Chapter II: Part 2

[17] An abundance of these amusing tracts eagerly bought up in their
day, but which came in the following generation to the
ballad-stalls, are in the present enshrined in the cabinets of
the curious. Such are the revolutions of literature! [It is by
no means uncommon to find them realise sums at the rate of a
guinea a page; but it is to be solely attributed to their
extreme rarity; for in many instances the reprints of such
tracts are worthless.]

[18] Poverty and the gaol alternated with tavern carouses or the
place of honour among the wild young gallants at the
playhouses. They were gentlemen or beggars as daily
circumstances ordained. When this was the case with such
authors as Greene, Peele, and Massinger, we need not wonder at
finding "a whole knot" of writers in infinitely worse plight,
who lived (or starved) by writing ballads and pamphlets on
temporary subjects. In a brief tract, called "The Downfall of
Temporising Poets," published 1641, they are said to be "an
indifferent strong corporation, twenty-three of you sufficient
writers, besides Martin Parker," who was the great ballad and
pamphlet writer of the day. The shifts they were put to, and
the difficulties of their living, is denoted in the reply of
one of the characters in this tract, who on being asked if he
has money, replies "Money? I wonder where you ever see poets
have money two days together; I sold a copy last night, and
have spent the money; and now have another copy to sell, but
nobody will buy it."--ED.

[19] Chatterton had written a political essay for "The North Briton,"
which opened with the preluding flourish of "A spirited people
freeing themselves from insupportable slavery:" it was,
however, though accepted, not printed, on account of the Lord
Mayor's death. The patriot thus calculated the death of his
great patron!

L s. d.
Lost by his death in this Essay 1 11 6
Gained in Elegies L2 2
---- in Essays 3 3
---- 5 5 0
---------
Am glad he is dead by L3 13 6

A MENDICANT AUTHOR,

AND THE PATRONS OF FORMER TIMES.

It must be confessed, that before "Authors by Profession" had fallen into the hands of the booksellers, they endured peculiar grievances. They were pitiable retainers of some great family. The miseries of such an author, and the insolence and penuriousness of his patrons, who would not return the poetry they liked and would not pay for, may be traced in the eventful life of THOMAS CHURCHYARD, a poet of the age of Elizabeth, one of those unfortunate men who have written poetry all their days, and lived a long life to complete the misfortune. His muse was so fertile, that his works pass all enumeration. He courted numerous patrons, who valued the poetry, while they left the poet to his own miserable contemplations. In a long catalogue of his works, which this poet has himself given, he adds a few memoranda, as he proceeds, a little ludicrous, but very melancholy. He wrote a book which he could never afterwards recover from one of his patrons, and adds, "all which book was in as good verse as ever I made; an honourable knight dwelling in the Black Friers can witness the same, because I read it unto him." Another accorded him the same remuneration--on which he adds, "An infinite number of other songs and sonnets given where they cannot be recovered, nor purchase any favour when they are craved." Still, however, he announces "Twelve long Tales for Christmas, dedicated to twelve honourable lords." Well might Churchyard write his own sad life, under the title of "The Tragicall Discourse of the Haplesse Man's Life."[20]

It will not be easy to parallel this pathetic description of the wretched age of a poor neglected poet mourning over a youth vainly spent.

High time it is to haste my carcase hence:
Youth stole away and felt no kind of joy,
And age he left in travail ever since;
The wanton days that made me nice and coy
Were but a dream, a shadow, and a toy--

I look in glass, and find my cheeks so lean
That every hour I do but wish me dead;
Now back bends down, and forwards falls the head,
And hollow eyes in wrinkled brow doth shroud
As though two stars were creeping under cloud.

The lips wax cold, and look both pale and thin,
The teeth fall out as nutts forsook the shell,
The bare bald head but shows where hair hath been,
The lively joints wax weary, stiff, and still,
The ready tongue now falters in his tale;
The courage quails as strength decays and goes....

The thatcher hath a cottage poor you see:
The shepherd knows where he shall sleep at night;
The daily drudge from cares can quiet be:
Thus fortune sends some rest to every wight;
And I was born to house and land by right....

Well, ere my breath my body do forsake
My spirit I bequeath to God above;
My books, my scrawls, and songs that I did make,
I leave with friends that freely did me love....

Now, friends, shake hands, I must be gone, my boys!
Our mirth takes end, our triumph all is done;
Our tickling talk, our sports and merry toys
Do glide away like shadow of the sun.
Another comes when I my race have run,
Shall pass the time with you in better plight,
And find good cause of greater things to write.

Yet Churchyard was no contemptible bard; he composed a national poem, "The Worthiness of Wales," which has been reprinted, and will be still dear to his "Fatherland," as the Hollanders expressively denote their natal spot. He wrote in the "Mirrour of Magistrates," the Life of Wolsey, which has parts of great dignity; and the Life of Jane Shore, which was much noticed in his day, for a severe critic of the times writes:

Hath not Shore's wife, although a light-skirt she,
Given him a chaste, long, lasting memorie?

Churchyard, and the miseries of his poetical life, are alluded to by Spenser. He is old Palemon in "Colin Clout's come Home again." Spenser is supposed to describe this laborious writer for half a century, whose melancholy pipe, in his old age, may make the reader "rew:"

Yet he himself may rewed be more right,
That sung so long untill quite hoarse he grew.

His epitaph, preserved by Camden, is extremely instructive to all poets, could epitaphs instruct them:--

_Poverty_ and _poetry_ his tomb doth inclose;
Wherefore, good neighbours, be merry in _prose_.

It appears also by a confession of Tom Nash, that an author would then, pressed by the _res angusta domi_, when "the bottom of his purse was turned upward," submit to compose pieces for gentlemen who aspired to authorship. He tells us on some occasion, that he was then in the country composing poetry for some country squire;--and says, "I am faine to let my plow stand still in the midst of a furrow, to follow these Senior Fantasticos, to whose amorous _villanellas_[21] I prostitute my pen," and this, too, "twice or thrice in a month;" and he complains that it is "poverty which alone maketh me so unconstant to my determined studies, trudging from place to place to and fro, and prosecuting the means to keep me from idlenesse." An author was then much like a vagrant.

Even at a later period, in the reign of the literary James, great authors were reduced to a state of mendicity, and lived on alms, although their lives and their fortunes had been consumed in forming national labours. The antiquary STOWE exhibits a striking example of the rewards conferred on such valued authors. Stowe had devoted his life, and exhausted his patrimony, in the study of English antiquities; he had travelled on foot throughout the kingdom, inspecting all monuments of antiquity, and rescuing what he could from the dispersed libraries of the monasteries. His stupendous collections, in his own handwriting, still exist, to provoke the feeble industry of literary loiterers. He felt through life the enthusiasm of study; and seated in his monkish library, living with the dead more than with the living, he was still a student of taste: for Spenser the poet visited the library of Stowe; and the first good edition of Chaucer was made so chiefly by the labours of our author. Late in life, worn-out with study and the cares of poverty, neglected by that proud metropolis of which he had been the historian, his good-humour did not desert him; for being afflicted with sharp pains in his aged feet, he observed that "his affliction lay in that part which formerly he had made so much use of." Many a mile had he wandered and much had he expended, for those treasures of antiquities which had exhausted his fortune, and with which he had formed works of great public utility. It was in his eightieth year that Stowe at length received a public acknowledgment of his services, which will appear to us of a very extraordinary nature. He was so reduced in his circumstances that he petitioned James I. for a _licence to collect alms_ for himself! "as a recompense for his labours and travel of _forty-five years_, in setting forth the _Chronicles of England_, and _eight years_ taken up in the _Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster_, towards his relief now in his old age; having left his former means of living, and only employing himself for the service and good of his country." Letters-patent under the great seal were granted. After no penurious commendations of Stowe's labours, he is permitted "to gather the benevolence of well-disposed people within this realm of England; to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects." These letters-patent were to be published by the clergy from their pulpits; they produced so little, that they were renewed for another twelvemonth: one entire parish in the city contributed seven shillings and sixpence! Such, then, was the patronage received by Stowe, to be a licensed beggar throughout the kingdom for one twelvemonth! Such was the public remuneration of a man who had been useful to his nation, but not to himself!

Such was the first age of _Patronage_, which branched out in the last century into an age of _Subscriptions_, when an author levied contributions before his work appeared; a mode which inundated our literature with a great portion of its worthless volumes: of these the most remarkable are the splendid publications of Richard Blome; they may be called fictitious works; for they are only mutilated transcripts from Camden and Speed, but richly ornamented, and pompously printed, which this literary adventurer, said to have been a gentleman, loaded the world with, by the aid of his subscribers. Another age was that of _Dedications_,[22] when the author was to lift his tiny patron to the skies, in an inverse ratio as he lowered himself, in this public exhibition. Sometimes the party haggled about the price;[23] or the statue, while stepping into his niche, would turn round on the author to assist his invention. A patron of Peter Motteux, dissatisfied with Peter's colder temperament, composed the superlative dedication to himself, and completed the misery of the author by subscribing it with Motteux's name![24] Worse fared it when authors were the unlucky hawkers of their own works; of which I shall give a remarkable instance in MYLES DAVIES, a learned man maddened by want and indignation.

The subject before us exhibits one of the most singular spectacles in these volumes; that of a scholar of extensive erudition, whose life seems to have passed in the study of languages and the sciences, while his faculties appear to have been disordered from the simplicity of his nature, and driven to madness by indigence and insult. He formed the wild resolution of becoming a mendicant author, the hawker of his own works; and by this mode endured all the aggravated sufferings, the great and the petty insults of all ranks of society, and even sometimes from men of learning themselves, who denied a mendicant author the sympathy of a brother.

MYLES DAVIES and his works are imperfectly known to the most curious of our literary collectors. His name has scarcely reached a few; the author and his works are equally extraordinary, and claim a right to be preserved in this treatise on the "Calamities of Authors."

Our author commenced printing a work, difficult, from its miscellaneous character, to describe; of which the volumes appeared at different periods. The early and the most valuable volumes were the first and second; they are a kind of bibliographical, biographical, and critical work, on English Authors. They all bear a general title of "Athenae Britannicae."[25]

Collectors have sometimes met with a very curious volume, entitled "Icon Libellorum," and sometimes the same book, under another title--"A Critical History of Pamphlets." This rare book forms the first volume of the "Athenae Britannicae." The author was Myles Davies, whose biography is quite unknown: he may now be his own biographer. He was a Welsh clergyman, a vehement foe to Popery, Arianism, and Socinianism, of the most fervent loyalty to George I. and the Hanoverian succession; a scholar, skilled in Greek and Latin, and in all the modern languages. Quitting his native spot with political disgust, he changed his character in the metropolis, for he subscribes himself "Counsellor-at-Law." In an evil hour he commenced author, not only surrounded by his books, but with the more urgent companions of a wife and family; and with that childlike simplicity which sometimes marks the mind of a retired scholar, we perceive him imagining that his immense reading would prove a source, not easily exhausted, for their subsistence.

From the first volumes of his series much curious literary history may be extracted, amidst the loose and wandering elements of this literary chaos. In his dedication to the Prince he professes "to represent writers and writings in a catoptrick view."

The preface to the second volume opens his plan; and nothing as yet indicates those rambling humours which his subsequent labours exhibit.

As he proceeded in forming these volumes, I suspect, either that his mind became a little disordered, or that he discovered that mere literature found but penurious patrons in "the Few;" for, attempting to gain over all classes of society, he varied his investigations, and courted attention, by writing on law, physic, divinity, as well as literary topics. By his account--

"The avarice of booksellers, and the stinginess of hard-hearted patrons, had driven him into a cursed company of door-keeping herds, to meet the irrational brutality of those uneducated mischievous animals called footmen, house-porters, poetasters, mumpers, apothecaries, attorneys, and such like beasts of prey," who were, like himself, sometimes barred up for hours in the menagerie of a great man's antechamber. In his addresses to Drs. Mead and Freind, he declares--"My misfortunes drive me to publish my writings for a poor livelihood; and nothing but the utmost necessity could make any man in his senses to endeavour at it, in a method so burthensome to the modesty and education of a scholar."

In French he dedicates to George I.; and in the Harleian MSS. I discovered a long letter to the Earl of Oxford, by our author, in French, with a Latin ode. Never was more innocent bribery proffered to a minister! He composed what he calls _Stricturae Pindaricae_ on the "Mughouses," then political clubs;[26] celebrates English authors in the same odes, and inserts a political Latin drama, called "Pallas Anglicana." Maevius and Bavius were never more indefatigable! The author's intellect gradually discovers its confusion amidst the loud cries of penury and despair.

To paint the distresses of an author soliciting alms for a book which he presents--and which, whatever may be its value, comes at least as an evidence that the suppliant is a learned man--is a case so uncommon, that the invention of the novelist seems necessary to fill up the picture. But Myles Davies is an artist in his own simple narrative.

Our author has given the names of several of his unwilling customers:--

"Those squeeze-farthing and hoard-penny ignoramus doctors, with several great personages who formed excuses for not accepting my books; or they would receive them, but give nothing for them; or else deny they had them, or remembered anything of them; and so gave me nothing for my last present of books, though they kept them _gratis et ingratiis_.

"But his Grace of the Dutch extraction in Holland (said to be akin to Mynheer Vander B--nck) had a peculiar grace in receiving my present of books and odes, which, being bundled up together with a letter and ode upon his Graceship, and carried in by his porter, I was bid to call for an answer five years hence. I asked the porter what he meant by that? I suppose, said he, four or five days hence; but it proved five or six months after, before I could get any answer, though I had writ five or six letters in French with fresh odes upon his Graceship, and an account where I lived, and what noblemen had accepted of my present. I attended about the door three or four times a week all that time constantly from twelve to four or five o'clock in the evening; and walking under the fore windows of the parlours, once that time his and her Grace came after dinner to stare at me, with open windows and shut mouths, but filled with fair water, which they spouted with so much dexterity that they twisted the water through their teeth and mouth-skrew, to flash near my face, and yet just to miss me, though my nose could not well miss the natural flavour of the orange-water showering so very near me. Her Grace began the water-work, but not very gracefully, especially for an English lady of her description, airs, and qualities, to make a stranger her spitting-post, who had been guilty of no other offence than to offer her husband some writings.--His Grace followed, yet first stood looking so wistfully towards me, that I verily thought he had a mind to throw me a guinea or two for all these indignities, and two or three months' then sleeveless waiting upon him--and accordingly I advanced to address his Grace to remember the poor author; but, instead of an answer, he immediately undams his mouth, out fly whole showers of lymphatic rockets, which had like to have put out my mortal eyes."

Still he was not disheartened, and still applied for his bundle of books, which were returned to him at length unopened, with "half a guinea upon top of the cargo," and "with a desire to receive no more. I plucked up courage, murmuring within myself--

'Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.'"

He sarcastically observes,

"As I was still jogging on homewards, I thought that a great many were called _their Graces_, not for any grace or favour they had truly deserved with God or man, but for the same reason of contraries, that the _Parcae_ or Destinies, were so called, because they spared none, or were not truly the _Parcae, quia non parcebant_."

Our indigent and indignant author, by the faithfulness of his representations, mingles with his anger some ludicrous scenes of literary mendicity.

"I can't choose (now I am upon the fatal subject) but make one observation or two more upon the various rencontres and adventures I met withall, in presenting my books to those who were likely to accept of them for their own information, or for that of helping a poor scholar, or for their own vanity or ostentation.

"Some parsons would hollow to raise the whole house and posse of the domestics to raise a poor _crown_; at last all that flutter ends in sending Jack or Tom out to change a guinea, and then 'tis reckoned over half-a-dozen times before the fatal crown can be picked out, which must be taken as it is given, with all the parade of almsgiving, and so to be received with all the active and passive ceremonial of mendication and alms-receiving--as if the books, printing and paper, were worth nothing at all, and as if it were the greatest charity for them to touch them or let them be in the house; 'For I shall never read them,' says one of the five-shilling-piece chaps; 'I have no time to look in them,' says another; ''Tis so much money lost,' says a grave dean; 'My eyes being so bad,' said a bishop, 'that I can scarce read at all.' 'What do you want with me?' said another; 'Sir, I presented you the other day with my _Athenae Britannicae_, being the last part published.' 'I don't want books, take them again; I don't understand what they mean.' 'The title is very plain,' said I, 'and they are writ mostly in English.' 'I'll give you a crown for both the volumes.' 'They stand me, sir, in more than that, and 'tis for a bare subsistence I present or sell them; how shall I live?' 'I care not a farthing for that; live or die, 'tis all one to me.' 'Damn my master!' said Jack, ''twas but last night he was commending your books and your learning to the skies; and now he would not care if you were starving before his eyes; nay, he often makes game at your clothes, though he thinks you the greatest scholar in England.'"

Such was the life of a learned mendicant author! The scenes which are here exhibited appear to have disordered an intellect which had never been firm; in vain our author attempted to adapt his talents to all orders of men, still "To the crazy ship all winds are contrary."

FOOTNOTES:

[20] This author, now little known but to the student of our rarer
early poets, was a native of Shrewsbury, and had served in the
army. He wrote a large number of poetical pieces, all now of
the greatest rarity; their names have been preserved by that
industrious antiquary Joseph Ritson, in his _Bibliographia
Poetica_. The principal one was termed "The Worthiness of
Wales," and is written in laudation of the Principality. He
was frequently employed to supply verses for Court Masques and
Pageantry. He composed "all the devises, pastimes, and plays
at Norwich" when Queen Elizabeth was entertained there; as
well as gratulatory verses to her at Woodstock. He speaks of
his mind as "never free from studie," and his body "seldom
void of toyle"--"and yet both of them neither brought greate
benefits to the life, nor blessing to the soule" he adds, in
the words of a man whose hope deferred has made his heart
sick!--ED.

[21] _Villanellas_, or rather "_Villanescas_, are properly country
rustic songs, but commonly taken for ingenious ones made in
imitation of them."--PINEDA.

[22] This practice of dedications had indeed flourished before; for
authors had even prefixed numerous dedications to the same
work, or dedicated to different patrons the separate
divisions. Fuller's "Church History" is disgraced by the
introduction of twelve title-pages, besides the general one;
with as many particular dedications, and no less than fifty or
sixty inscriptions, addressed to benefactors; for which he is
severely censured by Heylin. It was an expedient to procure
dedication fees; for publishing books by _subscription_ was an
art not then discovered.

[23] The price of the dedication of a play was even fixed, from five
to ten guineas, from the Revolution to the time of George I.,
when it rose to twenty--but sometimes a bargain was to be
struck--when the author and the play were alike indifferent.
Even on these terms could vanity be gratified with the coarse
luxury of panegyric, of which every one knew the price.

[24] This circumstance was so notorious at the time, that it
occasioned a poetical satire in a dialogue between Motteux and
his patron Henningham--preserved in that vast flower-bed or
dunghill, for it is both, of "Poems on Affairs of State," vol.
ii. 251. The patron, in his zeal to omit no possible
distinction that could attach to him, had given one
circumstance which no one but himself could have known, and
which he thus regrets:

"PATRON.

I must confess I was to blame
That one particular to name;
The rest could never have been known,
_I made the style so like thy own_.

POET.

I beg your pardon, Sir, for that!

PATRON.

Why d----e what would you be at?
_I writ below myself_, you sot!
Avoiding figures, tropes, what not;
For fear I should my fancy _raise
Above the level of thy plays_!"

[25] "_Athenae Britannicae_, or a Critical History of the Oxford and
Cambridge Writers and Writings, with those of the Dissenters
and Romanists, as well as other Authors and Worthies, both
Domestic and Foreign, both Ancient and Modern. Together with
an occasional freedom of thought, in criticising and comparing
the parallel qualifications of the most eminent authors and
their performances, both in MS. and print, both at home and
abroad. By M. D. London, 1716." On the first volume of this
series, Dr. Farmer, a bloodhound of unfailing scent in curious
and obscure English books, has written on the leaf "This is
the only copy I have met with." Even the great bibliographer,
Baker, of Cambridge, never met but with three volumes (the
edition at the British Museum is in seven), sent him as a
great curiosity by the Earl of Oxford, and now deposited in
his collection at St. John's College. Baker has written this
memorandum in the first volume: "Few copies were printed, so
the work has become scarce, and for that reason will be
valued. The book in the greatest part is borrowed from modern
historians, but yet contains some things more uncommon, and
not easily to be met with." How superlatively rare must be the
English volumes which the eyes of Farmer and Baker never
lighted on!

[26] These clubs are described in Macky's "Journey through England,"
1724. He says they were formed to uphold the Royalist party
on the accession of King George I. "This induced a set of
gentlemen to establish _Mughouses_ in all the corners of
this great city, for well-affected tradesmen to meet and keep
up the spirit of loyalty to the Protestant succession," and
to be ready to join their forces for the suppression of the
other party. "Many an encounter they had, till at last the
Parliament was obliged by a law to put an end to this city
strife, which had this good effect, that upon the pulling
down of the Mughouse in Salisbury Court, for which some boys
were hanged on this act, the city has not been troubled with
them since." It was the custom in these houses to allow no
other drink but ale to be consumed, which was brought in mugs
of earthenware; a chairman was elected, and he called on the
members of the company for songs, which were generally party
ballads of a strongly-worded kind, as may be seen in the
small collection printed in 1716, entitled "A Collection of
State Songs, Poems, &c., published since the Rebellion, and
sung in the several Mughouses in the cities of London and
Westminster."--ED.

COWLEY.

OF HIS MELANCHOLY.

The mind of COWLEY was beautiful, but a querulous tenderness in his nature breathes not only through his works, but influenced his habits and his views of human affairs. His temper and his genius would have opened to us, had not the strange decision of Sprat and Clifford withdrawn that full correspondence of his heart which he had carried on many years. These letters were suppressed because, as Bishop Sprat acknowledges, "in this kind of prose Mr. Cowley was excellent! They had a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of familiarity." And then the florid writer runs off, that, "in letters, where the souls of men should appear undressed, in that negligent habit they may be fit to be seen by one or two in a chamber, but not to go abroad into the streets." A false criticism: which not only has proved to be so since their time by Mason's "Memoirs of Gray," but which these friends of Cowley might have themselves perceived, if they had recollected that the Letters of Cicero to Atticus form the most delightful chronicles of the heart--and the most authentic memorials of the man. Peck obtained one letter of Cowley's, preserved by Johnson, and it exhibits a remarkable picture of the miseries of his poetical solitude. It is, perhaps, not too late to inquire whether this correspondence was destroyed as well as suppressed? Would Sprat and Clifford have burned what they have told us they so much admired?[27]

Fortunately for our literary sympathy, the fatal error of these fastidious critics has been in some degree repaired by the admirable genius himself whom they have injured. When Cowley retreated from society, he determined to draw up an apology for his conduct, and to have dedicated it to his patron, Lord St. Albans. His death interrupted the entire design; but his Essays, which Pope so finely calls "the language of his heart," are evidently parts of these precious Confessions. All of Cowley's tenderest and undisguised feelings have therefore not perished. These Essays now form a species of composition in our language, a mixture of prose and verse--the man with the poet--the self-painter has sat to himself, and, with the utmost simplicity, has copied out the image of his soul.

Why has this poet twice called himself _the melancholy Cowley_? He employed no poetical _cheville_[28] for the metre of a verse which his own feelings inspired.

Cowley, at the beginning of the Civil War, joined the Royalists at Oxford; followed the queen to Paris; yielded his days and his nights to an employment of the highest confidence, that of deciphering the royal correspondence; he transacted their business, and, almost divorcing himself from his neglected muse, he yielded up for them the tranquillity so necessary to the existence of a poet. From his earliest days he tells us how the poetic affections had stamped themselves on his heart, "like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, which, with the tree, will grow proportionably."

He describes his feelings at the court:--

"I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life the nearer I came to it--that beauty which I did not fall in love with when, for aught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw it was adulterate. I met with several great persons whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired. I was in a crowd of good company, in business of great and honourable trust; I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences that ought to be desired by a man of my condition; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect:--

Well then! I now do plainly see,
This busie world and I shall ne'er agree!"

After several years' absence from his native country, at a most critical period, he was sent over to mix with that trusty band of loyalists, who, in secrecy and in silence, were devoting themselves to the royal cause. Cowley was seized on by the ruling powers. At this moment he published a preface to his works, which some of his party interpreted as a relaxation of his loyalty. He has been fully defended. Cowley, with all his delicacy of temper, wished sincerely to retire from all parties; and saw enough among the fiery zealots of his own, to grow disgusted even with Royalists.

His wish for retirement has been half censured as cowardice by Johnson; but there was a tenderness of feeling which had ill-formed Cowley for the cunning of party intriguers, and the company of little villains. About this time he might have truly distinguished himself as "The melancholy Cowley."

I am only tracing his literary history for the purpose of this work: but I cannot pass without noticing the fact, that this abused man, whom his enemies were calumniating, was at this moment, under the disguise of a doctor of physic, occupied by the novel studies of botany and medicine; and as all science in the mind of the poet naturally becomes poetry, he composed his books on plants in Latin verse.

At length came the Restoration, which the poet zealously celebrated in his "Ode" on that occasion. Both Charles the First and Second had promised to reward his fidelity with the mastership of the Savoy; but, Wood says, "he lost it by certain persons enemies of the muses." Wood has said no more; and none of Cowley's biographers have thrown any light on the circumstance: perhaps we may discover this literary calamity.

That Cowley caught no warmth from that promised sunshine which the new monarch was to scatter in prodigal gaiety, has been distinctly told by the poet himself; his muse, in "The Complaint," having reproached him thus:--

Thou young prodigal, who didst so loosely waste
Of all thy youthful years, the good estate--
Thou changeling then, bewitch'd with noise and show,
Wouldst into courts and cities from me go--
Go, renegado, cast up thy account--
Behold the public storm is spent at last;
The sovereign is toss'd at sea no more,
And thou, with all the noble company,
Art got at last to shore--
But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see,
All march'd up to possess the promis'd land;
Thou still alone (alas!) dost gaping stand
Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand.

But neglect was not all Cowley had to endure; the royal party seemed disposed to calumniate him. When Cowley was young he had hastily composed the comedy of "The Guardian;" a piece which served the cause of loyalty. After the Restoration, he rewrote it under the title of "Cutter of Coleman Street;" a comedy which may still be read with equal curiosity and interest: a spirited picture of the peculiar characters which appeared at the Revolution. It was not only ill received by a faction, but by those vermin of a new court, who, without merit themselves, put in their claims, by crying down those who, with great merit, are not in favour. All these to a man accused the author of having written a satire against the king's party. And this wretched party prevailed, too long for the author's repose, but not for his fame.[29] Many years afterwards this comedy became popular. Dryden, who was present at the representation, tells us that Cowley "received the news of his ill success not with so much firmness as might have been expected from so great a man." Cowley was in truth a great man, and a greatly injured man. His sensibility and delicacy of temper were of another texture than Dryden's. What at that moment did Cowley experience, when he beheld himself neglected, calumniated, and, in his last appeal to public favour, found himself still a victim to a vile faction, who, to court their common master, were trampling on their honest brother?

We shall find an unbroken chain of evidence, clearly demonstrating the agony of his literary feelings. The cynical Wood tells us that, "not finding that preferment he expected, while others for their money carried away most places, he retired discontented into Surrey." And his panegyrist, Sprat, describes him as "weary of the vexations and formalities of an active condition--he had been perplexed with a long compliance with foreign manners. He was satiated with the arts of a court, which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him, yet nothing could make it quiet. These were the reasons that moved him to follow the violent inclination of his own mind," &c. I doubt if either the sarcastic antiquary or the rhetorical panegyrist have developed the simple truth of Cowley's "violent inclination of his own mind." He does it himself more openly in that beautiful picture of an injured poet, in "The Complaint," an ode warm with individual feeling, but which Johnson coldly passes over, by telling us that "it met the usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than pity."

Thus the biographers of Cowley have told us nothing, and the poet himself has probably not told us all. To these calumnies respecting Cowley's comedy, raised up by those whom Wood designates as "enemies of the muses," it would appear that others were added of a deeper dye, and in malignant whispers distilled into the ear of royalty. Cowley, in an ode, had commemorated the genius of Brutus, with all the enthusiasm of a votary of liberty. After the king's return, when Cowley solicited some reward for his sufferings and services in the royal cause, the chancellor is said to have turned on him with a severe countenance, saying, "Mr. Cowley, your pardon is your reward!" It seems that ode was then considered to be of a dangerous tendency among half the nation; Brutus would be the model of enthusiasts, who were sullenly bending their neck under the yoke of royalty. Charles II. feared the attempt of desperate men; and he might have forgiven Rochester a loose pasquinade, but not Cowley a solemn invocation. This fact, then, is said to have been the true cause of the despondency so prevalent in the latter poetry of "the melancholy Cowley." And hence the indiscretion of the muse, in a single flight, condemned her to a painful, rather than a voluntary solitude; and made the poet complain of "barren praise" and "neglected verse."[30]

While this anecdote harmonises with better known facts, it throws some light on the outcry raised against the comedy, which seems to have been but an echo of some preceding one. Cowley retreated into solitude, where he found none of the agrestic charms of the landscapes of his muse. When in the world, Sprat says, "he had never wanted for constant health and strength of body;" but, thrown into solitude, he carried with him a wounded spirit--the Ode of Brutus and the condemnation of his comedy were the dark spirits that haunted his cottage. Ill health soon succeeded low spirits--he pined in dejection, and perished a victim of the finest and most injured feelings.

But before we leave _the melancholy Cowley_, he shall speak the feelings, which here are not exaggerated. In this Chronicle of Literary Calamity no passage ought to be more memorable than the solemn confession of one of the most amiable of men and poets.

Thus he expresses himself in the preface to his "Cutter of Coleman Street."

"We are therefore wonderful wise men, and have a fine business of it; we, who spend our time in poetry. I do sometimes laugh, and am often angry with myself, when I think on it; and if I had a son inclined by nature to the same folly, I believe I should bind him from it by the strictest conjurations of a paternal blessing. For what can be more ridiculous than to labour to give men delight, whilst they labour, on their part, most earnestly to take offence?"

And thus he closes the preface, in all the solemn expression of injured feelings:--"This I do affirm, that _from all which I have written, +I never+ received the least benefit or the least advantage; but, on the contrary, have felt sometimes the effects of malice and misfortune_!"

Cowley's ashes were deposited between those of Chaucer and Spenser; a marble monument was erected by a duke; and his eulogy was pronounced, on the day of his death, from the lips of royalty. The learned wrote, and the tuneful wept: well might the neglected bard, in his retirement, compose an epitaph on himself, living there "entombed, though not dead."

To this ambiguous state of existence he applies a conceit, not inelegant, from the tenderness of its imagery:

Hic sparge flores, sparge breves rosas,
Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus;
Herbisque odoratis corona
Vatis adhuc cinerem calentem.

IMITATED.

Here scatter flowers and short-lived roses bring.
For life, though dead, enjoys the flowers of spring;
With breathing wreaths of fragrant herbs adorn
The yet warm embers in the poet's urn.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] My researches could never obtain more than one letter of
Cowley's--it is but an elegant trifle--returning thanks to his
friend Evelyn for some seeds and plants. "The Garden" of
Evelyn is immortalised in a delightful Ode of Cowley's, as
well as by Evelyn himself. Even in this small note we may
discover the touch of Cowley. The original is in Astle's
collection.

MR. ABRAHAM COWLEY TO JOHN EVELYN, ESQ.

"_Barn Elms, March 23, 1663._

"SIR,--There is nothing more pleasant than to see kindness
in a person for whom we have great esteem and respect: no,
not the sight of your garden in May, or even the having
such an one; which makes me more obliged to return you my
most humble thanks for the testimonies I have lately
received of you, both by your letter and your presents. I
have already sowed such of your seeds as I thought most
proper upon a hot-bed; but cannot find in all my books a
catalogue of these plants which require that culture, nor
of such as must be set in pots; which defects, and all
others, I hope shortly to see supplied, as I hope shortly
to see your work of Horticulture finished and published;
and long to be in all things your disciple, as I am in all
things now,

"Sir, your most humble and most obedient Servant,
"A. COWLEY."

[Barn Elms, from whence this letter is dated, was the first
country residence of Cowley. It lies low on the banks of the
Thames, and here the poet was first seized with a fever, which
obliged him to remove; but he chose an equally improper
locality for a man of his temperament, in Chertsey, where he
died from the effects of a severe cold.]

Such were the ordinary letters which passed between two men
whom it would be difficult to parallel for their elegant
tastes and gentle dispositions. Evelyn's beautiful retreat at
Sayes Court, at Deptford, is described by a contemporary as
"a garden exquisite and most boscaresque, and, as it were,
an exemplar of his book of Forest-trees." It was the
entertainment and wonder of the greatest men of those times,
and inspired the following lines of Cowley, to Evelyn and
his lady, who excelled in the arts her husband loved; for she
designed the frontispiece to his version of Lucretius--

"In books and gardens thou hast placed aright
(Things well which thou dost understand,
And both dost make with thy laborious hand)
Thy noble innocent delight;
And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet
Both pleasures more refined and sweet;
The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the wisest books."

[28] A term the French apply to those _botches_ which bad poets use
to make out their metre.

[29] This comedy was first presented very hurriedly for the amusement
of Prince Charles as he passed through Cambridge to York.
Cowley himself describes it, then, as "neither _made_ nor
_acted_, but _rough-drawn_ by him, and _repeated_ by his
scholars" for this temporary purpose. After the Restoration he
endeavoured to do more justice to his juvenile work, by
remodelling it, and producing it at the Duke of York's
theatre. But as many of the characters necessarily retained
the features of the older play, and times had changed; it was
easy to affix a false stigma to the poet's pictures of the old
Cavaliers; and the play was universally condemned as a satire
on the Royalists. It was reproduced with success at the
theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, as long afterwards as the
year 1730.--ED.

[30] The anecdote, probably little known, may be found in "The
Judgment of Dr. Prideaux in Condemning the Murder of
Julius Caesar by the Conspirators as a most villanous act,
maintained," 1721, p. 41.

THE PAINS OF FASTIDIOUS EGOTISM.

I must place the author of "The Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors," who himself now ornaments that roll, among those who have participated in the misfortunes of literature.

HORACE WALPOLE was the inheritor of a name the most popular in Europe;[31] he moved in the higher circles of society; and fortune had never denied him the ample gratification of his lively tastes in the elegant arts, and in curious knowledge. These were particular advantages. But Horace Walpole panted with a secret desire for literary celebrity; a full sense of his distinguished rank long suppressed the desire of venturing the name he bore to the uncertain fame of an author, and the caprice of vulgar critics. At length he pretended to shun authors, and to slight the honours of authorship. The cause of this contempt has been attributed to the perpetual consideration of his rank. But was this bitter contempt of so early a date? Was Horace Walpole a Socrates before his time? was he born that prodigy of indifference, to despise the secret object he languished to possess? His early associates were not only noblemen, but literary noblemen; and need he have been so petulantly fastidious at bearing the venerable title of author, when he saw Lyttleton, Chesterfield, and other peers, proud of wearing the blue riband of literature? No! it was after he had become an author that he contemned authorship: and it was not the precocity of his sagacity, but the maturity of his experience, that made him willing enough to undervalue literary honours, which were not sufficient to satisfy his desires.

Let us estimate the genius of Horace Walpole by analysing his talents, and inquiring into the nature of his works.

His taste was highly polished; his vivacity attained to brilliancy;[32] and his picturesque fancy, easily excited, was soon extinguished; his playful wit and keen irony were perpetually exercised in his observations on life, and his memory was stored with the most amusing knowledge, but much too lively to be accurate; for his studies were but his sports. But other qualities of genius must distinguish the great author, and even him who would occupy that leading rank in the literary republic our author aspired to fill. He lived too much in that class of society which is little favourable to genius; he exerted neither profound thinking, nor profound feeling; and too volatile to attain to the pathetic, that higher quality of genius, he was so imbued with the petty elegancies of society that every impression of grandeur in the human character was deadened in the breast of the polished cynic.

Horace Walpole was not a man of genius,--his most pleasing, if not his great talent, lay in letter-writing; here he was without a rival;[33] but he probably divined, when he condescended to become an author, that something more was required than the talents he exactly possessed. In his latter days he felt this more sensibly, which will appear in those confessions which I have extracted from an unpublished correspondence.

Conscious of possessing the talent which amuses, yet feeling his deficient energies, he resolved to provide various substitutes for genius itself; and to acquire reputation, if he could not grasp at celebrity. He raised a printing-press at his Gothic castle, by which means he rendered small editions of his works valuable from their rarity, and much talked of, because seldom seen. That this is true, appears from the following extract from his unpublished correspondence with a literary friend. It alludes to his "Anecdotes of Painting in England," of which the first edition only consisted of 300 copies.

"Of my new fourth volume I printed 600; but, as they can be had, I believe not a third part is sold. This is a very plain lesson to me, that my editions sell for their curiosity, and not for any merit in them--and so they would if I printed Mother Goose's Tales, and but a few. If I am humbled as an author, I may be vain as a printer; and when one has nothing else to be vain of, it is certainly very little worth while to be proud of that."

There is a distinction between the author of great connexions and the mere author. In the one case, the man may give a temporary existence to his books; but in the other, it is the book which gives existence to the man.

Walpole's writings seem to be constructed on a certain principle, by which he gave them a sudden, rather than a lasting existence. In historical research our adventurer startled the world by maintaining paradoxes which attacked the opinions, or changed the characters, established for centuries. Singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which Horace Walpole sought distinction.

In his works of imagination, he felt he could not trust to himself--the natural pathetic was utterly denied him. But he had fancy and ingenuity; he had recourse to the _marvellous_ in imagination on the principle he had adopted the _paradoxical_ in history. Thus, "The Castle of Otranto," and "The Mysterious Mother," are the productions of ingenuity rather than genius; and display the miracles of art, rather than the spontaneous creations of nature.

All his literary works, like the ornamented edifice he inhabited, were constructed on the same artificial principle; an old paper lodging-house, converted by the magician of taste into a Gothic castle, full of scenic effects.[34]

"A Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors" was itself a classification which only an idle amateur could have projected, and only the most agreeable narrator of anecdotes could have seasoned. These splendid scribblers are for the greater part no authors at all.[35]

His attack on our peerless Sidney, whose fame was more mature than his life, was formed on the same principle as his "Historic Doubts" on Richard III. Horace Walpole was as willing to vilify the truly great, as to beautify deformity; when he imagined that the fame he was destroying or conferring, reflected back on himself. All these works were plants of sickly delicacy, which could never endure the open air, and only lived in the artificial atmosphere of a private collection. Yet at times the flowers, and the planter of the flowers, were roughly shaken by an uncivil breeze.

His "Anecdotes of Painting in England" is a most entertaining catalogue. He gives the feelings of the distinct eras with regard to the arts; yet his pride was never gratified when he reflected that he had been writing the work of Vertue, who had collected the materials, but could not have given the philosophy. His great age and his good sense opened his eyes on himself; and Horace Walpole seems to have judged too contemptuously of Horace Walpole. The truth is, he was mortified he had not and never could obtain a literary peerage; and he never respected the commoner's seat. At these moments, too frequent in his life, he contemns authors, and returns to sink back into all the self-complacency of aristocratic indifference.

This cold unfeeling disposition for literary men, this disguised malice of envy, and this eternal vexation at his own disappointments,--break forth in his correspondence with one of those literary characters with whom he kept on terms while they were kneeling to him in the humility of worship, or moved about to fetch or to carry his little quests of curiosity in town or country.[36]

The following literary confessions illustrate this character:--

"_June, 1778._

"I have taken a thorough dislike to being an author; and, if it
would not look like begging you to compliment one by contradicting
me, I would tell you what I am most seriously convinced of, that I
find what small share of parts I had grown dulled. And when I
perceive it myself, I may well believe that others would not be
less sharp-sighted. _It is very natural_; mine were _spirits_
rather than _parts_; and as time has rebated the one, it must
surely destroy _their resemblance_ to the other."

In another letter:--

"I set very little value on myself; as a man, I am a very faulty
one; and _as an author, a very middling one_, which _whoever
thinks a comfortable rank, is not at all of my opinion_. Pray
convince me that you think I mean sincerely, by not answering me
with a compliment. It is very weak to be pleased with flattery;
the stupidest of all delusions to beg it. From you I should take
it ill. We have known one another almost forty years."

There were times when Horace Walpole's natural taste for his studies returned with all the vigour of passion--but his volatility and his desultory life perpetually scattered his firmest resolutions into air. This conflict appears beautifully described when the view of King's College, Cambridge, throws his mind into meditation; and the passion for study and seclusion instantly kindled his emotions, lasting, perhaps, as long as the letter which describes them occupied in writing.

"_May 22, 1777._