Once a year the most ingenious of the vase effusions was published, the net profits being applied to some Bath charity. Four volumes of the compositions appeared. The prize poem was written several times by Anna Seward, and on one occasion was awarded for her monody on the death of David Garrick.
Macaulay says, in his essay on Madame D’Arblay, that Lady Miller kept a vase “wherein fools were wont to put bad verses.” Dr. Johnson also said, when Boswell named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase, “He was a blockhead for his pains”; on the other hand, when told that the Duchess of Northumberland wrote, Johnson said, “Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she pleases: nobody will say anything to a lady of her high rank.” Remembering who were ranked among the contributors to the “Saloon of the Minervas,” these criticisms seem rather absurd, for
“Bright glows the list with many an honour’d name.”
Christopher Anstey, a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, remembered as having written the “New Bath Guide,” and as having been deemed worthy a cenotaph in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, and William Hayley, appear to have been among the best-known to fame at “the fanciful and romantic institution at Bath-Easton.” The latter was a friend of Cowper, Romney and Southey, and published the
lives of the two former. In “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” occur these lines:—
“Triumphant first see Temper’s Triumph shine,
At least I’m sure they triumphed over mine.
Of ‘Music’s Triumphs’ all who read may swear
That luckless music never triumphed there.”
The poems “Triumphs of Temper” (1781) and “Triumphs of Music” (1804) were Hayley’s chief productions. He was the most ardent of all of those who paid their homage to Anna Seward. Mr. Lucas informs us that David Garrick appears also in the list. To the foregoing names may be added Edward Jerningham, the friend of Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, a dramatist as well as a poet; George Butt, the divine, and chaplain to George III.; William Crowe, “the new star,” as Anna Seward calls him, a divine and public orator at Oxford; and Richard Graves, a poet and novelist, the Rector of Claverton, who wrote “Recollections of Shenstone” in 1788. These, and Thomas Sedgwick Whalley, were perhaps the most learned of the vase group. The latter, Fanny Burney says, was one of its best supporters. He was a Prebendary of Wells Cathedral, and corresponded a good
deal with Anna Seward. Wilberforce’s description of him is worth recalling, viz., “the true picture of a sensible, well-informed and educated, polished, old, well-beneficed, nobleman’s and gentleman’s house-frequenting, literary and chess-playing divine.”
Anna Seward’s “Elegy on Captain Cook,” and her “Monody on Major André,” were contributed to the Vase, and immediately brought her into great repute.
Anna Seward made friends with, and had a great admiration for, the celebrated recluses, “the ladies of Llangollen Vale,”—Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby. They were so called because when they arrived their names were unknown. It is said that they never left their home for 50 years, and were so absolutely devoted as to be inseparable from each other. They adopted a semi-masculine attire. These curious ladies,—“extraordinary women,”—are described as ladies of genius, taste and knowledge—who were “sought by the first characters of the age, both as to rank and talents.”