I have said that the frequent origin of bad poets is owing to bad critics; and it was the early friends of Stockdale, who, mistaking his animal spirits for genius, by directing them into the walks of poetry, bewildered him for ever. It was their hand that heedlessly fixed the bias in the rolling bowl of his restless mind.
He tells us that while yet a boy of twelve years old, one day talking with his father at Branxton, where the battle of Flodden was fought, the old gentleman said to him with great emphasis—
“You may make that place remarkable for your birth, if you take care of yourself. My father’s understanding was clear and strong, and he could penetrate human nature. He already saw that I had natural advantages above those of common men.”
But it seems that, at some earlier period even than his twelfth year, some good-natured Pythian had predicted that Stockdale would be “a poet.” This ambiguous oracle was still listened to, after a lapse of more than half a century, and the decree is still repeated with fond credulity:—“Notwithstanding,” he exclaims, “all that is past, O thou god of my mind! (meaning the aforesaid Pythian) I still hope that my future fame will decidedly warrant the prediction!”
Stockdale had, in truth, an excessive sensibility of temper, without any control over it—he had all the nervous contortions of the Sybil, without her inspiration; and shifting, in his many-shaped life, through all characters and all pursuits, “exalting the olive of Minerva with the grape of Bacchus,” as he phrases it, he was a lover, a tutor, a recruiting officer, a reviewer, and, at length, a clergyman; but a poet eternally! His mind was so curved, that nothing could stand steadily upon it. The accidents of such a life he describes with such a face of rueful simplicity, and mixes up so much grave drollery and merry pathos with all he says or does, and his ubiquity is so wonderful, that he gives an idea of a character, of whose existence we had previously no conception, that of a sentimental harlequin.[139]
In the early part of his life, Stockdale undertook many poetical pilgrimages; he visited the house where Thomson was born; the coffee-room where Dryden presided among the wits, &c. Recollecting the influence of these local associations, he breaks forth, “Neither the unrelenting coldness, nor the repeated insolence of mankind, can prevent me from thinking that something like this enthusiastic devotion may hereafter be paid to ME.”
Perhaps till this appeared it might not be suspected that any unlucky writer of verse could ever feel such a magical conviction of his poetical stability. Stockdale, to assist this pilgrimage to his various shrines, has particularised all the spots where his works were composed! Posterity has many shrines to visit, and will be glad to know (for perhaps it may excite a smile) that “‘The Philosopher,’ a poem, was written in Warwick Court, Holborn, in 1769,”—“‘The Life of Waller,’ in Round Court, in the Strand.”—A good deal he wrote in “May’s Buildings, St. Martin’s Lane,” &c., but
“In my lodgings at Portsmouth, in St. Mary’s Street, I wrote my ‘Elegy on the Death of a Lady’s Linnet.’ It will not be uninteresting to sensibility, to thinking and elegant minds. It deeply interested me, and therefore produced not one of my weakest and worst written poems. It was directly opposite to a noted house, which was distinguished by the name of the green rails; where the riotous orgies of Naxos and Cythera contrasted with my quiet and purer occupations.”
I would not, however, take his own estimate of his own poems; because, after praising them outrageously, he seems at times to doubt if they are as exquisite as he thinks them! He has composed no one in which some poetical excellence does not appear—and yet in each nice decision he holds with difficulty the trepidations of the scales of criticism—for he tells us of “An Address to the Supreme Being,” that “it is distinguished throughout with a natural and fervid piety; it is flowing and poetical; it is not without its pathos.” And yet, notwithstanding all this condiment, the confection is evidently good for nothing; for he discovers that “this flowing, fervid, and poetical address” is “not animated with that vigour which gives dignity and impression to poetry.” 222 One feels for such unhappy and infected authors—they would think of themselves as they wish at the moment that truth and experience come in upon them and rack them with the most painful feelings.