I Nelow DE LIBRIS PROSE AND VERSE MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCLSCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO <5 xS ^ -so tai O Z < s o u t- so s oi O S D E L I BR I S PROSE & VERSE BY AUSTIN DOBSON Vt Mel Os, sic Cor Melos afficit, & reficit. Deuteromelia. A mixture of a Song doth ever addc Pleasure. Bacon [adapted). MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON _ 1909 Copyright 1908 hy The Macmillan Company First Published October 1908 Reprinted [luith additions) 1909 PROLOGUE LECTOR BENErOLE /—FOR SO THEY USED TO CALL VOL', YEARS AGO,— 1 CAN'T PRETEND TO MAKE YOU READ THE PAGES THAT TO THIS SUCCEED ; NOR COULD I— IF I WOULD— EXCUSE THE WAYWARD PROMPTINGS OF THE MUSE AT WHOSE COMMAND I WROTE THEM DOWN. I HAVE NO HOPE TO "PLEASE THE TOWN." I DID BUT THINK SOME FRIENDLY SOUL (NOT ILL-ADVISED, UPON THE WHOLE!) MIGHT LIKE THEM; AND "TO INTERPOSE A LITTLE EASE," BETWEEN THE PROSE, SLIPPED IN THE SCRAPS OF VERSE, THAT THUS THINGS MIGHT BE LESS MONOTONOUS. THEN, LECTOR, BE HENEFOLUS ! 0' ~V^ 'A'\ [^r/ie Author desires to express his thanks to Lord Northcltffe, Mr. L. J. Maxse, Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., Mr. IVilliam Heinemann, and Messrs. (Virtue and Co., for kind permission to reprint those pieces in this 'volume concerning luhich no specific arrangetnents -ivere made on their first appearance in tjpe.] VII CONTENTS Prologue ....... On Some Books and their Associations An Epistle to an Editor .... Bramston's "Man of Taste" The Passionate Printer to his Love . M. Rouquet on the Arts ... The Friend of Humanity and the Rhymer The Parent's Assistant ... A Pleasant Invective against Printing Two Modern Book Illustrators — 1. Kate Greenaway A Song of the Greenaway Child .... Two Modern Book Illustrators — II. Mr. Hugh Thomson Horatian Ode on the Tercentenary of "Don Quixote" The Books of Samuel Rogers Pepys' " Diary " . A French Critic on Bath . A Welcome from the "Johnson Club" Thackeray's "F.smond" a miltonic kxercisf .... ix PAGE V I 23 39 43 65 69 87 91 105 109 125 129 H7 '5« 163 167 189 X CONTENTS Fresh Facts about Fielding . The Happy Printer .... Cross Readings — and Caleb Whitefoord The Simple Life ..... The "Unparalleled" Peiresc The Last Proof ..... General Index ..... PAGE 193 205 209 221 227 255 259 ILLUSTRATIONS *The Otter Hunt i\ the " Compleat Angler." From an unpublished pen -drawing by Mr. Hugh Thomson ..... Frontispiece * Group of Chiloren. From the original pen- drawing by Kate Greenaway for The Library^ 1 88 1 To face p. 93 * Pencil-Sketches, by the same (No. i) * Pencil-Sketch, by the same (No. 2) . * Pencil-Sketches, by the same (No. 3) * Pencil-Sketch, by the same (No. 4) . The Brown Book -Plate. From tlie original design by Mr. Hugh Thomson in the posses- sion of Mr. Ernest Brown . . . . * Sir Roger de Coverley at the Assizes. From a first rough pencil-sketch, by the same, for Days with Sir Roger de Coz'rrley, 1886 . Pen-Sketches, by the same, on the Half-Title of the Ballad of Beau Brocade, 1 892. From the originals in the possession of Mr. A. T. A. Dobson ...... * Pen-Skktch (Triplet), by the same, on a Fly- leaf of /'f^ IVoffitigton, 1H99 Evelina and the Branghtons, by the same. From tiie Cranford Evelina, 1 903 96 98 100 102 I 1 1 1 12 114 116 118 xH DE LIBRIS Lady Castlewood and her Son, by the same. From the Cranford Esmond, 1905 . To face p. 120 Mercery Lane, Canterbury, by the same. From the original pencil-drawing for High- ways and Bytuays in Kent, 1907 . . . ,, 122 ^*^ The crigir.ah of the liluitrations preceded by an asterisk are in the possession of the Author. ON SOME BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS ON SOME BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle -edojed Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings, — and yet be no more to us than the con- strained and uneasy acquaintances of yesterday. Friends they may become to-morrow, the day after, — perhaps " hunc in annum et plures.'' But for the time being they have neither part nor lot in our past of retrospect and suggestion. Of what we were, of what we like or liked, they know nothing ; and we — if that be possible — know even less of them. Whether familiarity will breed contempt, or whether they will come home to our business and bosom, — these are things that lie on the lap of the P'ates. But it is to be observed that the associations of old books, as of new books, are not always 3 4 DE LIBRIS exclusively connected with their text or format, — are sometimes, as a matter of fact, independent of both. Often they are memorable to us by length of tenure, by propinquity, — even by their patience under neglect. We may never read them ; and yet by reason of some wholly external and accidental characteristic, it would be a wrench to part with them if the moment of separation — the inevitable hour — should arrive at last. Here, to give an instance in point, is a stained and battered French folio, with patched corners, — Mons. N. Renouard's translation of the Metamorphoses d'Ovide, 1637, '•'■enrichies de figures a chacune Fable''' (very odd figures some of them are !) and to be bought '■'■ chez Pierre Billaine^ rue' Sainct lacques, a la Bonne-Foy, deuant S. Yues^ It has held no honoured place upon the shelves ; it has even resided au rez-de-chaussee, — that is to say, upon the floor ; but it is not less dear, — not less desirable. For at the back of the " Dedica- tion to the King" (Lewis XIII. to wit), is scrawled in a slanting, irregular hand : " Pour mademoiselle de mons Son tres humble et tres obeissant Serviteur St. Andrei Between the fourth and fifth word, some one, in a smaller writing of later date, has added " par^' and after " St. Andre," the signature " Vandeuvre^ In these irrelevant (and unsolicited) interpolations, I take no interest. But who was Mile, de Mons ^ As Frederick Locker sings : BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS 5 Did She live yesterday or ages back ? What colour were the eyes when bright and waking : And were your ringlets fair, or brown, or black. Poor little Head ! that long has done with aching ! ^ "Ages back " she certainly did not live, for the book is dated " 1637," and "yesterday" is absurd. But that her eyes were bright, — nay, that they were particularly lively and vivacious, even as they are in the sanguine sketches of Antoine Watteau a hundred years afterwards, I am " confidous " — as Mrs, Slipslop would say. For my theory (in reality a foregone conclusion which I shrink from dis- persing by any practical resolvent) is, that Mile, de Mons was some delightful seventeenth - century PVench child, to whom the big volume had been presented as a picture-book, I can imagine the alert, strait-corseted little person, with ribboned hair, eagerly craning across the tall folio ; and follow- ing curiously with her finger the legends under the copper "figures," — " Narcisse en fleur," " Ascalaphe en hibou," "Jason endormant le dragon," — and so forth, with much the same wonder that the Sinne-Beelden of Jacob Cats must have stirred ^ This quatrain has the distinction of having been touched upon by Thackeray. When Mr. Locker's manuscript went to the Cornhill Magazine in i860, it ran thus : Did she live yesterday, or ages sped ? What colour were the eyes when bright and waking ? And were your ringlets fair? Poor little head ! — Poor little heart ! that long has done with aching. 6 DE LIBRIS in the little Dutchwomen of Middelburg. There can be no Mile, de Mons but this, — and for me she can never grow old ! Sometimes it comes to pass that the association is of a more far-fetched and fanciful kind. In the great Ovid it lies in an inscription : in my next case it is " another-guess " matter. The folio this time is the Sylva Syharum of the " Right Hon. Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount St. Alban," of whom some people still prefer to speak as Lord Bacon. 'Tis only the " sixt Edition " ; but it was to be bought at the Great Turk's Head, " next to the Mytre Tauerne " (not the modern pretender, be it observed !), which is in itself a feature of interest. A former possessor, from his notes, appears to have been largely preoccupied with that ignoble clinging to life which so exercised Matthew Arnold, for they relate chiefly to laxative simples for medicine ; and he comforts himself, in April, 1695, ^y transcribing Bacon's reflection that " a Life led in Religion and in Holy Exercises " con- duces to longevity, — an aphorism which, however useful as an argument for length of days, is a rather remote reason for religion. But what to me is always most seductive in the book is, that to this edition (not copy, of course) of 1651 Master Izaak Walton, when he came, in his Compleat Angler of 1653, to discuss such abstract questions as the transmission of sound under water, and the ages of BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS 7 carp and pike, must probably have referred. He often mentions " Sir Francis Bacon's " History of Life and Death, which is included in the volume. No doubt it would be more reasonable and more " con- gruous " that Bacon's book should suggest Bacon. But there it is. That illogical " succession of ideas " which puzzled my Uncle Toby, invariably recalls to me, not the imposing folio to be purchased " next to the Mvtre Tauerne " in Fleet Street, but the un- pretentious eighteenpenny octavo which, two years later, was on sale at Richard Marriot's in St. Dunstan's churchyard hard by, and did no more than borrow its erudition from the riches of the Baconian storehouse. Life, and its prolongation, is again the theme of the next book (also mentioned, by the way, in Walton) which I take up, though unhappily it has no inscription. It is a little old calf-clad copy of Lewis Cornaro's Sure and Certain Methods of attaining a Long and Healthful Life, 4th ed., 24mo, 1727 ; and was bought at the Bewick sale of February, 1884, as having once belonged to Robert Elliot Bewick, only son of the famous old Newcastle wood-engraver. As will be shown later, it is easy to be misled in these matters, but I cannot help believing that this volume, which looks as if it had been re-bound, is the one Thomas Bewick mentions in his Ademoir as having been his companion in those speculative wanderings 8 DE LIBRIS over the Town Moor or the Elswick Fields, when, as an apprentice, he planned his future a la Franklin, and devised schemes for his conduct in life. In attaining Cornaro's tale of years he did not succeed ; though he seems to have faithfully practised the periods of abstinence enjoined (but probably not observed) by another of the "noble Venetian's" professed admirers, Mr. Addison of the Spectator. If I have admitted a momentary misgiving as to the authenticity of the foregoing relic of the " father of white line," there can be none about the next item to which I now come. Once, on a Westminster bookstall, long since disappeared, I found a copy of a seventh edition of the Pursuits of Literature of T. J. Mathias, Queen Charlotte's Treasurer's Clerk. Brutally cut down by the binder, that durus arator had unexpectedly spared a solitary page for its manuscript comment, which was thoughtfully turned up and folded in. It was a note to this couplet in Mathias, his Dialogue II. : — From Bewick's magick wood throw borrow'd rays O'er many a page in gorgeous Bulmer's blaze, — "gorgeous Bulmer " (the epithet is over-coloured!) being the William Bulmer who, in 1795, issued the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell. " I " (says the writer of the note) " was chiefly instrumental to this ingeni- ous artist's [Bewick's] excellence in this art. I first BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS 9 initiated his master, Mr. Ra. Beilby (of Newcastle) into the art, and his first essay was the execution of the cuts in my Treatise on Mensuration, printed in 4to, 1770. Soon after I recommended the same artist to execute the cuts to Dr. Horsley's edition of the works of Newton. Accordingly Mr. B. had the job, who put them into the hands of his assistant, Mr, Bewick, who executed them as his first work in wood, and that in a most elegant manner, tho' spoiled in the printing by John Nichols, the Black-letter printer. C. H. 1798." " C. H." is Dr. Charles Hutton, the Woolwich mathematician. His note is a little in the vaunting vein of that " founder of fortun's," the excellent Uncle Pumblechook of Great Expectations, for his services scarcely amounted to " initiating " Bewick or his master into the art of engraving on wood. Moreover, his memory must have failed him, for Bewick, and not Beilby, did the majority of the cuts to the Mensuration, including a much-praised diagram of the tower of St. Nicholas Church at Newcastle, afterwards a familiar object in the younger man's designs and tail-pieces. Be this as it may. Dr. Hutton's note was surely worth rescuing from the ruthless binder's plough. Between the work of Thomas Bewick and the work of Samuel Pepys, it is idle to attempt any ingenious connecting link, save the fact that they lo DE LIBRIS both wrote autobiographically. The " Pepys " in question here, however, is not the famous Diary, but the Secretary to the Admiralty's " only other acknowledged work," namely, the privately printed Memoires Relating to the State of the Royal Navy of England^ for Ten Tears, 1690; and this copy may undoubtedly lay claim to exceptional interest. For not only does it comprise those manuscript corrections in the author's handwriting, which Dr. Tanner reproduced in his excellent Clarendon Press reprint of last year, but it includes the two portrait plates by Robert White after Kneller. The larger is bound in as a frontispiece ; the smaller (the ex-libris) is inserted at the beginning. The main attraction of the book to me, however, is its previous owners — one especially. My immediate predecessor was a well-known collector. Professor Edward Solly, at whose sale in 1886 I bought it; and he in his turn had acquired it in 1877, at Dr. Rimbault's sale. Probably what drew us all to the little volume was not so much its disclosure of the lamentable state of the Caroline navy, and of the monstrous toadstools that flourished so freely in the ill- ventilated holds of His Majesty's ships-of-war, as the fact that it had once belonged to that brave old philanthropist. Captain Thomas Coram of the Foundling Hospital. To him it was presented in March, 1724, by one C. Jackson ; and he afterwards handed it on to a BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS ii Mr. Mills, . Pasted at the end is Coram's autograph letter, dated "June loth, 1746." "To Mr. Mills These. Worthy Sir I happend to find among my few Books, Mr. Pepys his memoires, w*^^ I thought might be acceptable to you & therefore pray you to accept of it. I am w'^' much Respect Sir your most humble Ser'- Thomas Coram." At the Foundling Hospital is a magnificent full- length of Coram, with curling white locks and kindly, weather-beaten face, from the brush of his friend and admirer, William Hogarth. It is to Hofjarth and his fellow- Governor at the Foundling, John Wilkes, that my next jotting relates. These strange colleagues in charity afterwards — as is well known — quarrelled bitterly over politics. Hogarth caricatured Wilkes in the Times : Wilkes replied by a North Briton article (No, 17) so scurrilous and malignant that Hogarth was stung into rejoining with that famous squint-eyed semblance of his former crony, which has handed him down to posterity more securely than the portraits of ZofTany and Earlom, W^ilkes's action upon this was to reprint his article with the addition of a bulbous-nosed woodcut of Hogarth " from the Life." These facts lent interest to an entry which for years had been familiar to me in the Sale Catalogue of Mr. H. P. Standly, and which ran thus : " The North Briton, No. 17, with a Portrait of Hogarth in woou ; and a severe 12 DE LIBRIS critique on some of his works : in Ireland' s handwriting is the following — ' This -paper was given to me by Mrs. Hogarth^ Aug. 1782, and is the identical North Briton purchased by Hogarth, and carried in his pocket 7nany days to show his friends' " The Ireland referred to (as will presently appear) was Samuel Ireland of the Graphic Illustrations. When, in 1892, dispersed items of the famous Joly collection began to appear sporadically in the second-hand catalogues, I found in that of a well-known London bookseller an entry plainly describing this one, and proclaiming that it came " from the celebrated collection of Mr. Standly, of St, Neots." Unfortunately, the scrap of paper connecting it with Mrs, Hogarth's present to Ireland had been destroyed. Nevertheless, I secured my prize, had it fittingly bound up with the original number which accompanied it ; and here and there, in v/riting about Hogarth, bragged consequentially about my fortunate acquisition. Then came a day — a day to be marked with a black stone ! — when in the British Museum Print Room, and looking through the " Collection," for the moment deposited there, I came upon another copy of the North Briton, bearing in Samuel Ireland's writing a notification to the effect that it was the identical No, 17, etc., etc. Now which is the right one ? Is either the right one } I inspect mine distrustfully. It is soiled, and has evidently been BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS 13 folded ; it is scribbled with calculations ; it has all the aspect of a venerable vetuste. That it came from the Standly collection, I am convinced. But that other pretender in the (now dispersed) " Collec- tion " ? And was not Samuel Ireland [yiomen invisum !) the, if not fraudulent, at least too-credulous father of one William Henry Ireland, who, at eighteen, wrote Vorti'^ern and Rowena, and palmed it off as genuine Shakespeare ? I fear me — I much fear me — that, in the words of the American showman, I have been " weeping over the wrong grave," To prolong these vagrant adversaria would not be difficult. Here, for example, dated 1779, are the Coplas of the poet Don Jorge Manrique, which, having no Spanish, I am constrained to study in the renderings of Longfellow. Don Jorge was a Spaniard of the Spaniards, Commendador of Montizon, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Captain of a company in the Guards of Castile, and withal a valiant soldado^ who died of a wound received in battle. But the attraction of my volume is, that, at the foot of the title-page, in beautiful neat script, appear the words, " Robert Southey. Paris. 17 May 1 8 17," — being the year in which Southey stayed at Como with Walter Savage Landor. Here are the Works of mock-heroic John Philips, 1720, whose Blenheim the Tories pitted against Addison's Campaign^ and whose Splendid Shilling still shines 14 DE LIBRIS lucidly among eighteenth -century parodies. This copy bears — also on the title-page — the autograph of James Thomson, not yet the author of The Seasons : and includes the book-plate of Lord Prestongrange, — that " Lord Advocate Grant " of whom you may read in the romances of '* R. L. S." Here again is an edition (the first) of Hazlitt's Lecturer on the English Comic Writers^ annotated copiously in MS. by a contemporary reader who was certainly not an admirer ; and upon whom W. H.'s cockneyisms, Gallicisms, egotisms, and " ///d'-isms " generally, seem to have had the effect of a red rag upon an inveterately insular bull. " A very ingenious but pert, dogmatical, and Prejudiced Writer " is his uncomplimentary addition to the author's name. Then here is Cunningham's Goldsmith of 1854, vol, i., castigated with equal energy by that Alaric Alexander Watts,^ of whose egregious strictures upon Wordsworth we read not long since in the Cornhill Magazine, and who will not allow Goldsmith to say, in the Haunch of Venison, " the porter and eatables followed behind." "They could scarcely have followed before," — he objects, in the very accents of Boeotia. Nor will he pass " the hollow - sounding bittern " of the Deserted Village. A barrel may sound hollow, but ^ So he was christened. But Lockhart chose to insist that his second pre- name should properly be " Attila," and thenceforth he was spoken of in this way. BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS 15 not a bird — this wiseacre acquaints us. Had the gifted author of Lyrics of the Heart never heard of rhetorical figures ? But he is not Goldsmith's only hyper-critic. Charles Fox, who admired The Traveller^ thought Olivia's famous song in the Vicar " foohsh," and added that " folly " was a bad rhyme to " melan- choly." ^ He must have forgotten Milton's : — Bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musicall, most melancholy ! Or he might have gone to the other camp, and remembered Pope on Mrs, Howard : — Not warp'd by Passion, aw'd by Rumour, Not grave thro' Pride, or gay thro' Folly, An equal Mixture of good Humour, And sensible soft Melancholy. ^ Recollecli'-ns, by Samuel Rogers, 2rnl ed., 1859, 43. AN EPISTLE TO AN EDITOR 17 AN EPISTLE TO AN EDITOR " Jamais les arbres verts n'ont essay^ d'etre bleus." — TnfOPHILK Gautier. "A NEW Review ! " You make me tremble (Though as to that, I can dissemble Till I hear more). But is it " ntw " ? And will it be a real Review ? — I mean, a Court wherein the scales Weigh equally both him that fails, And him that hits the mark ? — a place Where the accus'd can plead his case, If wrong'd ? All this I need to know Before I (arrogant !) say "Go." " We, that are very old " (the phrase Is Steele's, not mine !), in former days. Have seen so many " new Reviews " Arise, arraign, absolve, abuse ; — Proclaim their mission to the top (Where there's still room !), then slowly drop, '9 20 DE LIBRIS Shrink down, fade out, and sans preferment, Depart to their obscure interment ; — We should be pardon'd if we doubt That a new venture can hold out. It TO/7/, you say. Then don't be " new " ; Be " old." The Old is still the True. Nature (said Gautier) never tries To alter her accustom'd dyes ; And all your novelties at best Are ancient puppets, newly drest. What you must do, is not to shrink From speaking out the thing you think ; And blaming where 'tis right to blame, Despite tradition and a Name. Yet don't expand a trifling blot, Or ban the book for what it's not (That is the poor device of those Who cavil where they can't oppose !) ; Moreover (this is very old !), Be courteous — even when you scold ! Blame I put first, but not at heart. You must give Praise the foremost part ; — Praise that to those who write is breath Of Life, if just; if unjust, Death. Praise then the things that men revere ; Praise what they love, not what they fear ; AN EPISTLE TO AN EDITOR 21 Praise too the young ; praise those who try ; Praise those who fail, but by and by May do good work. Those who succeed, You'll praise perforce, — so there's no need To speak of that. And as to each. See you keep measure in your speech ; — See that your praise be so exprest That the best man shall get the best ; Nor fail of the fit word you meant Because your epithets are spent. Remember that our language gives No limitless superlatives ; And Shakespeare, Homer, should Yltlvg. more Than the last knocker at the door ! " We, that are very old ! " — May this Excuse the hint you find amiss. My thoughts, I feel, are what to-day Men call vieux jeu. Well ! — " let them say." The Old, at least, we know : the New (A changing Shape that all pursue!) Has been, — may be, a fraud. — But there ! Wind to your sail ! Vogue la gaTere ! BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE •i BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE" Were you to inquire respectfully of the infallible critic (if such indeed there be !) for the source of the aphorism, " Music has charms to soothe a savage beast," he would probably " down " you contempt- uously in the Johnsonian fashion by replying that you had "just enough ot learning to misquote" ; — that the last word was notoriously " breast " and not " beast " ; — and that the line, as Macaulay's, and every Board School-boy besides must be abundantly aware, is to be found in Congreve's tragedy of The Mourning Bride. But he would be wrong ; and, in fact, would only be confirming the real author's contention that " Sure, of all blockheads, Scholars are the worst." For, whether adapted from Congreve or not, the words are correctly given ; and they occur in the Rev. James Bramston's satire. The Man of Taste^ I733> running in a couplet as follows : — Musick has charms to sooth a savage beast, And therefore proper at a Sheriff's feast. 25 26 DE LIBRIS Moreover, according to the handbooks, this is not the only passage from a rather obscure original which has held its own. " Without black-velvet- britches, what is man?" — is another (a speculation which might have commended itself to Don Quixote) ; ^ while The Art of Politicks^ also by Bramston, contains a third : — What's not destroy'd by Time's devouring Hand ? Where's Troy, and where's the May Pole in the Strand'^. Polonius would perhaps object against a " devouring hand." But the survival of — at least — three fairly current citations from a practically forgotten minor Georgian satirist would certainly seem to warrant a few words upon the writer himself, and his chief performance in verse. The Rev. James Bramston was born in 1694 or 1695 ^^ Skreens, near Chelmsford, in Essex, his father, Francis Bramston, being the fourth son of Sir Moundeford Bramston, Master in Chancery, whose father again was Sir John Bramston, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, generally known as *' the elder." ^ James Bramston was admitted to Westminster School in 1708. In 1713 he became a ^ whose grande tenue or holiday wear — Cervantes tells us — was " a doublet of fine cloth and -velvet breeches and shoes to match " (ch. i). 2 Sir John Bramston, the younger, was the author of the " watery incoherent Autobiography^' — as Carlyle calls it — published by the Camden Society in 1845. BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE" 27 scholar at Christ Church, Oxford, proceeding B.A. in 17 1 7, and M.A. in 1720. In 1723 he was made Vicar of Lurgashall, and in 1725 of Harting, both of which Sussex livings he held until his death in March 1744, ten weeks before the death of Pope. His first published verses (1715) were on Dr. Radcliffe. In 1729 he printed The Art of Politicks^ one of the manv contemporary imitations of the Ars Poetica \ and in 1733 The Man of Taste. He also wrote a mediocre variation on the Splendid Shilling of John Philips, entitled the Crooked Sixpence, 1743. Beyond a statement in Dallaway's Sussex that " he [Bramston] was a man of original humour, the fame and proofs of whose colloquial wit are still remem- bered " ; and the supplementary information that, as incumbent of Lurgashall, he received an annual modus of a fat buck and doe from the neighbouring Park of Petworth, nothing more seems to have been recorded of him. The Crooked Sixpence is, at best, an imitation of an imitation ; and as a Miltonic pastiche does not excel that of Philips, or rival the more serious Lewesdon Hill of Crowe. The Art of Politicks, in its turn, would need a fairly long commentary to make what is only moderately interesting moderately intelligible, while eighteenth - century copies of Horace's letter to the Pisos are " plentiful as blackberries." But The Man of Taste, based, as 2 8 DE LIBRIS it is, on the presentment of a never extinct type, the connoisseur against nature, is still worthy of passing notice. In the sub-title of the poem, it is declared to be " Occasion'd by an Epistle of Mr. Pope's on that Subject" [i.e. "Taste"]. This was what is now known as No. 4 of the Moral Essays^ " On the Use of Riches." But its first title in 1731 was " Of Taste " ; and this was subsequently altered to " Of False Taste." It was addressed to Pope's friend, Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington ; and, under the style of " Timon's Villa," employed, for its chief illustration of wasteful and vacuous magnificence, the ostentatious seat which James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos, had erected at Canons, near Edgware. The story of Pope's epistle does not belong to this place. But in the print of T/ie Man of Taste., WilHam Hogarth, gratifying concurrently a personal anti- pathy, promptly attacked Pope, Burlington, and his own bete noire^ Burlington's architect, William Kent. Pope, to whom Burlington acts as hodman, is depicted whitewashing Burlington Gate, Piccadilly, which is labelled " Taste," and over which rises Kent's statue, subserviently supported at the angles of the pediment by Raphael and Michelangelo. In his task, the poet, a deformed figure in a tye-wig, bountifully bespatters the passers-by, particularly the chariot of the Duke of Chandos. The satire was BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE" 29 not very brilliant or ingenious ; but its meaning was clear. Pope was prudent enough to make no reply ; though, as Mr. G, S. Layard shows in his Suppressed Plates, it seems that the print was, or was sought to be, called in by those concerned. Bramston's poem, which succeeded in 1733, does not enter into the quarrel, it may be because of the anger aroused by the pictorial reply. But if — as announced on its title- page, — it was suggested by Pope's epistle, it would also seem to have borrowed its name from Hogarth's caricature. It was first issued in folio by Pope's publisher, Lawton Gil liver of Fleet Street, and has a frontispiece engraved by Gerard Vandergucht. This depicts a wide-skirted, effeminate-looking personage, carrying a long cane with a head fantastically carved, and surrounded by various objects of art. In the back- ground rises what is apparently intended for the temple of a formal garden ; and behind this again, a winged ass capers skittishly upon the summit of Mount Helicon. As might be anticipated, the poem is in the heroic measure of Pope. But though many of its couplets are compact and pointed, Bramston has not yet learned from his model the art of varying his pausation, and the period closes his second line with the monotony of a minute gun. Another defect, noticed by Warton, is that the speaker throughout is made to profess the errors satirised, and to be the 30 DE LIBRIS unabashed mouthpiece of his own fatuity. " Mine," say the concluding lines, — Mine are the gallant Schemes of Politesse, For books, and buildings, politicks, and dress. This is True Taste, and whoso likes it not, Is blockhead, coxcomb, puppy, fool, and sot. One is insensibly reminded of a quotation from P. L. Courier, made in the Cornhill many years since by the once famous " Jacob Omnium " when replying controversially to the author of lonica. '■'■Je vols " — says Courier, after recapitulating a string of abusive epithets hurled at him by his opponent — '■'•je vols ce qjiil veut dire : il entend que lui et moi sont d' avis different; et cest la sa maniere de s exprimer.'' It was also the manner of our Man of Taste. The second line of the above quotation from Bramston gives us four of the things upon which his hero lays down the law. Let us see what he says about literature. As a professing critic he prefers books with notes : — Tho' Blackmore^s works my soul with raptures fill. With notes by Bently they'd be better still. Swift he detests — not of course for detestable qualities, but because he is so universally admired. In poetry he holds by rhyme as opposed to blank verse : — Verse without rhvme I never could endure. Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure. BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE" 31 To him as Nature, when he ceas'd to see, Milton's an universiil Blank to mc. . . Thompson [i/V] write blank, but know that for that reason These lines shall live, when thine are out of season. Rhyme binds and beautifies the Poet's lays As London Ladies owe their shape to stays. In this the Man of Taste is obviously following the reigning fashion. But if we may assume Bramston himself to approve what his hero condemns, he must have been in advance of his age, for blank verse had but sparse advocates at this time, or for some time to come. Neither Gray, nor Johnson, nor Goldsmith ever grew reconciled to what the last of them styles " this unharmonious measure." Goldsmith, in parti- cular, would probably have been in exact agreement with the couplet as to the controlling powers of rhyme. " If rhymes, therefore," he writes, in the Enquiry into Polite Learning,^ " be more difficult [than blank verse], for that very reason, I would have our poets write in rhyme. Such a restriction upon the thought of a good poet, often lifts and encreases the vehemence of every sentiment ; for fancy, like a fountain, plays highest by diminishing the aperture." - The Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is > E<1. 1759, p. 151. " Montaigne has a somewhat similar illustration: ".As CleantJies said, that at the voice being forciblic pent in the narrow gullet of a trumpet, at last issueth forth more ilrong and shriller, so me seemcs, that a sentence cunningly and clo«ely coucheil in measure-keeping Posie, darts it selfe forth more furiously, and wounds mc even to tlic quicke " [Ejiuyn, bk. i. cli. xxv. f^Klorio's translation). 32 DE LIBRIS CoUey Gibber, who, however, deserves the laurel he wears, not for The Careless Husband, his best comedy, but for his Epilogues and other Plays. It pleases me, that Pope unlaurell'd goes, While Cibber wears the Bays for Play-house Prose. So Britain's Monarch once uncover'd sate, While Bradshazv bully'd in a broad-brimmed hat, — a reminiscence of King Charles's trial which might have been added to Bramston stock quotations. The productions of " Curll's chaste press " are also this connoisseur's favourite reading, — the lives of players in particular, probably on the now obsolete grounds set forth in Carlyle's essay on Scott. ^ Among these the memoirs of Gibber's " Lady Betty Modish," Mrs. Oldfield, then lately dead, and buried in Westminster Abbey, are not obscurely indicated. In morals our friend — as might be expected circa 1730 — is a Freethinker and Deist. Tindal is his text-book : his breviary the Fable 0^ the Bees : — T' improve in Morals Mandevil I read, And TyfidaTs Scruples are my settled Creed. I travell'd early, and I soon saw through Religion all, e'er I was twenty-two. Shame, Pain, or Poverty shall I endure. When ropes or opium can my ease procure ? When money's gone, and I no debts can pay. Self-murder is an honourable way. ^ " It has been said, 'There are no English lives worth reading except th se of Players, who by the nature of the case have bidden Respectability good-day.'" BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE" 33 As Pusaran directs I'd end my life, And kill myself, my daughter, and my wife. He would, of course, have done nothing of the kind ; nor, for the matter of that, did his Piedmontese preceptor/ Nil admirari is the motto of the Man ot Taste in Building, where he is naturally at home. He can see no symmetry in the Banqueting House, or in St. Paul's Covent Garden, or even in St. Paul's itself. Sure wretched Wreti was taught by bungling Jones, To murder mortar, and disfigure stones ! "Substantial" Vanbrugh he likes — chiefly because his work would make "such noble ruins." Cost is his sole criterion, and here he, too, seems to glance obliquely at Canons : — Dorick, lonick, shall not there be found. But it shall cost me threescore thousand pound. But this was moderate, as the Edgware " folly " reached ^^ 2 50,000. In Gardening he follows the latest whim for landscape. Here is his burlesque of the principles of Bridgeman and Batty Langley : — Docs it not merit the beholder's praise, What's high to sink } and what is low to raise ? ' Count Passrran w;i9 a frccthinking nobleman who wrote yi Pliilosophicul Diicourse cm Death, in which he defended suicide, though he refrained from resort- ing to it himself. Pope refers to liim in tiic Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue i. 124: — If Blount despatch'd himself, he playM the man, And so ni;iy'st thou, illustrious I'asscran ! D 34 DE LIBRIS Slopes shall ascend where once a green-house stood, And in my horse-pond I will plant a wood. Let misers dread the hoarded gold to waste, Expence and alteration show a Taste. As a connoisseur of Painting this enlightened virtuoso is given over to Hogarth's hated dealers in the Black Masters : — In curious paintings I'm exceeding nice, And know their several beauties by their Price. Auctions and Sales I constantly attend, But chuse my pictures by a skilful Friend. Originals and copies much the same, The picture's value is the painter'' s na?ne}- Of Sculpture he says — In spite of Addison and ancient Rome, Sir Cloudesly Sho-jeP s is my fav'rite tomb.^ How oft have I with admiration stood. To view some City-magistrate in wood ? I gaze with pleasure on a Lord May'r's head Cast with propriety in gilded lead, — the allusion being obviously to Cheere's manufactory of such popular garden decorations at Hyde Park Corner. In Coins and Medals, true to his instinct for liking 1 See post, " M. Rouquet on the Arts," p. 51. "^ "Sir Cloudesly Sho-vel's Monument has very often given me great Offence : Instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing Character of that plain, gallant Man, he is represented on his Tomb [in West- minster Abbey] by the Figure of a Beau, dressed in a long Perriwig, and reposing himself upon Velvet Cushions under a Canopy of State " {Spectator, March 30, 1711). BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE" 35 the worst the best, he prefers the modern to the antique. In Music, with Hogarth's Rake two years later, he is all for that " Dagon of the nobility and gentry," imported song : — Without Italian^ or without an ear. To BononcM% musick I adhere ; — though he confesses to a partiality for the bagpipe on the ground that your true Briton " loves a grumbling noise," and he favours organs and the popular oratorios. But his '* top talent is a bill of fare " : — Sir Loins and rumps of beef offend my eyes,' Pleas'd with frogs fricass[e]ed, and coxcomb-pies. Dishes I chuse though little, yet genteel, Snails - the first course, and Peepers'^ crown the meal. Pigs heads with hair on, much my fancy please, I love young colly-flowers if stew'd in cheese. And give ten guineas for a pint of peas ! No tatling servants to my table come. My Grace is Silence, and my waiter Dumb. He is not without his aspirations. Could I the priviledge of Peer procure, The rich I'd bully, and oppress the poor. To give is wrong, but it is wronger still, On any terms to />^/y a tradesman's bill. ' As they did those of Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs." "I hate your immense loads of meat . . . extreme disgusting to those who arc in the least acquainted with high life" {Citi-un of the fVcrld, 1762, i. 241). ' The edible or Roman snail [Ile/ix poniatia) is still known to continental cuicines — and gipsy camps. It v-as introduced into England as an epicure's dish in the seventeenth century. ' Young chickens. 36 DE LIBRIS I'd make the insolent Mechanicks stay, And keep my ready-money all for play. I'd try if any pleasure could be found In tossing-up for twenty thousand pound. Had I whole Counties, I to M-^hite's would go, And set lands, woods, and rivers at a throw. But should I. meet with an unlucky run. And at a throw be gloriously undone ; My debts of honour I'd discharge the first, Let all my lawful creditors be curst. Here he perfectly exemplifies that connexion between connoisseurship and play which Fielding discovers in Book xiii. of Tom Jones} An anecdote of C. J. Fox aptly exhibits the final couplet in action, and proves that fifty years later, at least, the same convenient code was in operation. Fox once won about eight thousand pounds at cards. Thereupon an eager creditor promptly presented himself, and pressed for payment. "Impossible, Sir," replied Fox, " I must first discharge my debts of honour." The creditor expostulated. *' Well, Sir, give me your bond," The bond was delivered to Fox, who tore it up and flung the pieces into the fire. " Now, Sir," said he, " my debt to you is a debt of honour," and immediately paid him.^ 1 " But the science of gaming is that which above all others employs their thoughts \i.e, the thoughts of the 'young gentlemen of our times']. These are the studies of their graver hours, while for their amusements they have the vast circle of connoisseurship, painting, music, statuary, and natural philosophy, or rather unnatural^ which deals in the wonderful, and knows nothing of nature, except her monsters and imperfections " (ch. v.). 2 Table Talk of Samuel Rogers [by Dyce], 1856, p. 73. BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE" 37 But we must abridge our levies on Pope's imitator. In Dress the Man of Taste's aim seems to have been to emulate his own footman, and at this point comes in the already quoted reference to velvet " inexpressibles " — (a word which, the reader may be interested to learn, is as old as 1793). His "pleasures," as might be expected, like those of Goldsmith's Switzers, " are but low " — To boon companions I my time would give, With players, pimps, and parasites I'd live. I would with Jockeys from Newmarket dine, And to Rough-riders give my choicest wine. . . My ev'nings all I would with sharpers spend. And make the Thief-catcher ray bosom friend. In Fig, the Prize-fighter, by day delight, And sup with Coliy Cibber ev'ry night. At which point — and probably in his cups — we leave our misguided fine gentleman of 1733, doubt- less a fair sample of many of his class under the second George, and not wholly unknown under that monarch's successors — even to this hour. Le jour va passer ; mats la folic ne passera pas ! A parting quotation may serve to illustrate one of those changes of pronunciation which have taken place in so many Knglish words. Speaking of his villa, or country-box, the Man of Taste says — Pols o'er the door I'll place like Cits balconies. Which Rent/y calls the Gardens of Adonis. 38 DE LIBRIS To make this a peg for a dissertation on the jars of lettuce and fennel grown by the Greeks for the annual Adonis festivals, is needless. But it may be noted that Bramston, with those of his day, — Swift excepted, — scans the " o " in balcony long, a practice which continued far into the nineteenth century. " Contemplate," said Rogers, " is bad enough ; but balc5ny makes me sick." ^ And even in 1857, two years after Rogers's death, the late Frederick Locker, writing of Piccadilly, speaks of " Old Q's " well- known window in that thoroughfare as "Primrose balcony." 1 Table Talk, 1856, p. 248, THE PASSIONATE PRINTER TO HIS LOVE 39 THE PASSIONATE PRINTER TO HIS LOVE [irhose name is Amanda.) With Apologies to the Shade of Christopher Marlowe. Come live with me and be my Dear ; And till that happy bond shall lapse, I'll set your Poutings in Brevier ^'^ Your Praises in the largest CAPS, There's Diamond — 'tis for your Eyes ; There's Ruby — that will match your Lips ; Pearl, for your Teeth ; and Minio?2-srz.c To suit your dainty Finger-tips. In Nonpareil ill put your Face ; In Rubric shall your Blushes rise ; There is no Bourgeois in your Case ; Your Fonn can never need " Revised Your Cheek seems " Ready for the Press " ; Your Laugh as Clarendon is clear ; There's more distinction in your Dress Than in the oldest Elzevir. ' " I'ronounceii Bre-vecr " (I'rinttrs' Vocabulary). 4> 42 DE LIBRIS So with me live, and with me die ; And may no " Finis " e'er intrude To break into mere " Printer's' Pie'' The Type of our Beatitude ! (Erratum. — If my suit you flout, And choose some happier Youth to wed, 'Tis but to cross Amanda out, And read another name instead.) M. ROUOUET ON THE ARTS 43 M. ROUOUET 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 r Academic Roy ale de Peinture is' de Sculpture ; and it is " wiprime 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 fivourable 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 Erench fashion, to the Marquis de Marigny, " Directeur iff Ordonnateur General de ses Ba/ifnens, JardinSy Arts, Academies iff Manufactures " to Lewis 45 46 DE LIBRIS 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-Frangois 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 Gold- smith's philosophic Wanderer — Winter ling'ring chills the lap of May. M. ROUOUET ON THE ARTS 47 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 1 746 ; 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. 48 DE LIBRIS In a brief introduction to this last, the author, hitherto unnamed, is spoken of as " Mr. Rouquet^ connu par ses Outrages d"* KmaiW 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. "^^^ 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 enter- prise 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 hum- bug 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 publica- tion 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 M. ROUQUET ON THE ARTS 49 1745) he had been taken up bv 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 especiallv identified, that " art of creating landscape" — as Walpole happily calls Gardening — which, in this not very "shining period," entered up<3n a fresh development under Bridgcman and William Kent. Although primarily a Londoner, 50 DE LIBRIS 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 Due 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 M. ROUOUET ON THE ARTS 51 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 arc reproduced almost textually from the writer's 52 DE LIBRIS letter of five years earlier on the " March to Finchley." To return, however, to History Painting. Accord- ing to Rouquet, its leading exponent ^ under George the Second was Francis Hay man 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 Mans 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 con- currently 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. ' 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" [Grafs Inn Journal, February 9, 1754). M. ROUOUET ON THE ARTS 53 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, docs M. Rouquet, when he treats of portrait, refer to Hogarth's masterpiece in this kind, the full-length of Captain Coram at the P'oundling. 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 remark- able performances arc, strictly speaking, the history of certain vices, to a foreign eye often a little over- charged, 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 54 DE LIBRIS 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 M. ROUOUET ON THE ARTS 55 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.^ 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 j^8oo 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 ' 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, otlicrs to the right ; and this is the most sensible difference to be observed between tiiem. Moreover, excepting the face, you find in all the same neck, the same arms, the same Resh, the same attitude ; and to tay 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 colour* on the canva* ; but they know not how to animate it" (Letters on t/ie Eitfrlii/i and French Nationt, 1747, i. 160). 56 DE LIBRIS 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." ^ " La peinture a rhuile, C est bien difficile ; Mais cest heaucoup plus beau Que la peinture a V eauT About la peinture a Veau, 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 dis- coveries which he was wise enough to keep to himself. 1 He (lied in 17+9. M. ROUOUET ON THE ARTS 57 ''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 contribu- tions 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, Rvsbrack, 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 con- siderable. 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 ArtSy 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 jlrts to the fact that he had been abused in the already- 58 DE LIBRIS 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 reflec- tions 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 peculi- arities 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 M. ROUQUET ON THE ARTS 59 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 morninnr 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 pur- chase, 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, 'ihere 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 Ouack 6o DE LIBRIS 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 flat- tering : — "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 Bias. 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 Archi- tecture, 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 life- long 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 M. ROUOUET ON THE ARTS 6i " k 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 con- cerning 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 62 DE LIBRIS 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 _^ioo 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 Squanderfield 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 M. ROUOUET ON THE ARTS 63 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 — con- temptuously by the Monthly Review^ and sympathetic- ally 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 oii en Ramequin [toasted cheese], invente pour suivre le louable projet de trouver graduellement des fa^ons de peindre inferieures a celles qui existent. This, as its title imports, is a skit, levelled at the recent Uistoire et Secret de la Peinture en Cire of Diderot, who nevertheless refers to Rouquet under Emails in the Dictionnaire Encyclopedique^ as " un homme habile^ He seems, however (like " /<7 64 DE LIBRIS peinture a Vhuile)^'' 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 over- worked, 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 65 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, rccjuirc elaboration, (^1 68 DE LIBRIS And (unlike eggs) grow fresh by incuba- tion ; 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 Oij THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT One of the things that exercise the dreamer — for, in spite of the reahsts, 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 press- ing 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 mis- laid. 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, Flcetstreet " 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 m t he sun nycornersof wasp-haunted alehouse windows, 7« 72 DE LIBRIS 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 2± the Peacock in th^ ' Pou/trey near Cornhil'" five and twenty years later, — The Pilgrim s Progress from This Worlds to That which is to come^ — why is it that there are only five or six copies, none quite perfect, now extant, of which the best sold not long since for more than ;^I400.^ Of these, the earliest 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 .f' 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 diffi- culty which the writer has experienced in obtaining particulars as to the original 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, disintegrated — THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT 73 sooner 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 Edcre worth'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 Assist- ant ; 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 Mati ; or, the Llonest Boy and the Thief" ; " Lazy Lawrence " ; " Jarleton " ; and " The False Key"; Part II., "The Purple Jar," "The Bracelets," " Mademoiselle Panache," " 1 he Birthdav Present," "Old Poz," and "The Mimic." \n the 74 DE LIBRIS same year, 1796, a second edition appeared, appar- ently 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," " W^ste 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 dis- appeared 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 ot the author were fully alive to her distinctive quaUties. " 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 THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT 75 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, with- out the least approach towards vulgarity or meanness, it is adapted with peculiar felicity to the understand- ings 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 Re- vieiv, 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 improve- ment, but to exercise the best affections of the human heart." With one of the books mentioned by the Monthly Review — Evenings at Home — Miss Kdgeworth 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, "arc printed and 76 DE LIBRIS 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 pubHsher]," 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 pro- duction 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 THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT 77 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 earlv 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 uncom- promising 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." ' I he training she underwent from the Inexorable ' Muria EJgewcrih, by Helen Zimmern, 1888, p. 13. 78 DE LIBRIS 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 diffi- culties 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, ^ 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 ' Of. "Attorney Case" in the story of "Simple Susan." THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT 79 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 subse- quent 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 him- self 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 8o DE LIBRIS to have deferred to his arguments. Nor were these even lost to the public, for w^e 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 Edge worth children in a little theatre erected in the dining-room for the purpose. According to her sisters, it was Miss Edge- worth'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 out- growth 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 any- thing, 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 THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT 8i best answer the purpose. — * Sketch that^ and shew it to we.' — 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.' " 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 " repre- sents " 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 ; " Barrii-ig 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 82 DE LIBRIS actual words of the " Preface "), their art of " keeping alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy."^ 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 every- thing 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. Gruffanuff's husband. But in Miss Edge- ^ The " Preface to Parents " — Miss Emily Lawless suggests to me — was probably by Mr. Edgeworth. THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT 83 worth's little fable there is no fairy agency. " Fairies were not much in her line," says Lady Ritchie, Thackerav's daughter, " but philanthropic manu- facturers, 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." 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 Free- man Family^ being already partly written, although many years were still to pass before it saw the light in I 8 14. 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 storv, whose prejudices against the J'illaintropic 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 84 DE LIBRIS 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, ^^^ ^^'^^ ^^*^ 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 Waver ley Novels^ THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT 85 twenty years before, he had gone so tar 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 -eery 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." ' The reference is to " Simple Susan," the longest and prettiest tale in the Parent's Assistant. 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 Jeiikyns of that story and its /-*/V/(:z£;/V/^-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 ' Lockhart's Life of Sir fValier Scoit, ch. Ixxxi. ad ji'-.tm. 86 DE LIBRIS " green covers " of Dickens. Years later, the assumed narrator of Cranford visits Miss Jenkyns, then falling into senility. She still vaunts The Rambler ; still maunders vaguely of the " strange old book, with the queer name, poor Captain Brovt^n 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 S7 A PLEASANT INVECTIVE AGAINST PRINTING " Flee tro the Prkks, anil dvscllc with sot h fast nesse." — Chaucer, Balade de Bon Cornell. The Press is too much with us, small and great : We are undone ot 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 ! 89 TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 9> GROUP OF CHILDREN, FOR "THE LIBRARY." (From the original pen-drawing.) TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS I. Kate Greenaway In: the world of pictorial recollection there are many territories, the natives of which you may recognise by their characteristics as surely as Ophelia recognises her true-love bv his cockle-hat and sandal shoon. There is the land of grave gestures and courteous inclinations, of dignified leave-takings and decorous greetings ; where the ladies (like Richardson's Pamela) don the most charming round-eared caps and frilled negliges ; where the gentlemen sport ruffles and bag-wigs and spotless silk stockings, and invariably exhibit shapely calves above their silver shoe-buckles ; where you may come in St. James's Park upon a portlv personage with a star, taking an alfresco pinch of snuff after that leisurely style in which a pinch of snuff should be taken, so as not to endanger a lace cravat or a canary-coloured vest ; where you may seat yourself on a bench by Rosamond's Pond in company with a tremulous mask who is evidently expecting the arrival of a 93 94 DE LIBRIS " pretty fellow " ; or happen suddenly, in a secluded side-walk, upon a damsel in muslin and a dark hat, who is hurriedly scrawling a foulet, not without obvious signs of perturbation. But whatever the denizens of this country are doing, they are always elegant and always graceful, always appropriately grouped against their fitting background of high- ceiled rooms and striped hangings, or among the urns and fish-tanks of their sombre-shrubbed gardens. This is the land of Stothard. In the adjoining country there is a larger sense of colour — a fuller pulse of hfe= This is the region of delightful dogs and horses and domestic animals of all sorts ; of crimson-faced hosts and buxom ale-wives ; of the most winsome and black- eyed milkmaids and the most devoted lovers and their lasses ; of the most headlong and horn-blowing huntsmen — a land where Madam Blaize forgathers with the impeccable worthy who caused the death of the Mad Dog ; where John Gilpin takes the Babes in the Wood en croupe ; and the bewitchingest Queen of Hearts coquets the Great Panjandrum himself " with the little round button at top " — a land, in short, of the most kindly and light-hearted fancies, of the freshest and breeziest and healthiest types — which is the land of Caldecott. Finally, there is a third country, a country inhabited almost exclusively by the sweetest little MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 95 child-figures that have ever been invented, in the quaintest and prettiest costumes, always happy, always gravely playful, — and nearly always playing ; always set in the most attractive framework ot flower-knots, or blossoming orchards, or red-rooted cottages with dormer windows. Everywhere there are green fields, and daisies, and daffodils, and pearly skies of spring, in which a kite is often flying. No children are quite like the dwellers in this land ; they are so gentle, so unaffected in their affectation, so easily pleased, so trustful and so confiding. And this is GREENAWAY-land. It is sixty years since Thomas Stothard died, and only fifteen since Randolph Caldecott closed his too brief career.^ And now Kate Greenaway, who loved the art of both, and in her own gentle way possessed something of the qualities of each, has herself passed awav. It will rest with other pens to record her personal characteristics, and to relate the story of her life. I who write this was privileged to know her a little, and to receive from her frequent presents of her books; but I should shrink from anything approaching a description of the quiet, unpretentious, almost homely little lady, whom it was always a pleasure to meet and to talk with. If I here permit myself to recall one or two incidents of our inter- course, it is solely because they bear either upon ' This was written in 190a. 96 DE LIBRIS her amiable disposition or her art. I remember that once, during a country walk In Sussex, she gave me a long account of her childhood, which I wish I could repeat in detail. But I know that she told me that she had been brought up in just such a neigh- bourhood of thatched roofs and " grey old gardens " as she depicts In her drawings ; and that in some of the houses, it was her particular and unfailing delight to turn over ancient chests and wardrobes filled with the flowered frocks and capes of the Jane Austen period. As is well known, she corresponded fre- quently with Ruskin, and possessed numbers of his letters. In his latter years, It had been her practice to write to him periodically — I believe she said once a week. He had long ceased, probably from Ill- health, to answer her letters ; but she continued to write punctually lest he should miss the little budget of chit-chat to which he had grown accustomed. At another time — in a pleasant country-house which contained many examples of her art— and where she was putting the last touches to a delicately tinted child-angel In the margin of a Bible — I ventured to say, "Why do your children always . , .?'' But it is needless to complete the query ; the answer alone is important. She looked at me reflectively, and said, after a pause, " Because I see it so." Answers not dissimilar have been given before by other artists in like case. But it was this rigid -> r '^3 'p PKNCIL-SKKTCHKS liV Miss f.RKKNAWAV (\0. l). MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 97 fidelity to her individual vision and personal con- viction which constituted her strength. There are alwavs stupid, well-meaning busy bodies in the world, who go about making question of the sonneteer why he does not attempt something epic and homicidal, or worrying the carver of cherry-stones to try his hand at a Colossus ; but though they disturb and discompose, they luckily do no material harm. They did no material harm to Kate Greenaway. She yielded, no doubt, to pressure put upon her to try figures on a larger scale ; to illustrate books, which was not her strong point, as it only put fetters upon her fancy ; but, in the main, she courageously pre- served the even tenor ot her way, which was to people the artistic demesne she administered with the tiny figures which no one else could make more captivating, or clothe more adroitly. It may be doubted whether the collector will set much store by Bret Harte's Queen of the Pirate Isle or the Pied Piper of Hiune/in^ suitable at first sight as is the latter, with its child -element, to her inventive idiosyncrasy. But he will revel in the dainty scenes of "Almanacks" (1883 to 1895, and 1897); in the charming Birthday Book of 1880; in Afother Goose^ J Day in a Chilcfs Life^ Little Ann^ Marigold Garden and the rest, (jf which the grace is perennial, though the popularity for the moment may have waned. H 98 DE LIBRIS I have an idea that Mother Goose ; or, the Old Nursery Rhymes, 1881, was one of Miss Greenaway's favourites, although it may have been displaced in her own mind by subsequent successes. Nothing can certainly be more deftly-tinted than the design of the "old woman who lived under a hill," and peeled apples ; nothing more seductive, in infantile attitude, than the little boy and girl, who, with their arms around each other, stand watching the black-cat in the plum-tree. Then there is Daffy-down-dilly, who has come up to town, with " a yellow petticoat and a green gown," in which attire, aided by a straw hat tied under her chin, she manages to look exceedingly attractive, as she passes in front of the white house with the pink roof and the red shutters and the green palings. One of the most beautiful pictures in this gallery is the dear little " Ten-o'-clock Scholar " in his worked smock, as, trailing his blue-and-white school-bag behind him, he creeps unwillingly to his lessons at the most picturesque timbered cottage you can imagine. Another absolutely delightful portrait is that of " Little Tom Tucker," in sky-blue suit and frilled collar, singing, with his hands behind him, as if he never could grow old. And there is not one of these little compositions that is without its charm of colour and accessory — blue plates on the dresser in the background, the parterres of a formal garden with old-fashioned flowers, quaint dwellings with '^^^ ^^'Min^nwTf , f III fl PENCIL-SKETCH BV MISS GREENAWAV (NO. 2). 1j W MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 99 their gates and grass-work, odd corners of country- side and village street, and all, generally, in the clear air or sunlight. For in this favoured Greenawav- realm, as in the island-valley of Avilion, there falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns. To Mother Goose followed A Day in a Child's Life, also 1881, and Little Jnn, 1883. The former ot these contained various songs set to music by Mr, Myles B. Foster, the organist of the Foundling; Hospital, and accompanied by designs on rather a larger scale than those in Mother Goose. It also included a larger proportion of the floral decorations which were among the artist's chief gifts. Foxgloves and buttercups, tulips and roses, are flung about the pages of the book ; and there are many pictures, notably one ot a little green-coated figure perched upon a five-barred gate, which repeat the triumphs of its predecessor. In Little Ann and other Poems^ which is dedicated to the four children of the artist's friend, the late Frederick Locker -Lampson, she illustrated a selection from the verses for " Infant Minds" of Jane and Ann Taylor, daughters of that Isaac Taylor of Ongar, who was first a line engraver and afterwards an Independent Minister.' The ' Since this paper was written, the Original Potms and Others, of Ann and Jane Taylor, with illustrations by F. D. Beilford, ami a most interesting " Introduction " by Mr. E. V. Lucas, have been issued by Messrs. Wells Gardner, Darton and Co. loo DE LIBRIS dedication contains a charming row of tiny portraits of the Locker-Lampson family. These illustrations may seem to contradict what has been said as to Miss Greenaway's abihty to interpret the conceptions of others. But this particular task left her perfectly free to " go her own gait," and to embroider the text which, in this case, was little more than a pretext for her pencil. In Marigold Garden^ 1885, Miss Greenaway became her own poet ; and next to Mother Goose, this is probably her most important effort. The flowers are as entrancing as ever ; and the verse makes one wish that the writer had written more. The "Genteel Family" and "Little Phillis " are excellent nursery pieces ; and there is almost a Blake- like note about " The Sun Door." They saw it rise in the morning, They saw it set at night, And they longed to go and see it, Ah ! if they only might. The little soft white clouds heard them, And stepped from out of the blue ; And each laid a little child softly Upon its bosom of dew. And they carried them higher and higher, And they nothing knew any more, Until they were standing waiting, Tn front of the round gold door. -4. .t^-. .^^ ^' >J,Uii- ip rKNCII, SSFTCHKS HV MISS CRKKNAW A Y (\0. 3). MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS loi And they knocked, and called, and entreated Whoever should be within ; But all to no purpose, for no one Would hearken to let them in. " Lci rime n est -pas riche,^" nor is the technique thoroughly assured ; but the thought is poetical. Here is another, " In an Apple-Tree," which reads like a child variation of that haunting " Mimnermus in Church " of the author of lonica : — In September, when the apples arc red. To Belinda I said, "Would you like to go away To Heaven, or stay Here in this orchard full of trees All your life ? " And she said, " If you please I'll stay here — where I know, And the flowers grow." In another vein is the bright little " Child's Song " :^ The King and the (^)ueen were riding Upon a Summer's day. And a Blackbird flew above them. To hear what they did say. The King said he liked apples, The (,)ucen said she liked pears ; And what shall we do to the Blackbird Who listens unawares? But, as a rule, it must be admitted of her poetry that, while nearly always poetic in its impulse, it is often halting and inarticulate in its expression. I02 DE LIBRIS A few words may be added in regard to the mere facts of Miss Greenaway's career. She was born at I Cavendish Street, Hoxton, on the 17th March, 1846, her father being Mr. John Greenaway, a draughts- man on wood, who contributed much to the earlier issues of the Illustrated London News and Punch. Annual visits to a farm-house at Rolleston in Nottinghamshire — the country residence already re- ferred to — nourished and confirmed her love of nature. Very early she showed a distinct bias towards colour and design of an original kind. She studied at different places, and at South Kensington. Here both she and Lady Butler " would bribe the porter to lock them in when the day's work was done, so that they might labour on for some while more." Her master at Kensington was Richard Burchett, who, forty years ago, was a prominent figure in the art-schools, a well instructed painter, and a teacher exceptionally equipped with all the learning of his craft. Mr. Burchett thought highly of Miss Green- away's abilities ; and she worked under him for several years with exemplary perseverance and industry. She subsequently studied in the Slade School under Professor Legros. Her first essays in the way of design took the form of Christmas cards, then beginning their now somewhat flagging career, and she exhibited pictures at the Dudley Gallery for some years in succession. cr- PKNCIL-SKtTCH BY MISS GREENAWAY (NO. 4). MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 103 beginning with 1868. In 1877 she contributed to the Royal Academy a water colour entitled "Musing," and in 1889 was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. By this date, as will be gathered from what has preceded. Miss Greenaway had made her mark as a producer of children's books, since, in addition to the volumes already specially mentioned, she had issued Under the Window (her earliest success), 'Hie Language of Flowers, Kaie Greenaway s Painting Book, The Book of Games, King Pepito and other works. Her last " Almanack," which was published by Messrs Dent and Co., appeared in 1897. In 1891, the Fine Arts Society exhibited some 150 of her original drawings — an exhibition which was deservedly successful, and was followed by others.^ As Slade Professor at Oxford, Ruskin, always her fervent admirer, gave her unstinted eulogium ; and in France her designs aroused the greatest admiration. The Debats had a leading article on her death ; and the clever author of V Art du Rire, M. Arsene Alexandre, who had already written appreciatively of her gifts as a "-paysagiste^' and as a " maitresse en Wirt du sourire, du joli sourire ' Among other things these exhibitions revealed the great superiority of the original designs to the rcproHiictions with which the public arc tamiliar — excellent as thc»c are in their way. Probably, if Mi;R Grcenaway's work- were now repeated by the latest form of three-colour process, she wouM be lest an " inhrritor " — in iliii rrnpcci — " of unfulfilled renown." I04 DE LIBRIS d' enfant ingenii et gaiement candide^'' devoted a column in the Figaro to her merits. It has been noted that, in her later years, Miss Greenaway's popularity was scarcely maintained. It would perhaps be more exact to say that it some- what fell off with the fickle crowd who follow a reigning fashion, and who unfortunately help to swell the units of a paying community. To the last she gave of her best ; but it is the misfortune of distinctive and original work, that, while the public resents versatility in its favourites, it wearies unreasonably of what had pleased it at first — especially if the note be made tedious by imitation. Miss Greenaway's old vogue was in some measure revived by her too-early death on the 6th November 1901 ; but, in any case, she is sure of attention trom the connoisseur of the future. Those who collect Stothard and Caldecott (and they are many !) cannot afford to neglect either Marigold Garden or Mother Goose} ^ since the above article appeared in the Art yournal, from which it is here substantially reproduced, Messrs. M. H. Spielmann and G. S. Layard have (1905) devoted a sumptuous and exhaustive volume to Miss Greenaway and her art. To this truly beautiful and sympathetic book I can but refer those of her admirers who are not yet acquainted with it. A SONG OF THE GREENAWAY CHILD loS A SONG OF THE GREENAWAY CHILD As I went ii-\valking on Lavender Hill^ O, I met a Darling in frock and frill ; And she looked at me shyly, with eyes of blue, " Are you going a-walking ? Then take me too I " So we strolled to the held where the cowslips grow, And we played — and we played, for an hour or so ; Then we climbed to the top of the old park wall, And the Darling she threaded a cowslip ball. Then we played again, till I said — " My Dear, This pain in my side, it has grown severe ; I ought to have mentioned I'm past three-score, And I tear that I scarcely can play any more ! " But the Darling she answered, — " O no ! O no ! You must play — you must play. — 1 sha'n't let you go! — And I woke with a start and a sigh of despair, And I tound myself safe in my Grandfather's-chair ! 107 TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 109 [ ' li 1 5 ! f i' II f r iTn Iw I » »H Hi'' :v f DTKJt Qrown THE BROWN BOOK-PLATE. (From the original design.) TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS II. Mr Hugh Thomson In virtue of certain gentle and caressing qualities of style, Douglas Jerrold conferred on one of his con- tributors — Miss Eliza Meteyard — the pseudonym of "Silverpen." It is in the silver-pensive key that one would wish to write of Mr. Hugh Thomson'. There is nothing in his work of elemental strife, — of social problem, — of passion torn to tatters. He leads you by no terrihile via, — over no " burning Marie." You cannot conceive him as the illustrator of Paradise Lost, of Dante's Inferno — even of Dorc's Meandering Jew. But when, after turning over some dozens of his designs, you take stock of your impressions, you discover that your memory is packed with pleasant fancies. You have been among " blown fields " and " flowerful closes"; you have passed quaint road- side-inns and picturesque cottages ; you are familiar with the cheery, ever-changing idyll of the highway 1 1 1 112 DE LIBRIS and the bustle of animal life ; with horses that really gallop, and dogs that really bark ; with charming male and female figures in the most attractive old-world attire ; with happy laughter and artless waggeries ; with a hundred intimate details of English domesticity that are pushed just far enough back to lose the hardness of their outline in a softening haze of retrospect. There has been nothing more tragic in your travels than a sprained ankle or an interrupted affair of honour ; nothing more blood-curdling than a dream of a dragoon officer knocked out of his saddle by a brickbat. Your flesh has never been made to creep : but the cockles of your heart have been warmed. Mechanically, you raise your hand to lift away your optimistic spectacles. But they are not there. The optimism is in the pictures. It must be more than a quarter of a century since Mr. Hugh Thomson, arriving from Coleraine in all the ardour of one-and-twenty, invaded the strong- holds of English illustration. He came at a fortunate moment. After a few hesitating and tentative attempts upon the newspapers, he obtained an introduction to Mr. Comyns Carr, then engaged in establishing the English Illustrated Magazine for Messrs. Macmillan. His recommendation was a scrap-book of minutely elaborated designs for Vanity Fair, which he had done (like Reynolds) " out of 5 n £n (3 < ■a' >- > O u O oo ^^^i:^ ^ MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 113 pure idleness." Mr. Carr, then, as always, a dis- criminating critic, with a keen eye to possibilitieSj was not slow to detect, among much artistic recollec- tion, something more than uncertain promise ; and although he had already Randolph Caldecott and Mr. Harry Furniss on his staff, he at once gave Mr, Thomson a commission for the magazine. The earliest picture from his hand which appeared was a fancy representation of the Parade at Bath for a paper in June, 1884, by the late H. D. Traill ; and he also illustrated (in part) papers on Drawing Room Dances, on Cricket (by Mr. Andrew Lang), and on Covent Garden. But graphic and vividly naturalistic as were his pictures of modern life, his native bias towards imaginary eighteenth century subjects (perhaps prompted by boyish studies of Hogarth in the old Dublin Penny Magazine)^ was already abundantly manifest. He promptly drifted into what was eventually to become his first illustrated book, a series of compositions from the Spectator. These were published in 1886 as a little quarto, entitled Days with Sir Roger de Cover ley. It was a "temerarious" task to attempt to revive the types which, from the days of Harrison's Essayists, had occupied so many of the earlier illustrators. But the attempt was fully justified by its success. One has but to glance at the head-piece to the first paper, where Sir Roger and " Mr. Spectator " have 114 DE LIBRIS alighted from the jolthig, springless, heavy- wheeled old coach as the tired horses toil uphill, to recognise at once that here is an artist en pays de connaissance, who may fairly be trusted, in the best sense, to " illustrate " his subject. Whatever one's predilections for previous presentments, it is impossible to resist Sir Roger (young, slim, and handsome), carving the perverse widow's name upon a tree-trunk ; or Sir Roger at bowls, or riding to hounds, or listening — with grave courtesy — to Will Wimble's long-winded and circumstantial account of the taking of the historic jack. Nor is the conception less happy of that amorous fine-gentleman ancestor of the Coverleys who first made love by squeezing the hand ; or of that other Knight of the Shire who so narrowly escaped being killed in the Civil Wars because he was sent out of the field upon a private message, the day before Cromwell's " crowning mercy," — the battle of Worcester. But the varied embodiments of these, and of Mrs. Betty Arable (" the great fortune "), of Ephraim the Quaker, and the rest, are not all. The figures are set in their fitting environment ; they ride their own horses, hallo to their own dogs, and eat and drink in their own dark- panelled rooms that look out on the pleached alleys of their ancient gardens. They live and move in their own passed-away atmosphere of association ; and a faithful effort has moreover been THE 'BALLAD OF BEAU BROCADE ^ND OTHER POEMS \.'\ /^Z,A^"^'i PEN-SKKTCHKS ON THI IIAI.l - 11 I 1.1. OK " IHl. BALLAD UK lUAU HROCADK." MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 115 made to realise each separate scene with strict relation to its text. All of the " Coverley " series came out in the English Illustrated. So also did the designs for the next book, the Coaching Days and Coaching Ways of Mr. Outram Tristram, 1888. Here Mr. Thomson had a topographical collaborator, Mr. Herbert Railton, who did the major part of the very effective drawings in this kind. But Mr. Thomson's con- tributions may fairly be said to have exhausted the " romance " of the road. Inns and inn-yards, hosts and ostlers and chambermaids, stage-coachmen, toll- keepers, mail-coaches struggling in snow-drifts, mail-coaches held up by highwaymen, overturns, elopements, cast shoes, snapped poles, lost linch-pins, — all the episodes and moving accidents of bygone travel on the high road have abundant illustration, till the pages seem almost to reek of the stableyard, or ring with the horn.' And here it may be noted, as a peculiarity of Mr. Thomson's conscientious horse-drawing, that he depicts, not the ideal, but the actual animal. His steeds are not " faultless monsters" like the Dauphin's palfrey in Heyiry the ' SometimM a literary or historical picture creeps into the text. Such are "Swift ami Bolingbrolcc at Bucklcbury " (p. lo) ; "Charles II. recognise.l by the Ostler" (p. 144), and " Barry Lyndon craclct a Bottle" (p. 1 16). Barry LynJcn with it? picaresque note and Irish background, would seem an excellent contribution to the "Cranford" s-ries. Why ilocs not Mr. Thomson try his hand at it > He has illustrated EtmonJ, and the Grrat Hoggarty Diamond. ii6 DE LIBRIS Fifth. They are "all sorts and conditions" of horses ; and — if truth required it — would disclose as many sand-cracks as Rocinante, or as many equine defects (from wind-gall to the botts) as those imputed to that unhappy " Blackberry " sold by the Vicar of Wakefield at Welbridge Fair to Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson. The Vicar of Wakefield — as it happens — was Mr. Thomson's next enterprise ; and it is, in many respects, a most memorable one. It came out in December, 1890, having occupied him for nearly two years. He took exceptional pains to study and realise the several types for himself, and to ensure correctness of costume. From the first introductory procession of the Primrose family at the head of chapter i. to the awkward merriment of the two Miss Flamboroughs at the close, there is scarcely a page which has not some stroke of quiet fun, some graceful attitude, or some ingenious contrivance in composition. Considering that from Wenham's edition of 1780, nearly every illustrator of repute had tried his hand at Goldsmith's masterpiece in fiction, — that he had been attempted without humour by Stothard, without lightness by Mulready,^ — that he had been made comic by Cruikshank, and vulgarised by Rowlandson, — it was certainly to Mr. Thomson's credit that he had approached his task 1 Mulready's illustrations of 1843 are here referred to, not his pictures. ■'Unu/ysw ^et^, ^^?L si:;. ^ - ^^' PEN-SKETCH (TRIPLKT) ON A FLY-LKAK OK " I'l (. UOFI-I Nf.TON." MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 117 with so much refinement, reverence and originality. If the book has a blemish, it is to be mentioned only because the artist, by his later practice, seems to have recognised it himself. For the purposes of process reproduction, the drawings were somewhat loaded and overworked. This was not chargeable against the next volumes to be chronicled. Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford, 1891, and Miss Mitford's Our Village, 1893, are still regarded by many as the artist's happiest efforts. I say " still," because Mr. Thomson is only now in what \'ictor Hugo called the youth of old age (as opposed to the old age of youth) ; and it would be premature to assume that a talent so alert to multiply and diversify its efforts, had already attained the summit of its achievement. But in these two books he had certain unejuestionable advantages. One obviously would be, that his audience were not already preoccupied by former illustrations ; and he was consequently free to invent his own personages and follow his own fertile fancy, without recalling to that implacable and Gorgonising organ, the " Public I'^ye," any earlier pictorial conceptions. Another thing in his favour was, that in either case, the very definite, and not very complex types surrendered themselves readily to artistic embodiment. " It almost illustrated itself," — he toKl an interviewer concerning Cranford ; " the characters were so ii8 DE LIBRIS exquisitely and distinctly realised." Every one has known some like them ; and the delightful Knutsford ladies (for "Cranford" was "Knutsford"), the "Boz"- loving Captain Brown and Mr. Holbrook, Peter and his father, and even Martha the maid, with their mise en scene of card-tables and crackle-china, and pattens and reticules, are part of the memories of our child- hood. The same may be said of Our Village, except that the breath of Nature blows more freely through it than through the quiet Cheshire market-town ; and there is a larger preponderance of those " charm- ing glimpses of rural life " of which Lady Ritchie speaks admiringly in her sympathetic preface. And with regard to the " bits of scenery " — as Mr. Thomson himself calls them — it may be noted that one of the Manchester papers, speaking of Cranford, praised the artist's intimate knowledge of the locality, — a locality he had never seen. Most of his back- grounds were from sketches made on Wimbledon Common, near which — until he moved for a space to the ancient Cinque Port of Seaford in Sussex — he lived for the first years of his London life. Li strict order of time, Mr. Thomson's next important effort should have preceded the books of Miss Mitford and Mrs. Gaskell. The novels of Jane Austen — to which we now come — if not the artist's high-water mark, are certainly remarkable as a tour de force. To contrive some forty page 44' #^ '^v ^>%. KVKLINA AM) IHI URANfJUlOSS. (From Miss Burney's E-vclina.) MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS 119 illustrations for each of Miss Austen's admirable, but — from an illustrator's standpoint — not very palpitat- ing productions, — with a scene usually confined to the dining-room or parlour, — with next to no animals, and with rare opportunities for landscape accessory, — was an "adventure" — in Cervantic phrase — which might well have given pause to a designer ot less fertility and resource. But besides the finrures there was the furniture ; and acute admirers have pointed out that a nice discretion is exhibited in graduating the appointments of Longbourn and Netherfield Park, — of Rosings and Hunsford. But what is per- haps more worthy of remark is the artist's persistent attempt to give individuality, as well as grace, to his dramatis persons. The unspeakable Mr. Collins, Mr. Bennet, the horsy Mr. John Thorpe, Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Norris, the Eltons — are all care- fully discriminated. Nothing can well be better than Mr. Woodhouse, with his " almost immaterial legs" drawn securely out of the range oi a too-fierce fire, chatting placidly to Miss Bates upon the merits of water-gruel ; nothing more in keeping than the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, " in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind " of her indignation, superciliously pausing to patronise the capabilities (A the Longbourn reception rooms. Not less happy is the dumbfounded astonishment of Mrs, Bennet at her toilet, when she hears — to her I20 DE LIBRIS stupefaction — that her daughter Elizabeth is to be mistress of Pemberley and ten thousand a year. This last is a head-piece ; and it may be observed, as an additional difficulty in this group of novels, that, owing to the circumstances of publication, only in one of the books, Pride and Prejudice^ was Mr. Thomson free to decorate the chapters with those ingenious enietes and culs-de-lampe of which he so eminently possesses the secret.^ By this time his reputation had long been firmly established. To the Jane Austen volumes succeeded other numbers of the so-called " Cranford " series, to which, in 1894, Mr. Thomson had already added, under the title of Coridons Song and other Verses^ a fresh ingathering of old-time minstrelsy from the pages of the English Illustrated. Many of the drawings for these, though of necessity reduced for publication in book form, are in his most delightful and winning manner, — notably perhaps (if one must choose !) the martial ballad of that " Captain of Militia, Sir Bilberry Diddle," who — dreamt, Fame reports, that he cut all the throats Of the French as they landed in flat-bottomed boats — or rather were going to land any time during the ^ That eloquence of subsidiary detail, which has had so many exponents in English art from Hogarth onwards, is one of Mr. Thomson's most striking characteristics. The reader will find it exemplified in the beautiful book-plate at page iii, which, by the courtesy of its owner, Mr. Ernest Brown, I am permitted to reproduce. ciiuf^. .x3Vt.-t-y Francisco de Rohles, January 1605) " Para mi sola nacio don (Quixote, y yo para cl." — Ckrvantes. Advents we greet of great and small ; Much we extol that may not live ; Yet to the new-born Type we give No care at all ! This year/ — three centuries past, — by age More maimed than by Lepanto's fight,- This year Cervantes gave to light His matchless page, Whence first outrode th' immortal Pair, — The half-crazed Hero and his hind, — To make sad laughter tor mankind ; And whence thev fare ' I.e. Jiinuary 1905. IJ7 128 DE LIBRIS Throughout all Fiction still, where chance Allies Life's dulness with its dreams — Allies what is, with what but seems, — Fact and Romance : — O Knight of fire and Squire of earth ! — O changing give-and-take betv^een The aim too high, the aim too mean, I hail your birth, — Three centuries past, — in sunburned Spain, And hang, on Time's Pantheon wall, My votive tablet to recall That lasting gain ! THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS 129 K THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS One common grave, according to Garrick, covers the actor and his art. The same may be said of the raconteur. Oral tradition, or even his own writings, may preserve his precise words ; but his pecuHarities of voice or ac^'ion, his tricks of utterance and in- tonation, — all the collateral details which serve to lend distinction or piquancy to the performance — perish irrecoverably. The glorified gramophone of the future may perhaps rectify this for a new genera- tion ; and give us, without mechanical drawback, the authentic accents of speakers dead and gone ; but it can never perpetuate the dramatic accompaniment of gesture and expression. If, as always, there are exceptions to this rule, they are necessarily evanescent. Now and then, it may be, some clever mimic will recall the manner of a passed-away predecessor ; and he may even contrive to hand it on, more or less effectually, to a disciple. But the reproduction is of brief duration ; and it is speedily eff'aced or transformed. '3' 132 DE LIBRIS In this way it is, however, that we get our most satisfactory idea of the once famous table- talker, Samuel Rogers. Charles Dickens, who sent Rogers several of his books ; who dedicated Master Humphrey'' s Clock to him ; and who frequently assisted at the famous breakfasts in St. James's Place, was accustomed — rather cruelly, it may be thought — to take off his host's very characteristic way of telling a story ; and it is, moreover, affirmed by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald ^ that, in the famous Readings, " the strangely obtuse and owl-like expression, and the slow, husky croak " of Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the " Trial from Pickwick,'' were carefully copied from the author of the Pleasures of Memory. That Dickens used thus to amuse his friends is confirmed by the autobiography of the late Frederick Locker,^ who perfectly remembered the old man, to see whom he had been carried, as a boy, by his father. He had also heard Dickens repeat one of Rogers's stock anecdotes (it was that of the duel in a dark room, where the more considerate combatant, firing up the chimney, brings down his adversary) ; ^ — and he speaks of Dickens as mimicking Rogers's " calm, low- pitched, drawling voice and dry biting manner very 1 Recreation: of a Literary Man, 1882, p. 137. 2 My Confidences, by Frederick. Locker-Lampson, 1896, pp. 98 and 325. ■^ The duellists were an Englishman and a Frenchman ; and Rogers was in the habit of adding as a postscript: "When I tell that in Paris, I always put the Englishman up the chimney ! " THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS 133 comically."^ At the same time, it must be remembered that these reminiscences relate to Rogers in his old age. He was over seventy when Dickens published his first book, Sketches by Box \ and, though it is possible that Rogers's voice was always rather sepulchral, and his enunciation unusually deliberate and monotonous, he had nevertheless, as Locker says, " made story-telling a fine art." Continued practice had given him the utmost economy of words ; and as far as brevity and point are concerned, his method left nothing to be desired. Many of his best efforts are still to be found in the volume of Table-Talk edited for Moxon in 1856 by the Rev. Alexander Dyce ; or preferably, as actually written down by Rogers himself in the delightful Recollections issued three years later by his nephew and executor, William Sharpe. But although the two things are often intimately connected, the " books," and not the " stories " of Rogers, are the subject of the present paper. After this, it sounds paradoxical to have to admit that his reputation as a connoisseur far overshadowed his re- putation as a bibliophile. When, in December 1855, he died, his pictures and curios, — his " articles of virtue and bigotry " as a modern Malaprop would have styled them, — attracted far more attention than the not ' It may be added that Mr. Percy Fitzgerah), himself no mean mime, may be lometimct pcriuaded to imitate Dickens imitating Rogers. 134 DE LIBRIS very numerous volumes forming his library,^ What people flocked to see at the tiny treasure-house over- looking the Green Park,^ which its nonagenarian owner had occupied for more than fifty years, were the "Puck" and "Strawberry Girl" of Sir Joshua, the Titians, Giorgiones, and Guidos,^ the Poussins and Claudes, the drawings of Raphael and DUrer and Lucas van Leyden, the cabinet decorated by Stothard, the chimney-piece carved by Flaxman ; the miniatures and bronzes and Etruscan vases, — all the " infinite riches in a little room," which crowded No. 22 from garret to basement. These were the rarities that filled the columns of the papers and the voices of the quidnuncs when in 1856 they came to the hammer. But although the Press of that day takes careful count of these things, it makes little reference to the sale of the "books" of the banker-bard who spent some _^ 1 5,000 on the embeUishments of his Italy and his Poems ; and although Dr. Burney says that Rogers's library included " the best editions of the best authors in most languages," he had clearly no widespread reputation as a book-collector pure and simple. Nevertheless he loved his books, — that is, 1 The prices obtained confirm this. The totalsum realised was ^^45,188 : 14:3. Of this the books represented no more than ^^141 5 : 5. 2 xhis — with its triple range of bow-windows, from one of which Rogers used to watch his favourite sunsets — is now the residence of Lord Northcliffe. * Three of these — the " hloli me tangere " of Titian, Giorgione's " Knight in Armour," and Guide's '■'■ Ecce Homo" — are now in the National Gallery, to which they were bequeathed by Rogers. THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS 135 he loved the books he read. And, as far as can be ascertained, he anticipated the late Master of Balliol, since he read only the books he liked. Nor was he ever diverted from his predilections by mere fashion or novelty. " He followed Bacon's maxim " — says one who knew him — " to read much, not many things : multiim legere, non multa. He used to say, ' When a new book comes out, I read an old one.' " ^ The general Rogers-sale at Christie's took place in the spring ot 1856, and twelve days had been absorbed before the books were reached. Their sale took six days more — i.e. from May 1 2 to May 19. As might be expected from Rogers's traditional position in the literary world, the catalogue contains many presentation copies. What, at first sight, would seem the earliest, is the Works of Edward Moore, 1796, 2 vols. But if this be the fabulist and editor of the World., it can scarcely have been received from the writer, since, in 1796, Moore had been dead for nearly forty years. With Bloomfield's poems of 1802, 1. p., we are on surer ground, for Rogers, like Capel LofFt, had been kind to the author of The Farmer's Boy., and had done his best to obtain him a pension. Another early tribute, subsequently followed by the Tales of the Hall., was Crabbe's Borough, which he sent to Rogers in 18 10, in response to polite overtures ' EJMurgh Refirw, vol. civ. p. 105, by Abraham Hayward, 136 DE LIBRIS made to him by the poet. This was the beginning of a lasting friendship, of no small import to Crabbe, as it at once admitted him to Rogers's circle, an advantage of which there are many traces in Crabbe's journal. Next comes Madame de Stael's much pro- scribed De V Allemagne (the Paris edition) ; and from its date, 18 13, it must have been presented to Rogers when its irrepressible author was in England. She often dined or breakfasted at St. James's Place, where (according to Byron), she out- talked Whitbread, confounded Sir Humphry Davy, and was herself well " ironed'''' ^ by Sheridan. Rogers considered Corinne to be her best novel, and Delphine a terrible falling-ofF. The Germany he found "very fatiguing." "She writes her works four or five times over, correcting them only in that way" — he says. "The end of a chapter [is] always the most obscure, as she ends with an epigram."^ Another early presentation copy is the second edition of Bowles's Missionary , 1815. According to Rogers, who claims to have suggested the poem, it was to have been inscribed to him. But somehow or other, the book got dedicated to * Perhaps a remembrance of Mrs Slipslop's ";Vo«/«g-." ^ Clayden's Rogers and his Contemporaries, 1889, i. 225. As an epigrammatist himself, Rogers might have been more indulgent to a consoeur. Here is one of Madame de Stael's "ends of chapters " : — " LiZ monotonk, dans la retraite, tran- quilUse I'^me ; la monoton'ie, dans le grand monde, fatigue r esprit" (ch. viii.). But he evidently found her rather overpowering. THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS 137 a noble lord who — Rogers adds drily — never, either by word or letter, made any acknowledgment of the homage.^ It is not impossible that there is some contusion of recollection here, or Rogers is misreported by Dyce. The first anonymous edition ot the Alissionary, 18 13, had no dedication; and the second was inscribed to the Marquess of Lansdowne because he had been prominent among those who recognised the merit of its predecessor. Several of Scott's poems, with Rogers's autograph, and Scott's card, appear in the catalogue ; and, in 1 8 12, Byron, who a year after inscribed the Giaour to Rogers, sent him the first two cantos of Childe Harold. In 1838, Moore presents Lalla Rookh, with Heath's plates, a work which, upon its first appearance, twenty years earlier, had been dedicated to Rogers. In 1839 Charles Dickens followed with Nicholas Nickleb)\ succeeded a year later by Alaster Humphrey's Clock (1840-1), also dedicated to Rogers in recognition, not only of his poetical merit, but of his " active sympathy with the poorest and humblest of his kind." Rogers was fond of " Little Nell " ; and in the Preface to Barnahy Rudge^ Dickens gracefully acknowledged that "for a beautiful thought " in the seventy-second chapter of the Old Curiosity Shop^ he was indebted to Rogers's Ginevra in the Italy : — > Tahlt-Talk, 1856, p. 258. 138 DE LIBRIS And long might'st thou have seen An old man wandering as in quest of something. Something he could not find — he knew not what. The American Notes, 1842, was a further offering from Dickens. Among other gifts may be noted Wordsworth's Poems, 1827-35 ; Campbell's Pilgrim of Glencoe, 1 842 ; Longfellow's Ballads and Voices of the Night, 1 840-2 ; Macaulay's Lays and Tennyson's Poems, 1842 ; and lastly, Hazlitt's Criticisms on Art, 1 844, and Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Cromwell, 1846. Brougham's philo- sophical novel of Albert Lunel ; or, the Chateau of Languedoc, 3 vols. 1844, figures in the catalogue as " withdrawn." It had been suppressed " for private reasons " upon the eve of publication ; and this particular copy being annotated by Rogers (to whom it was inscribed) those concerned were no doubt all the more anxious that it should not get abroad. Inspection of the reprint of 1872 shows, however, that want of interest was its chief error. A reviewer of 1858 roundly calls it "feeble" and " commonplace " ; and it could hardly have increased its writer's reputation. Indeed, by some, it was not supposed to be from his Lordship's pen at all. Rogers, it may be added, frequently annotated his books. His copies of Pope, Gray and Scott had many marginalia. Clarke's and Fox's histories of James II. were also works which he decorated in this way. THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS 139 As already hinted, not very many biblio- graphical curiosities are included in the St. James's Place collection ; and to look for Shakespeare quartos or folios, for example, would be idle. Ordinary editions of Shakespeare, such as Johnson's and Theobald's ; Shakespeariana, such as Mrs. Montagu's Essay and Ayscough's hidex^ — these are there of course. If the list also takes in Thomas Caldecott's Hamlet^ and As you like it (1832), that is, first, because the volume is a presentation copy ; and secondly, because Caldecott's colleague in his frustrate enterprise was Crowe, Rogers's Miltonic friend, hereafter mentioned. Rogers's own feeling for Shakespeare was cold and hypercritical ; and he was in the habit of endorsing with emphasis Ben Jonson's aspiration that the master had blotted a good many of his too-facile lines. Nevertheless, it is possible to pick out a few exceptional volumes from Mr. Christie's record. Among the earliest comes a copy of Garth's Dispensmy^ i/OJ? which certainly boasts an illustrious pedigree. Pope, who received it from the author, had carefully corrected it in several places; and in 1744 bequeathed it to Warburton. Warburton, in his turn, handed it on to Mason, from whom it descended to Lord St. Helens, by whom, again, shortly before his death (18 1 5), it was presented to Rogers. 'l"o Pope's corrections, which Garth adopted. Mason had added I40 DE LIBRIS a comment. What made the volume of further interest was, that it contained Lord Dorchester's receipt for his subscription to Pope's Homer ; and, inserted at the end, a full-length portrait of Pope ; viz., that engraved in Warton's edition of 1797, as sketched in pen-and-ink by William Hoare of Bath. Another interesting item is the quarto first edition (the first three books) of Spenser's Faerie (Xueene^ Ponsonbie, 1590: and a third, the Paradise Lost of Milton in ten books, the original text of 1667 (with the 1669 title-page and the Argument and Address to the Reader) — both bequeathed to Rogers by W. Jackson of Edinburgh. (One of the stock exhibits at " Memory Hall " — as 22 St. James's Place was playfully called by some of the owner's friends — was Milton's receipt to Symmons the printer for the five pounds he received for his epic. This, framed and glazed, hung, according to Lady Eastlake, on one of the doors.^) A fourth rare book was William Bonham's black-letter Chaucer, a folio which had been copiously annotated in MS. by Home Tooke, who gave it to Rogers. It more- over contained, at folio 221, the record of Tooke's ^ It was, no doubt, identical with the "Original Articles of Agreement" (Add. MSB. i8,86i) between Milton and Samuel Symmons, printer, dated 27th April, 1667, presented by Rogers in 1852 to the British Museum. Besides the above-mentioned ^5 down, there were to be three further payments of ^^5 each on the sale of three editions, each of 1300 copies. The second edition appeared in 1674, the year of the author's death. THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS 141 arrest at Wimbledon on i6th May, 1794, ^nd subsequent committal on the 19th to the rower, for alleged high treason.^ Further ?ioiabilid in this category were the Duke of Marlborough's Ih'pnero- tomachie of Poliphilus, Paris, 1554, 'ind also the Aldine edition of 1499 ; the very rare 1572 issue of Camoens's Lusiads ; Holbein's Dance of Deaths the Lyons issues of 1538 and 1547 ; first editions of Bewick's Birds and Quadrupeds ; Le Sueur's Life of St. Bruno^ with the autograph of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a rare quarto (15 16) of Boccaccio's Tiecameron. But the mere recapitulation of titles readily grows tedious, even to the elect ; and I turn to some of the volumes with which, from references in the Table-Talk and Recollections^ their owner might seem to be more intimately connected. Foremost among these — one would think — should come his own productions. Most of these, no doubt, are included under the auctioneers' heading of " Works and Illus- trations." In the " Library " proper, however, there ' He was acquitted. His notes, in pencil, and relating chiefly to his Di-veriians cf Purity, were actually written in the Towtr. Rogers, who was present at the trial in November, mentioned, acconling to Dyce, a curious incident bearing upon a now obsolete custom referred to by Goldsmith and others. As usual, the prisoner's dock, in view of possible jail-fever, was strewn with sweet-smelling herbs — fennel, rosemary and the like. Tooke indignantly swept them away. Another of several characteristic anecdotes told by Rogers of Tooke is as follows : — Being asked once at college what his father was, he replied, "A Turkey Merchant." Tooke fiire was a poulterer in Clare Market. 142 DE LIBRIS are few traces of them. There is a quarto copy of the unfortunate Columbus^ with Stothard's sketches ; and there is the choice little Pleasures of Memory of 1810, with Luke Clennell's admirable cuts in facsimile from the same artist's pen-and-ink, — a volume which, come what may, will always hold its own in the annals of book-illustration. That there were more than one of these latter may be an accident. Rogers, nevertheless, like many book- lovers, must have indulged in duplicates. According to Hayward, once at breakfast, when some one quoted Gray's irresponsible outburst concerning the novels of Marivaux and Crebillon le fils^ Rogers asked his guests, three in number, whether they were familiar with Marivaux's Vie de Marianne^ a book which he himself confesses to have read through six times, and which French critics still hold, on inconclusive evidence, to have been the " only begetter " of Richardson's Pamela and the sentimental novel. None of the trio knew anything about it. " Then I will lend you each a copy," rejoined Rogers ; and the volumes were immediately produced, doubtless by that faithful and indefatigable factotum, Edmund Paine, of whom his master was wont to affirm that he would not only find any book in the house, but out of it as well. What is more (unless it be assumed that the poet's stock was larger still), one, at least, of the three copies must have been returned, THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS 143 since there is a copy in the catalogue. As might be expected in the admirer of Marivaux's heroine, the list is also rich in Jean-Jacques, whose '•'■gout vif pour les dejeuners^'' this Amphitryon often extolled, quoting with approval Rousseau's opinion that " C est le temps de la jov.rnee oh nous somtnes le plus tranquil les, oil nous causons le plus a notre aiseJ' Another of his favourite authors was Manzoni, whose Promessi Sposi he was inclined to think he would rather have written than all Scott's novels ; and he never tired of reading Louis Racine's Memoires of his father, 1747, — that '■'■filon de for pur du dix-septieme siecW — as Villemain calls it — " qui se prolonge dans Tage suivanty Some of Rogers's likings sound strange enough nowadays. With Campbell, he delighted in Cowper's Homer, which he assiduously studied, and infinitely preferred to that of Pope. Into Chapman's it must be assumed that he had not looked — certainly he has left no sonnet on the subject. Milton was perhaps his best-loved bard, " When I was travelling in Italy (he says), I made two authors my constant study for versification, — Milton and Crowe." (The italics arc ours.) It is an odd collocation ; but not unintelligible. William Crowe, the now forgotten Public Orator of Oxford, and author of Lewesdon Hill, was an intimate friend ; a writer on versification ; and, last but not least, a very respectable echo of the Miltonic note, as 144 DE LIBRIS the following, from a passage dealing with the loss in 1786 of the Halsewell East Indiaman off the coast of Dorset, sufficiently testifies : — The richliest-laden ship Of spicy Ternate, or that annual sent To the Philippines o'er the southern main From Acapulco, carrying massy gold, Were poor to this ; — freighted with hopeful Youth And Beauty, and high Courage undismay'd By mortal terrors, and paternal Love, etc., etc. It is not improbable that Rogers caught the mould of his blank verse from the copy rather than from the model. In the matter of style — as Flaubert has said — the second-bests are often the better teachers. More is to be learned from La Fontaine and Gautier than from Moliere and Victor Hugo. Many art-books, many books addressed specially to the connoisseur, as well as most of those invalu- able volumes no gentleman's library should be with- out, found their places on Rogers's hospitable shelves. Of such, it is needless to speak ; nor, in this place, is it necessary to deal with his finished and amiable, but not very vigorous or vital poetry. A parting word may, however, be devoted to the poet himself. Although, during his lifetime, and particularly towards its close, his weak voice and singularly blanched appearance exposed him perpetually to a kind of brutal personality now happily tabooed, THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL ROGERS 145 it cannot be pretended that, either in age or youth, he was an attractive-looking man. In these cases, as in that ot Goldsmith, a measure of burlesque sometimes provides a surer criterion than academic portraiture. The bust of the sculptor-caricaturist, Danton, is of course what even Hogarth would have classed as outrc^ ; but there is reason for believing that Maclise's sketch in Fraser of the obtrusively bald, cadaverous and wizened figure in its arm-chair, which gave such a shudder of premonition to Goethe, and which Maginn, reflecting the popular voice, de- clared to be a mortal likeness — " painted to the very death " — was more like the original than his pictures by Lawrence and Hoppner. One can comprehend, too, that the person whom nature had so ungenerously endowed, might be perfectly capable of retorting to rudeness, or the still-smarting recollection of rude- ness, with those weapons of mordant wit and acrid epigram which are not unfrequently the protective compensation of physical shortcomings. But this conceded, there are numberless anecdotes which testify to Rogers's cultivated taste and real good breeding, to his genuine benevolence, to his almost sentimental craving for appreciation and affection. In a paper on his books, it is permissible to end with ' Rogen'i own copy of thii, which (it may be added), he held in horror, now belong* to Mr. Edmund Gosse. Lord Londonderry has a number of Danton's buit«. • L 146 DE LIBRIS a bookish anecdote. One of his favourite memories, much repeated in his latter days, was that of Cowley's laconic Will, — " I give my body to the earth, and my soul to my Maker." Lady Eastlake shall tell the rest : — " This .... proved on one occasion too much for one of the party, and in an incautious moment a flippant young lady exclaimed, ' But, Mr. Rogers, what of Cowley's property ^ ' An ominous silence ensued, broken only by a sotto voce from the late Mrs. Procter : ' Well, my dear, you have put your foot in it ; no more invitations for you in a hurry.' But she did the kind old man, then above ninety, wrong. The culprit continued to receive the same invitations and the same welcome." ^ ^ Sluarterly Re-vieiv, vol. 167, p. 512. PEPYS' "DIARY «47 PEPYS' "DIARY" To One who asked why he wrote it. You ask me what was his intent ? In truth, I'm not a German ; 'Tis plain though that he neither meant A Lecture nor a Sermon. But there it is, — the thing's a Fact. I find no other reason But that some scribbling itch attacked Him in and out of season, To write what no one else should read. With this for second meaning, To "cleanse his bosom" (and indeed It sometimes wanted cleaning) ; To speak, as 'twere, his private mind. Unhindered by repression, To make his motley life a kind Of Midas' ears confession ; 149 I50 DE LIBRIS And thus outgrew this work per se, — This queer, kaleidoscopic, Delightful, blabbing, vivid, free Hotch-pot of daily topic. So artless in its vanity, So fleeting, so eternal, So packed with " poor Humanity " — We know as Pepys, his journal.^ ^ Written for the Pepys Dinner at Magdalene College, Cambridge, February 23rd, 1905. A FRENCH CRITIC ON BATH '5» A FRENCH CRITIC ON BATH Among other pleasant premonitions of the present entente cordiak between France and England is the increased attention which, for some time past, our friends of Outre Manche have been devoting to our literature. That this is wholly of recent growth, is not, of course, to be inferred. It must be nearly five-and-forty years since M. Hippolyte Taine issued his logical and orderly Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise ; while other isolated efforts of insight and importance — such as the Laurence Sterne of M. Paul Stapfer, and the excellent Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au XVIIF Steele of the late M. Alexandre Beljame of the Sorbonne — are already of distant date. But during the last two decades the appearance of similar productions has been more recurrent and more marked. From one eminent writer alone — M. J. -J. Jusserand — we have received an entire series of studies of exceptional charm, variety, and accomplishment. M. Felix Rabbc has given us a sympathetic analysis of Shelley ; M. Auguste Angellier, — himself a poet of individuality >53 154 DE LIBRIS and distinction, — what has been rightly described as a " splendid work " on Burns ; ^ while M. Emile Legouis, in a minute examination of " The Prelude," has contrasted and compared the orthodox Words- worth of maturity with the juvenile semi-atheist of Coleridge. Travelling farther afield, M. W. Thomas has devoted an exhaustive volume to Young of the Night Thoughts ; M. Leon Morel, another to Thomson ; and, incidentally, a flood of fresh light has been thrown upon the birth and growth of the English Novel by the admirable Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les Origines du Cosmopolitisme Litteraire of the late Joseph Texte — an investigation un- questionably of the ripest scholarship, and the most extended research. And now once more there are signs that French lucidity and French precision are about to enter upon other conquests ; and we have M. Barbeau's study of a famous old English watering-place^ — appropriately dedicated, as is another of the books already mentioned, to M. Beljame.^ ^ A volume of Pages Chohies de Auguste Angellier^ Prose et Vers, with an Introduction by M. Legouis, has recently (1908) been issued by the Clarendon Press. It contains lengthy extracts from M. Angellier's study of Burns. 2 Une Ville d' Eaux anglaise au XVIIh Siecle. La Socie'te' Elegante et Litteraire a Bath sous la Reitie Anne et sous les Georges. Par A. Barbeau. Paris, Picard, 1904. ^ The list grows apace. To the above, among others, must now be added M. Rene Huchon's brilliant little essay on Mrs. Montagu, and his elaborate study of Crabbe, to say nothing of M. Jules Derocquigny's Lamb, M. Jules Douady's Hazlitt, and M. Joseph Aynard's Coleridge. A FRENCH CRITIC ON BATH 155 At first sight, topography, even when combined with social sketches, may seem less suited to a foreigner and an outsider than it would be to a resident and a native. In the attitude of the latter to the land in which he lives or has been born, there is always an inherent something of the soil for which even trained powers of comparison, and a special perceptive faculty, are but imperfect substitutes. On the other hand, the visitor from over-sea is, in many respects, better placed for observation than the inhabitant. He enjoys not a little — it has been often said — of the position of posterity. He takes in more at a glance ; he leaves out less ; he is disturbed by no apprehensions of explaining what is obvious, or discovering what is known. As a consequence, he sets down much which, from long familiarity, an indigenous critic would be disposed to discard, although it might not be, in itself, either uninterest- ing or superfluous. And if, instead of dealing with the present and actual, his concern is with history and the past, his external standpoint becomes a strength rather than a weakness. He can survey his subject with a detachment which is wholly favourable to his project ; and he can give it, with less difficulty than another, the advantages of scientific treatment and an artistic setting. Finally, if his theme have definite limits — as for instance an appreciable begin- ning, middle, and end — he must be held to be 156 DE LIBRIS exceptionally fortunate. And this, either from happy guessing, or sheer good luck, is M, Barbeau's case. All these conditions are present in the annals of the once popular pleasure-resort of which he has elected to tell the story. It arose gradually ; it grew through a century of unexampled prosperity ; it sank again to the level of a county-town. If it should ever arise again, — and it is by no means a ville morte, — it will be in an entirely different way. The particu- lar Bath of the eighteenth century — the Bath of Queen Anne and the Georges, of Nash and Fielding and Sheridan, of Anstey and Mrs. Siddons, of Wesley and Lady Huntingdon, of Quin and Gainsborough and Lawrence and a hundred others — is no more. It is a case of Fuit Ilium. It has gone for ever ; and can never be revived in the old circumstances. To borrow an apposite expression from M. Texte, it is an organism whose evolution has accomplished its course. M. Barbeau's task, then, is very definitely mapped-out and circumscribed. But he is far too good a craftsman to do no more than give a mere panorama of that daily Bath programme which King Nash and his dynasty ordained and established. He goes back to the origins ; to the legend of King Lear's leper-father ; to the Diary of the too-much- neglected Celia Fiennes ; to Pepys ^ and Grammont's ' Oddly enough — if M. Barbeau's index is to be trusted, and it is an A FRENCH CRITIC ON BATH 157 Memoirs ; to the days when hapless Catherine of Brasranza, with the baleful " belle Stewart " in her train, made fruitless pilgrimage to Bladud's spring as a remedy against sterility. He sketches, with due acknowledgments to Goldsmith's unique little book, the biography of that archquack, poseur, and very clever organiser, Mr. Richard Nash, the first real Master of the Ceremonies ; and he gives a full account of his followers and successors. He also minutely relates the story of Sheridan's marriage to his beautiful " St. Cecilia," Elizabeth Ann Linley. A separate and very interesting chapter is allotted to Lady Huntingdon and the Methodists, not without levies from the remarkable Spiritual Quixote of that Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, of whom an excellent account was given not long since in Mr. W. H. Hutton's suggestive Burford Papers. Other chapters are occupied with Bath and its belles lettres ; with " Squire Allworthy " of Prior Park and his literary guests, Pope, Warburton, Fielding and his sister, etc. ; with the historic Frascati vase of Lady Miller at Batheaston, which stirred the ridicule of Horace Walpole, and is still, it is said, to be seen in unusually good one, — he makes no reference to Evelyn's visit to Bath. Rut Evelyn went there in June, 1654, bathed in the Cross Bath, criticiscti the "facciata'" of the Abbey Church, complained of the "narrow, uneven and unpleasant streets," and inter-visited wiih the company frequenting the place for health. "Among the rest of the iom this Mr. Edward Peacock, F.S.A., compiled in 1883, for the Index Society, an Index to English-Speaking Students who have graduated at Leyden University ; and at p. 35 appears Fielding, Henricus, Anglus, 16 ' " Men of Letters " Fielding., 1907, Appendix I, 198 DE LIBRIS Mart. 1728, 915 (the last being the column number of the list). This added a month-date, and made Fielding a graduate. Then, two years ago, came yet a third rendering. Mr. A. E. H. Swaen, writing in The Modern Language Review for July 1906, printed the inscription in the Album as follows : " Febr. 16. 1728 : Rectore Johanne Wesselio, Henricus Fielding, Anglus. 20, L." Mr. Swaen construed this to mean that, on the date named (which, it may be observed, is not Mr. Peacock's date), Fielding, " aged twenty, was entered as litterarmn studiosus at Leyden." In this case it would follow that his residence in Holland should have come after February i6th, 1728 ; and Mr. Swaen went on to conjecture that, " as his [Fielding's] first play. Love in Several Masques, was staged at Drury Lane in February, 1728, and his next play, The Temple Beau, was produced in January, 1730, it is not improbable that his residence in Holland filled up the interval or part of it. Did the profits of the play [he proceeded] perhaps cover part of his travelling expenses.^" The new complications imported into the question by this fresh aspect of it, will be at once apparent. Up to 1875 there had been but one Fielding on the Leyden books ; so that all these differing accounts were variations from a single source. In this difficulty, I was fortunate enough to enlist the sympathy of Mr. Frederic Harrison, who most FRESH FACTS ABOUT FIELDING 199 kindly undertook to make inquiries on my behalf at Leyden University itself. In reply to certain definite queries drawn up by me, he obtained from the distinguished scholar and Professor of History, Dr. Pieter Blok, the following authoritative particulars. The exact words in the original Album Academician are: — "16 Martii i'j28 Henricus Fielding, Anglus, annor. 20 Litt. Stud." He was then staying at the " Casteel van Antwerpen " — as related by " A Scotchman in Holland." His name only occurs again in the yearly recensiones under February 22nd, 1729, as "Henricus Fieldingh," when he was domiciled with one Jan Oson, He must consequently have left Leyden before February 8th, 1730, February 8th being the birthday of the University, after which all students have to be annuallv registered. The entry in the Album (as Mr. Swaen affirmed) is an admission entry ; there are no leaving entries. As regards " studying the civilians," Fielding might, in those days, Dr. Blok explains, have had private lessons from the pro- fessors ; but he could not have studied in the University without being on the books. To sum up : After producing Love in Several Masques at Drury Lane, probably on February 12th, 1728,^ Fielding was admitted a " Litt. Stud." at Leyden University on March 16th ; was still there in ' Gcntit, iii. 209. 200 DE LIBRIS February 1729 ; and left before February 8th, 1730. Murphy is therefore at fault in almost every particular. Fielding did not go from Eton to Leyden ; he did not make any recognised study of the civilians, " with remarkable application " or otherwise ; and he did not return to London before he was twenty. But it is by no means improbable that the causa causans or main reason for his coming home was the failure of remittances. Another recently established fact is also more or less connected with " Mur. — " as Johnson called him. In his "Essay" of 1762, he gave a highly-coloured account of Fielding's first marriage, and of the promptitude with which, assisted by yellow liveries and a pack of hounds, he managed to make duck and drake of his wife's little fortune. This account has now been " simply riddled in its details " (as Mr. Saintsbury puts it) by successive biographers, the last destructive critic being the late Sir Leslie Stephen, who plausibly suggested that the " yellow liveries " (not the family liveries, be it noted !) were simply a confused recollection of the fantastic pranks of that other and earlier Beau Fielding (Steele's " Orlando the Fair "), who married the Duchess of Cleveland in 1705, and was also a Justice of the Peace for Westminster. One thing was wanting to the readjustment of the narrative, and that was the precise date of Fielding's marriage to the beautiful FRESH FACTS ABOUT FIELDING 201 Miss Cradock of Salisbury, the original both of Sophia Western and Amelia Booth. By good fortune this has now been ascertained. Lawrence gave the date as 1735 ; and Keightley suggested the spring of that year. This, as Swift would say, was near the mark, although confirmation has been slow in coming. In June 1906, Mr, Thomas S. Bush, of Bath, announced in The Bath Chronicle that the desired information was to be found (not in the Salisbury registers which had been fruitlessly con- sulted, but) at the tiny church of St. Mary, Charl- combe, a secluded parish about one and a half miles north of Bath. Here is the record : — " November y^ 28, 1734. Henry Fielding or y^ Parish of St. James in Bath, Esq., and Charlotte Cradock, of y*" same Parish, spinster, were married by virtue of a licence from y^ Court of Wells." All lovers of Fielding owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Bush, whose researches, in addition, disclosed the fact that Sarah Fielding, the novelist's third sister (as we shall see presently), was buried, not in Bath Abbey, where Dr. John Hoadly raised a memorial to her, but "in y^ entrance of the Chancel [of Charlcombe Church] close to y*" Rector's seat," April 14th, 1768.^ Mr. Bush's revelation, it may be added, was made in ' Sarah FicUling't epitaph in Bath Abbey is often said to have been written by Bishop Benjamin Hoadly. In this case, it must have been anticipatory (like Dr. Primrose's on his Deborah), for the Bishop died in 1761. 202 DE LIBRIS connection with another record of the visits of the novelist to the old Queen of the West, a tablet erected in June 1 906 to Fielding and his sister on the wall of Yew Cottage, now renovated as Widcombe Lodge, Widcombe, Bath, where they once resided. In the last case I have to mention, it is but fair to Murphy to admit that he seems to have been better informed than those who have succeeded him. Richardson writes of being "well acquainted" with four of Fielding's sisters, and both Lawrence and Keightley refer to a Catherine and an Ursula, of whom Keightley, after prolonged enquiries, could obtain no tidings. With the help of Colonel W. F. Prideaux, and the kind offices of Mr. Samuel Martin of the Hammersmith Free Library, this matter has now been set at rest. In 1887 Sir Leslie Stephen had suggested to me that Catherine and Ursula were most probably born at Sharpham Park, before the Fieldings moved to East Stour. This must have been the case, though Keightley had failed to establish it. At all events, Catherine and Ursula must have existed, for they both died in 1750. The Hammer- smith Registers at Fulham record the following burials : — 1750 July 9th, Mrs. Catherine Feilding (sic) 1750 Nov. 1 2th, Mrs. Ursula Fielding 1750 [-1] Feby . 24th, Mrs. Beatrice Fielding 1753 May loth, Louisa, d. of Henry Fielding, Esq. FRESH FACTS ABOUT FIELDING 203 The first three, with Sarah, make up the " Four Worthy Sisters " of the reprehensible author of that " truly coarse-titled Tom Jones,'' concerning which Richardson wrote shudderingly in August 1749 to his young friends, Astraea and Minerva Hill. The final entry relating to Fielding's little daughter, Louisa, born December 3rd, 1752, makes it probable that, in May, 1753, he was staying in the house at Hammersmith, then occupied by his sole surviving sister, Sarah. In the following year (October 8th) he himself died at Lisbon. There is no better short appreciation of his work than Lowell's lapidary lines for the Shire Hall at Taunton, — the epigraph to the bust by Miss Margaret Thomas : He looked on naked nature unashamed, And saw the Sphinx, now bestial, now divine, In change and re-change ; he nor praised nor blamed. But drew her as he saw with fearless line. Did he good service ? God must judge, not we ! Manly he was, and generous and sincere ; English in all, of genius blithely free : Who loves a Man may see his image here. THE HAPPY PRINTER 305 THE HAPPY PRINTER " Hoc est 'vi'vere." — Martial. The Printer's is a happy lot : Alone of all professions, No fateful smudges ever blot His earliest " impressions." The outgrowth of his youthful ken No cold obstruction fetters ; He quickly learns the " types " of men, And all the world of "letters." With " forms " he scorns to compromise ; For him no " rule " has terrors ; The " slips " he makes he can " revise " — They are but " printers' errors." From doubtful questions of the " Press " He wisely holds aloof ; In all polemics, more or less. His argument is " proof." 207 2o8 DE LIBRIS Save in their " case," with High and Low, Small need has he to grapple ! Without dissent he still can go To his accustomed " Chapel." ^ From ills that others scape or shirk, He rarely fails to rally ; For him, his most " composing " work Is labour of the " galley." Though ways be foul, and days are dim, He makes no lamentation ; The primal " fount " of woe to him Is — want of occupation : And when, at last, Time finds him grey With over-close attention, He solves the problem of the day. And gets an Old Age pension. 1 This, derived, it is said, from Caxton's connection with Westminster Abbey, is the name given to the meetings held by printers to consider trade affairs, appeals, etc. (Printers' Vocabulary). CROSS READINGS— AND CALEB WHITEFOORD 209 CROSS READINGS— AND CALEB WHITEFOORD Towards the close of the year 1766 — not many months after the publication of the Vicar of Wakefield — there appeared in Mr. Henry Sampson Woodfall's Public Advertiser^ and other newspapers, a letter addressed "To the Printer," and signed " Papyrius Cursor." The name was a real Roman name ; but in its burlesque applicability to the theme of the communication, it was as felicitous as Thackeray's " Manlius Pennialinus," or that " Apollonius CuRius " from whom Hood fabled to have borrowed the legend of " Lycus the Centaur." The writer of the letter lamented — as others have done before and since — the barren fertility of the news sheets of his day. There was, he contended, some diversion and diversity in card- playing. But as for the papers, the unconnected occurrences and miscellaneous advertisements, the abrupt transitions from article to article, without the slightest con- nection between one paragraph and another — so 211 212 DE LIBRIS overburdened and confused the memory that when one was questioned, it was impossible to give even a tolerable account of what one had read. The mind became a jumble of " politics, religion, picking of pockets, puffs, casualties, deaths, marriages, bankruptcies, preferments, resignations, executions, lottery tickets, India bonds, Scotch pebbles, Canada bills, French chicken gloves, auctioneers, and quack doctors," of all of which, particularly as the pages contained three columns, the bewildered reader could retain little or nothing. (One may perhaps pause for a moment to wonder, seeing that Papyrius could contrive to extract so much mental perplexity from Cowper's " folio of four pages " — he speaks specifically of this form, — what he would have done with Lloyd'' s^ or a modern American Sunday paper !) Coming later to the point of his epistle, he goes on to explain that he has hit upon a method (as to which, be it added, he was not, as he thought, the originator^) of making this heterogeneous mass afford, like cards, a " variety of entertainment." By reading the afore-mentioned three columns horizontally and onwards^ instead of vertically and downwards " in the old trite vulgar way," it was contended that much mirth might observingly be distilled from the most ^ As a matter of fact, he had been anticipated by a paper, No. 49 of " little Harrison's " spurious Tatler, vol. v., where the writer reads a newspaper " in a direct Line" . . . "without Regard to the Distinction of Columns," — which is precisely the proposal of Papyrius. CROSS READINGS 213 unhopeful material, as " blind Chance " frequently brought about the oddest conjunctions, and not seldom compelled sub juga aenea persons and things the most dissimilar and discordant. He then went on to give a number of examples in point, of which we select a few. This was the artless humour of it : — " Yesterday Dr. Jones preached at St. James's, and performed it with ease in less than 16 Minutes." "Their R.H. the Dukes of York and Gloucester were bound over to their good behaviour." "At noon her R.H. the Princess Dowager was married to Mr. Jenkins, an eminent Taylor." " Friday a poor blind man fell into a saw-pit, to which he was conducted by Sir Clement Cottrell." ^ " A certain Commoner will be created a Peer. ISl.B. — No greater reward will be offered." "John Wilkes, Esq., set out for France, being charged with returning from transportation." " Last night a most terrible fire broke out, and the evening concluded with the utmost Festivity." " Yesterday the new Lord Mayor was sworn in, and afterwards toss'd and gored several Persons." "On Tuesday an address was presented j it happily miss'd fire, and the villain made ofi-, when the honour of knighthood was conferred on him to the great joy of that noble family." " Escaped from the New Gaol, Terence M'Dermot. If he will return, he will be kindly received." " Colds caught at this season are The Companion to the Playhouse." ' Master of the Ceremonies. 214 DE LIBRIS " Ready to sail to the West Indies, the Canterbury Flying Machine in one day." " To be sold to the best Bidder, My Seat in Parliament being vacated." *' I have long laboured under a complaint For ready money only." " Notice is hereby given, and no Notice taken." And so forth, fully justifying the writer's motto from Cicero, De Finibus : " Fortuitu Conairsu hoc fieri ^ mirum est.'' It may seem that the mirthful element is not overpowering. But " gentle Dulness ever loves a joke"; and in 1766 this one, in modern parlance, " caught on." " Cross readings " had, moreover, one popular advantage : like the Limericks of Edward Lear, they were easily imitated. What is not so intelligible is, that they seem to have fascinated many people who were assuredly not dull. Even Johnson condescended to commend the aptness of the pseudonym, and to speak of the performance as " ingenious and diverting." Horace Walpole, writing to Montagu in December 1766, professes to have laughed over them till he cried. It was " the newest piece of humour," he declared, " except the Bath Guide [Anstey's], that he had seen of many years " ; and Goldsmith — Goldsmith, who has been charged with want of sympathy for rival humourists — is reported by Northcote to have even gone so far as to say, in a transport of enthusiasm, that " it CROSS READINGS 215 would have given him more pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the works he had ever published of his own," — which, of course, must be classed with " Dr. Minor's " unconsidered speeches. " Bien heureiix " — to use Voltaire's phrase — is he who can laugh much at these things now. As Goldsmith himself would have agreed, the jests of one age are not the jests of another. But it is a little curious that, by one of those freaks of circum- stance, or " fortuitous concourses," there is to-day generally included among the very works of Gold- smith above referred to something which, in the opinion of many, is conjectured to have been really the production of the ingenious compiler of the *' Cross Readings." That compiler was one Caleb Whitefoord, a well-educated Scotch wine-merchant and picture-buyer, whose portrait figures in Wilkie's *' Letter of Introduction." The friend of Benjamin Franklin, who had been his next-door neighbour at Craven Street, he became, in later years, some- thing of a diplomatist, since in 1782-83 he was employed by the Shelburne administration in the Paris negotiation for the Treaty of Versailles. But at the date of the " Cross Readings " he was mainly what Burke, speaking contemptuously of his status as a plenipotentiary, styled a '■'■ diseur de hons mots'' ; and he was for this reason included among those 2i6 DE LIBRIS " most distinguished Wits of the Metropolis," who, following Garrick's lead in 1774, diverted them- selves at the St. James's Coffee-house by composing the epitaphs on Goldsmith which gave rise to the incomparable gallery entitled Retaliation. In the first four editions of that posthumous poem there is no mention of Whitefoord, who, either at, or soon after the first meeting above referred to, had written an epitaph on Goldsmith, two-thirds of which are declared to be " unfit for publication." ^ But when the fourth edition of Retaliation had been printed, an epitaph on Whitefoord was forwarded to the pub- lisher, George Kearsly, by " a friend of the late Doctor Goldsmith," with an intimation that it was a transcript of an original in " the Doctor's own handwriting." " It is a striking proof of Doctor Goldsmith's good-nature," said the sender, glancing, we may suppose, at Whitefoord's performance. " I saw this sheet of paper in the Doctor's room, five or six days before he died ; and, as I had got all the other Epitaphs, I asked him if I might take it. " In truth you may, my Boy (replied he), for it will he of no use to me where J am going''' ^ Hewlns's Whitefoord Papers, 1898, p. xxvii. n., where the first four lines of twelve are given. They run — Noll Goldsmith lies here, as famous for writing As his namesake old Noll was for praying and fighting. In friends he was rich, tho' not loaded with Pelf; He spoke well of them, and thought well of himself. CROSS READINGS 217 The lines — there are twenty-eight of them — speak of Whitefoord as, among other things, a Rare compound of oddity, frolic and fun ! Who relish'd a joke, and rejoic'd in a pun ;^ Whose temper was generous, open, sincere ; A stranger to flatt'ry, a stranger to fear ; Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will, Whose daily ions mots half a column would fill ; A Scotchman, from pride and from prejudice free, A scholar, yet surely no pedant was he. What pity, alas ! that so lib'ral a mind Should so long be to news-paper-essays confin'd ! Who perhaps to the summit of science could soar. Yet content " if the table he set on a roar " ; Whose talents to fill anv station were fit. Yet happy if Woodfall confess'd him a wit. The "servile herd" of "tame imitators" — the " news-paper witlings " and " pert scribbling folks" — were further requested to visit his tomb — To deck it, bring with you festoons of the vine. And copious libations bestow on his shrine ; Then strew all around it (you can do no less) Cross-readings^ Ship-nezus, and Mistakes of the Press. It is not recorded that Kearsly ever saw this in Goldsmith's " own handwriting " ; the sender's name has never been made known ; and — as above observed ' "Mr. W." — says a note to the fifth edition — "is so notorious a punster, that Doctor Goldimith used to say, it was impossible to keep bim company, without being infected with the itch of punning." Yet Johnson endured him, and apparently lilccd him, though he had the additional disqualification of being a North Briton. 2i8 DE LIBRIS — it has been more than suspected that Whitefoord concocted it himself, or procured its concoction. As J. T. Smith points out in Nollekens and his Times, 1828, i. 337-8, Whitefoord was scarcely important enough to deserve a far longer epitaph than those bestowed on Burke and Reynolds ; and Goldsmith, it may be added — as we know in the case of Beattie and Voltaire — was not in the habit of confusing small men with great. Moreover, the lines would (as intimated by the person who sent them to Kearsly) be an extraordinarily generous return for an epitaph " unfit for publication," by which, it is stated, Goldsmith had been greatly disturbed. Prior had his misgivings, particularly in respect to the words attributed to Goldsmith on his death-bed ; and Forster allows that to him the story of the so-called " Postscript " has " a somewhat doubtful look." To which we unhesitatingly say — ditto. Whitefoord, it seems, was in the habit of printing his " Cross Readings " on small single sheets, and circulating them among his friends. " Rainy-Day Smith " had a specimen of these. In one of White- foord's letters he professes to claim that his jeux d' esprit contained more than met the eye. " I have always," he wrote, " endeavour'd to make such changes [of Ministry] a matter of Laughter [rather] than of serious concern to the People, by turning them into horse Races, Ship News, &c., and these CROSS READINGS 219 Pieces have generally succeeded beyond my most sanguine Expectations, altho' they were not season'd with private Scandal or personal Abuse, of which our good neighbours of South Britain are realy too fond." In Debrett's New Foundling Hospital for Wit, new edition, 1784, there are several of his productions, including a letter to Woodfall "On the Errors of the Press," of which the following may serve as a sample : " I have known you turn a matter of hearsay, into a matter of heresy ; Damon into a daemon ; a delicious girl, into a delirious girl ; the comic muse, into a comic mouse ; a Jewish Rabbi, into a Jewish Rabbit ; and when a corre- spondent, lamenting the corruption of the times, exclaimed ' O Meres ! ' you made him cry, ' O Moses ! ' " And here is an extract from another paper which explains the aforegoing reference to " horse Races " : "1763 — Spring Meeting. . . Mr. Wilkes's horse, Liberty, rode by himself, took the lead at starting ; but being pushed hard by Mr. Bishop's black gelding. Privilege, fell down at the Devil's Ditch, and was no where." The "Ship News" is on the same pattern. '•''August 25 [1765] We hear that his Majesty's Ship Newcastle will soon have a new figure-head, the old one being almost worn out." THE SIMPLE LIFE 221 THE SIMPLE LIFE "And 'a babbled of green fields." — Shakespeare-cum-Theobald. When the starlings dot the lawn, Cheerily we rise at dawn ; Cheerily, with blameless cup, Greet the wise world waking up ; — Ah, they little know of this, — They of Megalopolis ! Comes the long, still morning when Work we ply with book and pen ; Then, — the pure air in our lungs, — Then " persuasion tips our tongues " ; Then we write as would, I wis, Men in Megalopolis ! Next (and not a stroke too soon !) Phyllis spreads the meal of noon. Simple, frugal, choicely clean, Gastronomically mean ; — Appetite our entree is, F"ar from Megalopolis ! 223 224 DE LIBRIS Salad in our garden grown, Endive, beetroot, — all our own ; Bread, — we saw it made and how ; Milk and cream, — we know the cow ; Nothing here of " Force " or " Vis " As at Megalopolis ! After, surely, there should be. Somewhere, seats beneath a tree, Where we — twixt the curling rings — Dream of transitory things ; Chiefly of what people miss Drowsed in Megalopolis ! Then, before the sunlight wanes. Comes the lounge along the lanes ; Comes the rocking shallop tied By the reedy river-side ; — Clearer waves the light keel kiss Than by Megalopolis ! So we speed the golden hours In this Hermitage of ours {Hermits we are not, believe ! Every Adam has his Eve, Loved with a serener bliss Than in Megalopolis) : — So — until the shadows fall : Then Good Night say each and all ; THE SIMPLE LIFE 225 Sleep secure from smoke and din, Ouiet Conscience tucks us in ; Ah, thev nothing know of this, — Thev of Megalopolis ! {Thus Urban us to his Wife Babbled oyThe Simple Lite. Then — his glances unawares Lighting on a List of Shares — Gulping all his breakfast down^ Bustled, by the Train, to Town.) THE "UNPARALLELED" PEIRESC 227 THE "UNPARALLELED" PEIRESC To the yet-unenlightened reader — particularly if, with Voltaire, he holds the adjective to be the enemy of the noun — the second word of this title will no doubt seem excessive. Let us therefore hasten to justify it by a passage concerning Peiresc, which should triumphantly vindicate his claim to rank with the "Admirable Crichtons," the " Matchless Orindas," the " Cruel Parthenissas," — and all that illustrious community, whose names, rightly or wrongly, Posterity has decorated with a distinguish- ing epithet. "He sought Books," says his biographer, "not for himself alone, but for any that stood in need of them. He lent an innumerable company, which were never restored ; also he gave a world away ... of which he could hardly hope ever to get the like again ; Which he did when learned men had occasion to use them." Nor was he content with being an ideal lender ; he was also an ideal borrower. " Such Books as he borrowed, being neglected by their owners and ill-bound, he delivered 229 230 DE LIBRIS to his binder to be rectified and beautified, viz., when their subject matter or rarity deserved that cost ; so that having received them ill-bound and ill-favoured he returned them trim and handsome." Neither the magnificent generosity of Mead, nor the princely Sibi et Amicis of Grolier and Bilibald Pirckheimer, can fairly claim to surpass the above, for which reason, it is submitted, Peiresc is fully entitled to the qualification " unparalleled." ^ But there is another circumstance which should commend him to the English reader, and this is, that the EngUsh version of his life by his friend, the mathematician and philosopher Gassendi, is dedicated by its writer, William Rand, " Doctor of Physick," to " the ingenious and learned Gentleman, the worshipful John Evelyn, Esquire," himself a multi- farious collector and book-lover. With his kinsman, Dr. Kapha Rand of Godalming, who was the Wotton medical attendant, William Rand frequently visited W^otton House in the time of Evelyn's father ; and when, in 1656, he was casting about for some one to whom to present the Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentility — as he called his book — Evelyn's foreign 1 Grolier — it should be said — was not behindhand in a royalty of largess which our multimillionaires, seeking fresh pretexts for profusion, might usefully imitate. "I dined" — says a certain Venetian professor — "along with Aldus, his son Manutius, and other learned men, at Grolier's table j after dinner, and just as the dessert had been placed upon the table, our host presented each of liis guests with a pair of gloves tilled with ducats." — Jean Grolier, by W. L. Andrews, 1892, p. 28. THE "UNPARALLELED" PEIRESC 231 travels and literary reputation seemed specially to designate him as the fitting recipient of such a tribute. No one was indeed better calculated to commend the Peireskian attributes to the imitation and emula- tion of the Commonwealth than Mr. Evelyn, then of Depttord. To him accordingly (and to Mrs. Evelyn, whose name is diplomatically linked with that of her husband), the Mirrour is inscribed. Its " Epistle Dedicatory " is dated from Cripplegate, January 30, 1656, which must have meant 1657, since that is the year of publication ; and on March 5 of that year, Evelyn, in the curt and laconic tashion sometimes so exasperating to his admirers, records briefly that " Dr. Rand, a learned physitian, dedicated to me his Version of Gassendus's Vita Peireskii.'' He must, however, have been already well acquainted with the book, or its Latin original, for in a letter of January in the same year he commends it as " a fit Itinerary " to a friend about to travel. " I must believe that when you are in those parts of France you will not pass Beaugensier [Belgentier, Peiresc's birthplace] without a visit ; for certainely, though the Curiosities may be much dispersed since the time of the most noble Peireskius, yet the very genius of that place cannot but infuse admirable thoughts into you. But 1 suppose you carry the Life of that illustrious and incomparable Virtuoso 232 DE LIBRIS always with you."^ Evelyn could never himself have seen Peiresc in the flesh, for at the date of Peiresc's death, twenty years before this letter, he had only just been admitted as a "Fellow-commoner " at Balliol, and had never quitted England. But at the time of his Grand Tour in 1643-46, the fame of the great man can scarcely have faded out, especially in that Academy of the Humoristi at Rome, whose sessions Evelyn had attended, and which, at the instance of Pope Urban VIII., had celebrated Peiresc's obsequies with a special eloge, and a supplementary Panglossia in no fewer than forty languages. Con- cerning these " forty languages," Bayle, as usual, seems a little sceptical. But the attitude of this learned person to Peiresc is grudging and perfunctory, since, while protesting that he could add much to what had been said on the subject by his predecessor Moreri, he confesses that Peiresc has been crowded out of his programme by the congestion of matter following the letter " P " ; and he practically contents himself by referring the curious to the exact and elegant account of Peter Gassendus. Upon Gassendi's life, therefore, as Englished by Rand, though not reproducing Gassendi's Latinised names, it is pro- posed to rely in the following paper.- ^ Letter to Mr. Maddox, January lo, 1657. 2 The Latin title of Gassendi's book is Viri illustris Nicolai Clauriii Fahricii de Peiresc, Senatoris Aijuisextiemis Vila, per Petruni Gasjendum, praepositum Ecclesiae Diniensis [Digne]. Parisiis, 1641, 4to. THE "UNPARALLELED" PEIRESC 233 Nicolas-Claude de Fabri, Seigneur de Peiresc, and sometime Senator of the Parliament of Aix in Provence, came of the ancient stock of the Fabricii of Pisa, who migrated to France in the thirteenth century. He was born on December 1, 1580, at the Chateau of Belgentier, a country house to which his parents had retired from Hyeres during plague. This stood on the river Gapeau, in Var, not very far from Toulon. His father, Raynaud de Fabri, was Councillor of the Court of Aids at Aix : his mother, part of whose dowry was the little seigniory of Peiresc, now in the Dcpartement des Basses-Alpes, one Marguerite de Bompar. She was a lady of " so neat and comely a countenance, and so com- posed," that when Catherine de Mcdicis visited Aix, she was the only person upon whom the Oueen Mother " would vouchsafe to bestow the honour of a Kisse." After exhibiting much conventional precocity as to books, the boy was sent to school, first at St. Maximin, and then at the Jesuits' College at Avignon. Here he applied himself to poetry, Greek, and history, showing a commendable aversion from " plaies and shews," as distracting him from the due " reading and transcribing of all particu- larities " — a course, his biographer considers, not without injury to his health. At fifteen he returned to Aix to study philosophy, and to ju-rfect himself, somewhat against the grain, in the then indispens- 234 DE LIBRIS able arts of dancing, the handling of arms, and the manege. To this period belongs an incident which helped to give the requisite bent to his future career. A coin of the Emperor Arcadius was found at Belgentier, and young Peiresc promptly- identified it by the inscriptions. This made him a numismatologist ; and thenceforward his mind began " to burn like fire in a wood," leading him to collect eagerly not only medals, but all the out- of-the-way objects upon which he could lay hands. After a year of philosophy at the College of Tournon, he returned to Aix to devote himself to law, contriving to combine with this a good deal ot discursive reading and searching after "Coines and other rarities." Then, succeeding to some further studies at Avignon, came, in 1599, the inevitable hunger for Rome and the Grand Tour. This, however, at first took a no more questionable form than a plan for completing his legal education in Italy. Accordingly, in September, accompanied by his younger brother, Palamede, sieur de Valavez (Gassendi's " Valavesius"), and nominally in charge of a Bearnais " Governor " named Fonvives, of both of whom Gassendi says little or nothing, he set out on his Wanderjahre^ making his way by Genoa, Lucca, Florence, Bologna, and Venice, to Padua. Here, in brief space, his insatiable curiosity, extraordinary mental vigour, and pre- THE "UNPARALLELED" PEIRESC 235 cocious acquirements made him notable to the literati, and the Milanese orator, Erycius Puteanus, in a transport ot admiration, declared that he exhibited *' both the blossoms of youth and the fruits of old age." But the chief " guide, philosopher, and friend" he found in Italy was the famous " man of letters," — to employ Isaac d'Israeli's convenient distinction between the promoters and the producers of literature, — John Vincent Pinelli, or Pinellus, of Padua. Pinelli, at this date, had brought together a vast and varied storehouse of books and antiques, which he had been in the habit of treely flinging open to the learned, thus exercising very much what was later to be the selt-imposed function of Peiresc himself. He was now old and near his death ; and he plainly welcomed his energetic young triend as the letiitimatc inheritor of his beneficent traditions, corresponding with him regularJv during his travels, consulting him on every occasion, and furnishing him fully with letters of introduction. Meanwhile Peiresc journeyed from Padua to Rome, transcribing inscriptions and comparing antiques ; measuring Trajan's Column and the Arch of Constantine ; studying Michelangelo and Raphael, and marvelling much at the Hercules and the Laocoon. In the Internal Citv he became acquainted with the great Cardinals Robert Hellarmin aiul Ca;sar Baronius, both of whom he impressed by 236 DE LIBRIS his universal erudition. At Easter, 1600, he went on to Naples and Vesuvius, visiting on the way Cumas and Pausilippus, and following the traces of Cicero and Virgil. At Naples he made friends with Baptista Porta, the physiognomist. Then, after inspecting many objects of interest, including the Duke of Urbino's great library, subsequently trans- ferred to the Vatican, he came once more to Padua, Here, at Pinelli's, he added to his acquaintance Galileo ; and his own namesake, the famous anatomist, Geronimo Fabricio of Acquapendente. In August 1 60 1 Pinelli died, delivering "his Lampe to Peireskius^'''' and " leaving him the successour of his virtues and studies." A year later, Peiresc began to turn his thoughts homeward ; and after resuming assiduously at Montpellier — for ten hours a day — his intermitted legal studies, under Julius Pacio, then as eminent in jurisprudence as the younger Scaliger was in literature, he came back to Aix in December 1603. In the January follow- ing, he took his doctor's degree, deHghting all concerned, in the several " acts " pertaining to that ceremony, by the "large testimony of his Learning." He was now fully qualified to hold the office of Councillor of State or legal adviser to Henry IV. in the Parliament of Provence, for which post the royal patent had already been secured by the voluntary retirement of his uncle, Claude de Fabri. But he THE "UNPARALLELED" PEIRESC 237 was by no means eager to enter upon his parlia- mentary functions; and "having obtained a delay, he applied his mind to more free studies, to court the sweeter and more delightfull Muses, to advance good Arts, and to help, as much as in him lay, all the Promoters of learning." In this view, he refused to marry, preferring to be at liberty to follow his taste, and — like his exemplar, Pinelli — " patronize learned men." In 1605 he went to Paris with his close friend Guillaume du Vair (Varius), lirst President of the Parliament of Provence, and after- wards Garde des Sceaux. Already at Aix, through Du Vair's instrumentality, he had become acquainted with that " tyran des Mots et des Syllabes," Francois de Malherbe, who accompanied them to the capital ; and he was warmlv received at Paris by the King's librarian De Thou,' then composing the liistoria sni Temporis^ who " opened his very heart and Bowels to him " ; by Isaac Casaubon, the sub-librarian, and by others. He busied himself in ransacking every library to which he could gain access ; managed to give points to the keeper of the King's Jewel-house on a matter of medals, and inspected " in a word, all things which were worthy of observation." With the spring of the following year he went to England, where he was introduced to Camden the antiquary, ' .AUo known .15 the Prcsi.lent 2S make a con!i rtniin'icii o( Kvclyn's c-pit.ipli, which says lh:il " hi- livnl in :iii age ol cxtraorilinary Events ami Rt-volulions." Gnusrndi's woriU arc: '■^ Mira htitiiiaic felix teeulu rixoio nolitumut iine querela lixit," 250 DE LIBRIS a pupil of Simon Vouet. Mellan ^ — like Robert Nanteiiil — was an engraver as well as a draughts- man, and this particular plate is reckoned among his finest performances on copper. It shows Peiresc with thin hair straggling from a close skull-cap, and with a ragged, scanty beard. Southern in type, his face, with its aquiline nose, and grave, observant eyes, wears unmistakable signs both of the ill-health and the over-application which shortened his days. The fidelity of the likeness is attested by Rubens, whose only regret is, that it fails to give — what painting rarely can give — that " light of intelligence and of greatness which seemed to him characteristic of his friend's genius." The portrait, in all probability, is an accurate, if not very animated outward semblance of the Procureur-General de la Litter ature in 1637. For his other, or mental likeness, we must go to his friend Gassendi, whose last and most interesting sixth book is filled with personal traits. Some of these, especially as regards Peiresc's bodily infirmities, are too detailed for quotation ; but others, not already anticipated, may be briefiy recalled. In religion he was a Roman Catholic of an unusually tolerant type ; but zealously earnest to make converts, and a scrupulous observer of the ceremonies of his Church. That he was a most devoted son and ^ Mellaii, it may be lemembereil, is the author of that chalcograpliic tour deforce, the Sainte Face, an engraving on one continuous spiral line. THE ''UNPARALLELED" PEIRESC 251 brother, will already have been gathered. Of the other sex he seems to have been somewhat impatient, holding (in those pre-sufFragist days) that one " could hardly get any good thereby," and must be forced "to talk to them only of toies and trifles" — a conclusion possibly aggravated by the fact that he was apparently not too fortunate in his " Mother-in- Law," as Gassendi (or Rand), after the old fashion, styles his father's second wife. He dressed plainly and never wore silk. His chief bodily exercise was walking ; but he was not, like Horace, solibus apius, and always went abroad accompanied by a servant carrying " a hand-Canopy " to ward off inconvenient sun-rays. With Evelyn, he delighted in gardening, and all the adjuncts of that " Purest of Humane pleasures," as flowers, verdure, falling water, and the songs of birds. These last, indeed, he preferred to voices or musical instruments, being accustomed to breed nightingales in his chamber to solace him with their "unpremeditated art," — which, being unpremeditated, he considered less agitating to his fancy and memory than the formal " change of sounds and concords." Cats he was forced to keep, because the mice gnawed his books. He it was who first imported from Persia the Angora, of which he had "a great company" . . . "ash-coloured, dun, and speckled, beautiful to behold." Of dogs he was a fervent lover. 252 DE LIBRIS But his ruling passion was his library and his curiosities. Books engrossed his house everywhere, — on shelves, on tables, on chairs, in " nests " about the floor, alternating freely with busts, manuscripts, vases, fossils, ancient weights and measures, medals, bronzes, and bric-a-brac of all sorts. To the un- initiated it seemed chaos, but to him it was chaos with a clue. Provided — there is much virtue in that "provided" — no one meddled with his posses- sions, he could always find what he wanted, for everything was labelled or docketed or classified after a fashion intelligible enough when rightly understood, but hopeless to the outsider. It is in this environ- ment that we must imagine him prolonging into the small hours his laborious, exact, interminable correspondence with Valavez or Dupuy ; sampling Morocco skins with his binder and factotum, Simon Corberan ; ^ packing up presents of Eau de naffe, distilled from his own orange - flowers ; dispatch- ing duplicate copies of Strada's Emperors and the Mercurius Gallicus to some poorer student ; discussing plants with I'Ecluse, inscriptions with Kircher, and Coptic texts with Saumaisc ; acknow- ledging new marbles from the Levant and newer animals from Africa, or rising stealthily to slip a modest gratuity beneath the pillow of a guest too proud to receive it in any more overt fishion. Or ' Pciicsc was one of ihc employers of the famous Lc Gascon, THE -UNPARALLKT.KD" PEIRESC 25;, we mav suppose him at Belgentier, under a trellis of Spanish jessamine, regaling royally some lull- blown scarlet Cardinal or silk -clad Provencal magnifico ; and then, at nightfall, in his private chamber, retiring to a frugal supper of musk-melons, and an undisturbed talk with his townsman Gassendi concerning the system of Copernicus and the dis- coveries of Galileo. THE LAST PROOF 255 THE LAST PROOF AN EPILOGUE TO ANY BOOK. " Finissons. Mais demaiii. Muse, ct recommencer." — Boileau. " Finis at last — the end, the End, the End ! No more of paragraphs to prune or mend ; No more blue pencil, with its ruthless line, To blot the phrase ' particularly fine ' ; No more of 'slips,' and 'galleys,' and 'revises,' Of words ' transmogrified,' and ' wild surmises ' ; No more of ;7's that masquerade as //'s, No nice perplexities of />'s and y's ; No more mishaps of ante and of pos/, That most mislead when they should help the most ; No more of ' friend ' as ' fiend,' and ' warm ' as ' worm ' ; No more negations where we would affirm ; No more of those mysterious freaks of fate That make us bless when we should execrate ; No more of those last blunders that remain Where we no more can set them right again ; 257 s 258 DE LIBRIS No more apologies for doubtful data ; No more fresh facts that figure as Errata ; No more, in short, O Type, of wayward lore From thy most un-P\en3.n fount — no more ! " So spoke Papyrius. Yet his hand meanwhile Went vaguely seeking for the vacant file. Late stored with long array of notes, but now Bare-wired and barren as a leafless bough ; — And even as he spoke, his mind began Again to scheme, to purpose and to plan. There is no end to Labour 'neath the sun ; There is no end of labouring — but One ; And though we " twitch [or not] our Mantle blue," " To-morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new." GENERAL INDEX 259 GENERAL INDEX N.B. — The titles of articles are in capitals Addison, Joseph, 8, 34 Ad'de et Theodore, 78, 79 Alexandre, Arsene, 103 AlUmagne, De /", Mme. de Stall's, 1 36 Allen, Ralph, 157, 160 Almar.acks, Miss Greenaway's, 97, 103 American Notes, Dickens's, 138 Ami lies Enfants, Berquin's, 76 A MiLTONic Exercise, 191-92 Analysis of Beauty, Hogarth's, 48, 53 Andrew, Sarah, 196 An Epistle to an Editor, 19-21 Angellier, M. Auguste, 153, 154". Anstey, Christopher, 160, 214 A Pleasant Invective against Printing, 89 Arable, Mrs. Betty, 114 Art of Politicks, Bramston's, 26, 27 Arts, M. 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