Our English poet James Montgomery began life as a poor shop-boy. At an early age he began to write verses, and became editor of a Sheffield newspaper. The troubles of the French Revolution then broke out, and fired the extreme Radical spirit of the poetical editor. His writings attracted the attention of the Government, and he was sent to prison, where he wrote several poems—Ode to the Evening Star, Pleasures of Imprisonment, and Verses to a Robin Redbreast.
As late as the middle of the seventeenth century a young unfortunate poet, in spite of the interest of powerful friends, was hung and burnt at Paris. This was young Pierre Petit, the author of La B—— céleste, chansons et autres Poésies libres. His productions were certainly infamous and scandalous, but that was no reason why the poet should have been hanged. Moreover the poems existed only in MS.; subsequently they were published in a Recueil de Poésies. The manner of the discovery of the poems is curious, and serves as a warning to incautious bards. Leaving his chamber one day, he opened the window, and unfortunately a strong gust of wind carried several pages of MS. which were lying on his table into the street. A priest who happened to be passing the house examined one or two of the drifting poems, and, discovering that they were impious, denounced Petit to the authorities. His rooms furnished a large supply of similar work, and, as we have said, the poet paid the penalty for his rashness at the gallows.
Although the methods of later critics are less severe than their inquisitorial predecessors, they have not been without their victims, and books maltreated by them have sometimes "done to death" their authors.
A century ago furious invective was the fashion, and the tender mercies of the reviewers were cruel. Poor Keats died of criticism, if Shelley's story be true. On the appearance of Endymion the review in Blackwood told the young poet "to go back to his gallipots," and that it was a wiser and better thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet. Such vulgar abuse was certainly not criticism. Shelley wrote that "the savage criticism on Keats' Endymion which appeared in the Quarterly Review produced the most violent effects on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted. It may be well said, that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisonous shafts light on a heart made callous by many blows, or one like Keats', composed of more penetrable stuff." And then addressing the reviewer he says: "Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none."
Joseph Ritson, the antiquary, who, though not a poet, was a great writer on poetry and our early English songs and ballads, complained bitterly of the ignorant reviewers, and described himself as brought to an end in ill-health and low spirits—certain to be insulted by a base and prostitute gang of lurking assassins who stab in the dark, and whose poisoned daggers he had already experienced. Ritson himself was a fairly venomous critic, and the "Ritsonian" style has become proverbial. Nowadays authors do not usually die of criticism, not even susceptible poets. Critics can still be severe enough, but they are just and generous, and never descend to that scurrilous personal abuse of authors which inflicted such severe wounds a century ago, and sometimes caused to flow the very heart's blood of their victims.
CHAPTER IX. DRAMA AND ROMANCE.
Sir John Yorke and Catholic Plays—Abraham Cowley—Antoine Danchet—Claude Crébillon—Nogaret—François de Salignac Fénélon.
Of the misfortunes of dramatists and romance-writers I have little to record, but it would not be safe to conclude that this subject always furnished a secure field for literary activity. However, the successes of the writers of fiction and plays in our own times might console the Muse for any indignities which her followers have suffered in the past.