Chapter XXI: Part 21

But Cleveland has left us two remarkable effusions of his satiric and vindictive powers, in his curious character of "A Diurnal Maker," and "A London Diurnal." He writes in the peculiar vein of the wit of those times, with an originality of images, whose combinations excite surprise, and whose abundance fatigues our weaker delicacy.

"A Diurnal-Maker is the Sub-Almoner of History; Queen Mab's Register; one whom, by the same figure that a North-country pedler is a merchantman, you may style an author. The silly countryman who, seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of the hopes of his house, did not slander his compliment with worse application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an Historian is to knight a Mandrake; 'tis to view him through a perspective, and, by that gross hyperbole, to give the reputation of an engineer to a maker of mousetraps. When these weekly fragments shall pass for history, let the poor man's box be entitled the Exchequer, and the alms-basket a Magazine. Methinks the Turke should license Diurnals, because he prohibits learning and books." He characterises the Diurnal as "a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time; it is a history in sippets; the English Iliads in a nutshell; the Apocryphal Parliament's Book of Maccabees in single sheets."

But Cleveland tells us that these Diurnals differ from a _Mercurius Aulicus_ (the paper of his party),--"as the Devil and his Exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments."

The _Mercurius Aulicus_ was chiefly conducted by Sir JOHN BIRKENHEAD, at Oxford, "communicating the intelligence and affairs of the court to the rest of the kingdom." Sir John was a great wag, and excelled in sarcasm and invective; his facility is equal to repartee, and his spirit often reaches to wit: a great forger of tales, who probably considered that a romance was a better thing than a newspaper.[330] The royal party were so delighted with his witty buffoonery, that Sir John was recommended to be Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. Did political lying seem to be a kind of moral philosophy to the feelings of a party? The originality of Birkenhead's happy manner consists in his adroit use of sarcasm: he strikes it off by means of a parenthesis. I shall give, as a specimen, one of his summaries of what the _Parliamentary Journals_ had been detailing during the week.

"The Londoners in print this week have been pretty copious. They say that _a troop of the Marquess of Newcastle's horse have submitted to the Lord Fairfax_. (They were part of the _German_ horse which came over in the _Danish_ fleet.)[331] That the Lord _Wilmot hath been dead five weeks, but the Cavaliers concealed his death_. (Remember this!) That _Sir John Urrey[332] is dead and buried at Oxford_. (He died the same day with the Lord Wilmot.) That the _Cavaliers, before they have done, will HURREY all men into misery_. (This quibble hath been six times printed, and nobody would take notice of it; now let's hear of it no more!) That _all the Cavaliers which Sir William Waller took prisoners (besides 500) tooke the National Covenant_. (Yes, all he took (besides 500) tooke the Covenant.) That 2000 _Irish Rebels landed in Wales_. (You called them English Protestants till you cheated them of their money.) That _Sir William Brereton left 140 good able men in Hawarden Castle_. ('Tis the better for Sir Michael Earnley, who hath taken the Castle.) That _the Queen hath a great deafnesse_. (Thou hast a great blister on thy tongue.) That _the Cavaliers burned all the suburbs of Chester, that Sir William Brereton might find no shelter to besiedge it_. (There was no hayrick, and Sir William cares for no other shelter.)[333] The SCOTTISH DOVE says (there are Doves in Scotland!) that _Hawarden Castle had but forty men in it when the Cavaliers took it_. (Another told you there were 140 lusty stout fellows in it: for shame, gentlemen! conferre Notes!) That _Colonel Norton at Rumsey took 200 prisoners_. (I saw them counted: they were just two millions.) Then the _Dove_ hath this sweet passage: _O Aulicus, thou profane wretch, that darest scandalize GOD'S saints, darest thou call that loyal subject Master Pym a traitor_? (Yes, pretty _Pigeon_,[334] he was charged with six articles by his Majesty's Atturney Generall.) Next he says, that _Master Pym died like Moses upon the Mount_. (He did not die upon the mount, but should have done.) Then he says _Master Pym died in a good old age, like Jacob in Egypt_. (Not like Jacob, yet just as those died in Egypt in the days of Pharaoh.")[335]

As Sir John was frequently the propagator of false intelligence, it was necessary at times to seem scrupulous, and to correct some slight errors. He does this very adroitly, without diminishing his invectives.

"We must correct a mistake or two in our two last weeks. We advertised you of certain money speeches made by Master _John_ Sedgwick: on better information, it was not _John_, but _Obadiah_, Presbyter of Bread-street, who in the pulpit in hot weather used to unbutton his doublet, which John, who wanteth a thumbe, forbears to practise. And when we told you last week of a committee of _Lawyers_ appointed to put their new _Seale_ in execution, we named, among others, Master George Peard.[336] I confess this was no small errour to reckon Master Peard among the _Lawyers_, because he now lies sicke, and so farre from being their new _Lord Keeper_, that he now despairs to become their _Door Keeper_, which office he performed heretofore. But since Master Peard has become desperately sick; and so his vote, his law, and haire have all forsook him, his corporation of Barnstable have been in perfect health and loyalty. The town of Barnstable having submitted to the King, this will no doubt be a special cordial for their languishing Burgess. And yet the man may grow hearty again when he hears of the late defeat given to his Majesty's forces in Lincolnshire."

This paper was immediately answered by MARCHMONT NEEDHAM, in his "Mercurius Britannicus," who cannot boast the playful and sarcastic bitterness of Sir John; yet is not the dullest of his tribe. He opens his reply thus:

"Aulicus will needs venture his soule upon the other _half-sheet_; and this week he _lies_, as completely as ever he did in _two full sheets_; full of as many scandals and fictions, full of as much stupidity and ignorance, full of as many tedious untruths as ever. And because he would _recrute_ the reputation of his wit, he falls into the company of our _Diurnals_ very furiously, and there lays about him in the midst of our weekly pamphlets; and he casts in the few squibs, and the little wildfire he hath, dashing out his conceits; and he takes it ill that the poore scribblers should tell a story for their living; and after a whole week spent at Oxford, in inke and paper, to as little purpose as _Maurice_ spent his shot and powder at _Plimouth_, he gets up, about Saturday, into a jingle or two, for he cannot reach to a full jest; and I am informed that the three-quarter conceits in the last leafe of his Diurnall cost him fourteen pence in _aqua vitae_."

Sir John never condescends formally to reply to Needham, for which he gives this singular reason:--"As for this libeller, we are still resolved to take no notice till we find him able to spell his own name, which to this hour BRITANNICUS never did."

In the next number of Needham, who had always written it _Brittanicus_, the correction was silently adopted. There was no crying down the etymology of an Oxford malignant.

I give a short narrative of the political temper of the times, in their unparalleled gazettes.

At the first breaking out of the parliament's separation from the royal party, when the public mind, full of consternation in that new anarchy, shook with the infirmity of childish terrors, the most extravagant reports were as eagerly caught up as the most probable, and served much better the purposes of their inventors. They had daily discoveries of new conspiracies, which appeared in a pretended correspondence written from Spain, France, Italy, or Denmark: they had their amusing literature, mixed with their grave politics; and a dialogue between "a Dutch mariner and an English ostler," could alarm the nation as much as the last letter from their "private correspondent." That the wildest rumours were acceptable appears from their contemporary Fuller. Armies were talked of, concealed under ground by the king, to cut the throats of all the Protestants in a night. He assures us that one of the most prevailing dangers among the Londoners was "a design laid for a mine of powder under the Thames, to cause the river to drown the city." This desperate expedient, it seems, was discovered just in time to prevent its execution; and the people were devout enough to have a public thanksgiving, and watched with a little more care that the Thames might not be blown up. However, the plot was really not so much at the bottom of the Thames as at the bottom of their purses. Whenever they wanted 100,000_l._ they raised a plot, they terrified the people, they appointed a thanksgiving-day, and while their ministers addressed to God himself all the news of the week, and even reproached him for the rumours against their cause, all ended, as is usual at such times, with the gulled multitude contributing more heavily to the adventurers who ruled them than the legal authorities had exacted in their greatest wants. "The Diurnals" had propagated thirty-nine of these "Treasons, or new Taxes," according to one of the members of the House of Commons, who had watched their patriotic designs.

These "Diurnals" sometimes used such language as the following, from _The Weekly Accompt_, January, 1643:--

"This day afforded no newes at all, but onely what was _heavenly_ and _spiritual_;" and he gives an account of the public fast, and of the grave divine Master Henderson's sermon, with his texts in the morning; and in the afternoon, another of Master Strickland, with his texts--and of their spiritual effect over the whole parliament![337]

Such news as the following was sometimes very agreeable:--

"From Oxford it is informed, that on Sunday last was fortnight in the evening, Prince Rupert, accompanied with some lords, and other cavaliers, _danced through the streets openly, with music before them_, to one of the colleges; where, after they had stayed about half an houre, they returned back again, dancing with the same music; and immediately there followed _a pack of women, or curtizans_, as it may be supposed, for they were hooded, and could not be knowne; and this the party who related affirmed he saw with his own eyes."

On this the Diurnal-maker pours out severe anathemas--and one with a _note_, that "_dancing_ and _drabbing_ are inseparable companions, and follow one another close at the heels." He assures his readers, that the malignants, or royalists, only fight like sensual beasts, to maintain their dancing and drabbing!--Such was the revolutionary tone here, and such the arts of faction everywhere. The matter was rather peculiar to our country, but the principle was the same as practised in France. Men of opposite characters, when acting for the same concealed end, must necessarily form parallels.

FOOTNOTES:

[329] "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 158 (last edition).

[330] There is a small poem, published in 1643, entitled "The Great
Assizes holden in Parnassus," in the manner of a later work,
"The Sessions of the Poets," in which all the Diurnals and
Mercuries are arraigned and tried. An impartial satire on them
all; and by its good sense and heavy versification, is so much
in the manner of GEORGE WITHER, that some have conjectured it
to be that singular author's. Its rarity gives it a kind of
value. Of such verses as Wither's, who has been of late
extolled too highly, the chief merit is their sense and truth;
which, if he were not tedious, might be an excellence in
prose. Antiquaries, when they find a poet adapted for their
purposes, conjecture that he is an excellent one. This prosing
satirist, strange to say, in some pastoral poetry, has opened
the right vein.

Aulicus is well characterized:--

--------------"hee, for wicked ends,
Had the Castalian spring defiled with gall,
And changed by Witchcraft most satyricall,
The bayes of Helicon and myrtles mild,
To pricking hawthornes and to hollies wild.
--------------with slanders false,
With forged fictitious calumnies and tales--
He added fewel to the direful flame
Of civil discord; and domestic blowes,
By the incentives of malicious prose.
For whereas he should have composed his inke
Of liquors that make flames expire, and shrink
Into their cinders--
--He laboured hard for to bring in
The exploded doctrines of the Florentine,
And taught that to dissemble and to lie
Were vital parts of human policie."

[331] Alluding to a ridiculous rumour, that the King was to receive
foreign troops by a Danish fleet.

[332] Col. Urrey, _alias_ Hurrey, deserted the Parliament, and went
over to the King; afterwards deserted the King, and discovered
to the Parliament all he knew of the King's forces.--_See
Clarendon._

[333] This Sir William Brereton, or, as Clarendon writes the name,
Bruerton, was the famous Cheshire knight, whom Cleveland
characterizes as one of those heroes whose courage lies in
their teeth. "Was Brereton," says the loyal satirist, "to
fight with his teeth, as he in all other things resembles the
beast, he would have odds of any man at this weapon. He's a
terrible slaughterman at a Thanksgiving dinner. Had he been
cannibal enough to have eaten those he vanquished, his gut
would have made him valiant." And in "Loyal Songs" his valiant
appetite is noticed:

"But, oh! take heed lest he do eat
The Rump all at one dinner!"

And Aulicus, we see, accuses him of concealing his bravery in
a hayrick. It is always curious and useful to confer the
writers of intemperate times one with another. Lord Clarendon,
whose great mind was incapable of descending to scurrility,
gives a very different character to this pot-valiant and
hayrick runaway; for he says, "It cannot be denied but Sir
William Brereton, and the other gentlemen of that party,
albeit their educations and course of life had been very
different from their present engagements, and for the most
part very unpromising in matters of war, and therefore were
too much contemned enemies, executed their commands with
notable sobriety and indefatigable industry (virtues not so
well practised in the King's quarters), insomuch as the best
soldiers who encountered with them had no cause to despise
them."--_Clarendon_, vol. ii. p. 147.

[334] "The Scotch Dove" seems never to have recovered from this
metamorphosis, but ever after, among the newsmen, was known to
be only a Widgeon. His character is not very high in "The
Great Assizes."

"The innocent _Scotch Dove_ did then advance,
Full sober in his wit and countenance:
And, though his book contain'd not mickle scence,
Yet his endictment shew'd no great offence.
Great wits to perils great, themselves expose
Oft-times; but the _Scotch Dove_ was none of those.
In many words he little matter drest,
And did laconick brevity detest.
But while his readers did expect some Newes,
They found a Sermon--"

The Scotch Dove desires to meet the classical Aulicus in the
duel of the pen:--

------------"to turn me loose,
A _Scottish Dove_ against a _Roman Goose_."

"The Scotch Dove" is condemned "to cross the seas, or to
repasse the Tweede." They all envy him his "easy mulet," but
he wofully exclaims at the hard sentence,

"For if they knew that _home_ as well as he,
They'd rather die than there imprison'd be!"

[335] This stroke alludes to a rumour of the times, noticed also by
Clarendon, that Pym died of the _morbus pediculosus_.

[336] "Peard, a bold lawyer of little note."--_Clarendon._

[337] These divines were as ready with the sword as the pen; thus, we
are told in "The Impartial Scout" for July, 1650--"The
ministers are now as active in the military discipline as
formerly they were in the gospel profession, Parson Ennis,
Parson Brown, and about thirty other ministers having received
commissions to be majors and captains, who now hold forth the
Bible in one hand, and the sword in the other, telling the
soldiery that they need not fear what man can do against
them--that God is on their side--and that He hath prepared an
engine in heaven to break and blast the designs of all
covenant-breakers."--ED.

POLITICAL CRITICISM

ON LITERARY COMPOSITIONS.

ANTHONY WOOD and LOCKE--MILTON and SPRAT--BURNET and his
History--PRIOR and ADDISON--SWIFT and STEELE--WAGSTAFFE and
STEELE--STEELE and ADDISON--HOOKE and MIDDLETON--GILBERT
WAKEFIELD--MARVEL and MILTON--CLARENDON and MAY.

VOLTAIRE, in his letters on our nation, has hit off a marked feature in our national physiognomy. "So violent did I find parties in London, that I was assured by several that the Duke of MARLBOROUGH was a coward, and Mr. POPE a fool."

A foreigner indeed could hardly expect that in collecting the characters of English authors by English authors (a labour which has long afforded me pleasure often interrupted by indignation)--in a word, that a class of literary history should turn out a collection of personal quarrels. Would not this modern Baillet, in his new _Jugemens des Scavans_, so ingeniously inquisitive but so infinitely confused, require to be initiated into the mysteries of that spirit of party peculiar to our free country!

All that boiling rancour which sputters against the thoughts, the style, the taste, the moral character of an author, is often nothing more than practising what, to give it a name, we may call _Political Criticism in Literature_; where an author's literary character is attacked solely from the accidental circumstance of his differing in opinion from his critics on subjects unconnected with the topics he treats of.

Could Anthony Wood, had he not been influenced by this political criticism, have sent down LOCKE to us as "a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented, prating and troublesome?"[338] But Locke was the antagonist of FILMER, that advocate of arbitrary power; and Locke is described "as bred under a fanatical tutor," and when in Holland, as one of those who under the Earl of Shaftesbury "stuck close to him when discarded, and carried on the _trade of faction_ beyond and within the seas several years after." In the great original genius, born, like BACON and NEWTON, to create a new era in the history of the human mind, this political literary critic, who was not always deficient in his perceptions of genius, could only discover "a trader in faction," though in his honesty he acknowledges him to be "a noted writer."

A more illustrious instance of party-spirit operating against works of genius is presented to us in the awful character of MILTON. From earliest youth to latest age endowed with all the characteristics of genius; fervent with all the inspirations of study; in all changes still the same great literary character as Velleius Paterculus writes of one of his heroes--"Aliquando fortuna, semper animo maximus:" while in his own day, foreigners, who usually anticipate posterity, were inquiring after Milton, it is known how utterly disregarded he lived at home. The divine author of the "Paradise Lost" was always connected with the man for whom a reward was offered in the _London Gazette_. But in their triumph, the lovers of monarchy missed their greater glory, in not separating for ever the republican Secretary of State from the rival of Homer.

That the genius of Milton pined away in solitude, and that all the consolations of fame were denied him during his life, from this political criticism on his works, is generally known; but not perhaps that this spirit propagated itself far beyond the poet's tomb. I give a remarkable instance. Bishop Sprat, who surely was capable of feeling the poetry of Milton, yet from political antipathy retained such an abhorrence of his _name_, that when the writer of the Latin Inscription on the poet JOHN PHILIPS, in describing his versification, applied to it the term _Miltono_, Sprat ordered it to be erased, as polluting a monument raised in a church.[339] A mere critical opinion on versification was thus sacrificed to political feeling:--a stream indeed which in its course has hardly yet worked itself clear. It could only have been the strong political feeling of Warton which could have induced him to censure the prose of Milton with such asperity, while he closed his critical eyes on its resplendent passages, which certainly he wanted not the taste to feel,--for he caught in his own pages, occasionally, some of the reflected warmth. This feeling took full possession of the mind of Johnson, who, with all the rage of political criticism on subjects of literature, has condemned the finest works of Milton, and in one of his terrible paroxysms has demonstrated that the Samson Agonistes is "a tragedy which ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded." Had not Johnson's religious feelings fortunately interposed between Milton and his "Paradise," we should have wanted the present noble effusion of his criticism; any other Epic by Milton had probably sunk beneath his vigorous sophistry, and his tasteless sarcasm. Lauder's attack on Milton was hardily projected, on a prospect of encouragement, from this political criticism on the literary character of Milton; and he succeeded as long as he could preserve the decency of the delusion.

The Spirit of Party has touched with its plague-spot the character of Burnet; it has mildewed the page of a powerful mind, and tainted by its suspicions, its rumours, and its censures, his probity as a man. Can we forbear listening to all the vociferations which faction has thrown out? Do we not fear to trust ourselves amid the multiplicity of his facts? And when we are familiarised with the variety of his historical portraits, are we not startled when it is suggested that "they are tinged with his own passions and his own weaknesses?" Burnet has indeed made "his humble appeal to the great God of Truth" that he has given it as fully as he could find it; and he has expressed his abhorrence of "a lie in history," so much greater a sin than a lie in common discourse, from its lasting and universal nature. Yet these hallowing protestations have not saved him! A cloud of witnesses, from different motives, have risen up to attaint his veracity and his candour; while all the Tory wits have ridiculed his style, impatiently inaccurate, and uncouthly negligent, and would sink his vigour and ardour, while they expose the meanness and poverty of his genius. Thus the literary and the moral character of no ordinary author have fallen a victim to party-feeling.[340]

But this victim to political criticism on literature was himself criminal, and has wreaked his own party feelings on the _Papist_ Dryden, and the _Tory_ Prior; Dryden he calls, in the most unguarded language, "a monster of immodesty and impurity of all sorts." There had been a literary quarrel between Dryden and Burnet respecting a translation of Varillas' "History of Heresies;" Burnet had ruined the credit of the papistical author while Dryden was busied on the translation; and as Burnet says, "he has wreaked his malice on me for spoiling his three months' labour." In return, he kindly informs Dryden, alluding to his poem of "The Hind and the Panther," "that he is the author of the _worst_ poem the age has produced;" and that as for "his morals, it is scarce possible to grow a worse man than he was"--a personal style not to be permitted in any controversy, but to bring this passion on the hallowed ground of history, was not "casting away his shoe" in the presence of the divinity of truth.[341] It could only have been the spirit of party which induced Burnet, in his History, to mention with contempt and pretended ignorance so fine a genius as "_one Prior_, who had been Jersey's secretary." It was the same party-feeling in the Tory Prior, in his elegant "Alma," where he has interwoven so graceful a wreath for Pope, that could sneer at the fine soliloquy of the Roman Cato of the Whig Addison:

I hope you would not have me die
_Like simple Cato in the play_,
For anything that he can say.

It was the same spirit which would not allow that Garth was the author of his celebrated poem--

Garth did not write his own Dispensary,

as Pope ironically alludes to the story of the times:--a contemporary wit has recorded this literary injury, by repeating it.[342] And Swift, who once exclaimed to Pope, "The deuce take party!" was himself the greatest sinner of them all. He, once the familiar friend of Steele till party divided them, not only emptied his shaft of quivers against his literary character, but raised the horrid yell of the war-whoop in his inhuman exultation over the unhappy close of the desultory life of a man of genius. Bitterly has he written--

From perils of a hundred jails,
Withdrew to starve, and die in Wales.

When Steele published "The Crisis," Swift attacked the author in so exquisite a piece of grave irony, that I am tempted to transcribe his inimitable parallels of a triumvirate composed of the writer of the _Flying Post_, Dunton the literary projector, and poor Steele: the one, the Iscariot of hackney scribes; the other a crack-brained scribbling bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed. The following is a specimen of that powerful irony in which Swift excelled all other writers; that fine Cervantic humour, that provoking coolness which Swift preserves while he is panegyrising the objects of his utter contempt.

"Among the present writers on the Whig side, I can recollect but _three_ of any great distinction, which are the _Flying Post_, Mr. Dunton, and the Author of 'The Crisis.' The first of these seems to have been much sunk in reputation since the sudden retreat of the only true, genuine, original author, Mr. Ridpath, who is celebrated by the _Dutch Gazetteer_ as one of _the best pens in England_. Mr. Dunton hath been longer and more conversant in books than any of the three, as well as more voluminous in his productions: however, having employed his studies in so great a variety of other subjects, he hath, I think, but lately turned his genius to politics. His famous tract entitled 'Neck or Nothing' must be allowed to be the shrewdest piece, and written with the most spirit of any which hath appeared from that side since the change of the ministry. It is indeed a most cutting satire upon the Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke; and I wonder none of our friends ever undertook to answer it. I confess I was at first of the same opinion with several good judges, who from the style and manner suppose it to have issued from the sharp pen of the Earl of Nottingham; and I am still apt to think it might receive his lordship's last hand. The third and principal of this triumvirate is the author of 'The Crisis,' who, although he must yield to the _Flying Post_ in knowledge of the world and skill in politics, and to Mr. Dunton in keenness of satire and variety of reading, hath yet other qualities enough to denominate him a writer of a superior class to either, provided he would a little regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the grammatical part, and get some information on the subject he intends to handle."[343]

So far this fine ironical satire may be inspected as a model; the polished weapon he strikes with so gracefully, is allowed by all the laws of war; but the political criticism on the literary character, the party feeling which degrades a man of genius, is the drop of poison on its point.

Steele had declared in the "Crisis" that he had always maintained an inviolable respect for the clergy. Swift (who perhaps was aimed at in this instance, and whose character, since the publication of "The Tale of a Tub," lay under a suspicion of an opposite tendency) turns on Steele with all the vigour of his wit, and all the causticity of retort:--

"By this he would insinuate that those papers among the _Tatlers_ and _Spectators_, where the whole order is abused, were not his own. I will appeal to all who know the flatness of his style, and the barrenness of his invention, whether he doth not grossly prevaricate? _Was he ever able to walk without his leading-strings, or swim without bladders, without being discovered by his hobbling or his sinking?_"

Such was the attack of Swift, which was pursued in the _Examiner_, and afterwards taken up by another writer. This is one of the evils resulting from the wantonness of genius: it gives a contagious example to the minor race; its touch opens a new vein of invention, which the poorer wits soon break into; the loose sketch of a feature or two from its rapid hand is sufficient to become a minute portrait, where not a hair is spared by the caricaturist. This happened to Steele, whose literary was to be sacrificed to his political character; and this superstructure was confessedly raised on the malicious hints we have been noticing. That the _Examiner_ was the seed-plot of "The Character of Richard St--le, Esq.," appears by its opening--"It will be no injury, I am persuaded, to the _Examiner_ to _borrow him_ a little (Steele), upon promise of returning him safe, as children do their playthings, when their mirth is over, and, they have done with them."

The author of the "Character of Richard St--le, Esq.," was Dr. Wagstaffe, one of those careless wits[344] who lived to repent a crazy life of wit, fancy, and hope, and an easy, indolent one, whose genial hours force up friends like hot-house plants, that bloom and flower in the spot where they are raised, but will not endure the change of place and season--this wit caught the tone of Swift, and because, as his editor tells us, "he had some friends in the ministry, and thought he could not take a better way to oblige them than by showing his dislike to a gentleman who had so much endeavoured to oppose them," he sat down to write a libel with all the best humour imaginable; for, adds this editor, "he was so far from having any personal pique or enmity against Mr. Steele, that at the time of his writing he did not so much as know him, even by sight." This principle of "having some friends in the ministry," and not "any knowledge" of the character to be attacked, has proved a great source of invention to our political adventurers;--thus Dr. Wagstaffe was fully enabled to send down to us a character where the moral and literary qualities of a genius, to whom this country owes so much as the father of periodical papers, are immolated to his political purpose. This severe character passed through several editions. However the careless Steele might be willing to place the elaborate libel to the account of party writings, if he did not feel disturbed at reproaches and accusations, which are confidently urged, and at critical animadversions, to which the negligence of his style sometimes laid him too open, his insensibility would have betrayed a depravity in his morals and taste which never entered into his character.[345]

Steele was doomed even to lose the friendship of Addison amid political discords; but on that occasion Steele showed that his taste for literature could not be injured by political animosity. It was at the close of Addison's life, and on occasion of the Peerage Bill, Steele published "The Plebeian," a cry against enlarging the aristocracy. Addison replied with "The Old Whig," Steele rejoined without alluding to the person of his opponent. But "The Old Whig" could not restrain his political feelings, and contemptuously described "little Dicky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets." Steele replied with his usual warmth; but indignant at the charge of "vassalage," he says, "I will end this paper, by firing every free breast with that noble exhortation of the tragedian--

Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights,
The generous plan of power deliver'd down
From age to age, &c."

Thus delicately he detects the anonymous author, and thus energetically commends, while he reproves him!

Hooke (a Catholic), after he had written his "Roman History," published "Observations on Vertot, Middleton, &c., on the Roman Senate," in which he particularly treated Dr. Middleton with a disrespect for which the subject gave no occasion: this was attributed to the Doctor's _offensive_ letter from Rome. Spelman, in replying to this concealed motive of the Catholic, reprehends him with equal humour and bitterness for his desire of _roasting a Protestant parson_.

Our taste, rather than our passions, is here concerned; but the moral sense still more so. The malice of faction has long produced this literary calamity; yet great minds have not always degraded themselves; not always resisted the impulse of their finer feelings, by hardening them into insensibility, or goading them in the fury of a misplaced revenge. How delightful it is to observe Marvell, the Presbyterian and Republican wit, with that generous temper that instantly discovers the alliance of genius, warmly applauding the great work of Butler, which covered his own party with odium and ridicule. "He is one of an excellent wit," says Marvell, "and whoever dislikes the choice of his subject, cannot but commend the performance."[346]

Clarendon's profound genius could not expand into the same liberal feelings. He highly commends May for his learning, his wit and language, and for his Supplement to Lucan, which he considered as "one of the best epic poems in the English language;" but this great spirit sadly winces in the soreness of his feelings when he alludes to May's "History of the Parliament;" then we discover that this late "ingenious person" performed his part "so meanly, that he seems to have lost his wit when he left his honesty." Behold the political criticism in literature! However we may incline to respect the feelings of Clarendon, this will not save his judgment nor his candour. We read May now, as well as Clarendon; nor is the work of May that of a man who "had lost his wits," nor is it "meanly performed." Warburton, a keen critic of the writers of that unhappy and that glorious age for both parties, has pronounced this "History" to be "a just composition, according to the rules of history; written with much judgment, penetration, manliness, and spirit, and with a candour that will greatly increase your esteem, when you understand that he wrote by order of his masters the Parliament."

Thus have authors and their works endured the violations of party feelings; a calamity in our national literature which has produced much false and unjust criticism.[347] The better spirit of the present times will maintain a safer and a more honourable principle,--the true objects of LITERATURE, the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, stand entirely unconnected with POLITICS and RELIGION, let this be the imprescriptible right of an author. In our free country unhappily they have not been separated--they run together, and in the ocean of human opinions, the salt and bitterness of these mightier waves have infected the clear waters from the springs of the Muses. I once read of a certain river that ran through the sea without mixing with it, preserving its crystalline purity and all its sweetness during its course; so that it tasted the same at the Line as at the Poles. This stream indeed is only to be found in the geography of an old romance; literature should be this magical stream!

FOOTNOTES:

[338] A forcible description of Locke may be found in the curious
"Life of Wood," written by himself. I shall give the passage
where Wood acknowledges his after celebrity, at the very
moment the bigotry of his feelings is attempting to degrade
him.

Wood belonged to a club with Locke and others, for the purpose
of hearing chemical lectures. "John Locke of Christchurch was
afterwards a noted writer. This John Locke was a man of a
turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented. The club
wrote and took notes from the mouth of their master, who sat
at the upper end of a table, but the said John Locke scorned
to do it; so that while every man besides of the club were
writing, he would be prating and troublesome."

[339] This anecdote deserves preservation. I have drawn it from the
MSS. of Bishop KENNET.

"In the Epitaph on JOHN PHILIPS occurs this line on his metre,
that

'Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus,
Primoque pene par.'

These lines were ordered to be razed out of the monument by
Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester. The word Miltono being, as he
said, not fit to be in a Christian church; but they have since
been restored by Dr. ATTERBURY, who succeeded him as Bishop of
Rochester, and who wrote the epitaph jointly with Dr.
FREIND."--Lansdowne MSS., No. 908, p. 162.

The anecdote has appeared, but without any authority. Dr.
SYMMONS, in his "Life of Milton," observing on what he calls
Dr. Johnson's "biographical libel on Milton," that Dr. Johnson
has mentioned this fact, seems to suspect its authenticity;
for, if true, "it would cover the respectable name of Sprat
with eternal dishonour." Of its truth the above gives
sufficient authority; but at all events the prejudices of
Sprat must be pardoned, while I am showing that minds far
greater than his have shared in the same unhappy feeling. Dr.
Symmons himself bears no light stain for his slanderous
criticism on the genius of THOMAS WARTON, from the motive we
are discussing; though Warton, as my text shows, was too a
sinner! I recollect in my youth a more extraordinary instance
than any other which relates to Milton. A woman of no
education, who had retired from the business of life, became a
very extraordinary reader; accident had thrown into her way a
large library composed of authors who wrote in the reigns of
the two Charleses. She turned out one of the _malignant_
party, and an abhorrer of the Commonwealth's men. Her opinion
of CROMWELL and MILTON may be given. She told me it was no
wonder that the rebel who had been secretary to the usurper
should have been able to have drawn so finished a character of
SATAN, and that the Pandaemonium, with all the oratorical
devils, was only such as he had himself viewed at Oliver's
council-board.

[340] I throw into this note several curious notices respecting
BURNET, and chiefly from contemporaries.

Burnet has been accused, after a warm discussion, of returning
home in a passion, and then writing the character of a person.
But as his feelings were warm, it is probable he might have
often practised the reverse. An anecdote of the times is
preserved in "The Memoirs of Grub-street," vol. ii. p. 291. "A
noble peer now living declares he stood with a very ill grace
in the history, till he had an opportunity put into his hands
of obliging the bishop, by granting a favour at court, upon
which the bishop told a friend, within an hour, that he was
mistaken in such a lord, and must go and alter his whole
character; and so he happens to have a pretty good one." In
this place I also find this curious extract from the MS.
"Memoirs of the M---- of H----." "Such a day Dr. B----t told
me King William was an obstinate, conceited man, that would
take no advice; and on this day King William told me that Dr.
B----t was a troublesome, impertinent man, whose company he
could not endure." These anecdotes are very probable, and lead
one to reflect. Some political tergiversation has been laid to
his charge; Swift accused him of having once been an advocate
for passive obedience and absolute power. He has been
reproached with the deepest ingratitude, for the purpose of
gratifying his darling passion of popularity, in his conduct
respecting the Duke of Lauderdale, his former patron. If the
following piece of secret history be true, he showed too much
of a compliant humour, at the cost of his honour. I find it in
Bishop Kennet's MSS. "Dr. Burnet having _over night_ given in
some important depositions against the Earl of Lauderdale to
the House of Commons, was, _before morning_, by the
intercession of the D----, made king's chaplain and preacher
at the Rolls; so he was bribed to hold the peace."--Lansdowne
MSS., 990. This was quite a politician's short way to
preferment! An honest man cannot leap up the ascent, however
he may try to climb. There was something morally wrong in this
transaction, because Burnet notices it, and acknowledges--"I
was much blamed for what I had done." The story is by no means
refuted by the _naive_ apology.

Burnet's character has been vigorously attacked, with all the
nerve of satire, in "Faction Displayed," attributed to
Shippen, whom Pope celebrates--

----"And pour myself as plain
As honest Shippen or as old Montaigne."

Shippen was a Tory. In "Faction Displayed," Burnet is
represented with his Cabal (so some party nicknames the
other), on the accession of Queen Anne, plotting the
disturbance of her government. "Black Aris's fierceness," that
is Burnet, is thus described:--

"A Scotch, seditious, unbelieving priest,
The brawny chaplain of the calves'-head feast,
Who first his patron, then his prince betray'd,
And does that church he's sworn to guard, invade,
Warm with rebellious rage, he thus began," &c.

One hardly suspects the hermit Parnell capable of writing
rather harsh verses, yet stinging satire; they are not in his
works; but he wrote the following lines on a report of a fire
breaking out in Burnet's library, which had like to have
answered the purpose some wished--of condemning the author and
his works to the flames--

"He talks, and writes, that Popery will return,
And we, and he, and all his works will burn;
And as of late he meant to bless the age
With _flagrant prefaces of party rage_,
O'ercome with passion and the subject's weight,
Lolling he nodded in his elbow-seat;
Down fell the candle! Grease and zeal conspire,
Heat meets with heat, and pamphlets burn their sire;
Here crawls a _preface_ on its half-burn'd maggots,
And there an _introduction_ brings its fagots;
Then roars the prophet of the northern nation,
Scorch'd by a flaming speech on moderation."

Thomas Warton smiles at Burnet for the horrors of Popery which
perpetually haunted him, in his "Life of Sir T. Pope," p. 53.
But if we substitute the term arbitrary power for popery, no
Briton will join in the abuse Burnet has received on this
account. A man of Burnet's fervid temper, whose foible was
strong vanity and a passion for popularity, would often rush
headlong into improprieties of conduct and language; his
enemies have taken ample advantage of his errors; but many
virtues his friends have recorded; and the elaborate and
spirited character which the Marquis of Halifax has drawn of
Burnet may soothe his manes, and secure its repose amid all
these disturbances around his tomb. This fine character is
preserved in the "Biographia Britannica." Burnet is not the
only instance of the motives of a man being honourable, while
his actions are frequently the reverse, from his impetuous
nature. He has been reproached for a want of that truth which
he solemnly protests he scrupulously adhered to; yet, of many
circumstances which were at the time condemned as "lies," when
Time drew aside the mighty veil, Truth was discovered beneath.
Tovey, with his visual good humour, in his "Anglia Judaica,"
p. 277, notices "that pleasant copious imagination which will
for ever rank our _English Burnet_ with the _Grecian
Heliodorus_." Roger North, in his "Examen," p. 413, calls him
"a busy Scotch parson." Lord Orford sneers at his hasty
epithets, and the colloquial carelessness of his style, in his
"Historic Doubts," where, in a note, he mentions "_one_
Burnet" tells a ridiculous story, mimicking Burnet's
chit-chat, and concludes surprisingly with, "So the Prince of
Orange mounted the throne."

After reading this note, how would that learned foreigner
proceed, who I have supposed might be projecting the
"Judgments of the Learned" on our English authors? Were he to
condemn Burnet as an historian void of all honour and
authority, he would not want for documents. It would require a
few minutes to explain to the foreigner the nature of
political criticism.

[341] Dryden was very coarsely satirised in the political poems of his
own day; and among the rest, in "The Session of the Poets,"--a
general onslaught directed against the writers of the time,
which furnishes us with many examples of unjust criticism on
these literary men, entirely originating in political feeling.
One example may suffice;

"Then in came Denham, that limping old bard,
Whose fame on _the Sophy_ and _Cooper's-hill_ stands,
And brought many stationers, who swore very hard
That nothing sold better except 'twere his lands.
But Apollo advised him to write something more,
To clear a suspicion which possessed the Court,
That _Cooper's-hill_, so much bragg'd on before,
Was writ by a vicar, who had forty pounds for't."

[342] Dr. Wagstaffe, in his "Character of Steele," alludes to the
rumour which Pope has sent down to posterity in a single
verse: "I should have thought Mr. Steele might have the
example of his _friend_ before his eyes, who _had the
reputation of being the author of The Dispensary_, till, by
two or three unlucky after-claps, he proved himself incapable
of writing it."--WAGSTAFFE'S _Misc. Works_, p. 136.

[343] I know not how to ascertain the degree of political skill which
Steele reached in his new career--he was at least a spirited
Whig, but the ministry was then under the malignant influence
of the concealed adherents to the Stuarts, particularly of
Bolingbroke, and such as Atterbury, whose secret history is
now much better known than in their own day. The terrors of
the Whigs were not unfounded. Steele in the House disappointed
his friends; from his popular Essays, it was expected he would
have been a fluent orator; this was no more the case with him
than Addison. On this De Foe said he had better have continued
the _Spectator_ than the _Tatler_.--LANSDOWNE'S _MSS._ 1097.

[344] Wagstaffe's "Miscellaneous Works," 1726, have been collected
into a volume. They contain satirical pieces of humour,
accompanied by some Hogarthian prints. His "Comment upon the
History of Tom Thumb," ridicules Addison's on the old ballad
of "Chevy Chase," who had declared "it was full of the
majestic simplicity which we admire in the greatest of the
ancient poets," and quoted passages which he paralleled with
several in the AEneid. Wagstaffe tells us he has found "in the
library of a schoolboy, among other undiscovered valuable
authors, one more proper to adorn the shelves of Bodley or the
Vatican than to be confined to the obscurity of a private
study." This little Homer is the chanter of Tom Thumb. He
performs his office of "a true commentator," proving the
congenial spirit of the poet of Thumb with that of the poet of
AEneas. Addison got himself ridiculed for that fine natural
taste, which felt all the witchery of our ballad-Enniuses,
whose beauties, had Virgil lived with Addison, he would have
inlaid into his mosaic. The bigotry of classical taste, which
is not always accompanied by a natural one, and rests securely
on prescribed opinions and traditional excellence, long
contemned our vernacular genius, spurning at the minstrelsy of
the nation; Johnson's ridicule of "Percy's Reliques" had its
hour, but the more poetical mind of Scott has brought us back
to home feelings, to domestic manners, and eternal nature.

[345] I shall content myself with referring to "The Character of
Richard St--le, Esq.," in Dr. Wagstaffe's Miscellaneous Works,
1726. Considering that he had no personal knowledge of his
victim, one may be well surprised at his entering so deeply
into his private history; but of such a character as Steele,
the private history is usually too public--a mass of scandal
for the select curious. Poor Steele, we are told, was
"arrested for the maintenance of his bastards, and afterwards
printed a _proposal_ that the public should take care of
them;" got into the House "not to be arrested;"--"his _set_
speeches there, which he designs to get _extempore_ to speak
in the House." For his literary character we are told that
"Steele was a jay who borrowed a feather from the peacock,
another from the bullfinch, and another from the magpye; so
that _Dick_ is made up of borrowed colours; he borrowed his
humour from Estcourt, criticism of Addison, his poetry of
Pope, and his politics of Ridpath; so that his qualifications
as a man of genius, like Mr. T----s, as a member of
Parliament, _lie in thirteen parishes_." Such are the pillows
made up for genius to rest its head on!

Wagstaffe has sometimes delicate humour; Steele, who often
wrote in haste, necessarily wrote incorrectly. Steele had this
sentence: "And ALL, as one man, will join in a common
indignation against ALL who would perplex our obedience:" on
which our pleasant critic remarks--"Whatever contradiction
there is, as some suppose, in _all joining against all_, our
author has good authority for what he says; and it may be
proved, in spite of Euclid or Sir Isaac, that everything
consists of _two alls_, that these _alls_ are capable of being
divided and subdivided into as many _alls_ as you please, and
so _ad infinitum_. The following lines may serve for an
illustration:--

'Three children sliding on the ice
Upon a summer's day;
As it fell out, they all fell in;
The rest they ran away.'

"Though this polite author does not directly say there are
_two alls_, yet he implies as much; for I would ask any
_reasonable_ man what can be understood by _the rest they ran
away_, but the _other all_ we have been speaking of? The world
may see that I can exhibit the beauties, as well as quarrel
with the faults, of his composition, but I hope he will not
value himself on his _hasty productions_."

Poor Steele, with the best humour, bore these perpetual
attacks, not, however, without an occasional groan, just
enough to record his feelings. In one of his wild, yet
well-meant projects, of the invention of "a Fish-pool, or
Vessel for Importing Fish Alive," 1718, he complains of
calumnies and impertinent observations on him, and seems to
lay some to the account of his knighthood:--"While he was
pursuing what he believed might conduce to the common good, he
gave the syllables _Richard Steele_ to the publick, to be used
and treated as they should think fit; he must go on in _the
same indifference_, and allow the TOWN _their usual liberty
with his name_, which I find they think they have much more
room to sport with than formerly, as it is lengthened with the
monosyllable SIR."

[346] "Rehearsal Transprosed," p. 45.

[347] The late Gilbert Wakefield is an instance where the political
and theological opinions of a recluse student tainted his pure
literary works. Condemned as an enraged Jacobin by those who
were Unitarians in politics, and rejected because he was a
Unitarian in religion by the orthodox, poor Wakefield's
literary labours were usually reduced to the value of
waste-paper. We smile, but half in sorrow, in reading a
letter, where he says, "I meditate a beginning, during the
winter, of my criticisms on all the ancient Greek and Latin
authors,_ by small piecemeals, on the cheapest possible paper,
and at the least possible expense of printing_. As I can never
do more than barely indemnify myself, I shall print only 250
copies." He half-ruined himself by his splendid edition of
Lucretius, which could never obtain even common patronage from
the opulent friends of classical literature. Since his death
it has been reprinted, and is no doubt now a marketable
article for the bookseller; so that if some authors are not
successful for themselves, it is a comfort to think how
useful, in a variety of shapes, they are made so to others.
Even Gilbert's "contracted scheme of publication" he was
compelled to abandon! Yet the classic erudition of Wakefield
was confessed, and is still remembered. No one will doubt that
we have lost a valuable addition to our critical stores by
this literary persecution, were it only in the present
instance; but examples are too numerous!

HOBBES, AND HIS QUARRELS;

INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS CHARACTER.