is over, and, they have done with them.”
The author of the “Character of Richard St—le, Esq.,” was Dr. Wagstaffe, one of those careless wits[344] who lived to 432 repent a crazy life of wit, fancy, and hope, and an easy, indolent one, whose genial hours force up friends like hot-house plants, that bloom and flower in the spot where they are raised, but will not endure the change of place and season—this wit caught the tone of Swift, and because, as his editor tells us, “he had some friends in the ministry, and thought he could not take a better way to oblige them than by showing his dislike to a gentleman who had so much endeavoured to oppose them,” he sat down to write a libel with all the best humour imaginable; for, adds this editor, “he was so far from having any personal pique or enmity against Mr. Steele, that at the time of his writing he did not so much as know him, even by sight.” This principle of “having some friends in the ministry,” and not “any knowledge” of the character to be attacked, has proved a great source of invention to our political adventurers;—thus Dr. Wagstaffe was fully enabled to send down to us a character where the moral and literary qualities of a genius, to whom this country owes so much as the father of periodical papers, are immolated to his political purpose. This severe character passed through several editions. However the careless Steele might be willing to place the elaborate libel to the account of party writings, if he did not feel disturbed at reproaches and accusations, which are confidently urged, and at critical animadversions, to which the negligence of his style sometimes laid him too open, his insensibility would have betrayed a depravity in his morals and taste which never entered into his character.[345]
Steele was doomed even to lose the friendship of Addison amid political discords; but on that occasion Steele showed that his taste for literature could not be injured by political animosity. It was at the close of Addison’s life, and on occasion of the Peerage Bill, Steele published “The Plebeian,” a cry against enlarging the aristocracy. Addison replied with “The Old Whig,” Steele rejoined without alluding to the person of his opponent. But “The Old Whig” could not restrain his political feelings, and contemptuously described “little Dicky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets.” 434 Steele replied with his usual warmth; but indignant at the charge of “vassalage,” he says, “I will end this paper, by firing every free breast with that noble exhortation of the tragedian—
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Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights, The generous plan of power deliver’d down From age to age, &c.” |
Thus delicately he detects the anonymous author, and thus energetically commends, while he reproves him!
Hooke (a Catholic), after he had written his “Roman History,” published “Observations on Vertot, Middleton, &c., on the Roman Senate,” in which he particularly treated Dr. Middleton with a disrespect for which the subject gave no occasion: this was attributed to the Doctor’s offensive letter from Rome. Spelman, in replying to this concealed motive of the Catholic, reprehends him with equal humour and bitterness for his desire of roasting a Protestant parson.
Our taste, rather than our passions, is here concerned; but the moral sense still more so. The malice of faction has long produced this literary calamity; yet great minds have not always degraded themselves; not always resisted the impulse of their finer feelings, by hardening them into insensibility, or goading them in the fury of a misplaced revenge. How delightful it is to observe Marvell, the Presbyterian and Republican wit, with that generous temper that instantly discovers the alliance of genius, warmly applauding the great work of Butler, which covered his own party with odium and ridicule. “He is one of an excellent wit,” says Marvell, “and whoever dislikes the choice of his subject, cannot but commend the performance.”[346]
Clarendon’s profound genius could not expand into the same liberal feelings. He highly commends May for his learning, his wit and language, and for his Supplement to Lucan, which he considered as “one of the best epic poems in the English language;” but this great spirit sadly winces in the soreness of his feelings when he alludes to May’s “History of the Parliament;” then we discover that this late “ingenious person” performed his part “so meanly, that he seems to have lost his wit when he left his honesty.” Behold the political criticism in literature! However we may incline to respect the feelings of Clarendon, this will not save his judgment nor 435 his candour. We read May now, as well as Clarendon; nor is the work of May that of a man who “had lost his wits,” nor is it “meanly performed.” Warburton, a keen critic of the writers of that unhappy and that glorious age for both parties, has pronounced this “History” to be “a just composition, according to the rules of history; written with much judgment, penetration, manliness, and spirit, and with a candour that will greatly increase your esteem, when you understand that he wrote by order of his masters the Parliament.”