The gracious dew of pulpit eloquence,
might, no doubt, have been justly applied to him. Dr. Drake, in the third volume of his Essays, to illustrate the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, has some interesting pages respecting him. His benevolent heart and exemplary life, added great effect to his persuasive eloquence in the pulpit. "His sermons (says Lempriere), and divinity tracts, were widely circulated; but the firmness of his opinions drew upon him the censure of the House of Commons. His preface to his sermons on the deaths of Mary, the Duke of Gloucester, and of William, and on the accession of Anne, gave such offence to the ministry, that the book was publicly burnt in 1712; but it was more universally read, and even appeared in the Spectator, No. 384." As to this burning, Dr. Johnson remarked, that fire is a conclusive, but not a convincing argument; it will certainly destroy any book, but it refutes none.[71] In an Obituary, preserved in Peck's Desid. Curiosa, it thus mentions the death of a Jeffery Fleetwood, "leaving a wife and six little children behind him. God bless them. One of these little children was the famous William Fleetwood, Bishop of Ely."
Joseph Addison, Esq. There is an original portrait of this eminent man, at Holland House. Another at Oxford. Noble's continuation of Granger enumerates several engravings of him, from Kneller's portraits. Dayl, the painter, also drew him. His portrait appears in the Kit Cat Club. In Ireland's "Picturesque Views on the River Avon," he gives an interesting description of Mr. Addison's house at Bilton, near Rugby, two miles from Dunchurch; with a view of the same. The house "remains precisely in the state it was at the decease of its former possessor, nor has the interior suffered much change in its former decoration. The furniture and pictures hold their places with an apparent sacred attention to his memory. Among the latter, are three of himself, at different periods of his life; in each of which is strongly marked with the pencil, the ease of the gentleman, and the open and ingenuous character of the friend to humanity." From Dr. Drake's Biographical Sketch of Addison, it appears, that these portraits were still remaining in his house in 1797. A copy of the above view is given in the Monthly Magazine for February, 1822, and it there says, that "the spacious gardens retain the fashion of the age of the Spectator." The origin of the modern style of landscape gardening, or the first writers on that subject, were unquestionably Mr. Addison, in Nos. 414 and 477 of the Spectator, and Mr. Pope in his celebrated Guardian. The first artists who practised in this style, were Bridgman and Kent.[72] Mr. Addison's pure taste on these subjects is visible even where he prefers Fontainebleau to the magnificent Versailles, in his paper in the Guardian, No. 101:—"It is situated among rocks and woods, that give you a fine variety of savage prospects. The king has humoured the genius of the place, and only made use of so much art as is necessary to help and regulate nature, without reforming her too much. The cascades seem to break through the clefts and cracks of rocks that are covered over with moss, and look as if they were piled upon one another by accident. There is an artificial wildness in the meadows, walks, and canals; and the garden, instead of a wall, is fenced on the lower end by a natural mound of rock-work that strikes the eye very agreeably. For my part, I think there is something more charming in these rude heaps of stone than in so many statues, and would as soon see a river winding through woods and meadows, as when it is tossed up in so many whimsical figures at Versailles." In No. 414 of his Spectator, he says, "English gardens are not so entertaining to the fancy as those in France, and Italy, where we see a large extent of ground covered over with an agreeable mixture of garden, and forest, which represent every where an artificial rudeness, much more charming than that neatness and elegancy which we meet with in those of our own country." Mr. Murphy thus compares Addison with Johnson:—"Addison lends grace and ornament to truth; Johnson gives it force and energy. Addison makes virtue amiable; Johnson represents it as an awful duty." Addison has been called the English Fenelon. Johnson calls him the Raphael of essay writers. The imposing and commanding attitude of the statue erected a few years since in the Poets' Corner, seems to have arisen, and to have been devoted to his memory, from his Reflections on the Tombs in the Abbey. Those reflections I here subjoin; and I am sure my reader will agree with me, that I could not offer a purer honour to his genius and memory:—"No.26, Friday, March 30.
Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres, O beate sexti.
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam,
Jam te premet nox, fabulaeque manes,
Et domus exilis Plutonia.—Hor.
With equal foot, rich friend, impartial fate
Knocks at the cottage, and the palace gate:
Life's span forbids thee to extend thy cares,
And stretch thy hopes beyond thy tender years:
Night soon will seize, and you must quickly go
To storied ghosts, and Pluto's house below.—Creech.
"When I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the church-yard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tomb-stones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head.
Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque.—Virg.
"The life of these men is finely described in holy writ by the path of an arrow, which is immediately closed up and lost. Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixed with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time or other had a place in the composition of an human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter. After having thus surveyed this great magazine of mortality, as it were in the lump; I examined it more particularly by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments which are raised in every quarter of that ancient fabrick. Some of them were covered with such extravagant epitaphs, that if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest, that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical quarter, I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed indeed that the present war had filled the church with many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were buried in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean. I could not but be very much delighted with several modern epitaphs, which are written with great elegance of expression and justness of thought, and therefore do honour to the living as well as to the dead. As a foreigner is very apt to conceive an idea of the ignorance or politeness of a nation from the turn of their public monuments and inscriptions, they should be submitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius before they are put in execution. Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument has very often given me great offence: instead of the brave rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state. The inscription is answerable to the monument; for, instead of celebrating the many remarkable actions he had performed in the service of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honour. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, shew an infinitely greater taste of antiquity and politeness in their buildings and works of this nature, than what we meet with in those of our own country. The monuments of their admirals, which have been erected at the public expense, represent them like themselves; and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of sea-weed, shells, and coral. But to return to our subject. I have left the repository of our English kings for the contemplation of another day, when I shall find my mind disposed for so serious an amusement. I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds, and gloomy imaginations; but, for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means I can improve myself with those objects which others consider with terror. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tomb-stone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."[73]
Rev. John Lawrence published "The Clergyman's Recreation, shewing the Pleasure and Profit of the Art of Gardening;" 8vo. 1714. Also a poem, called "Paradise Regained, or the Art of Gardening;" 8vo. 1728. The sixth edition of "The Clergyman's Recreation" has "the effigies of the author, engraved by Vertue." I have seen eight copies of this sixth edition, and in neither of them has this portrait been. No doubt the collecting to form Granger's, has deprived each copy of its portrait. This is an expressive portrait, ornamented with a vine wreath, and with a rich cornucopia or clusters of ripe fruit. The original picture from which Vertue's print was taken, was at Pallion, near Durham, the seat of his grandson, John Goodchild, Esq. In Rodd's catalogue of engraved portraits, printed a few years ago, was "John Lawrence, prebend of Salisbury, original drawing by Vertue, price 5s." Mr. Lawrence published also, in folio, in 1726, his System of Agriculture and Gardening. Mr. Nichols, in vol. iv. of his Literary Anecdotes, has given a list of all his works, has preserved a few particulars respecting him, and pays a just tribute to him. A list of his works may also be seen in Watts's Bibl. Brit., and in Mr. Johnson's work. The Encycl. of Gardening informs us that he was "of a hospitable and benevolent disposition, taking great pleasure in presenting a rich dessert of fruit to his friends." He was presented to the rectory of Yelvertoft, Northamptonshire, in 1703, "by the extraordinary uncommon bounty of a generous patron." In 1721, he was presented to that of Bishop's Wearmouth, Durham, where he died in 1732. He was also a prebend of Salisbury.[74]
Mr. Lawrence thus enforces the pleasures of a garden, to his own order:—"to make them happy by loving an innocent diversion, the amusements of a garden being not only most delightful to those that love them, but most wholesome to those that use them. A good man knows how to recapitulate all his pleasures in a devout lifting up of his hands, his eyes and his heart, to the great and bountiful author of nature, who gives beauty, relish, and success to all our honest labours." His pen likewise paints with "soft and tempting colours," the extreme beauty of our fruit-trees, when clothed with their different coloured blossoms, (what Lord Byron calls the sweet and blooming fruits of earth):—"What a pleasing entertainment is it to the eye, to behold the apricot in its full blossom, white as snow, and at the same time the peach with its crimson-coloured blooms; both beginning to be interspersed with green leaves! These are succeeded by the pear, the cherry, and the plum, whose blossoms and leaves make a very beautiful mixture in the spring; and it cannot be a less pleasant sight to see clusters of swelling fruit all the summer, as the earnest of the full gratification of another sense in autumn. And now we have come hither, what painter can draw a landskip more charming and beautiful to the eye, than an old Newington peach-tree laden with fruit in August, when the sun has first begun to paint one side of the fruit with such soft and tempting colours? The apricot, the pear, the cherry and plum, when they appear in plenty as they ought, present themselves to the eye at the time of ripening in very inviting blushes. In short, all the several sorts of fruit trees have such pleasing varieties, that were there no other sense to be gratified but the sight, they may vie with a parterre even of the finest flowers." He thus mentions the month of July:—"How beautiful and refreshing are the mornings and evenings of such days, when the very air is perfumed with pleasant odours, and every thing that presents itself to the eye gives fresh occasion to the devout admirer to praise and adore the Great Creator, who hath given such wisdom and power to man to diversify nature in such various instances, and (for his own use, pleasure, and profit,) to assist her in all her operations." This worthy clergyman might have applied to the delights of a garden, the sacred words of scripture:—"her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace."[75]