In letters he was far more successful, and was undoubtedly the most popular satirical poet of the Georgian period. Whether he lampooned individuals, or public bodies, the Royal Academicians, or Royalty itself, his versatile genius displayed such a wide range of accomplishments that he attracted hosts of readers, and his books commanded a prodigious sale. All the world has read of the King’s visit to Whitbread’s Brewery, and his wondering how the apples got into the apple dumplings, and not a few readers have felt for Sir Joseph Banks, James Boswell, and Benjamin West, as they came in turn under his stinging lash.
His principal poems were issued from time to time as shilling or half-crown pamphlets. They were written in irregular, rollicking metre, the most important of them in the form of odes. In these he shines as a critic of music, painting, and literature. In all these directions he was, as he describes himself, “the most merciless Mohawk that ever scalped.” By such an expression he puts himself out of court as a safe and equitable judge. His appreciations of Wilson, of Gainsborough, of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and of J. M. W. Turner, have been endorsed by the foremost art writers of our time. Of Turner he said:—
Turner, whatever strikes thy mind,
Is painted well, and well designed.
Perhaps his least-known verses are those written for music and published from Exeter in the time of Jackson, the Cathedral organist, who was responsible for the airs to which they were sung. His own musical accomplishments were undoubtedly varied and sound.
Dr. Wolcot had much of the Bohemian in his constitution. He lived in a town where to this day a Puritan simplicity of manners marks the habits of the middle-class people. Quakers, Baptists, and Independents of the early Presbyterian type were numerous in the Kingsbridge of his day. If the old barn to which he addressed some of his odes could speak, it would tell of the visits of strolling players who, anathematised elsewhere, but welcomed by Peter Pindar, were allowed there to perform their bloodcurdling tragedies and questionable farces, to the scandal of the “unco guid.” And besides all this, old Richard Stanley, the king of the gipsies, grandfather of the present Romany patriarch of that name, was welcomed year by year to a shake-down in the straw when he came horse-dealing to Kingsbridge or to Dodbrooke Fair. Wolcot stoutly maintained that he never lost an egg or a chicken by his hospitality to the gipsies. We have heard the Bucklands, the Stanleys, and the Lees speak of his memory as of one who was kind to their fathers, and we have conversed with old people who have spoken of the building, which now stands almost unaltered, as the only theatre in Kingsbridge. Its interior is wonderfully like the picture of Hogarth’s called the “Strolling Players.” The fact that Bamfield Moore Carew, the king of the beggars, frequently lodged in it, adds historical interest to the picturesque and venerable shanty.
Dr. Wolcot’s real kindness to John Opie, whom he discovered as a lad working in a saw pit; his industrious endeavours to educate and refine him; and his generous assumption of fullest responsibility for his maintenance, together with his introduction of him to the world in London, form a creditable chapter in his history which ought never to be omitted from Peter’s life story. In Dugdale’s British Traveller will be found the copy of a written contract made by Opie in favour of his patron and friend. It begins—
I promise to paint for Dr. Wolcot any picture or pictures he may demand, as long as I live; otherwise I desire the world will consider me as an ungrateful son of a ——. [The words are unquotable.]
Opie stood to this obligation, but always made his friend pay eighteenpence for the canvas!
Opie is said to have paid great deference to Dr. Wolcot’s instructions. Whilst that gentleman was painting, he would sometimes lean over him and exclaim, “Ah! if I could ever paint like you!” to which Pindar replied, “If I thought thou wouldst not exceed me, John, I would not take such pains with thee.” For two years he never painted a single picture without the judgment of his friend.