Chapter M: Rouquet on the Arts

M. Rouquet's book is a rare duodecimo of some two hundred pages, bound in sheep, which, in the copy before us, has reached that particular stage of disintegration when the scarfskin, without much persuasion, peels away in long strips. Its title is--_L'Etat des Arts, en Angleterre. Par M. Rouquet, de l'Academie Royale de Peinture & de Sculpture_; and it is "_imprime a Paris_" though it was to be obtained from John Nourse, "_Libraire dans le_ Strand, _proche_ Temple-barr"--a well-known importer of foreign books, and one of Henry Fielding's publishers. The date is 1755, being the twenty-eighth year of the reign of His Majesty King George the Second--a reign not generally regarded as favourable to art of any kind. In what month of 1755 the little volume was first put forth does not appear; but it must have been before October, when Nourse issued an English version. There is a dedication, in the approved French fashion, to the Marquis de Marigny, "_Directeur & Ordonnateur General de ses Batimens, Jardins, Arts, Academies & Manufactures_" to Lewis the Fifteenth, above which is a delicate headpiece by M. Charles-Nicolas Cochin (the greatest of the family), where a couple of that artist's well-nourished _amorini_, insecurely attached to festoons, distribute palms and laurels in vacuity under a coroneted oval displaying fishes. For Monsieur Abel-Francois Poisson, Marquis de Marigny et de Menars, was the younger brother of Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the celebrated Marquise de Pompadour. Cochin's etching is dated "1754"; and the "Approbation" at the end of the volume bears his signature in his capacity of _Censeur_.

Of the "M. Rouquet" of the title-page biography tells us little; but it may be well, before speaking of his book, to bring that little together. He was a Swiss Protestant of French extraction, born at Geneva in 1702. His Christian names were Jean-Andre; and he had come to England from his native land towards the close of the reign of George the First. Many of his restless compatriots also sought these favoured shores. Labelye, who rose from a barber's shop to be the architect of London Bridge; Liotard, once regarded as a rival of Reynolds; Michael Moser, eventually Keeper of the Royal Academy, had all migrated from the "stormy mansions" where, in the words of Goldsmith's philosophic Wanderer--

Winter ling'ring chills the lap of May.

Like Moser, Rouquet was a chaser and an enameller. He lodged on the south side of Leicester Fields, in a house afterwards the residence of another Switzer of the same craft, that miserable Theodore Gardelle, who in 1761 murdered his landlady, Mrs. King. Of Rouquet's activities as an artist in England there are scant particulars. The ordinary authorities affirm that he imitated and rivalled the popular miniaturist and enameller, Christian Zincke, who retired from practice in 1746; and he is loosely described as "the companion of Hogarth, Garrick, Foote, and the wits of the day." Of his relations with Foote and Garrick there is scant record; but with Hogarth, his near neighbour in the Fields, he was certainly well acquainted, since in 1746 he prepared explanations in French for a number of Hogarth's prints. These took the form of letters to a friend at Paris, and are supposed to have been, if not actually inspired, at least approved by the painter. They usually accompanied all the sets of Hogarth's engravings which went abroad; and, according to George Steevens, it was Hogarth's intention ultimately to have them translated and enlarged. Rouquet followed these a little later by a separate description of "The March to Finchley," designed specially for the edification of Marshal Foucquet de Belle-Isle, who, when the former letters had been written, was a prisoner of war at Windsor. In a brief introduction to this last, the author, hitherto unnamed, is spoken of as "_Mr. Rouquet, connu par ses Outrages d'Email_."

After thirty years' sojourn in this country, Rouquet transferred himself to Paris. At what precise date he did this is not stated, but by a letter to Hogarth from the French capital, printed by John Ireland, the original of which is in the British Museum, he was there, and had been there several months, in March 1753. The letter gives a highly favourable account of its writer's fortunes. Business is "coming in very smartly," he says. He has been excellently received, and is "perpetualy imploy'd." There is far more encouragement for modern enterprise in Paris than there is in London; and some of his utterances must have rejoiced the soul of his correspondent. As this, for instance--"The humbug _virtu_ is much more out of fashon here than in England, free thinking upon that & other topicks is more common here than amongst you if possible, old pictures & old stories fare's alike, a dark picture is become a damn'd picture." On this account, he inquires anxiously as to the publication of his friend's forthcoming _Analysis_; he has been raising expectations about it, and he wishes to be the first to introduce it into France. From other sources we learn that (perhaps owing to his relations with Belle-Isle, who had been released in 1745) he had been taken up by Marigny, and also by Cochin, then keeper of the King's Drawings, and soon to be Secretary to the Academy, of which Rouquet himself, by express order of Lewis the Fifteenth, was made a member. Finally, as in the case of Cochin, apartments were assigned to him in the Louvre. Whether he ever returned to this country is doubtful; but, as we have seen, the _Etat des Arts_ was printed at Paris in 1755. That it was suggested--or "commanded"--by Mme. de Pompadour's connoisseur brother, to whom it was inscribed, is a not unreasonable supposition.

In any case, M. Rouquet's definition of the "Arts" is a generous one, almost as wide as Marigny's powers, already sufficiently set forth at the outset of this paper. For not only--as in duty bound--does he treat of Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Engraving, but he also has chapters on Printing, Porcelain, Gold-and Silver-smiths' Work, Jewelry, Music, Declamation, Auctions, Shop-fronts, Cooking, and even on Medicine and Surgery. Oddly enough, he says nothing of one notable art with which Marigny was especially identified, that "art of creating landscape"--as Walpole happily calls Gardening--which, in this not very "shining period," entered upon a fresh development under Bridgeman and William Kent. Although primarily a Londoner, one would think that M. Rouquet must certainly have had some experience, if not of the efforts of the innovators, at least of the very Batavian performances of Messrs. London and Wise of Brompton; or that he should have found at Nonsuch or Theobalds--at Moor Park or Hampton Court--the pretext for some of his pages--if only to ridicule those "verdant sculptures" at which Pope, who played no small part in the new movement, had laughed in the _Guardian_; or those fantastic "coats of arms and mottoes in yew, box and holly" over which Walpole also made merry long after in the famous essay so neatly done into French by his friend the Duc de Nivernais. M. Rouquet's curious reticence in this matter cannot have been owing to any consideration for Hogarth's old enemy, William Kent, for Kent had been dead seven years when the _Etat des Arts_ made its appearance.

If, for lack of space, we elect to pass by certain preliminary reflections which the _Monthly Review_ rather unkindly dismisses as a "tedious jumble," M. Rouquet's first subject is History Painting, a branch of the art which, under George the Second, attained to no great excellence. For this M. Rouquet gives three main reasons, the first being that afterwards advanced by Hogarth and Reynolds, namely,--the practical exclusion, in Protestant countries, of pictures from churches. A second cause was the restriction of chamber decorations to portraits and engravings; and a third, the craze of the connoisseur for Hogarth's hated "Black Masters," the productions of defunct foreigners. And this naturally brings about the following digression, quite in Hogarth's own way, against that contemporary charlatan, the picture-dealer:--"English painters have an obstacle to overcome, which equally impedes the progress of their talents and of their fortune. They have to contend with a class of men whose business it is to sell pictures; and as, for these persons, traffic in the works of living, and above all of native artists, would be impossible, they make a point of decrying them, and, as far as they can, of confirming amateurs with whom they have to deal in the ridiculous idea that the older a picture is the more valuable it becomes. See, say they (speaking of some modern effort), it still shines with that ignoble freshness which is to be found in nature; Time will have to indue it with his learned smoke--with that sacred cloud which must some day hide it from the profane eyes of the vulgar in order to reveal to the initiated alone the mysterious beauties of a venerable antiquity."

These words are quite in the spirit of Hogarth's later "Time smoking a Picture." As a matter of fact, they are reproduced almost textually from the writer's letter of five years earlier on the "March to Finchley." To return, however, to History Painting. According to Rouquet, its leading exponent[19] under George the Second was Francis Hayman of the "large noses and shambling legs," now known chiefly as a crony of Hogarth, and a facile but ineffectual illustrator of Shakespeare and Cervantes. In 1754, however, his pictures of _See-Saw, Hot Cockles, Blind Man's Buff_, and the like, for the supper-boxes at Vauxhall Gardens, with Sayer's prints therefrom, had made his name familiar, although he had not yet painted those more elaborate compositions in the large room next the rotunda, over which Fanny Burney's "Holborn Beau," Mr, Smith, comes to such terrible grief in ch. xlvi. of _Evelina_. But he had contributed a "Finding of Moses" to the New Foundling Hospital, which is still to be seen in the Court Room there, in company with three other pictures executed concurrently for the remaining compartments, Joseph Highmore's "Hagar and Ishmael," James Wills's "Suffer little Children," and Hogarth's "Moses brought to Pharaoh's Daughter"--the best of the four, as well as the most successful of Hogarth's historical pieces. All these, then recently installed, are mentioned by Rouquet.

Note:

[19] This is confirmed by Arthur Murphy: "Every Thing is put out of Hand by this excellent Artist with the utmost Grace and Delicacy, and his History-Pieces have, besides their beautiful Colouring, the most lively Expression of Character" (_Gray's Inn Journal, February 9, 1754_).

It will be observed that he says nothing about Hogarth's earlier and more ambitious efforts in the "Grand Style," the "Pool of Bethesda" and the "Good Samaritan" at St. Bartholomew's, nor of the "Paul before Felix," also lately added to Lincoln's Inn Hall--omissions which must have sadly exercised the "author" of those monumental works when he came to read his Swiss friend's little treatise. Nor, for the matter of that, does M. Rouquet, when he treats of portrait, refer to Hogarth's masterpiece in this kind, the full-length of Captain Coram at the Foundling. On the other hand, he says a great deal about Hogarth which has no very obvious connection with History Painting. He discusses the _Analysis_ and the serpentine Line of Beauty with far more insight than many of its author's contemporaries; refers feelingly to the Act by which in 1735 the painter had so effectively cornered the pirates; and finally defines his satirical pictures succinctly as follows:--"M. Hogarth has given to England a new class of pictures. They contain a great number of figures, usually seven or eight inches high. These remarkable performances are, strictly speaking, the history of certain vices, to a foreign eye often a little overcharged, but always full of wit and novelty. He understands in his compositions how to make pleasant pretext for satirising the ridiculous and the vicious, by firm and significant strokes, all of which are prompted by a lively, fertile and judicious imagination."

From History Painting to Portrait in Oil, the title given by M. Rouquet to his next chapter, transition is easy. Some of the artists mentioned above were also portrait painters. Besides Captain Coram, for example, Hogarth had already executed that admirable likeness of himself which is now at Trafalgar Square, and which Rouquet must often have seen in its home at Leicester Fields. Highmore too had certainly at this date painted more than one successful portrait of Samuel Richardson, the novelist; and even Hayman had made essay in this direction with the picture of Lord Orford, now in the National Portrait Gallery. A good many of the painters of the last reign must also, during Rouquet's residence in England, have been alive and active, _e.g._ Jervas, Dahl, Aikman, Thornhill and Richardson. But M. Rouquet devotes most of his pages in this respect to Kneller, whose not altogether beneficent influence long survived him. Strangely enough, Rouquet does not mention that egregious and fashionable face-painter, Sir Joshua's master, Thomas Hudson, whose "fair tied-wigs, blue velvet coats, and white satin waistcoats" (all executed by his assistants) reigned undisputed until he was eclipsed by his greater pupil. The two artists in portraiture selected by Rouquet for special notice are Allan Ramsay and the younger Vanloo (Jean Baptiste). Both were no doubt far above their predecessors; but Ramsay would specially appeal to Rouquet by his continental training, and Vanloo by his French manner and the superior variety of his attitudes.[20] The only other name Rouquet recalls is that of the drapery-painter Joseph Vanhaken; and we suspect it is to Rouquet that we owe the pleasant anecdote of the two painters who, for the sum of L800 a year, pre-empted his exclusive and inestimable services, to the wholesale discomfiture of their brethren of the brush. The rest shall be told in Rouquet's words:--"The best [artists] were no longer able to paint a hand, a coat, a background; they were forced to learn, which meant additional labour--what a misfortune! Henceforth there arrived no more to Vanhaken from different quarters of London, nor by coach from the most remote towns of England, canvases of all sizes, where one or more heads were painted, under which the painter who forwarded them had been careful to add, pleasantly enough, the description of the figures, stout or slim, great or small, which were to be appended. Nothing could be more absurd than this arrangement; but it would exist still--if Vanhaken existed."[21]

Note:

[20] Another French writer, the Abbe le Blanc, gives a depressing account of English portraits before Vanloo came to England: "At some distance one might easily mistake a dozen of them for twelve copies of the same original. Some have the head turned to the left, others to the right; and this is the most sensible difference to be observed between them. Moreover, excepting the face, you find in all the same neck, the same arms, the same flesh, the same attitude; and to say all, you observe no more life than design in those pretended portraits. Properly speaking, they [the artists] are not painters, they know how to lay colours on the canvas; but they know not how to animate it" (_Letters on the English and French Nations, 1747_, i. 160).

[21] He died in 1749.]

_"La peinture a l'huile, C'est bien difficile; Mais c'est beaucoup plus beau Que la peinture a l'eau."_ About _la peinture a l'eau_, M. Rouquet says very little, in all probability because the English Water Colour School, which, with the advance of topographic art, grew so rapidly in the second half of the century, was yet to come. He refers, however, with approval to the _gouaches_ of Joseph Goupy, Lady Burlington's drawing-master, perhaps better known to posterity by his (or her ladyship's) caricature of Handel as the "Charming Brute." (Caricature, by the way, is a branch of Georgian Art which M. Rouquet neglects.) As regards landscape and animal painting, he "abides in generalities"; but he must have been acquainted with the sea pieces of Monamy, and Hogarth's and Walpole's friend Samuel Scott; and should, one would think, have known of the horses and dogs of Wootton and Seymour. Upon Enamel he might be expected to enlarge, although he mentions but one master, his own model, Zincke, who carried the art of portrait in this way much farther than any predecessor. Moreover, like Petitot, he made discoveries which he was wise enough to keep to himself. "It is most humiliating," says Rouquet, "for the genius of painting that it can sometimes exist alone. M. Zincke left no pupil." Seeing that Rouquet is also accused of jealously guarding his own contributions to the perfection of his art, the words are--as Diderot says--remarkable.

With Sculpture, chiefly employed at this date for mortuary purposes, he has less opportunity of being indefinite, since there were but three notabilities, Scheemakers, Rysbrack, and Roubillac,--all foreigners. Of these Scheemakers, whom Chesterfield regarded as a mere stone-cutter, and who did the Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey, is certainly the least considerable. Next come Rysbrack, whom Walpole and Rouquet would put highest, the latter apparently because Rysbrack had been spoken of contemptuously by the Abbe le Blanc. But the first is assuredly Roubillac, whose monument to Mrs. Nightingale, however, belongs to a later date than the _Etat des Arts_, though he had already achieved the masterly figure of Eloquence on the Argyll monument. The only other sculptor referred to by Rouquet is Gabriel Cibber, whose statues of Madness and Melancholy, long at Bedlam, and now at South Kensington, certainly deserve his praise. But Cibber died in 1700, and belongs to the Caroline epoch. He no doubt owes his place in the _Etat des Arts_ to the fact that he had been abused in the already-mentioned _Letters on the English and French Nations_.

At this point we may turn M. Rouquet's pages more rapidly. It is not necessary to linger over his account of Silk Stuffs, more excellent in his opinion by their material than their make up. Under Medallists he commends the clever medals of great men by his compatriot, Anthony Dassier; under Printing he refers to that liberty of the Press which, in England, amounted to impunity. "A few too thinly disguised blasphemies; a few too rash reflections upon the Government, a few defamatory libels--are the sole things which, at the present time, are not allowed." And this brings about the following lively and very accurate description of the eighteenth-century newspaper:--"One of the most notable peculiarities which liberty of the Press produces in England, is the swarm of fugitive sheets and half-sheets which one sees break forth every morning, except Sunday, covering all the coffee-house tables. Twenty of these different papers, under different titles, appear each day; some contain a moral or philosophical discourse; the majority of the rest offer political, and frequently seditious, comments on some party question. In them is to be found the news of Europe, England, London, and the day before. Their authors profess to be familiar with the most secret deliberations of the Cabinet, which they make public. If a fire occurs in a chimney or elsewhere; if a theft or a murder has taken place; if any one commits suicide from _ennui_ or despair, the public is informed thereof on the morning after with the utmost amount of detail. After these articles come advertisements of all sorts, and in very great numbers. In addition to those of different things which it is desired to let, sell or purchase, there are some that are amusing. If a man's wife runs away he declares that he will not be liable for any debts she may contract; and as a matter of fact, this precaution, according to the custom of the country, is essential if he desires to secure himself from doing so. He threatens with all the rigour of the law those who dare to give his wife an asylum. Another publishes the particulars of his fortune, his age and his position, and adds that he is prepared to unite himself to any woman whose circumstances are such as he requires and describes; he further gives the address where communications must be sent for the negotiation and conclusion of the business. There are other notices which describe a woman who has been seen at the play or elsewhere, and announces that some one has determined to marry her. If any one has a dream which seems to him to predict that a certain number will be lucky in the lottery, he proclaims that fact, and offers a consideration to the possessor of the number if he cares to dispose of it."

After these come the advertisements of the Quack Doctors. Of the account of belles-lettres in 1754, two years after _Amelia_ and in the actual year of _Sir Charles Grandison_, M. Rouquet's report is not flattering:--"The presses of England, made celebrated by so many masterpieces of wit and science, now scarcely print anything but miserable and insipid romances, repulsive volumes, frigid and tedious letters, where the most tasteless puerility passes for wit and genius, and an inflamed imagination exerts itself under the pretext of forming manners." It is possible that the last lines are aimed at Richardson; certainly they describe the post-Richardsonian novel. But that the passage does not in any part refer to Fielding is clear from the fact that the writer presently praises _Joseph Andrews_, coupling it with _Gil Blas_.

Mezzotint, Gem-cutting, Chasing (which serves to bring in M. Rouquet's countryman, Moser), Jewelry, China, (_i.e._ Chelsea ware) are all successfully treated with more or less minuteness, while, under Architecture, are described the eighteenth-century house, and the new bridge at Westminster of another Swiss, Labelye, who is not named: "The architect is a foreigner," says Rouquet, who considered he had been inadequately rewarded. "It must be confessed (he adds drily) that in England this is a lifelong disqualification." From Architecture the writer passes to the oratory of the Senate, the Pulpit and the Stage. In the last case exception is made for "_le celebre M. Garic_," whose only teacher is declared to be Nature. As regards the rest, M. Rouquet thus describes the prevailing style:--"The declamation of the English stage is turgid, full of affectation, and perpetually pompous. Among other peculiarities, it frequently admits a sort of dolorous exclamation,--a certain long-drawn tone of voice, so woeful and so lugubrious that it is impossible not to be depressed by it." This reads like a recollection of Quin in the Horatio of Rowe's _Fair Penitent_.

Upon Cookery M. Rouquet is edifying; and concerning the eighteenth-century physician, with his tye-wig and gilt-head cane, sprightly and not unmalicious. But we must now confine ourselves to quoting a few detached passages from this discursive chronicle. The description of Ranelagh (in the chapter on Music) is too lengthy to reproduce. Here is that of the older Vauxhall:--"The Vauxhall concert takes place in a garden singularly decorated. The Director of Amusements in this garden [Jonathan Tyers] gains and spends successively considerable annual sums. He was born for such enterprises. At once spirited and tasteful, he shrinks from no expense where the amusement of the public is concerned, and the public, in its turn, repays him liberally. Every year he adds some fresh decoration, some new and exceptional scene. Sculpture, Painting, Music, bestir themselves periodically to render this resort more agreeable by the variety of their different productions: in this way opportunities of relaxation are infinite in England, above all at London; and thus Music plays a prominent part. The English take their pleasure without amusing themselves, or amuse themselves without enjoyment, except at table, and there only up to the point when sleep supervenes to the fumes of wine and tobacco."

Elsewhere M. Rouquet, like M. le Blanc before him, is loud in his denunciation of the pitiful practices of Vails-giving, which blocks the vestibule of every English house with an army of servants "ranged in line, according to their rank," and ready "to receive, or rather exact, the contribution of every guest." The excellent Jonas Hanway wrote a pamphlet reprehending this objectionable custom. Hogarth steadily set his face against it; but Reynolds is reported to have given his man L100 a year for the door. Here, from another place, is a description of one of those popular auctions, at which, in the _Marriage A-la-Mode_, my Lady Squanderfieid purchases the _bric-a-brac_ of Sir Timothy Babyhouse, The scene is probably Cock's in the Piazza at Covent Garden:--"Nothing is so diverting as this kind of sale--the number of those assembled, the diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what he openly depreciates; or--to spread a dangerous snare--pretending to secure with avidity a picture which already belongs to him. There, some are tempted to buy; and some repent of having bought. There, out of pique and bravado, another shall pay fifty louis for an article which he would not have thought worth five and twenty, had he not been ashamed to draw back when the eyes of a crowded company were upon him. There, you may see a woman of condition turn pale at the mere thought of losing a paltry pagoda which she does not want, and, in any other circumstances, would never have desired."

A closing word as to M. Rouquet himself. The _Etat des Arts_ was duly noticed by the critics--contemptuously by the _Monthly Review_, and sympathetically by the _Gentleman's_ and the _Scots Magazine_. In 1755, the year to which it belongs, its author put forth another work--_L'Art Nouveau de la Peinture en Fromage ou en Ramequin_ [toasted cheese], _invente pour suivre le louable projet de trouver graduellement des facons de peindre inferieures a celles qui existent_. This, as its title imports, is a skit, levelled at the recent _Histoire et Secret de la Peinture en Cire_ of Diderot, who nevertheless refers to Rouquet under _Email_, in the _Dictionnaire Encyclapedique_, as "_un homme habile_." He seems, however (like "_la_ _peinture a l'huile_)," to have been somewhat "_difficile_"; and as we have said, his discoveries (for he had that useful element in enamel-work, considerable chemical knowledge), like Zincke's, perished with him. Several of his portraits, notably those of Cochin and Marigny, were exhibited at the Paris Salons. Whether he was overparted, or overworked, in the Pompadour atmosphere; or whether he succumbed to the "continual headache" of which he speaks in his letter to Hogarth, his health gradually declined. In the last year of his life, his reason gave way; and when he died in 1759, it was as an inmate of Charenton.

THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE RHYMER

"Emam tua carmina sanus?"--MARTIAL.

F. OF H. I want a verse. It gives you little pains;--
You just sit down, and draw upon your brains.

Come, now, be amiable.

R. To hear you talk,
You'd make it easier to fly than walk.
You seem to think that rhyming is a thing
You can produce if you but touch a spring;

That fancy, fervour, passion--and what not,

Are just a case of "penny in the slot."
You should reflect that no evasive bird
Is half so shy as is your fittest word;
And even similes, however wrought,
Like hares, before you cook them, must be caught;--

Impromptus, too, require elaboration,
And (unlike eggs) grow fresh by incubation;
Then,--as to epigrams,..

F. of H. Nay, nay, I've done.
I did but make petition. You make fun.

R. Stay. I am grave. Forgive me if I ramble:
But, then, a negative needs some preamble
To break the blow. I feel with you, in truth,
These complex miseries of Age and Youth;
I feel with you--and none can feel it more
Than I--this burning Problem of the Poor;
The Want that grinds, the Mystery of Pain,
The Hearts that sink, and never rise again;--
How shall I set this to some careless screed,
Or jigging stave, when Help is what you need,
Help, Help,--more Help?

F. of H. I fancied that with ease
You'd scribble off some verses that might please,
And so give help to us.

R. Why then--TAKE THESE!

THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT

One of the things that perplexes the dreamer--for, in spite of the realists, there are dreamers still--is the almost complete extinction of the early editions of certain popular works. The pompous, respectable, full-wigged folios, with their long lists of subscribers, and their magniloquent dedications, find their permanent abiding-places in noblemen's collections, where, unless--with the _Chrysostom_ in Pope's verses--they are used for the smoothing of bands or the pressing of flowers, no one ever disturbs their drowsy diuturnity. Their bulk makes them sacred: like the regimental big drum, they are too large to be mislaid. But where are all the first copies of that little octavo of 246 pages, price eighteenpence, "Printed by T. Maxey for Rich. Marriot, in S. Dunstans Church-yard, Fleetstreet" in 1653, which constitutes the _editio princeps_ of Walton's _Angler_. Probably they were worn out in the pockets of Honest Izaak's "brothers of the Angle," or left to bake and cockle in the sunny corners of wasp-haunted alehouse windows, or dropped in the deep grass by some casual owner, more careful for flies and caddis-worms, or possibly for the contents of a leathern bottle, than all the "choicely-good" madrigals of Maudlin the milkmaid. In any case, there are very few of the little tomes, with their quaint "coppers" of fishes, in existence now, nor is it silver that pays for them. And that other eighteenpenny book, put forth by "_Nath. Ponder_ at the _Peacock_ in the _Poultrey_ near _Cornhil_" five and twenty years later,--_The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That which is to come_,--why is it that there are only five known copies, none quite perfect, now extant, of which the best sold not long since for more than L1400? Of these five, the first that came to light had been preserved owing to its having taken sanctuary, almost upon publication, in a great library, where it was forgotten. But the others that passed over Mr. Ponder's counter in the Poultry,--were they all lost, thumbed and dog's-eared out of being? They are gone,--that is all you can say; and gone apparently beyond reach of recovery.

These remarks,--which scarcely rise to the dignity of reflections--have been suggested by the difficulty which the writer has experienced in obtaining particulars as to the earliest form of the _Parent's Assistant_. As a matter of course, children's books are more liable to disappear than any others. They are sooner torn, soiled, dismembered, disintegratedsooner find their way to that mysterious unlocated limbo of lost things, which engulfs so much. Yet one scarcely expected that even the British Museum would not have possessed a copy of the first issue of Miss Edgeworth's book. Such, however, seems to be the case. According to the catalogue, there is nothing earlier at Bloomsbury than a portion of the second edition; and from the inexplicit and conjectural manner in which most of the author's biographers speak of the work, it can scarcely--outside private collections--be very easily accessible. Fortunately the old _Monthly Review_ for September, 1796, with most exemplary forethought for posterity, gives, as a heading to its notice, a precise and very categorical account of the first impression. _The Parent's Assistant; or, Stories for Children_ was, it appears, published in two parts, making three small duodecimo volumes. The price, bound, was six shillings. There was no author's name; but it was said to be "by E.M." (i.e. Edgeworth, Maria), and the publisher was Cowper's Dissenter publisher, Joseph Johnson of No. 72, St. Paul's Churchyard. Part I. contained "The Little Dog Trusty; or, The Liar and the Boy of Truth"; "The Orange Man; or, the Honest Boy and the Thief"; "Lazy Lawrence"; "Tarleton"; and "The False Key"; Part II., "The Purple Jar," "The Bracelets," "Mademoiselle Panache," "The Birthday Present," "Old Poz," and "The Mimic." In the same year, 1796, a second edition appeared, apparently with, some supplementary stories, e.g.: "Barring Out," and in 1800 came a third edition in six volumes. In this the text was increased by "Simple Susan," "The Little Merchants," "The Basket Woman," "The White Pigeon," "The Orphans," "Waste Not, Want Not," "Forgive and Forget," and "Eton Montem." One story, "The Purple Jar" at the beginning of Part II. of the first edition, was withdrawn, and afterwards included in another series, while the stories entitled respectively "Little Dog Trusty" and "The Orange Man" have disappeared from the collection, probably for the reason given in one of the first prefaces, namely, that they "were written for a much earlier age than any of the others, and with such a perfect simplicity of expression as, to many, may appear insipid and ridiculous." The six volumes of the third edition came out successively on the first day of the first six months of 1800. The Monthly Reviewer of the first edition, it may be added, was highly laudatory; and his commendations show that the early critics of the author were fully alive to her distinctive qualities, "The moral and prudential lessons of these volumes," says the writer, "are judiciously chosen; and the stories are invented with great ingenuity, and are happily contrived to excite curiosity and awaken feeling without the aid of improbable fiction or extravagant adventure. The language is varied in its degree of simplicity, to suit the pieces to different ages, but is throughout neat and correct; and, without the least approach towards vulgarity or meanness, it is adapted with peculiar felicity to the understandings of children. The author's taste, in this class of writing, appears to have been formed on the best models; and the work will not discredit a place on the same shelf with Berquin's _Child's Friend_, Mrs. Barbauld's _Lessons for Children_, and Dr. Aikin's _Evenings at Home_. The story of 'Lazy Lawrence'"--the notice goes on--"is one of the best lectures on industry which we have ever read. "The _Critical Review_, which also gave a short account of the _Parent's Assistant_ in its number for January 1797, does not rehearse the contents. But it confirms the title, etc., adding that the price, in boards, was 4s. 6d.; and its praise, though brief, is very much to the point. "The present production is particularly sensible and judicious; the stories are well written, simple, and affecting; calculated, not only for moral improvement, but to exercise the best affections of the human heart."

With one of the books mentioned by the _Monthly Review_--_Evenings at Home_--Miss Edgeworth was fully prepared, at all events as regards format, to associate herself. "The stories," she says in a letter to her cousin, Miss Sophy Ruxton, "are printed and bound the same size as _Evenings at Home_, and I am afraid you will dislike the title." Her father had sent the book to press as the _Parent's Friend_, a name no doubt suggested by the _Ami des Enfants_ of Berquin; but "Mr. Johnson [the publisher]," continues Miss Edgeworth, "has degraded it into _The Parent's Assistant_, which I dislike particularly, from association with an old book of arithmetic called The _Tutor's Assistant_." The ground of objection is not very formidable; but the _Parent's Assistant_ is certainly an infelicitous name. From some other of the author's letters we are able to trace the gradual growth of the work. Mr. Edgeworth, her father, an utilitarian of much restless energy, and many projects, was greatly interested in education,--or, as he would have termed it, practical education,--and long before this date, as early, indeed, as May 1780, he had desired his daughter, while she was still a girl at a London school, to write him a tale about the length of a _Spectator_; upon the topic of "Generosity," to be taken from history or romance. This was her first essay in fiction; and it was pronounced by the judge to whom it was submitted,--in competition with a rival production by a young gentleman from Oxford,--to be an excellent story, and extremely well written, although with this commendation was coupled the somewhat damaging inquiry,--"But where's the Generosity?" The question cannot be answered now, as the manuscript has not been preserved, though the inconvenient query, we are told, became a kind of personal proverb with the young author, who was wont to add that this first effort contained "a sentence of inextricable confusion between a saddle, a man, and his horse." This was a defect from which she must have speedily freed herself, since her style, as her first reviewer allowed, is conspicuously direct and clear. Accuracy in speaking and writing had, indeed, been early impressed upon her. Her father's doctrinaire ally and co-disciplinarian, Mr. Thomas Day, later the author of _Sandford and Merton_, and apparently the first person of whom it is affirmed that "he talked like a book," had been indefatigable in bringing this home to his young friend, when she visited him in her London school-days. Not content alone to dose her copiously with Bishop Berkeley's Tar Water--the chosen beverage of Young and Richardson--he was unwearied in ministering to her understanding. "His severe reasoning and uncompromising love of truth awakened her powers, and the questions he put to her, the necessity of perfect accuracy in her answers, suited the bent of her mind. Though such strictness was not always agreeable, she even then perceived its advantages, and in after life was deeply grateful to Mr. Day."[22]

Note:

[22] _Maria Edgeworth_, by Helen Zimmern, 1888, p. 13.

The training she underwent from the inexorable Mr, Day was continued by her father when she quitted school, and moved with her family to the parental seat at Edgeworthstown in Ireland. Mr. Edgeworth, whose principles were as rigorous as those of his friend, devoted himself early to initiating her into business habits. He taught her to copy letters, to keep accounts, to receive rents, and, in short, to act as his agent and factotum. She frequently accompanied him in the many disputes and difficulties which arose with his Irish tenantry; and, apart from the insight which this must have afforded her into the character and idiosyncrasies of the people, she no doubt very early acquired that exact knowledge of leases and legacies and dishonest factors which is a noticeable feature even of her children's books.[23] It is some time, however, before we hear of any successor to "Generosity"; but, in 1782, her father, with a view to provide her with an occupation for her leisure, proposed to her to prepare a translation of the _Adele et Theodore_ of Madame de Genlis, those letters upon education by which that gentle and multifarious moralist acquired--to use her own words--at once "the suffrages of the public, and the irreconcilable hatred of all the so-called philosophers and their partisans." At first there had been no definite thought of print in Mr, Edgeworth's mind. But as the work progressed, the idea gathered strength; and he began to prepare his daughter's manuscript for the press. Then, unhappily, when the first volume was finished, Holcroft's complete translation appeared, and made the labour needless. Yet it was not without profit. It had been excellent practice in aiding Miss Edgeworth's faculty of expression, and increasing her vocabulary--to say nothing of the influence which the portraiture of individuals and the satire of reigning follies which are the secondary characteristics of Madame de Genlis's most well-known work, may have had on her own subsequent efforts as a novelist. Meanwhile her mentor, Mr. Day, was delighted at the interruption of her task. He possessed, to the full, that rooted antipathy to feminine authorship of which we find so many traces in Miss Burney's novels and elsewhere; and he wrote to congratulate Mr. Edgeworth on having escaped the disgrace of having a translating daughter. At this time, as already stated, he himself had not become the author of _Sandford and Merton_, which, as a matter of fact, owed its inception to the Edgeworths, being at first simply intended as a short story to be inserted in the _Harry and Lucy_ Mr. Edgeworth wrote in conjunction with his second wife, Honora Sneyd. As regards the question of publication, both Maria and her father, although sensible of Mr. Day's prejudices, appear to have deferred to his arguments. Nor were these even lost to the public, for we are informed that, in Miss Edgeworth's first book, ten years later, the _Letters to Literary Ladies,_ she employed and embodied much that he had advanced. But for the present, she continued to write--though solely for her private amusement--essays, little stories, and dramatic sketches. One of these last must have been "Old Poz," a pleasant study of a country justice and a _gazza ladra_, which appeared in Part II. of the first issue of the _Parent's Assistant_, and which, we are told, was acted by the Edgeworth children in a little theatre erected in the dining-room for the purpose. According to her sisters, it was Miss Edgeworth's practice first to write her stories on a slate, and then to read them out. If they were approved, she transcribed them fairly. "Her writing for children"--says one of her biographers--"was a natural outgrowth of a practical study of their wants and fancies; and her constant care of the younger children gave her exactly the opportunity required to observe the development of mind incident to the age and capacity of several little brothers and sisters." According to her own account, her first critic was her father. "Whenever I thought of writing anything, I always told him [my father] my first rough plans; and always, with the instinct of a good critic, he used to fix immediately upon that which would best answer the purpose.--'_Sketch that, and shew it to me._'--These words, from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hope of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate on it in the sketch; but to this he always objected--'I don't want any of your painting--none of your drapery!--I can imagine all that--let me see the bare skeleton.'"

Note:

[23] Cf. "Attorney Case" in the story of "Simple Susan."

Of the first issue of the _Parent's Assistant_ in 1796, a sufficient account has already been given. In the "Preface" the practical intention of several of the stories is explicitly set forth. "Lazy Lawrence," we are told, illustrates the advantages of industry, and demonstrates that people feel cheerful and happy whilst they are employed; while "Tarleton" represents "the danger and the folly of that weakness of mind, and that easiness to be led, which too often pass for good nature"; "The False Key" points out some of the evils to which a well-educated boy, on first going to service, is exposed from the profligacy of his fellow-servants; "The Mimic," the drawback of vulgar acquaintances; "Barring Out," the errors to which a high spirit and the love of party are apt to lead, and so forth. In the final paragraph stress is laid upon what every fresh reader must at once recognise as the supreme merit of the stories, namely, their dramatic faculty, or (in the actual words of the "Preface"), their art of "keeping alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy."[24] The plausibility of invention, the amount of ingenious contrivance and of clever expedient in these professedly nursery stories, is indeed extraordinary; and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which--to use Dr. Johnson's words concerning _She Stoops to Conquer_--"the incidents are so prepared as not to seem improbable." There is no better example of this than the admirable tale of "The Mimic," in which the most unlooked-for occurrences succeed each other in the most natural way, while the disappearance at the end of the little sweep, who has levanted up the chimney in Frederick's new blue coat and buff waistcoat, is a master-stroke. Everybody has forgotten everything about him until the precise moment when he is needed to supply the fitting surprise of the finish,--a surprise which is only to be compared to that other revelation in _The Rose and the Ring_ of Thackeray, where the long-lost and obnoxious porter at Valoroso's palace, having been turned by the Fairy Blackstick into a door knocker for his insolence, is restored to the sorrowing Servants' Hall exactly when his services are again required in the capacity of Mrs. Gruffanuffs husband. But in Miss Edgeworth's little fable there is no fairy agency. "Fairies were not much in her line," says Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, "but philanthropic manufacturers, liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to distribute rewards or to point a moral."

Note:

[24] The "Preface to Parents"--Miss Emily Lawless suggests to me--was probably by Mr. Edgeworth.

Although, by their sub-title, these stories are avowedly composed for children, they are almost as attractive to grown-up readers. This is partly owing to their narrative skill, partly also to the clear characterisation, which already betrays the coming author of _Castle Rackrent_ and _Belinda_ and _Patronage_--the last, under its first name of _The Freeman Family_, being already partly written, although many years were still to pass before it saw the light in 1814. Readers, wise after the event, might fairly claim to have foreseen from some of the personages in the _Parent's Assistant_ that the author, however sedulous to describe "such situations only ... as children can easily imagine," was not able entirely to resist tempting specimens of human nature like the bibulous Mr. Corkscrew, the burglar butler in "The False Key," or Mrs. Pomfret, the housekeeper of the same story, whose prejudices against the _Villaintropic_ Society, and its unholy dealing with the "_drugs and refuges_" of humanity, are quite in the style of the Mrs. Slipslop of a great artist whose works one would scarcely have expected to encounter among the paper-backed and grey-boarded volumes which lined the shelves at Edgeworthstown. Mrs. Theresa Tattle, again, in "The Mimic," is a type which requires but little to fit it for a subordinate part in a novel, as is also Lady Diana Sweepstakes in "Waste not, Want not." In more than one case, we seem to detect an actual portrait. Mr. Somerville of Somerville ("The White Pigeon"), to whom that "little town" belonged,--who had done so much "to inspire his tenantry with a taste for order and domestic happiness, and took every means in his power to encourage industrious, well-behaved people to settle in his neighbourhood,"--can certainly be none other than the father of the writer of the _Parent's Assistant_, the busy and beneficent, but surely eccentric, Mr. Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown.

When, in 1849, the first two volumes of Macaulay's _History_ were issued, Miss Edgeworth, then in her eighty-third winter, was greatly delighted to find her name, coupled with a compliment to one of her characters, enshrined in a note to chap. vi. But her gratification was qualified by the fact that she could discover no similar reference to her friend, Sir Walter Scott. The generous "twinge of pain," to which she confesses, was intelligible. Scott had always admired her genius, and she admired his. In the "General Preface" to the _Waverley Novels_, twenty years before, he had gone so far as to say that, without hoping to emulate "the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact" of Miss Edgeworth, he had attempted to do for his own country what she had done for hers; and it is clear, from other sources, that this was no mere form of words. And he never wavered in his admiration. In his last years, not many months before his death, when he had almost forgotten her name, he was still talking kindly of her work. Speaking to Mrs. John Davy of Miss Austen and Miss Ferrier, he said: "And there's that Irish lady, too--but I forget everybody's name now" ... "she's _very_ clever, and best in the little touches too. I'm sure in that children's story, where the little girl parts with her lamb, and the little boy brings it back to her again, there's nothing for it but just to put down the book and cry."[25] The reference is to "Simple Susan," the longest and prettiest tale in the _Parent's Assistant_.

Note:

[25] Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, ch. lxxxi. _ad finem_.

Another anecdote pleasantly connects the same book with a popular work of a later writer. Readers of _Cranford_ will recall the feud between the Johnson-loving Miss Jenkyns of that story and its _Pickwick_-loving Captain Brown. The Captain--as is well-known--met his death by a railway accident, just after he had been studying the last monthly "green covers" of Dickens. Years later, the assumed narrator of _Cranford_ visits Miss Jenkyns, then faliing into senility. She still vaunts _The Rambler_; still maunders vaguely of the "strange old book, with the queer name, poor Captain Brown was killed for reading-that book by Mr. Boz, you know--_Old Poz_; when I was a girl--but that's a long time ago--I acted Lucy in _Old Poz_." There can be no mistake. Lucy is the justice's daughter in Miss Edgeworth's little chamber-drama.

A PLEASANT INVECTIVE AGAINST PRINTING

"Flee fro the PREES, and dwelle with sothfastnesse."--CHAUCER, _Balade de Bon Conseil_.

The Press is too much with us, small and great: We are undone of chatter and _on dit_, Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee, Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date, Babble of booklets, bicker of debate, Aspect of A., and attitude of B.-- A waste of words that drive us like a sea, Mere derelict of Ourselves, and helpless freight!

"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!" Some region unapproachable of Print, Where never cablegram could gain access, And telephones were not, nor any hint Of tidings new or old, but Man might pipe His soul to Nature,--careless of the Type!

TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS