The publication of the Diary, with a selection of familiar letters, and private correspondence, was entrusted to Mr. William Bray, F.S.A.; and the last sheets of the MS., with a dedication to Lady Evelyn, were actually in the hands of the printer at the hour of her death. The work appeared in 1818; and a volume of Miscellaneous Papers, by Evelyn, was subsequently published, under Mr. Upcott’s editorial superintendence.
Wotton House, though situate in the angle of two valleys, is actually on part of Leith Hill, the rise from thence being very gradual. Evelyn’s “Diary” contains a pen-and-ink sketch of the mansion as it appeared in 1653.
FAMILIES OF LITERARY MEN.
A Quarterly Reviewer, in discussing an objection to the Copyright Bill of Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, which was taken by Sir Edward Sugden, gives some curious particulars of the progeny of literary men. “We are not,” says the writer, “going to speculate about the causes of the fact; but a fact it is, that men distinguished for extraordinary intellectual power of any sort rarely leave more than a very brief line of progeny behind them. Men of genius have scarcely ever done so; men of imaginative genius, we might say, almost never. With the one exception of the noble Surrey, we cannot, at this moment, point out a representative in the male line, even so far down as the third generation, of any English poet; and we believe the case is the same in France. The blood of beings of that order can seldom be traced far down, even in the female line. With the exception of Surrey and Spenser, we are not aware of any great English author of at all remote date, from whose body any living person claims to be descended. There is no real English poet prior to the middle of the eighteenth century; and we believe no great author of any sort, except Clarendon and Shaftesbury, of whose blood we have any inheritance amongst us. Chaucer’s only son died childless; Shakspeare’s line expired in his daughter’s only daughter. None of the other dramatists of that age left any progeny; nor Raleigh, nor Bacon, nor Cowley, nor Butler. The grand-daughter of Milton was the last of his blood. Newton, Locke, Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Hume, Gibbon, Cowper, Gray, Walpole, Cavendish (and we might greatly extend the list), never married. Neither Bolingbroke, nor Addison, nor Warburton, nor Johnson, nor Burke, transmitted their blood. One of the arguments against a perpetuity in literary property is, that it would be founding another noblesse. Neither jealous aristocracy nor envious Jacobinism need be under such alarm. When a human race has produced its ‘bright, consummate flower’ in this kind, it seems commonly to be near its end.”
THE BLUE-STOCKING CLUB.
Towards the close of the last century, there met at Mrs. Montague’s a literary assembly, called “The Blue-Stocking Club,” in consequence of one of the most admired of the members, Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, always wearing blue stockings. The appellation soon became general as a name for pedantic or ridiculous literary ladies. Hannah More wrote a volume in verse, entitled The Bas Bleu: or Conversation. It proceeds on the mistake of a foreigner, who, hearing of the Blue-Stocking Club, translated it literally Bas Bleu. Johnson styled this poem “a great performance.” The following couplets have been quoted, and remembered, as terse and pointed:—
“In men this blunder still you find,
All think their little set mankind.”
“Small habits well pursued betimes,
May reach the dignity of crimes.”