BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS. • OLIVER CROMWELL. DANIEL DE FOE. SIR RICHARD STEELE. CHARLES CHURCHILL. SAMUEL FOOTE. By JOHN FORSTER. THIRD EDITION. [iJSflVBESITT] JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1860. \Jthe right of Tranjlation is refer^ved.'] %- p*^ LONDON : BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. PREFACE. 46, Montagu Square, September, 18G0. The subjoined remarks were prefixed to tlie last Edition of this work. " Of these Biographical Essays, three have been ' published in the Edinburgh Review, and two in the * Quarterly Revieio ; but all, as they are now printed, * have received careful revision, and, excepting only the ' first, large additions. Not for this should I have pre- ^ sumed, however, to give them a form less dependent, * and more accessible, than that of the distinguished ' periodicals in which they appeared originally. A more * numerous issue of volumes from the press is not among ' the wants of the time. But from the first these Essays ' were independent biographical studies, and not reviews ' in the ordinary sense. Such information and opinions ' as they embodied were their own ; and their design * was to supply, in a compact original form, what it * seemed desirable to possess, but impossible elsewhere * to obtain, upon the particular subjects treated. " The many additions in the present publication are * meant to give to that design greater scope and fullness. ' They are most considerable in the memoirs of Steele ' and FooTE ; and, in the latter more especially, an attempt ' by means of them has been made to render more com- * plete the picture of a series of comic writings, which * are not more remarkable for character and wit than for PREFACE. ' their vivid and humorous presentment of English vices ^ and foibles in the later half of the eighteenth century, ^ but which accidental causes may probably for ever shut ' out from the place they might have claimed to occupy ' in the literature of England. '' To this I have simply now to add that the book has undergone further revision; and that I have embodied h). the memoir of De Foe some facts derived from family papers obtained by me since the last edition appeared, and one letter, hitherto unprinted, written by De Foe himself. I am also able to subjoin, in this place, availing myself of the permission kindly afforded by their possessor, the two additional letters, also original, to which I have referred in that memoir, and which, brief as they are, form no unwelcome contribution to the very few existing specimens of the great writer's correspondence. The remarks at p. 112 will sufficiently explain the allusions in them. Both his correspondent and the Mr. Kogers of whom mention is made, appear to be connected with the business of publishing ; and the special matters in which he desires their agency are his Thoughts on the late Victory, published as his Hymn to Victory, and his Jure Bivino. He had only been a few weeks out of prison when the notes were written, yet already he had been reported (in connection with an article in his Review for which Admiral Rooke had threatened to prosecute him) as flying from his recognizances ; and it is to the latter incident, not to the London Grazette advertisement, he refers in the second note. " S'", — I had yo'' obligeing Letter, for w^^, tho' its now " very Late, I presume to give you my Sincere Thanks. " 1 had Given Mr. Rogers over, and laiew not how PREFACE. V ^' matters were w*'^ him ; supposing lie was marry 'd and " had forgot his friends, or something else was befallen "him. " This made me give you y^ Trouble of a Pcell yester- " day, by the Carryer, in w'^'^ are 50 books, w'^'' you will " find are a few Thoughts on y^ late Yictory : if you " please to Let him have them, or any Friends that '' Desire y™. If they are too many, he may retume " what he mislikes. " I can not Enlarge, but you'l see, by y^ Enclos'd, " what wonderfull Things God is Doeing in y^ World; of " w^^ I could not forbear putting you to y^ Charge, that " you might let our friends have y^ first of it. 'Tis " midnight. I hope you will Excuse y^ hast. " I am, S"-, " Yo"" sincere Friend [and] Serv^ " De Foe. '' Ultim" Aug^ 1704, " Addressed *' To Mr. Sam'^^^ Elisha, "in '' Shrewsbury." " S'', — I have yo^ kind Letter, and had answerd it " sooner but I have been out of Town for above 3 weeks. " What Treatm'^ I have had since I have been abroad, " you will see in y^ Revieio where I have been oblig'd to " vindicate my self by an advertisement ; and had not y« '^ maHce of people reported me fled from justice, w^*^ made " me think it necessary to come up and sho' my self, I " dont kno' but I might have given you a short visit. " I am Grlad to hear you had ye Hymns, and thank " your acceptance of the single one ; but I must owne '' myself sorry Mr. Rogers is leaving you. " I Thank you for yo^' kind proposall ; but tho* I have " a Family Large Enough, would not have my useless " acquaintance Burthensome to my Friends ; Especially '* you, of whom I have been capable to meritt very " Little. " I rejoyce that I shall see you in Town and wish you vi PREFACE. *' a good journey up. I beg y^ favour of you to remind '' Mr. Rogers of Jure DivinOf w^^^ now Draws near " putting forward. " I am, S^ " Yo»- Oblig'd Humble Serv*. DeF. *' Octo¥ 11, 1704." ERRATA. P. 112. The difference of date in the two letters is "a month," not "a year." P. 272. ''Fitzgerald," printed in the running title at top of the page, should be " Fitzpatrick." ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. I. OLIVER CROMWELL. 1599—1658. (From the Edinhurgh Review, Jan. 1856. With Omissions.) 1 — 55. PAGE Notices of Cromwell since the days of Hume .... 1 Cromwell as presented by modern writers — First view of his cha- racter — Defeat and disappointment 2 Second view — Same results from other causes — Traitor to Liberty not Royalty . 3 Third view — Complete type of the Puritan Rebellion . . . 4 Cromwell according to Mr. Carlyle — His temporal and spiritual victories — M. Guizot's version ..... 5 Cromwell's character coloured by Guizot's political experiences — A great and successful but unscrupulous man — Exciter and chastiser of Revolution — Destroyer and architect of Government ......... 6 -"^Causes of his failure — Foundations of his greatness set upon Disorder ......... 7 How a book may be spoiled by translation — Example . . . 8 Style extinguished — Delicacies of utterance destroyed . . 9 Temptation of high-sounding sentences — Meanings and sense translated 10 Intention missed — Subtleties dropped 11 Felicities and infelicities of idiom . . . , . . 12 Parallel passages from Text and Translation — Warning to foreign writers .......... 13 Character of M. Guizot's History — Reflection of his own cha- racter — Influences from recent events . . . . . 14 Early life of M. Guizot — First literary labours — Professor of Modern History at the age of 24 . . . . . 15 His opinions — Writings on Representative Government and the English Revolution— The Three Days . . . . 16 Tiii CONTENTS. Oliver Cromwell. page Guizot's career as Minister — Fall of Frencli monarchy — Dis- likes and calumnies of French republicans . . .17 The Old Republicans of England — Their character and motives 18 Under what conditions a Republic honours and serves humanity — M. Guizot not unjust to English republicanism . . 19 A visit to Mr. John Milton's lodging — Cromwell's personal re- lations with Milton 20 The Republican Council of State — Eminent members — Causes conspiring to its fall 21 Cromwell's seizure of power — Secret of the governing art— In- stinct of the drift of the People . . . . . . 22 Cardinal de Retz and Cromwell — Vane's secret mission to France 23 Ambition with a plan and without — Fixity of men's designs and Uncertainty of their destiny — The interval between . 24 Cromwell's early life — Quiet performance of his duties — Doing thoroughly what he has to do — Picture of him in D' Ewes' s MS 25 His Experience in the Field — Organisation of his Ironsides — Duty of directing and governing men .... 26 Rising to all occasions — Assuming still his natural place — Glory of the country reflected in his 27 Readiness for the hour and no restlessness beyond — The time when one mounts highest . . . . . .28 M. Guizot's imperfect recognition of Religious Element in English Revolution — His view of purely worldly character of Protectorate 29 Oliver Protector — The basis of his government — His plan for a Succession . . , 30 The Protector's real model — The old Hebrew Judges — His piety not statecraft 31 One mind in all his letters — At St. Ives and in Whitehall his tone the same ........ 32 Proofs of a profound sincerity— Equally removed from hypocrisy and fanaticism ......... 33 Toleration of differences in religion — His project of a Synod to bring sects into agreement— Preachei'S of Covenant over- thrown as he had overthrown its Army — Sublime warning to the Presbytery . . . . . . . .34 A scene in Ely Cathedral — Intercession with a Royalist for liberty of conscience . . * 35 Inseparability of Temporal and Spiritual things — Thoughts of a Hero — The same in triumph and in peril . . . .36 After Worcester and before Dunbar— The Pillar of Fire — Ac- counts by Officers of his Household . . . . . 37 A Velasquez portrait in words —General estimate by M. Guizot — Contention with the Parliament 38 Victor in the duel — Cromwell's foreign policy — Light thrown upon it by M. Guizot 39 CONTENTS. ix Oliver Cromicell. page Rivalries of De Retz and Mazarin for Cromweirs favour — His attitude 40 JMazarin no match for Cromwell — Cardinal and Coadjutor out- witted 41 Cromwell's alliances — France and Spain^Why France was pre- ferred 42 Mazarin no match for Oliver — Characteristic presents — Tapestry, wine, and Barbary horses — Pure Cornish tin . . . 43 Ideas of foreign policy — "Whitelock's Embassy to Sweden — The project for a Council of all Protestant Communions . . 44 Execution of the Portuguese Ambassador's brother — Prince of Conde's overtures to Cromwell 45 Seizure of Jamaica — Great Treaty with France —Admiration of young Louis XIV 46 Homage of Foreign Sovereigns — Old Princes and Kings humbled before Cromwell 47 Failure of Parliaments of Protectorate — Cromwell's Major- Generals .48 Comedy of Kingship— Its unwelcome fifth act — Why Protec- torate must close 49 Patronage of literature and learned men — Cromwell's gratitude for Waller's panegyric . . . . . . .50 His enjoyment of cheerful recreation — His pipe and game at crambo — Protectorate Court Circular 51 Alleged domestic infidelities a Royalist slander— Correspondence with his wife — Cromwell's five sons — Information respecting them 52 The school at Felsted — Death-bed of Cromwell — Affecting refer- ence to his eldest son . . . . . . . 53 The Register of Burials in Felsted ])arish church — One memora- ble Entry there 54 * * Vir honorandus " — What might have been if Robert Crom- well had lived 55 II. DANIEL DE FOE. 1661—1731. (From the Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1845. With Additions.) 57 — 158. Charles II. 1661—1685. An example of Things that Ought to have Succeeded — A solitary Life and a solitary Fame 57 Mr. Pepys and his wife in Whitehall Gardens — Sheldon and Cla- rendon presiding over Chui'ch and State . . . . 58 Indulgence to Dissenters in Year of Dutch War — Mr. James Foe of Cripplegate ........ 59 School-days of Daniel Foe— A boxing English boy . . . 60 X CONTENTS. Daniel De Foe. page Educated in English as well as in dead and in foreign Languages —The old 131ind Schoolmaster of Bunhill-fields . . 61 The Popish Plot — Two Memorable Words first heard — Whigs and Tories — Titus Gates 62 Young Daniel's opinions of the Plot — A Protestant Flail . . 63 The Monument carried off by six Frenchmen — Lying like Truth — A Grenius for homely Fiction — Daniel Foe, freeman, liveryman, and hose-factor ....... 64 The Close of Charles IPs reign — Seven eventful years — Visit of William of Orange ....... 65 Russell's execution — Charles the Second toying with his Concu- bines — Death ....... . . QQ James IL 1685—1689. Greetings from Churchmen and Lawyers — Passive Obedience and Infallibility of Kings QQ Landing of Monmouth — Daniel Foe "Out" with the Rebels — Escapes over Sea, and returns, Daniel De Foe . . . 67 James IPs Claim to a Dispensing Power — Character of the King — His overmastering Passion . . . . . .68 De Foe's denunciation of Court time-servers — Dissenters disclaim him 69 Art of thinking and standing Alone — The landing at Torbay — Flight of James — Debates of the Convention — De Foe at Guildhall 70 William IIL 1689—1702. A Prince who could stand Alone — De Foe's Celebrations of William — Hero-worship 71 Marriage — Reverses in Trade — Flight from London . . .72 Writing against the Iniquities of Whitefriars and the Mint — In Bristol — The Sunday Gentleman 73 Essay on Projects — A Tradition of the Landlord of the Red Lion . 74 Reforms suggested in Banking, Public Roads, Insurance, Friendly Societies and Savings Banks, and Treatment of Lunatics . 75 Scenes in London — Treachery on all Sides — Proposed Academy of Letters 76 De Foe's other suggested Reforms — Military College — Abolition of Imprisonment — College for Education of Women — Ar- rangement with Creditors — Subsequent Payments in full . 77 Refuses to leave England — Public Employment — Made Account- ant to Commissioners of Glass Duty — His Works at Til- bury 78 His Sailing-boat on the Thames — The most Unpopular Man in England — The Man who saved England . . . . 79 CONTENTS. xi Daniel Be Foe. page De Foe's Appeal against "William Ill's Assailants — The noblest of Services, Low Rewarded 80 Character of the Great King — Constitutional Government not an easy Problem to Solve 81 His Whig and his Tory Assailants — A Difference — De Foe's early Political Writings 82 Interview between William and De Foe —Personal aspects of the Men 83 Generous Enmity — De Foe and Dryden — Swift's lesson in eating Asparagus 84 Principles of Revolution taking root — Discussion of Moral Ques- tions — De Foe's Essay on the Poor . . . . . 85 Justice's Justice — Occasional Conformity — Offence to Dissenters 86 Condition of the Stage — Charles II's Court too refined for such Plays as Hamlet— Collier and Burnet — De Foe's attack . 87 Fugitive Verses — Mi-. Tutchin's Poem of the Foreigners— The True Born Englishman . . . . . . .88 William's need of Service — Service rendered by De Foe — An Appeal to the Common People . . . . . . 89 Popularity of the True Born Englishman — De Foe sent for to the Palace — A great Question mooted . . . .90 De Foe's famous Letter upon Government — Popular Element in the English Constitution — Original Right and Delegated Power 91 Robert Harley's first beginnings — A Creature of the Revolution — House of Commons tact ... ... 92 Kentish Petition and Legion Memorial — Impeachment of Whig Lords — Jonathan Swift's Pamphlet — De Foe's Scheme for Trade presented to William . . . . . . 93 Death of the King— Mock Mourners — De Foe's real grief . . 94 Anne. 1702—1714. Character of the Queen — Godolphin and Marlborough promoted 95 High Church prospects — A Tantivy Halloo — Bill against Occa- sional Conformity — Whig and Tory Cats . ... 96 Cowardice of Dissenters — Position of De Foe—Sacheverell's Bloody Flag — The Shortest Way with Dissenters published 97 Masterpiece of Serious Irony — Its Effect — Clamour for the Au- thor's name — Folly of Dissenters . . . . .98 Reward offered for Apprehension of De Foe — Proclamation in the London Gazette .... ... 99 Surrenders himself — His Trial at Old Bailey — Attorney- General Harcourt's Speech 100 Verdict of Guilty— Sentenced to Newgate and the Pillory — What the Pillory then was 101 A Hymn to the Hieroglyphic State Machine— De Foe's sentence Carried out, in CornhiU, in Cheapsidj, and at Temple Bar 102 xii CONTENTS. Daniel De Foe. page How the Populace behaved — Punishment turned into Ovation— Pope's ungenerous allusion 103 De Foe in Newgate — Gaol experiences — Restlessness of Martyr- dom 104 Portrait of De Foe — Prison Writings — His Account of the Great Storm . • 105 His opinions as to Literary Copyright — Establishment of his Review .......... 106 Days of Publication — Uninterrupted continuance for Nine Years — Written solely by De Foe 107 Piracies of the Review — Originality of its plan — Subjects dis- cussed in it . . . . . . . . . 108 The Scandalous Club — Wives and Husbands — Essays on Trade — First sprightly runnings of Tatlers and Spectators . .109 De Foe for the Citizen Classes, Steele and Addison for the Wits — Changes in the Government 110 Robert Harley in Office — Ascertaining how far the People will bear — Trimming between parties — Faith in Parliament and the Press — Message to De Foe . . . . .111 Her Majesty interests herself for Mr. De Foe — Release from Newgate — Victory of Blenheim — De Foe's Hymn . . 112 His Letters to Halifax — De Foe sent for — Use of Queen's name . 113 Taken to Court to kiss hands — Jonathan and Harley — Secret Service — Preparations for Travel . . . . .114 Return to England — A General Election — De Foe among the Electors 115 Popularity of his Writings — Fury of his Assailants — De Foe and the Devil at leap frog 116 John Dunton's Tribute — Elections favourable to Whigs — Excite- ment of the High Flyers — Inveteracy against De Foe . . 117 Lord Haversham's attack — De Foe's reply — Works on Trade, Tolei-ation, and the Colonies — His Giving Alms no Charity . 118 His Scheme for better and more humane Regulation of Mad- houses—His Jure Divino . . ... 119 Opinions as to Apparitions — On Spiritual Influences and Commu- nications with Visible World 120 His True History of Mrs. Veal — A Ghost called from the Grave to make a Dull Book sell 121 A gossip upon Death by the Spirit of an Exciseman's housekeeper —Tittle Tattle from the Other World . . • . . 122 Scottish Union — De Foe's interview with the Queen — Appointed Secretai-y to English Commissioners .... 123 De Foe in Scotland — His Eulogy on the Scotch — Histoiy of the Union — Its effects . . 124 Bedchamber Intrigues — Backstairs visits — Abigail Masham sus- ; pended and Robert Harley dismissed . . . .125 CONTENTS. xiii Daniel Be Foe. page Triumph of Duchess of Marlborough — Whig Administration made more Whiggish— Wits at Will's Coffee-house — The Joke against Partridge 126 Swift's attack on De Foe — De Foe's exertions for Men of Letters — Services to the Ministry 127 Interview with Lord Treasurer Godolphin — Gratitude to Harley — Again the High Church Trumpet . . . . . 128 De Foe again attacks both Extremes — His hint to such Impar- tial Writers — Petty Persecutions of him . . . .129 Instances from Luttrell's Diary — Reappearance of Sacheverell — His Impeachment resolved upon . . . . . . 130 Exultation of Harley — Trial of Sacheverell — Overthrow of the Ministry 131 Exit Godolphin and enter Harley — Last Administration of Queen Anne — Swift and the new Lord Treasurer . . . . 132 De Foe sent for — Grounds of his Conditional support stated — Principles of the Revolution ...... 133 Hai'ley's Whig tendencies — Principles and Persons — The Ex- aminer and the Review 134 Reply to Swift — Protest against Personalities in Literature — Courage to Fight a rascal but not to Call him one . .135 De Foe's Appeal against his Assailants — Charge of writing for Place 136 Debtor and Creditor account with Harley's Administration — A wise old Fox and a tamed Badger 137 De Foe's arguments for Free Trade — Opposes the Whig attempt to prohibit Trade with France — Questions on which he opposed the Harley Administration 138 Popish doctrines in English Church — Pamphlets against the Pretender 139 De Foe again thrown into Newgate — Released by Bolingbroke — Close of the Review 140 George I and George II. 1714 — 1731. Fall of Oxford and Bolingbroke — The Whigs fixed in power — • De Foe confuted by the ingenious Mr. Addison — Whig rewards — The reward of De Foe 141 Example of his Life — Type of the great Middle-Class English Character — A question for posterity — The world Without and Within 142 De Foe's last Political Essay — De Foe's Moral and Religious Writings — Family Instructor, Religious Courtship, and History of the Devil 143 Complete Tradesman and Strictures on London Life — Advocates a Metropolitan University, Foundling Hospital, and better System of Police — Attacks Beggars' Opera . . .144 Niched into the Duaciad — Pope's after regrets — Begins to write Fiction in 58th year of his age 145 iv CONTENTS. Daniel De Foe. page Kobinson Crusoe — Type of his own Solitudes and Strange Sur- prising Adventures . . , . . . .146 History of the Plague — Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and Roxana 147 Father of an Illustrious Family — What English Novelists owe to De Foe 148 His Residence at Newington — His Daughters — Mr. Henry Baker 149 A Family Picture — Visit of Enthusiasts from New World . . 150 Proposal for Youngest Daughter — Trouble of De Foe — Dowry he will give her 151 Disputes over Marriage Settlements — A too prudent lover — Pro- perty of De Foe 152 The Marriage — De Foe's Letter on parting with his Daughter . 153 His Son-in-law — His acts of Charity — Sudden Reverse . .154 Affecting Letter to his Printer — Labours, anxieties, and ill-re- quited toil . 155 Unnatural conduct of his Son — Fate of the last Lineal Descend- ant of a (xreat English Writer — A Subscription and its result .......... 156 De Foe's last Letter — Final Message to his Children— Te Deum Laudamus 157 Death of Daniel De Foe 158 in. SIR RICHARD STEELE. 1675—1729. (From the Quarterly Review, 1855. With Additions.) 159 — 253 Fielding's laugh at Tickell's Depreciation of Steele for Addison — Ghosts of the friends 159 The two leading Essayists of England — What Addison foretold — Looking at the same figure when Pleased, and when Angry . 160 Macaulay's character of Steele — Addison's alleged Scorn — Dis- puted—Ordinary source of Disagreement between the friends .......... 161 Swift's testimony to equality of relations between Steele and Addison 162 Steele's own account of their Estrangements — Plunging into the torrent, and Waiting on the brink — Differences of tempera- ment — How Mr. All worthy made enemies . . .163 Addison misrepresented — Poor Dick — Evil effects of Compassion 164 Best way to Cry a man down — Condescensions of praise — Captain Plume and Captain Steele 165 Virtues disguised Vices — Vices disguised Virtues — Opinions of Steele by Pope, Young, and Lady Mary Montagu . .166 CONTENTS. XV Sir Richard Steele. page Each to be judged by himself — No diminution to Steele not to be Addison, nor to Addison not to be Steele . . . . 167 The Levelling circumstance in all characters — Danger of putting it forward — Privacies denied to Public men . . . 168 Depreciation of Steele's genius — Alleged inability to see Conse- quences of his own Project — Appointment of Gazetteer . 169 Macaulay's account of Tatler before Addison joined it — No real worth until then . . . . . . . . .170 The Facts stated — Conclusive evidence from the papers them- selves .......... 171 The First Eighty Tatlers — Their freshness and originality . . 172 Criticism of Shakespeare — Experiences for Life as well as Rules for Taste — Advice to Tragic Poets — Moral Lessons from Books and Plays 173 Steele first raises again the Poet of Paradise — Gallantry and Refinement 174 Deficiencies in Female Education — True and false Accomplish- ments — Eulogy on Lady Elizabeth Hastings . . . . 175 Modes of Dying— A hint for Addison — Characters in Steele's Tatlers — Wags of Wealth — The Chaplain-Postilion — Uses of a Snuff-box — The Pious Freethinker . . . .176 A Shadow of good Intentions — Mrs. Jenny Distaff — Will Dactyle — Senecio — Will Courtly — Sophronius — Jack Dimple . . 177 Sprightly father of the English Essay— At First as to the Last — Enlivening Morality with Wit, and tempering Wit with Morality 178 Getting Wisdom out of Trifles — Bringing Philosophy out of closets and libraries into clubs and coffee-houses . . . . 179 Steele's distinction from other wits and humourists — A some- thing Independent of Authorship — The Man delightful . 180 On Vulgarity — Not the condition in life, but the sentiments in that condition — Insolence of the Wealthy in determining a man's Character by his Circumstances . . . .181 The only true distinctions — Rules of breeding — Entertaining as if a Guest, and Doing good offices as if Receiving them . . 182 Value of Reality beyond Appearance — Taking care Ourselves of our wisdom and virtue — Mistakes of the vain and proud — Folly of asking What the World will Say . . . .183 Same laws for Little and Great — A lesson from the Stage — Pope and Betterton — The actors of our youth . . . 184 Mr. Bickerstaff's visit to Oxford — Macaulay's view of Steele's writings — " A pleasant small Drink " kept too long . 185 Vicissitudes to which Old Reputations are subject — Estimated value of a single Spectator in Sam Johnson's time . . 186 Steele's Fame not to be surrendered even to Macaulay's — Reputa- tions made classical by Time — Their assailants most in peril — Steele's affection for Addison . . . . . 187 xvi CONTENTS. Sir Richard Steele. page Self-depi*eciation — The respect due to a noble Modesty — Question put iu issue by Macaulay 188 A Judgment challenged— Statue flung down, but Features unde- faced— Steele's pathos and refinement of feeling — First pure prose story-teller in the language — Circulating Libraries established 189 A domestic interior painted by Steele— Mr. B's courtship and marriage ......... 190 Mr. B's children — Isaac Bickerstaft's Godson — Married life and Bachelor life 191 Fleeting tenure of This world's happiness — A Death-bed Scene — Affecting Picture . . . . . . .192 Little Novels by Steele — Stories in the Tatler — On Untimely Deaths 193 Character of Addison as Ignotus — Definition of a fine gentleman • — Toleration of one another's faults — Arts of This life made advances to the Next . . . . . .194 Old Dick Reptile— Members of the Trumpet Club . . . 195 Easy Friends — A great necessity to Men of Small Fortunes — Pride in its humbler varieties — An unfading Portrait — An Insignificant Fellow, but exceeding Grracious . . .196 The Professed Wag — Everything seen in its lowest aspect — False applause and false detraction . . . . . 197 On Impudence — On over-easiness in Temper — The crafty old Cit — Tom Spindle — The Shire-lane pastrycook . . .198 Absurdities in Education for the Middle Class — The Country Squire setting up for Man of the Town . . . . . 199 The Censorious Lady of Quality — Married Prudes — Jenny Distaff and her Brother — The Sisters and the pair of Striped Garters — The Cobbler of Ludgate Hill — A hint for Statesmen out of business — Ponderous politician but small philosopher , 200 Maltreatment of Authors — The voyage hazardous, the gains doubtful — Should Privateers have licence to plunder ? . . 201 Character of the Private Soldier — Great Courage and Small Hopes — Anticipation of the Letters of heroes of Alma and Inkermann 202 Steele's kind heart and just philosophy — Actual Experiences — Human habits always changing — Unchanging habits of lesser creatures ........ 203 A Picture of Morning — Touching retrospect .... 204 Earliest Recollection and Earliest Grief 205 Birth and School days of Richard Steele — At the Charter House — His most important Acquisition there .... 205 Friendship with Joseph Addison — Visits to Addison's father, the Dean of Lichfield — At Merton, in Oxford . . . . 206 CONTENTS. xvii Sir Richard Steele. pass A Comedy burnt — Tatler's philosophy in the rough — Enlists in the Guards — Becomes Captain Steele . . . .207 Writes the Christian Hero — Growing conscious of his powers 208 Objects of his book — Inadequacy of Heathen Morality — Putting life Oflf till to-morrow — Not living Now — Characters of Heathen Antiquity — A contrast from the Bible . . . 209 The Sermon on the Mount — Inattention to its teaching — Fore- shadowing of the Tatler — Not Author but Companion . 210 Dedication to Lord Cutts — Exit Soldier, Enter Wit— With Con- greve at the St. James's Coffee-house . . . . 211 His first Comedy — Success of the Funeral — The ungrateful undertaker's 'man — The more he gets, the gladder he looks — Addison's return from Italy — The Kit-Katt Club . 212 Noctes Coenseque Deorum — Addison's Conversation — Steele's happy Criticism of plays and actors — Comparisons of Cibber and Wilkes, of Bullock and Penkethman . . . . 213 The Tender Husband played — Addison contributes to it — Writes the Prologue and receives the Dedication . . . .214 Whig Prospects brightening — Literattire taking a stronger tone — Men of Letters sought out by Ministers , . . . 215 A Scene in St. James's Coffee-house— A Clergyman of remark- able appearance — Encounter with a booted Squire - .216 Introduction of Steele and Addison to Swift — Charles Fox's theory about him — Addison's eulogy upon him — His won- derful Social Charm . . . . . . ..217 The Triumvirate — Addison's Rosamund, and its failure — Steele's Lying Lover, its Catastrophe and the cause thereof — Harley makes Steele Gazetteer — Addison Under-Secretary . .218 Harley quits ofl&ce — Early death of Steele's first wife — Marries again — Correspondence with second wife — 400 Private letters made Public 219 Domestic Revelations — Courting days — The lady's jealousy of Addison 220 Settlements at the Marriage — Income over-estimated — Town and country houses — Addison's loan of a thousand pounds — Repaid and renewed — Establishment at Hampton Court . 221 Large expenses and Small needs — Jacob TouEon discounting a bill — Days and Nights with Addison 222 Letters to Prue — Domestic attentions and troubles — Character of Mrs. Richard Steele— A first year of Wedded Life . . 223 Penalty of not conforming to common habits — A husband's excuses — Hours and Minutes of absence accounted for — As many letters as posts in the day 224 Unabashed Sir Bashful — Caprices of Prue — Unfounded com- plaints — Drawbacks from Beauty ... . 225 Differences pushed into quarrels — A peevish beauty rebuked — What a woman's Glory should be — Domestic explosion — Mrs. Steele's contrition . . . . . . ^ 226 h xvifi CONTENTS. Sir Richard Steele. page The wits at Halifax's — Drinking to Prue and her school-fellow — Intimacies with Swift — The joke against Partridge — Mr. Isaac Bickerstaflf 227 The joke kept up — Confusion and troubles of Mr. Partridge — Steele's distress — An Execution for rent .... 228 Addison appointed Irish Secretary — Steele a candidate for office — Farewell supper — Godfather Addison . . . . 229 First Number of the Tatler — Swift probably in the secret — Addison not consulted — Mode of publication — Postage . 230 Extraordinary popularity — Accounted for by Gay — Not Sub- serving the vices, but Correcting them — Diffusing the Graces of Literature — Bitter drop in the cup . . . 231 Weakness of Ministry — Eeturn of Addison — Whig anxieties to secure Swift 232 The Sacheverell trial — Whigs falling — Steele made Commissioner of Stamps — Warnings disregarded — Swift in London — Harley and St. John in Office — The Gazette taken from Steele 233 Swift leaves the Whigs — Keeps up intercourse with Whig friends — Officiates at Christening at St. James's Coffee-house — Requested by Harley not to write for Steele , . . 234 Last Number of the Tatler — Steele's interview with Harley — First Number of the Spectator 235 Swift's opinion of Spectator — Steele's Sketches for the Coverley Papers 236 Equal participation with Addison — The Editorship — Traditions of the Printing Office 237 Steele's leading papers particularised — Suggestion of the Jealous Wife— Dick Eastcourt 238 Wonderful Success — Sale of the Numbers — Effect of Boling- broke's Stamp — Last Number of Spectator— First Number of Guardian — Mr. Pope contributes 239 Steele's quarrel with Swift — Handsome retort — Steele's dispute about Things — Swift's about Persons .... 240 Steele surrenders Commissionership of Stamps and enters House of Commons — Publication of the Crisis . . . . 241 Steele's Defence at Bar of the House — Expelled from the House — Death of the Queen— Fall of Oxford and Bolingbroke — Whig appointments 242 Steele's office in the Theatre Royal — Gratitude of the Players — Politicians less grateful — Member for Boroughbridge . . 243 Oratory in the House of Commons — Steele characterises it — Views of public questions — Opposition to High Church party . . . 244 Conduct in the House — On Schism Bill — Toleration to Catholics — Mercy to Jacobites — South Sea Scheme — Walpole's propo- sition on the Debt — Sunderland's Peerage Bill — Deprived of his Drury Lane appointment . . . . . . 245 CONTENTS. Sir Richard Steele. Complaint to his wife — Interceding for South Sea Directors — Dull Mr. William Whiston 246 Treatment of Steele by the Whigs — Service in times of Danger forgotten — Apologue of Husbandman and Bridge . . . 247 Everyone^s Friend but his own — Social Impressions against Moral Resolutions — No Example of Improvidence for others 248 Bishop Hoadly — At a Whig Festivity with Steele — Visiting at Blenheim — Amateur play — Stories of Steele told to John- son — A Pamphlet written for a Dinner . . . . 249 Bailiffs in Livery — Addison's Enforcement of Steele's Bond — Probable explanation — Improbable suggestions — Entertain- ment in York Buildings 250 Addison Secretary of State — Steele dining with him — Appointed Commissioner of Scotch Forfeited Estates — His later mar- ried life — Boys and Girls — Alternate Sunshine and Storm with Prue — Mistress Moll and Madam Betty, Eugene and Dick 251 Last letters to Prue— Her death — His Later public life — Comedy of the Conscious Lovers — Difference with Addison . . 252 A Summer's Evening Scene in Wales — Steele in his Invalid Chair— Death 253 IV. CHARLES CHURCHILL. 1731—1764. (From the Edinburgh Review, January 1845. With Additions.) 265 — 328. An Editor's bad example — Tendency of remarks on Individuals — Too much either of blame or praise 255 Editorial Deficiencies — Dead hand at a Life, and not Lively at a Note — Dr. Brown and Jeremy Bentham — Dr. Francklin's Sophocles 256 Ambition of a young Solicitor to Edit a Satirist — A worthy Task ill-done — Unfortunate Criticism . . . . .257 Editorial blunders — Garth and his friend Codrington — The two Doctors William King — The two Bishops Parker — Grave correction of a Joke by Addison — Tom Davies and T. Davis — Premature putting to death of Churchill's brother John . 258 Self-Contradictions — Curacy in Wales — Failure in trade — Re- pulse at Oxford — Admiration for Croly . . . . 259 Contempt for Wordsworths and Coleridges — Attacks upon Noble Authors — Elegant extracts 260 Charles Churchill bom —Two races of men — Dryden's Cromwell and Shaftesbury, Churchill's Wilkes and Sandwich — Churchill's Father — Designs him for the Church . . . 261 b 2 XX CONTENTS. Charles Churchill. page Places him at Westminster — The Masters there— School-days and School -fellows — Stands by Cowper now, and Cowper after- wards by him — Colman, Cumberland, and Warren Hast- ings . . • 262 Small poets at Westminster — Taggers of verse increasing and multiplying — A Poetical Murrain — A Profession ill-chosen 263 Honours at School — Imprudent Marriage — Rejection at Oxford — Domestic disagreements 264 Entered at Trinity in Cambridge — Qualifying for Orders — Visit to London — Ordained 265 Curate of Rainham — Forty Pounds a-year — Opens a school — Death of his father — Elected Curate of St. John's in West- minster — Teaching in a Lady's Boarding School . . . 266 In the Pulpit — Ill-success — His own admissions— His heart never with his profession 267 His Character consistent with Itself — Alleged contradictions dis- puted — Churchill's claim to fairer judgments . . . 268 Wish to leave the Church — Early temptations revived — Old School-fellows established as Town wits — Result of ill-con- considered Marriage — Ruin impending — A Friendly Hand stretched forth 269 Determines to embark in Literature — The Bard and The Con- clave rejected by booksellers — Both destroyed — The Rosciad completed — Booksellers will not have it — Publishes it him- self—A great Hit 270 The Town startled — Example of Churchill's power — A Character without a Name 271 Full length of a Fribble — Fitzpatrick — Lawyer Wedderburne . 272 Pictures of Players — Yates, Sparks, Smith, Ross, and Mossop 273 Barry, and Quin 274 Havard and Davies — David Garrick— The Chair assigned to him 275 Satire a looking-glass for reflection of all faces but our own — Players running about like Stricken Deer — Grieving for their friends, not for themselves — The universal question Who is he? — Answered by the Critical Reviewers . . 276 Churchill criticises his Critics — His Apology — Depreciation of the Stage — Smollett fiercely attacked— Garrick rudely warned . . 277 Description of the Strollers — Imitated by Crabbe . . .278 Garrick's fright— Smollett's disclaimer of Attack on Churchill — Garrick's request for Lloyd's intercession — Manager and Poet reconciled 279 Warburton's allusion to the Rosciad— Garrick's brethren of the Stage — Attacks on the Satirist — Anti-Rosciads, Trium- virates, Examiners, and Churchilliads — Scene in Bedford Coffee-house 280 Foote's Lampoon — Murphy's Ode— Churchill's seat in the Drury CONTENTS. xxi Charles Churchill. page Lane pit— Watched from the Stage by the actors— Fright ofTomDavies 281 Pope's precautions against his Victims — Contrasted with Chnrchill's — Personal Bravado — War with the Hypocrisies carried too far 282 Remonstrances of Dean Pearce and Churchill's replies — Pa- rishioners remonstrate, and he resigns his living — Generous uses of newly acquired wealth 283 Epistle to Lloyd — Armstrong's attack in Day — Churchill's answer in Night — Allusion to Pitt 284 Wilkes seeks Churchill — Character and Antecedents — Alliance Offensive and Defensive — Violent Party-Spirit reawakened 285 Bute a Privy Councillor — Court Practices and Intrigues — Tamperings with Elections 286 Prospects and Requisites for a Demagogue — Compact between Wilkes and Churchill — Honesty of it on the poet's side — Medmenham Abbey Scandals 287 Excuses and disadvantages of a Satirist — Evil influences of the Time — Churchill's claims to Respect . . . .288 Morality of his Satire — Contrast with Hanbury Williams's Inde- cencies and Lampoons — New fashions in Verse — Durability of the Old 289 Publication of First Book of the Ghost — Poetical Tristram Shandy — Poet-laureate Whitehead's fine-gentleman airs . 290 Comparative Failure in eight-syllable verse — Constantly recur- ring necessity of rhyme — Tends to diffuseness — More suc- cessful in Duellist — Piqued by a Subject — Bishop War- bui-ton 291 Tribunes of the People — Doings of the Court — Pitt turned out, and Bute Prime-Minister — Dashwood a Minister and Bubb Dodington a Lord 292 The Briton established by Bute— The North Briton established by WUkes— A Match to a Train 293 Churchill helps in the Explosion — Satirises the Scotch in the Prophecy of Famine — Whig raptures . . . .294 Tory terrors — Exultation of the Satirist — A fresh Plague for the Scotch — Tributes to the New Poem . . . . 295 Its witty and masterly exaggerations — Resemblances to Dryden and Marvel . .296 The Highland Lass and her Lover — A Starved Scene — The Cave of Famine ......... 297 Ingenuity of Praise — Supposing what is Not Prose to be Poetry — Sudden Popularity — Recommended to return to Church — Benefices in Prospect 298 Manly self-assertion— Above temptation — Not lacking prefer- ment — Dislike of the Aristocracy ... . . 299 xxii CONTENTS. Charles Churchill. page Horace Walpole's picture of him — Private life — Fierce Extremes — Resignation of Bute — Sandwich and Halifax in office . 300 No. 45 of North Briton— General Warrants for arrest of Wilkes and Churchill — Great questions arising out of them — Wilkes's arrest and Churchill's escape 301 The Trial before Chief Justice Pratt— Hogarth in the Court sketching Wilkes — Publishes his Caricature — Anger of Churchill . . ■ 302 The Epistle to Hogarth — Heavy hitting — Unpublished Letter of ChurchiU 303 Character of the Epistle — The Man savagely attacked, but the Genius spared — Tribute to Hogarth's greatness , . 304 Garrick's opinion — Lord Bath's — General excitement — Hogarth's Rejoinder — Print of Churchill as the Bear . . . , 305 Churchill meditates further attack — Refrains on a lady's sug- gestion — Reconciliation with Hogarth prevented by death — Churchill's Mistress — Origin of the Connection — Walpole's account, and Southey's 306 Churchill's expressions of Remorse — His Poem of the Conference — Affecting self-references ....... 307 Unequal conflict of Vice and Virtue — Appeal on Churchill's behalf 308 Anecdote from Adventures of a Guinea — Conduct to an Unfor- tunate — Offices of the Good Samaritan . . . . 309 Absence from London — Robert Lloyd's imprisonment — Churchill's grateful kindness — Goes to him in the Fleet — Supports him — Gets up subscription for his release — A true poet . 310 Specimens of his Poetry apart from his Satire — On the Conquests in America 311 His Five Ages — Infancy, Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age 312 Paraphrase of Isaiah — Charming repetitions — A suggestion for Bums — The North Briton burnt — Wilkes prosecuted . . 313 Sandwich's Display in the House of Lords — ^Warburton's assault — Resolve to expel Wilkes from the House of Commons . 314 Ministerial prosecution drives him into France — The Duellist published — Wilkes's Scheme to get help from French Go- vernment — Opposed by Churchill — His fame abroad . . 315 Manner of Composition — Haste^ yet Care — Avoids Literary So- ciety — Dr. Johnson corrects his fii'st opinion of him — Not so bad as he seemed 316 Establishment at Acton Common — Mode of living— Greediness of gain imputed to him — Cowper's reply to that objection — Tribute to old school-fellow in the Table Talk . . .317 The Author published— Horace Walpole's admiration . . 318 Praise of the Critics — Appearance of Gotham — Idea of a Patriot King in Verse — Descriptive Poetry of a high order , .319 CONTENTS. xxiii Charles CIiurcMIl. page Gotham less successful than the Personal Satires — Dryden's Religio Laici less attractive than MacFlecknoe — Bookseller Johnson to his son Samuel 320 A Subject for a Satire — Lord Sandwich a Candidate for High Stewardship of Cambridge — Churchill publishes The Candi- date 321 Churchill's character of Sandwich compared with Dryden's of Buckingham — Appearance of The Farewell, The Times, and Independence . 322 What is a Lord — Churchill's self-painted portrait — Plays the Hogarth to his own defects — Last unfinished Poem — His Dedication to Wai-burton — Hogarth on his death-bed . 323 Churchill's strange anticipation of his own impending fate — Goes hastily to Boulogne — Illness seizes him — Wilkes and other friends summoned. . . . . . . • 324 Dictates his will — Dies — Garrick's comment — His first emotion not grief 325 Penalties of Popularity — Forged Letters — Charles Lloyd's and Sister Patty's grief — Two broken hearts at Churchill's grave — Wilkes's Professions of grief ..... 326 What Wilkes will do for his friend — What Wilkes really did for his friend — Churchill's body brought over to Dover— Tablet to his Memory ........ 327 Lord Byron at Churchill's grave — Moralizes on the Glory and the Nothing of a Name 328 V. SAMUEL FOOTE. 1720- 1777. (From the Quarterly Review, September 1854. With Additions. ) 329—462. A Joker's reputation— Lives and dies in a Generation — The Wit of one reign the Bore of the reign succeeding . . . 329 Laughter* s losing race against the Decorums — Swift tripped up by Tale of a Tub— Men of great social repute denied any other — Books upon English Humourists and Satirists — Foote omitted 330 A forgotten Name — What it once expressed — A terrible and delightful Reality— Various emotions inspired by his writ- ings .......... 331 What Foote claimed for his Comedies — Claim not admitted — Johnson's sarcasm against him — Adopted by writers since — Walter Scott's opinion — Macaulay's .... 332 Reasons for disputing them — Unfavourable effect of Foote's acting on his literary reputation — Introduction of real cha- racters justified by Vanbrugh, Farquhar, and Moliere . . 333 Limits of the strictly Personal in satire— Intention of writer lost xxiv CONTENTS. Samuel Foote. page in mimickry of actor— Endeavour to explain Foote's title to the fame he acquired . . . . . , 334 Readiness of his Humour — Impossible to put him at Disadvant- age— Specimens of his Wit — At White's Club — In Macklin's lecture-room — At his friend Delaval's . . . . 335 At Lord Stormont's — Abating and dissolving Pompous Gentle- men — Hint to Hugh Kelly — The foolish Duke of Cumber- land — Jokes worth remembering 336 Haunted by a Murdered tune — Old Cornish parson with his Glebe in his hands — Among Mrs. Montagu's blue-stockings — A doctor with too many irons in the fire — A mercantile gentleman's poem . 337 Foote compared with Quin and Garrick — Johnson's opinion of Foote's Incompressibility — Might serve for description of Falstaff's wit — Genius for Escape 338 Foote's mimickry a peculiar power — Dangers incident to its ex- ercise — Hard for what is brimful not to run over — Tyranny in the Habit of jesting — Startling introduction to a Club of Wits .......... 339 Samuel Foote born at Truro — His father an active magistrate — His mother a woman of fortune — Resemblances to her son 340 A boy at Worcester collegiate school — Mimickry of grown-up people — First in all pranks against authority — Talent for making fun of Elders and Superiors .... 341 Student at Oxford — Acting Punch — Other extravagances — Making fun of Provost Gower — Outrage of University dis- cipline— Quits Oxford — Enters of the Temple— Why designed for a lawyer — Imaginary Affiliation Case . . . . 342 Startling Tragedy — Close of a Family Quarrel— One of his Uncles procures the other to be Murdered 343 Captain Goodere RN hanged, and Foote gets part of the estate of Sir John Dinely Goodere, Bart — Makes a figure in London clubs and taverns — Vicinity of Theatres still head quarters of Wit — First appearance at the Bedford . . . 344 Two years of dissipation — Renting the Worcestershire Family Seat — In the Fleet— Murphy's cheerful day with him there 345 His alleged first essay in Authorship — Pamphlet on the Catas- trophe of his Uncles — Account of it 346 Meeting with old Oxford Fellow students — Witty concealment of defective wardrobe — Succeeds to a Second Fortune . .347 Tradition of his Marriage, and a ghostly serenade — Reasons for doubting it — A laughing Excuse for Bachelorhood — The Second Fortune spent — Reappears at the Bedford . . . 348 Another accession to the circle — Poor young Collins— The laugh turned against Foote — Garrick's sudden success . .349 CONTENTS. XXV Samuel Foote. page Raging of Theatrical Factions — Active part taken by Macklin and Foote — Form a third party among the Critics . . . 350 Foote's theatrical writings — Treatise on the Passions — Essays on Comedy and Tragedy — Necessity of making provision for himself — Taste for the Stage — Consults his friends the Delavals 351 Joins Macklin and the Actors against Gamck and the Patentees — Appears at Haymarket — Why Debutants select Othello — Garrick's failure in it — Pompey and the Tea-tray — Mr. Pope's nod of approval to Macklin 352 Foote's doubtful reception in Othello — His second character more successful — Lord Foppington — Hints from Gibber — Goes over to Dublin — His Wit more remembered there than his Acting 353 Returns to Drury Lane — Characters played in his first season — Sir Harry Wildair, Lord Foppington, Tinsel, Sir Novelty Fashion, Sir Courtley Nice, Younger Loveless, Dick Amlet, Bayes — Fits his own humourous peculiarities . . .354 His personal appearance — Garrick Club Dramatic Portraits — Nineveh of a Lost Art — Reynolds's poi-trait of Foote — Tra- ditions of Bayes — Garrick's innovations condemned by Cibber and Lord Chesterfield 355 Foote's performance of Bayes — Imitates actors — Satirizes poli- ticians — His Improvised Additions suggest a New Enter- tainment — Diversions of the Morning .... 356 Its extraordinary effect — Epilogue of the Bedford Coffee-house — Name of English Aristophanes given to Foote — Actors take up arms against their assailant . . ... 357 Licensing Act applied against him — Constables put it in force — Invites his friends to Morning Chocolate — Sir Dilbury Diddle and Lady Betty Frisk — No more Magistrates' Warrants . 358 Mr. Foote's Morning Chocolate — Entertainment described — Troop of Actors brought together — Castallo and Ned Shuter 359 Actors complaints jested off — Foote no longer opposed — Changes his Morning entertainment into Evening — Mr. Foote's Tea — An offer from Covent Garden — Foote's Auction of Pictures 360 Its run at Haymarket — Interrupted by Bottle Conjuror — The Duke of Montagu's hoax — New Lots at the Auction — The Great Weakness of the day — Agencies for all Deceptions 361 Foote's picture of an Auctioneer — Everything alike to him, and be alike in everything — As eloquent on a Ribbon as on a Raffaele — Vehicle for personal and public Satire . . . 362 Mixed feelings provoked — Deference, Fear, and Popularity — Distinction between his unpublished and his published pieces — The question stated as to Individual Satire — Doubts involved — Limits of Legitimate Comedy .... 363 Foote's first published piece — The Knights — Happy medium between farce and comedy — Dialogue and Character . . 364 CONTENTS. Samuel Foote. Sir Penurious Trifle and Sir Gregory Gazette— Wealthy Miser and Country Quidnunc — Personal introduction . . . 365 A proposed Treaty with the Pope imparted to Sir Gregory — How we are all to be made of One Mind — Sir Gregory's exulta- tation ... 366 Copies from Life — No Vampings from Antiquated plays or Pil- feriiigs from French farces— Sir Penurious played by Foote 367 Woodward the Comedian threatens Tit for Tat — The Mimic sen- sitive to Mimickry — Sarcastic letter to Garrick and Gar- rick's reply ..... ... 368 Fitful intercourse of Foote and Garrick — The men marked out for Rivalry — Foote the most frequent aggressor — Garrick' s 369 Garrick's alleged love of money — Foote's Jokes thereon — A Thief in the Candle— The Captain of the Four Winds— The bust on Foote's Bureau 370 A Guinea going far — Friendly feeling underlying Sarcasm — In- tercourse uninterrupted by the Laugh — Garrick in Foote's Green-room 371 The Hampton Temple to Shakespeare — Players not invited to the Libations — Principle of not losing Friend for Joke, unless Joke be better than Friend — Foote's ready Scholarship 372 At dinner with Charles Fox and his friends — Takes the lead in Conversation — Johnson's rebuke to Boswell for underrating him — Ti-ibute to his powers — Foote and Garrick at Chief Justice Mansfield's table — Advantages of Not Paying one's Debts 373 Foote's introduction to Johnson — The dinner at Fitzherbert's — Johnson's resolve Not to be pleased, and What came of it . 374 Johnson at Foote's dinner-table — ^With Foote in Bedlam — Enjoy- ment of Foote's sayings — Sleeping partnership in a brewery 375 The little black boy and Foote's small beer — His Third Fortune spent — Companionship with the Delavals — A scandal re- ported by Walpole 376 Change of Scene necessary — Visit to the Continent — Return to London — Garrick produces his Comedy of Taste — Dedica- tion to Sir Francis Delaval 377 Pope's Jemmy Worsdale — Profits of Taste given to him — Design of the Comedy — Ridicule of false not of true connoisseur- ship — Appreciation of Rafifaele as well as of Hogarth — Old Master Carmine 378 His antecedents — Mr. Pufi" discovers him — Manufacture of Guides — Profits how distributed 379 Fashionable portrait painting — Lady Pentweazle sits for her picture — The part played by Worsdale — Calling up a Look —Criticism by Mr. Puff 380 Foote again upon the Stage — His Englishman in Paris — With Garrick in France — Strange reports about him — Gairick's Prologue 381 CONTENTS. xxvii Samuel Foote. page Keception in London— Congreve's Ben and Farqnhar's Captain Brazen added to his parts — At the Haymarket laughing at Macklin — Engagement at Covent-garden .... 382 Plays his own Lady Pentweazle and Congreve's Sir Paul Plyant — Advertised for Polonius — The Englishman returned from Paris 383 Satire on the French — A John Bull view of French fashions and foibles in 1754— Moral for the True Briton . . .384 Foote again at the Bedford — Macklin removed to the Tavistock — His three shilling Ordinary and shilling Lecture — Oppor- tunities for Foote in Macklins lecture-room — Laughs at the Lectures — On the Irish Duel 385 On Memory by Rote — The great She-bear and the Barber — The Grand Panjandrum — Foote establishes a Summer Lecture of his own 386 Haymarket tragedy after the Greek manner — Haymarket Lec- ture crowded — Macklin's shut up — Foote's friendship with Arthur Murphy — Their early intercourse . . . . 387 First night of Orphan of China — A Dinner with Hogarth and Delaval— Hearing Pitt in House of Commons — Misunder- standing 388 Murphy puts Foote into a comedy — Intended posthumous ridicule of his friend's failings — Comedy of the Author produced — Its character and merits 389 Absence of all pretence in Foote's writings — Neither false senti- ment nor affected language — No face-making — Reality of the Satire — Perfection of Comic Dialogue . . . . 390 Absurdity of comparison with Aristophanes — But some qualities shared with the Greek — Athens in age of Pericles, and London in time of Bubb Dodington — Old Vamp of Turn- stile — A Patron and Protector of Authors . . . 391 Mr. Vamp's clients — Harry Handy and Mr. Cape— Vamp's grandson in training for a politician — Foote's Author a Gentleman 392 Introduction of Mr. Cadwallader — The part played by Foote . 393 Shout of surprise at his appearance — Dressed at a Real person — His double sitting in the Boxes — Mr. Ap-Rice laughs at the caricature of himself — Popularity of the Author — • Kitty Olive's Becky 394 Inconvenient results for Mr, Ap-Rice — Moves the Lord Cham- berlain against Foote — The Author suppressed — Lord Chamberlain's subsequent concession of Haymarket licence 395 Failure in Dublin of the first Sketch of the Minor — The Irish Engagement — Tate Wilkinson picked up by Shuter — Foote takes him to Dublin — How they journeyed there . . . 396 Wilkinson's recollections of Foote — Their worthlessness — Secret of the failure to depict men of genius — They contain what you can find in them, no less or more .... 397 xxviii CONTENTS. Samuel Foote. page Odd adventure in Dublin — Foote playing the Conjm'or — Taken ojff by Wilkinson — Entertainment of Tea with his ptipil — Its popularity 398 Foote' s reception at the Castle — Rehearsing Minor -with Mr. Rigby — Its failure on Dublin stage — His reappearance at the Bedford in London — Twitted with the failure — Foote de- fends his attack on Whitfield ...... 399 The great Leader of the Methodists in his pulpit — His audiences at Hampton Common and Moorfields — Effecting for Low Church what Puseyism attempts for High Church — Making religion vital in direction of Calvinism . . . . 400 Drawbacks and disadvantages — Scorn of the Chesterfields and Walpoles — Foote's unsparing attack .... 401 His character of Mrs. Cole — An edified member of Mr. Squin- tum's congregation — Purpose of the satire . . . . 402 Extraordinary success of the Minor in London — Foote doubles Mrs. Cole and Mr. Smirk — Effort to stop the performance — Lord Chamberlain refuses to interfere — The Archbishop of Canterbuiy appealed to — Declines to meddle — Attack by Whitfield's friends — Foote's reply . ' . . . 403 Anachronisms in his pamphlet — No disproof of his scholarship — Recollections of him at Eton acting in Greek plays . . 404 Argument against abolishing what is Grood because pervertible to Bad — Foote exhibits Thespis and Whitfield in their respec- tive Carts — Asserts the claim of Minor to be called Comedy not Farce — Comedy not dependent on number of acts . 405 Hints taken by Sheridan and Holcroft from Foote's Minor — Original of Little Moses and his friend Premium — The brisk Mr. Smirk — Pleasant but Wrong 406 Sam Shift the Link-boy — Experiences of the World in Avenues of the playhouse — Taken into Whimsical Man's service — Sets up for himself — Laugh at Tate Wilkinson . . . 407 Keen knowledge of character — General Characteristics in Par- cular Forms— The family of the Wealthys— As good as a Picture by Hogarth ' . 408 Crop-eared 'prentices of Past Generation compared with Modem City lads — The Old country gentleman with the Modern man of fashion — Foote's increase of reputation from The Minor— Joint-Manager of Drury-Lane with Murphy . . 409 Production of the Liar — A Laugh for Goldsmith— Sketch from the Life of a Monthly Reviewer 410 Production of Bentley's Comedy of the Wishes — Private Rehear- sal at Bubb Dodington's — Bute and other great Folk present —Proposed Prologue, and its Flattery of the Young King and the Favorite — Foote refuses to speak it — Too strong . 411 Laugh at Bubb Dodington in the Patron— Its happy leading notion — Character of Sir Thomas Lofty . . . .412 His Chorus of Flatterers— Patronage of Bad poets as vile as Neglect of Good ones— The Damned Play and its Author . 413 CONTENTS. xxix Samuel Foote. page Hints for Sir Fretful Plagiary — Foote doubles Sir Thomas Lofty with Sir Peter Pepperpot 414 A Laugh at the Society of Antiquaries — Resemblance of Miss Lofty to Bust of the Princess Poppsea —Weston's acting in Martin Rust ... - 415 Sketches of Underling Bards and Hack Booksellers — Mr, Dactyl and Mr. Puff — A Garretteer in Wine-oflfice Court — Existing relations of Literature and Publishing . . , .416 A self-important personage — Mi-. Alderman Faulkner — Lord Chesterfield — Faulkner introduced in The Orators — His wooden leg — A caricature of a caricature — Foote's subse- quent causes for regret 417 Mr. Peter Paragraph played by Foote — Ridicule of Spirit Rap- pings— Cock Lane Ghost 418 Speakers at the Robin Hood — The respected Gentleman in the Sleeves — Lord Chesterfield ironically advises Faulkner to prosecute Foote — The advice taken gravely — Action tried in Dublin 419 Foote puts Jury, Counsel, and Judge, into an interpolated scene in The Orators— Produces the Mayor of Garrett— Carica- tures the Duke of Newcastle and Justice Lamb . . . 420 Wit and entertainment of the Mayor of Garrett — Major Sturgeon, Jerry Sneak, Matthew Mug, and Peter Primer —Its success, and Mr. Whitehead's opinion thereupon .... 421 Foote produces The Commissary — Aimed at the successful army contractors of the Seven Years' War— Copies Moliere and laughs at Dr. Arne — Reader introduced to Mrs. Mechlin . 422 Her commodities and customers — New lights in match-making — Marriage of the Macaroni parson Dodd satirised . . 423 Illustrations from Walpole's Letters — Charles Fox's actual Mrs. Mechlin — Reality of Foote's satire . . . . 424 Foote at highest point of his fortune — Splendid seasons at Hay- market — His vogue in Paris — His fashionable life in London — Wide range of his celebrity — The Boys invite him to Eton 425 His respect for literary men — Gray, Mason, and Goldsmith — Duke of York visits him — He visits Lord Mexborough — Accident in hunting — His leg amputated .... 426 Touching correspondence with Garrick — Lord Chesterfield's an- nouncement to Faulkner 427 Kindness of the Court — King grants him Patent for Haymarket — Rebuilds the Theatre — Appears again, with false leg, on the Stage 428 Nine original dramas in nine years — Toils of acting and man- agement — Sufferings from illness — Produces Devil on Two Sticks— Satirises Practitioners in Physic . . . . 429 Doctor Brocklesby and Mrs. Macauley — Good humoured Satire — Socratic party in the Boxes — The President of College XXX CONTENTS. Samuel Foote. page of Physicians— Little Apozem the Apothecary — Zoffany's picture 430 Production of the Lame Lover — Foote's jokes against Attornies — Grand battery against the Law 431 The case of Hobson and Nobson — Arguments on either side — Footmen and Maids aping Masters and Mistresses . . 432 Hero of the Lame Lover — Sir Luke Limp — Laugli at Prince Boothby — Son of Fielding's Sophia Western . . . 433 Sir Luke Limp's Engagements — Busy -with everybody's affairs but his own — Invitations to Dinner — The Alderman, the Knight, the Lord, and the Duke — Rank-worship laughed at — No Flunkey ism in Foote 434 Produces the Maid of Bath — Garrick's prologue — Local por- traiture of Bath — Satire of Home Tooke and Miser Long — Visit of Cumberland and Garrick to Foote's house at Par- son's Green 435 Production of the Nabob —Borough of Bribe' m — The Christian Club — A Negro suggested for Member . . . .436 Question for the Licenser of Plays — Unpublished letter of Lord Hertford to Horace Walpole — Ridicule of the Society of Antiquaries . . . . . . . . . 437 Nabobs go to see the Nabob — Sir Matthew White and General Smith — Invite Foote to their Houses — He produces the Puppet Show 438 Piety in Pattens—Laugh at Politics and Public Men — Senti- mental Comedy overthrown — The Stratford Jubilee . . 439 Garrick and Foote at Lord Stafford's — Interchange of hospitali- ties — Good feeling between Foote and Grarrick — Their ser- vices to each other ....... 440 Foote's public compliment to Mrs. Garrick — Writing Candi- dates' Addresses for the Mock Election at Garrett — Pro- duction and success of the Bankrupt 441 Mercantile Failures of 1772 — Sir George Fordyce and the Scotch Bankers — Foote satirises Newspaper Slanders — Last visit to Scotland 442 Visits Ireland for last time — Lord Harcourt's hospitalities — Sadness of his Occasional Prologue 443 Behind the Scenes in Dublin — O'Keefe's recollections of him — A Green-room incident 444 Generosity to Players — Encouragement of the Young — Support of the Old — Not a slave to the Actor" s Vice of jealousy — Playing for a Christmas Dinner 445 Unpublished letter to Garrick — Characteristic allusions — The Literary Club — Foote's habit of reading in bed — Narrow escape of becoming a Toast 446 Little Jephson and Foote in the Parliament House — Mr. Alder- man Faulkner — An original letter — Message to Mrs. Garrick 447 CONTENTS. Samuel Foote. Refusal to satirise upon Appearances only — Again in London — Produces his Cozeners — Legitimate Satire — Macaroni Preachers and Traders in Simony — Mrs. Rudd and Mrs. Fleec'em 448 Charles Fox's Adventure with West Indian Heiress introduced — Painting of Charles's eyebrows— The Private Boxes con- vulsed — Dr. Dodd's attempted Bribery of Lady Apsley . 449 Foote's Dr. Simony — The most "populous" of Preachers — His short Sermons and short Wig — No scruples in Duty or Doctrine 450 Ridicule of Chesterfield's Letters to his Son — Further burlesque of them meditated — Johnson's suggestion — Foote's illness and projected surrender of his theatre . . . .451 One more new Comedy — The Trip to Calais — Strikes at Duchess of Kingston — She strikes again — Her blow the heaviest . 452 Appeal to the Chamberlain — Foote's letter to Lord Hertford — Suppression of his play would close his public life — Lord Hertford suggests a compromise . . . . . 453 Interview at Kingston House — Offers to Foote — His rejection of them — Batteries of private slander opened remorselessly against him ......... 454 A cry of pain — Offer to withdraw Scenes if Libels are with- drawn — The Duchess's Letter 455 Foote's Reply to the Duchess — Masterpiece of Wit and Satire — Lord Mountstuart called in evidence 456 Horace Walpole's opinion of the Controversy — Mason's — Dr. Hoadly's — The Duchess's Trial and Conviction of Bigamy . 457 Foote's resolve— Produces The Capuchin — Satirises his libeller Jackson — Packing of Audience at the Haymarket — Con- spiracy against Foote — Unnameable slanders — Foote pro- secutes the Slanderer . . . . . . .458 Reopens the Haymarket — His Reception and his Appeal — Pun- ishment of his Libeller — Counter-accusation got up against Foote 459 The Trial deferred — Foote's sufferings — Grarrick's kindness — The friends who rallied round him — Burke, Reynolds, — Fitzherbert, the Royal Dukes, and other noblemen — Trial before Lord Mansfield 460 Murphy the messenger of the Verdict — Foote's extraordinary emotion — Lets his Theatre to Colman — Complete list of his Dramatic Pieces, and dates of Performance— At the Queen's Drawing-Room — Last appearance on the Stage . .461 Reaches Dover on his way to France — His Death — Buried in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey— No memorial in marble or stone ........ 462 Index 463 [TJHI7EESIT7J OUTER CEOMWELL 1599—1658. Histoire de la RepuhUque d'Angleterre et de Cromwell. Par M. Guizot. Richard Cromwell. Par M. Guizot. History of Oliver Cromwell and the English Commonwealth. By M. Guizot. Translated from the French. Up to the time when Mr. Macaulay, some seyen and twenty years ago, remarked of the character of Cromwell in this Review, that though constantly attacked and scarcely ever defended, it had yet always continued popular with ^q great hody of his countrymen, it is un- questionable that the memory of the great Protector, assiduously blackened as it had been in almost every generation since his death, had failed to find a writer in any party entirely prepared to act as its champion. Down to the days of Mr. Hume, Cromwell remained for the most part what that philosophical historian very unphi- losophically called him, " a fanatical hypocrite ; " and though there was afterwards a great change, though to praise him was no longer punishable, to revile him became almost unfashionable, and at last the champion ready on every point to defend and uphold him was found in Mr. Carlyle, it is yet remarkable what differences of opinion as to his moral quaHties continued to prevail, where even the desire to exalt his intellectual abilities was most marked and prominent. We shall perhaps best exhibit this, and with it the authorities on which M. Guizot has had mainly to rely for that latest and not least admirable * From the Edinhurgh Review; January, 1856. With several omissions. 2 DIFFERENT VIEWS OF SAME CHARACTER. \Oliver of the written portraits of the Protector whicli we are about to introduce to our readers, if we briefly sketch Cromwell under the leading general aspects in which he has appeared to the students of English history, from the opening of the present century to our own day. That will of course exclude the old Tory and Fox-hunting style of talking of him, and restrict us to such expressions only as educated men need not blush to read. Under three di\dsions, we think, all may be sufficiently included. The first would run somewhat thus. That, when the struggle had passed from the parliament house into the field of battle, there somewhat suddenly arose into the first place amid the popular ranks, a man not more re- markable for his apparent religious fanaticism than for the sagacity of his practical outlook on afi'airs. So far indeed had the latter quality in him a tendency, as events moved on, to correct the former, that even what was sincere in his rehgious views soon yielded to the teachings and temptations of worldly experience, and religion itself became with him but the cloak to a calculating policy. His principal associates were bigots in repubHcanism ; but he had himself too much intellect to remain long under a delusion so preposterous, as that monarchy, aristocracy, and episcopacy were not essential to England. As the opponent of all three, nevertheless, he was pledged too deeply to recede ; and such was the false position in which his very genius and successes placed him, that, with no love for hypocrisy, he became of necessity, a hypocrite. To cant in his talk, to grimace in his gestures, on his very knees in prayer to know no humility, were the crooked ways by which alone he could hope to reach the glittering prize that tempted him. When at last it fell within his grasp, therefore, when he had struck aside the last life that intercepted his path to sovereignty, and al he sought was won, there came with it the inseparable attendants of discontent and remorse. " What would not " Cromwell have given," exclaims Mr. Southey, "whether " he looked to this world or the next, if his hands had " been clear of the king's blood ! " The height to which he afterwards rose never lifted him above that stain. It darkened the remainder of his life with sorrow. " Fain "would he have restored the monarchy," pui'sues Mr. Cromwe/L'] traitor to royalty or to liberty ? 3 Southey, " created a house of peers, and re-established " tlie episcopal churcli." But his guilt to royalty was not to be cleansed, or his crime to society redeemed, by setting up mere inadequate forms of the precious insti- tutions he had overthrown. He lived only long enough to convince himself of this ; and at the close would have made himself the instrument for even a restoration of the Stuarts, if Charles the Second could have forgiven the execution of his father. But this was not thought possible, and Cromwell died a defeated and disappointed man. The second view of the character would arrive, by very different reasoning, at something like the same conclusion of grief and disappointment. Within somewhat similar toils of ambition, however, it exhibits a far greater and purer soul. It would seem to be founded on the belief, that a man must have thoroughly deceived himself before he succeeds on any great or extended scale in deceiving others ; and here the final remorse is made to arise, not from treason to royalty, but from treason to liberty. In this Cromwell, we have a man never wholly mthout a deep and sincere rehgion, however often able to wrest it to worldly purposes ; and, if never altogether without ambition, yet with the highest feelings and principles intenningUng with the earlier promptings of it. There is presented to us a man not always loving liberty, but always restless and insubordinate against tyranny ; and at the last, even with his hand upon the crown, driven back from it by the influence still possessed over him by old republican associates. His nature, in this view of it, is of that complicated kind, that, without being false to itself, it has yet not been true to others ; and it is even more the consciousness of what might have been his success, than the sense of what has been his failure, which constitutes the grief of his closing years. \Yhile he has grasped at a shadow of personal authority, the means of government have broken from him ; and, fail- ing as a sovereign, he cannot further succeed as a ruler. Difficulties without have accumulated, as perplexities within increased ; and his once lofty thoughts and aspira- tions have sunk into restless provisions for personal safety. The day which released his great spirit, therefore, the anniversary of his victories of Worcester and Dunbar, B 2 4 COMPLETE TYPE OF PURITAN REBELLION. {OUver was to be held still his Fortunate Day for the sake of the death it brought, not less than it was so held of old for the triumphs it associated with his name.^ The third stands apart from both of these, and may be taken as the expression of certain absolute results, to which a study of the entire of CromwelFs letters and speeches, brought into succinct arrangement and con- nection, has been able to bring so earnest an inquirer as Mr. Carlyle. We may thus describe them. That, in tha harsh untuneable voice which rose in protest against popery in the third parliament, was heard at once the complete type and the noblest development of what was meant by the Puritan Rebellion. That there then broke forth the utterance of a true man, of a consistency of character perfect to an heroic degree, and whose figure has heretofore been completely distorted by the mists of time and prepossession through which we have regarded it, as we looked back into the past. That this Cromwell was no hypocrite or actor of plays, had no vanity or pride in the prodigious intellect he possessed, was no theorist in politics or government, was no victim of ambition, was no seeker after sovereignty or temporal power. That he was a man whose every thought was with the Eternal, — a man of a great, robust, massive mind, and of an honest, stout, Enghsh heart : subject to melancholy for the most part, because of the deep yearnings of his soul for the sense of divine forgiveness; but inflexible and resolute always, because in all things governed by the supreme law. That, in him, was seen a man whom no fear but of the divine anger could distract ; whom no honour in man's bestowal could seduce or betray ; who knew the duty of the hour to be ever imperative, and who sought only to do the work, whatever it might be, whereunto he believed God to have called him. That, here was one of those rare souls which could lay upon itself the lowliest and the highest functions alike, and find itself, in them all, self- ^ Such was the view I attempted posed veiy greatly indeed to modify to present of the character of this it ; though not by any means to adopt great man in my Statesmen of the the tone of dislike and depreciation Commonwealth. As the reader may of the Republicans and their design, probably infer from the tone of the which too generally accompanies the present Essay, I should now be dis- unsparing eulogy of Cromwell. Cromwell. ] views of carlyle and of guizot. 5 contained and suflB.cient, — tlie dutiful gentle son, tlie quiet country gentleman, the sportive tender husband, the fond father, the active soldier, the daring political leader, the powerful sovereign, — under each aspect still steady and unmoved to the transient outward appearances of this world, still wrestling and trampling forward to the sub- lime hopes of another, and passing through every instant of its term of life as through a Marston Moor, a Worcester, a Dunbar. That such a man could not have consented to take part in public affairs, under any compulsion less strong than that of conscience.* That his business in them was to serve the Lord, and to bring his country under subjection to God's laws. That, if the statesmen of the republic who had laboured and fought with him, could not also see their way to that prompt sanctification of their country, he did well to strike them from his path, and unrelentingly denounce or imprison them. That he felt, unless his purpose were so carried out unflinchingly, a curse would be upon him ; that no act, necessitated by it, could be other than just and noble ; and that there could be no treason against royalty or liberty, unless it were also treason against God. That, finally, as he had lived he died, in the conviction that human laws were nothing unless brought into agreement with divine laws, and that the temporal must also mean the spiritual government of man. And now, with these three aspects of the same character before us, we may perhaps better measure the view which M. Guizot takes of Cromwell. Something of the first will be found in it ; of the second decidedly yet more ; and though it has nothing of the remorse with which both cloud the latter days of the Protector, it expresses the same sense of failure and loss, and stops with a faltering step far short of where his last and warmest panegyrist would place him. Free and unhesitating, nevertheless, is its admiration of his genius and greatness, and earnest and unshrinking the sympathy expressed with his courage and his practical aims. It would seem to be the view too exclusively of a statesman and a man of the world. The conclusion arrived at, is that of one who has lived too near to revolutions, and suffered from them too much, always to see them in their right proportions, to measure 6 QUALIFICATIONS FOR SUCCESS. \Oliver them patiently by their own laws, or to adjust them fairly to their settled meaning and ultimate design. But there is nothing in it which is petty or unjust ; nothing that is unworthy of a high clear intellect. M. Guizot thinks Cromwell to have been a great man, but with the drawback of having been too much ena- moured of the mere hard, substantial greatness, of this lower world. All that was noble in his mind, and all that was little, he was ever able, and too ready, to subordinate to the lust of material dominion. But, where that passion led him, there also lay what he believed to be his duty ; and if, in the pursuit of it, he suffered no principle of right to be a barrier upon his path, neither did he suffer any mists of petty vanity to cloud his perfect view of whatever hard or flinty road might lie before him. To Grovern, says M. Guizot, that was his design. The business of his life was to arrive at Government, and to maintain himself in it ; his enemies were those who would throw any bar or hindrance in the way of this ; and, excepting those whom he used as its agents, he had no friends. Such a man was Cromwell, if he be judged rightly by the French historian. He was a great and a successful, but an unscrupulous man. With equal success he attempted and accomplished the most opposite enterprises. During eighteen years a leading actor in the business of the world, and always in the character of victor, he by turns scattered disorder and established order, excited revo- lution and chastised it, overthrew the government and raised it again. At each moment, in each situation, he unravelled with a wonderful sagacity the passions and the interests that happened to be dominant ; and, twist- ing all their threads into his own web of policy, he clothed himself ever with their authority, and knew still how to identify with theirs his own dominion. Always bent upon one great aim, he spurned any charge of inconsistency as to the means by which he pursued it. His past might at any time belie his present, but for that he cared little. He steered his bark according to the wind that blew ; and, however the prow might point at one time and another, it was enough for him if he could ride the stormy waters of the revolution, and make short voyage without shipwreck to the harbour beyond. The singleness of his Cromwell. ~\ causes of failure. 7 aim was tlie consistency tliat covered any inconsistency in the conduct of his enterprise. His work was good if it attained its crown. His seamanship was credit- able if it took him safely across to the desired port, port royal. Not that this expressed in him any mean or low desire for a merely selfish aggrandisement. It is a main point in M. Guizot's judgment of the character of Cromwell, that he holds him to have been a man who felt quite as distinctly as M. Guizot himself feels, an absence of prac- tical sense in even the noblest system that is Kevolutionary. He was thoroughly aw.are that a people Kke the English, reverent of law, though they might crush a king by whom the law had been defied, would nevertheless remain true in their hearts to the principle of monarchy. When he proposed, therefore, finally to stand before the English as their sovereign, the Cromwell of M. Guizot was but shaping his ambition by the spirit of the nation he sought to rule. His soul was too great to be satisfied with a mere personal success. To become a constitutional king was only his last aim but one. His last, and the dearest object of his life, was to transmit a crown and sceptre, as their birthright, to succeeding members of his family. He was a man, however, who could conquer, but who could not found. He conquered much more than the power of King of England, but also much less than the name ; and while it was his own wish, as well as the genius of the nation, to govern by Parliaments, and not an efibrt was left unattempted by him to put off his absolutist habits, and to live within the means of a ruler account- able to Lords and Commons, these were the only labours of his life in which he failed. To substitute for a weak House of Stuart a strong House of CromAvell, at the gate of the temple of the Constitution, was, if M. Guizot be right in his view, the most persistent aim of the Protec- torate. But herein the Protector failed ; and the histo- rian to whom disorder is the synonym for revolution, closes with this sentence the Histoire de la Bqnibliqiie d' Angleterre et de Cromwell: " God does not grant to the great men who have set *' on disorder the foundations of their greatness, the " power to regulate at their pleasure and for centuries, 8 SUFFERINGS OF A BOOK FROM TRANSLATION. {OUvet " even according to their best wishes, the government " of nations.'^ ^ That is the moral of the book ; and it may be well that the reader should see, before we proceed further, how the few simple and pregnant words composing it are given in the English version. M. Guizot's translator'"' states his endeavour to have been " to make as literal a translation " as was compatible with our English idiom ;" and the sentence, which translates literally as above, is adapted to English idiom after the following fashion : " God " does not grant to those great men who have laid the " foundation of their greatness amidst disorder and revo- *' lution, the power of regulating at their pleasure, and " for succeeding ages, the government of nations.'* Of which sentence, the accommodation to English idiom con- sists in the addition of " and revolution " to " disorder," whereby the English implies that the two things are dif- ferent, whereas it is the spirit of the French to assume that they are like ; and in the entire omission of the very pregnant clause by which both the summary of Cromwell's ambition is qualified to his credit, and the moral the historian would draw from it is pointedly en- forced, namely, that in the opinion of M. Guizot, even designs that might seem well worthy of completion are frustrated by the divine wisdom, when disorder is used as a step to their accomplishment. As it is in this opening sentence, however, so it is, we regret to say, through the greater part of the translator's work ; and since we have interrupted ourselves to say so much, we may as well delay the reader a little longer to prove it. For, it is surely to be regretted that a book like this by M. Guizot, so especially interesting to Eng- 1 * ' Dieu n'accorde pas aux grands an important one, and they are re- " hommes qui ont pose dans le des- tained for that reason. I am bound ** ordre les fondements de leur to add, however, that the same ** grandeur, le pouvoir de regler, translator acquitted himself infi- *' 4 leur gre et pour des siecles, nitely better in the execution of the ** m^meselonleursmeilleursdesirs, second part of M. Guizot's work, *' le gouvernement des nations," devoted to Richard Cromwell. This 2 In again reading these remarks latter book, taken as a whole, is a on M. Guizot's translator, the tone version of the original neither un- is here and there unnecessarily pleasing nor unfaithful, V harsh ; but the question raised is Cromwell. ~\ style extinguished. 9 lisliineii tliat a place was at once ready in our permanent literature for a good translation of it, should have failed to find the proper care and attention in this respect. If books were to be swallowed like water, with no regard to the mere pleasure of the taste, it would matter little ; but there is a style in writing as there is a bouquet in wine, and if M. Guizot's be a little thin, it is yet pure, refined, and sparkling, with a delicate aroma. As he presents it to us, it is never flat or insipid ; but it is a sad plunge from M. Guizot's flask to his translator's bucket, and whatever spirit the original possessed is found to have almost or altogether disappeared. A reconstruction into verbose, round-in-the-mouth sentences, is the de- struction of M. Guizot's French. The sense comes mufiled, as though the voice reached us through a feather bed. Let any one who cares to be at so much trouble, read separately this history and its translation, and he will be surprised to flnd how much is lost when style is lost. The two versions leave absolutely difi'erent impressions of the author's mind. Without any special search for glaring instances, we will begin at the beginning. We will take the first dozen pages (written when the translator, fresh to his work, could hardly have begun to sKp through weariness), and see what has been made of them. The very title, we regret to say, has been altered in significance. M. Guizot wrote History of the Commomvealth of England and of Cromwell, and this the translator makes compatible with English idiom by writing History of Oliver Cromwell and the English Commomvealth. It does not occur to him that there may be sense, no less than sound, in the order of the words placed upon his title-page by the historian. His problem is to impart what he conceives to be an easy flow to a given number of vocables ; and if for him they flow better upside down than straightforward, they are inverted accordingly. It is a noticeable peculiarity of M. Guizot, that in characterising historical persons he shows himself prone to dwell on the contradictory appearances assumable by the same nature. Whenever it is possible, he marks the two sides which belong to human character, and the ease with which opposite opinions of the same individual may 10 MEANINGS AND SENSE TRANSLATED. [OHver "witli no dishonesty be formed. Of this there is of course no example in his book, or in the whole range of human history, so prominent as Cromwell himself; and the temptation is great to the historian to bring out such contrasts in strong antithetical expression. So marked in M. Guizot is generally, indeed, this form of speech, that it takes but the least additional strain to turn it into nonsense ; and not seldom his translator goes far to effect this, by multiplying words ^vithout the least neces- sity. It is quite curious how he yields to the temptation of rolling off high-sounding sentences. In the opening words of the book, he cannot give simply even such an epithet as " the lustre of their actions and their destiny," " I'eclat de leur actions et de leur destinee," without turning it into " the splendour of their actions and the *' magnitude of their destiny." The history begins with a picture of the Long Parlia- ment under its republican chiefs, reduced in number by secessions following the execution of the King, and re- garded without S}Tnpathy by the main body of the people. In the February following the execution, there were not more than seventy-seven members who recorded votes at any of the divisions, and of these divisions M. Guizot counts eight. The translator alters this into ten, without a note to indicate the change. The parliamentary leaders, M. Guizot continues, set to work, "avec une ardeur pleine " en meme temps de foi et d'inquietude : " a hint of the secret disquiet at the heart of theorists committed sud- denly to action, which loses both subtlety and sense by the translator's exaggeration of disquiet into anxiety, and by his yoking of an adjective to each noun for the more dignified and sonorous roll of the period. They set to work, he says, with an ardour full " at once of strong " faith and deep anxiety." The words strong and deep come into the sentence, and the things strength and depth go out of it. Forty- one councillors of state were presently appointed, and among those chosen, says M. Guizot, there were five superior magistrates, and twenty-eight country gentlemen and citizens : but these numbers, again mthout a note to say that he is not translating, the translator alters, one into three, the other into thirty. When these councillors CromwelL'\ al'thor's intention missed. II met, contiimes the historian, they were required to sign an engagement approving of all that had been done " in " the king's trial, and in the aboHtion of monarchy and " of the house of lords : " but the translator words and double words the simple expression, " in the king's trial, " in the overthrow of kingship, and in the abolition of " the house of lords." Twenty-two, proceeds M. Guizot, persisted " a le repousser : " but English idiom pushes away that spirited word, and tells us merely that they per- sisted " in refusing it." The substance of their reasons, adds M. Guizot, the tone of his mind colouring his ex- pression insensibly, was that they " refused to associate " themselves" with the past: but, masterly as is the hint so given of a personal stain, and of the dread of compli- city, the translator drearily obscures it into "■ refused to " give their sanction." Excited by the censure so im- pUed, resumes M. Guizot, the House nevertheless checked its own resentment (''on ne voulut pas faire eclater les " dissensions des republicains ") ; and here his temperate and subtle tone again directs attention to the weakness of the theoretical republicans, in the fact that they did not msh to publish abroad their dissensions. But the entire sense is lost by the translator, who again words and double words and smothers it in idiom. " To ori- " ginate dissensions among the republicans would, it *' was felt, be madness." There is already discord in the camp, suggests M. Guizot. Discord, suggests his trans- lator, had yet to begin, and these were not men mad enough to set it going. The translator may be right, but he is not translating M. Guizot. The historian still pursues his theme. " Les regicides " comprirent qu'ils seraient trop faibles s'ils restaient *' seuls : " but, that the translation might become " too " weak " indeed, the simple words " trop faibles " are multiplied into the idiomatic English of " not strong *' enough to maintain their position." The matter was accordingly arranged, says M. Guizot, " sans plus de " bruit." Hushed-up would be no bad idiom for that ; but, unfortimately, hushed-up would mean what M. Guizot means, and so, says the translator, it was arranged " with- " out further difficulty." Significantly M. Guizot adds, of the modified pledge offered by the dissidents, that with 12 FELICITIES AND INFELICITIES OF IDIOM. [OUver it " on se contenta : " wHcli, most insignificantly, the translator renders " it was accepted." These are small items of criticism, it will be said. But be it understood that the last seven arise out of a single paragraph, and that the last six are on the same page ; and let any one conceive what murder is done upon the soul of a book, 700 pages long, when a translator sits dowTi in this manner to the work of killing it by inches. We turn over, and on the first line of the next page read that the compromise described was " to a very great " extent " the work of Cromwell and Sir Henry Vane : " to a very great extent " being the translator's idiom for " surtout." Before we get to the middle of the page, we find a date set down as November, without any note of its having been written December in the text. On the first line of the next page. Vane's suggestion of an oath of fidelity having relation simply to the future, is spoken of as an idea of which Cromwell was most eager " to *' express his entire approval : " the translator so supply- ing his peculiar idiom for " a s'en contenter." Similarly we find, in the sentence following, that for " nul " the English idiom is "no one for a moment." Of the com- mittee of three who held the powers of the Admiralty, M. Guizot says that Vane " etait Tame : " and his trans- lator dilutes it into the idiom that Yane '' was the " chief." Blake then enters on the scene, by whom, according to M. Guizot, the glory of the Commonwealth at sea was hereafter " a faire ; " and this expression is rendered " to augment," that its spirit may be utterly destroyed. "We promised to comment on the first dozen pages of this authorised English version of M. Guizot's Common- wealth and Cromwell, and if we redeem our promise we must discuss four more. Eather than do that, we will break our promise. We quote from both texts the be- ginning of page nine, the English water by the French wine ; and no reader who examines it will desire that we should splash on through the pages following. The pas- sage, feeble as it is, is far above the average ; for in it the sense of the text does absolutely survive what the translator overlays it with, though in what condition the reader will see. Cromwell S\ warning to foreign writers. IS **La chambre avait to^icM et "The house had revised and pourvu a tout; la legislation, la arranged every department of the diplomatie, la justice, la police, administration ; thelQcri^Xsdiou and les finances, I'armee, la flotte etai- diplomacy of the country, tJie courts ent dans ses mains. Pourparaitre 0/ justice, tlie police, the finances, aussi desinteressee qu'elle etait the army, and the fleet, were all active, elle admit les membres qui in its hands. To appear as dis- s'etaient separes du parti vain- interested as it was active, it per- queur, au moment de sa rupture mitted those members who had definitive avec le roi, k reprendre separated from the conquering leur place dans ses rangs, mais en party, at the moment of its defi- leur imposant xva. tel desaveu de nitive rupture ^\•ith the king, to re- leurs anciens votes que bien peu sume their seats in its midst ; but d'entre enxpurent s'y resoudre.'" it required from them at the same time such a disavowal of their former votes, that very few could persuade themselves to take advan* tage of this co7icession.'" Sucli is the translation which M. Guizot has authorised, and which the law now protects against any hetter that might replace it. The example should not he thrown away. It is an evil, hut ought not to he a necessary evil, of the protection given under international copyright, that if a hook he marred in the translation, it is marred past hope of mending. The new law is not less poHtic than it is just, for without it there can he no inducement sufficient to invite to such labour the employment of original talents and real learning. But if, through want of care in obtaining these, inapt or inferior talents are employed and protected, mischief beyond retrieval is done. Nor is it easy to make the proper choice. A man may be a very respectable writer who will turn out to be an execrable translator, though it would be next to im- possible that a good translator should not also be a writer of respectable powers. But the difficulty should be tlioroughly considered, and a scrupulous care exerted, be- fore foreign writers permit their works to pass finally out of their own keeping. What an engraver is to an artist, a translator should be to an author ; and the best masters in either craft have at all times been esteemed, by authors and painters of repute, as brother craftsmen. If pub- lishers are indisposed to the same view, the public should protect themselves. Copyright in translation will involve grave injury to them, if it lowers instead of raising the average of translating ability by lowering the prices paid for it. To give no more, under the new law, to the author 14 PERSONAL EXPERIENCES COLOURING HISTORY. [OUver and the translator, than under the old was given to the translator alone, is to mistake altogether the object of a change which was meant to increase the facilities for properly remunerating both, by protecting translations of a really high character from unequal rivalry with the in- different or worthless. We invite to the subject, there- fore, a more minute attention than it has hitherto been customary to give to it. A more exacting criticism of translation, as translation, may at least check the incapable with some fear of censure, and cheer on the able with some small hope of reasonable fame. The lights and shades of style indicate the bias of an author's mind. In describing their effacement from the English version of this History, we have found also means to indicate what, in M. Guizot's case, the bias is. What it is, it could hardly fail to be. It requires but the opening sentence of the volumes ' to reveal to us that the feelings of the writer are here more nearly touched than they had been by the former portion of his narrative. His account of the Eevolution down to the King's execution, published more than thirty years ago, was given in a style as calm as it was clear : but here, where only the men of the Re- public are before him, though he is still philosophical, and still to the utmost of his ability a righteous judge, a ripple before unseen appears upon the surface of his judgment ; and we cannot but be reminded of all that has filled up the interval since that first portion of his book was written. The statesman who has connected his own name in 1 "J'ai raconte la chute d'une *' struments de ses grand desseins •' ancienne monarchie et la mort " sont pleins de contradiction et de ** violente d'un roi digne de respect, *' mystere : il mele et unit en eux, ** quoiqu'il ait mal et injustement *' dans des proportions profonde- " gouverne ses peuples. J'aimain- ** ment cachees, les qualites et les *' tenant ^ raconter les vains efforts *' defauts, les vert us et les vices, les "d'une assemblee rdvolutionnaire ** lumieres et les erreurs, les gran- •' pour fonder une republique, et.le " deurs et les faiblesses ; et apres •' gouverneraent toujours chance- ** avoir rempli leur temps de Feclat •* laut, bien que fort et glorieux, '* de leurs actions et de leur des- *' d'un despote r^volutionnaire, ad- ** tin^e, ils demeurent euxmemes " mirable par son hardi et judi- " obscurs au sein de leur gloire, " cieux genie, quoiqu'il ait attaque *' encenses et maudits tour a tour " etdetruit, dans son pays, d'abord " par le monde qui ne les connait ** I'ordre legal, puis la liberte. Les " pas." * ' hommes que Dieu prend pour in- Cromzvell.'] early life of guizot. 15 history with endeavours to preserve a king and a consti- tution, and who saw king and constitution swept away to make room for an ephemeral repubHc, holds fast never- theless by a constitutional monarchy as not merely the best form of government, but, so to speak, as his own cause, and regards a republic with some sense of personal antagonism. The open expression of this is as far as possible subdued ; but not the less is it discernible. Sixty-one years ago a high-spirited young lawyer died at Nimes on the scaffold, sentenced to death for his dislike of a republic by a court obedient to the French Republican Convention. That young man, twenty-seven years old when his life was taken, was the father of M. Guizot. The latter was only a boy of seven at the time, but he was old enough to receive into his soul an undy- ing recollection of the murder in the name of Hberty that made a widow of his mother. The decree which took away the father's life and confiscated his possessions, ordered also that his childi-en, — the boy just named, and another little son, — should be committed to the foundling hospital, and brought up in accordance with a revolutionary law. But their mother, a noble woman, whom her eldest-born, then become a statesman and historian of European fame, saw grieving after fifty years of widowhood with fresh tears for the husband of her youth, took them with the wreck of her fortune out of France, and dwelt with them for six years at Geneva, watching carefully their education. Father and mother had been pious Protestants, finn against the pressm-e of reHgious persecution ; and, open to all grave and noble influences, M. Guizot's boyhood at Geneva was full of the promise which his manhood more than fulfilled. By the reflective tone of his mind, by his skill in reasoning, by a surprising aptitude for the acquisition of languages, and by a taste for historical inquiry, even so early he dis- tinguished himself. Sent at the age of eighteen as a law student to Paris, his abilities were quickly recognised by men ready to turn them to account. His pen was soon brought into use ; and his literary talents as well as in- dustry were displayed in the publication by him, at the age of twenty-two, of his well known Dictionary of Sy}ionyms. He had begun at the same time the arduous 16 A FRENCH statesman's CAREER. \Oliver enterprise of a translation of Gibbon, witb original notes ; and so prompt was the recognition of his manifest ability, that at the age of twenty-four he was made professor of modem history at the Faculty of Letters. Through all the troubles of France during the years that ensued, M. Guizot, known as a man of the future, steadily maintained his position. "Whatsoever he believed to be anarchy, he calmly but determinedly opposed. Standing between republican and despot in the days of Bonaparte and of Charles X, with a moral courage free from display of passion, he held firm to the lesson of his life which study had strengthened in him, that the quiet reign of a constitutional king, upon a system liberally conservative, is the condition of prosperity and peace for the French people, or for any people fairly civilised. Order, with Liberty, was his creed in those days ; as to the present it has remained his belief that Liberty must be protected by Order. One of his first political pam- phlets was upon Eepresentative Government ; another was upon the mode of conducting Government and Oppo- sition. One of the first historical inquiries on which he entered was a discovery for himself of the origin and causes of our great Eevolution. He published an account of it to the death of Charles I ; and, with a spirit and enter- prise which has yet found no parallel in England itself, he completed, in no less than twenty-six octavo volumes, a translated collection of memoirs and histories relating to it. As a writer, we should not omit to add, his first commanding success was won by his elaborate Lectures on the origin of Representative Government in Europe, delivered at the temporary cost of his chair when France sorely needed reliable and sound information on that matter. At last came the revolution of 1830, and there was placed upon the French throne a ruler whose obvious interest it was, at once to resist all extremes of democratic passion and to establish a government that should in its nature be liberal not less than conservative : enough of the former to be safe, and of the latter to satisfy European statesmen. In such a course there was no man in France so fit to counsel the King and serve the country as M. Guizot. The student of history, so skilful and so dispas- Cromwell.'] cojsflicts with french republicans. 17 sionate, became accordingly Minister of Interior to Louis Philij^pe. Subsequently be gave his earnest support, though out of office, to the Ministry of Casimir Perier ; and he afterwards held the Portfolio of Public Instruction for nearly five years, bet^Yeen 1832 and 1837. During the summer of 1840, he was Ambassador in England ; at the close of that year he formed the Ministry in which he took the charge of Foreign Affairs, but of which he was the virtual head ; and finally, on the death of Mar- shal Soult, in September 1847, he became its nominal as well as actual chief, and Prime Minister of France. The beginning of this career of office was employed in decisive suppression of all active revolutionary opposition to the new monarchy. The middle of it saw him the successful founder of a system of national education for his country- men, far better than anything of a similar kind even yet attempted in Great Britain. And it is quite possible that the close of it might have placed within his power the salvation of the French monarchy, if, in the critical hour, a failing king had not forsaken his counsels. The throne fell ; and the same republican wrath which had destroyed his father, again beat and surged around the monarchist statesman. But whatever his failures, in theory or in action, M. Guizot never failed in probity. He never flinched from the trial of his principles ; never feU from his oaths or his professions ; never in his public conduct abated what his secret conscience exacted. There have been many greater statesmen, but few so altogether free from moral stain. Yet in his own country, where republicanism has been identified with revolution, there has been no man, with of course one exception, against whom so much ill has been spoken by republicans ; and he had borne from them, for many of the last years of his life as a statesman, the incessant sting of calumny. In resuming at its close, therefore, the story of a short-lived repubHc, he found before him the moral of the creed which for sixty years had been his private and his pubhc enemy. Not for this reason, however, which his true scholar's spirit would disown, did he then, after the storm of his active life was over, return to the study of the revolution which earliest had engaged his attention ; but because, unlike that in 18 THE OLD ENGLISH REPUBLICANS. \OUver progress and still undetermined in France, it was in itself complete, it admitted of a perfect scrutiny, and it offered the fairest prospect of historical instruction. The History of the Commonwealth and Cromivell is the second of the four parts into which he divides it (the third heing that of Richard Cromwell, of which by the favour of M. Guizot, the early portion is also before us) ; and remembering that the very pulse of its author's life beats in it, we may well be surprised to find its stroke so regular and calm. Far from reviling our historical republicans, whose high-minded endeavours he has quite nobility enough to understand, M. Guizot points out that the experiment they made was not in their time associated with any of those ideas of mere revolt and lawlessness which have lately been connected with such attempts. Under honourable forms only, as in Italy, Switzerland, or the Netherlands, was republican government then known ; and the attempt to convert the English Monarchy into a Republic, was, to put his idea into plain words, such an experiment as decent men might put their hands to. In the eyes of continental nations it had also a religious aspect ; and though he believes it, as a republican move- ment, to have been a mistake, he not the less believes, that, but for the violence necessarily incident to the transition from a kingdom to a commonwealth, the scheme might have been a successful one. But, in his judgment, a republic founded upon revolution finds its works soon clogged by that property in its founders, which, calling itself and thinking itself republican zeal, is in reality nothing but revolutionary obstinacy. Thus, as might have been expected, M. Guizot is too accurate a thinker to condemn wholly as theory that scheme of government, in the formal establishment of which both England and France, each in its own manner and degree, have up to this time failed, but not a few of whose most practical and substantial results have never- theless been left to both countries. Every way worthy of notice, indeed, is the reflection with which he opens the third section of his labours, when, in the narrative of E/ichard CromweU and his troubles, following upon Cromivell.~\ worthiness of their design. 19 that of Eichard's father and his triumphs, he is about to relate the career of the revived Long Parliament. A Bepuhlic, he argues, when it is, among any people, the na- tural and true result of its social state, of its ideas and of its manners, is a Government worthy of all S5rmpathy and respect. It may have its vices, theoretical and prac- tical; but it honours and serves humanity, which it stimulates to the healthy gathering up of its higher energies and moral forces, and can lift to a very lofty degree of dignity and virtue, of prosperity and glory. Not so with a Republic untimely and factitious, foreign to the national history and manners, introduced by the egotism of faction, and sustained by the pride that is begotten of it. He holds this to be a government de- testable in itself, because full of falsehood and violence ; and having also the deplorable consequence, that it dis- credits in the minds of nations the principles of political right and the guarantees of liberty, by the false applica- tion and tyrannical use they are put to, or by the hypo- critical violation they are made to suffer. Though hostile, therefore, to all crude attempts at the establishment of a Republic, no unfair measure is dealt out by the French statesman to our republican forefathers. That they should, after all, have failed principally because their hopes were pitched too high, is not a fact which such a man can dismiss with indifference, whatever his sense of the needs of practical statesmanship may be. He rather. Frenchman as he is, rejoices to show them to us with Mazarin hat in hand before them ; spurning the fair outside of civility with which the wily French-Italian would have approached them ; and finally bringing him to a frank submission, while the Queen Mother Henrietta, standing by his side, gnashes her teeth at his enforced recognition of '' these infamous traitors." In illustration of the kind of men whom the traitors sought out for employment, too, there stands a somewhat memorable record in their Council Book, which we can conceive appealing to M. Guizot with the same sort of interest it still possesses for Englishmen, notwithstanding his too manifest predilection for those powers only " which " are based upon right and sanctioned by time.'* It is the official notice of Sir Harry Yane's and Mr. Henry 2 20 MILTON AND THE COUNCIL. [OHver Marten's risit, one March evening in 1649, armed with the authority of the Council of State of which they were members, to " the lodging of Mr. John Milton, in a small " house in Holbom, which opens backwards into Lincoln's *' Inn Fields, to speak to Mr. Milton, to know. Whether " he will be employed as Secretary for the Foreign *' Languages ? and to report to the Council." One of the first declarations of that Council had been that they would neither write to other States, nor receive answers, but in the tongue which was common to all countries, and fittest to record great things, the subject of future history ; and hence the visit to the small house in Holborn. We may feel quite sure that M. Guizot would think none the worse of the Council for this little circumstance: though we cannot quite satisfy ourselves as to the autho- rity with which he describes the Lord Protector, in later days, eager to profit by Milton's genius and ascendancy, and continuing to employ the talents left at his disposal by the Government he displaced, but putting no faith in the wisdom of their wondrous possessor ; supplying him with funds to afi'ord liberal hospitaHty, at his house and table in Whitehall, to such foreign men of letters as came to visit England, but, while chief of the State, admitting him into no personal intimacy, and studiously withhold- ing from him all public influence. Such may have been the relations of Milton and Cromwell; but we do not know the authority on which the statement rests, and what we do know of the circumstances attending the interference for the Yaudois would lead us to entertain very considerable doubts of it. Milton is M. Guizot's ideal of the highest of the repub- lican statesmen, grand but unpractical. He depicts him revelhng in a dream of liberty, and taking pleasure as a poet in sublime thoughts and majestic words, without inquiring whether every- day life held within it any answer to such aspirations. In his case, according to M. Guizot, abstract reasoning so far misguided a noble heart,' a passionate and dreamy intellect, as to render his wisdom of less service than it miorht have been in the actual 1 " Un noble coeur," says M. Guizot. "A stern hat noble heart, says his translator. Cromwell.'] glory of the commonwealth. 21 conduct of affairs. And as with him, so in less degree with the other statesmen of the Commonwealth — scho- lastic, theoretical repubKcans ; in their way, too, in regard to much they took in hand, mere high-minded dreamers ; and possessed, according to a foolish homely phrase, of every sense but common sense. Yet it is the belief of M. Gfuizot, that with a dignified reserve and an intelli- gent prudence these adventurous statesmen entered upon, and for the most part discharged, their work. The country coldly supported them, indeed, and abroad they were detested ; nevertheless, as they well knew, they were not menaced, and they had otherwise much upon their side. They included men of spotless integrity, such as Sydney, Ludlow, Bradshaw, Marten, Hutchinson, and Harrington ; they could boast of men of the highest ad- ministrative ability, such as Henry Yane ; they had in their service Eobert Blake, a man of the noblest stuff of which English heroism is made ; they were impassioned on behalf of their cause ; and they were swayed through- out by no meaner or less exalted interest than that of seeing it triumph. The cause itself, too, though *' peu " sensee et antipathique au pays," was noble and moral ; for the principles presiding over it were a faith in truth, and an affectionate esteem for humanity, respect for its rights, and the desire for its free and glorious develop- ment. Nor did they fail to accompKsh, in the main successfully, the task intrusted to them. They had de- clared upon assuming power that they would vindicate their country's ancient right to the sovereignty of the seas, and they did not rest till it was done. They had virtually subdued the Dutch, had humbled the Portuguese and the Danes, and, hated as they were upon the Con- tinent, on all the other European States they had imposed peace, at the period of their fall. Before power was wrested from them, they had used it to correct not a little of the injustice and inequality which remained to be redressed in the domestic administration, and they had shown singular and indisputable financial ability. But the his- torian thinks it was also incident to their very position that many errors should be committed, and that a too prolonged enjoyment of power in the midst of chaos should prove disastrous to some among themselves. And 22 FATE or THE REPUBLIC. [OUver he shows, from the secret correspondence of the agents of Mazarin, what a number of people there were in the City who resembled a certain respectable merchant and news-writer, Mr. Morrell, eager for any sort of change, tired of a multiplicity of masters, and ready to hope better things from one than from a hundred. We want greater secrecy, wrote the thrifty Mr. Morrell, more promptitude, less speechifying, more work. In a word, three great causes were surely and steadily conspiring to the fall of the republic. There was matter both corrupt and obstructive in its lower divisions ; there was a nation, reverent of law, heavily and surely swaying back to monarchy ; and, worse than all, the very heart of the republican ranks held within it a leader in their army, a man mighty in battle, the main support of the Com- monwealth itself, born with an instinct of command, born with a genius for government, eminently practical, and utterly unscrupulous. That is M. Guizot's Cromwell. A man who had the pitiless sagacity to see the worth of an enemy only to recognise the necessity of at once putting him out of the way, he was able not less, in the judgment of the French historian, to conceal effectually his own pride and pretensions, and carry exposed upon his sleeve only an irresistible semblance of self-denial. " No great man," exclaims M. Guizot, " ever carried the ** hypocrisy of modesty so far as Cromwell, or so easily " subordinated his vanity to his ambition." So little also can M. Guizot discover of system in his mind, so little does he find him under the influence of preconceived ideas of any kind, that he believes him to have had no really fixed principles at all on questions civil or religious. But, though he was not a philosopher, and did not act in obedience to systematic and premeditated views, he was guided by the superior instinct and practical good sense of a man destined by the hand of God to govern ; and he possessed, above all, the consummate secret of the governing art which consists in a just appreciation of what will be sufiicient in every given circumstance, and in resting satisfied with that. He had, moreover, an unerring instinct of the drift of the people by which he brought them to his side ; and the historian thinks it an extreme proof of the relations he maintained, and Cromwell.'] the protector and the cardinal. 23 the hopes he inspired, among persons of all ranks and creeds, that he should have been able to suggest himself as their best resource, not simply to sectaries of all sorts, — Unitarians, Jews, Muggletonians, and Freethinkers, but even to Roman Catholics and Episcopalians. Giving credit to the earliest reports which represent him as by councils and conversations feeling his way towards the dignity of King, it was yet, according to M. Guizot, his rare faculty throughout to understand the ne quid nimis in the art of government ; and acting upon it, bitter as the trial was, he finally denied himself the Crown. He possessed, says the historian, the two qualities that make men great. He was sensible, and he was bold ; indomitable in his hopes, yet never the victim of illusion. What is thus said of the absence of system in Crom- well's ambition, let us remark, finds such striking illus- tration in a passage of the Cardinal de Retz's Memoirs, that we are surprised it should have escaped M. Guizot. Having occasion to quote the description, from that very clever book, of Yane's secret mission from Cromwell and the Council of State immediately after the victory of Worcester, when the Cardinal found the envoy a man of such *' surprising capacity," ' the historian should not have laid down the volume, we think, without reproducing from a somewhat later page one of the shrewdest of all its hints for statesmen, embodied in the following memo- rable dialogue. The Cardinal is talking, during Crom- well's protectorate, with the First President of the Parlia- ment of Paris, M. de Bellievre. " I understand you," says the President at a particular point of their argument, " and I stop you at the same time to tell you what I have " learnt from Cromwell." (M. de Bellievre, interposes the Cardinal, had seen and known him in England.) " He said to me one day, that One never mounted so high " as ivhen one did not know ichere one was going.'' AYhere- upon says the Cardinal to the President, *' You know " that I have a horror of Cromwell ; but, however great 1 An admission, we may observe, down to the last and best edition of -whicli the French editors have of MM. Michard and Foujoiilat, hitherto done their best to deprive which restores the suppressed pas- the great English republican by in- sages, and from which we quote), variably printing his name (even as Vairc^ Vere, or Vainc. 24 AMBITION WITHOUT A PLAN. \_Oliver " a man tliey may think him, I add to this horror, con- " tempt ; for if that be his opinion, he seems to me to be " a fooL" The Cardinal proceeds to tell ns that he reports this dialogue, which is nothing in itself, to make us see the importance of never speaking of people who are in great posts. For Monsieur the President, return- ing to his cabinet where there were several people, repeated the remark without reflection, as a proof of the injustice which was done their friend the Cardinal when it was said that his ambition was without measure and without bounds. All which was straightway carried off to my Lord Protector of England, who remembered it with bitterness ; and took occasion not long after to say to M. de Bordeaux, the Ambassador of France at his Court, / know only one man in the world who despises me, and that is Cardinal de Retz. " This opinion," adds the penitent Cardinal, " had very nearly cost me dear.'' The truth is, that Cromwell's remark by no means deserved the contemptuous comment of De Eetz. It is not at all so necessary, as the Cardinal appears to think, that a man who is about to mount high should have systematically arranged beforehand to what exact height he shall mount. It may be true, that in all ambitious men there will necessarily be some calculation, and something of a preconceived plan ; but it may be fairly doubted whether to constitute such a man of the first order, there must not also be a yet larger amount of passion to outstrip and go beyond the calculation. In short, to whatever extent particular plans and arrange- ments may contribute intermediately to success, it must ever be a condition of the highest success not to be finally bound by them. Between the fixity of all men's designs and the uncertainty of their destiny, there is an interval so large and vague, that it is there the highest order of genius will probably most often find its occasions and means, its power and opportunity ; and we think it very certain that wherever the highest has been reached to which it was possible to attain, the courage to undergo a risk must at least have been as great as the patience to profit by a plan. We go farther in Cromwell's case, for we are very certain he began with no plan at all, but a zeal for what he honestly believed to be Gfod's truth, and Cromwell,'] early life of oliver. 25 for the establishment of a government that should he according to God's will. Who that is at all acquainted with his entire history- will believe, that when the final summons of array reached him, he knew, as he buckled on his sword, whither he was going ? He had lived for nearly forty years the useful unassuming life from which parliamentary duties first called him away, cultivating his native acres in the Eastern fens, tilling the earth, reading his Bible, assist- ing persecuted preachers, and himself kneeling daily with his servants around him in exhortation and prayer. When he went up with Hampden to take his seat in the Long Parliament, he was by birth a gentleman, as he described himself ten years later to the first parliament of the Protectorate, Hving at no great height, nor yet in obscurity. He had not been without the means, that is, of challenging distinction, if such had been his wish. He had been dragged before the Privy Council ' without claiming the honours of a martyr, and he had led an agita- tion against the great lords of his county without aspiring to the rewards of a hero. In resisting a particular grie- vance, he had made himself the most popular and powerful man in all that district of the fens ; but, satisfied when the work was done, he had sought no further advantage from the popularity and power acquired in doing it. There is nothing so striking, in connection with Cromwell's history, as the steady uniformity of the picture it presents, of a man doing his duty in the station and offices of life to which his duty has called him. JSTo new discovery we have made, none that we have the chance of making, is likely to disturb or unsettle that picture by a single adverse trait. As he appears to us everywhere else, when honestly reported, we found him lately when the blotted page of D'Ewes revealed its secrets to us. There is never any fussy activity about him, and no superfluous energy. We see always the least possible of himself. There is nothing over- anxious or restless, or that interferes for an instant with the sole straightforward purpose of arriving in the 1 This curious and hitherto un- that most intelligent and able of known incident in his career was antiquaries, Mr. John Bruce, and by lately discovered in a search among him communicated to the Athenceum the registers of the Privy Council by of the 13th of October, 1855. JJ6 CAKEER OF THE LORD GENERAL. \_Oliver shortest and most effectual manner at tlie point he desires to reach. Certainly this, too, is uniformly the character of his early exploits in the war. All that appears essential to him is that he must actually do the work he has in hand, and to this he is bent exclusively. When, in con- versation with his cousin Hampden at the close of the first doubtful year of the conflict, he threw out the remark which contained the germ of all his subsequent victories, who will believe that his thoughts were travelling beyond the duty and necessity of the hour ? His experience in the field had taught him why it was the royalists gained upon their adversaries in battle, and he at once declared that it would not do to go on enlisting " poor tapsters and " town- apprentice people " against well-born cavaliers ; but that, to cope with men of honour, men of religion must be enrolled. When he expressed this design to Hampden, it might be said that, on the instant, the whole issue of the war was determined ; but is it necessary to suppose him carrying his own thoughts so far ? When ho proceeded to organise his God-fearing regiment of Ironsides, is it conceivable that he cared, or was troubled to anticipate, to what a destiny they might bear himself ? Clarendon has made it a reproach against him, that on one occasion he said he could tell what he would itot have, but not what he would have ; but was not this only another expression of the thought, that he had no concern but the duty of the hour, no wish but to do it in the hour, and that he knew not and cared not whither it might lead him ? As time went on, indeed, as he commanded armies, won battles, and saw himself indisputably the first soldier and captain in the war, to direct and govern men became clearly as much a part of his no longer avoidable duty, as any commonest avocation that had occupied him on his Ely farm. With this, too, let it also be admitted, there must of course have opened upon him that wider range of worldly opportunities to which, whether they shape them- selves to ambition, or any other inclination of the mind, it is so easy to give the name, or to make available under the sanction, of duty itself. Doubtless to many such temptations Cromwell yielded. In his religious creed he is said (we must confess on what seems to us very doubt- Cromwell,'] "our chief of men." %t ful authority) to have held the somewhat dangerous doctrine, that having once heen in a state of grace it was not possible to fall from it ; and from time to time, if this were so, it must insensibly have relaxed to him even the restraints of religion itself. But that there was any conscious hypocrisy in his language, or any settled scheme of mere ambition in his conduct, we find it difiicult to believe. Higher and higher as he was mounting, still to the last he might have asked himself — Whither ? When, at the close of the war, he appears heaped with all the favours a grateful people and parliament could bestow, there is yet not one which had not fallen to him naturally, or that it would not have been monstrous as well as foolish to deny to him. Every step of the ascent had been solidly and laboriously won ; he stood upon it as of right ; and surely no man ever rose so high with less of what we must call usurpation. In the honours paid to him, in the very trappings of state thrown over him, when he left London upon his last campaign and returned with the final victory, there was not a man in the popular ranks, of however rigid and ascetic public virtue, who might not feel that he was also himself participating as in a gain and glory of his own. When the Lord General passed out of the city in his coach, drawn by six gallant Flanders mares, whitish gray, and " with colonels for *' his life guard such as the world might not parallel," — it may be very doubtful if less would have satisfied the most exacting republican, whose claims and whose power he then and there represented. When he returned in a more than regal triumph, receiving homage from the populace, halting to hawk with the gentry, and present- ing horses and prisoners to the parliamentary delegates appointed to give him welcome, — it was yet but the glory of their common country which all men were con- tent to see reflected, in the ceremony and the pomp which surrounded him. Should it be matter of blame, then, that still he rose to the occasion which called him, and that even this position did not take him unawares ? As he farmed at Ely and St. Ives, as he fought at Marston Moor and Naseby, so now he fell into his allotted place as Milton's " chief of '' men." Such is the sum of reproach with any fairness 28 SELF-CREATED SOVEREIGNTYi \Oliver up to this date to be imputed to him. " This man will " be King of England yet," said the Eev. Mr. Peters inwardly to himself, as he observed at the time, in his air and manner, an indescribable kind of exaltation. Sir Philip Warwick afterwards observed it too ; and, being entirely at a loss to reconcile so " great and majestic a " deportment and comely presence " with what he re- membered of his very ill-made apparel, and not very clean or sufficient linen, when he first heard him speak in the parliament-house twelve years before, is much disposed to attribute the change to the fact of his having mean- while " had a better tailor and more converse among " good company." The same difficulty occurs even to Clarendon, who more shrewdly dismisses it with the re- mark, that " his parts seemed to be raised, as if he had " concealed his faculties till he had occasion to use them." But we shall not ourselves have any difficulty at all, if we simply believe, of such a man, that only the occasion for use would ever tempt him to the assumption or dis- play. A readiness for the duty of the hour, and no rest- lessness beyond it, would seem to be the lesson of Crom- well's life, whatever part of it we examine ; and if we think the forcible dissolution of the Long ParHament an interruption to the temperate wisdom which generally guided him (and here, we must distinctly state, we difier strongly from Mr. Carlyle), it is because we feel that with- out it the supreme power must nevertheless have been his, unattended by the difficulties in which the conse- quences of that act involved him. At the very last, he said himself, he was doubtful about doing it ; but another and stronger impulse got the mastery over him. " When " I went there," he told his council of officers, " I did " not think to have done this. But perceiving the spirit " of God so strong upon me, I would not consult ilesh " and blood." And so we arrive again at what he told Monsieur the President de Bellievre, that One never mounts so high as when one does not know ivhere one is going. But M. Guizot would attach little importance to that stronger impulse which the Lord General there professed to have over-ruled him. We do not know that anything has impressed us more throughout his book than its Cromwell. 1 religious element in revolution. 29 extremely partial and imperfect recognition of the reli- gious element, which formed so large a portion not merely of Cromwell himself, but of the entire English Eevolution. Doubtless it arises from the fact that this element, so necessary in the study of it, lies too far away from those evils which dwell insensibly and most strongly upon the historian's mind, and from which his study of these great events in our history had deHberately or unconsciously arisen. He is even careful to hint his belief, more than once, that there were in those days more infidels in England than we commonly suppose. It is curious to contrast his view in this respect with that of another French writer, M. de Lamartine, who, regarding Crom- well from the thick of French republicanism, has very partially and confusedly (but as he believes wholly) ac- cepted Mr. Carlyle's interpretation, and informs his countrymen that Cromwell was a fanatic. M. Guizot, himself a man of calm unostentatious piety, and not unfrequently reminding his readers that a Divine Provi- dence is ordering and disposing the affairs of States, yet cannot see in Cromwell either fanatic or chosen man of God. In no part of his history of Oliver do we find any swerving from this view, and subsequent reflection appears only to have confirmed him in it. In the whole of his account of Richard CromweU there is no more striking passage than that in which, describing the respective positions occupied by the followers of Oliver and the ad- vocates of the Republic, he again expresses forcibly the distinction between the purely worldly character of the Protectorate and the Divine purpose it was called to ful- fil. The Cromwellians under Richard, he says, rather by experience and political instinct than by any principle clearly comprehended or defined, would forcibly have imposed upon the people the second Protectorate, on the ground that they did not hold the people to be itself sufficient to constitute the entire Government, or to possess the right to unmake and reconstruct it at its pleasure. In their opinion the Government requu-ed, for the main- tenance and good order of societ}^, some base independently subsistent, recognised by the people, but anterior, and in a certain degree superior, to its shifting will. Originally conquest, afterwards the hereditary principle in monarchy, 30 OLIVER PROTECTOR. \^Olwer and tlie preponderance of great landowners, liad created in the English. Government such power, independent in itself, immovable in right, and indispensable to society. By the course of things, however, the territorial proprie- torship had in part changed hands, and, by its own faults, the hereditary principle of monarchy had succumbed. But God then raised up Oliver, and gave him the power with the victory. Conqueror and actual master, sur- rounded by his comrades in war, and treating with a House elected by the people, he had been able to found, for his successor as for himself, the Protectorate and its Constitution ; and thus was provided that anterior and independent power, born of events, not of the people's will, and which the people should be held as little able to destroy according to its fancy, as it had been able of its motion to create. This great fact, therefore, accom- plished upon the ruins of the ancient monarchy, and in the name of necessity, by the genius of a great man sus- tained by God, it became the duty of all men to recognise and accept ; and, from the uniform tone of M. Guizot's argument, it is manifest that he would himself so have accepted it, though he sees that it carried with it also the seeds of failure inseparable from its revolutionary origin. How otherwise, he reasons, could it be ? The weak purpose of Richard being substituted for his father's iron will, every party again became loud in the assertion of his own particular theory ; " accomplices became rivals ; " and soon, in the stormy sea of faction, the good ship of the Republic drifted an utter wreck. Then were seen, according to the historian, the faults of both divisions, of the pure republicans and of the adherents of Cromwell, revenging themselves upon their authors. For, what more easy than the way at last appeared to be, to a firm establishment of Richard Cromwell's government? What- ever his infirmities of character, he was disliked by none. Golden opinions were expressed of him by all sorts of people ; and the whole private interest of the members of his first Parliament lay in the assurance of his power, and with that also of their own prosperity. His Govern- ment had no design and no desire of tyranny ; Richard himself was naturally moderate, patient, equitable ; and his counsellors, like himself, demanded nothing better Cromwell.~\ ideal of his protectorate. »3l than to govern in concert with the Parliament, and ac- cording to the laws. What, then, so natural or so reasonable, as for all men who had not vowed their hearts to the old royal line or to the pure republic, to accommodate themselves to the regime established, and to live, by common consent, tranquil and safe under the new Protector ? But it was not to be. Though their empire had vanished, their obstinacy remained unenlightened and unsubdued. Decried as visionaries, they retorted by ac- cusing their country of ingratitude, and battled vainly against the successive defeats which they knew not that the hand of God was inflicting. But though they could not build they could destroy, and so the second Protec- torate passed away. We have thus endeavoured to exhibit the process of reasoning by which M. Guizot has arrived at his judgment of the two Protectorates. We by this means not un- fairly show, at the same time, the measure and degree to which he has been able to exclude, from the consideration of both, that particular element in Cromwell's idea of Government which led him, in the re-constitution of the State with a view to its bequest to his successor, to be indif- ferent whether it was republican or monarchical in its form, provided only that, above all things, it was godly in its spirit. Yet a sound and true perception in this respect might have led the historian to more just con- clusions as to opinions held generally by Cromwell, in regard not only to his system of rule during life, but to the succession he desired to leave after him. Upon a close ex- amination it would be found, we suspect, that Cromwell's true ideal was among the Jewish forms of government disclosed by the Sacred Book, even such as showed, in the midst of the petty kings of Moab and Edom, the free people of Israel, without a king, living majestically. The grand old Hebrew Judges would be perhaps his nearest model. But his historian will not recognise anything of this. M. Guizot thinks his mind was great, because it was just, perspicacious, and thoroughly practical ; but of this great- ness he does not find that religion formed an essential part, or contributed to it in any material way. He avoids, indeed, all common-place abuse. He knows that in Cromwell's day the open use of scriptural language wat 32 STATE-CRAFT OR PERSONAL PIETY ? \JDliver no more synonymous with cant, than republicanism with discord ; but in both cases he appears to think that the one had a tendency to beget the other, and he accepts Cromwell's reported comment to Waller on a dialogue with one of the saints ('* we must talk to these men in " their own way "), as a fair hint of the value of his piety. It was no more than one portion, and not the chief, of his state craft. Even the rapt and exalted fervour of his address to what we may call the assembled saiuts in the Barebones Parliament, M. Guizot attributes to those instincts on the part of a profound genius which mark his anxiety to derive, as though immediately from God, the pretended supreme power which he had himself esta- blished, and the inherent infirmity of which he already perceived. We certainly cannot but regard as extremely remarkable the grave indifference with which the French historian is thus able to set aside, as only one of many means towards a worldly end, the fervent vein of scrip- tural thought and feeling which runs not alone through every deliberate work of Cromwell's, but tinges also his every Hghtest act, and, in his private as in his public utterances, is that which still makes most impressive appeal to all who would investigate his character. For, this we hold to have been finally established by Mr. Carlyle, and to constitute the peculiar value of his labours in connection with the subject. To collect and arrange in chronological succession, and with elucidatory comment, every authentic letter and speech left by Cromwell, was to subject him to a test from which false- hood could hardly escape; and the result has been to show, we think conclusively and beyond further dispute, that through all these speeches and letters one mind runs consistently. Whatever a man's former prepossessions may have been, he cannot accompany the utterer of these speeches, the writer of these letters, from their first page to the last, travelling with him from his grazing lands at St. Ives up to his Protector's throne ; watching him in the tenderest intercourse with those dearest to him ; observing him in affairs of state or in the ordinary business of the world, in offices of friendship or in con- ference with sovereigns and senates ; listening to him as he comforts a persecuted preacher, or threatens a perse- Cromwell.'] peoofs of a profound sincerity. 33 cuting prince ; and remain at last with any other con- viction than that in all conditions, and on every occasion, Cromwell's tone is substantially the same, and that in the passionate fervour of his religious feeling, under its different and varying modifications, the true secret of his life must be sought, and will be found. Everywhere recognisable is the sense, deeply interpenetrated with his nature and life, of spiritual dangers, of temporal vicissi- tudes, and of never-ceasing responsibility to the Eternal. " Ever in his Great Taskmaster's eye." Unless you can believe that you have an actor continually before you, you must believe that this man did unquestionably recognise in his Bible the authentic voice of God; and had an irremovable persuasion that according as, from that sacred source, he learned the divine law here and did it, or neglected to learn and to do it, infinite blessedness or infinite misery hereafter awaited him for evermore. It is also clear to us from the letters, with only such reservation as we have already intimated, and after the large allowance to be made in every case for human passion and frailty, that Cromwell was, to all practical intents, as far removed on the one hand from fanaticism, as, on the other, from hypocrisy. It is certainly not necessary that we should accept it as proof of fanaticism, that, on the day before setting out to the war with Scot- land, he enlarged to Ludlow upon the great providences of God then abroad upon the earth, and in particular talked to him for almost an hour upon the hundred and tenth psalm. We have but to remember it as the psalm in which God's promise was given to make his enemies his footstool, to make his people willing, and to strike through kings in the day of his wrath, — to understand why Cromwell so recalled it on the eve of his last entrance into battle. It is as little necessary that we should accept, as proof of hypocrisy, the proof M. Guizot offers of his rejecting, and even ridiculing, the report set about by the fanatical officers after the dissolution of the Parliament, to the effect that he had undergone special and superna- tural revelations. " The reports spread about the Lord " General," writes M. de Bordeaux to M. deBrienne, are " not true. He does not affect any special communication 34 TOLERATION FOR ALL RELIGIONS. [OHver *' with the Holy Spirit, and he is not so weak as to he *' caught hy flattery. I know that the Portuguese am- " hassador having complimented him on this change, " he made a jest of it." But the French ambassador does not omit to accompany his statement with a careful tribute to the Lord GeneraFs zeal and great piety. Nor do we think M. Guizot justified in the belief he appears ' to entertain, that CromwelFs toleration of differences in religion proceeded from the merely politic spirit, and was due only to his wisdom as a ruler of men. To his pro- found knowledge of the art of government may indeed be referred such projects as were started in the Protectorate, — for a Synod to bring the different sects into peaceful agreement, for ensuring a complete legal toleration to the Jews, and for receiving in England even a bishop of the Church of Pome to preside over the religious communion of the Catholics. But, from the depth of true piety in his own soul, must have proceeded that larger personal charity, which was so ready, with listening ear and help- ing hand, for any form of honest belief that claimed from him sympathy and protection. Let any one read his noble correspondence with the governor of Edinburgh Castle, when, having defeated the army of the Covenant in battle, he proceeded in argument to overthrow its preachers, — and entertain any further doubt of this if he can. Those are the incomparable letters in which he reasoned out a perfect scheme of sublime toleration ; in which he vindicated the execution of Charles Stuart as an act which Christians in after times would mention with honour, " and all tyrants in the world look at with '^ fear ; " in which he warned the Presbytery that their platform was too narrow for them to expect " the great *' God to come down " to such minds and thoughts ; in which he told them that he had not himself so learned Christ as to look at ministers as the lords over, instead of helpers of, God's people; and in which he desired them specially to point out to him the warrant they had in Scripture for believing that to preach was their function exclusively. " Your pretended fear lest error should " step in, is like the man who would keep all the wine " out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will " be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a Cromwell. ~\ scene in ely cathedral. 85 " man of Ms natural liberty upon a supposition lie may *' abuse it. When be doth abuse it, judge." And tben, within some six months or so, Edinburgh having mean- while surrendered, and the Presbytery, recovered from its sulks, having accepted permission fr'om him again to open its pulpits, you see this same Cromwell respectfully . attending their services and sermons, and taking no other notice of the latter being specially directed against him- self and his fellow "sectaries,'' than to desire friendly discourse with the ministers who had so railed against them, to the end that, if possible, misunderstandings might be taken away. Neither had Cromwell, before he evinced this spirit, waited until authority fell to him as Lord General, at which time, in M. Guizot's view, considerations altogether politic and worldly began largely to operate with him. There is a very remarkable letter decisive as to this, which the Gentleman^ s Magazine first published three- quarters of a century ago, but which Mr. Carlyle has been able both to confirm as authentic and to adjust to the right place in his Hfe, — the year after the battle of Naseby. Not long before the date of it, he had entered Ely cathe- dral while the Reverend Mr. Hitch was " performing " the choir service ; and, with a " leave off your fooling , and " come dotcn, sir/' had turned the reverend gentleman sheer out of the place, intoning, singing, and all. But this was because Sir. Hitch had become a nuisance to a godly neighbourhood, and had treated with dehberate disregard a previous warning of OHver's to the very plain and legible effect, that, " lest the soldiers should in " any tumultuous or disorderly way attempt the reform a- " tion of the cathedral church, I require you to forbear " altogether your choir service, so un edifying and offen- " sive ; and this, as you shall answer it, if any disorder " should arise thereupon." And notwithstanding the prompt procedure by which he kept his word in this case, he shows himself, in the letter we have named and are now about to quote, not less ready to protect any honest people differing completely from himself in regard to choir or other services, provided always they so exer- cised their unedifying faith as not to be offensive to others. He intercedes with a Royalist gentleman, in the D 2 36 THOUGHTS OF A HERO. [OHver adjoining (Norfolk) county, for liberty of conscience to certain of his tenants. " And,'^ lie writes, "however the " world interprets it, I am not ashamed to solicit for such " as are anywhere under pressure of this kind ; doing " even as I Avould be done by. Sir, this is a quarrelsome " age, and the anger seems to me to be the worse, where " the ground is difference of opinion ; which to cure, to " hurt men in their names, persons, or estates, will not be " found an apt remedy.'* Over and over again he insists and enlarges on these views. The very day after the fight at Naseby he had repeated them, reminding the Parliament of the honest men who had served it faithfully in that fight, and beseeching it, in the name of God, not to discourage them. " He that ventures his life for the " liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the " liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he " fights for." He started life with these thoughts, and they remained with him to its close. Over and over again he used the noble language which was nearly the last he addressed to the last parliament that assembled in his name. He would have freedom for the spirits and souls of men, he said, because the spirits of men are the men. The mind was the man. If that were kept pure and free, the man signified somewhat ; but if not, he would fain see what difference there was betwixt a man and a beast. Nay, he had only some activity to do some more mischief. Upon these principles he would have established, and connected inseparably, Government and Religion. vThe religion which so teaches us our duty to others is not very likely to fail us in regard to ourselves. Watch Cromwell in any great crisis of his life, and judge whether the faith he held could have rested on any doubtful or insecure foundation. Take him at the moment of his greatest triumph, or in the hour of his darkest peril, and observe whether the one so unduly elates or the other so unworthily depresses him, as to cause him to lose the sense either of his own weakness or of his Creator's power, either of the littleness of time or of the greatness of eter- ''li^y.-., I^ the very majesty of his reception after the Worcester battle, "he would seldom mention anything ** of himself," says Whitelocke, describing their meeting CromwelLj the pillar of fihe. 87 at Aylesbury; " mentioned others only; and gave, as was " due, the glory of tlie action unto God." In his last extremity at Dunbar, when Lesley, with an army of double his numbers, flushed with "sdctory, had so hemmed him in with his sick, star^^ng, and dispiiited troops, as they retreated and were falling back upon their ships, that, to use his own expression, " almost a miracle " was needed to save them, there is, in the tone of the letter he sent to Haselrig on the Newcastle border, such a quiet and composed disregard of himself, such a care only for the safety of the cause, such a calm and sustained reliance upon God, as we doubt if the annals of heroism can else- where parallel. "Whatever becomes of us," he wrote, " it will be well for you to get what forces you can " together; and the South to help what they can. If " your forces had been in readiness to have fallen upon " the back of Copperspath, it might have occasioned sup- " plies to have come to us. But the only wise God knows *' what is best. All shall work for good. Our spirits " are comfortable, praised be the Lord ; though our " present condition be as it is. Let Henry Vane know " what I write. I icould not make it public, lest danger " should accrue thereby J* Whatever else might desert this man, hope and faith never did. There was o;ie who stood afterwards by his death- bed, while a worse storm shook the heavens than even that which had swept along the heights of Dunbar, and who recalled these days in testimony of the strong man he had been. " In the dark perils of war, in the '* high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar " of fire, when it had gone out in all the others." Nor in the high places only, but in the solitude or service of his chamber, he impressed in like manner all who had intercourse with him. It was ever they who stood nearest to him who had reason to admire him most ; and to the eyes of his very valets and chamber-grooms, the heroic shone out of Cromwell. It is from one who held such office in his household we have a picture of him handed down to us which Vandyke or Velasquez might have painted. A body well compact and strong ; his stature under six foot (*' I believe about two inches ") ; his head so shaped as you might see it both a storehouse and shop, 38 CONTENTION WITH LONG PARLIAMENT. [OHveV of a vast treasiiry of natural parts ; his temper exceeding fiery (" as I have known ''), but the flame of it kept down for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had ; naturally compassionate towards objects in distress, even to an effeminate measure, though God had made him a heart, wherein was left little room for any fear ; " a larger soul, I thinlx, hath seldom dwelt in " a house of clay than his was.'' What Englishman may not be proud of that written portrait of Oliver Cromwell, still fresh from the hand of worthy Mr. John Maidstone, cofferer and gentleman-in- waiting on the Lord Protector of England ? Of the general estimate of him formed by the French historian little more need be said. There is much we might further make objection to ; but, compressed and brief as our summary of M. Guizot^s views has been, it will perhaps be understood with sufficient reservation. He does not reject the stories of the Irish massacres, though they are unwittingly refuted even by Cromwell's most eager enemies, the Irish priests, in the Clonmacnoise manifesto. He retains, on authority very decidedly ques- tionable, a great many reports which would tend to suggest ill thoughts of the Protector. But to the full worldly extent of the term, his Cromwell, whether before or after the Protectorate, is one of the great men of the earth. He is under the influence of ambition, but it is an ambition generally qualified, and often exalted, by the state necessities to which it bends. The question that so early arose between him and the Long Parliament, M. Guizot calls the beginning of a duel, of which he holds that neither party engaged therein could avoid forcing it on to its close. Of one or the other, it became the duty cedere majori; and, as we infer from his reasoning, it could not but occur to the Parliament towards the close of the struggle, while claiming over Cromwell a nominal supremacy, to feel the sting of the last portion of the epigram. Ilia gravis palma est, qiiam minor hostis hahet. But while indicating thus where in his judgment the pre-eminence lay, he might have added Cromwell's own later admission of the merits and services of his adver- saries. " They had done things of honour," he told hig second House of Commons, " and things of necessity : Cromwell.'] victor in the duel. 39 " things which, if at this day you have any judgment " that there lieth a possibility upon you to do any good, I " may say that you are all beholden to that Long Parlia- " ment for." At the same time, let us remark, the French historian's researches to illustrate this contention of Cromwell and the republicans appear to establish very clearly one point of considerable interest. He shows decisively that Cromwell, before the republic fell by his hand, was indisputably the first man, and acknow- ledged to be the first man, in it ; not simply in right of his victories, but by the administrative genius he had displayed, and by the light in which the foreign courts already regarded him. He fails himself, how- ever, to attach sufiicient importance to this ; and perhaps generally he somewhat underrates the influence and con- nection of foreign policy with the domestic administration of England at the period. But the mistake, if it be one, does not stint the details of foreign policy which M. Guizot gives. These open to us the manuscript treasures of the Hague, and the un- published archives of the French foreign office, as well as of Simancas in Spain, and pour upon this part of his great subject a flood of steady and original light. His volumes thus include details of various confidential mis- sions, and much other matter of the highest interest, of which the most essential portions are given complete. That we should always admit their evidence, in exactly the light in which M. Guizot seems disposed to accept it, we of course do not find to be necessary. Although both M. CrouUe for France, and Don Alonzo de Cardenas for Spain, express and act upon opinions of Cromwell which agree generally with the judgment formed of his character in M. Guizot's book, it may yet be said with perfect fairness, that neither a gentleman from the court of Philip lY, nor a gentleman representing a statesman of the stamp of Mazarin, were very likely to understand an exalted zeal like Cromwell's, taking it always for what it claimed to be. Putting aside some few acts of policy, however, perhaps justified by the distinction, which is only too freely permitted, between private and political morality, there is nothing in these new discoveries of which any defender of Cromwell has need to be ashamed, 40 FRENCH PARTIES AND INTRIGUES. [OHver and there is a vast deal to confirm very strikingly tlie sense of his greatness. "We give a few examples not in the histories. Before the time of the Protectorate, by the chief statesmen of both parties in the war of the Fronde then raging in France, the upward course of the great leader of the popular party in England had been watched with anxiety and dread. Both feared and hated him ; yet such was their position in regard to Spain, and each other, that his friendly countenance to either was become of inexpres- sible value. He had hardly arrived in London, after the battle of Worcester, when, in answer to overtures from De Retz at the instant of the brief triumph Avhich pre- ceded that statesman's fall, he sent Henry Yane with a letter to him (a striking proof that up to this time, that " great parliamentarian and intimate confidant of his," as the Cardinal describes him, could have had no suspi- cion of any blow meditated against the Parliament) ; and this also is the date when Mazarin, afi'ecting to put a friendly construction upon rumours that had reached him of a proposed expedition of Cromweirs into France, eagerly suggests to M. Croulle, through M. Servien, that if at the close of his Scottish campaign " Mr. Cromwell " should come into France, being as he is a pei'son of " merit, he will be well received here, for assuredly every " one will go to meet him at the place where he disem- " barks." Of course M. Croulle promptly disabuses his master of any notion of expecting that kind of neighbourly visit ; but, in also contradicting the report that any hostile intentions were entertained to France, he is careful to reproduce for the Cardinal the haughty terms in which Cromwell himself was said to have denied it. " Looking " at his hair, which is already white. General Cromwell " said that if he were ten years younger there was not a " king in Europe whom he could not make to tremble ; " and that, as he had a better motive than the late king " of Sweden, he believed himself still capable of doing " more for the good of nations than the other ever did " for his own ambition." Nevertheless, it was while overtures were on all sides secretly going on, and still during De Retz's brief predo- minance, that the double-faced Mazarin thus wrote from Cromwell. "l cardinal and coadjutor outwitted. 41 his place of exile at BruU to discredit De Eetz with the queen. It was probably written at the very moment when the Coadjutor himself was attempting to justify his intercourse with Yane, on the express ground of what he calls Mazarin's ''base and continual flattery" of Cromwell. " The Coadjutor has always spoken with veneration of *' Cromwell, as of a man sent by God into England, " saying that he would raise such men also in other " kingdoms ; and once in good company, where there was " Menage present, hearing the courage of M. de Beaufort " extolled, he said in express terms, if 31. de Beaufort is " Fairfax, I am Cromwell.'' A portion of M. Guizot's comment (which we need hardly say we have translated for ourselves) may be subjoined. " Mazarin excelled in " poisoning, for the ruin of his enemies, their actions or *' their words, and at the same time in taking to himself " impudently their examples and their weapons. While " he thus showed to the queen's eyes, as a crime in the " Coadjutor, his opinion of Cromwell, he laboured him- " self to enter with Cromwell into close relations. Too " shrewd not to recognise that in that direction, in Eng- *' land, lay the capacity and power,' it was to the future *' master of the republic, no longer to the republican " parliament, that he made his advances." To this, it is needless to add, Cromwell lent himself willingly ; he was too incessantly bent on making to himself powerful friends everywhere ; and soon Mazarin was within the toils of a subtler brain and stronger hand. " Mr. Cromwell adroitly ''leaves to others the conduct and care of whatever " begets outcry," wrote, in 1650, CrouUe to M. Servien, " and reserves to himself affairs that confer obligation ; " concerning which at least he sets rumours afloat, in " such manner that if they succeed they may be attri- " buted to him, and if not that one may see he willed " them well, and that the result came of hindrance from " others." ' ^ ^' Trop sagace pour ne pas re- " and ability then existing in Eng- ' ' connaitre que la etaient, en Angle- ' ' land. " " iei're, Vhabilete et le pouvoir." 2 ^ letter to Mazarin from the According to the translator, "Too Count d'Estrador is added, in which, " sagacious not to perceive that in though the date is the 5th of Febru- " him were centred all the power ary, 1652, the title of Protector is 43 EIYALRIES OF FRANCE AND SPAIN. \OUver We cannot give all the details of the overtures that thus began, curious and impressive as they are, but through none of them, the reader at once perceives, was Mazarin a match for Cromwell. The great soldier and statesman, though with his own predilections hampered by the prejudices of his country, and standing between the intrigues of the rival Courts of France and Spain, yet knew how to play his game with perfect safety, and to obtain substantially all that he desired. All through the negotiations that ensued, however, two things are very obvious in his far-sighted policy. He had not simply to adjust the balance in Europe, at that time overweighted by France ; but he had to look to the safety and stability of his own recently settled government, more in danger from so near a neighbour as France, than from one so distant as Spain. Here will be found the real clue to his wonderful management of these two powers ; and to the measures by which he had been able to estab- lish so potent and singular an influence in the heart, and over both the parties, of the neighbour kingdom. Up to the time of the expulsion of the Long Parliament, no alliance had been absolutely concluded with either France or Spain ; though, at the moment of its expulsion, M. Bordeaux was under the impression that a treaty with it, on the part of the statesman he represented, was on the point of being happily concluded. But already Mazarin had been obliged, even without deriving any immediate advantage from the step, formally to recognise the Republic and its leaders ; and with hot haste, as soon as the Long Parliament was dissolved, the Cardinal of course easily betook himself to the power that remained trium- phant. " Mazarin," writes M. Guizot, " always pro- " digal of flattering advances, wrote to Cromwell to offer " him, and ask from him, a serviceable friendship. Crom- " well replied to him ^dth a rare excess of affected hu- given to Cromwell. Of course tliere- note, or explain the confusion it was fore M. Guizot is careful to remark, intended to remedy ; and in subse- ina note, that as the letter and its quently giving the note of June '53, date are beyond question, the title quoted in the text, he appends to of Protector must have been inter- its signature the title (P.) which its calated some years afterwards ; but very contents should have shown him his translator does not think it did not then belong to the writer, worth while either to translate this Cromwell. "^ mazarin no match for Oliver. 43 " mility.'* And then follows a little note, concerning wMcli Mr. Carlyle, believing it to exist only in the form of a French translation made by Mazarin, remarked, that " it would not be wholly without significance if we had *' it in the original." Here it is in the original : " Westminster^ 9th of June, 1653. "It is surprise to me that your Eminency should take notice of a person so inconsiderable as myself, living (as it were) separate from the world. This honour has done (as it ought) a very deep impression upon me, and does oblige me to serve your Eminency upon aU occa- sions, so as I shall be happy to hnd out. So I trust that very honour- able person Monsieur Burdoe [Bordeaux] will therein be helpful to "Your Eminencie's * ' Thrice humble Servant, "0. Cromwell." The historian calls this a rare excess of affected hu- mility ; but, after all, what is there more in the counter- feit humility, than such a reply to a compliment as every gentleman in England makes every week in some form to somebody. " You do me too much honour. " There is nothing that I would not do to serve you, Sir. " Good morning." In truth, there is never any affected humility, but rather a contempt very thinly covered, if not openly avowed, from Cromwell to Mazarin ; nor does this find anywhere more characteristic expression than in the evidence the historian incidentally gives us of the sort of gifts they interchanged. While Mazarin sent over regal presents of tapestry, wine, and Barbary horses, Cromwell, familiarly and half contemptuously confident that he had to do with a man more avaricious than vain, would return such compliments by forwarding so many cases of pure Cornwall tin. As to their public intercourse throughout, one sees that it was but a constant interchange of conces- sions and resistances, services and refusals, in which they ran little risk of quarrelling, for the simple reason that they understood each other, and did not require, on either hand, anything that could not be denied without doing greater injury than the grant would do service ; but it was after all a kind of equality in which the personal predominance remained with Cromwell. It is he whom it is manifestly impossible, throughout, either to intimidate 44 FOREIGN POLICY OF PROTECTOUATE. [OUver or deceive ; and tliougli it was no small art on Mazarin's side, as soon as lie saw this, to affect to meet his adver- sary with the same simple frankness, there cannot be a question which plays the greater figure, he who possessed the art, or he who always reduced its possessor to the necessity of practising it. M. Guizot justly describes the foreign policy of Crom- well as based on two fixed ideas, — peace with the United Provinces and the alliance of the Protestant States. These were, in his eyes, the two vital conditions of the security and greatness of his country in Europe, of his own security and his own greatness in Europe and in his country. With the United Provinces, peace was at once made ; Whitelocke was sent upon his embassy to Sweden ; a special treaty of commerce was negotiated with the King of Denmark; and Cromwell found himself on terms of friendship with all Protestant States of Europe. In France it was said that he even meditated, in the interests of Protestantism, a more vast and difficult design. " The Protector proposes to himself," wrote one of Mazarin's confidential agents to his master the Cardinal, " to cause the assembly of a council of all the Protestant " communions, to re-unite them in one body for the " common confession of one and the same faith." Some particular facts indicate that Cromwell was, indeed, pre- occupied with this idea. It was one of many such he would fain have realised, and he reluctantly laid aside. Well does M. Guizot describe him as one of those persons of powerful and fertile genius in whom great designs and great temptations are born by crowds : but who applied promptly his firm good sense to his grandest dreams, and never pursued farther those which did not stand that trial. " He assumed towards the Catholic powers," the French historian finely and characteristically continues, " an attitude of complete and frigid independence, without " prejudice or ill-will, but without forwardness, showing " himself disposed to peace, but always leaving to be seen a " glimpse of war, and carrying a rough pride into the care of " the interests of his country or of his own greatness." ' We cannot resist giving M. translator. "II prit envers les Guizot's text in this latter paragraph "puissances Catholiques uue atti- ia conuexion with the version of his " tude complete et froide liberie,— Cromwell. 1^ bidding high for an alliance. 45 One example of that rougli pride and immovable resolve rises promptly to tlie mind. The King of Portugal was stigmatised at Madrid as an usurper, but Cromwell, who had received his ambassador, consented to sign a treaty with him; and on the very day when the treaty was signed, the ambassador's brother, Don Pantaloon de Sa, who, under the plea of supposed immunity to members of a foreign embassy, had committed a fatal outrage on an English citizen, perished on a public scaffold at Tower Hill. No man had believed that this would be, and the fate of that Portuguese noble sent a thrill through Europe. Shall we wonder that France and Spain outdid each other in obsequious homage before such indomitable and intract- able energy? We see, in the French histonan's page, each bidding higher and higher against the other for his active friendship, and Cardenas at last eagerly offering him a subvention of not less than six hundred thousand dollars a year, " without having in London or in Flanders," wrote Mazarin to Bordeaux, *' the first sou to give him, if " he took them at their word. He would promise with the " same faciHty a million, indeed two, to get a pledge from " him, since assuredly it would not cost them more to " hold and execute one promise than the other." Mazarin, a better diplomatist, enriched his promises with a flowing courtesy; sent with them his wine, his tapestry, and his Barbary horses ; and conceded, on the part of the young king, a rank only less than royal. Even the Prince of Conde hastened to make himself acceptable to the rough English soldier, and declared his belief that the people of the three kingdoms must be surely at the summit of their happiness in seeing their goods and lives confided to so great a man. " sans prejugd ni raauvais vouloir, " powers he assumed an attitude of " mais sans empressement, se men- " complete and fearless liberty, un- " trant dispose a la paix, mais lais- *' marked by prejudice or ill-will, " sant toujours entrevoir la guerre, " but equally void of courtship or " et portant une fierte rude dans le " flattery, showing himself disposed " soin des interets de son pays ou "to maintain peace, but always " de sa propre grandeur." That " leaving open the prospect of war, is an admirable specimen of JM. '* and watching over the interests Guizot's style and manner in this " of his country and of his own book. We could hardly instance a " family with stern and uncompro- better. But now observe the fol- '' mising haughtiness." lowing : ' ' Towards the Catholic 46 WAR DETERMINED AGAINST SPAIN. \_Oliver Cromwell received all these advances, according to M. Guizot, with the same show of good will. But it was not that he saw them all with equal eye, or that he drifted indifferent or uncertain among allies so opposite. " Unlike " the Long Parliament, he inclined much more towards *' France than towards Spain ; with a superior sagacity " he had perceived that Spain w^as thenceforward an *' apathetic power, ahle to effect hut little, and, in spite *' of its favourable demonstrations, more hostile than any " other to Protestant England, for it was more exclu- " sively than any other given up to the maxims and *' influences of the Roman Church. And at the same " time that there was little to expect from Spain, *' she offered to the maritime ambition of England, by *' her vast possessions in the new world, rich and easy " prey." There soon followed, accordingly, the well-known swoop upon the King of Spain's West India possessions. The better half of the design failed, indeed, when the attack upon St. Domingo failed; but the seizure of Jamaica was an unquestionable prize, which Cromwell's wisdom turned at once to a noble account. All these incidents, and their consequences, show ever characteris- tically the personal predominance of the Protector. Up to within a few days of the declaration of war against Spain, hope had continued with Cardenas. To even the hour of the treaty of alliance with France, fear had not quitted Mazarin. And, in the actual dispatches written while the events were in progress, lives still their most graphic history. M. Guizot sees this, and the foreign policy of the Protectorate is thus with a rare freshness reproduced by him. We compare the mighty tread of Cromwell with the pirouettes of the statesmen opposed to him, and get no mean perception of the true hero of the day. Of the conditions of the treaty at last concluded with France, we need not speak ; but the jealous rigour with which Cromwell insisted on the substitution of Eex Gal- lorum, for Rex GaUicBy is a pregnant indication of the attitude then assumed by him to the most powerful of foreign States. Never, certainly, had our English name been carried so high. " He is the greatest and happiest Cromwell.'^ homage of foreign sovereigns. 47 *' prince in Europe," exclaimed young Louis Quatorze. Bound in fast treaties with all the Protestant States, allied to the most potent of Catholic Sovereigns, Monte- cuculi deprecating his wrath on one side as agent for the house of Austria, and on the other the Marquis of Leyden on behalf of the King of Spain, he received, besides the foreign ministers who habitually resided at his court, ambassadors extraordinary from Sweden, Poland, Germany, and Italy, who came solemnly to present to him the overtures or homage of their masters. To the very last he received this homage. While he lay himself in the sickness from which he never recovered, the young French King was talking bare-headed to his son-in-law. Lord Fauconberg ; and the great French Cardinal was treating him with a ceremony which, even to the King himself,' he ordinarily dispensed with. Pictures and medals, some nobly commemorative of his exploits, others coarsely satirical of his adversaries, were displayed in almost every town of the continent; celebrating his illustrious deeds, and humbling before them the old princes and kings. Well might one of the most considerable of the foreign agents write over to Thurloe, from Brussels, that " the Lord Protector's " government makes England more formidable and con- " siderable to all nations than it has ever been in my " day." Not the less comes in the inevitable, the melancholy close. "While the Lord Protector's government was thus formidable and considerable abroad, it was beset with I I quote from a letter of Lord " after an hour's discourse in pri- Fauconberg's, written in June, 1658, " vate, he conducted me downe to to inform Henry Cromwell that he "the very door, where my coach had had "the honorablest recep- "stood, a ceremony he dispenses " tion imaginable" at the French "with not only to all others, but Court. "The King did not only " even to the King himself. The * ' keepe bare at my publique au- ' ' charge of two very handsome " diences, but, when I made him a " tables were defrayed (for myself " private visit, he talked with me "and followers) by the King, all " in the garden an hour or two uu- " the while I stayed. In siimrae, " covered. From the Cardinal, the " through all their actions, not the " honors I had were particular " least circumstance was omitted, " and unusual : he waved the state " that might witness the truth of " of a publique audience, came out "those respects they beai-e his "of his own room to meet me, led " Highnesse and the English na- " me presently into his cabinet ; " tion." 48 FAILURE OF PROTECTORATE PARLIAMENTS. [OUver difficulties at home, wHch drove him finally to expe- dients that are alleged to have thrown discredit on his rule, and to have obscured the glory of his name. It would take us too far from our present purpose to discuss this matter with M. Guizot, with whom, respecting it, we have some important differences ; but we will en- deavour briefly but clearly to present the result of the investigation and reasoning which he appears to have been at great pains to bestow upon it. Of Cromwell's first effort, after the dissolution of the Long Parliament, to govern with the help of the men who had been parties to that act of violence, the result, according to M. Guizot's view, was to show him that reforming sectaries and innovators, though useful instru- ments of destruction, are destructive to the very power they establish ; and that the classes among whom con- servative interests prevail are the only natural and permanent allies of authority. Yet he had no choice but to try again, and again to renew, his efforts in the same direction, with what help his experience could give ; for the French historian has satisfied himself that his honest desire was so far to place himself, by any possible means, in subordination to English law, as to obtain co-operation from a fairly chosen Parliament in establishing a dynasty of Cromwell kings, and restoring the ancient form of Lords and Commons with that revival of the monarchy. But his attempts were all unavailing. He could not restore what he had so helped to destroy. Amid the ruins which his hands had made, he was doomed to see the vanity of those rash hopes, and to learn that no Government is, or can be, the work of man's will alone. In the endeavour to obtain such a Parliament as the old usages of England sanctioned, he raised up more than one semi-constitutional assembly ; but merely to destroy it when it disappointed him, and with it, as he well knew, his only safe means of taxing the people he would govern. The money needful for State purposes thus failing him, he was at last driven to the expedient pro- nounced by M. Guizot to be the political act which caused his ruin: the estabhshment of Major- Generals to levy tithes on the revenues of the royalists. By this unjustifiable act, he is declared to have detached his glory from the Cromwell.'] failure of protectorate itself. 49 cause of order and peace, in tlie name of wMcli lie had begun to found his throne, and to have plunged his power down into the depths of revolutionary violence. " He invoked," says the constitutional historian, *' neces- *' sity ; and without doubt thought himself reduced to " that : if he was right, it was one of those necessities " inflicted by God's justice, which reveal the innate vice " of a Government, and become the sentence of its con- " demnation." From this time to the end, the French historian believes CromweU to have been thoroughly conscious of the weak- ness with which he was smitten by his own deed, and that it was now, upon feeKng in all directions for support, he at last perceived his surest prop to be the advocacy of liberty of conscience. (Need we interpose to repeat, what already we have distinctly shown, that never had this sacred cause, at any period of his life^ been without his advocacy?) Of the formal discussion which he afterwards raised with his friendly Parliament on the question of his assuming royal state, the historian speaks as of a comedy performed for the instruction of the nation. It was designed to make men familiar with the topic, and to scatter abroad a variety of arguments in its favour ; but the interference of the army brought the comedy to an unwelcome end. Cromwell resigned the name of king ; and with it, the historian appears to think, any power of retaining much longer the kingly authority. He had arrived at the slippery height on which to stand still was impossible, and there was no alternative but to mount higher or to fall. Even his great heart failed him. He now saw, that, die when he might, he must be content to leave behind him for his successors, the two enemies he had most ardently combatted — Anarchy, and the Stuarts ; and M. Guizot's comments leave it to be inferred as his opinion, that had he long sur- vived the discomfiture which embittered his last months, even his political position might have been seriously endangered. He died, however, in the fullness of his power, though sorroicful. " Sorrowful not only because " he must die, but also, and above all, because he " must die without having attained his true and final " purpose." 50 PATRONAGE OF LEARNED MEN. \_Oliver Noble purposes lie nevertheless fully achieved, and a fame which will set him ever apart amongst the most illustrious of Englishmen. Let our last allusions he to such parts of his character as no doubt can possibly rest upon. Of his patronage of Hterature and learned men, M. Guizot speaks with due respect. Though he holds that his mind was neither naturally elegant nor richly cultivated, he yet cannot fail to see that his free and liberal genius understood thoroughly the wants of the human intellect. And while M. Guizot's experience has taught him that absolute power, on emerging from great social disturbances, takes its principal delight and achieves its easiest triumphs in the promotion of material prospe- rity, still, in regard to Cromwell, he frankly admits that few despots have so carefully confined their despotism within the limits of practical necessity, and allowed the human mind such a wide range of freedom. He sees in him the practical saviour of the two old Universities, and the founder of the University of Durham : following out and establishing, in both, what the Statesmen of the Long Parliament had begun. He is glad to record that he offered Hobbes the post of a secretary in his household, that he continued the employment of Milton, and that he took no offence at either Casaubon or Selden, when the one declined his pension and the other his invitation to write a history of the civil wars. He dwells with pleasure on his kindness to the learned Usher, on his desire to stand well with Cudworth and with Taylor, on his frank patronage of all the lettered Puritans,' on his friendly intercourse with Marvel and Morland, with Petty the Irish statist and with Pell the famous linguist, and on the facts that Waller had a place in his court (we have evidence, since M. Guizot wrote, that he put no mean value on the poet's famous panegyric^), ^ "When the great design of pub- has no guilt upon him unless it be lishing the Polyglott was set on "to be revenged for your soe wil- foot by Dr. Walton, Cromwell per- " linglye mistakinge mee in your mitted the paper to be imported '* verses ;" and talks of putting duty free. Waller to redeem him from himself, 2 A brief but remarkable letter as he had already from the world, was brought to light the other day, in The great Protector was not insen- which Cromwell, writing from White- sible to those noble and ever memo- hall in 1655, tells Waller that he rable lines. Waller had known well Cromwell.'] protectorate court circular. 51 that Butler was permitted to meditate Hudibras in the house of one of his officers, and that Davenant obtained his permission to open a private theatre for performance of his comedies. He might have added that the Lord Protector had himself a taste for innocent and cheerful recreation ; that he had no objection to play at Crambo, or even occasionally to smoke a pipe with Lord Commis- sioner Whitelocke, who also has left us a pleasant anecdote contrasting his laughter and gaiety to the sol- diers with the greater impatience and reserve of Ireton ; and that, in the correspondence of one of the Dutch ambassadors, there is a picture of his courteous habits on state occasions, and of the dignified and graceful conduct of his household, which far exceeds, in sober grandeur and worth, any other court circular of that age. " The " music played all the while we were at dinner," says Herr Jongestall, " and after, the Lord Protector had us " into another room, where the Lady Protectress and " others came to us, and we had also music and voices." To these graces of his private life, and to his domestic love and tenderness, which even his worst enemies have admitted, M. Guizot is of course, not slow to pay tribute ; but on one point he has suffered himself to be strangely misled. He gravely mentions Cromwell's infidelity to his wife, as if it were an admitted fact, and not a mere royalist slander; and he seems to think that some how to make his Panegyric most '* Hither the oppressed shall hence- pleasing to his great kinsman's ear. forth resort ** Justice to crave, and succour of ** The Sea's our own, and now all your Court, nations greet ** And show your Highness not for ** With bending sails each vessel in ours alone our fleet, *' But for the World's Protector * * Your power resounds as far as shall be known . . . wind can blow, " To pardon willing, and to punish " Or swelling sails upon the globe loth, may go . . . " You strike with one hand, but " Whether this portion of the world you heal with both . . . were rent " Still as you rise, the State, ex- ** By the wide ocean from the con- alted too, tinent, " Finds no distemper while 'tis " Or thus created, it was sure de- changed by you — signed *' Changed like the World's great "To be the sacred refuge of man- scene, when without noise kind. " The rising Sun night's vulgar lights destroys ! " E 2 63 WIFE OF THE PROTECTOR. \Oliver complaints of her own remain, in proof of a well-founded jealousy. Jealousy there may be, in the solitary letter of this excellent woman which has descended to us ; but it is the jealousy only of a gentle and sensitive nature, shrinking from the least ruflEe or breath of doubt that can come between itself and the beloved. " My dearest," she writes, " I wonder you should blame me for writing no " oftener, when I have sent three for one : I cannot but " think they are miscarried. Truly, if I know my own " heart, I should as soon neglect myself as to omit the " least thought towards you, when in doing it I must do " it to myself. But when I do write, my dear, I seldom " have any satisfactory answer, which makes me think my " writing is slighted ; as well it may ; but I cannot but " think your love covers my weakness and infirmities. " Truly my life is but half a life in your absence." That is not the writing of a woman jealous of anything but the share of her husband's time and care which public affairs steal from her. Most touching, too, is a letter of his own of nearly the same date, written to her from the very midst of the toils and perils of Dunbar ; in which he tells her that truly, if he does not love her too well, he thinks he errs not on the other hand much, and assures her that she is dearer to him than any creature. Let M. Guizot be well assured that he has here fallen into error. Of another error into which he has fallen, also con- nected with the domesticities of Cromwell, we have now, in conclusion, to speak in somewhat more detail. It touches an interesting point in Cromwell's history, and we are happy to be able to remove all further doubt respecting it. By none who have yet written on the subject has it been stated correctly. Five sons were born to Cromwell, of whom the youngest, James, born in 1632, certainly died in his infancy, and the eldest, Eobert, born in 1621, is supposed in all the biographies not to have survived his childhood. The second son, Oliver, born in 1623, grew to manhood, and his name is to be found enrolled as a cornet in the eighth troop of what was called " Earl Bedford's Horse." He was killed in battle ; but, in our opinion, certainly not so early as appears to be fixed by Mr. Carlyle, who accepts Cromwell. '\ family histoey. 53 an allusion, in a letter of his father's written after Marstou Moor, as referring to this loss, which we are about to show might have had quite another reference. Be this as it may, however, all the biographers up to this time have agreed, in regard to the eldest, Robert, that what is comprised in Mr. Carlyle's curt notice, " Named for Ms " grandfather. No farther account of him. Died before " ripe yearsy' — must be taken to express whatever now can be known. Cromwell's only distinct reference to any of his sons while yet in tender years, is contained in a letter addressed to his cousin, Oliver St. John's wife, while she was staying with his friend and relative Sir William Masham, at Otes, in Essex ; and Mr. Carlyle connects the reference in this letter with the fact that some two or three of Cromwell's sons were certainly educated at the neighbouring public school of Felsted, where their maternal grandfather had his country-seat. But the allusion surely relates specifically to one son, who appears to have been either staying with the Mashams at the time, or the object of some particular care and sym- pathy on their part. " Salute all my friends in that " family whereof you are yet a member. I am much " bound unto them for their love. I bless the Lord for " them ! and that my son, by their procurement, is so " well. Let him have your prayers, your counsel." Such had been the amount of existing information respecting the two eldest sons of Cromwell, when, before the publication of Mr. Carlyle's work, the present Avriter, in the Fifth Volume of his Statesmen of the Common- wealth, reproduced from one of tbe king's pamphlets in the British Museum, a very striking account of the death- bed of the Lord Protector, written by a groom of the chamber in waiting on him. In this, Cromwell was re- presented calling for his Bible, and desiring those verses from the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians to be read to him, in which the Apostle speaks of having learned, in whatever state he was, therewith to be con- tent, for he could do all things through Christ which strengthened him. " ^Yhich read," (the account pro- ceeded) " said he, to use his own words as near as I can " remember them. This scripture did once save my life ; " when my eldest son died; tchich went as a dagger to my 54 ELDEST SON OF PROTECTOR. \_Oliver " heart : indeed it did/' Naturally enough, this aiFecting passage was supposed by the writer who reproduced it to relate to his son's death in battle, and Mr. Carlyle arrived also at the same conclusion so confidently, that after " eldest son '' he put in " poor Oliver " in reprinting it, at the same time carefully marking the words as an insertion. M. Guizot, however, has gone two steps further, and printed the passage thus : " Ce texte, dit-il, m'a " sauve une fois la vie, quand mon fils aine, mon paiivre " Olivier, fat tue, ce qui me perca le coeur comme un " poignard." In making this change without the least authority, M. Gruizot marked unconsciously the weak point in the supposition he had adopted from others, and on which he was himself, too confidently proceeding. If the Protector had really intended his allusion for the son who had been slain in battle, would he not, in place of the simple expression *' when my eldest son died," more probably have said just exactly what M. Guizot has thought it necessary to say for him ? We are now in a position to prove that the allusion was not to Oliver, but to Robert ; that Robert lived till his nineteenth year ; that he was buried at Felsted within seven months of the date of the letter containing the allusion to the kindness of the Mashams respecting him ; and that his youth had inspired such promise of a future as might well justify the place in his father's heart kept sacred to his memory as long as life remained. In the register of burials in the parish church of Felsted, under the year 1639, is the following entry : " Eobertus Crom- " well filius honorandi viri M^J^ Oliveris Cromwell et " Elizabethae uxoris ejus sepultus fuit 31° die Maii. Et " Robertus fuit eximie pius juvenis deum timens supra " multos." ' Which remarkable addition to a simple mention of burial, we need hardly point out as of ex- * This entry has been more than name, "^t'^^er and ITz'^gs," says Sel- once carefully examined, and is here den {IHtles of Honour, Ivi.), "often l>rinied verbatim et litei'atim, as it "signify in the old feudal law of stands in the register. The word "the Empire, a gentleman, as the denoted by the conti-action M*'* is * ' Avord gentleman is signified in no- " Militis," in the sense of esquire, or " bilisy and not a dubbed knight ; arm-bearing gentleman, and there " as with us in England, the word are some rare examples of its use " m?7^Ves denotes gentlemen or great with this meaning before a proper " freeholders of the country also." Cromwell.'] "vm honorandus." 55 tremely rare occurrence on tliat most formal of all the pages of liistory — a leaf of the parish register ; where to be born, and to die, is all that can in justice be conceded to either rich or poor. The friend who examined the original for us could find no other instance in the volume of a deviation from the strict rule. Among all the fathers, sons, and brothers, crowded into its records of birth and death, the only vir honorandus is the puritan squire of Huntingdon. The name of the vicar of Felsted in 1639 was "Wharton ; this entry is in his handwriting, and has his signature appended to it ; and let it henceforward be remembered as the good Mr. Wharton's distinction, that, long before Cromwell's name was famous beyond his native county, he had appeared to this incumbent of a small Essex parish as a man to be honoured. The tribute to the youth who passed so early away, uncouthly expressed as it is, takes a deep and mournful significance from the words which lingered last on the dying lips of his heroic father. If Heaven had but spared all that gentle and noble promise which repre- sented once the eldest son and successor of Cromwell's name, the sceptre then falling might have found a hand to grasp and sustain it, and the history of England taken quite another course. The sad and sorry substitute — is it not written in M. Guizot's narrative of the Protectorate of Eichard Cromwell ? DANIEL DE FOE/ 1661—1731. The Novels and Miscdlaneous Works of Daniel Be Foe; with a Bio- graphical Memoir of the Author. 20 vols. 12mo. Oxford: 1842. The Works of Daniel De Foe. 3 vols, royal 8vo. London : 1843. Swift proposed, for one of the sour consolations of liis Irish exile, to compile a catalogue of Things that Ought to have Succeeded. A modern version of the sorry Ust would be incomplete wdthout the Complete Editions of De Foe. Better undertakings have never more decisively- failed. Of the only two attempts, now before us, made with any sort of pretension to success, the first scantly executed a limited design, and the second abruptly stopped with four-fifths of its labour unaccomplished. Such as they are, the intelligent bookseller ofi'ers them for some- thing less than a fourth of their original cost, and has yet to comxplain that his customers turn away. He would fain think better of the writer with whom his boyhood associates the first and most enduring delight he has received from literature ; and perhaps he moves him wdth some reluctance from that popular shelf which holds the Pope, the Swift, and the Addison. It is with De Foe dead, as it was with De Foe living. He stands apart from the circle of the reigning wits of his time, and his name is not called over with theirs. What in this respect was formerly the fashion, is the fashion still ; and, whether sought for in the histories of Doctor Smollett or of Lord Mahon, his niche is vacant. His life, ^ From the Edhiburgh Eevieiv, October, 1845. With some additions. 58 CHURCH AND STATE UNDER CHARLES II. {^Daniel to be fairly presented, should he written as the " Life and " Strange Surprising Adventures of Daniel De Foe, who " Lived about Seventy Years all Alone, in the Island of *' Great Britain." It might then be expected to compare, in vicissitude and interest, with his immortal romance ; as hitherto written, it has only shared the fate of his manly but perishable polemics. He was born much about the time of that year of grace 1661, when Mr. Pepys and his wife, walking in Whitehall Gardens, saw " the finest smocks and linen petticoats of *' my Lady Castlemaine, laced with rich lace at the " bottom,'' that ever they saw : " and did me good to " look at them," adds the worthy man. There was little else in those days to do any body good. The people, drunk with the orgies of the Eestoration, rejoiced in nothing so much as in pimps and courtesans ; and to be a bad Englishman and a worse Christian, was to be a good Protestant and a loyal subject. Sheldon governed the Church, and Clarendon the State ; the bishop having no better charity than to bring Presbyterian preachers into contempt, and the chancellor no better wisdom than to reduce them to beggary. While Sheldon entertained his dinner.-table with caricatures of a dissenting minister's sermon, " till," says one of his guests, " it made us all *' burst," Clarendon was drawing up that act of unifor- mity, by which, in one day, he threw out three thousand ministers from the benefices they held. This was in 1662 ; and the beginning of that system of religious persecution, under which, with God's blessing, the better part of the English character re-awakened, and the hardy virtues of Dissent struck root and flourished. Up to this time, vast numbers of the Presbyterians^ strongly attached to monarchy, desired but a reasonable settlement of episcopacy, and would have given in their adherence to any moderate system. The hope of such a compromise was now rudely closed. In 1663 the Con- venticle Act was passed, punishing with transportation a third ofi'ence of attendance on any worship but that of the Church ; and while the plague was raging, two years after, the Oxford Act banished five miles from any corporate town all who should refuse a certain oath, which no Non- conformist could honestly take. Secret, stealthy worship De Foe."] mr. foe of cripplegate. 69 was tlie resource left ; and other things throve in secret T\dth it, which would less have prospered opeiily. Sub- stantial citizens, wealthy tradesmen, even gossiping secretaries to the admiralty, began to find other employ- ment than the criticism of Lady Castlemaine's lace, or admiration of Mistress Nell Gwynne's linen. It appeared to be dawning on them at last, that they were really living in the midst of infamy and baseness ; that buffoons and courtesans were their rulers ; that defeat and disgrace were their portion ; that a Dutch fleet was riding in the channel, and a perjured and pensioned Popish despot sitting on the throne. The Indulgence granted to Dissenters in the year of the Dutch war (the previous year had been one of fierce persecution), opened, among other meeting-houses, that of Little St. Helen's, Bishopsgate ; where the Hev. Dr. Annesley, ejected from his living of Cripplegate by the Act of Uniformity, administered his pious lessons. Under him there sate, in that congregation of earnest listeners, the family of a wealthy butcher of St. Giles's Cripple- gate, Mr. James Foe ; and the worthy minister would stop approvingly, as he passed the seats of Mr. Foe, to speak to that bright-eyed lad of eleven, by name Daniel, whose activity and zeal in the good cause were already such, that, in fear their Popish governors might steal away their printed Bibles, he had " worked like a horse " till he had written out the whole Pentateuch." For, the gleam of liberty to Dissenters had been but a veil for the like indulgence to Papists ; and it was known at this very time, that the high-minded Eichard Baxter had refused a bribe of 50/. a-year, to give in his public approval of such questionable favours of the Crown. Mr. James Foe, a grave, reserved, and godly man,' seems to have been proud of his son Daniel. He gave 1 He lived till 1707, and two " that godly minister, wlncli we yeai-s before his death wrote this " should not have done had not her testimony to a servant's character, *' conversatioa been becoming the which now supplies no bad testi- " gospel. From my lodgings, at mony to his own : — " Sarah Pierce " the Bell in Broad-street, having " lived with us about fifteen or six- " left my house in Throgmorton- " teen years since, about two years ; " street, October 10, 1705. \Yit' *' and behaved herself so well that '* ness my hand, James Foe." " we recommended her to IVIr. Cave, GO A BOXING ENGLISH BOY. [Daniel liim tlie best education whicb. a Dissenter bad it in bis power to give. He sent bim to tbe tben famous Aca- demy at Newington Green, kept by Mr. Cbarles Morton, an excellent Oxford Scbolar, and a man of various and large ability ; wbom Harvard College in New England afterwards cbose for vice-president, wben driven by eccle- siastical persecution to find a borne beyond tbe Atlantic. Here tbe lad was put tbrougb a course of tbeology; and was set to study tbe rudiments of political science. Tbese tbings Mr. Morton reckoned to be a part of education. Young Daniel also acquired a competent knowledge of matbematics and natural pbilosopby ; of logic, geograpby, and bistory ; and, wben be left tbe scbool, was reasonably accomplisbed in Latin and Greek, and in Frencb and Italian.^ He bad made bimself known, too, as a '' boxing " Englisb boy ; " wbo never struck liis enemy wben be was down. All tbis be recounted, witb no immodest or unmanly pride, wben assailed in after life by Browne and Tutcbin, for bis mean Dissenter's education. It was an act of justice to bis ancient fatber, be said, tben still living, freely to testify tbat, if be was a blockbead, it was nobody's fault but bis own, notbing in bis education bav- ing been spared tbat could qualify bim to matcb witb tbe accurate Doctor Browne or tbe learned Observator ; and b.e added, tbat tbere was a fiftb language, besides tbose recounted, in wbicb it bad been Mr. Morton's endeavour ^ In later life, when replying with " pliilosopliy, and could never find great dignity and temper to an at- " between the two ends of nature, tack by Swift, he adverts to what " generation and corruption, one some of his studies in those eai-lier " species out of which such a crea- days had been. "Illiterate as I *' ture could be formed. I thought "am," he says, repeating Swift's " myself master of geography, and acrimony, ' ' I have been in my time ' ' to possess sufficient skill in astro- " pretty well master of five Ian- *' nomy to have setup for a country " guages, and have not lost them " almanac -writer ; yet could, in " yet ; but my father left the Ian- '* neither of the globes, find either " guage of Billingsgate quite out of "in what part of the world such a " my education. I have also made " heterogeneous creature lives, nor " a little progress in science. I have " under the influence of what hea- " read 'Euclid's Elements,' and yet " venly body he can be produced. ** never found the mathematical de- "From whence I conclude, very " scription of a scurrilous gentle- " frankly, that either there is no " man. I have read logic, but " such creature in the world, or " could never see a syllogism formed " that, according to Mr. Examiner, " upon the notion of it. I went " I am a stupid idiot, and a very " some length in physics, or natural " illiterate fellow." Be Foe.'\ a manly exglish EDrcATiox. 6 J to practice and improve his scholars. " He read all his *' lectures, gave all his systems, whether of philosophy *' or divinity, and had all his' declaimings and disserta- " tions — in EngJlsli. We were not critics in the Greek ** and Hebrew, perfect in languages, and perfectly igno- " rant, if that term may he allowed, of our mother tongue. " We were not destitute of languages, hut we were made " masters of English ; and more of us excelled in that " particular than of any school at that time." So passed the youth of Daniel Foe, in what may he well accounted a vigorous and healthy English training. With sharp and strong faculties, with early and active zeal, he looked out from his honest father's home and his liberal teacher's study, upon a course of public events well fitted to enforce, by dint of bitter contrast, the value of high courage, of stern integrity, and of unbending faithfulness. He would be told, by all whom he esteemed, of the age of great deeds and thoughts which had lately passed away ; and thus early would learn the difference, on which he dwelt in one of his first writings, between the grand old blind schoolmaster of Bunhill-fields, just buried in his father's parish of Cripplegate,^ and the ribald crowd of profligate poets lounging and sauntering in St. James's. There is no better school for the love of virtue, than that of hatred and contempt for vice. He would hear dis- cussed, with fervid and honest indignation, the recall of the Indulgence in 1674, after the measures for relief of Dissent had been defeated ; the persecution of Baxter and Manton in the following year ; the subsequent gross interference of the Bishops against a final effort for ac- commodation ; and the fierce^ cruelty of the penal laws against Nonconformists, between 1676 and 1678. Then, ill the latter memorable year, he would find himself in- volved in that sudden and fierce re- action of the Anti- Papist feeling of the time, which, while Protestants and Presbyterians were groaning under a Popish prince, sent numberless innocent Boman Catholic gentlemen to Protestant and Presbyterian scaffolds. When the rage of the so-called Popish Plot burst forth, 1 Buried in tlie chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate, November, 1674, John Milton. 62 THE POPISH PLOT AND ITS HERO. \_T)amel Mr. Morton's favourite pupil was in his seventeenth year. We need not say how freely we condemn that miserable madness ; or in what scorii we hold the false-hearted spies and truculent murderers, whose worthless evidence sacri- ficed so many noble and gentle lives. But as little can we doubt, that, to honest Presbyterians then existing, the tiling was not that cruel folly it now seems to its ; and we can understand their welcoming at last, in even such wild frenzy, a popular denunciation of the faith which they knew to be incompatible with both civil and religious liberty, yet knew to be the faith of him who occupied, and of him who was to succeed to, the throne. Out of the villainy of the Court, sprang this counter- villainy of Titus Gates ; and the meetings in which that miscreant harangued the London citizens, were the first effectual demonstration against the government of Charles II. We will not wonder, then, that there was often to be seen among his crowds of excited listeners, but less excited than they, a middle-sized, spare, active, keen-eyed youth — the son of Mr. Foe of Cripplegate. At these meetings were first heard, bandied from side to side, the two not least memorable words in English history. Then broke forth, when the horrible cruelties of Lauderdale were the theme, groans of sympathy for those tortured Cameronians who lived on the refuse, the " weak '' of the milk, and so had got the Scotch name of Whigs. Then, when justification was sought for like cruelties and tortures against the opposite faith, shouts of execration were hurled against the Papists who would murder Titus Gates, and who, for their thieving and villainous tendencies, had got the Irish name of Tories. Young Foe remembered this in after life ; and described the blustering hero of these scenes, with a squat figure, a vulgar drawling voice, and, right in the centre of his broad flat face, a mouth of fit capacity for the huge lies it uttered, " calling every man a Tory that opposed him in discourse.^' For> be it noted to the credit of the youth's sagacity, he did not even now, to adopt his own expression, " come " up to all the extravagances of some people in their " notions of the Popish plot." He believed, indeed, that wherever sincere Popery was, a conspiracy to act in con- formity with it would not be far off. "I never blame De Foe.~\ a stout protestant flail. 63 " men who, professing principles destructive of tlie con- " stitution they live under, and believing it their just right '' to supplant it, act in conformity to the principles they " profess. I believe, if I were a Papist, I should do " the same. Believing the merit of it would carry me to *' heaven, I doubt not I should go as far as another. But, " when we ran up that plot to general massacres, fleets of " pilgrims, bits and bridles, knives, handcuffs, and a *' thousand such things, I confess, though a boy, I could " not then, nor can now, come up to them. And my " reasons were, as they still are, because I see no cause " to believe the Papists to be fools, whatever else we had " occasion to think them. A general massacre, truly ! " when the Papists all over the kingdom are not five to ** a hundred, in some counties not one, and within the *' city hardly one to a thousand ! " So saved from the general folly of the Presbyterian party, and intolerant only because a larger toleration was at stake, this manly and sagacious lad needed neither knife nor handcuff to save himself from a Papist. He walked through the thick of the riots with reliance on a stout oaken cudgel, which he called his " Protestant *' flail ; " ' and he laughed at the monstrous lies that fed the vulgar cravings, and kept taverns agape with terror. See him enter one, and watch the eager group. A fellow ^ Witli characteristic and manly " I remember I saw an honest stout humour he wrote, several years after " fellow, who is yet alive, with one this date: — "Now, a Protestant "of these Protestant instruments "flail is an excellent weapon. A "exorcise seven or eight ruffians " pistol is a fool to it. It laughs " in Fleet-street, and drive them * ' at the sword or cane. You know ' ' all before him quite from Fleet- " there's no fence against a flail. "bridge into White-friars, which " For my part, I have frequently " was their receptacle ; and he " walked with one about me in the " handled it so decently that you "old Popish days, and, though I "would wonder, when now and " never set up for a hero, yet, when " then one or two of them came "armed with this scourge for a " within his reach, and got a knock, "Papist, I remember I feared no- "to see how they would dance: " thing. Murthering men in the " nay, so humble and complaisant * ' dark was pretty much the fashion ' ' were they, that every now and " then, and every honest man walked "then they would kiss the very " the streets in danger of his life ; " ground at his feet ; nor would "yet so excellent a weapon is it, " they scruple descending even to " that really the very apprehension " the kennel itself, if they received " ofitsoon piitanendto theassassi- "but the word of command from " nations that then were practised. " this most Protestant utensil." 64 LYixG LIKE TRUTH. \_Daniel bawls forth tlie last invention against " the Papishes." It concerns tlie new building honest men took such pride in, and Papists, for a reason, hated so. It is about the " tall bully " of a Monument ; and everybody pricks up his ears. AYhat has happened ? " Why, last night, six " Frenchmen came up and stole away the Monument ; " and but for the Watch, who stopped them as they were " going over the bridge, and made them carry it back " again, they might, for aught we know, have carried it " over into France. These Papishes will never have ** done." Is the tale incredible ? JSTot half so much, as that some of those assembled should stare and doubt it. But now steps forward " Mr. Daniel Foe." He repeats the story, and tells the unbelievers to satisfy their doubts by going to the spot, " where they 'd see the workmen " employed in making all fast again." The simpletons swallowed the joke, " and departed quite satisfied." The touch of reality sent it down. A genius for homely fiction had strolled into the tavern, and there found its first victims. They deserved, by way of compensation, a ripe old age, and the reading of Robinson €?^usoe. But the strolling into taverns ? It is little likely that Mr. Morton, or the elder Mr. Foe, would have sanctioned it ; but the Presbyterian ministry was no longer, as it once had been, the youth's destination. He seems to have desired a more active sphere, and he was put to the business of commerce. His precise employment has been questioned : but, when his Hbellers in later life called him a hosier, he said he had never been apprentice to that craft, though he had been a trader in it; and it is tolerably certain that, in seven years from the present date, he had a large agency in Freeman's- court, Cornhill, as a kind of middleman between the manufacturer and the retail trader. He was a freeman of London by his birth ; on embarking in this business of hose-factor, he entered the livery; and he wrote his name in the Chamberlain's book, " Daniel Foe." Seven eventful years ! Trade could not so absorb him, but that he watched them with eager interest, l^or was it possible for such a man to watch them mthout hope. Hope would brighten in that sensible manly heart, when it most deserted weaker men's. When the King, alarmed, De Foe.~\ se\t:x eventful years. 66 flung off Ms lounging sloth for crueller enjo\Tnents; when lampoons and ballads of tlie streets, directed against the doings in Whitehall, became fiercer and bolder than even Duchess Portsmouth's impudence; when such serious work was afoot, that a satire by Dryden counted more at Court than an indecency by Rochester ; when bills to exclude a Popish succession were only lost in the upper House by means of a phalanx of Protestant bishops, and the lower House that had passed them, rudely dissolved by a furious monarch and intemperately assailed by ser- vile churchmen, was calmly defended by a Sydney and a Somers ; when, the legitimate field of honest warfare being closed, dark conspii'acies and treasons took its place, and the daring boast of Shaftesbury passed reck- lessly from mouth to mouth, that he 'd walk the King leisurely out of his dominions, and make the Duke of York a vagabond on the earth like Cain ; — no fear was likely to depress, and no bragging was needed to keep in hope, this clear, shrewd intellect. The young Cornhill merchant told his countrymen afterwards, how it had gone with him then. How Tyranny had taught him the value of liberty. Popery the danger of passive pulpits, and Oppression how to prize the fence of laws ; with what interest he had observed the sudden visit of the King's nephew, William of Orange, already the hero of the Protestant liberties of Europe, and lately wedded to the presumptive heiress of the throne ; of what light esteem he held the monarch's disregard of that kinsman's prudent counsel ; and with what generous anger, yet unshrinking spirit, he saw the men who could not answer Algernon Sydney's book, erect a scaffold to take off his head. That was his first brave impulse to authorship of his own. In the year made infamous by the judicial murders of Russell and Sydney, he published his first pohtical essay. It was a prose lampoon on High Church absurdi- ties ; ' and, with much that would not bear present revival, it bore the stamp of a robust new mind, fresh from the reading of Rabelais. It stirred the veteran libeller L'Estrange, and pamphlet followed pamphlet. But it ^ The allusion in the text is to seen reason to doubt whether De the Speculum Ompegownoricm; but Foe was really the author, since this Essay was written I have 66 DEA.TH OF CHARLES THE SECOND. {Datliel needs not to toucli the controversy now. It is dead and gone. Oxford herself repudiates, with shame, the decree she passed in full Convocation on the day of Russell^s execution ; promulgating, on pain of infamy here and damnation hereafter, the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience ; and anathematising twenty-seven pro- positions from Milton, Baxter, and Godwin, Bellarmine, Buchanan, and Hobbes, as seditious, scandalous, impious, blasphemous, heretical, and damnable. Having fleshed his maiden pen, the young merchant soon resumed it, in a cause again involving religious liberty ; with a spirit in advance of his party ; and with force, decision, and success. The reign of Charles was now setting, in a sullen, dire persecution. Chapels were shut ; ministers dying in jail ; congregations scattered. A man who would not take the sacrament, was whipped or pilloried ; a man who would not take it kneeling, was plundered or imprisoned. " See there ! '^ cried the sharp strong sense of Daniel Foe, whom business had taken to Windsor, where he had sauntered into St. George's Chapel with a friend — " See that altar-piece ! Our " Saviour administers his Last Supper to his disciples " sitting round the table; and because we would copy that " posture, the Government oppresses us." Almost as he spoke, the end was approaching. Evelyn had seen the King on the past Sunday evening, sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, and Mazarine. A French boy sang love-songs in a glorious gallery; and, round a table groaning with a bank of two thousand golden pieces, a crew of profligate courtiers drank and gambled. *' Six days after, all was in the dust ; " and caps in the air for James the Second. Of the new monarch's greetings, the most grovelling were those of the churchmen and the lawyers. The Bishop of Chester preached the divinity and infallibility of Kings ; the Temple benchers and barristers went to Court with the assurance that high prerogative, in its fullest extent, was the subject's best security for liberty and property; and in every pulpit thanksgivings resounded. In the first months of the reign, our hose-factor of Free- man's Yard heard it publicly preached from one of these De Foe,'] " out " with monmouth. 67 pulpits, that if the King commanded the suhject's head, and sent his messengers to fetch it, the subject was bound to submit, and, as far as possible, facilitate his own decapitation. Close upon this came the sudden tidings of Monmouth's ill-fated landing ; and of a small band of daring citizens who took horse and joined him, Daniel Foe was one. Perhaps he thought his own head nearer danger than it was, and worth a stroke for safety. He knew, at any rate, only the better sides of Monmouth's character. He admired his popular manners. " None so beautiful, " so brave as Absolon." He had seen him among the people in their sports, at races and at games, and thought his bearing sensible and manly. What matter if Lucy Walters was his mother ? He knew him to be a sincere Protestant, and a lover of civil freedom ; and he remem- bered the more kindly his disgrace in the reign just passed, for having vainly striven to moderate Episcopal cruelties in Scotland, when he saw the first Scottish act of the reign just begun, in a law to inflict death on con- venticle preachers. In a word, our incipient rebel made no nice balance of danger and success ; he saw what seemed to him liberty on the one side, and slavery on the other, and he resolved, with whatever fortune, to strike a blow for the good cause. He mounted horse and joined the invaders ; was with them in Bristol and at Bath ; and very narrowly escaped the crash that followed. There is little doubt that while Bishops Turner and Ken were prolonging Monmouth's agonies on the scaffold, for the chance of a declaration in favour of divine right and non-resistance ; and while Jeffreys's bloody campaign, through the scenes of the late rebellion, was consigning his master and himself to eternal infamy; the young rebel citizen had eff'ected a passage over seas. At about this time, he certainly was absent from England; as certainly had embarked some capital in the Spanish and Portuguese trade ; and no one has questioned his narrow escape from the clutch of Jeffreys. The mere escape had been enough for other men ; — his practical, unwearying, versatile energy, made it the means of new adventure, the source of a larger experience, the incentive to a more active life. He had seen Spain, Germany, and France, before he again saw Freeman's-court, Cornhill; and, F 2 68 ACTS OF JAMES THE SECOND. [Datliel wlien he returned, it was with the name he has made immortal. He was now Daniel Be Foe. Whether the change was a piece of innocent vanity picked up in his travels, or had any more serious motive, it would now he idle to inquire. By hoth names he was known to the last ; but his hooks, in almost every instance, bore that by which he is known to posterity. He found a strange scene in progress on his return. The power of the King to dispense with the laws, had been afSrmed by eleven out of the twelve judges ; and he saw this monstrous power employed to stay the as mon- strous persecution of Nonconformists and Dissenters. A licence purchased for fifty shillings had opened the prison doors of E-ichard Baxter ; but the sturdy lovers of freedom who purchased that licence, acknowledged, in the act of doing it, that they placed the King above the laws. It was a state of things in which men of the clearest sight had lost their way, and the steadiest were daily stumbling. "William Penn had gone up to Court with a deputation of thanks ; he was seconded by not a few Presbyterians ; he had the support of all those classes of Dissent whose idea of religion rejected altogether the alliance of civil government, conceiving itself to stand immeasurably above such control ; and, though the main Presbyterian body stood aloof, it was in an attitude of deference and fear, without dignity, without self-reliance. For a while De Foe looked on in silence ; and then resolvedly took his course. Of James II's sincerity there is as little doubt, as of his bigotry and meanness. He had the obstinate weakness of his father. " There goes an honest gentleman,'' said the Archbishop of Rheims, some year or two later, " who *' lost three kingdoms for a mass." His unwearied, sole endeavour, from the hour when he ascended the throne to that in which he was hurled from it, was to establish the Roman Catholic religion in England. When the Church, that had declared resistance unchristian and proffered him unconditional obedience, refused him a single benefice fat or lean, and kept his hungering Popish doctors outside the butteries of her Oxford colleges, — the Dissenters became his hope. If he could array Dissent against the Church, there was an entrance yet for Rome. De Foe.'\ warnings disregarded. 6& That was his passion. He had literally no other ; and, to balance or counteract it, he had neither breadth of understanding nor warmth of heart. It stood him in the stead, therefore, of every other faith or feeling; and, when the game went wholly against him, he had no better source of courage. He thought but of " raising *' the Host," and winning it that way. De Foe understood both the game and the gambler. We could name no man of the time who understood them so clearly as this young trader of Cornhill. He saw the false position of all parties; the blundering clash of interests, the wily complications of policy. He spoke with contempt of a Church that, "with its "fawning, " whining, canting sermons,'' had played the Judas to its Sovereign. He condemned the address-making Dis- senters, who, in their zeal for religious liberty, had forgotten civil freedom. He exposed the conduct of the King, as, in plain words, a fraudulent scheme " to " create a feud between Dissenters and the Establish- " ment, and so destroy both in the end." And with emphatic eloquence he exhorted the Presbyterian party, that now, if ever, they should make just and reasonable terms with the Church ; that now, if ever, should her assumption of superiority, her disdain of equal inter- course, her denial of Christian brotherhood, be effectually rebuked ; that between the devil sick and the devil well, there was a monstrous difference ; and that, failing any present assertion of rights and guarantees, it would be hopeless to expect them when she should have risen, once more strengthened, from her humble diet and her recumbent posture. The advice and the warning were put forth in two mas- terly publications. The Dissenters condemned them, and took every occasion to disclaim their author. De Foe had looked for no less. In his twenty-sixth year, he found himself that solitary, resolute, independent thinker, which, up to his seventieth year, he remained. What he calls the " grave, weak, good men " of the party, did not fail to tell him of his youth and inexperience ; but, for all that fell out, he had prepared himself abundantly. " He " that will serve men, must not promise himself that he " shaU not anger them. I have been exercised in this 70 THE LANDING AT TORBAY. \_Daniel " usage even from a youth. I liad their reproaches when " I blamed their credulity and confidence in the flatteries " and caresses of Popery; and when I protested against " addresses of thanks for an illegal liberty of conscience " founded on a dispensing power." He was thus early initiated in the transcendent art of thinking and standing ALONE. Whoso can do this manfully, will find himself least disposed to be alone, when any great good thing is in progress. De Foe would have worked with the meanest of the men opposed to him, in the business of the nation's deliverance. He knew that Dyckvelt was now in England, in communication with the leaders of both parties in the State. He had always honoured the steady-purposed Dutchman's master as the head of the league of the great European confederacy, which wanted only England to enable it to complete its noble designs. He believed it to be the duty of that prince^ connected both by birth and marriage with the English throne, to watch the course of public affairs in a country which by even the natural course of succession he might be called to govern. But he despised the Tory attempt to mix up a claim of legitimacy with the greater principle of elective sove- reignty ; and he laughed with the hottest of the Jacobites at the miserable warming-pan plot. He felt, and was the first to state it in print at the time, that the title to the throne was but in another form the more sacred title of the people to their liberties ; and so, when he heard of the landing at Torbay, he mounted his " rebel " horse once more. He was with the army of William when James precipitately fled ; he was at the bar of the House of Lords when Hampden took up the vote of non- allegiance to a Popish sovereign, and when the memo- rable resolution of the 13th of February declared that no King had reigned in England since the day of James's flight; he heard William's first speech to the Houses five days later ; and, " gallantly mounted and richly " accoutred," he was foremost in the citizen troop of volunteer horse, who were William and Mary's guard of honour at their first visit to Guildhall. ^ Oldmixon's account is charac- old Whig libels De Foe, but a suffi- teristic. Of course the inveterate cient refutation of his sneers -will De Foe."] hero-worship. 71 De Foe never ceased to commemorate William's bear- ing in these passages of his life. While the Convention debates were in progress, the calmly resolute Stadtholder had stayed, secluded, at St. James's. Sycophants sought access to him, counsellors would have advised with him, in vain. He invited no popularity, he courted no party. The only Tory chief who spoke with him, came back to tell his friends that he set *' little value on a Crown." The strife, the heat, the violent animosity, the doubtful success — all that in these celebrated debates seemed to affect his life and fortune — moved him not. He desired nothing to be concealed from him ; but he said nothing to his informants. This only was known : he would not hold his crown by the apron-strings of his wife. He would not reign but as an independent sovereign. " They are " an inconstant people, Marshal," he quietly observed to Schomberg. Here, then, in the prince who now ruled over England, was a man who also could stand alone. Here was a king for such a subject as De Foe. We may not wonder that the admiration conceived of him by the citizen merchant deepened into passion. He reverenced him, loved, and honoured him ; and kept as a festival in his house, even to the close of his life, that great day in the month of November which is so remarkably associated with be given before this Essay closes. *' who, being gallantly mounted and " Their Majesties," he says, de- *' richly accoutred, were led by the scribing the grand day at Guild- ** Earl of Monmouth, now Earl of hall, ' ' attended by their royal * ' Peterborough, and attended their " highnesses and a numerous train " majesties from Whitehall. Among " of nobility and gentry, went first " these troopers, who were for the *' to a balcony pi-epared for them at " most part Dissenters, was Daniel *'the Angel in Cheapside, to see *' Foe, at that time a hosier in "the show; which, for the great *' Freeman s-yard, Cornhill ; the "number of liverymen, the full "same who afterwards was pillo- " appearance of the militia and " ried for writing an ironical invec- " artillery company, the rich adorn- " tive against the Church, and did, " ments of the pageants, and the "after that, 'list in the service of "splendour and good order of the "Mr. Robert Harley, and those " whole proceeding, outdid all that " brethren of his who passed the "had been seen before upon that " Schism and Occasional bills, broke " occasion ; and what deserved to " the confederacy, and made a " be particularly mentioned, was a " shameful and ruinous peace with " royal regiment of volunteer horse, "France." " made up of the chief citizens, 72 MARRIAGE AND ILL-FORTUNE. \^Daniel William's name. On that day, exclaimed De Foe with enthusiasm, he was horn ; on that day he married the daughter of England ; on that day he rescued the nation from a bondage worse than that of Egypt, a bondage of soul as well as bodily servitude ! Its first celebration was held at a country house in Tooting, which it would seem De Foe now occupied: and the manner of it afforded in itself some proof, of what we hardly need to be told, that the resolute, practical habits of this earnest, busy man, were not unattended by that genial warmth of nature which alone imparts strength of character such as his, and without which never public virtue, and rarely private, comes quite to its maturity. In this village, too, in this year of the Revolution, we find him occupied in erecting a meeting-house; in drawing together a Non- conformist congregation ; and in providing a man of learning for their minister. It was an object always near his heart. For, every new foundation of that kind went some way towards the rendering Dissent a permanent separate interest, and an independent political body, in the State ; and the Church's reviving heats made the task at once imperative and easy. Wherever intemperate language, and overbearing arrogant persecution, are cha- racteristics of the highest churchmen, should we marvel that sincere churchgoers turn affrighted from the flame they see incessantly flickering about those elevated rods, which they had innocently looked to for safe conductors ? But, in the midst of his labours and enjoyments, there came a stroke of evil fortune. He had married some Httle time before this (nothing further is known on that head, but that in the course of his life he had two wives, the first named Mary, and the second Susannah) ; and, with the prospect of a family growing up around him, he saw his fortune swept suddenly away by a large unsuccessful adventure. One angry creditor took out a commission of bankruptcy; and De Foe, submitting meanwhile to the rest a proposition for amicable settlement, fled from London. A prison paid no debts, he said. " The cruelty " of your laws against debtors, without distinction of " honest or dishonest, is the shame of your nation. It " is not he who cannot pay his debts, but he who can " and win, who must necessarily be a knave. He who De Foe.^ the sunday gentleman. 73 " is unable to pay his debts at once, may yet be able to " pay them at leisure ; and you should not meanwhile " murder him by law, for such is perpetual imprison- " ment." So, from himself to his fellow-men, he rea- soned always. No wrong or wretchedness ever befell De Foe, which he did not with all diligence bestir him- self to turn to the use and profit of his kind. To what he now struggled with, through two desperate years, they mainly owed, seven years later, that many most atro- cious iniquities, prevailing in the bankrupt refuges of "Whitefriars and the Mint, were repressed by statute ;^ and that the small relief of William's act was at last reluctantly vouchsafed. He had pressed the subject with all his power of plain strong sense, and with a kind of rugged impressiveness, as of the cry of a sufferer. His place of retreat appears to have been in Bristol. Doubtless he had merchant friends there. An acquaint- ance of his last industrious biographer, Mr. Walter Wilson, mentions it as an honourable tradition in his family, that at this time one of his Bristol ancestors had often seen and spoken with " the great De Foe." They called him, he said, the Sunday Gentleman^ because through fear of the bailiffs he did not dare to appear in public upon any other day ; while on that day he was sure to be seen, with a fine flowing wig, lace ruffles, and a sword by his ^ The extent of this service could this I will add, from another of his only be measured for the reader by writings, an illustration of the a description, for which this is no ''excesses" of dishonesty to which fitting place, of the atrocities and their gross facilities tempted men : knaveries of every kind practised in ' ' Nothing was more frequent than those privileged haunts of desperate " for a man in full credit to buy all and outlawed men. Well warranted ** the goods he could lay his hands was the pride with Avhich he re- "on, and carry them directly from marked in his old age : — *' I had ** the house he bought them at into *' the good fortune," says he, "to " the Friars, and then send for his " be the first that complained of ** creditors, and laugh at them, "this encroaching evil in former "insult them, showing them their "days, and think myself not too " own goods untouched, offer them "vain in saying that my humble " a trifle in satisfaction, and if they " representations, in a day when I " refused it, bid them defiance : I " could be heard, of the abomina- " cannot refrain vouching this of " ble insolence of bankrupts, prac- " my own knowledge, since I have ' * tised in the Mint and Friars, gave ' * more than many times been served " the first mortal blow to the pro- " so myself." " sperity of these excesses." To 74 IN RETIREMENT AT BRISTOL. {Baniel side, passing tlirough the Bristol streets/ But no time was lost with. De Foe, whether he was watched by baiHffs, or laid hold of by their betters. He wrote, in his present retirement, that famous Essay which went far to form the intellect and direct the pursuits of the most clear and practical genius of the succeeding century. ^' There was '^ also," says Benjamin Franklin, describing the little library in his uncle's house, " a book of De Foe's called " an Essay on Projects, which perhaps gave me a turn of " thinking that had an influence on some of the principal " future events of my life." De Foe composed the Essay here, in Bristol ; though it was not published until two years later. What the ^ I give what is said by Mr. Wil- son, because of the oddity of its conclusion, and the manifest con- . fusion of ideas involved in it : — ■ * ' A friend informs me of a tradi- " tion in his family, that rather "countenances this supposition" (of De Foe's retreat to Bristol). '* He says, that one of his ancestors * * remembered De Foe, and some- *' times saw him walking in the *' streets of Bristol, accoutred in *' the fashion of the times, with a " fine flowing wig, lace ruffles, and " a sword by his side. Also, that '* he there obtained the name of the *' 'Sunday Gentleman,' because, *' through fear of the bailiffs, he ** did not dare to appear in public *' upon any other day. The fact of '* De Foe's residence in Bristol, ** either at this or some later period " of his life, is further corrobo- ** rated by the following circum- * ' stance. About a century ago, as *' the same friend informs me, there " was a tavern in Castle-street, • ' known by the sign of the Red *' Lion, and kept by one Mark *' Watkins, an intelligent man, who " had been in better circumstances. *• His house was in considerable *' repute amongst the tradesmen of ** Bristol, who were in the habit of ** resorting there after dinner, for *' the purpose of smoking their ** pipes, and hearing the news of * the day. De Foe, following the ' custom of the times, occasionally ' mixed with them at these seasons, ' and was well known to the land- ' lord under the same name of the ' ' Sunday Gentleman.' The house ' is still standing, and is now a * mere pot-house. The same Mark ' Watkins, it is said, used to en- ' tertain his company, in after- * times, with an account of a sin- ' gular personage who made his ' appearance in Bristol, clothed in ' goat-skins, in which dress he was ' in the habit of walking the streets ' and went by the name of Alex- ' ander Selkirk, or Eobinson Cru- ' soe." In other words, Mr. Mark Watkins had lived till Robinson Crusoe was published, and then, in his old age, with his wits not the clearer for all those years of ale and pipe, was apt, in still dwelling on his recollections of the Sunday Gentleman, to confound his quon- dam guest with the hardly less veritable creation of his fancy, and to substitute the immortal mariner for the mortal De Foe ! [This sug- gestion has been disputed by an acute writer in the Times, who points out the possibility of the real Selkirk having been actually seen in the flesh by the jovial land- lord, on his being brought to Bristol by Captain Woodes-Rogers. I860.] De Foe.'\ writing the essay on projects. 75 tendency of the age would surely be (partly by tbe influence of the Revolution, for commerce and religious freedom have ever prospered together ; partly by the financial necessities of the war, and the impulse thereby given to projects and adventure), he had promptly dis- cerned ; and he would have turned it to profitable uses in this most shrewd, wise, and memorable piece of writing. It suggested reforms in the System of Banking, and a plan for Central Country Banks ; it pointed out the enormous advantages of an efiicient improvement of the Public Eoads, as a source of public benefit and revenue; it recommended, for the safety of trade, a mitigation of the law against the honest Bankrupt, and a more effectual law against practised knavery ; it proposed the general establishment of Offices for Insurance, " in every case *' of risk ; " it impressively enforced the expediency of Friendly Societies, and of a kind of Savings Bank, among the poor ; and, with eloquence and clear-sightedness far in advance of the time, it urged the solemn necessity of a greater care of Lunatics, which it described as " a par- *' ticular rent-charge on the great family of mankind." A man may afford to live Alone who can make solitude eloquent with such designs as these. What a teeming life there is in them ! — what a pregnant power and wisdom, thrown broad-cast over the fields of the future ! To this banlo-upt fugitive, to this Sunday Gentleman and every- day earnest workman, mth no better prospect than a bailiff visible from his guarded window, it might not be ill done, as it seems to us, to transfer some part of the honour and glory we too freely assign to more prosperous actors in the busy period of the Revolution. Could we move to London from the side of our hero, by the four days' Bristol coach, it would be but a paltry scene that awaited us there. He has himself described it. " Is a " man trusted, and then made a lord ? Is he loaded " with honours, and put into places ? Has he the King's " ear ? and does he eat his bread ? Then, expect he " shall be one of the first to fly in his face ! " Such indeed, and no other, would be the scene presented to us. AYe should find the great Sovereign obliged to repose his trust where no man could trust with safety ; and the first rank growth of the new-gotten Liberty would greet us in 76 PROPOSED ACADEMY OF LETTERS. [Daniel its most repulsive forms. We should see, there, the double game of treachery, to the reigning and to the banished sovereign, played out with unscrupulous perfidy by rival statesmen ; Opposition and Office but varying the sides of treason, from WilHam to James. There would be the versatile Halifax, receiving a Jacobite agent " with open arms." There would be the dry, reserved Godolphin, engaged in double service, though without a single bribe, to his actual and to his lawful sovereign. There would be the soldier Churchill, paid by WilHam, yet taking secret gold from James, and tarnishing his im- perishable name with an infamous treachery to England. And all^ this, wholly unredeemed by the wit and litera- ture which graced the years of noisy faction to which it was the prelude. As yet. Pope was in the cradle, Addison and Steele were at Charter House, Henry St. John was reading Greek at Christ Church, and Swift was amanuensis in Sir William Temple's house, for his board and twenty pounds a-year. Nor does any sign in the present give hope of such a future. The laureateship of Dryden has fallen on Shadwell, even Garth's Dispensary has not yet been written, Mr. Tate and Mr. Brady are dividing the town, the noble accents of Locke on behalf of toleration are inaudible in the press, but Sir Eichard Blackmore prepares his Epics, and Bishop Burnet sits down in a terrible passion to write somebody's character in his History. We may be well content to return to Bristol, and take humbler part with the fortunes of Daniel De Foe. We have not recounted all the projects of his Essay. The great design of Education was embraced in it, and a furtherance of the interest of Letters. It proposed an Academy, on the plan of that founded in France by Eichelieu, to " encourage polite learning, establish purity " of style, and advance the so much neglected faculty of " correct language ; " — urging upon William, how worthy of his high destiny it would be to ecKpse Louis Quatorze in the peaceful arts, as much as he had eclipsed him in the field of battle. The proposition was revived, a few years later, in Prior's Carmen Seculare; and in 1711, Swift stole the entire notion, and almost the very language of De Foe, in his attempt (curious as the only printed De Foe.l college for education of women. 77 piece to which, he ever, himself, attached his name) " to " erect some kind of society or academy, under the " patronage of the ministers, and protection of the Queen, " for correcting, enlarging, polishing, and fixing our " language." Nor let us omit recital of the Military College which De Foe would have raised ; of his project for the Abolition of Impressment ; and of his College for the Education of Women. His rare and high opinion of women had given him a just contempt for the female training of his time. He could not think, he said, that Grod ever made them so delicate, so glorious creatures, to be only stewards of our houses, our cooks, and slaves. " A " woman well-bred and well-taught, furnished with the *' additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, " is a creature without comparison. Her society is the " emblem of sublimer enjoyments ; she is all softness " and sweetness, love, wit, and delight." This pleasant passage might have been written by Steele. His Bristol exile was now closed, by the desired arrangement with his creditors. They consented to com- pound his liabilities for five thousand pounds, and to take his personal security for the payment. In what way he discharged this claim, and what reward they had who trusted him, an anecdote of thirteen years' later date (set down in the book of an enemy) will tell. While the quid-nuncs of the cofi'ee-houses raged against him at the opening of the reign of Anne, a knot of intemperate assailants in one of them were suddenly interrupted by a person who sat at a table apart from theirs. " Come, " gentlemen," he said, " let us do justice. I know this " De Foe as well as any of you. I was one of his cre- " ditors ; compounded with him, and discharged him " fully. Years afterwards he sent for me ; and though " he was clearly discharged, he paid me all the remainder " of his debt voluntarily, and of his own accord ; and he " told me, that, so far as God should enable him, he " meant to do so with every body." The man added, that he had placed his signature to a paper of acknow- ledgment, after a long list of other names. Of many witnesses to the same efiect, only one other need be cited. Four years later, when the House of Lords had been the scene of a libel against him worse than that of.the cofi'ee- /X^ OP TH«*^^^t 78 HONOUR AND ADVENTURE IN TRADE. \Daniel house disputants, but with, no one to interrupt or put the libeller to shame, De Foe himself made an unpretending pubhc statement, to the effect that the sums he had at that time discharged of his own mere motion, without obligation, " with a numerous family, and no help but " his own industry," amounted to upwards of twelve thousand pounds. Not as a matter of pride did he state this, but to intimate that he had not failed in duty. The discharge of law could not discharge the conscience. The obligation of an honest mind, he said, can never die. He did not return to Freeman's-court. He had other views. Some foreign merchants, by whom he was held in high esteem, desired to settle him as a large factor in Cadiz ; but he could not be induced to leave England. It was his secret hope to be able to serve the King. Nor had many months passed before we find him " concerned " with some eminent persons at home," in proposing ways and means to the government for raising money to supply the occasions of the war. Resulting in some sort from this employment, seems to have been the office which he held for four years (till the determination of the commission, 1694 — 1699), of Accountant to the Commis- sioners of the Glass Duty.^ And, not unnaturally, one may suppose it to be not distantly a part of the same desire to draw round him a certain association with the interests and fortunes of his sovereign, that he also at this time undertook a large adventure in the making of what were called Dutch pantiles. He established exten- sive tile-kiln and brick-kiln works at Tilbury, on the Thames ; where it was his boast to have given, for several years, employment "to more than a hundred poor " workmen." He took a house, too, by the side of the river, and amused himself with a saihng boat he kept there.^ ^ He dedicates his Essay on Pro- " treated of, and more capable jects to Dal by Thomas, "not," he ''than the greatest part of man- tells him, " as commissioner under *' kind to distinguish and under- ** whom I have the honour to serve '* stand them." Dal by Thomas, ** his Majesty, nor as a friend, afterwards Sir Dalby, was a great ** though I have great obligations of West India merchant of the time. " that sort also ; but as the most - I quote one of his many anec- *' proper judge of the subjects dotes of this river-side life, for the De Foe.'j river-side life. 79 We fancy him now, not seldom, among the rude, daring men, who made the shore of the great London river, in those days, a place of danger and romance — " Friends of the sea, and foes of all that live on it." He knew, it is certain, the Kyds as well as the Dampiers of that boisterous, adventurous, bucaniering, Ocean breed. "With no violent effort, we now imagine him fortifying his own resolution, and contempt of danger, by theirs ; looking, through their rough and reckless souls, face to face with that appalling courage they inherited from the vikings and sea- conquerors of old ; listening to their risks and wanderings for a theme of robust example, some day, to reading landsmen ; and already, it may be, throwing forward his pleased and stirred imagination into solitary wildernesses and desert islands, " Placed far amid the melancholy main." But, for the present, he turns back with a more prac- tical and earnest interest to the solitary resident at St. James's. It will not be too much to say, that, at this moment, the most unpopular man in England was the man who had saved England. The pensioner of France, the murderer of Sydney and Yane, had more homage and sake of the fact it records in natu- " the river just at that time, and ral history. He is speaking of the " I believe near two pecks of them period at which the ant becomes *' fell into the boat. They fell so furnished with wings, as if it were * ' thick, that I believe my hatful a direction to change its habitation. * ' came down the funnel of two "Being thus equipped, 'they fly "chimneys in my house, which ** away in great multitudes, seek- *' stood near the river's edge ; and ** ing new habitations, and, not " in proportion to this quantity, " being well practised in the use of " they fell for the space, as I could "their wings, they grow weary, " observe, of half a mile in breadth "and, pressing one another do^vn "at least: some workmen I em- " by their own weiglit, when they " ployed there said they spread "begin to tire they fall like a " two miles, but then they fell not " shower. I once knew a flight of " so thick, and they continued fall- " these ants come over the marshes "ing for near three miles. Any " from Essex, in a most prodigious " body will imagine the quantity * ' quantity, like a black cloud. ' ' thus collected together must be " They began to fall about a mile " prodigious ; but, if again they " before they came to the Thames, "will observe the multitude of " and in flying over the river, they " these ant-hills, and the millions " fell so thick that the water was " of creatures to be seen in them, " covered with them. I had two " they will cease to wonder." " servants rowing a small boat over 80 INGRATITUDE TO THE DELIVERER. \_Damel respect for lounging about with his spaniels, and feeding the ducks in St. James's Park, than was ever attained by him who had rescued and exalted two great countries, to whom the depressed Protestant interest throughout the world owed its renovated hope and strength, and who had gloriously disputed Europe with Louis the Fourteenth. Yes ! this was the man whom the most powerful in England were now combined to harass and oppose ; whom they reproached with the very services he had rendered them ; whom they insulted by the baseness of their in- trigues against him ; in whose face, to use the striking expression employed by De Foe, they flung the filth of their own passions. " I confess," he exclaimed with an irrepressible and noble indignation, " my blood boils at the " thought of it ! Prodigious ingratitude ! Canst thou " not, man ! be content to be advanced without merit, " but thou must repine at them that have merit without " reward ? You helped to make him king, you helped to " save your country and ruin him, you helped to recover *' your own liberties and those of your posterity, and now *' you claim rewards from him ! Has he not rewarded " you, by sacrificing his peace, his comfort, his fortune, " and his country to support you ? As a prince, how great " he was — how splendid, how happy, how rich, how easy, " and how justly valued both by friends and enemies ! " He lived in the field glorious, feared by the enemies of *' his country, loved by the soldiery, having a vast inherit- " ance of his own, governor of a rich State, blessed with '' the best of consorts, and, as far as this life could give, " completely happy. Compare this with the gaudy crown " you gave him, which, had a visible scheme been laid " with it of all its uneasinesses, dangers, crosses, disap- *' pointments, and dark prospects, no wise man would " have taken ofi" the dunghill, or come out of jail to be " master of. His perils have been your safety, his labours " your ease, his cares your comfort, his continued harass- *' ing and fatigue your continued calm and tranquillity. *' When you sit down to eat, why have you not soldiers " quartered in your houses, to command your servants " and insult your tables ? It is because King William " subjected the military to the civil authority, and made Be Foe.'] tribute to wt:lliam the third. 81 " the sword of justice triumph over the sword of war, " When you lie down at night, why do you not bolt and " bar your chamber, to defend the chastity of your wives '' and daughters from the ungoverned lust of raging " mercenaries ? It is because King William restored the " sovereignty and dominion of the laws, and made the " red-coat world servants to them that paid them. When " you receive your rents, why are not arbitrary defalca-. " tions made upon your tenants, arbitrary imposts laid " upon your commerce, and oppressive taxes levied upon " your estates, to support the tyranny that demands them " and make your bondage strong at your own expense ? " It is because King William re-established the essential " security of your properties, and put you in that happy " condition which few nations enjoy, of calling your souls " your own. How came you by a parliament, to balance " between the governed and the governing, but upon King " Wilham's exalting liberty upon the ruin of oppression ? " How came you to have power to abuse your deliverer, " but by the very deliverance he wrought for you ? He *' supported you in those privileges you ungratefully " bullied him mth, and gave you the liberty you took to *' insult him ! " Such was De Foe's living and lofty appeal against the assailants and detractors of our great King ; and, after proof and trial of nearly two centuries, how small is the exception to be taken to its warmth of generous partizan- ship ! If we see here and there a defect which was not visible to him, is there a greatness he commemorates which we do not also see, indelibly written in our English history? We may be far from thinking William a faiolt- less Prince : but what to Princes who have since reigned has been a plain and beaten path, was rendered so by his experience and example ; and our wonder should be, not that he stumbled, but that he was able to walk at all in the dark and thorny road he travelled.' He undertook the vexed, and till then unsolved, problem of Consti- tutional Government ; but he came to rule as a monarch, and not as a party chief. He, whom foolish bigots libel ^ Since the date of this Essay, racter and memory of William the Lord Macaulay's History has paid Third, its magnificent tribute to the cha- 82 WHIG AND TORY FACTION^. \_Daniel witli their admiration, came to unite, and not to separate ; to tolerate, and not to persecute ; to govern one people, and not to raise and depress alternate classes. Of the many thousand churchmen who had been preaching passive obedience before his arrival, only four hundred refused to acknowledge his government of active resistance; but he lived to find those four hundred his most honour- able foes. From the very heart of the councils that sur- rounded his throne, arose the worst treason against him. His Church overthrew him in his first attempt to legislate in a spirit of equal religious justice. His Whig ministers withdrew from him what they thought an unjust preroga- tive, because they had given him what they thought a just title. His Tory opposition refused him what they counted a just prerogative, on the ground of what they held to be an unjust title. Tories joined with Whigs against a standing army, and Whigs joined with Tories against a larger toleration. "I can see no difi'erence " between them," said William to the elder Halifax, " but " that the Tories would cut my throat in the morning, " and the Whigs in the afternoon." And yet there was a difference. The Whigs would have given him more than that " longer day." In the Tory ranks there was no public character so pure as that of Somers ; the high-church Bishops could show at least no intellect equal to Burnet's ; among the Tory financiers, there was no such clear accomplishment and wit as those of Charles Montagu, the later Halifax. Nor, even when with all his heats of advocacy he flung him- self into the struggle on the King's behalf, did De Foe omit to remember this. In all his writings he failed not to enforce it. When he most grieved that there should be union to exact from the Deliverer of England what none had ever thought of exacting from her Enslavers, it was that men so difi'erent should compose it. When he supported a moderate standing army against the Whigs, it was with a Whig reason ; that " not the King, but the '' sword of England in the hand of the King, should *' secure peace and religious freedom." When he opposed a narrow civil list against the Whigs, it was with no Tory reason ; but because " the King had wasted his own " patrimony in a war undertaken for the defence of De FGe.~\ a meeting at hampton court. 83" " religion and liberty/' Nay, wlien lie opposed the King himself, in his Reasons against a War mith France, it was on a ground which enabled the Whigs, soon after, to direct and prosecute the mighty struggle which for ever broke the tyranny and supremacy of France. *'He that " desires we shoul-d end the war honorably, ought to " desire also that we begin it fairly. Natural antipathies " are no just ground of a war against nations; neither are " popular opinions : nor is every invasion of a right a " good reason for war, until redress has first been peaceably " demanded." If William was to find himself again reconciled to the Whigs, it would be by the influence of such Whiggery as this. Indeed, it soon became apparent to him, even in the midst of general treachery, by which of the traitors he could most ef&ciently be served; and when, being made aware of the Jacobite correspondences of the Whig Duke of Shrewsbury, he sent him a Colonel of Guards with the seals of office in one hand and a warrant of treason in the other, to give him his choice of the Cabinet or the Tower, he but translated, in his decisive fearless way, the shrewd practical counsel of Daniel De Foe. That this merchant financier and speculator, this warm, jret wary advocate, this sagacious politician, this homely earnest man of business, should early have made his value known to such a sovereign, we cannot doubt. It was not till a later service, indeed, that the private cabinet of William was open to him; but, before the- Queen's death it is certain he had access to the palace, and that Mary had consulted him in her favourite task of laying out Hampton Court gardens. It is, to us, very pleasing to contemplate the meeting of such a sovereign and such a subject, as William and De Foe. There was something not dissimilar in their physical aspect, as in their moral temperament resemblances undoubtedly ex- isted. The King was the elder by ten years ^ but the middle size, the spare figure, the hooked nose,, the sharp chin, the keen grey eye, the large forehead^ and grave appearance, were common to both. William's manner was cold, except in battle ; and little warmth was ascribed to De Foe's, unless he spoke of civil liberty. There would G 2 84 SOVEREIGN AND SUBJECT. \_Damel be little recognition of Literature on either hand, yet nothing looked for that was not amply given. When the Stadtholder, in his practical way, complimented St Evre- mont on having been a major-general in France, the dandy man of letters took offence ; but, if the King merely spoke to De Foe as one who had borne arms with Mon- mouth, we will answer for it there was no disappointed vanity. Here, in a word, was profound good sense on both sides ; substantial scorn of the fine and the roman- tic ; impassive firmness ; a good broad, buffeting style of procedure ; and dauntless force of character, — a King who ruled by popular choice, and a Subject who represented that choice without a tinge of faction. Of how few then living but De Foe, might that last remark be made ! Of how few, even of the best "Whigs, was it true that their Whiggism found no support in personal spite ! At this very time, old Dryden could but weep when he thought of Prior and Charles Montagu (" for two young fellows I have always been civil to, to " use an old man in so cruel a manner'') : but De Foe, even while assailing the licence of the stage, spoke respectfully of Dryden, and, when condemning his changes of belief in later years, made admission of his ^' extraordinary genius." At this" time Prior, so soon to become a Jacobite, was writing to Montagu that he had " faced old James and all his court, the other day, at " St. Cloud ; vive Guillaume I You never saw such a *' strange figure as the old bully is ; lean, worn, and ^^ riv'led : " but De Foe, in the publication wherein he most had exalted William, had also described with his most manly pathos James's personal maltreatment and desertion. We repeat that the great sovereign would find, in such a spirit as this, the nearest resemblance to his own ; and, it may be, the best ultimate corrective of that weary im- patience of the Factions which made his English sove- reignty so hard a burden. It was better discipline, on the whole, than he had from his old friend Sir William Temple, whom, on his difficulty with the ultra-factious Triennial bill, he went to Moor Park to consult : when the wary diplomatist could but set his Irish amanuensis, Mr. Jonathan Swift, to draw up wise precedents for the De Foe,'] settlement of the revolution. 85 monarch's quiet digestion of the bill, Whigs, Tories, and all ; and the monarch could but drily express his thanks to Mr. Swift, by teaching him to digest asparagus, against all precedent, by swallowing stalks and all. Those great questions of Triennial bill, of Treason bill, of Settlement Securities bill, whether dictated by wisdom or by faction, we need touch but lightly here. All worked wisely. Urged by various motives, they tended yet to a common end. Silently, steadily, securely, while the roar of dispute and discontent swelled and raged above, the soKd principles of the Revolution were rooting themselves deep in the soil below. The Censorship of the Press ex- pired in 1694 ; no man in the State was found to suggest its renewal ; and it passed away for ever. ^Yhat, before, it had been the interest of government to impeach, it was now its interest to maintain ; what the Tories formerly would have checked in the power of the House of Com- mons, their interests now compelled them to extend. All became committed to the principle of Resistance ; and, whether for party or for patriotism, Liberty was the cry of all. De Foe turned aside from politics, when their aspect seemed for a time less virulent ; and applied him- self to what is always of intimate connection with them, and of import yet more momentous, — the moral aspects of the time. We do not, however, think that he always penetrated with success to the heart of a moral question. He was somewhat obstructed, at the threshold, by the formal and limited points of Presbyterian breeding ; and there were depths in morals and in moral causes, which undoubtedly he never sounded. Even the more practical and earnest features of his character had in this respect brought their disadvantages ; and, on some points, stopped him short of that highest reach and grace of intellect, which in a consummate sense constitutes the ideal, and takes leave of the merely shrewd, solid, acute, and palpable. The god of reality and matter-of-fact, is not always in these things a divine god. But there was a manliness and courage well worthy of him in the general tone he took, and the game at which he flew. He represented in his Essay, the Poor Man ; and his object was to show that Acts of ParHament were useless, which enabled those who 86 SOCIAL AND SECTARIAN QUESTIONS. \_Daniel administered tliem to pass over in their own class what they punished in classes below them. He arraigned that tendency of English legislation, which afterwards passed into a proverb, to '^ punish men for being poor." Abun- dant were the penalties, he admitted, against vtcious practices, but, severe as they were, they were all of cob- web structure, in which only the small flies were caught, while the great ones broke through ; and he set forth a petition, pregnant with sense and wit, that the Stocks and House of Correction should be straightway abolished, " till the Nobility, Gentry, Justices of the Peace, and " Clergy, will be pleased to reform their own manners." He lived in an age of Justice Midases and Parson Trul- libers, and he assails both with singular bitterness. ^' The Parson preaches a thundering sermon against ^^ drunkenness, and the Justice sets my poor neighbour " in the 'stocks ; and I am Hke to be much the better for " either, when I know that this same Parson and this " same Justice were both drunk together but the night *' before." He knows little of De Foe, who would suspect him of a class-prejudice of his own in this. When, in the pre- sent year, the Presbyterian Lord Mayor, going in his robes and chain in the morning to the church, and in the afternoon to the Pinner's-hall meeting-house, raised a vehement and bitter discussion on the question of Occa- sional Conformity, — ardent Dissenter though he was, De Foe did not hesitate to take part with the Church. He could not see, he said, why Sir Humphrey Edwin should wish, like a boy upon a holiday, to display his fine clothes at either church or meeting-house. In a religious view, he thought that if it was a point of conscience with a Dissenter not to conform to the Established Church, he could not possibly receive a dispensation to do so from the mere fact of his holding a civic office ; in a political view, he held what was called Occasional Conformity to be a surrender of the dignity and independence of Dissent, likely to lead to larger and dangerous conces- sions ; and he maintained these opinions with great force of argument. He was in the right ; and the party never forgave him. On no question, no matter how deeply affecting their common interests, could the Dissenters De Foe.^ attack upon the stage. 87 afterwards bring themselves to act cordially with. De Foe. Pious Presbyterian ministers took his moral treatises into their pulpits with them, cribbed from them, preached upon their texts, largely quoted them, but were careful to suppress his name. Another point of attack in his publications on the manners of his time, had reference to the Stage. "With whatever views we approach the consideration of this subject, there can be but one opinion of the existing condition of the theatres. They were grossly profligate. Since that year after the Restoration in which Mr. Evelyn saw the performance of Hamlet^ and had reason to note that " the old plays begin to disgust this refined " age, since his Majesty's being so long abroad,'' vice had made its home in the theatres. Nor had any check been at this time given to it. The severe tone of William Ill's Court had only made the contrast more extreme. Collier had not yet published his Short Vieic. Burnet had not yet Aviitten that volume of his Own Time wherein he described, with perhaps more truth than logic, the stage as the corrupter of the town, and the bad people of the town as the corrupters of the stage ; and proclaimed it a " shame to our nation and religion to see the stage so " reformed in France, and so polluted still in England." Neither was the evil merely left unrestrained ; for it had lately received potent assistance from the unequalled wit of Congreve, whose Maskwell and Lady Touchwood were now affecting even the ladies in the lobbies, and their male attendants, with a touch of shame. Nevertheless, while we admit his excellent intention, we cannot think that De Foe made any figure in the argument. He many times returned to it, but never with much effect. His objections would as freely have applied to the best-con-^ ducted theatre. Nor, in the special immoralities assigned, had he hit the point exactly. To bring women into the performance of female characters was a decided improve- ment. The morals of Charles the Second's age, though openly and generally worse, were, in particular respects, not so bad as those of James the First ; neither was the stage of even Wycherley and Etherege so deeply immoral ".-*, that of Beaumont and Fletcher. :7e do not know if the Muses resented, in De Foe's 88 VERSES FUGITIVE AND PERMANENT. [Daniel case, this unfriendliness to one of their favourite haunts ; but, when he attempted to woo them on his account, they answered somewhat coyly to his call. A collection of Fugitive Yerses, published by Dunton, appeared at this time — " made/' says the eccentric bookseller, " by " the chief wits of the age ; namely, Mr. Motteux, Mr. " De Foe, Mr. Richardson, and, in particular, Mr. Tate, " now poet'laureat." (Swift was among them, too, but not important enough yet to be named.) Mr. De Foe's contribution was, " The character of Dr. Annesley by " way of Elegy ; " and we must confess, of this elegiacal tribute to the memory of his old Presbyterian pastor, that it seems to us rightly named Fugitive ; whether we apply the word actively to the poetry that flies away, or passively to that which makes the reader do the same. De Foe lost a part of his strength, his facility, and his fancy, when he wrote in verse. Yet, even in verse, he made a lucky, nervous hit, now and then ; and the best of his efforts was the True-horn Englishman. It appeared in 1701. It was directed against the un- relenting and bitter attacks from which William at that time more particularly suffered, on the ground of his birth and of the friends he had ennobled. They were no true-born Englishmen : that was the cant in vogue. Mr. Tutchin's poem of The Foreigners was on every body's tongue. The feeling had vented itself, in the previous year, on that question of the dismissal of the Dutch Guards, which the King took so sorely to heart. The same feeling had forced the Tories into power ; it had swelled their Tory majority with malcontent Whigs ; and it now threatened the fair and just rewards which William had offered to his deserving Generals. It is recorded of him at this juncture, that even his great silent heart at last gave way. " My Guards have done " for them what they could not do for themselves, and " they sen^i them from me." He paced his cabinet in uncontrollable emotion. He would have called out his assailants, he said, if he had been a private man. If he had not had the obligation of other than private duties, he would have resigned the crown. Then it was that De Foe stepped in with his timely service. The True-horn Englishman was a doggerel, but De Foe.~\ the true-born englisipian. 89 a fine one. It was full of earnest, weighty sense ; of excellent history ; of the nicest knowledge of our English character ; and it thrust right home at the point in issue. It proved the undeniable truth, that, so far from being of pure birth and blood. Englishmen are the most mixed race on the earth, and owe to that very circumstance their distinction over other feebler races. Whilst others, for the lack of such replenishment, have dwindled or periihed, the English have been invigorated and sustained by it, and their best blood has owed its continual pre- dominance mainly to the very rudeness and strength of the admixture. This True-horn Englishman exposed a vulgar prejudice, even as it flattered a reasonable vanity ; and few things of a merely temporary interest have ever equalled its success. Its first four lines, * ' Wherever God erects a house of prayer, Tlie Devil always builds a chapel there ; And 'twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation," — are all that perhaps fairly dan be said to have survived, of couplets that were then shouted from street to street ; yet it would be easy, by any dozen lines taken at random from those that have perished out of memory, to show not only its merit as a vigorous piece of writing, but the art with which it appealed to the common people. Such an example might at once be taken from the passage which exhibits Charles the Second, with a view to fresh supply against the drain upon noble blood occasioned by the Civil ^7ars, contributing himself six dukes to the peerage of England — * ' And carefully repeoj)ling us again, Throughout his lazy, long, lascivious reign ; French cooks,' Scotch pedlars, and Italian whores, Were all made lords or lords' progenitors. Beggars and bastards by his new creation Still multiplied the peerage of the nation. Who will be all, ere one short age runs o'er, As true-born lords as those we had before ; Then, with true English pride, they may contemn Schomberg and Portland, new-made noblemen ! " The instant popularity of the satire was astonishingly great. Besides the nine editions of which De Foe himself 90 SERVICES TO THE KING. \_Daniel received tlie profit, upwards of twelve editions were pirated, printed, and sold, in defiance of his interdict. More than eighty thousand copies, we are told, were thus disposed of in the streets alone. But it is more important to have to remark, that it destroyed the cant against which it was directed. " Nothing was more frequent in our mouths " before that ; nothing so universally blushed for and " laughed at, since. Whereas, before, you had it in the " best writers, and in the most florid speeches, before the " most august assemblies, upon the most solemn occasions,'' — Now, without a blush or a laugh, you never heard it named. It may be doubted if this great King had ever so deeply felt a service. His opportunities were few. De Foe has recorded how he was sent for to the palace, on the special occasion of his book; with what kindness he was received ; " how employed ; and how, above his " capacity of deserving, rewarded." His free access to William's cabinet never ceased from this time. There are statements, throughout his writings, of the many points of public policy he had been permitted frankly to discuss with the sovereign. On the agitated questions of the Partition Treaties, he was many times consulted ; and there was one grand theme, nobly characteristic of the minds of both, often recurred to in these inter- views. It was the Union of Scotland with England. " It shall be done," said WilHam ; " but not yet." Other things more nearly and closely pressed him then. The rapid growth and march of the Revolution might be aptly measured by the incidents and disputes of the last year of his reign. They turned solely on the power claimed by the lower house of legislature. In several ably- written pamphlets, and particularly in a Letter dis- tinguished for its plain and nervous diction, and in which the grounds of popular representation were so happily condensed and clearly stated, that it has been a text-book of political disputants from the days of the expulsion of Walpole and of Wilkes to those of the Reform Bill,' — ^ This remarkable pamphlet in over the Delegated authority, and defence of Popular Rights, may be remains still, as it was when first briefly described as a demonstration written, the most able, plain, and of the predominance of the Original courageous exposition in our lau- Be Foe ] defence of popular rights. 91 De Foe impugned the full extent of the claim on tlie ground of a non- representation of the people ; but a power had lately arisen, within the House itself, indicative guage, of the doctrine on wliich our own and all free political consti- tutions rest. Its argument proceeds from four general propositions, which are worked out with masterly power and clearness. The first is, That all government is contrived and instituted by the consent and for the mutual benefit and protec- tion of the governed. The second, That its constituent members, whether King, Lords or Commons, if they invert the great end of their institution, cease to be, and sur- render their power to the source from which it proceeded. The third, That no collective or repre- sentative body of men whatsoever, in matters of politics or religion, have been infallible. And the fourth, That reason is the test and touchstone of laws, which cease to be binding, and become void, when contradictory to reason. Of which propositions the close and insepa- rable interdependence is shown, hj exhibiting the respective relations and obligations of the various autho- rities of the State to each other, and to their supreme head ; it being the grand purpose of the argument to demonstrate the sole safety and efficacy of the latter in the final resort. "For, notwithstanding all * ' the beauty of our constitution, "and the exact symmetry of its " parts, about which some have *' been so very eloquent, this noble, " well-contrived system has been *' overwhelmed, the government has *' been inverted, the people's liber- *' ties have been trampled on, '* and parliaments have been ren- ** dered useless and insignificant. " And what has restored us ? The " last resort has been to the people, " Vox Dei has been found there, *' not in the representatives, but in ■*' their original, the represented." And let no man dread such last resort, wisely adds De Foe. For what say the practical results of history as to the unvarying political tendencies of the English people ? " The genius of this nation has " always appeared to tend to a "limited monarchy; and having " had, in the late Revolution, a *' full and interrupted liberty to " cast themselves into what form " of government they pleased, there '* was not discovered the least in- '* clination in any party to a com- " mon wealth, though the treatment " they met with from their last two " kings had all in it that could be; *' to put them out of love with " monarchy. A commonwealth " can never be introduced but by " such invasions of right as must " make our constituted government '* impracticable. C^he reason is, " because men never willingly * ' change for the worse ; and the " people of England enjoy more " freedom in our regal, than any * ' people in the world can do in a " popular government.") But were it otherwise, not the less must this thorough Englishman uphold the superiority of the original power. Before there was such a thing as a Constitution, there must have been a People ; and, as the end to which authority is delegated can never be other than the public good, upon the unquestioned assertion of all men's right to the government of themselves must also rest the most absolute and express confirmation that such delegated authority can receive. Addressing the King, he says, "It is not the least extra- " ordinary attribute of your ma- " jesty's character, that, as you are " king of your people, so you are " the people's king ; a title, as it is " the most glorious, so it is the " most indisputable in the world. " Your majesty, among all the * ' blessings of your reign, has re- '* stored this as the best of all our 92 HARLEY AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. [Baniel of the changed relations of the Government of England, mser in effect than the wisdom of Somers, and more cunning than the cunning of Sunderland. " The Tories," said the latter to William, '' are better speakers than the " Whigs in the House of Commons^ It had arisen into a peculiar art — this art of oratory — there. Confessedly- one of the most influential of its members was he whom the last three parliaments of William elected for their Speaker ; yet no man would have listened patiently for five minutes to Robert Harley, anywhere but in the House of Commons. There, he was supreme. The country gentlemen voted for him, though they remem- bered that his family went to a meeting- house. The younger members put forth their most able and graceful representative to honour him, when Henry St. John seconded his third nomination. And posterity itself had cause to be grateful to him, when, employing for once this influence in its service, he joined Tory and Whig in a common demand for the best securities of the Act of Settlement. It was not genius, it was not eloquence, it " enjoyments— tlie full liberty of " Original Right ; and your majesty *' knows too well the nature of go- " vernment to think it at all the *' less honourable, or the more pre- " carious, for being devolved from, ' ' and centred in, the consent of '• your people." To the Lords, he conceded their place as an indepen- dent branch of the Constitution, and then tells them : "The rest of the " freeholders have originally a right •' to sit there with you ; but, being " too numerous a body, they have " long since agreed that whenever *' the King thinks fit to advise with " his people, they will choose a cer- ** tain few out of their great body " to meet together with your Lord- *' ships. Here is the original of * ' parliaments ; and, when thrones *' become vacant, to this original " all power of course returns, as *' was the case at the Revolution." To the House of Commons, finally, as the representatives of the col- lected body of the people, De Foe turns ; and with his very striking address to them, may be closed this imperfect sketch of a very important and powerful political tract : "To " you they have trusted, jointly ' ' with the King and the Lords, the " power of making laws, raising " taxes, and impeaching criminals ; " but it is in the name of all the ' ' Commons of England, whose re- " presentatives you are. All this ' ' is not said to lessen your autho- ' ' rity, which cannot be the interest " of any English ireeholder : but if * ' you are dissolved (for you are not *' immortal), or if you are deceived " (for you are not infallible), it was " never supposed, till very lately, " that all power dies with you. " You may die, but the People re- * ' main ; you may be dissolved, and "all immediate right may cease; " power may have its intervals, and " crowns their interregnum : but " Original Power endures to the " same eternity as the world eu- " dures." De Fce,~\ kentish petition and legion memorial. 93 was not statesmansliip, that had given Harley this extra- ordinary power. It was House of Commons tact. It was a thing born of the Eevolution ; and of which the aim and tendency, through whatever immediate effects, was in the end to strengthen and advance the Revolution. For, it rested on the largest principles, even while it ap- pealed to the meanest passions. There was something very striking in the notion of De Foe, to bring it suddenly face to face with those higher principles ; and this he did in his Kentish Petition and Legion Memorial. In all the histories which relate the Tory impeachment of AYilliam^s four Whig lords, will be found that counter-impeachment of the House of Commons itself, preferred in the name of the entire population of England, and comprising fifteen articles of treason against their authority. It was creating a People, it is true, before the people had declared themselves; but it was done with the characteristic reality of genius, and had a startling effect. As Harley passed into the House, a man muffled in a cloak placed the Memorial in his hands. The Speaker knew De Foe's person, and is said by the latter to have recognised him ; but he kept his counsel. No one has doubted, that in the excitement of the debates that followed, the Whigs and William recovered much lost ground ; and the coffee-houses began to talk mightily of a pamphlet written by Temple's quondam secretary, now the Reverend Jonathan Swift, parish priest and vicar of Laracor, wherein Lord Portland figured as Phocion, Lord Oxford as Themistocles, Lord Halifax as Pericles, and Lord Somers as Aristides. The subsequent declaration of war against France still further cheered and consoled the King. He sent for De Foe, received from him a scheme for opening new " channels of trade " in connection with the Avar, and assigned to him a main part in its execution.^ He felt that he ruled at last, 1 The drift of this scheme was ing account of it : *'I gave you an for directing such operations against " instance of a proposal which 1 had the Spanish possessions in the West * ' the honour to lay before his late Indies as might open new channels *' Majesty, at the beginning of the of trade, and render the war self- * ' last war, for the sending a strong supporting. Writing about it some * ' fleet to the Havannah, to seize years later, De Foe gives the follow- '* that part of the island in which 94 DEATH OF WILLIAM THE THIRD. [^Daniel and was probably never so reconciled to his adopted kingdom. But, in tbe midst of grand designs and hopes, he fell from his horse in hunting, sickened for a month, and died. There are many Mock Mourners at royal deaths, and, in a poem with that title, De Foe would have saved his hero's memory from them. He claimed for him nobler homage than such tributes raise, " to damn their former " follies by their praise. "*' He told what these mourners were, while yet their living King appeared, " and what " they knew they merited, they feared." He described what has since become matter of history, that toast of " William's horse," which had lightened all their festi- vities since his accident : — " 'twould lessen much our " woe, had Sorrel stumbled thirteen years ago." And he closed with eloquent mention of the heroic death which Burnet's relation made so distasteful to High Church bigotry : *' No conscious guilt disturb'd his royal breast, Calm as the regions of eternal rest." The sincerity of the grief of De Foe had in this work lifted his verse to a higher and firmer tone. It was a heartfelt sorrow. There was no speeding the going, wel- coming the coming sovereign, for De Foe. Nothing could replace, nothing too gratefully remember, the past. It was his pride always after to avouch, that to have been " trusted, esteemed, and, much more than I deserved, " valued by the best king England ever saw," was more than a compensation for what inferior men could inflict upon him. When, in later years, Lord Haversham de- nounced him in the House of Lords as a mean and mer- cenary writer, he told that ungrateful servant of King " it is situated, and from thence to ** been enabled to support this war. ** seize and secure the possession of "But the King died, in whose *' at least the coast, if not by coiise- " hands this glorious scheme was in *' quence the Terra Fir ma, of the *' a fair way of being concerted, ** empire of Mexico, and thereby *' and which, had it gone on, I had ** entirely cut off the Spanish com- *' had the honour to have been not "merce and the return of their "the first proposer only, but to "Plate fleets; by the immense " have had some share in the per- * ' riches whereof, and by which * ' formance." * ' only, both France and Spain have De FoeJ] character of queen anne. 95 William, that if lie should say he had the honour to know something from his majesty, and to transact something for him, which he would not have trusted Lord Ha- versham with, perhaps there might he more truth than modesty in it. Still, to the very last, it was his theme. '' I never forget his goodness to me," he said, when his own life was wearing to its close. " It was my honour '^ and advantage to call him master as well as sovereign. " I never patiently heard his memory slighted, nor ever " can do so. Had he lived, he would never have suffered " me to he treated as I have heen in this world." Aye ! good, brave, Daniel De Foe ! There is indeed but sorry treatment in store for you. The accession of Anne was the signal for Tory re- joicings. She was thirty-seven, and her character was formed and known. It was a compound of weakness and of bigotry, but in some sort these availed to counteract each other. Devotion to a High Church principle was needful to her fearful conscience ; but reliance on a woman-favourite was needful to her feeble mind. She found Marlborough and Godolphin in office, where they had been placed by their common kinsman, Sunderland ; and she raised Godolphin to the post of Lord Treasurer, and made Marlborough Captain-General. Even if she had not known them to be opponents of the Whigs, she would yet have done this ; for she had been some years under the influence of Marlborough's strong-minded wife, and that influence availed to retain the same advisers when she found them converted into what they had opposed. The spirit of The Great lives after them ; and this weak, superstitious, " good sort of woman," little thought, when she uttered with so much enjoyment the slighting allu- sions to William in her first speech from the throne, that the legacy of foreign administration left by that high- minded sovereign would speedily transform the Tories, then standing by her side, into undeniable earnest Whigs.' ^ The Commons replied to the signally retrieved the ancient honour address in the same strain, and and glory of the English nation, congratulated her Majesty on the Very felicitous were the lines of the wisdom of her councils and the sue- satire : cess of her arms, by which she had "Pacific Admirals, to save the fleet, 96 TRIUMPH OF THE HIGH-FLYERS. [Daniel At first all promised well for the most high-flpng Churclimen. Jacobites came in with proffered oaths of allegiance ; the " landed interest'' rubbed its hands with anticipation of discountenance to trade ; tantivy parsons cried their loudest halloo against Dissent ; the martyr- dom of Charles became the incessant theme of pulpits, for comparison of the martyr to the Saviour ; and, by way of significant hint of the royal sanctity, and the return of the throne to a more lineal succession, the gift of the royal touch was solemnly revived. Nor did the feeling explode in mere talk, or pass without a practical seconding. The Ministry introduced a bill against Occasional Conformity, the drift of which was to disqualify Dissenters from all civil employments ; and though the ministers themselves were indifferent to it, court bigotry pressed it so hard, that even the Queen's husband, himself an Occasional Conformist, was driven to vote for it. '*My heart is vid " you," he said to Lord Wharton, as he divided against him. It was a remark, if taken in connexion with the vote, very chommingly foreign to the purpose. The bill, passed by the Tory House of Commons (where Harley had again been chosen Speaker), was defeated by the Whig lords, to the great comfort of its authors, the ministry. But the common people, having begun their revel of High Church excitement, were not to be balked so easily. They pulled down a few dissent- ing chapels ; sang High Church songs in the streets ; insulted known Dissenters as they passed along ; and in other ways orthodoxly amused themselves. Swift enjoyed the excitement, and in his laughing way told Stella that so universal was it, he observed the dogs in the streets to be much more contumelious and quarrelsome than usual; and, the very night the bill went up to the Lords, a com- mittee of Whig and Tory cats had been having a very warm and loud debate on the roof of his house. But it seemed to De Foe a Kttle more serious. On personal grounds he did not care for the bill, its acceptance or its rejection : but its political tendency was unsafe ; it was designed as an act of oppression ; the spirit aroused was Shall fly from conquest, and shall William's cost, conquest meet. And honour be retrieved before Commanders shall be praised at 'tis lost ! " De Foe.'] sacheverell's bloody flag. 97 dangerous ; and the attitude taken by Dissenters wanted both dignity and courage. Nor let it be supposed, while he still looked doubtingly on, that he had any personal reason which would not strongly have withheld him from the fray. He had now six children ; his affairs were again thriving; the works at Tilbury had reasonably prospered ; and passing judgment, by the world's most favoured tests, on the house to which he had lately re- moved at Hackney, on the style in which he lived there, and on the company he kept, it must be said that Daniel De Foe was at this time most " respectable " and well to do. He kept his coach and visited county members.* But, as the popular rage continued, he waived considera- tions of prudence in his determination to resist it. There was a foul-mouthed Oxford preacher named Sacheverell, who had lately announced from his pulpit to that intelli- gent University, that he could not be a true son of the Church who did not lift up her banner against the Dis- senters, who did not hang out the "bloody flag and " banner of defiance ; " and this sermon was selling for twopence in the streets. It determined him, as he tells us, to delay no longer. He would make an effort to stay the plague. And he wrote and published his Shortest Way with the Dissenters — without his name, of course. Its drift was to personate the opinions and style of the most furious of the high-flying Church party, and to set forth, with perfect gravity and earnestness, the extreme of the ferocious intolerance to which their views and wishes tended. "We can conceive nothing so seasonable, or in the execution so inimitably real. We doubt if a finer specimen of serious irony exists in the language. In the only effective mode, it stole a march on the blind bigotry of the one party, and on the torpid dulness of the other ; for, to have spoken to either in a graver tone, would have called forth a laugh or a stare. Only discovery could effect prevention. A mine must be sprung, to show the combustibles in use, and the ruin and disaster they were fraught with. " 'Tis in vain," said the Shortest Way, " to ^ He makes frequent mention of mansion at Steyning appears to one of the Sussex members, Sir hare been always at the service of John Fagg, the hospitality of whose De Foe. 98 SHORTEST WAY WITH DISSENTERS. \_Damel *' trifle in this matter. We can never enjoy a settled " uninterrupted union in this nation, till the spirit of " Whiggism, Faction, and Schism, is melted down like *' the old money. Here is the opportunity to secure the " Church and destroy her enemies. I do not prescribe " fire and faggot, but Delenda est Carthago. They are to " be rooted out of this nation, if ever we will live in peace " or serve God. The light foolish handling of them " by fines is their glory and advantage. If the gallows " instead of the compter, and the galleys instead of the " fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, there " would not be so many sufferers. The spirit of martyr- " dom is over. They that will go to church to be chosen " sheriffs and mayors, would go to forty churches rather " than be hanged.'* If a justification of this masterly pamphlet were needed, would it not be strikingly visible in the existence of a state of society wherein such arguments as these could be taken to have grave intention ? Gravely, they tcere so taken. Sluggish, timid, cowardly Dissenters were struck with fear ; rabid High Churchmen shouted approval. A Cambridge Fellow wrote to thank his bookseller for having sent him so excellent a treatise, it being, next to the Holy Bible and the Sacred Comments, the most valuable he had ever seen. But then came a whisper of its true intention, and the note suddenly changed. There arose a clamour for discovery and punishment of the writer, unequalled in its vehemence and intensity. The very thing that made them eager and exulting to have the thing said, made them shrink in mortification and shame from the fact of his saying it. To the lasting dis- grace of the Dissenters, they joined the cry. They took revenge for their own dulness. That the writer was De Foe was now generally known ; and they owed his wit no favour. It had troubled them too often before the time. They preferred to wait until Sacheverell's bloody flag should be hoisted in reality : such a pamphlet, meanwhile, was a scurrilous irreverence to religion and authority, and they would have none of it. Yet, bad as were the conse- quences involved in their desertion of him, he had nothing more harsh than a smile for their stupidity. " All the ** fault I can find in myself as to these people is, that De Foe,"] reward offered for the author. 99 " when I had drawn the picture, I did not, like the Dutch- *' man with his man and bear, write underneath, * This is '^ * the man, and this is the bear,' lest the people should " mistake me. Having, in a compliment to their judg- " ment, shunned so sharp a reflection upon their senses, " I have left them at liberty to treat me like one that put " a value upon their penetration at the expense of my *' own.'* And so indeed they treated him ! A worthy colonel of the party said, " he'd undertake to be hangman, " rather than the author of the Shortest Way should want " a pass out of the world ; " and a self-denying chairman of one of the foremost dissenters' clubs went to such alarming lengths with his zeal, as to protest that if he could find the libeller he would deliver him up without the reward. For, Government had now offered a reward of fifty pounds for the apprehension of Daniel De Foe. There is no doubt that the moderate chiefs were dis- inclined to so extreme a step : but they were weak at this time. Lord Nottingham had not yet been displaced; there was a Tory House of Commons, which not even Harley's tact could always manage, and by which the libel had been voted to the hangman; nor had Godol- phin's reluctance availed against the wish of the Court, that office should be given to the member most eminent for opposition to the late King while he lived, and for insults to his memory. De Foe had little chance ; and Nottingham, a sincere bigot, took the task of hunting him down. The proclamation in the London Gazette described him as " a middle-sized, spare man, about forty *' years old, of a brown complexion, and dark-brown '^ coloured hair, but wears a wig ; a hooked nose, a sharp " chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth ; *' owner of the brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort, *' in Essex." ' But it was not immediately successful. ^ Here is the exact advertisement: ** but wears a wig ; a hooked nose, a — "Whereas Daniel De Foe, alias " shnrp chin, grey eyes, and a large " De Fooe, is charged with writing " mole near his mouth ; was born " a scandalous and seditious pam- "in London, and for many years ' ' phlet, entitled, The Shortest Way ' ' was a hose-factor, in Freeman's " with the Dissenters : he is a mid- " Yard in Cornhill, and now is "die-sized spare man, about forty "owner of the brick and pantile " years old, of a brown complexion, "works, near Tilbury Fort, in "and dark-brown coloured hair, "Essex: whoever shall discover u 2 100 TRIAL AT THE OLD BAILEY. [Daniel Warrants then threw into custody the printer and the bookseller ; and De Foe concealed himself no longer. He came forth, as he says, to brave the storm. He would not have others ruined by mistake for him. He stood in the Old Bailey dock in July 1703. Harcourt, who before had carried up the impeachment of Somers, and was afterwards counsel for Sacheverell, prosecuted. " A " man without shame," says Speaker Onslow, " but very " able." It was his doctrine, that he ought to prosecute every man who should assert any power in the people to Oall their governors to account, — taking this to be a right corollary from the law of libel, then undoubtedly existing, that no man might publish any piece reflecting on the government, or even upon the capacity and fitness of any one employed in it. The Revolution had not altered that law ; and it was, in effect, the direct source of the profligate and most prolific personal libels of the age we are entering on. For, of course, Harcourt's policy was found impracticable, and retaliation was substituted for it, — as the denial of all liberty in theory will commonly produce extreme licentiousness in practice. We do not know who defended De Foe ; ' but he seems to have been ** the said Daniel De Foe to one of *' was ironically said in that book *' her Majesty's principal secretaries " was not seriously, as well as with " of state, or any of her Majesty's " a malicious earnest, published in *' justices of peace, so as he may be '* print with impunity a hundred " apprehended, sli^ll have a reward "times before and since? And " of fifty pounds, which her Ma- " whether, therefore, to say that *' jesty has ordered immediately to " this was a crime, flies so much in " be paid upon such discovery." " the face of the churchmen, that ^ Some idea of the speech for the *' it upbraids them with blowing prosecution is derivable from the *' up their own cause, and ruining allusions made to it by De Foe him- *' their friends by a method they at self in after years. Harcourt's posi- " the same time condemn in others, tion throughout was, that it was an ** Upon this foot, I again say, the atrocious libel on churchmen to con- *' book was just, its design fair, and ceive them capable of uttering such " all the facts charged upon them abominable sentiments. "To hear "very true." Then came the " of a gentleman," says De Foe, Sacheverell sermon at St. Paul's, writing during his subsequent ira- transcending all that De Foe had prisonment, "telling me 7'Ae »SAor<- invented as apposite to such pulpit " est ^ay was paving the way over agitators ; and thus he commented ** the skulls of churchmen, and it upon it : — "Where were the brains "is a crime to justify it! That " of wise Sir Simon Harcourt, when, " should have been said by no man, " according to his custom, bullying "but him who could first answer "the author then at the bai-, he * ' this question : Whether ail that ' ' cried, ' Oh, but he would insinu- 2)^ Foe.^ WIT DULY REWARDED. 101 ill defended. He was advised to admit the libel, on a loose assurance in the court that a high influence was not indisposed to protect him. He was declared guilty ; and was sentenced to pay a fine of two hundred marks, to stand three times in the pillory, to be imprisoned during the Queen's pleasure, and to find sureties for good beha- viour for seven years. Alas, for the fate of Wit in this world ! De Foe was taken back to Newgate, and told to prepare for the pillory. The high influence whispered about, made no sign now. But some years after, when it was her interest to say it, the Queen condescended to say, that " she left all that matter to a certain person, and " did not think he would have used Mr. De Foe in such " manner." But what was the manner to Mr. De Foe ? He went to the pillory, as in those after years he went to the palace, with the same quiet temper. In truth, writers and thinkers lived nearer to it, then, than we can well fancy possible now. It had played no ignominious part in the grand age passed away, Noble hearts had been tried and tempered iu it. Daily had been elevated in it, mental independence, manly self-reliance, robust athletic endurance. All from within that has undying worth, it *' ate that the Churchmen were for "not heard how eagerly they *' these barbarous ways with the " granted the suggestion, by es- " Dissenters,' and therefore it was ** pousing the proposal, and by ac- *• a mighty crime ! And now, good " knowledging it was the way they *' Sir Simon, whose honesty and " desired. Now, here is another *' modesty were born together, — '* test put upon the world of this • ' you see, sir, the wrong done them ; ' ' true High Church principle. De- ** for this very man, whom you so " struction of Dissenters is proved *' impudently said was then abused, ** to be no more persecution than " has doomed them all to the devil " hanging of highwaymen. This is *'and his angels, declares they " saying in earnest what the author '* ought to be prosecuted for high *' of The Shortest Way said in jest ; " treason, and tells us that every " this is owning that to the sun, *' Dissenter from the Church is a *' which Sir Simon Harcourt said ** Traitor to the State." Again he "before was a crime to suggest, says, remarking on the same sub- *' Now the blessed days are come ject : "When Sir Simon Harcourt "that the gi'eat truth is owned "aggravated it against the author, "barefaced; and the party that " that he designed the book to have " ruined and abused the author for **the world believe the Church of "telling the truth out of season, " England would have the Dissent- " makes no scruple of taking this " ers thus used, 'tis presumed, " as a proper season to tell the same " without reflection upon that gen- " truth in their own way." *' tleman s penetration, that he had 102 STANDING IN THE PILLORY. [Daniel had, in those times, but the more plainly exposed to public gaze from without. The only Archbishop that De Foe ever truly reverenced, Robert Leighton, was the son of a man who, in it, had been tortured and mutilated ; and the saintly character of that Prelate was even less saintly than his father's. A Presbyterian's first thought would be of these things ; and De Foe's preparation for the pillory was to fortify his honest dignity by remembrance of them, in the most nervous and pointed verses he had ever written. ' Hail, Hieroglyphic State machine, Contriv'd to punish Fancy in ; Men that are men, in thee can feel no pain, And all thy insignificants disdain. Contempt, that false new word for shame, Is, without crime, an empty name. A Shadow to amuse mankind, But ne'er to fright the wise or well-fix'd mind. Virtue despises human scorn ! Even the learned Selden saw A prospect of thee through the law. He had thy lofty pinnacles in view, But so much honour never was thy due," &c. The entire Ode is in truth excellent. On the 29th of July, 1703, it appeared publicly, in twenty-four quarto pages, as A Hymn to the Pillory, by Daniel De Foe ; and on that day, we are informed by the Lojidon Gazette, Daniel De Foe himself stood in the pillory before the Royal Exchange in Cornhill ; on the day following, near the Conduit in Cheapside ; and on the 31st, at Temple-bar. A large crowd had assembled to provide themselves sport ; but the pillory they most enjoyed was not of the Government's erecting. Unex- pectedly they saw the Law pilloried, and the Ministers of State,— the dulness which could not comprehend, and the malice which on that account would punish, a popular champion. They veered quickly round. Other missiles than were wont to greet a pillory reached De Foe ; and shouts of a different temper. His health was drunk' ^ A Tory satirist of the day thus ** All round him Philistines adoring refers to that circumstance : stand, De Foe.'\ behaviour of the people. lOeS with acclamations as lie stood there ; and nothing harder than a flower was flung at him. "The people were " expected to treat me very ill," he said ; *' but it was " not so. On the contrary, they were with me ; wished " those who had set me there were placed in my room ; " and expressed their afi'ections by loud shouts and accla- " mations when I was taken down." We are told that garlands covered the platform where he stood ; that he saw the Hymn passed from hand to hand ; and that, what it so calmly had said, he heard far less calmly repeated from angry groups that stood below. " Tell them the men that placed him here Are scandals to the times ; Are at a loss to find his guilt, • And can't commit his crimes." A witness who was present, in short, and an undeniably good one, being himself a noted Tory libeller of the day (Ned Ward), frankly admits this " lofty Hymn to the " wooden rufi"" to have been "to the law a counter-cuff; " and truly, without Whiggish flattery, a plain assault " and downright battery." Had not De Foe established his right, then, to stand there "Unabashed?" Un- abashed by, and unabated in his contempt for. Tyranny and Dulness, was he not now entitled to return fearless — not "earless," readers of the Danciad!^ — to his appointed home in Newgate ? And keep their Dagon safe from been not a little of the mere fine Israel's hand. gentleman in the attack. De Foe They, dirt themselves, protected him was not in "the circles," and did from filth, not write always according to the And for the faction's money drank " rules," and it was to be under- his health." stood that the fashionable poet kept ,,,T,i 1-ij.j vm no such unfinished company. Even 1 " Earless on hieh stood unabashd ,, , , ,. j "^ r t P^ -p, ° the paternal hnen-drapery of Lom- A J m X 1 '• x\ i. r i.u bard Street may have rendered him And Tutchm flagrant from the ., .,i. '' . u i *. i- ..u , , °„ the more willing to back out of the scourge below. hosierly neighbourhood of Cornhill. A most ungenerous attack, and It is, however, likewise to be added very wantonly made. It is possible, that Pope, notwithstanding the real indeed, that in addition to his grudge liberality of his religious opinions, against the assailant of Swift, Pope if not by very reason of it, could may have resented De Foe's attack hardly have liked the bitterness of on Harcourt, the attorney-general, De Foe's attacks ou his kinsfolk the who was an intimate friend of his ; Catholics. but I am afraid there must also have l04 IMPRISONMENT IN NEWGATE. [^Daniel A home of no unwise experience to the wise ohserver. A scene of no unromantic aspect to the minute and careful painter. It is a common reproach to the memory of WilHam of Orange, that literature and art found no encouragement in him ; hut let us rememher that Daniel De Foe and David Teniers acknowledged him for their warmest friend. There is higher art, and higher litera- ture ; hut, within the field selected by both, there is none more exact and true. The war of politics, however, has not yet released our English Teniers. He has not leisure yet for the more peaceful "art of roguery." It is to come with the decline of life ; when that which mainly he had struggled for was won, and the prize had passed to others. In the "Writings he now rapidly sent forth from New- gate, we think we see something of what we may call the impatient restlessness of martyrdom. He is more eager, than was perhaps desirable, to proclaim what he has done, and what he will do. We can fancy, if we may so express it, a sort of reasonable dislike somewhat un- reasonably conceived against him now, by the young men of letters and incipient wits, the Mr. Popes and the gentlemen at Will's, with whom the world was going easily. His utmost address might seem to have some offence in it; his utmost liberality to contain some bigotry ; his best offices to society to be rendered of doubtful origin, by what would appear a sort of ever- lasting pragmaticalness and delight in finding fault. It is natural, all this. We trample upon a man, plunder him, imprison him, strive to make him infamous, and then we wonder if he is only the more hardened in his persuasion that he has a much better case than ourselves. One of the pirate printers of the day took advantage of the imprisoned writer's popularity to issue the Works of the Author of the True-horn Englishman ; and thought himself grossly ill-used, because the Author retorted with a charge of theft, and a True Collection corrected hy Himself The very portrait he had affixed to this latter book constituted a new offence. Here was a large, de- termined, resolute face ; and here was a lordly, full- bottomed wig surmounting it, — flowing lower than the elbow, and rising higher than the forehead, in amazing De Foe.'\ hard literary labour. 105 amplitude of curl. Here was riclily-laced cravat ; fine, loose, flowing cloak ; and surly, substantial, citizen aspect. He was proud of this portrait, by the way, and complains of that of the pirate volume as no more like himself than Sir Roger L'Estrange was like the dog Touzer. But, was this the look of a languishing prisoner ? Was this an image of the tyranny complained of ? Neither Tutchin of the Ohservator, nor Leslie of the Rehearsal, could bring himself to think it. So they found some rest from the assailing of each other, in common and prolonged assaults upon De Foe. He did not spare them in return. He wrote satires ; he wrote polemics ; he wrote politics ; he discussed occa- sional conformity with Dissenters, and the grounds of popular right with Highfliers ; he wrote a famous account of the Great Storm ; he took part in the boldest questions of Scotch and Irish policy; he canvassed with daring freedom the measures of the Court, on whose pleasure the opening of his prison doors depended ; he argued with admirable force and wit against a proposed revival of the Censorship of the Press ; he put the claims of authors to be protected in their Copyright with irresistible force ; ' ^ At this time, though the author ** hackney abridgers fill the world, possessed, by the common law, a " the first with spurio\is and incor- perpetual right to his copy, the law " rect copies, and the latter with provided him with no means of en- '* imperfect and absurd representa- forcing his right, but left every body *' tions, both in fact, style, and to rob and plunder him as they ** design. pleased. De Foe tells us in forcible *''Tis in vain to exclaim at the language, and with a striking illus- *' villainy of these practices, while tration from his own case, how this " no law is left to punish them. " liberty of the press" worked. ** The press groans under the un- " The scandalous liberty of the *' happy burthen, and yet is in a " press, which no man more tlian " strait between two mischiefs. " myself covets to see rectified, is *' 1. The tyranny of a licenser. *' such that all manner of property ** This in all ages has been a method " seems prosti'ated to the avarice of "so ill, so arbitrary, and so sub- *' some people ; and if it goes on, . Ejected to bribery and parties, that " even reading itself will in time " the Government has thought fit, *' grow intolerable. " in justice to the learned part of " No author is now capable of ** the world, not to suffer it ; since " preserving the purity of his style, ** it has always been shutting up the " no, nor the native product of his " press to one side and opening it " thoughts to fiosterity ; since, after "to the other; which, as affairs " the first edition of his work has " are in England often changing, *' shown itself, and perhaps sinks in ** has, in its turn, been oppressive to " a few hands, piratic printers or " both. 106 THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. [Daniel and finally (on tlie 19tli February, 1704) he set up Ms Review. Its plan was curious, and, at that time, new to English, literature. It was at first a quarto sheet, somewhat widely printed, published weekly, and sold for a penny. " 2. The unbridled liberty of in- vading each other's property ; and this is the evil the press now cries for help in. *' To let it go on thus, will in time discourage all manner of learning ; and authors will never set heartily about anything, when twenty years' study shall immedi- ately be sacrificed to the profit of a piratical printer, who not only ruins the author, but abuses the work. " I shall trouble myself only to give some instances of this in my own case. "1, As to abusing the copy, the True-horn Englishman is a re- markable example, by which the author, though in it he eyed no profit, liad he been to enjoy the profit of his own labour, had gained abou^ 1 OOOZ ; a book that, besides nine editions of the au- thor, has been twelve times printed by other hands ; some of which have been sold for Id, others "Id, and others 6^, while the author's edition being fairly printed, and on good paper, and could not be sold under a shilling. Eighty thousand of the small ones have been sold in the streets for 2d ot at Id ; and the author, thus abused and discouraged, had no remedy but patience. * ' And yet he had received no mortification at this, had his copy been transmitted fairly to the world ; but the monstrous abuses of that kind are hardly credible. Twenty, fifty, in some places sixty lines, left out in a place ; others turned, spoiled, and so intolerably mangled, that the parent of the brat could not know ■ his own child. This is the thing " complained of, and which I wait " with patience, and not without " hopes, to see rectified." To this he adds other illustrations of a similar kind, and then re- marks : " It may be inquired here how ' will you find a remedy for this ' mischief? How will you have ' the drones that work none, but ' devour the labour and industry of ' the bees, kept out of the hive ? " It is an unhappiness that, in ' answering this point, there is not ' difficulty enough either to excuse * the Government in letting it lie so ' long neglected, or to procure me ' any reasonable applause for the ' contrivance. ' ' The road is as plain as the table ' of multiplication, and that a con- * junction of parts makes an addition ' of quantity. Two short clauses ' would heal all these evils, would ' prevent seditious pamphlets, 1am- ' poons, and invectives against the * Government, or at least prevent ' their going unpunished, and pre- ' serve to every man the fruit of his ' own labour and industry. '' First. That every author set ' his name to what he writes, and ' that every printer or publisher ' that pi-ints or publishes a book * without it, shall be deemed the ' author, and answerable for the ' contents. " Secondly. That no man shall * print another man s copy ; or, in ' English, that no printer or book- ' seller shall rob another man's ' house ; for it really is no better, ' nor is it any slander, notwith- ' standing the aforesaid pretence, * to call it by that title." Whether or not De Foe's plan would have proved effective, needs De Foe.'] the review started. 107 After the fourtli number, it was reduced to half-a-sheet, and sold for twopence, in smaller print and with double columns. After the eighth number, it was published twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Before the close of the first volume, it sent forth monthly supple- ments. And at last it appeared on the Tuesday, Thurs- day, and Saturday of every week ; and so continued, without intermission, and written solely by De Foe, for nine years. He wrote it in prison and out of prison ; in sickness and in health. It did not cease when cir- cumstances called him from England. No official employment determined it ; no politic consideration availed to discontinue it ; no personal hostility, or party censure, weighed with him in the balance against it. "As to " censure," he exclaimed, " the writer expects it. He " writes to serve the world, not to please it. A few wise, " calm, disinterested men, he always had the good hap " to please and satisfy. By their judgment he desires " still to be determined ; and, if he has any pride, it is that " he may be approved by such. To the rest, he sedately " says, their censure deserves no notice." So, through all the vicissitudes of men and ministries, from 1704 to 1713, amid all the contentions and shouts of party, he kept with this homely weapon his single-handed way, a solitary watchman at the portals of the commonwealth. Remark- able for its rich and various knowledge, its humour, its satire, its downright hearty earnestness, it is a yet more surprising monument of inexhaustible activity and energy. It seems to have been suggested to him, in the first instance, as a resource against the uncertainties of his not now be discussed. Suffice it to to a book very lately published by observe, that it never occurred to Mr. Charles Reade, the ^V(7 A/A Co 7ri- him to provide a remedy by limiting mandment. Everyone who has at the author's right to the fraction of heart the interests of Literature and time afterwards conceded to him ; its professors, or who desires to help though he was fain to accept even in removing a national reproach and that concession, wrung forth mainly discredit, should read a book which by his own remonstrances, as an in both respects does noble service, improvement on the existing system. It is full of thoughts as wise and [If the reader wishes to pursue just as they are generous, though the subject of this note (which I not perhaps always uttered in the may be excused for saying that I wisest way ; but even the faults of have also largely illustrated in my the book are those of a large-minded Life of Goldsmith), let me refer him and large-hearted man. 18(iU.] 108 A NOVELTY IN PAMPHLETEERING. \_Daniel imprisonment, and ttie disastrous effects on his trade speculations (he had lost by his late prosecution more than 4000/) ; and there is no doubt it assisted him in the support of his family for several of these years. But he had no efficient protection against the continued piracy of it. The thieves counted it by thousands, when worthy Mr. Matthews the publisher could only render account for hun- dreds ; and hence the main and most substantial profit its writer derived from all the anxiety and toil it cost him, was expressed in the proud declaration of one of its latest lumbers. "I have here espoused an honest interest, " and have steadily adhered to it all my days. I never " forsook it when it was oppressed ; never made a gain " by it when it was advanced ; and, I thank God, it is " not in the power of all the Courts and Parties in " Christendom to bid a price high enough to buy me off " from it, or make me desert it." The arrangement of its plan was not less original than that of its form. The path it struck out in periodical literature was, in this respect, entirely novel. It classed the lesser and the larger morals ; it mingled personal and public themes ; it put the gravities of life in an enter- taining form ; and at once it discussed the politics, and corrected the vices, of the age. We may best indicate the manner in which this was done, by naming rapidly the subjects treated in the first volume, in addition to those of political concern. It condemned the fashionable prac- tice of immoderate drinking ; in various ways it ridiculed the not less fashionable habit of swearing ; it inveighed against the laxity of marital ties ; it exposed the licentious- ness of the stage ; it discussed, with great clearness and sound knowledge, questions affecting trade and the poor; it laughed at the rage for gambling speculations; and it waged inveterate war with that barbarous practice of the duel, in which De Foe had to confess, with shame, that he had once during his life been engaged. Its machinery for matters non-political was a so-called Scandalous Club, or- ganised to hear complaints, and entrusted with the power of deciding them. We will show how it acted. A gen- tleman appears before the Club, and complains of his wife. She is a bad wife ; he cannot exactly tell why. There is a long examination, proving nothing; when De Foe.'] the tatler anticipated. 109 suddenly a member of the Club begs pardon for the ques- tion, and asks if his worship was a good husband. His worship, greatly surprised at such a question, is again at a loss to answer. Whereupon the Club pass three reso- lutions. 1. That most women that are bad wives are made so by bad husbands. 2. That this society will hear no complaints against a virtuous bad wife from a vicious good husband. 3. That he that has a bad wife, and can't find the reason of it in her, ^tis ten to one that he finds it in himself. And the decision finally is, that the gentleman is to go home, and be a good husband for at least three months ; after which, if his wife is still uncured, they will proceed against her as they shall find cause. In this way, pleas and defences are heard on the various points that present themselves in the subjects named ; and not seldom with a lively dramatic interest. The graver arguments and essays, too, have an easy homely vigour, a lightness and pleasantry of tone, very diff'erent from the ponderous handling peculiar to the Eidpaths and the Dyers, the Tutchins and the Leslies. We open at an essay on Trade, which would delight Mr. Cobden himself. De Foe is arguing against impolitic restrictions. We think to plague the foreigner, he says; and in reality we but deprive ourselves. "If you vex " me, I'll eat no dinner, said I, when I was a little boy : " till my mother taught me to be wiser by letting me " stay till I was hungry." The reader will remember the time when this Review was planned. Ensign Steele was yet but a lounger in the lobbies of the theatres, and Addison had not emerged from his garret in the Haymarket. The details of common life had not yet been invested with the graces of litera- ture, the social and polite moralities were still disregarded in the press, the world knew not the influence of my Lady Betty Modish, and Colonel Ranter still swore at the waiters. Where, then, shall we look for " the first " sprightly runnings " of Tatlers and Spectators, if we have not found them in De Foe's Revieic ? The earlier was indeed the ruder workman : but wit, originality, and knowledge were not less the tools he worked with ; and the latter "two-penny authors," as Mr. Dennis is pleased to caU them, found the way well struck out for their 110 CHANGES IN THE GOVERNMENT. \_Daniel finer and more delicate art. What had been done for the citizen classes, they were to do for the beauties and the wits. They had watched the experiment, and seen its success. The Review was enormously popular. It was stolen, pirated, hawked about everywhere ; and the writer, with few of the advantages, paid all the penalties of success. He complains that his name was made " the " hackney title of the times." Hardly a penny or two- penny pamphlet was afterwards cried in the streets, or a broadside put forth appealing to the people, to which the scurrilous libeller, or witless dunce, had not forged that popular name. Nor was it without its influence on the course of events which now gradually changed the aspect and the policy of Godolphin's government. De Foe has claimed for himself large share in preparing a way for what were called the "modern Whigs;" and the claim was undoubtedly well founded. IS^ottingham and Rochester had resigned; and the great House of Commons tactician was now a member of the government. The seals of the Home and War offices had been given to Harley and his friend Henry St. John. The Lord-Treasurer could not yet cross boldly to the Whigs, and he would not creep back to the Tories; but to join with Robert Harley was to do neither of these things. This famous person appears to us to have been the nearest representative of what we might call the practical spirit of the Eevolution, of any who lived in that age. In one of his casual sayings, reported by Pope, we seem to find a clue to his character. Some one had observed of a measure proposed, that the people would never bear it : " None of us," replied Harley, " know how far the good people of England will bear." All his life he was engaged in attempts upon that problem. If he had thought less of the good people of England, he would have been a less able, a more daring, and certainly a more successful statesman. We do not think he was a Trimmer, in the ordinary sense of the word. When he went to church, and sent his family to the meeting-house, — when, upon asking a clergyman to his Sunday table, he was careful to provide a clergyman " of another sort " to meet him, — we should try to find a better word for it, if we would not find a worse for the Revolution. The De Foe.~\ character of harley. Ill Revolution trimined between two parties ; and the Revo- lution, to this day, is but the grand unsolved experiment of how much the people of England will bear. To call Harley a mere court intriguer, is as preposterous as to call him a statesman of commanding genius. He had less of mere courtliness than any of his colleagues. The fashionable French dancing-master who wondered what the devil the Queen should have seen in him to make him an Earl and Lord-Treasurer, for he had attended him two years, and never taught such a dunce, — gives us a lively notion of his homely, bourgeois manners. Petticoat politics are to be charged against him ; but, to no one who thoroughly knew the Queen can it be matter of severe reproach, that he was at the pains to place Abigail Hill about her person. He knew the impending doTvnifall of Marlborough's too imperious wife; and was he to let slip a power so plainly within his grasp, and see it turned against him? His success in the Bed- chamber never shook his superior faith in the agencies of Parliament and the Press. These two were the levers of the Revolution ; and they are memorably associated with the Government of Robert Harley. As soon as he joined Godolphin, he seems to have turned his thoughts to De Foe. He was not, indeed, the first who had done so. More than one attempt had been already made to capitulate with that potent prisoner. Two lords had gone to him in Newgate ! exclaims Old- mixon ; in amaze that one lord should find his way to such a place. He says the same thing himself, in the witty nar- rative at the close of the Consolidator. But these lords carried conditions with them ; and there is a letter in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 7421), wherein DeFoe writes to Lord Halifax, that he '' scorned to come out of JN'ewgate *• at 'the price of betraying a dead master.'' Harley made no conditions, for that was not his way : he sent to Mr. De Foe because he was a man of letters, and in distress. His message was " by word of mouth ; " and to this effect — " Pray, ask Mr. De Foe what I can do for " him." Nor was the reply less characteristic. The prisoner took a piece of paper, and wrote the parable of the blind man in the Gospel. *' I am blind, and yet ask " me what thou shalt do for me ! My answer is plain in 112 RELEASE FROM NEWGATE. [Datliel " my misery. Lord, that I may receive my sight ! " What else could such a man wish for but his liberty ? Yet four months passed before a further communication reached him. It seemed to imply reluctance in a higher quarter. Within four months, however, " her Majesty " was pleased particularly to inquire into my circum- " stances, and by my Lord-Treasurer Godolphin to send " a considerable supply to my wife and family ; and to " send to me the prison-money, to pay my fine and the *' expenses of my discharge." He was released in August 1704. His health had then become shattered by his long confinement. He took a house at Bury in Suffolk, and lived there a little while retired. But his pen did not rest ; nor could he retire from the notoriety that followed him, or from other pen- alties of that public service which he still continued fearlessly to discharge. Luttrell records in his Diary (under date of the 26th Sept. 1704) that " it's said, " Daniel De Foe is ordered to be taken into custody for " reflecting on Admiral Rooke, in his Master Mercury, " whereby he has forfeited his recognisance for his good ** behaviour." His name also, to papers he had not written, continued to be hawked about the London streets ; and it was reported, and had to be formally denied, that he had escaped from Newgate by a trick. Then came the exciting news that Blenheim was won, France humbled, Europe saved ; and De Foe, in a Hymn to Victory, verses of no great merit, but which cost him only " three hours *' to compose, gave public utterance to his joy.' Then, the dry unlettered Lord-Treasurer went in search of the most graceful wit among the Whigs, to get advice as to some regular poet who might properly ^ Among the extremely few letters ** wonderful times" they are living of De Foe that have survived, out in, refers to his poem on The Vic- of the not very many he is likely tory, and mentions some fifty books to have written (he was too busy a that had been forwarded. He makes man for a voluminous letter-writer), allusion also, in the later note, to I have seen two brief notes of which his Jure Divino, to the circulation one belongs to this date, and one of the i^eriVu', and to the un warrant- to a year later, addressed to a Mr. able advertisement for his arrest Elisha. To this correspondent, who {ante, p. 99), of which his numer- ■was probably one of the agents em- ous enemies were still making pro- ployed by him in the sale or circu la- fitable use as a battery of assault tion of his writings, he speaks of the against him. De Foe.'\ letters to lord Halifax. 113 celebrate the Captain- General. Then HaKfax brought down Addison from his garret ; the Campaign was ex- changed for a comfortable Government salary ; and communications were at the same time opened again, upon the same suggestion, with De Foe. Two letters of this date, from himself to Halifax, have escaped his biographers. In the first, he is grateful for that lord's unexpected goodness, in mentioning him to my Lord- Treasurer ; but would be well-pleased to wait till Halifax is himself in power. He speaks of a Government com- munication concerning " paper credit," which he is then handling in his Review. He regrets that some proposal his lordship had sent, "exceeding pleasant for me to " perform, as well as useful to be done," had been so blundered by the messenger that he could not under- stand it ; and from this we get a glimpse of a person hitherto unnamed in his history, — a brother, a stupid fellow. In the second letter he acknowledges the praise and favours of Lord Halifax : and thus manfully declares the principle on which his own services are offered. " If " to be encouraged in giving myself up to that service " your lordship is pleased so much to overvalue ; if going *' on with the more cheerfulness in being useful to, and " promoting, the general peace and interest of this nation; " if to the last vigorously opposing a stupid, distracted *' party, that are for ruining themselves rather than not " destroy their neighbours ; if this be to merit so much *' regard, your lordship binds me in the most durable, and " to me the most pleasant engagement in the world, " because 'tis a service that, with my gratitude to your " lordship, keeps an exact unison with my reason, my " principle, my inclinations, and the duty every man " owes to his country, and his posterity." Harley was at this time in daily communication with Halifax, and very probably saw these letters ; but he was a man who managed all things warily, and who, even in dealing with the press, knew the value of the delicacies. He had not appeared in De Foe's affairs since he effected his release : and that release he threw upon the Queen. In the same temper he sent to him now. The Queen, he said, had need of his assistance ; but he offered him no employment to fetter future engagements. He knew that 114 INTERCOURSE WITH HARLEY. [^Daniel in tlie last of his publications (tlie Consolidator, a prose satire, remarkable for tlie hints it threw out to Gulliver) , De Foe had laughed at Addison' for refusing to write the Campaign " till he had 200/. a year secured to him ; " — an allusion never forgiven. Harley was content, there- fore, simply to send for him to London ; to tell him the Queen *' had the goodness to think of taking him into " her service ; " and to do what the Whigs were vainly endeavouring to do for the Irish Priest who had written the most masterly satire since the days of Eabelais. He took him to Court to kiss hands. "We see in all this but the truth of the character we would assign to this so variously estimated statesman. On grounds independent of either party, except so far as " reason, principle, in- " clinations, and duty to his country " should prompt, the powerful, homely, and popular writer had thus quietly and surely been enlisted in the service of the Govern- ment of the Revolution. Compared with Harley, we cannot but think the old Whigs, with every honest in- clination, little better than bunglers in matters of the kind. It is true that not even Harley could carry the Yicar of Laracor to the palace ; but he might show that he understood why Swift wished to be there, and might conciliate that weakness in his character. He could carry him in his coach to country ale-houses ; he could play games of counting poultry on the road, or " who should " first see a cat or an old woman ; " he could loll back on his seat with a broad Temple jest ; or he could caU and be called " Jonathan " and " Harley ; " — and the old Whigs were much too chary of these things. So they had lost Prior, and were losing Parnell and Swift ; and he who had compared Lord Somers to Aristides, was soon to talk of him as little better than a rascal. We next see De Foe in the house of Mr. Secretary Harley. He has been named to execute a secret com- mission in the public service, which requires a brief absence on the Continent. He is making preparations for his departure ; is proposing to travel as *' Mr. Chris- ^ In his verses of Do«&Ze TTeZcowie " Mecaenas has his modem fancy- to the Duke of Marlborough he has strung — also a sarcastic allusion to Addison, You fix'd his pension first, or he had when he speaks of the way in which never sung." De Foe.~\ electioneering. 115 " topher Hurt ; *' is giving Harley advice for a large scheme of secret intelligence ; and is discussing with him a proposed poetical satire (afterwards published as the Diet of Polandy against the High Church faction. In a subsequent farewell letter he adverts to these things ; and, after naming some matters of public feeling in which one of the minister's Tory associates was awk- wardly involved, characteristically closes with an opinion, that it was needful Harley should know in this, as well as anything else, what the people say. The foreign service was one of danger. '^ I ran as much " danger of my life," he said, " as a grenadier upon the " counterscarp." But it was discharged successfully; and, in consideration of the risk, the Government offered him what seems to have been a small sinecure. He took it as a debt ; and at a later period, when opposed to the reign- ing Ministry, complains that large arrears were then unpaid. On his return he had found the Tory House of Commons dissolved, and the new elections in progress. He threw himself into the contest with characteristic ardour. He wrote; he canvassed; he voted; he jour- neyed throughout the country on horseback, he tells us, more than eleven hundred miles ; and, in addresses to elec- tors everywhere, still he counselled the necessity of laying aside party prejudices, of burying former animosities, and of meeting their once Tory ministers at least half- way. He found many arguments on his road, he adds. He found people of all opinions, as well Churchmen as Dissenters, living in Christian neighbourhood ; and he ^ There are excellent lines in this Are always cheated, oftentimes un- Diet of Poland, of which a great part done, satirizes, under cover of the factions Besieged with flattery, false report, against Sobieski, the character of the and lies, party intrigues against William III. And soothed with schemes of vast One might expect to meet in the absurdities. Satires of Churchill such a passage as The jangling statesmen clash in their I here subjoin : Fraud fights with fraud, and craft "Statesmen are gamesters, sharp to craft inclines ; and trick's the play. Stiffly engage, quarrel, accuse, and Kings are but cullies, wheedled in to hate, pay ; And strive for leave to help undo The Courtiers footballs, kick'd from the State." one to one, 116 PENALTIES OF POPULARITY. \_Daniel had very often the honour, " with small difficulty, of con- " vincing gentlemen over a bottle of wine, that the author " of the Review was really no monster, but a conversable, " social creature/* His Essays, meanwhile, written in the progress of this journeying, were admirable ; and with every paper that he wrote, to use his own language. Rehearsals raved, Ohservators bullied, and High Church not only voted him to the Devil but exhibited him in that companionship. I possess a curious tract entitled, *' Daniel De Foe and the Devil at Leapfrog, Being a " Dialogue which passed between them as they were " recreating themselves at that Sport in an eminent *' Tavern in Cheapside,'' ^ which for the character and degree of its abuse is perfectly astounding ; but which yet is valuable for the evidence it unconsciously bears to the extraordinary popularity of his Reviews. They were read in every cofi'ee-house and club ; often they were stolen from these houses by Highfliers, that they might not be read ; they were quoted on every popular hustings ; the Duchess of Marlborough sent them over to the camp in Flanders ; * and the writer, on peril of his life, was warned to discontinue them. His tributes of this latter kind were numerous. He had to change his publisher, Mr. Matthews, a set of high churchmen having conspired to clap him into prison ; his printer was threatened ; his own house was marked to be pulled down ; he was beset and dogged by adversaries armed for personal violence. ^ It is adorned by a large -wood- did) by taking the Devil, from his cut representing De Foe, bis hat and domineering, to be a "High Church- ample wig on the ground, "making " man or a Player." "aback" in the centre, with the ^ Acknowledging one in which he Devil preparing to leap on one is himself gallantly vindicated, the side, and on the other a highly Duke writes to the Duchess, " I do dressed lively gentleman looking " not know who the author of the on, whom we discover to be Pin- " Eevieivis, but I do not like to see kethman the actor. " Make a fair " my name in print ; for I am per- " back, David," cries the Devil. " suaded that an honest man must *'I do, don't I, Pinkethman?" " be justified by his own actions, says De Foe. "No, you cheating "and not by the pen of a writer, " Dog," replies Pinkethman, "you "though he should be a zealous "don't!" The epithets hurled at "friend." To which I will venture De Foe, in the course of the dia- to reprint the brief comment which logue, might do credit to even a I find affixed to this passage in my Devil's vocabulary ; while De Foe in copy of Wilson's De Foe. — Non- return seems to tliink he hits hard sense ; he was afraid he would have enough (which in all probability he to pay something. T)e Foe.'\ a true englishman. 117 Highflying Justices followed him about the country with false warrants of arrest; sham actions were brought against him in shoals; compounded debts of long past years were revived ; his life was threatened by bullying letters, his morals were assaulted by impotent and groundless slanders, his principles were misrepresented alike by professing friends and malicious enemies, and only his own unequalled and irresistible energy could have stayed the completion of his ruin. But no jot of heart or hope was abated in him. " Take him with all '' his failings," says no friendly critic, " it must be ac- " knowledged that he is a man of good parts, and very " clear sense. He is master of the English tongue, and " can say what he pleases upon any subject. With all " my revenge, I cannot but own his thoughts are always " surprising, new, and singular : and though he writes "for bread, he could never be hired to wrong his con- " science or disgrace the quill : and, which crowns his " panegyric, he is a person of true courage. He is not " daunted with multitudes of enemies ; for he faces as " many every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, as '^ there are foes to moderation and peace. He Hevietcs "■ without fear, and acts without fainting. To do him " justice, he has piety enough for an author, and courage " enough for a martyr. And in a word, if any, Daniel ** De Foe is a True Englishman." It was an honest opponent of his, eccentric old John Dunton, who said that, and honoured himself by saying it. The elections confirmed the power of the Whigs. The Duke of Buckingham and Sir Nathan Wright retired to make way for the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Cowper ; and a renegade Whig and former Dissenter, Lord Haver- sham, led the first attack upon the ministers. De Foe was dragged forward by this lord as the *'mean and " mercenary prostitute of the Bevietv ;'* as making his fortune by the way of " scribbling ;" and as receiving both " encouragement and instructions " from Godolphin. There was a quiet dignity and eloquence in his answer. He reminds the turncoat peer that Fate, which makes footballs of men, kicks some men up stairs and some down ; that some are advanced without honour, others suppressed without infamy ; that some are raised without 118 WRITING FOR BREAD DEFENDED. [^Daniel merit, some crushed without crime ; and that no man knows, by the beginning of things, whether his course shall issue in a peerage or a pillory. To the charge of writing for bread, he asks what are all the employments in the world pursued for, but for bread ? The lawyer " pleads, the soldier fights, the musician fiddles, the " players act, and, no reflection on the tribe, the clergy " preach, for bread." ^ For the rest he reminds him that he had never betrayed his master (William had given Lord Haversham his peerage), nor his friend ; that he had always espoused the cause of truth and liberty ; that he had lived to be ruined for it ; that he had lived to see it triumph over tyranny, party rage, and persecution principles ; that he thanked God this world had not a price to give, sufficient to bribe him from it ; and that he ivas sorry to see any man abandon it. Besides the Review, he had published, in the current year, works on Trade ; on the conduct and management of the Poor ; on Toleration ; and on colonial Intolerance in North America. It would be difficult to name a more soundly reasoned or shrewdly written pamphlet than his Giving Alms no Charity. Yet he knew what then he had to contend with, in dealing with a subject so imperfectly understood. His judgment may differ from that of others in giving some needful hints as to the state of our poor, he says, but he must be plain. " While he *' is no enemy to charity-hospitals and workhouses, he " thinks that methods to keep our poor out of them far " exceed, both in prudence and charity, all the settlements " and endeavours in the world to maintain them there." Especially did he claim to be heard on that subject, he ^ It is a remarkable fact, neverthe- promoting public morals and the less, that, for a great part of the time public service. " I defy the whole during which he was carrying on the " world to prove," he said at this Review, De Foe derived no personal particular time, " that I have profit from it. Such income as ac- "directly or indirectly gained or crued to him was drawn still from the " received a single shilling, or the remains of his mercantile specula- ' ' value of it, by the sale of this tions ; and he continued the labours " paper, for now almost four years ; and sacrifices which the Review *' and honest Mr, Morphew is able involved, *' amassing infinite ene- " to detect me if I speak false." **mies,"ashe remarks, "and not Mr. Morphew had succeeded Mr. "at all obliging even the men I Matthews as its publisher, "serve," for the sole reward of De Foe."] "jure diyino." 119 added, as an English freeholder. His town tenements had been taken from him, the Tilbury works were gone, and the Freeman's-yard house was his no longer, — but he still possessed one English freehold. He does not tell us in what county (towards the close of his life he was in possession of a small freehold in Essex) ; but he had moved his family to Newington, and it may have been in some way connected with that scene of his boyhood. To this date, also, belong several pamphlets on Dissenters' questions ; his attempted enforcement of a better scheme for the Regulation of Madhouses, and for humanity to their inmates ; and his Jure Divino. In the latter, the reasoning is better than the poetry ; but it has vigorous verses in it, and its rude strong lines passed current Tsith great masses of the people. It appeared with a large subscription,* and such was the certainty that its author would be worth plundering, that the whole satire was im- pudently pirated on the very day of its pubKcation. Now, too, there went to him that worthy and much distressed bookseller, who had published a large edition of a very dull and heavy book, called Drelincourt on Death, " with several directions how to prepare ourselves to die well ;" which the public, not appearing to relish unauthorised 1 As to which, let me add, De ' ' taine Book called Jure Divine, a Foe's ruthless and inveterate anta- " Satyr on Passive Obedience, &c, gonists took advantage of a brief and " and now for that he has got the not unusual delay in its publication " money, does not publish the said (it was for but a few months) to charge "Book, according to his promise, him with an intention to cheat his " and according as to the Honour subscribers. I possess a pamphlet, " of a Poet he Ought." It is need- which a manuscript memorandum on less to add that the "Tryal, Ex- the title, in the handwriting of the " amination, and Condemnation," time, shows to have been issued on are conducted in a style of reckless the 2nd October, 1705 ; and simply scurrility in every respect worthy to quote that title will show the of this title. Certainly De Foe was violence and recklessness of the ene- the best abused man even of that mies whom his hard hitting had abusive time. The bi-weekly paper provoked. " The Proceedings at called the Rehearsal, now before " the Tryal, Examination, and Con- me, seems to have existed for no " demnation, of a certain Scribling, other purpose than to assail him; ** Rhyming, Versifying, Poeteeriug and this it did unsparingly twice every "Hosier and True Born English- week, through a series of years now "man, commonly known by the represented by four reasonably sized " name of Daniel the prophet, folio volumes, to which his name " alias Anglipoliski, alias Foeski, (under vai'ious forms of attack and " alias your humble sei-vant De F, abuse) imparts the solitary interest " for taking subscriptions to a cer- they continue to possess* 120 HOW TO SELL A DULL BOOK. {Daniel directions of that nature, liad stubbornly refused to buy. What was to be done with the ponderous stock under which his shelves were groaning ? De Foe quieted his fears. Nothing but a ghost from the grave, it was true, could recommend such a book with effect ; but a ghost from the grave the worthy bookseller should have.' ^ In connection -with this subject, and the impression one cannot but receive, from the downright earnest- ness with which the invention is cha- ractei'ised, that De Foe actually might himself have believed in the possi- bility of such a visitation, and so might have thought it no bad service to his countrymen to do his best to persuade them of the like, even by means of a fiction, — I ought here to mention that, besides innumerable passages in his general writings to the same effect, he published a formal treatise on Apparitions and Spirits, and the strong probabilities of their direcu communication with the visible •world. There can be little doubt that De Foe's I'eligious convictions find belief sought help and sustain- ment from speculations of this na- ture, and that he held it to be the moral and material delect of his day, that the spiritual element in life ob- tained such small recognition. ' ' Be- " tween our ancestors laying too " much stress on supernatural evi- *' dences,"hesays, "and the present " age endeavouring wholly to ex- * ' plode and despise them, the world *' seems hardly ever to have come ** to a right understanding . . . *' Spirit is certainly something we do ** not fully understand in our present ' ' confined circumstances ; and, as "we do not fully understand the " thing, so neither can we distin- ** guish its operation. Yet not- *' withstanding all this, it converses *' here ; is with us and among us ; ** corresponds, though unembodied, *' with our spirits ; and this con- * * versing is not only by an invisible, " but to us an inconceivable way." Such communication he believes to take place by two modes, First, by '* immediate, personal, and parti- " cular converse;" and secondly, by " those spirits acting at a dis- " tance, rendering themselves vi- " sible, and their transactions per- " ceptible, on such occasions as *' they think fit, without any further ** acquaintance with the person." It was his conviction that God had posted an army of these ministering spirits round our globe, "to be " ready, at all events, to execute his * * orders and to do his will ; reserv- * ' ing still to himself to send express " messengers of a superior rank on " extraordinary occasions." These, he adds, " may, without any ab- " surdity, be supposed capable of * ' assuming shapes, conversing with " mankind by voice and sound, or *' by private notices of things, im- " pulses, forebodings, misgivings, * and other imperceptible commu- " nications to the minds of men, as " God their great em^jloyer may " direct." But, upon the power of man to control, or communicate at Lis will with such spiritual beings, he entertains doubts, and gravely protests against the arts of conjura- tion. I subjoin also the curious and somewhat touching passage in which De Foe accounts for the strength of these beliefs in him, by the ordinary current of his daily ex- periences. "I firmly believe, " says he, " and have had such convincing " testimonies of it, that I must be " a confirmed atheist if I did not, ' * that there is a converse of spirits, " I mean those unembodied, and ** those that are encased in flesh. " From whence, else, come all those * ' private notices, strong impulses, " involuntary joy, sadness, and " foreboding apprehensions, of and De Foe.'] the ghost of mrs. veal. 121 As speedily done as said. De Foe sent him, in a few days, The True History of the Apjmrition of one Mrs. Veal, the next day after her Death, to one Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, the 8th of September, 1705. If such a thing was ever to be believed, here it was made credible. When Shakespeare invented five justices to put their hand to that enormous flam of Autolycus, about the mer- maid that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sang her pitiful baUad of her love adventures, we laugh at the joke, and there's an end of it. But here was quite another matter. The very narrative purports to be ** about things immediately attend- " ing us, and this in the most im- * ' portant affairs of our lives ? That "there are such things, I think I " need not go about to prove ; and I ' ' believe they are, next to the Scrip- * * tures, some of the best and most * ' undeniable evidences of a future * ' existence. It would be endless to * ' fill this paper with the testimonies " of learned and pious men ; and I " could add to them a volume of my ' ' own experiences, some of them so " strange as would shock your belief, ' ' though I could produce such proofs " as would convince any man. I " have had, perhaps, a greater va- " riety of changes, accidents, and " disasters, in my short unhapi)y " life, than any man, at least than '* most men alive : yet I had never * ' any considerable mischief or dis- * ' aster attending me, but, sleeping " or waking, I have had notice of it " beforehand ; and, had I listened " to those notices, I believe might " have shunned the evil. Let no ' ' man think this a jest. I seriously " acknovvledge, and I do believe, " my neglect of such notices has " been my great injury ; and, since " I have ceased to neglect them, I *' have been guided to avoid even ** snares laid for my life, by no ' ' other knowledge of them than by * * such notices and warnings ; and, ** more than that, have been guided " by them to discover even the fact ** and the persons. I have living? " witnesses to produce, to whom I *' have told the particulars in the '* very moment, and who have been " so affected with them, as that *' they have pressed me to avoid the '* danger, to retire, to keep myself '* up, and the like." At a time (1855) when this subject has been revived, in a form as little likely to recommend it to the right feeling as to the rational understanding of the community, I have thought that these extracts might be interesting. I will add that this very Essay on Apparitions contains one of the best pieces of prose satire I know, de' scriptive of a class of men rife in De Foe's day, and not extirpated since, to whom it would be as ridi- culous to talk of such a subject as to listen to its discussion by them. " To see a fool," he says, " a fop, "believe himself inspired ! — a fel- " low that washes his hands fifty " times a day, but, if he would be " truly cleanly, should have his * ' brains taken out and washed, his "skull trepanned, and placed with ** the hinder side before ; so that *' his understanding, which nature " placed by mistake with the bottom " upward, may be set right, and "his memory placed in a right " position ! To this unscrewed *' engine, talk of spirits and of the "invisible world, and of his con- ' ' versing with unembodied souls ! 122 TITTLE TATTLE FROM THE OTRES, WORLD. [^Daniel drawn up " by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace, at Maid- " stone, in Kent, a very intelligent person.'^ Moreover, it is attested by a " very sober and understanding gentle- '* woman, who lives in Canterbury, witbin a few doors of " the bouse in wbich Mrs. Bargrave lives." The one vouches for the other, and the other vouches for Mrs. B.'s veracity. The justice believes his kinswoman to be of so discerning a spirit as not to be put upon by any fallacy ; and the kinswoman positively assures the justice that the whole matter, as it is related and laid down, is really true, and what she herself heard, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's own mouth : " who, she hioivs, had no reason '' to invent or publish such a story, or any design to forge " or tell a lie ; being a woman of so much honesty and " virtue, and her whole life a course, as it were, of piety." Now, surely this business-like, homely, earnest, common- place air of truth, is perfectly irresistible. And what said the ghost to Mrs. Bargrave ? Why, the ghost, in the course of a long gossip, filled with the says I and thinks /, the says she and thinks she, of the tea-table of a country town, and in which are introduced scoured silks, broken china, and other topics such as the ghost of an exciseman's house-keeper might possibly talk over with a seamstress, but which certainly nobody would ever think of inventing for a supernatural visitation,— said, with all the confident dogmatism of her recent mortuary experience, that Dre- lincourt's book about Death was the best book ever written on that subject. Doctor Sherlock was not bad ; two Dutch books had merit ; several others were worth mention ; but Drelincourt, she protested, had by far the clearest notions of death and the future state, of any one who had handled the matter. The Narrative was appended to the book, and a new edition advertised. It flew like wildfire. The copies, to use an illustration of Sir, Walter Scott's (with whom the narrative was an immense favourite), which had hung on the bookseller's hands as heavy as *' when he has hardly brains to con- ''to see the Devil, in whatever *' verse with anything but a pack " shape he is pleased to appear in, *' of hounds, and owes it only to his " is not really qualified to live in " being a fool that he does not con- *' this world, no, not in the quality " verse with the devil ! — For I ** of a common inhabitant." I "must tell you, good people," venture to commend these sentences adds De Foe, " he that is not able to the admiration of Mr. Carlyle. De Foe.'] negotiating Scottish union. 123 a pile of lead bullets, now traversed tlie town in every direction, like the same bullets discharged from a field- piece. Kay, the book has been popular ever since. More than fifty editions have not exhausted its popularity. Mrs. Yeal's ghost is still believed in by thousands ; and the hundreds of thousands who have bought the silly treatise of Drelincourt (for hawking booksellers have made their fortunes by traversing the country with it in sixpenny numbers), have borne unconscious testimony to the genius of De Foe. It was now engaged once more in the service of the Ministry. He had, in various writings, prepared his countrymen for the greatest political measure of the time; he was known to have advised the late King on a project for the Scottish Union ; and Godolphin, about to immor- talise his administration by that signal act of statesman- ship, called in the services of De Foe. He describes the Lord-Treasurer's second introduction of him to her Ma- jesty, and to the honour of kissing her hand. " Upon " this second introduction, her Majesty was pleased to " tell me, with a goodness peculiar to herself, she had " such satisfaction in my former services that she ap- " pointed me for another office." The greater part of the next two years was passed in this office ; which seems to have combined, with the duties of Secretary to the Eng- lish Commissioners for the Union, considerable influence derived from the Ministry at home. It was an important appointment, and Godolphin was assailed for it. An under spur-leather, forsooth, sent down to Scotland " to " make the Union ! " It carried De Foe at various inter- vals between Edinburgh and London ; it involved him in continual discussion leading to or arising out of the mea- sure, as well as in the riots which marked the excitement of the time ; it procured for him what appears to have been the really cordial and friendly attentions of the Duke of Queensberry and Lord Buchan ;' it directed his atten- tion to various matters which he believed to be essential to Scottish prosperity ; and it grounded in him a high respect and liking for the Scottish people. They had no ^ In after years De Foe's grandson bore Lord Buchan's name, David Erskine. 124 EULOGY OF THE SCOTCH. [Daniel truer friend or warmer advocate than De Foe in all subse- quent years. He liked their love of liberty, he admired their sober and grave observance of religious duties, he celebrated their good feeling and hospitality, and he pointed out the resources and capabilities of their soil. " They who fancy," he said, in a passage characteristic in the highest degree of his shrewd and sagacious observa- tion, and of his manly sense and spirit, *' there is nothing ' to be had here but wild men and ragged mountains, * storms, snows, poverty, and barrenness, are quite mis- ' taken ; it being a noble country, of a fruitful soil and * healthy air, well seated for trade, full of manufactures * by land, and a treasure as great as the Indies at their ' door by sea. The poverty of Scotland, and the fruit- * fulness of England, or rather the difference between ' them, is owing not to mere difference of climate, or the ' nature of the soil ; but to the errors of time, and their ' different constitutions. And here I must tell our friends * in England, who are so backward to set their country ' free, and so willing to enslave us again, that the different ^ face of the two countries, tp whoever will please to sur- * vey them as I have done, is the best lecture upon ' politics. All the land in England is not fruitful, nor * that in Scotland all barren. Climate cannot be the ' cause ; for the lands in the north of Scotland are in '■ general better than the lands in Cornwall, which are * near six hundred miles south of them. But Liberty and ^ Trade have made the one rich, and Tyranny the other ' poor." Nor did even such earnest eulogy suffice for the tribute he would render to the Scotch. He broke out again into verse, and wrote a poem in their praise ; he busied himself earnestly with suggestions for their com- mercial and national advancement; and he spent some well- devoted labour, in after years, on the compilation of a very minute, and, so to speak, highly dramatic History of the Union. We rejoice to have to couple that act, so eminently in the best spirit of the Eevolution, so large- minded and so tolerant, with De Foe's name. It changed turbulence to tranquillity ; rude poverty to a rich civi- lisation ; and the fierce atrocities of a dominant church, to the calm enjoyments of religious liberty. A strange scene was meanwhile going on in London. De Foe^l dismissal of harley. 125 The easy, indolent Prince George (whom Charles II. said he had tried drunk and sober, and could do nothing with him) had been heard to complain one day, in the intervals of his dinner and his bottle, that the Queen came very late to bed. This casual remark, falling on the already sharp suspicions of the Duchess of Marlborough, discovered the midnight conferences of the Queen with Abigail Masham and her kinsman, Secretary Harley ; and the good Mrs. Freeman, knowing that her dear Mrs. Morley had not a stock of amity to serve above one object at a time, at once peremptorily insisted on the suspension of the Abigail, and the dismissal of the Secretary. We state the fact without comment ; but it may be remarked, that if Harley's back-stairs midnight visits impHed treachery to his colleagues, it was not of that black kind which would have ruined men who trusted him. It had been clear to the Secretary for some time, that the Whigs would not trust him. He says himself, and there is no reason to doubt it, that he was not enough of a party-man for them. One smiles, indeed, with a kind of sympathy for him, to read in Lord Cowper's diary of two years' date before this, his devotion of his best tokay ('' good, ** but thick ") to the hapless effort of Whig conciliation. The accession of strength received from the great measure of the Union, had been straightway used to weed his friends from office. Hedges had made way for Sunder- land ; and even Prior and his colleagues, in the Board of Trade, had been removed. Nor was that an age in which party warfare was scrupulous on either side. In the session just begun, the party motion supported by Eochester and Buckingham, to ruin the Whig chiefs of the ministry, was supported by Somers and Wharton with the sole hope of ruining Harley. In now retiring, the Secretary's principal mortification would seem to have been the necessity it laid him under of joining an ultra-faction. He made a last attempt to conciliate Cowper and Somers. But the arrangements were made. To the ill-concealed grief and distress of the Queen, he and his friend St. John retired ; Robert Walpole entered the ministry ; Lord Somers was readmitted into the Privy Council ; Lord Cowper received the Great Seal ; and the imperious Duchess of Marlborough thought herself 126 THE WITS AT will's COFFEE HOUSE. \_Daniel triumpliant. Slie had known Anne now forty years, but she did not know the strength of her sullen obstinacy. In a few months more, the death of the Prince threw fresh power into Whig hands. Somers became President of the Council, and Lord Wharton went to Ireland. He took with him, as Secretary, Mr. Joseph Addison. Mr. Addison was, at this time, less distinguished by the fame of his writings than by that of his sayings. He was the most popular man in the little commonwealth of Whig wits, who now met nightly (Button's was not yet esta- blished) at Will's coffee-house in Covent-garden. They were a kind of off-shoot from the more dignified club who ate mutton-pies at Kit Katt's the pastry-cook's ; and of which the principal literary members were Congreve, Garth, Yanbrugh, Steele, and Addison. The Revolution gave a new character, in giving new duties, to associa- tions of this kind. They were no longer what they were, when, in this same Will's coffee-house, then called The Eose, Dryden ruled the town wits from the Tory chair. They were a recognised class, with influence before un- known. In sketching the career of De Foe, we have indicated its rise and growth. The people were beginning to be important, and it was the only direct means of com- munication with the people. Thus, the Kttle party at WiU's were not sought, or courted, for the graces of their wit and literature alone. That pale, bright-eyed, sickly, deformed youth of one- and- twenty, whose Pastorals are so much talked of just now, may seek them for no better reason; but not for this are they sought by the tall, stem-looking, dark-faced Irish priest, whose forty-two years of existence have been a struggle of ill-endured dependence and haughty discontent, which he now resolves to redeem in the field of political warfare. Here, mean- while, he amuses himself and the town with Mr. Bicker- staff's joke against Mr. Partridge, suggesting to hearty Dick Steele those pleasant Lucubrations' of Isaac, which, in a few months more, are to take the town by storm ; or, it may be, showing privately to Addison that sneer against De Foe, worded with such malignant art, which he was about now to give to the world. " One of those authors " (the felloiv who icas pilloried, I have forgot his name) is " indeed so grave, sententious, dogmatical a rogue, that T)e Foe.'] copyright act passed. 127 " there is no enduring him/' ' That was it ! There was profiting hy his labour ; there was copying the sugges- tions of his genius ; there was travelling to wealth and power along the path struck out hy his martyrdom ; hut, for this very reason, there was no enduring him. A man who will go into the pillory for his opinions, is not a " cluhable " man. Yet, at this very moment, De Foe was labouring for the interests of the literary class. For twenty years he had urged the necessity of a law to pro- tect an author's property in his writings, and in this session the Copyright Act was passed. The common law recognised a perpetual right, but gave no means of enforcing it ; the statute limited the right, and gave the means. It was a sort of cheat, but better than unlimited robbery.^ Notwithstanding Harley's retirement, De Foe con- tinued in the service of Godolphin's Ministry. But, at the special desire of Harley himself; to whom, as the person by whom he had first been employed for Anne, and whose apparently falling fortunes were a new claim of attachment, he considered himself bound. " Nay, not so, " Mr. De Foe," said Harley, " I shall not take it ill from " you in the least. Besides, it is the Queen you are serv- " ing, who has been very good to you." The words were well selected for continuance of the tenure by which the sagacious diplomatist had first engaged his services. He went to the Lord-Treasurer accordingly, who received * He hated him still worse, when " Books are printed by nobody, and he found him writing for Harley on * ' wrote by everybody. One man the same side with himself, and be- " prints another man's works, and came conscious that hack partisans " calls them his own ; another man on the other side did not scruple to *' prints his own, and calls them by couple them together, as "' fellow- *' the name of another. Continual "labourers in the service of the "robberies, piracies, and invasions *' white Staff." " He paid De Foe '* of property, occur in the occupa- *' better than he did Swift, looking " tion. One man shall study seven "on him as the shrewder head of "years to bring a finished piece "the two for business," is the " into the world; and, as soon as reckless assertion of Oldmixon. " produced, it shall be republished ^ I have adverted to this subject "by some piratical printer at a in a previous note (ante, p. 105-7) ; " quarter of the price, and sold for but I may add, in a few pregnant ' * his own benefit. These things sentences from one of De Foe's Be- " call loudly for an act of parlia- riews of this date, a description ©f " ment." the existing abuses of the law : — 128 MINISTERIAL EMPLOYMENTS. [Daniel him witli great friendliness, and told him, *' smiling," he had not seen him a long while. De Foe frankly men- tioned his obligations to Harley, and his fear that his interest might be lessened on that account. " Not at all, " Mr. De Foe," rejoined Godolphin ; " I always think a " man honest till I find the contrary." To which De Foe might have added, without rebuke, in the language he always afterwards used of Harley, " And I shall ever " preserve this principle, that an honest man cannot be *' ungrateful to his benefactor." The scrupulous author, nevertheless, considered it his duty, while now again engaged in ministerial employments,' entirely to cease communication with the rival statesman, tiU he again appeared as a pubKc minister. It was not very long. Nor had the Ministry, on the score of moderation at any rate, profited greatly by his absence ; while he, by the position of parties, was driven to the extreme of opposition. Despairing of the Queen's power to second her well-known incKnation, the High Church trumpet had again sounded to battle, and De Foe had again buckled on his armour of offence against both ^ What these employments exactly " tell me the rest ; and so I with- "were, is not now known ; but they *' drew. The next day, his lordship were thus hinted at by himself, when " having commanded me to attend, lie defended his conduct after the ' * told me that he must send me to death of Anne : — '* After this re- *' Scotland, and gave me but three *' ception my Lord Godolphin had *' days to prepare myself, Accord- " the goodness, not only to introduce *' ingly, I went to Scotland, where *' me for the second time to her " neither my business nor the *' Majesty, and to the honour of *' manner of my discharging it is "kissing her hand, but obtained "material to this tract; nor will ' ' for me the continuance of an ap- * ' it be ever any part of my cha- " pointment which her Majesty had " racter that I reveal what should *' been pleased to make me, in con- "be concealed. And yet my errand " sideration of a former special "was such, as was far from being ' * service I had done, and in which ' ' unfit for a sovereign to direct, or " I had run as much risk of my " an honest man to perform ; and " life as a grenadier upon the " the service I did upon that occa- " counterscarp .... Upon this " sion, as it is not unknown to the "second introduction, her Majesty "greatest man now in the nation " was pleased to tell me with a " under the King and the Prince, "goodness peculiar to herself, that "so, I dare say, his Grace was " she had such satisfaction in my "never displeased with the part I " former services that she had ap- " had in it, and I hope will not "pointed me for another afiair, " forget it." The last allusion, I " which was something nice, and need hardly say, is to the Duke of " that my Lord- Treasurer should ]\Iarlborough. De Foe.'l short hixt to impartial writers. 129 ultra-parties. Again, as he says himself, he went on freely telling offensive truths, regarding no censures, fear- ing no prosecutions, asking no favour of any man, making no court to any, and expecting not to oblige even those whom he thought the best of. It was now he told the world that fate of the unbiassed writer, with Avhich a celebrated journal of modern days has familiarized its readers. " If " I might give a short hint to an impartial writer, it " should be to tell him his fate. If he resolves to venture " upon the dangerous precipice of teUing unbiassed truths, " let him proclaim war with mankind a la mode le pays de ** Pole J neither to give nor take quarter, (jf he tells the *' crimes of great men, they fall upon him with the iron " hands of the law ; if he tells them of their virtues, " when they have any, then the mob attacks him with " slander. But if he regards truth, let him expect " martyrdom on both sides, and then he may go on fear- " less. And this is the course I take myself.''^ It was now, describing his personal treatment by one of the Tory mobs, he told them the destiny of all who had ever served them. " He that will help you, must be hated *' and neglected by you, must be mobbed and plundered " for you, must starve and hang for you, and must yet " help you. And thus I do.'* We could give numberless instances from the Review itself, if space permitted ; but, limited as we are in this respect, it Tvill perhaps suffice if we turn to the Biary of LuttreU, and take a note or two from that voluminous record as the mere type or indication of a petty persecu- tion, quite wonderful for its eager activity, which from month to month, and year to year, was incessantly directed against this indomitable man. On one occasion, Tuesday the 15th of October 1706, LuttreU tells us (vi. 98) that Daniel De Foe was carried before the Lord Chief Justice Holt, for *' inserting a speech in his Review relating to " the Union, 'pretending the same was made by a great " lawyer, and was bound over for the same, himself in *' 200/, and two sureties in 100/ each." A year later, the same pains-taking authority informs us (vi. 215-16), the Swedish envoy had complained against De Foe for reflect- ing on his master in his Reviews of the 9th and 28th of August, and the 2nd of September ; and in consequence 180 MARTYRDOM BY PETTY PERSECUTIONS. [Daniel thereof, on Tuesday the 23rd of September 1707 (the same night on which his old antagonist, Tutchin of the Ohser- fatoTf died), there went into Scotland "an order to take " into custody Daniel De Foe for reflecting on the King of *' Sweden in his EeviezvJ' Again, not a month later, Luttrell tells us (under date of Saturday the 18th of October) that the Muscovite ambassador has complained against Daniel De Foe for the following expression in his Mevieio of the preceding Thursday, ^^ Money makes Chris- ** tians fight for the Turks, money hires servants to the Devil, " nay, to the very Czar of Muscovy." As to which, on the next following Tuesday, the same trustworthy per- son further relates that, " The Earl of Sunderland has *' writ to the Muscovite Ambassador here, that he will " take care the author of the Revino shall be prosecuted " for the reflection upon his master." And so the pro- secution and persecution went on, and so went on De Foe ; mobbed and plundered by those whom he opposed, disliked and neglected by those whom he served, but expecting from both sides the martyrdom he received, and therefore still going on fearless. But now came suddenly again upon the scene De Foe's old friend Dr. Henry Sacheverell. This brawling priest attacked Godolphin in the pulpit by the name of Voljwne ; inveighed against Burnet and other bishops for not un- furling the bloody flag against Dissent; abused the Revolution as unrighteous ; and broadly reasserted non- resistance and passive obedience. The fellow was such a fool and madman that a serious thought should not have been wasted on him, whatever might be reckoned needful to discountenance his atrocious doctrines. This was the feeling of De Foe. When Harley called the sermon a " circumgyration of incoherent words", (in a speech thought to merit the same description), it seems to have been his feeling too. It was certainly that of Lord Somers, and of the best men in the cabinet. They all knew his noisy ignorance. His illustration of " parallel lines meeting in *' a centre," was a standing joke with the wits. But Vol- pone stuck to Godolphin, and an impeachment was resolved upon. The Minister little thought, when he took to what Burnet calls the luxury of roasting a parson, that the fire .would blaze high enough to roast himself and his colleagues. De Foe,'] sacheyerell's trial. 131 Harley made a shrewder guess. He was dining with a friend in tlie country when the news reached him. " The " game is up," he cried; left the dinner-table, and hurried to London. In vain De Foe still urged, " Let us have *' the crime punished, not the man. The bar of the House " of Commons is the worst pillory in the nation." In that elevated pillory, Sacheverell Avas placed ; weU dressed, with clean gloves, with white handkerchief well managed, and with other suitable accomplishments ; — Atterbury, who secretly despised him, in affected sympathy by his side ; the mob without, screaming for their mart}T ; and women, high and low, frantic with admiration. "You *' could never embark the ladies," said De Foe, " till you " fell upon the clergy. As soon as you pinch the parson, " the women are one woman in his defence." His description of the interest created by the impeachment is one of his happiest pieces of quiet irony. It has also his- toric value. The ladies, he tells us, laid aside their chocolate, their china, and their gallantries, for State business; the Tatler, the immortal Tatler, the great Bickerstaff himself (to whom, let us remark by the way, De Foe, in his hearty admiration,' had lately resigned the offices of his own Scandal Club), was fain to leave off talking to them ; they had no leisure for church ; little Miss, still obliged to go, had the Doctor's picture put into her prayer-book ; even Punch laid aside his domestic broils, to gibber for the holy man ; and not only were the churches thinned, and the parks, but the very playhouses felt the effects, and Betterton died a beggar. Well had it been, however, if this were all. A series of horrible riots followed. Meeting-houses were pulled down ; the bloody flag was in reality unfurled ; mounted escorts, carrying martyr Sacheverell about the country, were 1 This feeling led him soon after "doled him, examined him, &c. to condemn Steele for taking any " He should have let envy bark, public notice of Ids quondam friend " aad fools rail ; and, according to S^^'ift's vituperation. "For my "his own observation of the fable " part," he says, "I have always " of the sun, continued to shine on. *' thought that the weakest step the " This I have found to be agreeable " Tatler ever took, if that complete " to the true notion of contempt. *' author can be said to have done " Silence is the utmost slight nature *^ anything weak, was to stoop to "can dictate to a man, and the " take the least notice of the bark- " most insupportable for a vain man " iugs of the animals that have cou- " to bear." K 2 133 THE HARLEY MINISTRY. [DaHtel everywhere the signal for the plunder and outrage of Dissenters; the martyr's printed defence (filled with abuse of De Foe and his Revietcs) circulated by tens of thousands; and Lord -Treasurer Godolphin was ordered to break his staff, and make way for Robert Harley. Harley took ofiice ; and at once began the work, which, whatever the motives we assign to him, and whatever the just faults we may find with the absence of decision in his mind and in his temper, we must admit that he con- tinued to the last^ of opposing, against his own interests, the exterminating policy of the party who had borne him into power. While several leading Whigs yet retained office, he again unsuccessfully attempted a coalition with Cowper and Walpole ; and it was not until wholly rebuffed in this quarter that he completed his High Tory cabinet, and determined to risk a dissolution. St. John was made secretary ; Harcourt had the great seal ; and he himself took the treasurer's staff. The elections gave him a majority, though not very decisive ; and Anne's celebrated Last Administration began its career. A man might pre- dict in some sort the course of it, who had seen the new Premier on the first of October ; the day before the meet- ing of Parliament. He was not at the palace of the Queen, nor in his office of business with Harcourt or St. John; but he was stopping in his coach at the St. James's coffee-house, to set down Jonathan Swift. " He knew my Christian name very well," says the Journal to Stella. On that day the reverend ex- Whig partizan had sent forth a lampoon against Godolphin, and had paid his first visit to Harley. On the 4th he dined with him. Afterwards, his visits were daily welcomed. The proud and long-neglected Priest found himself, on one and the same hopeful October day, dining for ten- pence in his old chop-house; then going "reeking" from thence to the first minister of state; and then, in charity, sending a Tatler to Steele, "who is very low " of late." Others were " low " too. There was Con- greve, a resolute Whig, and member of the Kit Katt, whose little place depended on the Ministry. But Harley quieted his fears with a happy quotation from Yirgil: De Foe.'\ interview with the LOHD-THEASniER. 133 Kon obtusa adeo gestaraiis pectora Pceni, ISTec tarn aversus equos Tyria sol jungit ab urbe.^ • Whatever else, then, were the objections to this states- man, they did not lie on the score of his indifference to genius. The Administration organised, he sent for De Foe. A different course was needed with Daniel from that which had been taken with Jonathan. Harley knew De Foe thoroughly; and was certainly not sorry to know that the High Church majority in the Commons might have been much larger, but for his unwearied personal and public exertions against that faction, in the elections recently closed. De Foe distinctly states the result of the interview to have been, that he capitulated for liberty to speak according to his own judgment of things, and that he had this liberty allowed him. Nor did he wait on Harley, till he had first consulted the dismissed Godolphin ; who counselled him to consider himself as the Queen's servant, to wait until he saw things settled, and then to take her Majesty's commands from the new minister. In the same tone Harley conferred with him now. And if we couple the interview with the paper sent forth in the Review which first opened the fury of the "Whig batteries on De Foe, we shall find everything to confirm the impression here taken of it ; as well of the character of Harley himself, as of the honourable grounds of De Foe's conditional support. He states his opinion to be, that the Ministry must be carried on upon the foundation, and with the principles, of the Eevolution. This, he adds, even though mth it should come the fate of pleasing and displeasing all parties in their turn, can be the only safe guide where so many parties alternately govern, and where men of the same party have so often been of several opinions about the same thing. If, on the other hand, they reject such guidance, another kind of language would have to be talked to them. " For, let " not governors flatter themselves, nor people be dismayed " — the Revolution cannot be overthrown in Britain. It " is not in the power of ministry or party, prince or " parliament, to do it. If the attempt is made, let them ^ " Our hearts are not so cold, nor '* Of Sol so distant from the race of flames the fire Tyre." 134 SUPERIORITY TO PARTY. \T)aniel " look to it that venture upon tlie attempt. The People " of England have tasted Liberty, and I cannot think ^' they mil bear the exchange." He then says explicitly, that he shall not go along with the Ministry unless they go along with him. He exults in Harley's known inclination to the Whigs ; and indeed he argues that the Constitution is of such a nature, that, whoever may he in it, if they are faithful to their duty, " it ivill either "find them Whigs or make them so.'' In short, he lays it down as a truth not to he disputed, that they all had but one interest as Englishmen, whatever interest they might have as to parties. And upon these plain principles Daniel He Foe acted. They were principles professed by Swift two years later ; but never, we regret to say, whether later or earlier, impli- citly acted on by him. " I bear all the Ministry to be my " witnesses," he wrote to Steele, in whose Correspondence the letter may be found, " that there is hardly a man of " wit of the adverse party, whom I have not been so bold " as to recommend often and with earnestness to them : " for I think principles at present are quite out of the " case, and that we dispute wholly about persons. In *' these last, you and I differ : but in the other, I think " we agree; for I have in print professed myself in politics '' to be what we formerly called a Whig." And in two months from the date of the letter, he was covering this very Dick Steele with the most lavish contempt, for no better reason than that he held Whig principles. But he wrote for power, and got it ; while De Foe wrote for what he believed to be the public service, and got no reward but the consciousness of having done so. Compare Swift's Examiner with De Foe's Review^ and the distinction is yet more plain. It is earnest and manly reasoning against a series of reckless libels. Libels, too, in which the so-called advocate of Harley is de- nounced by Harley 's confidential friend as an illiterate idiot. " Much wit in that," quietly answered De Foe ; who never was seduced into party lampooning, who held that no difference of opinion should discharge the obli- gation of good manners,' and who, even at moments like ^ At a time when De Foe waa troversy, it is for ever to be recorded engaged in his bitterest political con- to his honour, in that age of habitual De F0S.'\ REPLY TO JONATHAN SWIFT. 135 these, held Swift's wit and genius in honour. " Now, I ^* know a learned man at this time, an orator in the Latin, " a walking Index of books, who has all the libraries in " Europe in his head, from the Vatican at Rome to the " learned collection of Doctor Salmon at Fleet Ditch ; " but he is a cynic in behaviour, a fury in temper, unpolite " in conversation, abusive in language, and ungovernable " in passion. Is this to be learned ? Then may I still be " illiterate. I have been, in my time, pretty well master " of five languages, and have not lost them yet, though I " write no bill over my door, nor set Latin quotations in " any part of the Review. But, to my irreparable loss, I " was bred only by halves ; for my father, forgetting " Juno's royal academy, left the language of Billingsgate " quite out of my education. Hence I am, in the polite '^ style of the street, perfectly illiterate ; and am not fit to " converse with the porters and carmen of quality, who " adorn their diction wtth the beauties of calling names, " and cursing their neighbour with a bonne grace. I have " had the honour to fight a rascal, but never could muster " the eloquence of calling a man so." This was the manly and calm spirit of every return vouchsafed by the author of the Review to the cross-fire that now assailed him. He was content, whether defending or opposing, to stand Alone. He did not think the Brothers' Club had helped the Ministry, nor that the Scriblerus Club would be of any service to Literature. He preferred to stand where he libel and reckless personal abuse, '* satisfy you. I have not been that hethus wrote to his antagonist : " desirous of giving just offence to " But to state the matter fairly be- " you, neither would I to any man, " tween you and me, as writing for " however I may differ from him ; *' different interests, and so possibly *' and I see no reason why I should ** coming under an unavoidable *' affront a man's person, because I "necessity of jarring in several *' do not join with him in principle. " cases, I am ready to make a fair '* I always thought that men might "truce of honour with you, viz. *' dispute without railing, and dif- " that if what either party are doing " fer without quarrelling, and that " or saying may clash with the party "opinions need not affect our " we are for, and urge us to speak, "temper," Most admirably and " it shall be done without naming wisely did he say on another occa- "either's name, and without personal sion, in reference to the same vile * ' reflections ; and thus we may differ habit of personal recrimination, ' ' I "still, and yet preserve both the " have always carefully avoided lash- " Christian and the gentleman. " ing any man's private infirmities, "This, 1 think, is an offer may " as being too sensible of my owu." 136 CHARGED WITH WRITING FOR PLACE. \_Daniel did ; " unplaced, unpensioned, no man's heir or slave ;" in frank and free communication with his countrymen. And therefore was he assailed hy Tory scribes on the one hand, and by Whig scribes on the other, who could yet only join their attacks on the one point of accusing him of a hankering after place. " And what place do I write for ? " he pleasantly asked. " I have not yet inquired whether " there is a vacancy in the press-yard ; but I know of no " place anybody could think I should be writing for, " unless it be a place in Newgate, for this truly may be " the fate of any body that dare to speak plainly to men " in power." The same charge had been brought against him while yet the old Whigs held office. " As to places, " I have been seven years under what we call a Whig " government, and have not been a stranger to men in " power. I have had the honour to be told I served that " government ; the fury of an enraged party has given " their testimony to it, and I could produce yet greater ; " but the man is not alive of whom I have sought pre- ** ferment or reward. If I have espoused a wrong cause ; " if I have acted in a good cause in an unfair manner ; " if I have, for fear, favour, or by the bias of any man in " the world, great or small, acted against what I always " professed, or what is the known interest of the nation ; " if I have any way abandoned that glorious principle of " truth and liberty, which I ever was embarked in, and " which I trust I shall never, through fear or hope, step " one inch back from, — if I have done thus, then, as " Job says in another case, ' Let thistles grow instead *' * of wheat, and cockles instead of barley ;' then, and " not till then, may I be esteemed a mercenary, a mis- " sionary, a spy, or what you please. But, if the cause *' be just, if it be the peace, security, and happiness of " both nations, if I have done it honestly and effectually " — how does it alter the case if I have been fairly '' encouraged, supported, and rewarded in the work, as "God knows I have not? Does the mission disable the " messenger, or does it depend upon the merit of the " message ? " * ^ His experiences derived from stated in another of his ■writings. Buch support as he had given Har- After telling the story of a malcon- ley's government, were very happily tent, " of a reign not many years T)e Foe.'\ a tebtor and creditor accouxt. 137 And now, as tlie best comment we can make upon this manly avowal, let us briefly state De Foe's debtor-and- creditor account with the Administration of Eobert Harley. He supported him against the October Club ; a party of a hundred country gentlemen, who drank October ale, and would have driven things to extremes against the Whigs. He supported him against the bigot Rochester ; and against the tiery, impatient Bolingbroke. He sup- ported him against the Whigs ; when the Whigs, to avenge their party disappointments, laid aside their noblest principles, and voted with Lord Findlater for the dissolution of the Scottish Union. He supported him also against the Whigs, when, for no nobler reason, they joined with his old enemy Lord Nottingham, to oppress and disable the Dissenters. And again he supported him against the Whigs, when, speaking through their ablest and most liberal representatives, the WalpoleS; and the Stanhopes, they declared emphatically, and in all circum- stances, for a total prohibition of trade mth France. It was on this latter question De Foe would seem to have incurred their most deadly hatred. He had achieved the repute of a great authority in matters of the kind ; and " behind ns" (whether he -wrote '* them stopped ; like a sort of dogs Postboys or Examiners, De Foe " I have met with, that, when they humorously interposes, authors are * ' attend under your table, bark not agreed), who, when an argu- " that they may be fed. 1 remem- ment was brought a little too close '* ber a man of some note who to him, said, " Sir, you would rail '* practised this with great success, " as I do, if you were not bribed ;" " and canted a long while in the to which the other replied, "Ay, *' House of Commons about abuses " and you would be quieter than I, "in the management, misapplying "if anybody would bribe you;" — "the public treasure, making he proceeds to remark : "Three "felonious treaties, and the like ; ' ' sorts of men always rail at a Gro- ' * but a wise old fox no sooner *' vernment. First, those whose " halved his den to this badger, " opinion of their own merit makes " but he put a stop to the clamour, ' ' them think they are never well " and the nation's treasure was "enough rewarded. The second " never misapplied since, because a " sort are those, who, having en- " good share of it ran his way." "joyed favours, but being found The wise old reynard was Sir "unworthy, are discarded from Stephen Fox ; and the quieted bad- " their offices ; these always rail ger, a certain notorious place-hunter " as if they had never been obliged, of the parliament of William and " But we have a third sort of peo- Anne, Mr. John Howe, MP, whom " pie who always go with their Sir Stephen made joint Paymaster "mouths open, in order to have of the Forces with himself. 138 HARLEY AND BOLINGBROKE SUPPORTED. \T)aniel he threw it all into the scale in favour of Bolingbroke's treaty. He wrote on it often and largely ; with eminent ability, and with great effect. His view briefly was, that the principle of a free trade, unencumbered by prohibi- tions, and with very moderate duties, was "not only " equal and just, but proceeding on the true interest of " trade, and much more to the advantage of Britain than " of France." ^ What disadvantages of unpopularity such reasoning had then to contend with, we need not say ; the cry of Trade and Wool did as much for the Whigs, as that of Sacheverell and the Church had done for the Tories ; but He Foe opposed both alike, and it is not very pro- bable that he will be traduced for it now. But we have not yet stated the reverse of his account in connection with Robert Harley's Administration. It it not less honourable to him. He did not oppose the Peace when settled ; but while it was in progress he opposed the terms. He desired peace ; but he did not think the Spanish guarantees sufii- cient. He thought that Europe had been saved by the policy of William and the Whigs, and by the genius of Marlborough ; but he did not approve of the violent method of winding up the war. He was, in short, glad when it was done, but would have been ashamed to take part in doing it : and the best judgment of posterity, we believe, confirms that judgment. He opposed the crea- tion of Peers. He opposed strongly, while the Whigs made the feeblest resistance, the Parliamentary Qualifica- tion act ; which he condemned for a lurking tendency to give preponderance to the landed interest. He opposed the Occasional Conformity bill; though his position 1 He argued this question of Free traordinarily scarce. When Mr. Trade, which he dealt with in a Wilson published his Life of De spirit greatly in advance of his Foe, he had not been able to get time, chiefly in a government paper sight of a copy. One of the very called the Mercator, set on foot by few in existence belongs to my Harley, in which he had no per- friend Mr. Crossley of Manchester, sonal or pecuniary interest, and who justly describes it as "replete over which (though he was very un- " with the vigour, the life and ani- justly made responsible for all its " mation, the various and felicitous contents) he exercised no control ; *' power of illustration, which this but to whose pages he contributed a "great and truly English author series of most remarkable papers on " could impart to any subject." commercial subjects. It is now ex- De Foe.'] harley and bolingbroke opposed. 139 respecting it was such tliat lie might fairly have kept his peace. He opposed the Tax upon Papers ; and bitterly- denounced the malignant attack upon the Press which signalised Bolingbroke's few days' Ministry. He concen- trated all his strength of opposition against the same statesman's Schism bill ; in which an attempt was made to deprive Dissenters of all share in the work of educa- tion, grounded precisely on those preposterous High Church claims which we have seen flagrantly revived in more recent days. Let us show, by a memorable passage from the Review, how httle Church pretensions and extra- vagances alter, while all else alters around them. " AVho " are they that at this juncture are so clamorous against *' Dissenters, and are eagerly soliciting for a further " security to the Church ? Are they not that part of the " clergy who have already made manifest advances towards ** the s}Tiagogue of Rome ? they who preach the inde- " pendency of the Church on the State ? who urge the *' necessity of auricular confession, sacerdotal absolution, " extreme unction, and prayer for the dead ? who expressly *' teach the real presence in the Lord's Supper, which they " will have to be a proper sacrifice ? and who contend for *' the practice of rebaptising, wherein they overshoot the " Papists themselves ? Are they not they who are loudly " clamorous for those church lands which, to the unspeak- " able detriment of the public, were in the days of igno- " ranee given to impudent begging friars ? " Finally, when it was whispered about that the leading Ministers were intriguing for the succession of the Pretender ; and when it was reported everywhere that the mani- festo of the Jacobites against a Protestant succession lay splendidly bound in the Queen's closet at Windsor ; De Foe wrote and published those three pamphlets, which, for prompt wit and timely satire, may be classed with his best efforts : A Seasonable Caution. — What if the Pretender should come ? — and, What if the Queen should die ? It is almost inconceivable that the Whigs should have led the cry against him on the score of these admirable pieces ; but it is another proof of the blindness of party malice. The men of whose principles throughout life he had been the sturdiest advocate, were the Dissenters and 140 AGAIN IN NEWGATE. [^Daniel the Whigs ; and, as he had to thank the one for his earliest experience of a prison, for his latest he had now to thank the other. A great Whig light, Mr. Auditor Benson, commenced a prosecution against him, at his private cost, for desiring by these works to favour the Jacobite succession ; their mode of recommending the Jacobite succession having been, to say that it would con- fer on every one the privilege of wearing wooden shoes, and ease the nobility and gentry of the hazard and ex- pense of winter journeys to Parliament ! But dulness had the odds against wit, in this as in the former instance ; and the prosecutors had no difficulty in finding judges to tell Be Foe, " that they contained matter for which he *' might be hanged, drawn, and quartered." He was ac- cordingly thrown again into Newgate ; and might possibly again have been taken from thence to the pillory, but for the interposition of Harley, now Lord Oxford. He repre- sented the matter to the Queen ; and made known to Be Foe the opinion expressed by Anne. " She saw nothing " but private pique in it." A pardon was issued by Bolingbroke, and the prisoner released. But not until, with an instinct that the end was now approaching, he had brought his JReview to a close, within the hard un- genial walls wherein it had begun. It was with a some- what sorrowful retrospect he closed it, but not without a dignified content. There were two sorts of people out of reach by the world, he said — those that are above, and those that are below it ; they might be equally happy, for aught he knew ; and between them he was not un- willing to accept the lot, which, as it placed him below envy, yet lifted him far above pity. In the school of affliction, he bethought him he had learned more philoso- phy than at the academy, and more divinity than from the pulpit ; in prison, he had learned to know that liberty does not consist in open doors, or the free egress and re- gress of locomotion. He had seen the rough and smooth sides of the world, and tasted the difference between the closet of a King and the Newgate dungeon. Here, in the dungeon, he had still, " with humblest acknowledg- " ments" to remember that a glorious Prince had " loved" him ; and, whatever Fortune had still in store, he felt himself not unfit, by all this discipline, for serious applica- De Foe.'\ triumph of the whigs. 141 tion to the great, solemn, and weighty work, of resigna- tion to the will of Heaven. The cheerful and pious resignation for which De Foe had so prepared himself, he needed when the crisis came. It is not our province here to dwell on the memorable scenes of 1714, which consigned Oxford to the Tower and Bolingbroke to exile ; shattered the Tory Party ; settled the succession of Hanover ; and fixed the "VYhigs in power. The principles for which De Foe had con- tended all his Hfe, were at last securely established ; and for his reward, he had to show the unnoticed and unprotected scars of thirty-two years' incessant po- Htical conflict. But he retired as he had kept the field — with a last hearty word for his patron Harley ; and with a manly defence against the factious slanders which had opened on himself. He probably heard the delighted scream of Mr. Boyer, as his figure disappeared ; to the effect of how fully he had been " confuted by the ingenious " and judicious Joseph Addison, esquire." Doubtless he also smiled to observe what Whig rewards for pure Whig service were now most plentifully scattered. The inge- nious Joseph Addison, esquire. Secretary of State ; Mr. Steele, Sir Richard, and Surveyor of the royal stables ; Mr. Tickell, Irish Secretary ; Mr. Congreve, twelve hundred a-year ; Mr. Rowe, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Ambrose Phillips, all snugly and comfortably sinecured. For himself, he was in his fifty-fourth year ; and, after a life of bodily and mental exertion that would have worn down a score of ordinary men, had to begin life anew. Into that new life we shall enter but briefly. It is plain to all the world. It is the life by which he became immortal* It is contained in the excellent books which are named at the head of this article; and there the world may read it, if they will. What we sought to exhibit here, we trust we have made sufiiciently obvious. After all the objections that may be justly made to his opinions, on the grounds of shortcoming or excess, we believe that in the main features of the career we have set before the reader, will be recognised a noble English example of the quaHties most prized by Englishmen. De Foe is our only famous politician and man of letters, who repre- 142 . A TYPE OF ENGLISH CHARACTER. [Daniel I sented, in its inflexible constancy, sturdy dogged resolu- \ tion, unwearied perseverance, and obstinate contempt of Ndanger and of tyranny, the great Middle-class English character. We beheve it to be no mere national pride to say, that, whether in its defects or its surpassing merits, the world has had none other to compare with it. He lived in the thickest stir of the conflict of the four most violent party reigns of English history ; and, if we have at last entered into peaceful possession of most part of the rights at issue in those party struggles, it the more becomes us to remember such a man with gratitude, and with wise consideration for what errors we may find in him. He was too much in the constant heat of the battle, to see all that we see now. He was not a philosopher himself, but he helped philosophy to some wise conclusions. He did not stand at the highest point of toleration, or of moral wisdom ; but, with his masculine active arm, he helped to lift his successors over obstructions which had stayed his own advance. He stood, in his opinions and in his actions, alone and apart from his fellow-men ; but it was to show his fellow-men of later times the value of a juster and larger fellowship, and of more generous modes of action. And when he now retreated from the world Without to the world Within, in the solitariness of his unrewarded service and integrity, he had assuredly earned the right to challenge the higher recognition of Posterity. He was walking towards History with steady feet ; and might look up into her awful face with a brow unabashed and undismayed. Here was his language, when, withdrawn finally and for ever from the struggle, he calmly reviewed the part he had taken in it. " I was, from my first entering into " the knowledge of public matters, and have ever been to " this day, a sincere lover of the constitution of my country ; " zealous for Liberty and the Protestant interest : but a " constant follower of moderate principles, and a vigorous " opposer of hot measures in all. I never once changed *' my opinion, my principles, or my party ; and let what " will be said of changing sides, this I maintain, that I " never once deviated from the Revolution principles, nor " from the doctrine of liberty and property on which it ** was founded." Describing the qualities that should T)C Foe.'j MORAL AND SOCIAL WRITIXGS. 143 distinguisli a man who, in those critical time?, elected so to treat of public affairs, he added : " Find him where " you will, this must be his character. He must be one " that, searching into the depths of truth, dare speak her " aloud in the most dangerous times ; that fears no face, " courts no favour, is subject to no interest, bigoted to no " party, and will be a hypocrite for no gain. I icill not " sap lam the man. I leave that to posterity." His last poKtical Essay was written in 1715 ; and while the proof-sheets lay uncorrected before him, he was struck with apoplexy. After some months' danger he rallied ; and in the three following years sent forth a series of works, chiefly moral and religious, and of which the Family Instructor and the Religious Courtship may be mentioned as the types, which were excellently adapted to a somewhat limited purpose, and are still in very high esteem. They are far too numerous even for recital here. They had extraordinary popularity ; went through count- less editions ; and found their way not only in handsome setting-forth to the King's private library, but on rough paper to all the fairs and markets of the kingdom. In the fact that Goldsmith makes his lively Livy Primrose as thoroughly acquainted with the dialogue in Religious Courtship y as she is with the argument of man Friday and his Master in Robinson Crusoe, and with the disputes of Thwackum and Square in Tom Jones, we may see in what vogue they continued to that date. But beyond, and up to the beginning of the century, they were generally among the standard prize books of schools ; and might be seen lying in coarse workman-garb, with Pomfrefs Poems or Hervey's Meditations, on the window-seat of any trades- man's house. Grave moral and religious questions had, in truth, not before been approached with anything like that dramatic liveliness of manner. To the same popu- larity were also in later years committed, such half- satirical, half-serious books, as the Political History of the Devil; of which, strong plain sense, and a desire to recommend, by liveliness of treatment, the most homely and straightforward modes of looking into moral and reli- gious questions, were again the distinguishing charac- teristics. Other works of miscellaneous interest will be found recited in the careful catalogue of De Foe's \vritings 144 PICTURES OF MIDDLE CLASS LIFE. \_Daniel (upwards of two hundred in all) compiled by Mr. Walter "Wilson. The most remarkable of these was probably the Complete English Tradesmany in which you see distinctly reflected many of the most solid and striking points of De Foe's own character ; and, let us add, of the general character of our middle-class countrymen. The plays of Heywood, Massinger, and Ben Jonson, do not give us the citizens of their time more vividly, nor 'better contrast the staidness and the follies of old and of young, than De Foe has here accomplished for the traders of William and Anne. We are surprised to be told that this book was less popular than others of its class ; but perhaps a certain surly vein of satire which was in it, was the reason. A book which tends, however justly, to satirize any com- munity iu general, readers included, is dangerous to its author's popularity, however the public may like satire in particular, or when aimed at special classes. Our hasty summary would be incomplete, without a reference to his many publications on points of domestic economy, and on questions of homely, domestic morals ; to his occasional satires in verse ; or to a timely and powerful series of strictures on London Life, in which he earnestly sug- gested the necessity of a Metropolitan University, of a .FoundHng Hospital, and of a well- organised system of 'Police. He also again attacked the stage, on the success of the Beggar 8 Opera ; and here, confusing a little the prose and poetry of the matter, made that excellent piece responsible for a coarse drama on the subject of the re- cently hanged Jack Sheppard.* In this discussion he ^ *' Our rogues," he says, "are '* dency than the former: for in " grown more wicked than ever ; *' this. Jack Sheppard is made the "and vice of all kinds is so much "head of the drama, and runs *' winked at, that robbery is ac- " through such a scene of riot and ' ' counted a pretty crime. We take * ' success, that but too many weak ' ' pains to puff them up in their vii'- ' ' minds have been drawn away ; " lainy ; and there is one set out in "and many unwary persons so " so amiable a light in the ^cf/^ar's "charmed with his appearance on ' ' Opera, it has taught them to * * the stage, dressed in that elegant " value themselves on their profes- "manner, and his pockets so well " sion, rather than to be ashamed " lined, they have forthwith com- " of it. Not content with the mis- " menced street-robbers or house- " chief done by the ^e^.7ar's 0/)era, " breakei's ; so that every idle fel- ** we must have a Quaker's Opera " low, weary of honest labour, need " forsooth, of much more evil ten- " but fancy himself a Macheath or De Foe.l^ series of works of fiction. 145 again encountered his old enemy, now the Dean of St. Patrick's; and, moving the spleen of Swift's dearest friend, got himself niched in the Dimciad. But the as- sailant lived to regret it more than the assailed, and to confess to his friend Spence, that, out of aU the countless works written hy " restless Daniel," there was not one that did not contain some good, — in other words, that did not brand reproach on the man who had stigmatised their author as a dunce. Meanwhile, concurrently with these works, there had appeared a more memorable series from the same untiring hand. In 1719, being then in his fifty-eighth year, he had given Rohinson Crusoe to the world ; but not until he had first wearily gone the round of all the trade, and at last, with enormous difficulty, had found a purchaser and publisher. Paternoster Pow is not bound to find out the value of genius, until it begins to sell. With Rohinson Crusoe's successors there was less difficulty. In 1720 he had published the Life and Piracies of Captain Singleton; the Dumb Philosopher ; and Duncan Camphell. In 1721, the Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders. In 1722, the Life and Adventures of Colonel Jack; and the Journal of the Plague Year. In 1723, the Memoirs of a Cavalien, In 1724, Roxana. In 1725, the New Voyage round the , World. And in 1728, the Life of Captain C^ mMojh. He SW^j^U was at work upon a new production at the close of 1729, as we shall shortly see, and apologises to his printer for having delayed the proofs through " exceeding illness." It never appeared. Of Rohinson Crusoe it is needless to speak. Was there ever any thing written by mere man but this, asked Doctor Johnson, that was wished longer by its readers ? It is a " a Sheppard, and there's a rogue "pattern." Gay sneered at De Foe, ** at once." It is rather curious as a fellow who had excellent natural that in the same pamphlet De Foe parts, but wanted a small founda- makes a concession we would hardly tion of learning ; and as a lively have expected from his earlier op- instance of those wits who, as an position to all stage performances. ingenious author says, "will endure " Since example has so much force," " but one skimming : " with which he says, "the stage should exhibit sneer the judicious reader may pro- " nothing but what might be repre- bably be disposed to connect the " sented before a bishop. They may passage just quoted from De Foe " be merry and wise ; let them about Gay's masterpiece. " take the Provoked Husband for a 146 ROBINSON CRUSOE. [Daniel standard piece in every European language; its popu- larity has extended to every civilized nation. The tra- veller Burckhardt found it translated into Arabic, and heard it read aloud among the wandering tribes in the cool hours of evening. It is devoured by every boy; and, as long as a boy remains in the world, he will' clamour for Robinson Crusoe. It sinks into the bosom while the bosom is most capable of pleasurable impressions from the adventurous and the marvellous ; and no human work, we honestly believe, has afforded such great delight. Neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey, in the much longer course of ages, has incited so many to enterprise, or to reHance on their own powers and capacities. It is the romance of solitude and self-sustainment ; and could only so perfectly have been written by a man whose own life * ^ That De Foe in some sort intend- ed the adventures, even of the first part of Eobinson Crusoe, as a kind of type of what the dangers and vicissi- tudes and surprising escapes of his own life had been, appears to be con- fessed in his Crusoe's Serious Reflec- tions. Towards the close of that book l^is unmistakeable passage occurs : — " Had the common way of writing " a man's history been taken, and " I had given you the conduct or *' life of a man you knew, and " whose misfortunes and infirmi- *' ties perhaps you had sometimes " unjustly triumphed over, all I *' could have said would have " yielded no diversion, and perhaps " scarce have obtained a reading, "or at best no attention ; the " teacher, like a greater, having " no honour in his own country." But more explicit and remarkable still, is the preface to this same work, in which, speaking of the objection that had been urged against the former volumes oi Robin- son Crusoe as wholly fictitious, he adds that " the story, though alle- *' gorical, is also historical. It is "the beautiful representation of a ' ' life of unexampled misfoi-tunes, " and of a variety not to be met ** with in the world. Farther, " there is a man alive, and well " known too, the actions of whose " life are the subject of these vol- " umes, and to whom all or most _ * ' part of the story most directly '"alludes." He then recounts a number of particulars necessary for the purposes of his narrative ; and says: "The adventures of "Robinson Crusoe are one whole " scene of real life of eight-and- " twenty years, spent in the most "wandering, desolate, and afflict- ' ' ing circumstances that ever a man " went through ; and in which I ' ' have lived so long a life of won- " ders, in continual storms ; fought " with the worst kind of savages " and man-eaters, by unaccountable "surprising incidents; fed by " miracles greater than that of " raveng ; suffered all manner of " violences and oppressions, inju- " rious reproaches, contempt of " men, attacks of devils, corrections " from heaven, and oppositions on " earth ; have had innumerable ups " and downs in matters of fortune, " been in worse slavery than Turk- ' ' ish, escaped by as exquisite man- " agement as that in the story of " Xury and the boat of Salee, been " taken up at sea in distress, raised " again and depressed again, and " that oftener perhaps in one man's ' ' life than ever was known before ; De Foe.'j art of natural story-telling. 147 had for the most part been passed in the independence of unaided thought, accustomed to great reverses, of inex- haustible resource in confronting calamities, leaning ever on his Bible in sober and satisfied belief, and not afraid at any time to find himself Alone, in communion with nature and with Gfod. Nor need we here repeat, what has been said so well by many critics, that the secret of its fascination is its Reality. The same is to be said, in a no less degree, of the Mistoty of the Plague; which, for the grandeur of the theme and the profoundly afi'ecting familiarity of its treatment, for the thrilling and homely touches which paint at once the moral and the physical terrors of a pestilence, is one of the noblest prose epics of the language. These are the masterpieces of De Foe. These are the works wherein his power is at the highest, and which place him not less among the practical benefac- tors than among the great writers of our race. " Why, this " man could have founded a colony as well as governed it," said a statesman of the succeeding century, amazed at the knowledge of various kinds, and at the intimate acquaint- ance with all useful arts, displayed in Robinson Crusoe. Nor, within the more limited range they occupy, is power less manifest in his other fictions. While undoubtedly open to objections on a different score, the Moll Flanders, the Colonel Jack, . and the Roxana, are not less decisive examples of a wonderful genius. In their day, too, they had no unwise or hurtful efi'ect ; for certainly they had a tendency to produce a more indulgent morality, and larger fair play to bad and good. That we question the wisdom of now reviving them as they were written, we will frankly confess ; but, as models of fictitious narrative, in common with all the writings of De Foe they are supreme. The art of natural story-telling, which can discard every resort to mere writing or reflection, and rest solely on what people, in peculiar situations, say and do, just as if there were no reader to hear all about it, has had no such astonishing illustrations. High authorities have indeed thought them entitled to still higher dignity. "ship-wrecked often, though more "allusion to a real story, and " by land than by sea ; — in a word, " chimes part for part, and step for *' there is not a circumstance in the ** step, with the inimitable life of " imaginary story but has its just *' Robinson Crusoe.". /V ^*^ OF THE^^^!)^ 148 FATHER OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL. [Daniel Some one asked Doctor E/obertson to advise him as to a good historical style. " Eead De Foe," replied the great historian. Colonel Jack's life has been commonly re- printed in the genuine accounts of highwaymen; Lord Chatham thought the Cavalier a real person, and his description of the civil wars the best in the language ; Doctor Mead quoted the book upon the Plague as the . ^ . narrative of an eyewitness ; and Doctor Johnson sat up all ' ^' ' " night over Captain ^nrl fttny) ^c^ tti p-m oi rs, as a new work of t^h '"^^^ English history he wondered not to have seen before. In - ^tiUL particular scenes, too, of the three tales we are more ' immediately considering (those of the prison in Moll Flanders, of Susannah in Roxana, and of the boyhood in Colonel Jack), the highest masters of prose, fiction have never surpassed them either in power or in pathos, in the subtle portraiture of humanity or in a profound acquaint- ance with life. But it will remain the chief distinction of De Foe to have been, in these minor tales of English scenes and manners, the father of the illustrious family of the English Novel. Swift directly copied from him ; Richardson founded his style of minute narrative wholly upon him ; Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith, — Godwin, Scott, Bulwer, and Dickens, — have been more or less indebted to him. Shall we scruple to add, then, that ' while he remains unapproached in his two great master- pieces, he has been surpassed in his minor works by these his successors? His language is as easy and copious, but less elegant and harmonious; his insight into cha- racter is as penetrating, but not so penetrating into the heart ; his wit and irony are as playful, but his humour is less genial and expansive ; and he wants the delicate fancy, the richness of imagery, the sympathy, the truth, and depth of feeling, which will keep the later Masters of our English Novel the delightful companions, the gentle monitors, the welcome instructors, of future generations. So true it is, that every great writer promotes the next great writer one step; and in some cases gets himself superseded by him. While his gigantic labours were in progress, De Foe seems to have lived almost wholly at his favourite New- ington. His writings had been profitable. He got little for Rohimon Crusoe, but was paid largely for its successors. De Foe.'\ living at newington. 149 We have occasional glimpses of him still engaged in mer- cantile speculation ; purchasing and assigning leases ; disposing of South Sea stock ; and otherwise attending to worldly affairs. But we do not see him steadily till 1724 ; and our manner of seeing him then, heing peculiar and characteristic, will bear somewhat of detailed relation. A young gentleman named Baker, known in later years as a somewhat celebrated philosophical inquirer, a writer on the microscope, and principal founder of the Society of Arts, introduces the great author to us at this time. En- gaged at the outset of his life as a tutor in two families, Mr. Henry Baker divided each week between Enfield and Newington ; and, as he informs us in the MS.' narrative from which we derive these facts, " at both places I soon "became acquainted with all the people of fashion ; " when suddenly, at one of the fashionable abodes in this sub- urban world, he tumbled over head and ears in love with a charmingly pretty girl, the youngest of three daughters who lived in a large and handsome house in Church- street, which their father had newly-built.* The father * This manuscript, in the hand- writing of Mr. Baker himself, exactly as left by him, is now in my pos- session. Only a few lines from it were quoted by Mr. Wilson in his biography of De Foe. [I860.] 2 The fact of his having newly built it has been doubted, but his son-in-law's authority ought to be accepted on this point. He certainly did not occupy it till shortly before the time mentioned. It is still standing. It is the one which was occupied by the late Mr. William Frend, of the Rock life-office, and which his widow continued to oc- cupy. It is on the south side of Church-street, a little to the east of Lordship-lane or road, and has about four acres of ground attached, bounded on the west by a narrow footway, once (if not still) called Cut-throat-lane. Or it may be identified thus : take the map of Stoke Newington in Robinson's history of that place, London, 1820, 8vo, and look directly below the first "e" in Church-street. Among the papers by which the house is held, is the copy of the enrolment of a surrender to the lord of the manor dated February 26, 1740, in which the house is described as " heretofore in the "tenure or occupation of Daniel " Defoe.'' Dr. Price lived for some years in it, as the domestic chaplain of a subsequent owner. These facts I derive from the very useful, well- informed, and well-conducted Notes and Queries, iv. 299-300. A whimsical proof was given, not long ago, of the interest with which the name of De Foe still surrounds this unpicturesque house in an unpoeti- cal locality. Whimsical I call it, but it is also very honourable to the pilgrims from over distant seas who figure in it, and who display such enthusiasm for the memory of the great writer and popular advocate, in whom they have a common pro- perty with ourselves. The anec- dote was originally told me by my old friend. Sir James Emerson Tennent, who kindly re-tells it here at my 160 A FAMILY PICTURE. [Daniel was an old gentleman of sixty-four years, afflicted with gout and stone, but very cheerful, still very active, with mental faculties in sharp abundance, keeping a handsome coach, paying away much money in acts of charity, and greatly given to the cultivation of a large and pleasant garden. This was Daniel De Foe. As Mr. Baker's manuscript narrative of these scenes of his youth is before us, we will transcribe one or two brief passages. " Amongst the first who desired his ac- " quaintance at JN'ewington was Mr. D , a gentleman " well known by his writings, who had newly built there " a very handsome house, as a retirement from London, " and amused his time either in the cultivation of a large " and pleasant garden, or in the pursuit of his studies, " which he found means of making very profitable. He " was now at least sixty years of age, afflicted with the " gout and stone, but retained all his mental faculties " entire. Mr. B readily accepted his invitation, and was " so pleased vdth his conversation, that he seldom came *' to Newington without paying a visit to Mr. D , and " met usually at the tea-table his three lovely daughters, " who were admired for their beauty, their education, " and their prudent conduct. And if sometimes Mr. " D 's disorders made company inconvenient, Mr. B " was entertained by them either singly or together, and request. *' The incident of wMch ** pelled by their respect for the *' you remind me, in connexion with " name of his illustrious predeces- " the^nemory of De Foe, was this. " sor in it, to beg that they might " A friend of mine lately told me "be permitted to spend a little *' that the gentleman residing in De " time in the dwelling-place of so ** Foe's house at Newington, about '* eminent a man. Assent was * ' two years back, was one forenoon * ' readily given ; whereupon they ' ' surprised by a visit from a party ' * said that already they had ven- *' of Americans, who drove to his ** tured to anticipate that, by bring- *' door in a hired carriage. They "ing a pic-nic hamper in their " drew up in front, knocked, and " carriage — and their satisfaction "requested to see the proprietor. " was complete on permission being "On making bis appearance, the " granted to carry it into the garden, " spokesman said he presumed they *' where the explosion of cork, and " were right in supposing that this "other corresponding symptoms, " was the house of Daniel De Foe ? " speedily gave evidence of the sin- * ' — And being assured of the fact, * * cerity with which they had made " he went on to say that he and his " this very matter-of-fact pilgrimage " companions, from the new coun- " to the home of the great novelist " try, had waited on him as the " and patriot." " occupant of that mansion, im- De Foe.'\ proposal for his You^^GEST daughter. 151 '' that commonly in tlie garden when the weather was " favourable." AYith what follows, the reader need not be troubled. But with prospects of unequalled bliss came also trouble to Mr. Baker. Slave as he was become to the tender passion, he had a sober reflective turn of mind. " He knew nothing of Mr. D — 's circumstances, only " imagined from his very genteel way of living that he " must be able to give his daughter a decent portion." Mr. D — was accordingly spoken to as soon as hope was received of the young lady's approval. The young lady herself indeed made his consent the first condition of her own ; and, even more than the " genteel way of living " in this grave and good dissenter's household, we are pleased and arrested by the picture presented to us of a kindly controul, and affectionate yet prudent discipline, in the father and chief disposer of the house. The first thought of parting with his youngest daughter sorely troubled De Foe. He called her the dearest jewel he possessed, and by other playful and loving names. But then he spoke of his own age and infirmities, and how precarious his life was become, and finally, with touching reiteration that Mr. Baker must ^' use her kindly," per- mitted him to urge his suit. He should not take her, he added, like a charity girl, with nothing. She should have, even during her father's life, at least five hundred pounds ; and Mr. Baker (who had already managed to save a thousand pounds out of his employment) must add the same sum, to be settled and set apart to her use in case of accident. " I wish I could promise more," said the old man, " but what she wants in money, I hope she will " make up in goodness ; and if she proves as good a wife " as she has been a child, her husband will be a happy " man." Mr. Baker's suit prospered, but not with such unin- terrupted smoothness as to invalidate the poet's rule. After some Little time he preferred a request to De Foe " to order proper settlements to be drawn up in the " manner he had proposed ; when his answer was, that "formal articles he thought unnecessary; that he could " confide in the honour of Mr. B ; that when they talked " before, he did not know the true state of his own affairs ; " that on due consideration he found he could not part 152 DISPUTE OVER MARRIAGE SETTLEMENTS. [Daniel " witli any money in present, but at his death his daughter " Sophy's share would be more than he had promised." Bemembering the hard struggle of the great writer's life, the old claims from mercantile adventure which hung over him still unsatisfied, and the difl&culties of protecting the property in literature which more lately he had acquired, there was nothing in what he is thus reported to have said that should have raised a suspicion of his good faith. The result too early and sadly showed that he had indeed been sanguine in his first estimate, and that he had not remembered correctly the state of his aff'airs. But, to Mr. Baker, nothing was visible or admissible but his own disappointment ; and in remonstrance and complaint thereon he was eager and persistent. " Sir," interrupted De Foe at last, " if you will take " my daughter, you must take her as I can give her." " Never was father so indulgent as he has been to me ! " cried Sophy De Foe through her tears, when her too prudent wooer related his disappointment that evening in the garden. " This was the beginning," says Mr. Baker, " of that " long uneasiness they both suffered," and which carried with it the moral, that a young gentleman may err even in excess of prudence. " Several proposals," he adds, " were *' made at different times by Mr. D — and Mr. B for ac- " commodating this matter ; but each new proposal only " occasioned new perplexity : for, when everything seemed " agreed on, Mr. D — would give no security but his single " bond for the due performance of articles, tho' he had an " estate in Essex, and a new-built house at Newington, *' either of which would have been a satisfactory security ; " but he pretended these were already settled for family " purposes, which he could not break through. At length, '' however, after almost two years, Mr. D — consented to " engage his house at Newington as a security ; and, " articles being accordingly executed, the marriage was " celebrated April 30, 1729." If the opening date given by Mr. Baker is correct, the courtship of the young philosopher had lasted nearly five years. But not the least pointed touches occurred at its close, and Mr. Baker's modesty has omitted them. When all had been arranged, and the bond only waited to be De Foe,~\ letter on parting with his daughter. 153 signed/ tlie thrifty young gentleman insisted that it should bear interest at five per cent, whereas De Foe had special family reasons for limiting it to four ; and eight more months appear to have passed before this new diffi- culty vanished. The authority for so appropriate a sequel to Mr. Baker's narrative, which otherwise it strikingly confirms, is a letter by De Foe himself, here for the first time published ;' fuU of character ; and, of the very few of his private letters that have been preserved to us, decidedly the most agreeable in its tone and turns of expression. It is written in a firm strong hand, and is addressed to Mr. Henry Baker. De Foe was now in his sixty-eighth year ; it is the last picture of the great author which we shall be able to contemplate without sorrow ; and we may perhaps account it as no small gain that a long life of so much struggle and vicissitude, should have left so far un- impaired the manifest spirit of domestic enjoyment and quiet thankfulness, which shines through a letter written so near its close. Sir, — I am sorry there should be any manner of room for an objection when we are so near a conclusion of an aff'air like this. I should be very uneasie, when I give you a gift I so much value (and I hope I do not overrate her neither), there should be any reserve among us that should leave the least room for unkindness, or so much as thinking of unkindness^no, nor so much as of the word. But there is a family reason why I am tyed down to the words of four per cent, and I can not think Mr. Baker should dispute so small a matter with me after I tell him so, (viz.) that I am so tyed down. I can, I be- lieve, many ways make him up the little sum of five pound a-year ; and when I tell you thus under my hand, that I shall think myself obliged to do it durante vita, I shall add that I shall think myself more obliged to do so, than if you had it under hand and seal. But, if you are not willing to trust me on my parole, for ^ A facsimile of De Foe's signature Magazine, Vol. 82, part i, p. 529. to this bond (dated 5th April, 1729) ^ pj-Q^ ^\^q original, now in my described as " for payment of £500 possession. It had been given by " marriage portion of Sophia De Foe Mr. Baker's great great grandson ** to Mr. Henry Baker of Enfield," to the late Mr. Dawson Turner, was published in the Gentleman's [I860.] 154 ^HIS DEAREST AND BEST-BELOVED. [Daniel SO small a sum, and tliat according to tlie Great Treatys abroad, there must be a secret article in our Negotiations — I say if it must be so, I would fain put myself in a condition to deny you nothing, which you can ask, beHev- ing you will ask nothing of me which I ought to deny. When you speak of a child's Fortmie, which I own you do very modestly, you must give me leave to say only this, you must accept of this in bar of any claim from the City Customes ; and I doubt you will have but too much reason, seeing I can hardly hope to do equally for all the rest, as I shall for my dear Sophie. But after that, you shall onely allow me to say, and that you shall depend upon, whatever it shall please God to bless me with, none shall have a deeper share in it. And you need do no more than remember, that she is, ever was, and ever will be, my Dearest and Best Beloved. And let me add again, I hope you will take it for a mark of my singular and affectionate concern for you, that I thus give her you, and that I say too. If I could give her much more, it should be to you, with the same affection. Yours without flattery, August intky 1728. "^^ ^ * We have said that here was the last clear glimpse of De Foe that we should get without grief and pain. But it is not so. There is one other before the final shadow falls. Homely but hearty are the words in which a certain honest old Thomas Webb, after telling us what he had suffered by the death of his wife, goes on to tell us who it was that comforted and consoled him. " And poor dis- " tressed I, left alone, and no one to go and speak to, " save only Mr. Deffoe, who hath acted a noble and " generous part towards me and my poor children. The " Lord reward him and his with the blessings of upper *' and nether spring, with the blessings of his basket and " store,'' &c. Alas ! the basket and store of De Foe were not much oftener to be replenished on this side the grave. Eight months after his letter about his daughter's marriage, the marriage took place, and the next glimpse we get of him reveals a sad change. It is a letter to his printer, Mr. J. Watts, in Wild-court, and even in its signature the bold De Foe.^ correcting his last proofs. 155 upright hand is broken down. He is grieved to have de- tained the proofs, but he has been exceeding ill. He has revised his manuscript again, and contracted it very much, and he hopes to bring it within the bulk the printer desires. He now sends him back the first sheet, with as much copy as wdll make near three sheets more ; and he shall have all the remainder, so as not to let him stand still at all. He greatly regrets the number of alterations made in the pages he returns, and fears the corrections will cost as much as perhaps setting the whole over again would be ; but he will endeavour to send the rest of the copy so well corrected as to give very little trouble. — Whether or not he succeeded in that endeavour, cannot now be told ; for there is no evidence that any more than that single sheet was ever printed.' It must be enough for us that such was his hope and his intention, and that even such, to the very last, according to this most cha- racteristic letter, were the labours, the anxieties, and the ill-rewarded toil, which followed this great English author up to the very verge of the grave. There is but one more letter of his preserved. Its date is a year later ; and from this letter, also addressed to his son-in-law Baker,' and which is one of the most affecting ^ The original manuscript never- ' ' ' from posterity but a name. theless exists, and was lately sold ' ' ' Look at Daniel De Foe ; recol- to a private purchaser at the sale of " ' lect him pilloried, bankrupt, Mr. Dawson Turner of Great Yar- ** ' wearing away his life to pay mouth, for sixty-nine pounds. The " 'his creditors in full, and dying British Museum had not the courage "'in the struggle! — and his to go beyond thirty-five. Its title is " ' works live, imitated, corrupted, The Complete Gentleman. [I860.] " ' yet casting off their stains, * The eldest son of this marriage, ' ' ' not by protection of law, but David Erskine Baker, so named " ' by their own pure essence, after his godfather, Lord Buchan, " ' Had every schoolboy whose wrote the Biographia Dramatica, " ' young imagination has been or Companion to the Playhouse. " * prompted by his great work, What follows I transcribe from a " * and whose heart has learned to note in the second edition of my " ' throb in the strange yet familiar Life of Goldsmith. "Pleading the " 'solitude he created, given even ' case of authors, and their title ' ' ' the half-penny of the statute of ' to a longer protection of their " * Anne, there would have been * copyright, Mr. Serjeant Talfoiird " ' no want of a provision for his ' employed this affecting illustra- " * children, no need of a subscrip- ' tion. ' A man of genius and in- " ' tion fora statue to his memory ! ' ' ' tegrity, who has received all "As I transcribe these eloquent * ' insult and injury from his con- " words (January, 1854), I become * * temporaries, obtains nothing " acquainted with the most strik- 156 TREACHERY OF A SON. [Daniel that the English, language contains, we learn that far be- yond poverty, or printers, or booksellers, or any of the manifold ills of authorship, the conduct of De Foe's second son was embittering the closing hours of his long and checkered life. The precise story is difficult to unravel ; ' ' ing practical comment which it *' would be possible for them to " receive, in the fact that there is " now living in Kennington, in " deep though tmcom plaining pov- ** erty, James De Foe, aged 77, * ' the great grandson of the author *' of Robinson Crusoe." — Life and Times of Goldsmith, vol. ii. p. 482. The sequel to this note remains (March, 1858) to be given. Upon reading it, Mr. Landor addressed to the Times a noble eulogy on De Foe, calling upon every schoolboy, and every man in England who had been one, to give his penny at once to save the descendant he had left — "a Crusoe without a Friday, in ' ' an island to him a desert." I sub- join the close of this striking appeal. " Let our novelists, now the " glory of our literature, remember " their elder brother Daniel, and " calculate (if, indeed, the debt is " calculable) what they owe him. " Let our historians ask them- * ' selves if no tribute is due, in long *' arrear, to the representative of *' him who wrote the History of the ** Plague in London. What ought "to live will live, what ought to *' perish will perish. Marble is " but a wretched prop at best. " Defoe wants no statue, and is *' far beyond all other want. *'Alas! there is one behind who " is not so. Let all contribute *' one penny for one year; poor " James has lived seventy-seven, *' and his dim eyes can not look ' * far into another. " Persuade, Sir, for you can "more powerfully than any, the " rich, the industrious, the studi- " ous, to purchase a large store of " perdurable happiness for them- " selves by the smallest sum of a " day's expendituie. The author " of that book which has imparted " to most of them the greatest de- * * light of any, was also the earliest * ' teacher of political economy, the " first propouuder of free trade. " He planted that tree, which, " stationary and stunted for nearly "two centuries, is now spreading "its shadow by degrees over all "the earth. He was the most far- " sighted of our statesmen, and the " most worthily trusted by the " wisest of our kings. He stood " up for the liberty of the press ; " let the press be grateful. " It was in the power of Johnson " to relieve the granddaughter of ' * Milton : Sir, it is in yours to " prop up the last scion of Defoe. " If Milton wrote the grandest " poem, and the most energetic " and eloquent prose, of any "writer in any country; if he " stood erect before Tyranny, and " covered with his buckler, not " England only, but nascent na- " tions ; if our great prophet raised " in vision the ladder that rose " from earth to heaven, with angels * ' upon every step of it ; lower, " indeed, but not less useful, were ' ' the energies of Defoe. He stimu- " lated to enterprise those colonies " of England which extend over * ' every sea, and which carry with " them, from him, the spirit and * ' the language that will predomi- " nate throughout the world. " Achilles and Homer will be for- " gotten before Crusoe and Defoe." To this most striking letter suc- ceeded one by Mr. Charles Knight, from whom the information as to James De Foe originally reached me, and who had already, with his characteristic zeal in every good work, opened in conjunction with Mr. Dickens a subscription. Mr. De Foe.~\ last melancholy letter. 157 — but what lie had hinted to Mr. Baker, and that too cautious and wary gentleman had been so slow to believe, of the uncertain condition of his fortune and estate, had come unexpectedly and fatally true. One of his old credi- tors, " a wicked, perjur'd, and contemptible enemy," had struck him suddenly with so heavy a hand, that, to avoid utter shipwreck of everything, he had been fain to make over what he possessed to his son in trust for the joint benefit of his two unmarried daughters and their mother ; and now this trust the son had betrayed, had converted all to his own use, and had reduced his mother and sisters to beggary. " Nothing but this has conquered or could con- " quer me. Et tu I Brute. I depended upon him, I trusted ** him, I gave up my two dear unprovided children into his " hands ; but he has no compassion, and sufiers them and " their poor dying mother to beg their bread at his door, '* and to crave, as if it were an alms, what he is bound under " hand and seal, besides the most sacred promises, to sup- " ply them with : himself, at the same time, living in a *' profusion of plenty. It is too much for me. Excuse " my infirmity ; I can say no more, my heart is too full. " I only ask one thing of you as a dying request. Stand " by them when I am gone, and let them not be wronged, " while he is able to do them right. Stand by them as a " brother ; and if you have any thing within you owing " to my memory, who have bestow'd on you the best gift " I had to give, let them not be injured and trampled on " by false 'pretences, and unnatural reflections. I hope " they will want no help but that of comfort and council ; " but that, they will indeed want, being too easy to be " managed by words and promises." Even thus De Foe writes, from a place near Greenwich, where he seems to have been some time wandering about, Landor's letter brought immediate have heen collected, but more was and large additions to it, and enough not wanted. James De Foe died on was obtained for the purpose de- the 19th of May, 1857. After pay- sired. From the close of January, ment of all expenses incident to his 1854, to the middle of May, 1857, illness and death, a very small ba- nearly 200Z. was paid, in small lance was handed to his daughters ; sums, to the worthy old man ; and an account of the monies col- whose needs were in this way better lected and distributed was then cir- satisfied, than if the money in any culated among the subscribers, in larger amount had been placed at so far as it was prissible to reach his disposal. Aluch more might them, by Mr. Knight and myself. 158 DEATH. [Daniel De Foe. alone, in want, and with, a broken heart. The letter, as we have said, is to his son-in-law, Baker ; possessor of his " best gift," his dear daughter, his dearest Sophia, whom if he could but meet again, " without giving her the grief of " seeing her father in tenebris, and under the load of insup- " portable sorrows," even those griefs might be more supportable ! It closes thus :^ " I would say, I hope with " comfort, that it is yet well I am so near my journey's end, *' and am hastening to the place where the weary are at " rest, and where the wicked cease to trouble. Be it that " the passage is rough, and the day stormy, by what way " soever He please to bring me to the end of it, I desire to " finish life with this temper and soul in all cases — Te " Deiim laudamus. May all you do be prosperous, and all " you meet with pleasant, and may you both escape the " tortures and troubles of uneasy life ! It adds to my " grief that I must never see the pledge of your mutual " love, my little grandson. Give him my blessing, and " may he be, to you both, your joy in youth, and your " comfort in age, and never add a sigh to your sorrow. " Kiss my dear Sophy once more for me ; and, if I must " see her no more, tell her this is from a father that loved " her above all his comforts, to his last breath." The money was recovered, and the family again pros- perous ; but Daniel De Foe was gone. In his seventy- first year, on the 24th of April 1731, he had somehow found his way back to London — ^to die in that parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate,'^ wherein he was borri ; and, as long as the famous old city should live, to live in the memory and admiration of her citizens. , ^ It is only just to Mr, Baker to place of De Foe's death was not add that he seems, shortly before known to Mr. Walter Wilson. It its date, to have written a "very took- place in Kopemakers'-alley, kind and affectionate letter " to his Moorfields. Of this fact there can father-in-law, who takes occasion be no reasonable doubt, it being in the midst of his trouble to speak, so stated in the Daily Courant of with characteristic felicity of phrase, the day following his death. Rope- of his "kind manner and hinder makers' -alley no longer exists, but *' thought from which it flows.'" it stood about opposite to where the 2 Cromwell was married there, London Institution now stands. and Milton buried. The precise SIE EICHARD STEELE.' 1675—1729. On the Life and Writings of Addison. By Thomas BABiKaiON Maoaulat. London, 1852. Steele and Addison are among the first ghosts met by- Fielding in his delightful Journey from this World to the next. A remark from the spirit of Yirgil having a little disconcerted the bashful Joseph, he has turned for re- assurance to the spirit most familiar and best known to him on earth, when at once Steele heartily embraces him, and tells him he had been the greatest man up in the other world, and that he readily resigned all the merit of his own works to him. In return Addison gives him a gracious smile, and, clapping him on the back with much solemnity, cries out, " Well said, Dick." Fielding was here laughing at the claim set up by Addison's associ- ates, when they would have struck down his old fellow- labourer's fame, to add to the glories of his own. What Steele said so well for his friend, and ill for himself, in the other world, had already been more than broadly hinted in this, in Mr. Tickell's celebrated preface. Nevertheless, Steele's fame survived that back-handed blow. What the Kving Addison himself foretold came true ; and, out of party contentions so fierce that no character escaped them unsullied, side by side, when those contentions ceased, his friend's and his emerged.' 1 From the (Quarterly Review, March 1855. With additions. ' "Their personal friendship and '* ties they are engaged in be at an " enmities must cease, and the par- "end, before their faults or their 160 TWO FRIENDS STRUCK ASUNDER. \Sir Richard Thougli circumstances favoured somewliat tlie one against the other, there had come to be a corner for both in almost all men's liking ; and those " little diurnal essays " which are extant still/' kept also extant, in an equal and famous companionship, the two foremost Essayists of England. A more powerful hand than Mr. TickelFs now strikes them rudely apart. A magnificent eulogy of Addison is here built upon a most contemptuous depreci- ation of Steele ; and if we are content to accept without appeal the judgment of Mr. Macaulay's Essay, there is one pleasant face the less in our Walhalla of British "Worthies. For ourselves we must frankly say Not Content, and our reasons shall be stated in this article. Not, we dare say, without partiality ; certainly not without frank and full allowance for the portion of evil which is inseparable from all that is good, and for the something of littleness mixed up with all that is great,;;^n one of his most charming essays Steele has himself reminded us, that the word inijKrfection should never carry to the considerate^ man's heart a thought unkinder than the word humanity y and we shall also think it well to remember, what wiih not less wisdom on another occasion he remarked, as to the prodigious difference between the figure the same person bears in our imagination when we are pleased with him, from that wherein we behold him when we are angry.^ Steele we think eminently a man to write or speak of in the mood of pleasure. But first let Mr. Macaulay speak of him. Introducing him as a person only entitled to distinction as one of the chief members of the small literary coterie to which Addison was the oracle, and deriving from that fact his "virtues can have justice done "different parties, will then have "them. . . I cannot forbear en- "the same body of admirers, and " tertainiug myself very often with " appear illustrious in the opinions * ' the idea of an imaginary histo- ' * of the whole British nation. . . . " rian describing the reign of Anne I, " *It was under this reign,' he will " and introducing it with a preface "say, 'that the Spectator pub- " to his readers that he is now en- " 'lished those little diurnal Es- " tering upon the most shining pai't "'says, which are still extant,' " of the English story. The several " &c. &c." — Spectator^ lS.o.\^\. " antagonists who now endeavour ^ Tatlei; No. 246. " to depreciate one another, and " Theatre, No. 26. " are celebrated or traduced by StCele.'\ MACAULAY ON STEELE AND ADDISON. 161 claim to present recognition, lie describes him in general terms as one of those people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. He admits his temper to have been sweet, his affections warm, and his spirits lively ; but says that his passions were so strong, and his principles so weak, that his life was spent in sinning and repenting, in inculcating what was right and doing what w^as wron^> Hence, we are told, though he was a man of piety and honour in speculation, he was in practice much of the rake and a little of the swindler ; but, then again, he was so good-natured, that it^was not easy to be seriously angry with him ; and^ven rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a spunging-house, or drank himself into a fever. Among the rigid moralists here referred to, we must presume was Mr. Joseph Addison, whose strict abstinence from drink is so well known ; but the Essayist is care- ful to add, that the kindness with which that rigid moralist regarded his friend was "not immingled with " sconij^ So much the worse for Addison, if that be true ; for very certainly he succeeded in concealing it from his friend, and, we imagine indeed, from every one but Mr. Macaulay. True, no doubt, it is, that so consummate a master of humour could hardly have had it always under control ; and that the most intimate of his associates would not be spared the pleasant laugh which was raised in turn against all. But Pope, from whom we derive the fact that he would now and then " play a little '^ on the extraordinary regard which Steele evinced for him, also informs us how weU it was always taken ; and, that any- thing of contempt ' ever passed from one to the other, is most assui-edly not to be inferred from any published record.' The first characteristic thing which Pope noted in Addison, that he was always for moderation in parties, and used to blame his dear friend Steele for being too much of a party-man, marks the source of whatever dis- agreement they had ; and he who, on that very ground of party, lavished upon Steele the most unsparing and unscrupulous abuse, and whose old intimacy with both friends had opened to him the secrets of their most familiar hours, never thought of using against him such 162 EVIDENCE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [tS'/V Richavd a formidable weapon as lie would have found in Addi- son/s contempt// ■"^' Swift calls Steele a thoughtless fellow, satirises his submission to his wife, and says he was never good company till he had got a bottle of wine in his head ; ^ he twits him with his debts, and flings a bailiff at him in every other paragraph, through some scores of page^jf^ he avers that he cannot write grammar ; ^ nay, he descends so low (but this through the fouler mouth of one of the professional libellers of the day) as even coarsely to laugh at his short face, little flat nose, broad back, and thick legs ; " and yet he empties inefiectively all those vials of his o\vn scorn, without one allusion to that other which he knew would have gone, with a deadly venom, straight to the heart of his victim. '''Before their final rupture, he had to answer Steele's reproach that he had spoken of him as " bridled by Addison," and he does this with a denial that frankly admits Steele's right to be jealous of the imputatioru^ Throughout his intimate speech to Stella, whether fiis humour be sarcastic or polite, the friend- ship of Steele and Addison is for ever suggesting some annoyance to himself, some mortification, some regret ; but never once the doubt that it was not intimate and sincere, or that into it entered anything inconsistent with a perfect equality. "When he wishes to serve the one, and is annoyed that the other receives the overture coldly (22 October, 1710) ; when he suspects the one of prevent- ing the other's visits to Harley (15th November, 1710) ; when he treats a service to the one as not less a service to the other (14th January, 1710-11) ; when he reproaches the one as ungrateful for what he had done for the other (15th January, 1710-11); when he calls him- self a fool for spending his credit in favour of both (16th March, 1710-11) ; and when he has promised my Lord Treasurer never again to speak for either (29th June, 1711) ; he shows you, still, that he is speaking of an intercourse upheld by the strongest attachments, and into which, whatever the respective ^ Journal to Stella, Oct. 3, 1710. "* Letter from, Dr. Tripe to Nestor 2 Importance of the Guardian Ironside. considered. s Letter of Swift to Steele, May 3 Fublic Spirit of the Whigs. 27, 1713. Steele*^ RELATIONS OE ADDISON AXD STEELE. 163 merits of the men, there could have entered no element oiJ>' scorn.'' ^ ■■^li is quite true, however, that some coldness and estrangement did grow between Steele and Addison as time went oti, though to the last it was never so complete as Mr. Macaulay would wish to convey To this, and its causes, we shall have to advert hereafter ; but in con- nection with it we have so express and affecting a state- ment from Steele himself, only six months after his friend's death, and in reply to a coarse assailant whom it silenced, that as to the general fact it leaves no doubt whatever, /^here never, he says, was a more strict friendship than between himself and Addison, nor had they ever any difference but what proceeded from their different way of pursuing the same thing ; the one waited and stemmed the torrent, while the other too often plunged into it ; but, though they thus had lived for some .^years last past, shunning each other, they still preserved the most passionate concern for their mutual welfare; and when they met, " they were as unreserved as boys, " and talked of the greatest affairs, upon which they saw " where they differed, without pressing (what they knew " impossible) to convert each other." ^ As to the sub- stance or worth of what thus divided them, Steele only adds the significant expression of his hope that, if his family is the worse, his country may be the better, for the mortification he has undergone^ There is something in that. When a man is indiscreet, it is not beside the matter to inquire what passion it is that urges him to indiscretion. It may be the actual good of others, or it may be a fancied good for himself. Mr. AUworthy did so many kindnesses for so many people, that he made enemies of the whole parish ; and it wiU perhaps generally be found that the man who cares least for his neighbours, is very far from the least likely to pass for good-natured among them. It will not do to judge off-hand, even between the impetuosity which plunges into the torrent, and the placidity which waits upon the brink. Each temperament has its advantages, within a narrow or a more extended range ; and, where the passion 1 The Theatre, No. xii, Feb. 9, 1719-20 M 2 164 CONDESCENSIONS OF PRAISE. {_Sir Richavd for public affairs has been so incorrigible that it refused to take regard of its own or others' convenience in its manifestations, we must not too hastily resolve to take part either against the hostility it provokes, or with the sympathy it repels. So much, before passing in review Steele's actual character and story, it will be well to keep in mind ; though there can be no manner of doubt that his course, whether in other respects ill or well taken, put him at grave disadvantage with the world. Even in regard to this, however, there is no need to take any special tone of pity; and too much stress has perhaps been laid on Addison's own regrets in the matter. It was when the good Mr. Hughes thought he saw an opportunity, on the sudden cessation of Mr. Steele's Guardian, to get Mr. Addison's services for a little scheme of his own ; and, with many flourishes about the regret with which all the more moderate Whigs saw their com- mon friend's thoughts turned entirely on politics and dis- engaged from pursuits more entertaining and profitable, had propounded his plan for a Register; that Mr. Addison, foreseeing little glory in working with Mr. Hughes, and sending a civil No, I thank you, I must now rest and lay in a little fuel, proceeded, merely upon the hint his corre- spondent had thrown out, to speak of Steele in language often quoted, and used against him by Mr. Macaulay. " In the meantime I should be glad if you would set " such a project on foot, for I know nobody else capable " of succeeding in it, and turning it to the good of man- *' kind, since my friend has laid it down. I am in a " thousand troubles for poor Dick, and wish that his zeal " for the public may not be ruinous to himself; but he " has sent me word that he is determined to go on, and ** that any advice I can give him in this particular will " have no weight with him." Formerly, as now, these expressions have been pointed to a sense not exactly intended by them. Taken with what induced them, and read as they were written, they are certainly unmingled with scorn. There is pity in them, to be sure ; and there is what Mr. Macaulay calls the " trying with little success to keep "him out of scrapes;" both which must pass for what they are worth. There is also the " poor Dick," which ^ Steele.~\ way to "cry" a man down. 1G5 has been so lavishly repeated since ; but, we must take the liberty to add, with a feeling and for a purpose far less worthy. -^'It is our belief that no man so much as Steele has suffered from compassion. It was out of his own bitter experience that he shrewdly called it, himself, the best disguise of malice, and said that the most apposite course to cry a man down was to lament hinj^ Mr. Macaulay is incapable of malice, even if the motive for it were in such a case conceivable ; but whatever praise he gives to Steele is always in the way of condescension, and he cannot bring himself to state a virtue in him which he does not at the same time extenuate with its equal vice or drawback. We much fear there are few characters that would stand this kind of analysis, — very few in which the levelling circumstance might not be detected, that more or less brings down the high, the wise, the strong, and the fortunate, to the lower level with their fellow- men. An ill mending of the matter it would be, indeed, to extenuate vice itself as a set-off to the extenuation of virtue ; but both have need of a more considerate reflec- tion than they are generally apt to receive, in connection with such a life as we shaU shortly retrace. For not a few years of that life, we dare say. Captain Steele might have pleaded, with Captain Plume, that for all his exube- rance of spirits he was yet very far from the rake the world imagined. " I have got an air of freedom," says Farquhar's pleasant hero, " which people mistake in ^ The sketch in which this occurs * * ceremony or taking leave, runs (No. 4) is of a class of men who *' to the side on which they appear, (making allowance for special dif- " Hence it is, that he passes all ferences in themselves) would not " his days under reproach from be ill represented by De Foe and *' some persons or other ; and he is, "^teele. It is very difficult, he says, *' at different times, called a rene- with an obvious tone of self-reference, ' ' gade, a confessor, and a martyr, to put them down. It is thought " by every party. This happens enough to shrug your shoulders, " from his sticking to principles, take snuff, and say something in ' ' and having no respect to persons ; pity of them. But yet the man you "and it is his inward constancy so lament, is, after all, too hardy a * ' that makes him vary in outward creature to be so discountenanced and "appearance. It is therefore un- undone. "He is never mortified " lucky for those who speak of this ' ' but when truth, honour, and rea- * ' kind of character with ridicule, " son are against him ; which, as " that all the great who ever lived " soon as he perceives, he, without " were such." 1G6 VIRTUES AND VICES IN DISGUISE. [^Sir Richavd " me, just as in others they mistake formality for religion." It is a kind of mistake committed in many forms ; and Pope was hinting at it when he remarked, that whereas, according to La Rochefoucauld, a great many virtues are disguised ^dces, he would engage, by the same mode of reasoning, to prove a great many vices to be disguised virtues. Take the love of ourselves for example, and say that in it lies the motive of most of our actions, good or bad ; yet it by no means would follow that the number are not much greater wherein the self-love of some men incline them to please others, than where the self-love of others is employed wholly in pleasing themselves. Steele had said the same thing several years before in his Christian Hero, when he remarked that there can really be no greater love of self than to love others, nor any more secure way to obtain good offices than to do them. Not that any such modes of reasoning may sufficiently excuse a life spent, if what Mr. Macaulay tells us be true, in sinning and repenting, in inculcating what was right and doing what was wrong. A profitless life to himself, beyond a doubt, if such indeed was Steele's ; but sugges- tive also of the remark, that, since the wrong that was done has passed away, and the right that was inculcated remains, others decidedly may have profited though he did not. For ourselves, holding with the philosophy which teaches us that depravity of disposition is less pardonable than any kind of frailty of passion, we know of no ofPence against virtue so grave as to speak of it in disparagement ; and no worse practice in regard to vice than the systematic praise and recommendation of it. "With the latter, at least, no one has ever been so reckless, in our daj* or even in his own, as to charge Richard Steele. //jIq had a real love and reverence for virtue. Pope told Spence. He had the best nature in the world, and was a man of almost boundless benevolence, said Young. Lady Mary Montagu lived much with all the wits, and knew no one with the kind nature of Steele. It is his admitted weakness to have yielded to the temptation which yet he never lost the strength to condemn ; but we should remember who has said that, if at all times to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had Steele."] each man to be judged by himself. 167 been churclies and poor men's cottages princes' palaces^^ Let us add that even Addison himself could not always do both ; and that, if the strict rule were applied universally, never to accept unreservedly what is good in a man, and praise it accordingly, without minute measimng-off of what may also be condemned for evil, with detraction at least equal to the praise, there would be altogether an end at last to all just judgments, and a w^oeful general confusion of right and wrong. Jh^ Addison had not Steele's de- fects ; that Steele's defects, graver though they may have been, were yet not those of Addison ; should surely be far from matter of complaining with us, since in no small degree it has served to contribute to the more complete instruction and entertainment of the w^orld. There is a wise little paper in which Steele has pursued so closely an argument resembling this, that we may adapt it to our present use. We may stigmatise it as not less a want of sense than of good nature, to say that Addison has less exuberant spirits than Steele, but Steele not such steady self-control as Addison ; for, that such men have not each other's capacities is no more a diminution to either, than if you shouM say Addison is not Steele, or Steele not Addison, -^he, heathen world, as Mr. Bickerstaff reasons the matter, had so little notion that perfection was to be expected from men, that among them any one quality or endowment in a heroic degree made a god. Hercules had strength, but it was never objected to him that he wanted wit. Apollo presided over wit, and it was never asked whether he had strength. Those wise heathens were glad to immortalise any one serviceable gift, and to overlook all imperfections in the person who had it. But with us it is far otherwise. We are only too eager to reject many manifest virtues, if we find them accompanied with a single apparent weakness.,^ ^'' Nor does the shrewd Mr. Bickerstaff end the argument here. He discovers in it the secret why principally it is that the worst of mankind, the hbellers, receive so much encouragement. " The low race of men take a great " pleasure in finding an eminent character levelled to " their condition by a report of its defects, and they keep " themselves in countenance, though they are excelled in a 1 The Merchant of Venice. 168 THE WORLD AND ITS BENEFACTORS. \_Sir Richard " thousand virtues, if they believe they have in common " with a great person any one fault." It would not be easy to express more perfectly, than in these few words, the danger of those extremes of depreciation to which Steele more than any man has been subjected. It is our firm behef that, whatever his improvidence may have been, he was incapable of a dishonourable action. It will not be difficult to show, in the brief sketch we shall presently give of his career, how little avoidable in his circumstances were not a few of his embarrassments and troubles. We wish it were possible to doubt that the life to which only he was warranted in applying the modest expression that it was " at best but pardonable," was not better than ninety-nine hundredths of theirs whp would be apt to pass the harshest judgments upon it. ,^ It was at least the life of a disinterested poKtician and patriot, of a tender husband, of an attached father, of a scholar, a wit, a man of genius, a gentleman. But the wit and the genius brought with them their usual penal- ties ; and the world, not content that their exercise should have enlarged the circle of its enjoyments, and added enormously to human happiness in various ways, must satisfy its vulgar eagerness to find feet of clay for its image of gold, and give censorious fools the comfort of speaking as ill as may be of their benefactor^^ And so thp inquisition, far worse than "forquemada's, is opened. 'A^ircumstances of life the most minute, nor any longer intelligible without the context that has perished, are dragged into monstrous prominence. Re- lations the most intimate are rudely exposed. Letters are printed without concealment, though written in the confidence of a privacy so sacred that to break it in the case of ordinary men would be to overturn society alto- gether. And if the result should finally show that the man who has taught us all so well what our own conduct ought to be, had unhappily failed in such wisdom for the guidance of his own, the general complacence and satis- faction are complete. Silly world ! as even Swift can find it in his heart to say ; not to understand how much better occupied it would be in finding out that men of wit may , be the most, rather than the least, moral of mankin^^ Unlucky man of wit ! who, in the teeth of his own earnest Steele.'\ APPOINTMENT OF GAZETTEER. 169 warning, that only lie who lives below his income lays up efficient armour against those who will cover all his frailties when he is so fortified, and exaggerate them when he is naked and defoDceless,^ goes incontinently and lives above his own income, and gets himself rated as " a " swindler." Nor does Mr. Macaulay's disparagement of Steele take only the form of such harsh and quite unwarrantable expressions. It extends from his moral to his intellectual character; and we are not permitted to believe that a man could write excellent Tatlers, who was not able to pay his tavern-bills with unvarying punctuality. In forming his most celebrated literary project, we are told, Steele was far indeed from seeing its consequences. It had originated in his access to early and authentic foreign news, opened by that appointment of Gazetteer, which, says Mr. Macaulay, he had received " from Sun- " derland, at the request, it is said, of Addison." This is another of the many attempts which we grieve to see in his Essay, to exhibit Steele as wholly dependent on Addi- son for his position with public men ; but it is certainly incorrect. Swift expressly tells us, on the information of Under-Secretary Erasmus Lewis, that it was Harley from whom he received his appointment, and at the request of Maynwaring. Indeed, Steele has himself left us in no doubt as to this ; for, when he was reproached for attack- ing the man to whom his thanks for it were due, he ex- cused himself by saying that Harley, the person referred to, had refused at the time to accept such thanks, and had transferred them wholly to Maynwaring : that very leader among the Whigs who is now known himself to have written the attack comj)lained of.^ 1 The Tatler, No. 180. " pounds. This was devilish un- 2 See the Tatler, No. 193. The " grateful." *'When," he says, in fictitious letter of prompter Downes tlie Importance of the Guardian was certainly by Maynwaring, I considered (Works, ed. Scott, iv. quote Swift: "Steele has lost his 192-3), **Mr. Maynwaring recom- " place as Gazetteer," he writes to *' mended him to the employment of Stella {Journal, Oct. 22, 1710), " Gazetteer, Mr. Harley, out of an ' ' three hundred pounds a-year, for ' ' inclination to encourage men of '* writing a Tatler some months ago " parts, raised that office from fifty *' against Mr, Harley, who gave it " pounds to three hundred pounds ** him at first, and raised the salary " a-year." *' from sixty to three hundred 170 FIEST DESIGN OF THE TATLER. \_Sir Rlchavd Mr. Macaulay proceeds to give us his own description of the aim and design of the Tatler. Suggested by Steele's experience as Gazetteer, it was to be on a plan quite new, and to appear on the days when the post left London for the country, which were, in that generation, the Tues- days, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Mr. Macaulay thinks it immaterial to mention that De Foe's Review, with not a few points of resemblance, had already for five years travelled by the country posts on those days ; but indeed the resemblance could hardly be expected to suggest itself, with such a low opinion of Steele's jpiirpose in tbe Tatler as he seems to have formed. '/''It was to contain, he says, the foreign news, accounts of thea- trical representations, and the literary gossip of Will's and of the Grecian. It was also to contain remarks on the fashionable topics of the day, compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted sharpers, and criti- cisms on popular preachers. " The aim of Steele does " not appear to have been at first higher than this." Mr. Macaulay's manifest object is to convey the im- pression that the Tatler hdidi no real worth until Addison joined it../ Now the facts are, that, with the exception of very rare occasional hints embodied in papers indubitably by Steele, and of the greater part of one essay which appeared in May, and of another published in July, Addison's contri- bittions to the Tatler did not begin until his return from Ireland in the middle of October, 1709, when eighty num- bers had been issued. If, therefore, what Mr. Macaulay would convey be correct, Steele's narrow and limited design must have lasted at least so long ; and that which gives the moral not less than the intellectual charm to these famous Essays, which turned their humour into a censorship of manners at once gentle and effective, and made their wit subservient to wisdom and piety, could not have become apparent until after the middle of the second volume. Up to that time, according to Mr. Macaulay, Steele must have been merely compiling news, reviewing theatres, retailing literary gossip, remarking on fashionable topics, complimenting beauties, pasquinading sharpers, or criticising preachers ; and could not yet have entered the higher field which the genius of Addison was Steele.'\ opening numbers of the tatleu. 171 to open to him. Nevertheless this is certain, that, in dedicating the first vohame of the work to Maynwaring, he describes in language that admits of no miscon- struction, not only his own intention in setting it on foot, hut what he calls the " sudden acceptance, '^ the extra- ordinary success, which immediately followed ; and which attracted to its subscription almost every name "now " eminent among^us for power, wit, beauty, valour, or " wisdom." //iSswfeR being, he says, to observe upon the manner^,' both in the pleasurable and the busy part of mankind, with a view to an exposure of the false arts of life, he resolved to do this by way of a letter of intel- ligence constructed on so novel a plan, that it should appeal to the curiosity of all persons, of all conditions and of each sex ; and at once he proceeds to explain the character of his design as precisely that attempt *' to pull " ofi" the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and " to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our " discourse, and our behaviour," which was remarked by Johnson, three-quarters of a century afterwards, as its most happy distinguishing feature. It was this that the old critic and philosopher singled out as the very drift of all its labour in teaching us the minuter decencies and inferior duties, in regulating the practice of our daily conversation, in correcting depravities rather ridiculous than criminal, and in removing, if not the lasting calamities of life, those grievances which are its hourly vexation. / / But the papers themselves are before us, if we want evidence more conclusive. Here is the first number with its motto superscribed, claiming for its comprehensive theme the qtiicquid a gtmt homines ; and here, among the very first words that give us hearty greeting — " and for as " much as this globe is not trodden upon by mere drudges " of business only, but that men of spirit and genius are " justly to be esteemed as considerable agents in it " — the lively note seems struck for every pleasant strain that followed. Where are the commonplaces described by Mr. Macaulay ? How shall we limit our selection of examples, in disproof of the alleged restriction to compiling gossip- ing, complimenting, pasquinading ? Why, as v/e turn over the papers preceding that number 81 which must be said 173 CRITICISM ON THE STAGE. [S/> Richavd to have begun tlie regular contributions of Addison, there is hardly a trait that fails to flash upon us the bright wit, the cordial humour, the sly satire, the subtle yet kindly criticism, the good-nature and humanity, which have endeared this delightful book to successive genera- tions of readers. There is, indeed, not less prominent at the outset than it continued to the close, the love of theatrical representations, and no doubt actors are criti- cised and preachers too ; but we require no better proof than the very way in which this is done, of the new and original spirit that entered with it into periodical literature. In both the critic finds means of detecting countless afi'ec- tations ; and no one acquainted with the Pulpit of that day, need feel surprise at the hints he gives of the service the Stage might render it, or that Mr. Betterton should have borrowed from Mr. Bickerstaff the answer to San- croft's question — Why it was that actors, speaking of things imaginary, afiected audiences as if they were real ; while preachers, speaking of things real, could only affect their congregations as with things imaginary ? '* Why " indeed I don't know ; unless it is that we actors speak of " things imaginary as if they were real, while you in " the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imagi- " nary." An admirable paper, to the same effect, among the early Tatlers, is that wherein he tells us, that in tragi- cal representations of the highest kind it is not the pomp of language, or the magnificence of dress, in which the passion is wrought that touches sensible spirits, "but " something of a plain and simple nature which breaks in " upon our souls by that sympathy which is given us for " our mutual good will and service." ^ And he illustrates his position by the example of Macduff when he hears of the murder of his children, and of Brutus when he speaks of the death of Portia. There is no criticism of Shakespeare, in that day, at all comparable to this of Steele's, at the outset and to the close of the Tatler. With no set analysis or fine-spun theory, but dropped only here and there, and from time to time, with a careless grace, it is yet of the subtlest discrimi- nation. He places the great dramatist as high in phi- 1 Tatler, No. 68. Steele.'\ admiration of shakespeare. 173 losophy as in poetry, and in the ethics of human life and passion quotes ever his authority as supreme. None hut Steele then thought. of criticising him in that strain. The examples just quoted, for instance, are used as lessons in art, but also as experiences for_patience under actual sor- row ; and he finely adds, that it is in life itsel? exactly as at one of his plays, where we see the man overwhelmed by grief yet struggling to bear it with decency and patience, we "sigh for him, and give him every groan he sup- " presses." In another Tatler (No. 47) he separates the author of Othello from the ordinary tragic poets, from the gentlemen, as he calls them, " who write in the buskin " style " (and they were legion then, beginning with his friend Mr. Rowe, and ending, though he refused to see that, with his friend Mr. Addison), by the excellent distinction, that it always seems as if Shakespeare were suffering the events represented, while the rest were merely looking on. In short, he says, there is no medium in these attempts, and you must go to the very bottom of the heart, or it is all mere language. His advice to his tragic friends therefore is, that they should read Shakespeare wdth care, and they will soon be deterred from putting forth what they persuade themselves to call tragedy. They are to read him, and to understand the distinction between pretending to be a thing, and being the thing they pretend. They are to read particularly, and mark the differences between the two — the speech, which old Northumberland addresses to the Messenger before, and that which he utters after, he knows of the death of Hotspur, his son; the last, one of the noblest passages in the whole of Shakespeare.^ And he warns them that " he who pretends to be sorrowful and is not, " is a wretch yet more contemptible than he who pretends " to be merry and is not." In this mode of eliciting, not merely canons of taste, but moral truths and rules of conduct, from the plays he sees acted, or the books he has been reading, Steele ^ Colley Gibber soon afterwards Richard III. But wliat an asto- did "what he could to vulgarise nishing grandeur of passion there that speech of Northumberland's is in it ! — by wrenching it out of its place u ^ow bind my brows with iron- to fit it into his stage translation of ^^^ approach 174 APPRECIATION OF MILTON. \_Sir Richdrd enriched his earliest and his latest Tatlers with a style of criticism which he must be said to have created. Nor is he satisfied with less than the highest models; delighting not more to place the philosophy above the poetry of Shakespeare, than to discover the sweetness and grace which underlie the majesty of Milton. The sixth Tatler begins the expression of his reverence for the latter poet ; and not until the last line of the last Tatler, on which Shakespeare's name is imprinted, does it cease in regard to either. It was he, and not his friend, who, in that age of little faith, first raised again the poet of Paradise; his allu- sions to him, from the very commencement, are incessant ; and a Tatler of but a few days earlier than that just quoted, contains not only the noble lines in which Adam contemplates the sleeping Eve, but, by way of comment on its picture of manly affection made up of respect and tenderness, throws out this delightful remark. *' This is " that sort of passion which truly deserves the name of " love, and has something more generous than friendship " itself; for it has a constant care of the object beloved, " abstracted from its own interests in the possession «ofit.'\ t^^a time in no wav; remarkable for refinement, Steele's gallantry to women/ihus incessantly expressed in the Tatler to the last, w^s that of a Sir Tristan or Sir Cali- dore ; and, in not a small degree, to every household into which it carried such unaccustomed language, this was a ground of its extraordinary success. Inseparable always from his passion is the exalted admiration he feels ; and his love is the very flower of his respect^^jxDelightfuUy does he say of a woman in the 206th Tatldr, that the love of her is not to be put apart from some esteem of her ; " The rugged'st hour that time and " But let one spirit of the first-born spite dare bring Cain ** To frown upon the enrag'd North- " Reign in all bosoms ; that, each umberland. heart being set " Let heav'n kiss earth ! Now let " On bloody courses, the rude scene not Nature s liand may end, ** Keep this wild flood confin'd ! let " And Darkness be the burier of the Order die ! dead ! " " And let this world no longer be a stage, In the whole of poetry, ancient and " To feed contention in a lingering modern, there is no image greater act ; than that. Steele.'\ on the education of women. 175 and, as slie is naturally the object of affection, site who has your esteem has also some degree of your love. ::'^ut as, unhappily, a woman's education was then sunk to the lowest ebb, there is also no subject to which he has occa- sion so often and so eagerly to return, as a comparison of the large amount of care bestowed on her person with the little given to her mind. You deliver your daughter to a dancing-master, he says in one of these papers, you put a collar round her neck, you teaoh her every movement under pain of never having a husband if she steps, or looks, or moves awry ; and all the time you forget the true art, which " is to make mind and body improve together, " to make gesture follow thought, and not let thought be " employed upon gesture," " As he says, in another paper to the like effect, a woman must think well to look well.^ He is never weary of surrounding her form with hosts of graces and deHghts ; in her mind, how unused and uncul- tivated soever, he yet recognises always a finer and more deHcate humanity; and, of all the subtle and eloquent things ever uttered in her praise by poet or romancer, none have surpassed that fascinating eulogy of Lady Elizabeth Hastings which is contained in the 49th Tatler. " That awful distance which we bear toward her in all " our thoughts of her, and that cheerful familiarity with " which we approach her, are certain instances of her " being the truest object of love of any of her sex. In " this accomplished lady, love is the constant effect, " because it is never the design. Yet, though her mien ^' carries much more invitation than command, to behold " her is an immediate check to loose behaviour, and to " love her is a liberal education.'* As we have turned to this charming passage, we meet another of his illustrations from Shakespeare, in which, rebuking the author of a new tragedy for relying too much on the retinue, guards, ushers, and courtiers of his hero to make him magnificent, " Shakespeare," he exclaims, " is our pattern. In the tragedy of Caesar he introduces " his hero in his night-gown." The resemblance of Addison's 42nd Spectator to this 53rd Tatler need not be pointed out ; and we shall be excused for saying, with all 1 No. 212 ; and see No. 248. 176 CHARACTERS IN EARLY TATLERS. \_Sir Richavd our love and respect for Addison, that he might with good effect have taken, now and then, even a hint of conduct, as well as one of criticism, from his friend. As to modes of dying, for example. The 11th Tatler, with a truth and spirit not to be surpassed, remarks that any doctrine on the subject of dying, other than that of living well, is the most insignificant and most empty of all the labours of men. A tragedian can die by rule, and wait till he discovers a plot, or says a fine thing upon his exit ; but in real life, and by noble spirits, it will be done decently, without the ostentation of it. Commend me, exclaims Steele, to that natural greatness of soul expressed by an innocent and consequently resolute country fellow, who said, in the pains of the cholic, " If I once get this breath " out of my body, you shall hang me before you put it in *' again." Honest Ned ! And so he died. And what hints of other characters, taken from the same portion of the Tatler, need we, or shall we, add to honest Ned's, in proof that Steele did not wait for Addi- son's help before stamping his design with the most marked feature that remained with it ? The difficulty is selection. Shall we take the wealthy wags who give one another credit in discourse according to their purses, who jest by the pound, and make answers as they honour bills ; and who, with unmoved muscles for the most exquisite wit whose banker's balance they are not acquainted with, smirk at every word each speaks to the other ?^ Shall we take the modest young bachelor of arts, who, thinking himself fit for anything he can get, is above nothing that is offered, and, having come to town recommended to a chaplain's place but finding none vacant, modestly accepts that of a postilion? 2 Shall we introduce the eminent storyteller and politician, who owes the regularity and fluency of his dullness entirely to his snuff-box ? ^ Shall we make acquaintance with the whimsical young gentle- man, so ambitious to be thought worse than he is, that, in his degree of understanding, he sets up for a free- thinker, and talks atheistically in coffee-houses all day, though every morning and evening, it can be proved upon him, he regularly at home says his prayers ? "^ Shall the 1 Tatler, No. 57. ^ Tatlei-, No. 35. 8 Tatler, No. 52. -» Tatler, No. 77. Steele.'] FIRST SPRIGHTLY RUNNINGS OF WIT. 177 well-meaning Umbra take us by the button, and talk half an hour to us upon matters wholly insignificant with an air of the utmost solemnity, that we may teach our- selves the charity of not being offended with what has a good intention in it, by remembering that to little men. little things are of weight, and that, though our courteous, friend never served us, he is ever willing to do it, and believes he really does do it ? ^ Or, while Mr. Bickerstafl^ thus teaches us that impotent kindness is to be tolerated,, shall Mrs. Jenny Distaff show us that impotent malice is not ; and that society should scout the fool who cannot listen to praise without whispering detraction, or hear a man of worth named without recounting the worst passage of his life.^ Shall we follow into Garraway's or the Stock Exchange those two men, in whom so striking a contrast appears of plain simplicity with imposing affectation, and learn that the sort of credit which commerce affects is worthless, if but sustained by the opinions of others and not by its own consciousness of value ? ^ Shall we let the smallest of pedants, Will Dactyle, convince us that learning does but improve in us what nature endowed us with ; for that, not to have good sense with learning is only to have more ways of exposing oneself, and to have sense is to know that learning itself is not knowledge?* Shall the best natured of old men, Senecio, prove to us that the natural and not the acquired man is the companion ; that benevo- lence is the only law of good-breeding; that society can? take no account of fortune ; and that he who brings his quality with him into conversation, coming to receive homage and not to meet his friends, should pay the reck- oning also?' Shall we listen to Will Courtly, saying nothing but what was said before, yet appearing neither ignorant among the learned nor indiscreet with the wise„ ^ Tatler, No. 37. ** faculties, and not to disguise our 2 Tatler, No. 38. " imperfections. It is therefore ia ' Tatler, No. 48. ** vain for folly to attempt to conceal ■* Tatler, No. 58. This subject " itself by the refuge of learned he pursues in another admirable " langnages. Literature does but Tatler of later date (No. 197), where " make a man more eminently the he points out that "all the true use " thing which Nature made him." " of what we call learning is to en- * Tatler^ No. 45. " noble and improve our natural n 178 FATHER OF THE EXGLISH ESSAY. \_Sir RlcJiard and acknowledge, so long as Will can thus converse with the wittiest without being ridiculous, that, if ceremony is the invention of wise men to keep fools at a distance, good-breeding must be its opposite expedient of putting wise men and less wise on an equality ? ^ Shall we make ourselves easy in the company of Sophronius, who, when he does a service, charms us not more by his alacrity than, when he declines one, by his manner of convincing us that such service should not have been asked ? ^ Or shall we fidget ourselves in a room with Jack Dimple, who, having found out that what makes Sophronius acceptable is a natural behaviour, in order to the same reputation makes his own entirely artificial, meditates half an hour in the ante- room to get up his careless air, and is continually running back to the mirror to recollect his forgetfulness ? ' Such are among a few of the characters and essays which, while Mr. Macaulay would represent the Tatler as yet given up to sheer commonplace, Steele with a pro- digal wit and exuberant fancy was pouring out upon its readers. We touch but slightly these few, and only hint at their purport and design ; entering into no more detail than may carry with it the means of outweighing an asser- tion, advanced on authority too high to be met by mere assertion of our own. We leave fifty things unnamed, and take from those named only a sentence here and there : but is it not enough ? Not to speak of what will better be described hereafter, of social colouring and indi- vidual expression, have we not here what gave life to the Tatler'} Have we not the sprightly father of the English Essay, writing at the first even as he wrote to the last ; out of a true and honest heart sympathising with all things good and true; already master of his design in beginning it, and able to stand and move without help of any kind, if the need should be ? In his easy chair we shall hereafter see Mr. Bickerstaff, amid the rustling of hoop-petticoats, the fluttering of fans, and the obeisance of flowing perukes : but what here for the pre- sent we see, is the critic and philosopher Steele, more wise and not less agreeable ; who, in an age that faction 1 TatltT, No. 30. * Ti tier, No. 21. ' Ibid. Sleele,"] getting wisdom out of trifles. 179 brutalised and profligacy debased, undertook the censor- sliip of manners, and stamped at once upon the work he invented a genius as original as delightfuL Here we have ourselves the means of judging if it was gossip, and compliments, and pasquinades, in the midst of which Addison found his friend ; or whether, already, he had not struck out the thought by which both must be famous for ever, of enlivening morality with wit, and tempering wit with morality ? But another fact is not less manifest in the examples given, and with it perhaps something of excuse for the £alf contemptuous tone that has done him such injustice, '^here is nothing so peculiar to his manner as the art of getting wisdom out of trifles. Without gravely trans- lating his humorous announcement,^ that, when any part of his paper appeared dull, it was to be noted that there was a design in it, we may say with perfect truth that he had a design in everything. But a laugh never yet looked , so wise as a frown ; and, unless you are at pains to look a little beneath it, the wisdom of Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff may now and then escape yoiy' The humorous old gentle- man who is always prying into his neighbours' concerns, when he is not gossiping of his own ; to whom the young beau is made responsible for wearing red-heeled shoes, and the young belle for showing herself too long at her glass; who turns the same easy artillery of wit against the rattling dice-box and the roaring pulpit ; who has early notice of most of the love-afi'airs in town, can tell you of half the domestic quarrels, and knows more of a widow with a handsome jointure than her own lawyer or next of kin ; whose tastes take a range as wide as his experience, to whom Plutarch is not less familiar than a pretty fellow, and who has for his clients not only the scholars of the Grecian, but the poets at Will's, the men of fashion at White's, and the quidnuncs of the St. James's, — this old humourist,' yoa would say, is about the last man to pass for a Socrates.r^nd yet there was some- thing more than whim in the good Isaac's ambition to have it said of his Lucubrations, that, whereas Socrates had j brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among I K 2 180 HUMANiTAS HUMANissiMA. [S/V Richard \ men, he liad himself aimed to bring philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and collegps, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in cofFee-houses^>^ For, it is his actual and marked peculiarity, that neither ^more nor less than this may generally be detected in Steele. One of the sincerest of men, he was the most natural of writers ; and, living in the thick of the world, he could not' write but with a vivid and ever present sense of it. "/The humanitas humanissima is never absent from him. If he takes up a book, it is not for a bookish purpose ; he is thinking always of the life around him^/> Never yet, we think, has he had the due and distinctive praise for this, which in some sort separates him from every humourist and satirist of his time. Wit more piercing and keen, a reflective spirit of wider scope, a style more correct and pure, even humour more consummate than his own, will be found, in the way of comment upon life, among his friends and fellow- labourers ; but, for that which vividly brings actual Life before us, which touches the heart as with a present experience, which sympathises to the very core with all that moves the joy or sorrow of his fellows, and which still, even as then, can make the follies of men ridiculous and their vices hateful without branding ridicule or hate upon the men themselves, — we must turn to Steele, ^n his little pictures of the world, that open new and unexpected views of it ; in his wonderfully pathetic little stories, that fill our eyes with tears ; in those trivial details by which he would make life easier and happier, in those accidents the most common and familiar out of which he draws secrets of humanity ; what most, after aU, impresses us, is a something independent of authorshigj^ We like him the more for being nearer and more like our- selves, not for being higher or standing apart ; and it is still the man whom his writings make pleasant to us, more than the author, the wit, thepartizan, or the fine gentleman. And a great reason for this we take to be, that he founded his theory and views of life rather on the realities that men should bravely practise, than on the pretences^) which for the most part they shamefully submit. 'To be a man of breeding, was with him to be a man of feeling ; to be a fine gentleman, in his own phrase, was to be a generous and brave man ; he had a proper Steele.~\ ox vulgarity. 181 contempt for the good manners that did not also impty the good morals ; and it was the exalting and purifying influence of love for Lady Betty Modish, that made his Colonel Ranter cease to swear at the waiters^ Be his theme, therefore, small or great, he hrings it sull within rules and laws which we find have not lost their interest for ourselves ; and to which, in truth, we are in all respects still as amenable, as if the red-heeled shoe, the hooped petticoat, or the flowing peruke, were yet potent and pre- dominant in our century. As an instance which at once will explain our meaning, let us take what he says of vulgarity. It also is in one of these early Tatlers.' There is perhaps no word so misused, certainly none of which the misuse is so mischievous ; and not unfairly, by the opinions held of it, we may .take the measure of a code of ethics and philosophy. ^y^^ieelQ^^ view of the matter, then, is, that it is to him a very great meanness, and something much below a philosopher, which is what he means by a gentleman, to rank a man among the vulgar for the condition of life he is in, and not according to his behaviour, his thoughts, and his sentiments in that conditionJ?^ For, as he puts it, if a man be loaded with riches and honours, and in that state has thoughts and inclinations below the meanest workman, is not such a workman, who within his power is good to his friends and cheerful in his occupation, much superior in all ways to him who lives but to serve himself ? He then quotes the comparison, from Epictetus, of human life to a stage play ; in which the philosopher tells us it is not for us to consider, among the actors, who is prince or who is beggar, but who acts prince or beggar ^ Tatler, No. 10. " extraordinary in such a man as * Tatler, No. 69. " lie is, and tlie like ; when they ^ How charmingly he illustrates " are forced to acknowledge the this in his paper on the death of '* value of him whose lowness up- Richard Eastcourt the comedian, one *' braids their exaltation. It is to of his masterpieces of feeling and ** this humour only it is to be style, a brief extract will show : "ascribed, that a quick wit in " It is an insolence natural to the " conversation, a nice judgment ** wealthy, to affix, as much as in "upon any emergency that could *' them lies, the character of a man " arise, and a most blameless in- " to his circumstances. Thus it is "offensive behaviour, could not ' ' ordinary with them to praise ' ' raise this man above being re- " faintly the good qualities of those " ceived only upon the foot of con- " below them, and say, it is very " tributing to mirth and diversion.'* 182 ON SOCIAL DUTIES AND DISTINCTIONS. [ versation, in business, in society, in the worl(j/'' " Hence " also is it," he adds quietly, and with excellent effect after all his emphasis, " that a vain fellow takes twice as " much pains to be ridiculous as would make him sin- " cerely agreeable." For we are never to be permitted to lose sight of the fact, that the little and the great subserve still the same truths and laws, in the eyes of our kindly philosopher, tatler, and companion. To which end, from every part of his delightful book, it would be easy to continue our instances and illustra- tions, to the still recurring evidence and proof that there is nothing to be imagined so trivial which may not yet 1 Tatler, No. 186. 184 SAME LAWS FOR LITTLE AND GREAT. {^Sir RicJtavd be used to establisli tlie superiority of truth over all the affectations and pretences. " I have heard," he remarks in one of the later Tatlers/ " my old friend Mr. Hart ' *' speak it as an observation among the players that it is " impossible to act with grace except the actor has forgot " that he is before an audience." Still the reasoning is the same, still the conclusion is unerring, whether the audience be the world, the coffee-house, the drawing- room, or the theatre ; and you would hardly suppose, by his manner of handling any, that Mr. Bickerstaff thought the least of less importance than the greatest. For, indeed, in his mode of viewing life, neither is quite inde- pendent of the other ; and it was he who first compared the man of much knowledge and many thoughts, unprac- tised in the arts of society, to one who has his pockets full of gold but always wants change for his ordinary occasions. " We see a world of pains taken," he con- tinues,^ " and the best years of life spent, in collecting a ^* set of thoughts in a college for the conduct of life ; and, " after all, the man so qualified shall hesitate in his speech " to a good suit of clothes, and want common sense before *^ an agreeable woman." The remark opportunely takes us back to those earlier Tatlers which contain it, and to the purpose for which we have referred to them ; nor will its hints as to college life render less appropriate the single additional reference we shall make, before resuming what waits us still of Mr. Macaulay's censure. In his 39th Tatler, Mr. Bickerstaff visits Oxford : not in search of popular preachers to criticise, of pretty faces to compliment, or of youthful follies to pasquinade ; but to refresh his imagination in a scene sacred to civilisation and learning, where so far his own social philosophy prevails, that not the fortunes but ^ Tatler^ No. 138. *' rior, just as we do of Betterton's 2 This was the actor to whom ** being superior to those now." Pope makes the characteristic allu- It is the universal rule in such mat- sion in speaking of Betterton. "I ters. When Lady Louisa Meyrick "was acquainted with Betterton was taken to see Mrs. Siddons, she " from a boy. . . . Yes, I really protested that, compared with the *' think Betterton the best actor I favourite of her youth, Mrs. Porter, ** ever saw ; but I ought to tell you, her grief was the giief of a cheese- *' at the same time, that in Better- monger's wife. " ton's days the older sort of people ^ Tatler, No. 30. " talked of Hart's being his supe- Steele.^ attack on Steele by macaulay. 185 the understandings of men exact distinction and pre- cedence, and you shall see an Earl walk bareheaded to the son of the meanest artificer, in respect to seven years' more knowledge and worth than the nobleman is pos- sessed of. "The magnificence of their palaces," adds Steele, " the greatness of their revenues, the sweetness " of their groves and retirements, seem equally adapted " for the residence of princes and philosophers ; and a " familiarity with objects of splendour, as well as places " of recess, prepares the inhabitants with an equanimity *' for their future fortunes, whether humble or illustrious." We think, as we read the paper, of some of the most pleasing turns of Addison. But, alas ! what would be said to such a remark by Mr. Macaulay, who, taking up the project of the Tatler at the low design we have seen him attribute to it, proceeds drily to describe its editor as " wo^ ^7/-qualified " to give efiect to such a plan ? Steele was not i7/-qualified, that is, to compile news, to give an account of a theatrical representation, to collect literary gossip at Will's and the Grecian, to remark on fashionable topics, to compliment a beauty, to pasquinade a sharper, or to criticise a popular preacher. For, Mr. Macaulay continues, his public intel- ligence he drew from the best sources j he not only knew the town, but had paid dear for his knowledge ; "he had " read much more " (now, do not let the sanguine reader expect too much) " than the dissipated men of that time " were in the habit of reading ; " if he was a rake among scholars, he was a scholar among rakes ; nay, his style was even easy and not incorrect ; and though his wit and humour were of no high order, his gay animal spirits imparted to his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary readers could hardly distinguish from comic genius. " His writings have been well compared to those " light wines which, though deficient in body and flavour, " are yet a pleasant small drink, if not kept too long, or " carried too far." It is sufiiciently clear, at least, that they have survived too long for Mr. Macaulay. Yinegar is not more sour than the pleasant small drink, kept now too long by nearly a century and a half, is become to him. We must accept it, we suppose, as among the chances 186 VICISSITUDES OF OLD REPUTATIONS. [S/r Richavd and vicissitudes to which old reputations are subject. Steele was famed as a wit before Pope came upon the town, and in those days a young poet who could say he had dined with him was not without claims to considera- tion.' In the succeeding age, this opinion went on gather- ing strength ; and it was enough for a man to have merely written a single paper in one of the works he con- ducted, to be thought entitled to unquestioned celebrity. " For example," said Murphy to Johnson,^ " there is Mr. " Ince, who used to frequent Tom's Coffee-house ; he has " obtained considerable fame merely from having written " a paper in the Spectator.^' " But," interposed Johnson, " you must consider how highly Steele speaks of Mr. '' Ince." The dull Dr. Hurd followed, and brayed Steele down loudly enough ; but afterwards came a reaction, the laborious and industrious Nichols produced careful editions of his writings, and he resumed his admitted rank as a humourist of the first order, the most pathetic of story-tellers, the kindest of wits and critics, and, of all the fathers of English Essay, the most natural and the most inventive. Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt, no inconsiderable authorities, even placed him above his friend, on an eminence where we cannot and need not follow them. What now has befallen him in the other extreme we see, and that more than two hundred Tatlers, nearly two hundred and fifty Spectators, and some eighty" Guardians, to say nothing of Englishmen, Lovers, Eeaders, Theatres, Town Talks, Plebeians, Chit Chats, and what not, have failed to win from Mr. Macaulay as much kindly recognition, as the good old Samuel Johnson was ready to reward Mr. Ince with, for one Spectator. But we cannot unresistingly surrender the fame of Steele even to Mr. Macaulay's well-merited fame. To a reputation which time has made classical there belongs what no new reputation can have, till it shall in turn become old ; and in the attempt to reverse, by a few con- ^ The reader of Pope will remem- " 'Twas all the ambition his high ber his laugh at Ambrose Philips : soul could feel, - When simple Macer, now of high " ^o wear red stockings, and to dine renown, with Steele." "First sought a poet's fortune in 2 BosweirsZi/e, 10th April, 1776. the town : Steele.~\ affection foe, addison. 187 temptuous sentences, a verdict of nearly two centuries, it is the assailant who is most in peril. The disadvantage doubtless is great in having to meet a general attack by detailed assertion of the claims denied, but abeady we have not shrunk from that detail ; and still, before enter- ing on such a sketch of Steele's personal career as may best perhaps fix those claims, and ascertain his real place among the men of his time, more of the same kind awaits us. But we will not be tempted into comparisons that would have given pain to his own generous nature. There was no measure to Steele's afiection for Addison. Even Fielding's wit could not exaggerate the eagerness with which, on all occasions, he depreciated his own writings to exaggerate those of his friend. He was above all men in the talent we call humour, he exclaimed again and again ; he had it in a form more exquisite and delightful than any other man ever possessed. He declared, in the last number of the TatleVy that its finest strokes of wit and humour had been Addison's. He avowed himself, in the last number of the Spectator^ more proud of Addison's long-continued friendship than he should be of the fame of being thought even the author of his writings. " I " fared like a distressed prince," he said again, speaking of him in the preface to the Tatler's last volume, " who " calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone " by my auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I " could not subsist without dependence on him." That Addison had changed the design of the paper, he never said ; but he never tired of saying that his genius had elevated and enriched it. Again, and still again, at various times, he reasserts this with all the hearty warmth of his unselfish and unmisgiving nature. *' I rejoiced in " being excelled," he exclaims, remarking on Mr. Tickell's not very generous doubts ; ^' and made those little talents, " whatever they are, which I have, give way, and be sub- " servient to the superior qualities of a friend whom I " loved." Eeplying to a more savage attack by Dennis, he still contrives occasion to refer to " that excellent man " whom Heaven made my friend and superior." Nor had that friend been many weeks in his grave, when, forgetful of all that had clouded their latter intercourse, and having a necessity to mention their joint connection with the 188 ISSUE JOINED WITH MACAULAY. [Sir Rlc hard Tatler and Spectator^ lie describes himself as not merely the inventor of those papers, but the introducer into them of ^' a much better writer than himself who is now im- " mortal." ' Such a feeling we are bound to respect, we think, out of respect to him who entertained it; even while we see that he suffers no disadvantage from such a noble modesty. We take therefore a specific statement made by Mr. Macaulay, not necessarily involving a comparison, though made to justify the contempt which would sacrifice one reputation to the other ; and we shall meet it by some additional references to Tatlers written by Steele, so made as also to include some means of judgment upon them. After stating that at the close of 1709 the work was more popular than any periodical paper had ever been, and that Addison's connexion with it was generally known, Mr. Macaulay adds that it was not however known that almost everything good in it was his ; and that his fifty or sixty numbers were not merely the best, but so decidedly the best, that any five of them were more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in which he had no share. In mere extent, we may pause to remark, the participation was not so large ; for, of the sixty numbers printed by Tickell, not much fewer than twenty were joint compo- sitions, and Steele bore his full and equal part in those humorous proceedings before the Court of Honour, where even Bishop Hurd is fain to admit that " Sir Richard " hath acquitted himself better than usual." But to dwell further upon this would involve what we wish to avoid. What is absolutely good, or absolutely bad, is not matter of relation or comparison : and if, upon the examples of Steele's Tatlers which now we are about to add to those already named, any question or doubt can be raised of their wit, feeling, or truth ; of their invention, their observation of life and of the shades of character ; of their humour, or the high moral tendency of their satire ; nay, even of their sweetness, facility, and grace of style ; the verdict will pass which determines, not this or that degree of inferiority to his friend, but the issue specifically raised by Mr. Macaulay, of whether or not, independently » The Theatre No. 8, Jan. 26, 1719-20. Sleele.'] tale told by mr. bickerstaff. 189 of sucli considerations, Steele's title as an English humourist is to he conceded any longer. The statue has been flung down from its pedestal, but its features remain yet undefaced; and upon an honest and im- partial judgment of them, must rest its claim to be restored. Our first example shall be a domestic picture, drawn by Steele in two Tatlers of within a few weeks' date of each other (Nos. 95 and 114), which to our thinking includes in itself almost every quality enumerated, and that in no indifferent degree. It is a common-life interior, of a truth and exactness which Wilkie or Leslie might have painted, and of that kind of pathos and purity which Goldsmith or Dickens might have written. In connexion with it, too, it is to be remembered that at this time, as Mr. Macaulay observes in his Essay, no such thing as the English novel existed. De Foe as yet was only an eager politician, Eichardson an industrious compositor, Fielding a mischievous schoolboy, and Smollett and Goldsmith were not born. For your circulating libraries (the first of which had been established some six years before, to the horror of sellers of books, and the ruin of its ingenious inventor) there was as yet nothing livelier, in that direc- tion, than the interminable Grand Cyrus of Madame de Scuderi, or the long-winded Cassandra and Pharamond of the lord of La Calprenede, which Steele so heartily laughed at in his Tender Husband. The little story conveyed in the two papers is of the simplest possible description. Mr. Bickerstaff visits an old married friend, who had been his schoolfellow and his college companion, in whose house he always feels as in a second home, and where, as soon as the family come to town for the winter, he is expected to dinner as a matter of course. How pretty is the opening scene! " I *' cannot, indeed, express the pleasure it is to be met by " the children with so much joy as I am when I go " thither. The boys and girls strive who shall come *' first, when they think it is I that am knocking at the " door; and that child which loses the race to me runs back " again to tell the father it is Mr. Bickerstafi". This day " I was led in by a pretty girl that we all thought must *' have forgot mc, for the family has been out of town 190 MARRIED AND BACHELOR LIFE. \jSir Rtchard " these two years. Her knowing me again was a mighty " subject with us, and took up our discourse at the first " entrance." Then follows pleasant raillery of Mr. Bic- kerstaff from all the circle, upon numberless Kttle stories that had been told of him in the country ; the hints they have heard of his marriage with a young lady there ; the hope they express that he will yet give the preference to our eldest daughter, Mrs. Mary, now sixteen ; and the father's laughing disbeliefs, founded on Mr. B's love afi'airs of old, and the verses he wrote on Teraminta. But after dinner the friends are alone, and then fears for his wife's health break from the husband, which the other tries to turn aside ; and so arise genial memories of the past, Mr. Bic- kerstaff talking over all his friend's courting days again, how they first saw her at the playhouse, and it was himself who followed her from the playhouse to ascertain her name, and who carried his friend's first love-letter to her, and who carried it back to him unopened, and how foolishly wretched he then was to think her angry in earnest. But the pleasant memory of sorrow that was unreal, and had passed away, cannot abate the abiding and still recurring fear. " That fading in her countenance," he says, " is " chiefly caused by her watching with me in my fever." But, handsomer than ever to him is the pale face ; and nothing in all the boisterous passions of their youth, he tells his friend, can compare in depth and intensity with the love he feels in manhood. The poor bachelor thinks, as the other speaks, that now he shall never know it. " Her face," continues the husband more calmly, " is to " me much more beautiful than when I first saw it ; there " is no decay in any feature, which I cannot trace from '* the very instant it was occasioned by some anxious con- " cern for my welfare and interests." With which thought, the tide of his sorrow comes again upon him ; and he describes his sinking heart as he hears the children play in the next room, and thinks what the poor things shall do when she is gone. Whereupon she re-enters ; and he brightens again at her cheerful face; and she knows what he has been talking of, and ralHes him, and means to have Mr. Bickerstaff for her second husband unless this first will take greater care of himself; and finally gets Mr. Bickerstaff to promise to take her again Sleelc\~\ AN ENGLISH DOMESTIC INTERIOR. 191 to the playhouse, in memory of his having followed her one night from the playhonse. The children then reappear to complete a domestic interior, which, at a time when wit had no higher employ- ment than to laugh at the affections and moralities of home, could have arisen only to a fancy as pure as the heart that prompted it was loving and true. The noisiest among them is Mr. Bickerstaff's godson, Dick, in whose conversation, however, though his drum is a Httle in the way, this nice gradation of incredulity appears, that, hav- ing got into the lives and adventures of Guy of Warwick, the Seven Champions, and other historians of that age, he shakes his head at the improbability of ^sop's Fables. But the mother becomes a little jealous of the godson carrying off too much attention ; and she will have her friend admire little Mrs. Betty's accompKshments, which accordingly are described ; and so the conversation goes on till late, when Mr. Bickerstaff leaves the cordial fire- side, considering the different conditions of a married Kfe and the life of a bachelor, and goes home in a pensive mood to his maid, his dog, and his cat, who only can be the better or the worse for what happens to him. But the little story is only half told. Having for its design to show that the pleasures of married life are too little regarded, that thousands have them and do not enjoy them, and that it is therefore a kind and good office to acquaint such people with their own happiness, he with it connects the solemn warning to be drawn from its fleeting tenure, and the Limited duration of all enjoy- ment on earth. Two mouths have elapsed, it is the last day of the year, and Mr. Bickerstaff is walking about his room very cheer- fully, when a coach stops at his door, a lad of fifteen alights, and he perceives the eldest son of his school- fellow. The pleasant thought has occurred to him that the father was just such a stripling at the time of their first knowledge of each other, when the boy enters, takes his hand, and bursts into tears. His thought at the moment is with his friend, and with sudden concern he inquires for him. The reply, " My mother ," and the tears that choke further utterance, tell Mr. Bickerstaff all. His friend's worst forebodings have come suddenly 193 A DEATH-BED SCENE. \_Sir PJchard true. He hurries to the house; meets the celebrated divine, Dr. Smallridge, just quitting it ; and, by the sup- pressed grief of the mourners as he enters, knows what hope and consolation that sacred teaching has left. But the husband, at sight of him, cannot but turn a\A'ay his face and weep again ; and the little family of children renew the expressions of their sorrow, according to their several ages and degrees of understanding. The eldest daughter, in tears, is busied in attendance upon her mother ; others are kneeling about the bedside ; " and *' what troubled me most was to see a little boy, who was " too young to know the reason, weeping only because his *' sisters did.'' In the room, there is only one person unmoved ; and as he approaches the bed she says in a low broken voice, " This is kindly done. Take care of " your friend — do not go from him ! '^ She has taken leave of them all, and the end is come. " My heart was *' torn in pieces to see the husband on one side suppress- " ing and keeping down the swellings of his grief, for " fear of disturbing her in her last moments ; and the " wife, even at that time, concealing the pains she *' endured, for fear of increasing his affliction. She kept " her eyes upon him for some moments after she grew " speechless, and soon after closed them for ever. In the *^ moment of her departure, my friend, who had thus far " commanded himself, gave a deep groan, and fell into a *' swoon by her bedside.'' The few calm grave sentences that follow this description are known to have been written by Addison. It would seem as though Steele felt himself unable to proceed, and his friend had taken the pen from his trembling hand. Need we indicate other stories, told yet more briefly, more in the manner of direct relations, and all of them pathetic in the extreme ? Inkle and Yarico, which has filled with tears so many eyes, and the story of Alexander Selkirk, which suggested De Foe's wonderful romance, belong to Steele's writings in the Spectator ; but, in the Tatler, we have Valentine and Unnion (No. 5), the Fire at the Theatre (No. 94), the domestic tragedy of Eustace (No. 172), the Shipwreck and the Wedding Day (both contained in No. 82), and the Dream (No. 117). All these tales have an artless, unpretending simplicity, and a charm Sleek. '\ PERFECT STORIES BRIEFLY TOLD. lUS quite unpremeditated, but which, is yet combined with a reality and intensity of pathos, affecting to a degree that the equally brief narrations of any other writer have never, in our judgment, equalled. Of the Dream in especial the contrivance is so inimitable, and the moral so impressive, that within the same compass we know of nothing at all approaching to its effect. A lover and his mistress are toying and trifling together in a summer evening on Dover- cHff ; she snatches a copy of verses from his hand and runs before him ; he is eagerly following, when he beholds on a sudden the ground sink under her, and she is dashed down the height. " I said to myself, it is not in the " power of Heaven to relieve me ! when I awaked, " equally transported and astonished to see myself " drawn out of an affliction which, the very moment " before, appeared to me altogether inextricable." This has been given to Addison, but it is certainly Steele's. It will be consonant with the emotion suggested by it to pass, for our next example, to what is said of untimely deaths in No. 181, one of the most tender and beautiful essays that the Tatler contains. Such deaths, says Steele, we are most apt to lament, so little are we able to make it indifferent when a thing happens, though we know it Cmust happen. " Thus we groan under life, and bewail " those who are relieved from it.'' And especially he applies this to his recollection of the many gallant, gay, and agreeable spirits lost in war, where yet, he finely adds, a We gather relief enough from their own contempt of " death, to make that no evil which was approached " with so much cheerfulness, and attended with so much " honour." He then relates his saddest experience ; recalling, in a few short sentences of great deHcacy, the beauty, innocence, and untimely death of the girl he had first loved. " The beauteous virgin ! how ignorantly did " she charm, how carelessly excel ! O Death ! thou hast " right to the bold, to the ambitious, to the high, and to " the haughty ; but, why this cruelty to the humble, to "the meek, to the undiscerning, to the thoughtless? " Nor age, nor business, nor distress, can erase the dear '' image from my imagination. In the same week, I saw " her dressed for a ball, and in the shroud. How ill did 194 IDEAL OF A GENTLEMAN. [Sir Rickard " the liabit of death become the pretty trifler. I still " behold the smiling earth '' Another treatment of the same grave theme is in the noble character he draws of Addison, under the name of Ignotus. What chiefly makes his friend become this life so perfectly, he says, is his firm and unshaken expectation of another ; and he lays it down as the only solid reason for doing all things well, that a man should consider his present being as an uncertain one, and think to reap an advantage by its discontinuance. Such a one, Steele con- tinues, does not behold his existence as a short, transient, perplexing state, made up of trifling pleasures, and great anxieties ; but he sees it in quite another light : his griefs are momentary, and his joys immortal. Eeflection upon death is not a gloomy and sad thought of resigning every- thing that he delights in, but it is a short night followed by an endless day. From all which, and from his friend's ever easy and delightful manners, he draws the conclusion that " to be a fine gentleman is to be a generous and a " brave man." To the same conclusion, too, he brings another thoroughly characteristic paper in JSTo. 246. It is a wise essay on the toleration of one another's faults, pointing out how faintly any excellence is received, and how unmercifully every imperfection is exposed: from which it occurs to him to suggest, that we should all be more considerate to each other, and society a thousand times more easy, if we could better familiarise ourselves to the idea of mortality ; if we could bring ourselves to the habit of seeing that we are strangers here, and that it is unreasonable to expect we should have anything about us as well as at our own home. All faults, he thinks, might then be reduced into those which proceed from malice or dishonesty ; it would quite change our manner of beholding one another ; nothing that was not below a man's nature would be below his character ; the arts of this life would be proper advances towards the next ; and a very good man would be a very fine gentle- man. As it is now, human life is inverted, and we have not learned half the knowledge of this world before we are dropping into another. All which Steele winds up by saying that old Dick Reptile, who does not want humour, when he sees another old fellow at their club touchy at Steele 7^ membeus of the trumpet club. 195 being laughed at for having fallen behind the mode, bawls in his ear, " Prithee, don't mind him ; tell him " thou art mortal." Their club is the Trumpet, immortalised in No. 132 ; and, out of the many such societies that owed their life to Steele's untiring invention, and that live still by his wit, we may select this one in especial for brief allusion. Its members are smokers and old story-tellers, rather easy than shining companions, promoting the thoughts tranquilly bedward, and not the less comfortable to Mr. Bickers taff because he finds himself the leading wit among them. There is old Sir Jeffrey Notch, who has had misfortunes in the "world, and calls every thriving man a pitiful upstart, by no means to the general dis- satisfaction ; there is Major Matchlock, who served in the last civil wars, and every night tells them of his having been knocked off his horse at the rising of the London Apprentices, for which he is in great esteem ; there is honest old Dick Reptile, who says little himself, but who laughs at all the jokes ; and there is the elderly Bencher of the Temple, next to Mr. Bickerstaff the wit of the company, who has by heart ten couplets of Hudihras which he regularly applies before leaving the club of an evening, and who, if any modern wit or town frolic be mentioned, shakes his head at the dulness of the present age and tells a story of Jack Ogle. As for Mr. Bickerstaff himself, he is esteemed among them because they see he . is something respected by others ; but, though they con- cede to him a great deal of learning, they credit him mth small knowledge of the world, " insomuch that the " Major sometimes, in the height of his mihtary pride, " calls me the philosopher ; and Sir Jeffrey, no longer " ago than last night, upon a dispute what day of the " month it was then in Holland, pulled his pipe out of " his mouth, and cried, * What does the Scholar say to "'it?" Supplementary to the sketch of these social companions is the paper (208) in which Steele, with as intimate knowledge of nature as of the world, describes the class of easy friends : men with no shining quahties, but in a certain degree above great imperfections ; who never contradict us ; who gain upon us, not by a fulsome way 2 196 ORIGINAL OF BEAU TiBBs. \_Sir Richavd of commending in broad terms, but by liking whatever we propose to utter ; wbo at the same time are ready to beg our pardons and gainsay us, if we chance to speak ill of ourselves. *' We gentlemen of small fortunes,'' con- tinues Steele with amusing candour, " are extremely " necessitous in this particular. I have indeed one who " smokes with me often ; but his parts are so low, that all " the incense he does me is to fill his pipe with me, and *' to be out at just as many whiffs as I take. This is all " the praise or assent that he is capable of ; yet there are " more hours when I would rather be in his company, " than in that of the brightest man I know." Which of us will take upon him to say that he has not had some such experience ? But perhaps the most consummately drawn of all his characters is introduced in the essay, No. 127, in which he discourses of, and illustrates in its humbler varieties, that *' affection of the mind called pride " which appears in such a multitude of disguises, every one feeling it in himself, yet wondering to see it in his neighbours. Pur- suing it to its detection and exposure under the semblance of quite contrary habits and dispositions, he introduces, as the most subtle example of it he had ever known, a person for whom he had a great respect, as being an old courtier and a friend of his in his youth. And then we have a portrait of that kind which, though produced by a few apparently careless touches, never fades, never ceases to charm, and is a study for all succeeding times and painters. " The man," says Steele, "has but a bare " subsistence, just enough to pay his reckoning with us " at the Trumpet ; but, by having spent the beginning of " his life in the hearing of great men and persons of '* power, he is always promising to do good offices and to " introduce every man he converses with into the world. " He will desire one of ten times his substance to let him " see him sometimes, and hints to him that he does not " forget him. He answers to matters of no consequence " with great circumspection ; but, however, maintains a " general civility in his words and actions, and an inso- " lent benevolence to all whom he has to do with. This " he practises with a grave tone and air ; and though I " am his senior by twelve years, and richer by forty Sleek.l PROFESSED WAGS. 197 " pounds per annum, lie had yesterday the impudence to " commend me to my face and tell me * lie should be " * always ready to encourage me.' In a word, he is a " very insignificant fellow, but exceeding gracious." If there is better observation or writing than this, in either Tatler or Spectator^ we should be very glad to become acquainted with it. Another distemper of the mind is treated of in No. 227, where he condemns the nil admirari as the shallowest of doctrines ; points out the great mistake which Milton re- presents the Devil making, when he can find nothing even in Paradise to please him ; and looks upon a man as afflicted with disease, when he cannot discern anything to be agreeable which another is master of. "^V^e are to re- member, Steele shrewdly says, that a man cannot have an idea of perfection in another which he was never sensi- ble of in himself; he is forced to form his conceptions of ideas he has not, by tbose which he has ; and who is there, asking an envious man what he thinks of "virtue, need feel surprise if he should call it design, or of good nature, if he should term it dullnessE^/lVith this we may connect the very perfect description, in No. 184, of that social nuisance, a professed wag ; which never in its life beheld a beautiful object, but sees always what it does see, in the most low and inconsiderable light it can be placed in. The wag's gaiety, Steele adds, consists in a certain professed ill-breeding, as if it were an excuse for committing a fault that a man knows he does so ; but the truth is, that his mind is too small for the abihty neces- sary to behold what is amiable and worthy of approbation, and this he attempts to hide by a disregard to everything above what he is able to appreciate. A yet earher essay, bearing somewhat upon the same matter, is in No. 92 : where, contrary to the common notion, Steele declares his belief that the love of praise dwells most in great and heroic spirits ; and that it is those who best deserve it who have generally the most exquisite relish of it. But this also induces a corresponding sensibility to reproach, which is the common weakness of a virtuous man ; and for which the only cure is, that they should fix their re- gard exclusively upon what is strictly true, in relation to their advantage as well as diminution. " For if I am 198 LESSONS FROM LIFE. [6*/> Richavd " pleased with commendation wMch. I do not deserve, I " shall from the same temper be concerned at scandal I " do not deserve. But he that can think of false applause " with as much contempt as false detraction, will certainly " he prepared for all adventures, and will become all " occasions.'' Let us add, from an essay on impudence in No. 168, as one of many admirable thoughts conceived in the same noble spirit, that he notes it as a mean want of fortitude in a good man, not to be able to do a virtuous action with as much confidence as an impudent fellow does an ill one. For our next examples, shall we turn to the innumer- able little sketches of individual character by which these and other truths are so abundantly and pleasantly en- forced, are vivified, and put into action ? No unattainable impossible virtues, no abstract speculative vices, occupy the page of Steele. As promptly as his heart or know- ledge suggests, his imagination creates ; his fancies crowd, in bodily form, into life ; everything with him becomes actual ; and to all his airy nothings he has given lasting habitation and a name. Shall we take a lesson against over-easiness in temper from the crafty old cit in No. 176, who, speaking of a well-natured young fellow set up with a good stock in Lombard-street, "I will," says he, " lay no more money " in his hands, for he never denied me anything " ? Or shall we introduce Tom Spindle from No. 47, who takes to his bed on hearing that the French tyrant won't sign the treaty of peace, he having just written a most excellent poem on that subject ? Or, from the proof in number 173 that by the vanity of silly fathers half the only time for education is lost, shall we make acquaintance with the Shire-lane pastrycook who has an objection to take his son from his learning, but is resolved, as soon as he has a little smattering in the Greek, to put him apprentice to a soap-boiler ?* Or, shall we illustrate the discredit which ^ This paper exposes with so much in what is taught to children of the force an absurdity still prevalent in middle class, by devoting so much of education, thatitwill be worth while the time, which, to fall in with their to subjoin a few passages. Steele is ways and prospects in life, should be laughing at the ridiculous way of spent in learning the useful arts, to preferring the useless to the useful the over-cramming of Latin and Steele.'] MISTAKES OF OVER -EDrCATIOX. 199 tlie morals of the stage tlien strove to cast upon marriage, and the separate beds, the silent tables, and the solitary homes, which it was the sole ambition of your men of wit and pleasure to contribute to, by presenting, from No. 159, the country squire who set up for a man of the town, and went home " in the gaiety of his heart " to beat his Greek, and those kind of accom- plishments wliich they only acquire to forget, or to find utterly useless in their after career. It arises, he says, " from the vanity of parents who ' ' are wonderfully delighted with the " thought of breeding their children *' to accomplishments, which they *' believe nothing but want of the ' ' same care in their own fathers *' prevented themselves from being '* masters of. Thus it is, that the ** part of life most fit for improve- *' ment is generally employed in a *' method against the bent of na- ** ture ; and a lad of such parts as " are fit for an occupation where " there can be no calls out of the ' ' beaten path, is two or three years * ' of his time wholly taken up in " knowing how well Ovid's mis- '* tress became such a dress, how " such a nymph for her cruelty '* was changed into such an animal, " and how it is made generous in '* ^neas to put Turnus to death : '* gallantries that can no more come " within the occurrences of the lives " of ordinary men, than they can be '* relished by their imaginations. * * However, still the humour goes on *' from one generation to another ; " and the pastrycook here in the " lane, the other night, told me he " would not yet take away his son ' ' from his learning, but has re- " solved, as soon as he had a little *' smattering in the Greek, to put " him apprentice to a soap-boiler. * * These wrong beginnings determine ** our success in the world ; and *' when our thoughts are originally *' falsely biassed, their agility and *' force do but carry us the further *' out of our way, in proportion to " our speed. We are half way *• our journey, when we have got ' into the right road. But if all * our days were usefully employed, * and we did not set out imperti- ' nently, we should not have so ' many grotesque professors in all ' the arts of life ; every man would * be in a proper and becoming me- * thod of distinguishing or enter- ' taining himself, suitably to what ' nature designed him. As they go ' on now, our parents do not only * force us upon what is against our ' talents, but our teachers are also ' as injudicious in what they put us * to learn. I have hardly ever since ' sufi"ered so much by the charms ' of any beauty, as I did before I ' had a sense of passion, for not ap- ' prehending that the smile of Lalage ' was what pleased Horace ; and I * verily believe, the stripes I suf- ' fered siboai iJigito male pertinad ' have given me that irreconcilable * aversion which I shall carry to ' my grave against coquettes." After that pleasant biographical touch, Steele goes on to characterise Horace with much wit and shrewd- ness ; and, quoting what he had heard a great painter say as to there being certain faces for certain painters as well as certain subjects for ceiiain poets, he adds, " This is as true in ' ' the choice of studies ; and no " one will ever relish an author ** thoroughly well who woiijd not " have been fit company for that *' author, had they lived at the ' ' same time. All others are me- ** chanics in learning, and take the " sentiments of writers like waiting- " servants who repeat what passed '* at their master's table, but de- " base every thought and expres- " sion for Avant of the air with ** which they were uttered." 200 SKETCHES OF CHARACTER. \_Sir Richavd wife ? Or shall we profit by the lecture, read in No. 210, to the very fine and very censorious lady of quality, who is for ever railing at the vices of the age, meaning only the single vice she is not guilty of herself; and whose cruelty to a poor girl, who, whatever imperfections may rest on her, is in her present behaviour modest, sensible, pious, and discreet, is indignantly rebuked by Mr. Bicker- staff ? Or shall we pursue the same subject in No. 217, and, concerning the same too numerous class, who, be- cause no one can call them one ugly name, think them- selves privileged to bestow all kinds of ugly epithets upon every body else, humbly conceive with Mr. Bickerstaff that such ladies have a false notion of a modest woman ; and dare to say that the side-boxes would supply better wives than many who pass upon the world and them- selves for modest, and whose husbands know every pain in life with them except jealousy ? Or shall we take a different lesson from Jenny Distaff's conversation with her brother Isaac in No. 1 04, when, being asked the help of his magic to make her always beautiful to her husband, he shows her how an inviolable fidelity, good humour, and complacency of temper, may outlive all the charms of the prettiest face, and make the decays of it invisible ? Or shall we observe, in No. 151, the unexpected sources of pride in the two sisters, one of whom holds up her head higher than ordinary from having on a pair of striped garters ; or, in No. 127, the fantastic forms of it in the cobbler of Ludgate-hill, who, being naturally a lover of respect, and considering that his circumstances are such that no man living will give it him, reverses the laws of idolatry which require the man to worship the image, and contrives an inferior to himself in the wooden figure of a beau, which, hat in one hand and in posture of profound deference, holds out obsequiously in the other what is needful to its master's occasions ? Or, from what is told us in No. 112 of the mischief done in the world from a want of occupation for idle hours, shall we see reason to think an able statesman out of business like a huge whale that will endeavour to overturn the ship, unless he has an empty cask to play with ; and to wish with Mr. Bickerstaff, for the good of the nation, that many famous politicians could but take pleasure in feeding Steele.~\ ox the wroxgs of authors. 201 ducks ? Or, finally, shall we turn to that ponderous politician but small philosopher, in No. 171, who, with a very awful brow and a countenance full of weight, pro- nounces it a great misfortune " that men of letters seldom *' look into the bottom of things.'' That men of letters might always look to Steele for their heartiest champion, it would not have been needful to add, but for a proof of it in No. 101 too characteristic not to be mentioned. As on a former occasion we saw Addi- son, when the grief of his friend seemed to break his utter ^ ance, with a calm composure taking up his theme simply to moderate its pain ; so, in this paper, to which also both contribute, and of which the exquisite opening humour closes abruptly in generous indignation, we may see each, according to his different nature, moved by an intolerable wrong. Of the maltreatment of authors, in regard to copyright, both are speaking ; and, high above the irresist- ible laugh which Addison would raise against a law that makes only rogues and pirates prosperous, rings out the clear and manly claim of Steele to be allowed to speak in the cause of learning itself, and to lament that a liberal education should be the only one which a pohte nation, makes unprofitable, and that the only man who cannot get protection from his country should be he that best deserves it. According to the ordinary rules of computation, he says, the greater the adventure, the greater should be the profit of those who succeed : yet he implores his countrymen to consider, how expensive is the voyage which is under- taken in the search of knowledge ; how few there are who gather in any considerable merchandise ; how fewer still are those able to turn what they have so gained into profit : and then he asks the question, which it is the disgrace of two subsequent centuries to have left still imperfectly answered, whether it is not " hard, indeed, that the very " small number who are distinguished with abilities to " know how to vend their wares, and have the good for- " tune to bring them into port, should sufi'er plunder " by privateers under the very cannon that should protect "them?'' Nor less characteristic of that generous nature which reserved its sympathies for no single class, but could enter familiarly into all conditions, and to which nothing could 202 SOLDIERS UNDER MARLBOROUGH. \_Sir Richard be foreign ttat concerned humanity, is that paper, No. 87, which in the present crisis of our history ^ should not be the least interesting to us of all the Tatlers. Those, too, were days of war and foreign siege ; and while a chorus of continual praise was going up to Marlborough and Eugene, Steele bethought him to single out, as not less worthy of celebration, the courage and feeling of the private soldier. He sets before us, therefore, as dropped by his servant in dressing him, a supposed letter from one Serjeant Hall to Serjeant Cabe, "in the Coldstream *' regiment of Foot Guards, at the Red Lettice in the " Butcher-row, near Temple-bar," by which he would show us the picture of what he calls the very bravest sort of men, "a man of great courage and small hopes," and would exemplify the dignity of human nature in all states of life. The letter itself is what we have lately seen, in a hundred forms, from the humble heroes of Alma and Inkermann ; it is just such an honest masterpiece, as any of those which have made hearts throb and eyes glisten lately ; and, that the good Serjeant himself might have written it, will sufficiently appear from what Steele proceeds pleasantly to say of it. " This is, said I, truly a letter, and an " honest representation of that cheerful heart which *' accompanies the poor soldier in his warfare. Is not *' there, in this, all the topic of submitting to our destiny *' as well discussed as if a greater man had been placed, " like Brutus in his tent at midnight, reflecting on all the " occurrences of past life, and saying fine things on Being " itself ? What Serjeant Hall knows of the matter is, that *' he wishes there had not been so many killed ; and he had " himself a very bad shot in the head ; and should recover *' if it pleased God. But, be that as it will, he takes care, *' like a man of honour as he certainly is, to let the widow " Stevenson know that he had seven and three-pence for " her, and that, if he lives, he is sure he shall go into " garrison at last. I doubt not but all the good company " at the Red Lettice drank his health with as much real " esteem as we do of any of our friends." More thought- fully Steele adds, with the warmth and wisdom of his generous nature : " If we consider the heap of an army, ^ This Essay was written during the War with Russia. Steele.\ personal experiences. 203 " utterly out of all prospect of rising and preferment, as " they certainly are, and such great things executed by " them, it is hard to account for the motive of their gal- " lantry ; but to me, who know very well this part of *' mankind, I take it to proceed from the same, if not " from a nobler impulse, than that of gentlemen and " officers. They have the same taste of being acceptable " to their friends ; and they go through the difficulties of " that profession by the same irresistible charm of fellow- " ship, and the communication of joys and sorrows, which " quickens the relish of pleasure, and abates the anguish *' of pain. Add to this, that they have the same regard " to fame, though they do not expect so great a share as " men above them hope for ; but I will engage Serjeant " Hall would die ten thousand deaths, rather than a word ** should be spoken, at the Red Lettice or any part of the " Butcher-row, in prejudice to his courage or honesty." There spoke a personal experience, as well as a kind heart and a just philosophy. Steele knew very wtII, as he says, that part of mankind, for in the army he had him- self mixed with them. Nor will it be inappropriate to interpose, before we pass to our brief sketch of his actual career, allusion to two more papers in which actual ex- periences are written, and where the charm of his natural style is carried to exquisite perfection. He describes himself, in No. 263, going to call on a country friend at eight o'clock in the evening, and finding him gone to bed. Next morning he goes at eleven, and finds him sat down to dinner. This leads Steele to a whimsical description of modern hours, which he com- pares with the unchanging habits of other creatures. The lark, he observes, rises as early as he did formerly, and the cock begins to crow at his usual hour : whereas, in his own memory, the dinner has crept by degrees from twelve o'clock to three, so that where it will fix, nobody knows ; and as for supper, it is so encroached upon that it has been even banished from many families. Yet how many midnight hours will it take the libertine, or the woman of fashion, adequately to replace the loss of a single hour of morning ! " When I find myself awakened into " being and perceive my life renewed within me, and at " the same time see the whole face of nature recovered 204 MORXiNG AND NIGHT. [Sit' RicJiard " out of the dark uncomfortable state in which, it lay for " several hours, my heart overflows with such secret sen- " timents of joy and gratitude as are a kind of implicit " praise to the great Author of nature. The mind, in " these early seasons of the day, is so refreshed in all " her faculties, and borne up with such new supplies of " animal spirits, that she finds herself in a state of youth ; " above all, when the breath of flowers entertains her, the ^' melody of birds, the dews that hang upon the plants, " and all those other sweets of nature that are peculiar " to the morning. But, who can have this relish of being, " this exquisite taste of life, who does not come into the " world before it is in all its noise and hurry ? who loses " the rising of the sun, the still hours of the day ; and, " immediately upon his first getting up, plunges into the " ordinary cares or follies of the world.** Not to cheerfulness, however, but to sorrow, and not to the still hours of day, but to those of night, the last paper invites us, with which we close our appeal from Mr. Macaulay's judgment. It is a paper of sadness and self-examination.' Con- scious of having been surrendering too much time to plea- sure, he desires to correct the present by recollections of the past, to cast back his thoughts on those who had been dear and agreeable to him, to ponder step by step on the life that was gone, and to revive old places of grief in his memory. " When we wind up a clock that is out of order, " to make it go well for the future, we do not immediately " set the hand to the present instant, but we make it " strike the round of all its hours, before it can recover " the regularity of its time. Such, thought I, shall be " my method this evening ; which I dedicate to such in " another life, as I much delighted in when living." But we can only take, from this charming and most touching retrospect, his earliest recollection and his earliest grief. " The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the " death of my father, at which time I was not quite five " years of age; but was rather amazed at what all the " house meant, than possessed with a real understanding " why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember 1 TatUr, No. 181. Steele.^ a child's earliest guief. - 205 " I went into the room where Ms body lay, and my " mother sat weeping alone by it. I haci my battledore " in my hand, and fell a beating the coifin, and calling *' Papa ; for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that " he was locked up there. My mother catched me in her " arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent ^' grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her " embraces, and told me in a flood of tears, * Papa could " * not hear me, and would play with me no more, for " ' they were going to put him under ground, whence he " ' could never come to us again.' She was a very beau- " tiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity " in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport " which, methought, struck me with an instinct of sorrow, " that, before I was sensible of what it was to grieve, " seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness " of my heart ever since." And so, strengthened by love, if weakened by pity, began the life of Richard Steele. /Y His family on the father's side were English, but he had an Irish mother ; and in Dublin, where his father held the office of secretary to the first Duke of Ormond, he was born in 1675. The Duke was one of the governors of Charter-house ; and there Richard Steele was placed, as soon as he could be entered after his father's death. He remained till he was seventeen ; and from his ready scholarship of after years, as well as from the kind ex- pressions long interchanged between him and its old head- master. Dr. Ellis, he may be assumed to have passed fairly through the school. .Of his positive acquisitions only one is known, but it is by far the most important. Not the glory of his having carried off every prize and exhibition attainable, if such had been his, would have interested us half so much as the fact, that here began his friendship with Joseph Addison./^' The son of the Dean of Lichfield was three years older than Steele, who was a lad of only twelve, when, at the age of fifteen, Addison went up to Oxford. Three years at that age are the measure of submission or authority ; and, through life, Steele never lost the habit of looking up 206 • SCHOOL D^YS AND COLLEGE DAYS. [StT RtcJiard at his friend, rile went himself to Oxford in 1692, at the head of that year's post-masters for Merton ; hut his intercourse with the scholar of Magdalen had not ceased in the interval. Pleasant traces are left for us which connect the little fatherless lad with visitings to Addison's father, who loved him^-^^ Like one of his own children he loved me ! exclaimed 'Steele, towards the close of his life. Those children, too, apart from his famous schoolfellow, he thanks for their affection to him ; and among the pos- sessions of his youth retained until death, was a letter in the handwriting of the good old Dean, giving "his " blessing on the friendship between his son and me." The little black-eyed dusky-faced lad had made himself popular at the Lichfield deanery ; and he brought away from it, we will not doubt, that first ineffaceable impression which remained alike through the^weakness and the strength of his future years, tha^s^ligion was a part of goodness, and that cheerfulness should be inseparable from piet^^^ Entered of Merton in 1692, his college career is soon told. Having passed three years in a study of which he showed afterwards good use, and in a companionship which confirmed not the least memorable of friendships, he left Oxford with the love of " the whole society," ' but without a degree, after writing a comedy which was per- haps as strong a recommendation to the one as a disquali- fication for the other. He burnt that comedy, however, on a friend telling him it was not worth keeping. Quick, inventive, and ardent ; easy and sweet in temper, social and communicative in tastes ; with eager impulses and warm affections, but yet forming his opinions for himself, and giving them shape and efiicacy without regard to con- sequences ; the Dick Steele of Merton, was the same Mr. Steele and Sir Richard of Hampton and Bloomsbury, to whose maturer philosophy many charming illustrations have attracted us in the foregoing pages. Having desired his friend's advice about his comedy, he had too much sincerity and too little pride not at once to act upon it ; but he was also too impatient not to ask himself after- wards, If he was to fail as a wit and a writer, in what * BiograpTiia Britannica, vi. 3823. Steele^ ' in the horse guards. 207 other direction lay tlie chances of success ? -Already a hot politician, and entering with all his heart into the struggle of which the greatest champion now sat on the English throne, might he not at any rate, on his hero's behalf, throw a sword if not a pen into the scale ? He would be a soldie^ He would, as he says, plant himself behind King William the Third against Louis the Four- teenth. But here he was met by determined opposition ; and a rich relative of his mother, who had named him heir to a large estate in Wexford, threatened to disinherit him if he took that course. He took it, and was disinherited ; giving the express reason, many years later, that, when he so cocked his hat, put on a broad sword, jack -boots, and shoulder-belt, and mounted a war-horse, under the unhappy Duke of Ormond's command, he teas not ac- quainted with his own parts, and did not know, what he had since discovered, that he could handle a pen more effectively than a sword.' ^^^hat do we see, in all this, but an earlier form of the philosophy of the TatJer, that you must he the thing you would seem to be, and in some form manage to do what you think it right should be done^iX' Baffled in his hope to obtain a commission, Steele entered the army as a private in the Horse Guards, pre- ferring, as he characteristically expresses it, the state of his mind to that of his fortune. Soon, however, the qualities which made him the delight of his comrades, obtained him a cornetcy in the regiment ; and not long after, through the interest of its colonel. Lord Cutts, to whom he had acted as private secretary, he got a company in Lord Lucas's fusiliers, and became Captain Steele. Then began the experiences and temptations he has him- self described. He found it, he says, a way of life exposed to much irregularity ; and, being thoroughly convinced of many things, of which he often repented and which he more often repeated, he writ, for lus own private use, a little book called the Christian Hero? Nevertheless, this little book is not exactly what the good Dr. Drake, and many before him and since, appear to have thought it. You would suppose, from what is said of it, that it was 1 The Theatre^ No. xi. 2 Apology, p. 296. 208 THE CHRISTIAN HERO. \_Sir Richavd " a valuable little manual " of religious exercises for use in " the intervals snatclied from the orgies of voluptuous- " ness." But it is by no means this, nor anything else that would amount to such sheer fooling and face-making. Steele had too humble and pious a faith in religion to expose it to ridicule from the unscrupulous companions he lived with. How large and longing is the mind of man, compared with the shortness of his life and the frailty of his desires, he knew ; and, that his own thoughts were better than his practice, it was no discredit to him also to know. But it was not to set up the one either as a cloak or a contrast to the other, that he wrote the Chris- tian Hero. It was not a book of either texts or prayers. There was nothing in it that a man conscious of all infir- mities might not write ; but there was also that in it which must have made its writer more conscious of his powers than he had been till then, and which influenced his future perhaps more than any one has supposed.' 1 Perhaps Steele has no where so beautifully expressed the spirit in which he wrote this book, than by that fine paper (No. 27) of the Spectator, in which he says : * ' There ' is scarce a thinking man in the ' world, who is involved in the ' business of it, but lives under a * secret impatience of the hurry ' and fatigue he suffers, and has * formed a resolution to fix himself, * one time or another, in such a ' state as is suitable to the end of ' his being. You hear men every ' day in conversation profess that ' all the honour, power, and riches * which they propose to themselves, ' cannot give satisfaction enough to ' reward them for half the anxiety ' they undergo in the pursuit or * possession of them. While men ' are in this temper (which hap- * pens very frequently), how in- ' consistent are they with them- * selves ! They are wearied with ' the toil they bear, but cannot ' find in their hearts to relinquish * it ; retirement is what they want, ' but they cannot betake them- ' selves to it ; while they pant after shade and covert, they still affect to appear in the most glittering scenes of life : but sure this is only just as reasonable, as if a man should call for more lights when he has a mind to go to sleep . *' Since, then, it is certain that our own hearts deceive us in the love of the world, and that we cannot command ourselves enough to resign though we every day wish ourselves disengaged from its allurements, let us not stand upon a formal taking of leave, but wean ourselves from these, while we are in the midst of them. "It is certainly the general in- tention of the greater part of mankind to accomplish this work, and live according to their own approbation, as soon as they pos- sibly can ; but since the duration of life is so uncertain, and that this has been a common topic of discourse ever since there was such a thing as life itself, how is it possible that we should defer a moment the beginning to live ac- coiduig to the rules of reason ? Steele.'] belief and uxbelief. 209 P^ At the outset of it lie tells you that men of business, ^ whatever they may think, have not nearly so much to do with the government of the world as men of wit ; but that the men of wit of that age had made a grave mistake in disregarding religion and decency. He attributes it to classical associations, that, being scholars, they are so much more apt to resort to Heathen than to Christian examples ; and to correct this error he proposes to show, by a series of instances, how inadequate to all the great needs of life is the Heathen, and how sufficient the Chris- tian moraHty. Anticipating and answering Gibbon, he looks upon it as a special design of Providence that the time when the world received the best news it evej* heard, was also that wherein the warriors and philosophers whose virtues are most pompously arrayed in story should h^ive been performing, or just have finished, their parts, -^e then introduces, with elaborate portraiture of their great- ness, Cato, the younger Brutus, and other characters of antiquity ; that he may also display them, in their mo- ments of highest necessity, deprived of their courage, and deserted by their gods. By way of contrast he next ex- hibits, " from a certain neglected Book, which is called, " and from its excellence above all other books deservedly " called. The Scripture," what the Christian system is ; handling it with no thfeological pretension, but as the common inheritance vouchsafed to us all. He finds in the Sermon on the Mount " the whole heart of man dis- " covered by Him that made it, and all our secret im- *' The man of business has ever *' wherever we are, till they are * ' some one point to carry, and then ' ' conquered ; and we can never " he tells himself he'll bid adieu to "live to our satisfaction in the " all the vanity of ambition; the " deepest retirement, unless we are " man of pleasure resolves to take " capable of so living in some mea- ' ' his leave at last, and part civilly ' ' sure amidst the noise and business '* with his mistress. But the am- " of the world.'' " bitious man is entangled every And so, when that problem is " moment in a fresh pursuit, and solved as the kindly philosopher ' ' the lover sees new charms in the would have solved it, we shall have '* object he fancied he could aban- men at last living really in the day ' ' don. It is, therefore, a fantas- that is present, and not putting life ' * tical way of thinking, when we continually off until to-morrow ; or " promise ourselves an alteration in to that some other time, which is so " our conduct from change of place, little likely, for any of us, ever to ' ' and difference of circumstances. arrive. *' The same passions will attend us 210 FORESHADOWING OF THE TATLER. [Sir Richard " pulses to ill, and false appearances of good, exposed and " detected ; " he shows through what storms of want and misery it had been , able to bear unscathed the early martyrs and apostl^ and, in demonstration of the world's present inattention to its teaching, he tells them that, after all they can say of a man, let them but conclude that he is rich, and they have made him friends, nor have they utterly overthrown him till they have said he is poor. In other words, a sole consideration to prosperity had taken, in their imaginations, the place of Christianity ; and, what is there that is not lost, pursues kind-hearted Steele, in that which is thus displaced? " For Chris- " tianity has that in it which makes men pity, not scorn, " the wicked ; and, by a beautiful kind of ignorance of " themselves, think those wretches their equals." It aggravates all the benefits and good offices of life by making them seem fraternal, and its generosity is an en- larged self-love. The Christian so feels the Avants of the miserable, that it sweetens the pain of the obliged ; he gives with an air that has neither oppression nor superio- rity in it ; " and is always a benefactor with the mien of " a receiver." In an expression already quoted from the Tatter^ we have seen a paraphrase of these last few words ; but indeed Mr. Bickerstaff's practical and gentle philosophy, not less than his language, is anticipated by Captain Steele. The sj^mtfl^o^^Jthe same. The leading purpose in both 'is feneariy sympathy with humanity : a belief, as both .express it, that "it is not possible for a human heart to " be averse to anything that is human ;" a desire to link the highest associations to the commonest things ; a faith in the compatibility of mirth with virtue ; the wish to smooth life's road by the least acts of benevolence as well as by the greatest ; and the lesson so to keep our under- standings balanced, that things shall appear to us " great " or little as they are in nature, notas they are gilded or " suUied by accident and fortune. j^^iThe thoughts and expressions, as may be seen in these quoted, are fre- quently the same ; each has the antithetical turns and verbal contrasts, " the proud submission, the dignified " obedience," which is a peculiarity of Steele's manner ; in both, we have the author aiming far less to be author Steele.'] town and the wits. 211 than to be companion ; and there is even a passage in this Christian Hero which brings rustling about us the hoops and petticoats of Mr. Bickerstaff's Chloes and Clarissas. He talks of the coarseness and folly, the alternate rapture and contempt, with which women are treated by the wits ; he desires to see the love they in- spire taken out of that false disguise, and put in its own gay and becoming dress of innocence ; and he tells us that " in their tender frame there is native simplicity, ground- " less fear, and little unaccountable contradictions, upon " which there might be built expostulations to divert a " good and intelligent young woman, as well as the ful- " some raptures, guilty impressions, senseless deifications, " and pretended deaths, that are every day offered her." Captain Steele dedicates his little book to Lord Cutts ; dates it from the Tower Guard ; and winds it up with a parallel between the French and the English king, not unbecoming a Christian soldier. But surely, as we read it on to its close, the cocked hat, the shoulder-belt, the jack-boots disappear ; and we have before us, in gown and slippers, the Editor of the Tatler. Exit the soldier, and enter the wit. The publication of the Christian Hero, in 1701, is cer- tainly the point of transition. He says himself that after it he was not thought so good a companion, and that he found it necessary to enliven his character by another kind of writing. The truth is that he had discovered, at last, what ^ he best could do ; and where in future he was to mount guard, was not at the Tower, or under command of my Lord Cutts, but at the St. James's coffee- house, or \Yiirs, in waiting on Mr. Congreve. The author of the Old Bachelor and Love for Love now sat in the chair just vacated by Dryden ; and appears to have shown unusual kindness to his new and promising recruit. In a letter of this date, he talks of Dick Steele with an agreeable air of cordiality ; and such was then Mr. Congreve's distinction, that his mere notice was no trifling feather in the cap of an ex-captain of Fusileers. " I hope I may have leave to indulge my vanity," says Steele, "by telling all the world that Mr. Con- " greve is my friend." The Muses Mercunj not only told the world the same thing, but published verses p 2 5^12 W^^^ COMEDY PLAYED. \_Sir Ruhard of the new Whig wit, and threw out hints of a forth- coming comedy. The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode, Steele's first dramatic production, was played at Drury Lane in 1702. Yery sprightly and pleasant throughout, it was full of telling hits at lawyers and undertakers ; and, with a great many laughable incidents, and no laugh raised at the expense of virtue or decency, it had one character (the widow on whom the artifice of her husband's supposed death is played off) which is a masterpiece of comedy. Guards- men and Fusileers mustered strong on the first night ; in the prologue, " a fellow soldier " made appeal to their soldierly S3rmpathies ; Gibber, Wilks, Norris, and Mrs. Oldfield were in the cast ; and the success was complete. One can imagine the enjoyment of the scene where the undertaker reviews his regiment of mourners, and singles out for indignant remonstrance one provokingly hale, well -looking mute. " You ungrateful scoundrel, did not " I pity you, take you out of a great man's ser\ice, and " show you the pleasure of receiving wages ? Did not I " give you ten, then fifteen, now twenty shillings a week, '* to be sorrowful. A^id the more I give yoii, I think the " gladder you are /" But this was a touch that should have had for its audience a company of Addisons rather than of gay Fusileers and Guardsmen. Sydney Smith, indeed, who delighted in it, used to think it Addison's ; but certainly Steele's first comedy had no insertion from that masterly hand. When it was written Addison was in Italy, when it was acted he was in Geneva ; and he did not return to England, after an absence of more than four years, till towards the close of the following autumn. He found his friend not only established among the wits, but enrolled in that most select body of their number who drank Whig toasts at the Kit-Katt, with the prudent Mr. Tonson at one end of the table and the proud Duke of Somerset at the other. For, the comedy had brought him repute in high Whig quarters, and even the notice of the King. He was justly proud of this. It was much to say, from experience, that nothing could make the town so fond of a man as a successful play ; but more to have it to remember that " his name to be provided for, was in Steele^^ NOCTES CCENtEQUE deorum. 213 " the la§t table-book ever worn by tbe glorious and " immortal William the Third." ' Yes, the last. Be- tween the acting of his comedy and the arrival of his friend, their great sovereign had ceased to be mortal. Somewhat sad were Whig prospects, therefore, when Addison again grasped Steele by the hand; but the Kit-Katt opened its doors eagerly to the new comer, the first place at Will's and the St. James's was conceded to him, and the Nodes Ccenceque Deorum began. Many have described and glorified them; and Steele coupled them in later years mth a yet rarer felicity, when he had to tell of "nights spent with him apart from all " the world," in the freedom and intimacy of their old school days of Charter-house, and their College walks by the banks of the Cherwell. There is no such thing as real conversation, Addison used to say, but between two persons; and after nights so passed, Steele could only think of his friend as combining in himself all the wit and nature of Terence and Catullus, heightened with a humour more exquisite and delightful than either possessed, or than was ever the property of any other man. Of course Captain Steele (for so, according to Mr, Dennis, he continued to be called at the theatres)^ had by 1 Apology, p. 227. territories, and (prefacing thus his 2 How popular Steele was at the recommendation of the young poet, theatres, and himself how fond of Leonard Welsted, to instruct whom them, needs hardly to be said. in the art of comedy he has asked Some of his finest pieces of criti- Gibber and Wilks to act the Care- cism are on Betterton and East- less Husband) he goes on to give a court. He describes himself, as Mr. specimen of his most nicely discri- Bickei'staff, carrying his little cousin minative criticism. A brief passage to see the Hamlet of the great tra- will sufiice : "It is," he says, " a gedian, and tells us he shalUalways '' very good office one man does love the little chap for his partiality " another, when he tells him the in all that concerned the fortune of ' ' manner of his being pleased ; and Hamlet. "This," he continues, '* I have often thought that a com- " is entering youth into the affec- " ment upon the capacities of the " tions and passions of manhood " players would very much improve " beforehand, and, as it were, ante- " the delight that way, and impart " dating the effects we hope from a '• it to those who otherwise have no " long and liberal education." In "sense of it. The first of the the same spirit is that delightful '' present stage are Wilks and paper (182) in which, after speaking "Gibber, perfect actors in their of Eugenie's gallery of fine pictures, "different kinds. Wilks has a and the grand woods and fields of " singular talent in representing Crassus, he says, that the players " the graces of nature ; Gibber the are his pictures and the scenes his ' * deformity in the affectation of ^14 THE TENDER HUSBAJ^D. \_Sir Richard this time begun another comedy, and from his friend he received for it not a few of what he generously said after- wards were its most applauded strokes. Nor is it difficult, we think, to trace Addison's hand in the Tender Husband. There is a country squire and justice of the quorum in it, perhaps the very first the stage had in those days brought from his native fields for any purpose more inno- cent than to have horns clapped on his head ; and, in the scenes with him and his lumpish nephew, there is a height- ened humour we are disposed to give to Addison. But Steele's rich invention, and careless graces, are also very manifest throughout ; and in the dialogues of the romance- stricken niece and her lover, from which Sheridan bor- rowed, and in that of the niece and her bumpkin of a cousin, to which even Goldsmith was somewhat indebted, we have pure and genuine comedy. The mistake of the piece, as of its predecessor, is the occasional disposition to reform morals rather than to paint manners ; for the rich vein which the Tatler worked to such inimitable uses, yielded but scantily to the working of the stage. But the Tender Sushand, admirably acted by Wilks, Norris, and Eastcourt, and above all by Mrs. Oldfield in that love-lorn Parthenissa, Biddy Tipkin, well deserved its success. Before its production there had arrived the glorious news " them. Were I a writer of plays, that the same justice should be done '* I should never employ either of to them. "Mr, William Bullock," '* them in parts which had not their he says, "and Mr. William Pen- " bent this way. This is seen in " kethman are of the same age, ' ' the inimitable strain and run of ' * profession, and sex. They both ** good humour which is kept up in ** distinguish themselves in a very ** the character of Wildair, and in the " particular manner under the dis- '* nice and delicate abuse of under- " ciplyie of the crab-tree, with this •' standing in that of Sir Novelty. " only difference, that Mr. Bullock ** Gibber, in another light, hits ** has the more agreeable squall, *' exquisitely the flat civility of an '* and Mr. Penkethman the more "affected gentleman -usher, and " graceful shrug. Penkethman de- " Wilks the easy frankness of a " vours a cold chick with great "gentleman." Nothing could be "applause; Bullock's talent chiefly better said than that. Nor must I " lies in asparagus. Penkethman omit what he afterwards wrote " is very dexterous at conveying (No. 188) by way of a parody on " himself under a table ; Bullock is this criticism, but with infinite good " no less active at jumping over a humour in the satire, in answer to " stick. Mr. Penkethman has a a demand from two walking gentle- " great deal of money ; but Mr. men of the stage, Mr. William Bui- " Bullock is the taller man." lock, and Mr. William Penkethman, Steele?^ -svhig prospects brightening. 215 of Blenheim, and Steele flung in some 'WL.iggish. and patriotic touches. Addison wrote the prologue, and to Addison the piece was dedicated : the author taking that means of declaring pubKcly to the world that he looked upon this intimacy as the most valuable enjoyment of his life, and hoping also to make the Town no ill compliment for their kind acceptance of his comedy by acknowledging, that this had so far raised his own opinion of it as to make him think it no improper memorial of an inviolable friend- ship. To Addison he addressed at the same time a more private \\dsh, which lay very near his heart. " I told him *' there was nothing I so ardently wished, as that we " might sometime or other publish a work written by us " both, which should bear the name of The Monument, in " memory of our friendship." ^ Such a work, imder a live- lier title, not planned with that view by either friend, was soon to perpetuate, and inseparably to connect, the names ofboth. /^^eauAvhile, after two or three years of adversity and depression, the Whig cause had again brightened^ The great foreign policy of William coerced, as with a spell, the purposes of his successors ; and again, with the victory of Blenheim, Whig principles obtained the mastery. But, in the interval of gloomy and variable weather, many changes had by degrees become also perceptible in the places of resort which the wits made famous. The coffee- house had ceased to be any longer such neutral ground as it had formerly been. Men are more jealous of their opinions when their opinions are less prosperous, more eager themselves to chamgion them, and less tolerant of others who oppose them.'''ljiterature itself took insensibly a stronger tone, and a higher position, in those stormy and threatening days. It was the only direct communication between the men who governed the State, and the people from whom, if the Act of Settlement was to have any authority, they received their sole commission to govern '-^ Halifax, Somers, Sunderland, Co^vper, indeed all the lead- ing Whig lords, knew this thoroughly ; and if they had acted on it less partially, they would have kept their ground better than they did. "When Mr. Mackey, in his 1 The Spectator, No. 555. 216 WITS AT THE ST. JAMEs's. [_Sir Richard Memoirs of his Secret Services, says of Halifax that lie was a great encourager of learning and learned men, Swift grimly writes in the margin that " his encourage- " ments were only good words and dinners." But that at any rate was something. At such a time as the present it was much. When Blenheim made a " new" Whig of the Tory Lord Treasurer, a good word from Halifax got Addison a commissionership of two hundred a year from him ; and, while the restoration of the old Whigs was yet doubtful, the dinners of Halifax at least kept their par- tisans together, and Prior himself was rendered not less steady than even Ambrose Philips or Steele. But, as we have said, prospects in that direction were brightening at last. Events were accomplishing, of them- selves, what the actors in them had not the power to prevent ; and, through whatever remaining obstacle or hindrance, for the present the plain result had become too imminent to be much longer delayed by any possible com- bination of clergy and country gentlemen. What was done with such a hope, only hastened the catastrophe. Oddly enough, however, it happened just at this time that the only consolation of which the circumstances were capable, was suggested by a member of the one disheartened class to a member of the other. It was at the St. James's coffee-house, now the great Whig resort, but into which there had stumbled one day, when all the lead- ing wits were present, a *' gentleman in boots, just " come out of the country." Already also, on that day, a clergyman of remarkable appearance had been observed in the room. Of stalwart figure, mth great sternness and not much refinement of face, but with the most wonderful blue eyes looking out from under black and heavy brows, he had been walking half an hour or so incessantly to and fro across the floor without speaking to anybody ; when at last, on the entrance of the booted squire, up went the walking priest to him, and asked this question aloud : " Pray, Sir, do you remember any good " weather in the world ? " The country gentleman was of course unprepared for anything in the way of allegory, and stammered out an answer which did little credit to him as an agriculturist. "Yes, Sir, I thank God I " remember a great deal of good weather in my time." Steele.'] doctor joxathan swift. 217 To which, the querist rejoined, " That is more than I can " say. I never remember any weather that was not too " hot or too cold, too wet or too dry; but, however God " Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 'tis all " very well " — took up his hat, and without another word to anybody walked out of the room. That was the first introduction of Steele and Addison to the Reverend Jonathan Smft. Not long after, how- ever, they knew in him not only " the mad parson," but the writer of one of the most effective of Whig pamphlets, the author of the most masterly prose satire published since Rabelais, the foremost intellect, and one of the first wits of the day. Nor was he, to them, the least delightful of associates. Charles Fox had a theory about Swift, that he could not have written the heaps of nonsense he entertained his friends with, unless he had been at heart a good-natured man. All at any rate were agreed as to his wonderful and unequalled fascination in society, at such times as he pleased to exert it. When Addison, shortly after this date, gave him his book of travels, he wrote on its fly-leaf that it was given to the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of the age. Happily none of them yet knew what his master-passion was, of what little value he counted friendships or alliances that might thwart it, with what secret purpose he sought the power to be derived from literary distinction, to what uses he would have turned his influence over those Whig wits at the St. James's coffee-house, and what a dreary and unsatisfactory past he was there himself to redeem. As yet, they saw him only in his amiable aspect ; somewhat perhaps condescending to their mirth, but sharing in it nevertheless, and, when he pleased, making it run over with abundance. Indeed he cared so little for what was matter of real moment to them, that he was able often to pass for a good-natured man in points where they failed to show good nature. " I have great credit with him," he wrote of an indifferent verse- writer to Ambrose Philips, when a foreign employment had for a time carried off that staunch Whig poet, "because I can listen when he reads, " which neither you nor the Addisons nor Steeles ever " can." It is the same letter in which he tells Ambrose that the " triumvirate " of Addison, Steele, and himself, 218 A FAMOUS TRIUMVIRATE. [Sit' RtcJiard come together as seldom as the sun, moon, and earth ; though he often sees each of them, and each of them as often him and each other ; hut, when he is of their number, justice is done to Ambrose as he would desire. No doubt, when the triumvirate were thus together, Swift could do justice also, in his dry way, to the pretty little opera of Rosamund which Mr. Addison had per- mitted to be represented, and which, though it brought him no repute, added another member to the circle who surrounded him (the "senate,^' as Pope afterwards called them,) in the person of that young Mr. Tickell of Oxford • who addressed to him a poem in admiration of it. One may imagine, too, that while Swift bore with much equa- nimity Mr. Addison's failure on that occasion, he might be even disposed to make merry at a certain contempo- raneous failure of the other member of the triumvirate, who, having proposed to give a dramatic form to Jeremy Collier's Short Vieiv, and to introduce upon the stage itself that slashing divine's uncompromising strictures of it, produced his Lying Lover ; and had the honour to inform the House of Commons some years later, that he alone, of all English dramatists, had written a comedy wbich was damned for its piety. This surprising incident closed for the present Captain Steele's dramatic career ; and when the Muse's Mercury next introduced his name to its readers, it was to say that, as for comedies, there was no great expectation of anything of that kind since Mr. Farquhar's death, for " the two gentlemen who would " probably always succeed in the comic vein, Mr. Con- " greve and Captain Steele, have affairs of much greater " importance at present to take up their time and '' thoughts." Soon after his pious failure, in truth, he had received from the gift of Harley what he calls the lowest office in the State, that of Gazetteer, and with it the post of Gen- tleman-Usher in the household of Prince George. It was not long before Harley's own resignation, that he had to thank him for this service ; and it was at the very time when the old Whigs were to all appearance again firmly established, and Addison was Under-Secretary of State, that heavings of no distant change became again percep- tible. Writers themselves were beginning to sway from Steele.~\ first and second marriage. 219 side to side, as preferments fell thick. There was Eowe coming over from the Tories, and there was Prior going over from the Whigs ; ' and there was the *' mad parson " of the St. James's coffee-house talking his Tract on Civil Discords to alarm the Tories, or his Tale of a Tub to alarm the Whigs, according as either side for the time inclined. And in the midst "of these portents, as we have said, Mr. Harley quitted office ; and the Whig phalanx little dreamed what he went to plan and meditate in his compelled retirement. But, in other than political ways, the current of life was moving on with Steele, and matters of private as well as pubHc concern had to do with his secession from the theatre. Some little time before this, he had received a moderate fortune in West India property with his first wife, the sister of a planter in Barbados ; and he had been left a widower not many months after the marriage. Just before Harley left the ministry, he married again ; and, of every letter or note he addressed to his second wife during the twelve years of their union, that lady proved herself so curiously thrifty, whether for her own comfort in often reading his words or for his plague in often repeating them, that the public curiosity was gra- tified at the commencement of the century by the publi- cation of upwards of four hundred such compositions: and thus the most private thoughts, the most familiar and unguarded expressions, weaknesses which the best men pass their lives in concealing, self-reproaches that only arise to the most generous natures, everything, in short, that Eichard Steele uttered in the confidence of an intimacy the most sacred, and which repeatedly he had begged "might be shown to no one living," became the property of all the world. It will be seen, as we proceed, 1 In the Hanmer Correspon- "honour. They say when yon and dence, published not many years ' ' I had lookt over this piece for six ago, we have a significant letter " months, the man could write from Prior to Hanmer dated in 1707, " verse ; but when we had forsaken and referring to another accession " him, and he went over to St the Whigs had lately had in the " and Addison, he could not write person of Mr. Edmund Smith, who " prose: you see, Sir, how danger- dedicated his play to Lord Halifax. " ous it is to be well with you ; a ^^ Phcedra is a prostitute, and ** man is no longer father of his own " Smith's dedication is nonsense. " writings, if they are good.'* " People do me a great deal of 220 MRS. MOLLY scrnLOCK [Sir Richard how lie stands a test such as never was applied, within our knowledge, to any other man on earth. *' Happy is the wooing that is not long a-doing,'' and Steele's does not seem to have been prolonged beyond a month. But his letters are such masterpieces of ardour and respect, of tender passion and honest feeling, of good sense and earnestness as well as of playful sweetness, that the lady may fairly be forgiven for having so soon surrendered. Instead of saying he shall die for her, he protests he shall be glad to lead his Hfe with her ; and on those terms she accepts, to use tbe phrase she after- wards applied to him, *' as agreeable and pleasant a man *' as any in England.^' Once accepted, his letters are in- cessant. He writes to her every hour, as he thinks of her every moment, of the day. He cannot read his books, he cannot see his friends, for thinking of her. AYhile Addi- son and he are together at Chelsea, he steals a moment, while his friend is in the next room, to tell the charmer of his soul that he is only and passionately hers. In town, he seems to have shared Addison's lodgings at this time ; for, not many weeks afterwards, he tells her ** Mr. " Addison does not remove till to-morrow, and therefore '' I cannot think of moving my goods out of his lodgings." Thus early, she seems to have contracted that habit of call- ing Addison her " rival, '* which he often charges on her in subsequent years ; and who will doubt that the Under- Secretary, rigid moralist as he was, formed part of the " very good company," who not many days before the marriage drank Mrs. Mary Scurlock's health (such was her name : she was the daughter and sole heiress of Jonathan Scurlock, Esq. of the county of Carmarthen) by the title of the woman Dick Steele loves best, to an extent it would hardly be decorous now to mention ? The last few days before the wedding are the least tolerable of all. If he calls at a friend's house, he must borrow the means of writing to her. If he is at a coffee-house, the waiter is despatched to her. If a minister at his office asks him what news from Lisbon, he answers she is exquisitely handsome. If Mr. Elliott desires at the St. James's to know when he has been last at Hampton-court, he replies it will be Tuesday come se'ennight. For, the happy day was fixed at last ; and on " Tuesday come se'ennight," Steele.^ mrs. dick Steele. 221 the 9th of September, 1707, the adorable Molly Scurlock became Mrs. Richard Steele. It does not fall within our purpose to dwell in much detail upon so large a subject as this lady's merits and defects, but some circumstances attended the marriage of a nature to make some of its early results less surprising. In her fortune of 400^ a-year her mother had a life- interest, and she does not seem to have regarded favour- ably any of the plans the newly-married couple proposed. On the other hand, Steele had certainly over-estimated his own income ; and a failure in his Barbados estate made matters worse in this respect. Eager meanwhile to show all distinction to one he loved so tenderly, and belie\dng, as he wrote to her mother, that the desire of his friends in power to serve him more than warranted the expectations he had formed, his establishment was larger than prudence should have dictated. Mrs. Steele had a town -house in Bury-street, St. James's; and within six weeks of the marriage, her husband had bought her a pretty little house at Hampton -court which he furnished handsomely, and pleasantly called, by way of contrast to the Palace by the side of which it stood, the Hovel. In the neigh- bourhood lived Lord Halifax ; between whom and Steele as well as Addison there was such frequent intercourse at the time, that this probably led to Steele's first unwise outlay, which Addison helped to make up by a loan of a thousand pounds. In something less than a year (the 20th of August, 1708) the whole of this loan was repaid ; but soon after, the same sort of thing re- appears in the correspondence ; and not until some eight or nine years later does it entirely disappear, after a manner to be related hereafter, and very needlessly mis-related hitherto. Thus established at Hampton-court, Mrs. Steele drives her chariot and pair ; upon occasion, even her four horses. She has a Httle saddle-horse of her own, which costs her husband five shillings a week for his keep, when in town. She has also Eichard the footman, and Watts the gardener, and Will the boy, and her " own " women, and an addi- tional boy who can speak Welsh when she 'goes down to Carmarthen. But also, it must be confessed, she seems to have had a frequent and alarming recurrence of small needs and troubles which it is not easy to account for. If 222 LARGE EXPENSES AND SMALL WANTS. [<5'/r Richavd it be safe to take strictly the notes she so carefully pre- served, she was somewhat in the position pleasantly described by Madame de Sevigne, in her remark to the Countess Calonne and Madame Mazarine when they visited her on their way through Aries : " My dears, you " are like the heroines of romances ; jewels in abundance, " but scarce a shift to your backs ! " In the fifth month after their marriage, Steele writes to her from the Devil Tavern at Temple-bar (Ben Jonson's house), to tell her he cannot be home to dinner, but that he has partly succeeded in his business,, and that he incloses two guineas as earnest of more, languishes for her welfare, and will never be a moment careless again. JN'ext month, he is getting Jacob Ton^on to discount a bill for him, and he desires that the man who has his shoe- maker's bill should be told that he means to call on him as he goes home. Three months later, he finds it necessary to sleep away from home for a day or two, and orders the printer's boy to be sent to him with his night- gown, slippers, and clean linen, at the tavern where he is. But, in a few days, all seems prosperous again : she calls for him in her coach at Lord Sunderland's office, with his best periwig and new shoes in the coach-box, and they have a cheerful drive together. Not many days later, just as he is going to dine with Lord Halifax, he has to inclose her a guinea for her pocket. She has driven in her chariot- and-four to Hampton-court on the Tuesday, and on the Thursday he sends her a small quantity of tea she was much in want of. On the day when he had paid Addison back his first thousand pounds, he incloses for her immediate uses a guinea and a half. The day before he and " her favourite " Mr. Addison are going to meet some great men of the State, he sends her a quarter of a pound of black tea, and the same quantity of green. The day before he goes into his last attend- ance at Court upon Prince George, he conveys to her a sum so small, that he can only excuse it by saying he has kept but half as much in his own pocket. And a few days after Mr. Addison has taken him in a coach- and- four to dine with his sister and her husband, he tells his dearest Prue that he has despatched to her seven penny- worth of walnuts, at five a penny ; the packet containing Sleek.l LETTERS TO PRUE. 223 whicli he opens with much gravity before it goes, to inform her that since the invoice six walnuts have been abstracted. In that humorous touch, not less than in the change from his " dearest Molly '* to his " dearest Prue,'* by which latter name he always in future called her, we get glimpses of the character of Mrs. Richard Steele. That she had unusual graces both of mind and person, so to have fascinated a man like her husband, may well be assumed ; but here we may also see something of the defects and demerits that accompanied them. She seems to have been thrifty and prudent of everything that told against him (as in keeping every scrap of his letters), but by no means remarkably so in other respects. Clearly also, she gave herself the most capricious and prudish airs ; and quite astonishing is the success with which she appears to have exacted of him, not only an amount of personal devotion unusual in an age much the reverse of chivalrous, but accounts the most minute of all he might be doing in her absence. He thinks it hard, he says in one letter, that because she is handsome she will not behave herself with the obedience that people of worse features do, but that he must be continually giving her an account of every trifle and minute of his time ; yet he does it nevertheless. In subjoining some illustrations on this point from their first year of marriage, let us not fail to observe how characteristically the world has treated such a record. If Mr. Steele's general intercourse with his wife had been in keeping with the customary habits of the age, he would have had no need to make excuses or apologies of any kind; yet these very excuses, an exception that should prove the rule, are in his case taken as a rule to prove against him the exception. He meets a schoolfellow from India, and he has to write to the dearest being on earth to pardon him if she does not see him till eleven o'clock. He has to dine at the gentlemen -ushers' table at Court, and he sends his adorable ruler a messenger to bring him back her orders. He cannot possibly come home to dinner, and he writes to tell his dear, dear wife, that he cannot. He " lay last " night at Mr. Addison's," and he has to tell the dear creature the how and the why, and all about the papers 224 A TOO TENDER HUSBAND. [^Sir Richavd they were preparing for the press. A friend stops him as he is going home, and carries him off to Will's, whereon he sends a messenger, at eleven at night, to tell her it is a Welsh acquaintance of hers, and that they are only drinking her health, and that he will be with her " within " a pint of wine.'' If, on another occasion, he has any fear of the time of his exact return, he sends a special despatch to tell her to go to bed. When any interesting news reaches him for his Gazette, he sends it off at once to her. From the midst of his proofs at the office, he is continually writing to her. When, at the close of a day of hard work, he has gone to dine with Addison at Sandy- end, he snatches a little time from eating while the others are busy at it at the table, to tell her he is " yours, yours, " ever, ever." He sends her a letter for no other purpose than to tell his dear, dear Prue, that he is sincerely her fond husband. He has a touch of the gout, and exaspe- rates it by coming down stairs to celebrate her first birth- day since their wedding ; but it is his comfort, he tells her mother, as he hobbles about on his crutches, to see his darling little wife dancing at the other end of the room. When Lord Sunderland orders him to attend at council, he sends a special note to warn Prue of the uncertainty of his release. When, in May 1708, Mr. Addison is chosen member for Lostwithiel, and he is obliged, with some per- sons concerned, to go to him immediately, he has to write to acquaint her with that fact. He will write from the Secretary's office at seven in the evening, to tell her he hopes to be richer next day ; and again he will write at half-past ten the same night, to assure her he is then going very soberly to bed, and that she shall be the last thing in his thoughts as he does so, as well as the first next morning. Next morning he tells her she was not, he is sure, so soon awake as he was for her, desiring upon her the blessing of God. He writes to her as many letters in one day as there are posts, or stage-coaches, to Hamp- ton-court ; and then he gets Jervas the painter to fling another letter for her over their garden-wall, on passing there at night to his own house. He lets her visit his Gazette office, nay, is glad of visits at such a place, he tells her, from so agreeable a person as herself; and when Steele?^ a peevish wife. 225 her gay dress comes fluttering in, and with it " the beau- " tifulest object his eyes can rest upon," he forgets all his troubles. And if charming words could enrich what they accompanied, of priceless value must have been the guineas, the five guineas, the two guineas, the ten shil- lings, the five shillings, they commended to her. He has none of Sir Bashful Constant's scruples in confessing that he is in love with his wife. His life is bound up with her ; he values nothing truly but as she is its partaker ; he is but what she makes him ; with the strictest fidelity and love, with the utmost kindness and duty, with every dictate of his aftections, with every pulse of his heart, he is her passionate adorer, her enamoured husband. To which the measure of her return, in words at least, may perhaps be taken from the fact, that he has more than once to ask her to "write him word" that she shall really be overjoyed when they meet. The tone of her letters is indeed often a matter of complaint with him, and more often a theme for loving banter and pleasant raillery. What does her dissatisfac- tion amount to, he asks her on one occasion, but that she has a husband who loves her better than his life, and who has a great deal of troublesome business out of the pain of which he removes the dearest thing alive ? Her manner of writing, he says to her on some similar provocation, might to another look like neglect and want of love ; but he will not understand it so, for he takes it to be only the uneasiness of a doating fondness which cannot bear his absence without disdain. She may think what she pleases, again he tells her, but she knows she has the best husband in the world. On a particular letter filled with her caprices reaching him, he says of course he must take his portion as it runs without repining, for he considers that good nature, added to the beautiful form God had given her, would make a happiness too great for human life. But, be it lightly or gravely expressed, the feeling in which all these little strifes and contentions close, on his part, still is, that there are not words to express the ten- derness he has for her ; that love is too harsh a word ; and that if she knew how his heart aches w^hen she speaks an unkind word to him, and springs with joy when she smiles upon him, he is sure she would be more eager to make 226 roMESTic differences. \_Sir Richard him tappy like a good wife, than to torment him like a peevish beauty. Nevertheless there are differences, more rare, which the peevish beauty tvill push into positive quarrels ; and from these his kind heart suffers much. The first we trace some eight months after the marriage (we limit all our present illustrations, we should remark, to the first year and a half of their wedded life), when we find him trying to court her into good humour after it, and protest- ing that two or three more such differences will despatch him quite. On another occasion he knows not, he says, what she would have him do ; but all that his fortune will compass, he promises that she shall always enjoy, and have nobody near her that she does not like, unless haply he should himself be disapproved for being so de- votedly her obedient husband. At yet another time, he teUs her he shall make it the business of his life to make her easy and happy ; and he is sure her cool thoughts will teU her that it is a woman's glory to be her husband's friend and companion, and not his sovereign director. On the day following this, he takes a higher tone. She has saucily told him that their little dispute has been far from a trouble to her, to which he gravely replies, that to him it has been the greatest affliction imaginable : and, since she has twitted him with the judgment of the world, his answer must be, that he shall never govern his actions by it, but by the rules of morahty and right reason ; and so he will have her understand, that, though he loves her better than the light of his eyes, or the life-blood in his heart, yet he will not have his time or his will, on which her interests as well as his depend, under any direction but his own. Upon this a great explosion appears to have followed ; and almost the only fragment we possess of her writing is a confession of error consequent upon it, which so far is curiously characteristic of what we beheve her nature to have been, that while, in language which may somewhat explain the secret of her fascination over him, it gives even touching expression to her love and her contrition, it yet also contrives, in the very act of penitence, to plant another thorn. She begs his pardon if she has offended him, and she prays God to forgive him for adding to the sorrow of a heavy heart, which is Steele.'^ origin of bickerstaff. 227 above all sorrow but for his sake. This he is content to put aside by a very fervent assurance that there is not that thing on earth, except his honour, and that dignity which every man who lives in the world must preserve to himself, which he is not ready to sacrifice to her will and inclination ; and then he pleasantly closes by telling her that he had been dining the day before with Lord Hah- fax, when they had drank to the "beauties in the garden." The beauties in the garden were Prue and an old school- fellow then on a visit to her. And, of the wits who so drank to her at Lord Halifax's, Swift was doubtless one. For this was the time when what he afterwards sneeringly called that nobleman's " good words and good dinners " were most abundant, and when Anthony Henley put together, as the very type of unexceptionable Whig company, " Mr. Swift, Lord " Halifax, Mr. Addison, Mr.Congreve,and the Gazetteer." Never w^as Swift so intimate as now with Steele and Addi- son. We have him dining with Steele at the George, when Addison entertains ; with Addison at the Fountain, when Steele entertains ; and with both at the St. James's, when Wortley Montague is the host. And no wonder the run upon him was great at the time, for he had lately started that wonderful joke against Partridge in which the rest of the wits joined so eagerly; and which not only kept the town in fite of laughter for a great many months, but was turned to a memorable use by Steele. In ridi- cule of the notorious almanac-maker, and all kindred im- postors. Swift devised sundry Predictions after their own manner for the year 1708, the very first of which an- nounced nothing less than the death of Partridge himself; which event, after extremely cautious consultation with the star of his nativity, he fixed for the 29th of March, about eleven at night : and he was casting about for a whimsical name to give to the assumed other astrologer who was to publish this joke, when his eye caught a sign over a locksmith's house with Isaac Bickerstaff under- neath. Out accordingly came Mr. Bickerstaff's predic- tions, followed very speedily by an account of the " ac- " complishment of the first of them upon the 29tli " instant." What he most counted upon of course was, that Partridge should be such a fool as to take the matter Richavd and volunteer Ms good services with Harley, Addison should have " talked as if he suspected me," and refused to fall in with anything proposed. More strangely still, he complains to Stella the next day that he has never had an invitation to Steele's house since he came over from Ireland ; and that during this visit he has not even seen his wife, " by whom he is governed most abominably. So *• what care I for his wit ?" he adds. " For he is the worst " company in the world till he has a bottle of wine in his " head." Nevertheless he shows still a strange hankering after both the friends, and not so much indifference as might be supposed to the worst of company : for, the next social glimpse we have of him is at our old acquaintance Elliott's, of the St. James's, where the coffeeman has a christening, at which, as Yicar of Laracor, he officiates ; and where " the rogue " had a most noble supper, and Steele and himself sat among some scurvy people over a bowl of punch, until very late indeed. But, in truth, one has not much difficulty in discovering exactly enough, in spite of many apparent contradictions of phrase, in what position recent events had now placed the two friends towards him. On their side, without further faith in his political profession, remained still the same respect for his genius, and still the same desire to have help from his wit ; and on his, underlying a real desire to be of service where he could, was displayed too much of a fussy exhibition of his eagerness to serve, and far too exuberant and exulting a sense of that sudden and unwonted favour at Whitehall, which seemed half to have turned the great brain that had condescendingly waited for it so long. At his intercession, Harley was to see Steele; but the ex- Gazetteer did not even keep the appointment which was to save him his Commissionership. He probably knew, better than Swift, that Harley had no present inten- tion to remove him. The new Lord Treasurer certainly less surprised his antagonist Steele than his friend Jonathan, by showing no more resentment than was impHed in the request that the latter should not give any more help to the Tatler. *' They hate to think that I " should help him," he wrote to Stella, *' and so 1 frankly " told them 1 would do it no more." Already Steele had taken the determination, however, Siee/e.'\ the tatler discontinued. 235 wliicli made this resolve, in so far as the Tatler was con- cerned, of the least possible importance to him. His loss of the Gazette had entailed a change in the con- duct of his paper, which had convinced him of the expediency of re-casting it on a new plan. The town was startled by the announcement, therefore, that the Tatler of the 2nd January, 1710-11, was to be the last ; and Swift informs us that Addison, whom he met that night at supper, was as much surprised as himself at the an- nouncement, and quite as little prepared for it. But this may only express the limit of the confidence now reposed in Swift ; for there can be little doubt that the friends had acted together, in what already was in agitation to replace the Tatler. Nor is there any ground to suppose that Addison was ignorant, or Swift informed, of an interview which Steele had with Harley, in the interval before the new design was matured. The Lord Treasurer's weakness was certainly not a contempt or disregard for letters, and, though the object of the meeting was to settle a kind of armed neutrality, he overpassed it so far as to intimate the wish not simply to retain Steele in the Commissioner- ship, but to give him something more valuable.' This was civilly declined, but the courtesy was not forgotten ; and the better feeling it promoted for a time, the sort of armistice it established, the understood abstinence from present hostility involved in it, obtained all the more zealous help from Addison to his friend's new scheme. On Thursday the 1st of March, 1710-11, appeared the first number of the Spectator , with an announce- ment that it was to be continued daily. Much wonder was raised by so bold a promise, and little hope enter- tained that it could ever be redeemed. The result showed, notwithstanding, with what well-grounded confidence the ^ "When I had the honour of a " which yon have at snndry times short conversation with yon, you *' showed me." So Steele wrote to were pleased not only to signify to Harley (then Lord Oxford) on re- me that I should remain in this signing his Commissionership a little office, but to add that, if I would more than two years after the date name to you one of more value, in the text, when the Spectator had which would be more commodi- been brought to a close, and his ous to me, you would favour me tacit compact with Addison was at in it. . . I thank your Lordship an end, for the regard and distinction 236 THE SPECTATOR BEGUN. \_Sir Richurd friends had embarked in an enterprise wliicli men of less ricli resource thought extravagant and impossible. From day to day, without a single intermission, the Spec- tator was continued through 555 numbers, up to the 6th of December 1712. It began with a regular design, which with unflagging spirit was kept up to its close. " It " certainly is very pretty," wrote Swift to Stella, after some dozen numbers had appeared ; when, in answer to her question, he had to tell her that it was written by Steele with Addison's help. " Mr. Steele seems to have gathered " new life," he added, " and to have a new fund of wit." So indeed it might have seemed. Never had he shown greater freshness and invention, than in his first sketches of the characters that were to give life to the new design : nor can any higher thing be said of his conception of Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Honeycomb, than that it deserved the noble elaboration of Addison; or of his humorous touches to the short-faced gentleman,' than that even Addison's invention was enriched by them. It is not our purpose here to compare or criticise what each, according to his genius, contributed. It is enough to say that to the last both nobly bore their part, and that, whatever we have seen in the Tatler of Steele's wit, pathos, and philosophy, reappeared with new graces in the Spectator.'^ There was the same inexpressible charm in ^ We can give only one out of Spectator Tvas printed, to insert a many masterly strokes ; but, in the new preposition or conjunction. Nor whole range of Addison's wit, is does this differ from Pope's report there anything more perfect than that Addison wrote very fluently, Steele's making the Spectator re- but was very scrupulous and slow member that he was once taken up in correction : to which he adds, for a Jesuit, for no other reason what no doubt Steele knew and than his profound taciturnity ? acted on, that " it seemed to be for 2 It may perhaps be worth sub- *' his advantage not to have time joining, before we quit the subject ** for much revisal." That, during of their pleasant and ever memo- the continuance of the works in rable literary companionship, that which they were jointly engaged, what has been said at various times Steele sent all papers to press, is of Addison's care and Steele's indif- certain. Tickell asserts that the ference in regard to corrections of papers, before publication, were the press, seems to express not badly never or seldom shown to each other the different temperaments of the by their respective writers; but, that men. Joseph Warton had heard of all passed through Steele's hands to Addison's being so nice, that he the printer, is proved by old Richard would even stop the press when Nutt, who worked in the ofiice of nearly the whole impression of the his father, Moi-phew's partner, John Steele.~\ a new fund of wit. 237 the matter, the same inexhaustible variety in the form. And upon all the keen exposure of vice, or the pleasant laugh at folly ; as prominent in the lifelike little story, as in the criticism of an actor or a play ; making attractive the gravest themes to the unthinking, and recommending the lightest fancies to the most grave ; there was still the old and ineffaceable impress of good-nature and humanity — the soul of a sincere man shining out through it all. Let any one read the uninterrupted series of twenty-two Spectators, which Steele daily contributed from the 6th to the 31st of August 1711, and doubt his title to a full share in the glory and fame of the enterprise. Try his claim to participate in its wit and character, by such papers as the short-faced gentleman's experiences (No. 4) ; as the seven he inserted in the series of Sir Roger de Coverley ; as those numerous sketches of Clubs which his touch filled with such various life ; and as the essays we now proceed to name. On Powell's Puppet-Show (No. 14), On Ordinary People (No. 17), On Envious People (No. 19), On Over-consciousness and Affectation (No. 38), On Coffee-house Politicians (No. 49), On Court Mournings (No. 64), On the Fine Gentlemen of the Stage (No. 65), On Coarse Speaking (No. 75), On the Impro- vidence of Jack Truepenny (No. 82), On the Footmen of the House of Peers (No. 88), On the Portable Quality of Good Humour (No. 100), On Servants' Letters (No. 137), On the Man of Wit and Pleasure (No. 151), On the Virtues of Self-denial (No. 206 and No. 248), On Mr. Antony Freeman's domestic troubles, and on Mr. Tom Meggott's share therein (Nos. 212 and 216), in which lies the whole germ of the capital comedy of the Jealous Wife, On Generous Men (No. 346), On Witty Companions Nutt. This same Richard also told * ' which he saw rapidly written by- Mr. Nichols, that the press was "Steele at midnight, and in ted, stopped, not seldom, by want of copy, "whilst he waited to carry it to for which Steele was responsible ; " the press." Let me simply add, and that in these cases he had often that the art of making errata in a hard task to find out Steele, who themselves delightful, and of turn- frequently wrote hastily what was ing the correction of a printer's needed, in a room at the printing- error into a new spring and charm office. *' This merry old man, who of wit, was never carried to such a *' died but lately, mentioned upon perfection as by Addison. " recollection a particular paper 238 ON DICK eastcourt's DEATH. \_Sir Richat'd (JSTo. 258), On the Comic Actors (No. 370), On Jack Sippet (No. 448), and On Yarious Forms of Anger (No. 438), with its whimsical contrasts of imperturbability and wrath. Let him be measured, too, in graver themes, by such papers as those On Living to our own Satisfaction (No. 27), On Female Education (No. QQ\ On the Death of a Friend (No. 133), On the Fear of Death (No. 152), On Youth and Age (No. 153), On the Flogging at Public Schools (No. 157), On Raffaelle's Cartoons (No. 226,) and On the Death of the Comedian Eastcourt (No. 468), the last one of his most characteristic, wise, and beautiful pieces of writing.* So long as these and many others survive, there will be no need to strike him apart, or judge him. aloof, from his friend. ^ I subjoin a passage, never to be quoted too often, from this exquisite in which, describing East- court's astonishing talents for loi- micry, he extracts from them a phi- losophy of most wise and general application to the weakness and self-love of us all, ' ' What was ■ ' he says "peculiarly excellent in this * memorable companion, was, that ' in the accounts he gave of persons ' and sentiments, he did not only * hit the figure of their faces, and ' manner of their gestures, but he ' would in his narrative fall into ' their very way of thinking ; and * this when he recounted passages ' wherein men of the best wit were * concerned, as well as such wherein ' were represented men of the lowest ' rank of understanding. It is ' certainly as great an instance of ' self-love to a weakness, to be im- ' patient of being mimick'd, as any ' can be imagined. There were ' none but the vain, the formal, * the proud, or those who were in- * capable of amending their faults, ' that dreaded him ; to others he ' was in the highest degree pleas- ' ing ; and I do not know any sa- * tisfaction of any indifferent kind ' I ever tasted so much, as having * got over an impatience of my see- ' ing myself in the air he could put ' me when I have displeased him. ' It is, indeed, to his exquisite talent ' this way, more than any philoso- ' phy I could read on the subject, ' that ray person is very little of ' my care ; and it is indifferent to ' me what is said of my shape, my ' air, my manner, my speech, or ' my address. It is to poor East- ' court I chiefly owe, that I am '• arrived at the happiness of think- ■ ing nothing a diminution to me, ■ but what argues a depravity of ' my will. . . I have been present ■ with him among men of the most ' delicate taste a whole night, and ' have known him (for he saw it ■ was desired) keep the discourse '• to himself the most part of it, ■ and maintain his good humour ■ with a countenance, in a language • so delightful, without offence to ■ any person or thing upon earth, • still preserving the distance his ■ circumstances obliged him to ; — ' I say, I have seen him do all this ' in such a charming manner, that ' I am sure none of those I hint at will read this, without giving him some sorrow for their abun- dant mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter. I wish it were any honour to the pleasant creature's memory, that my eyes are too much suffused to let me go on — " Steele ] spectator's unexampled success. 239 Nothing in England had ever equalled the success of the Spectator. It sold, in numbers and volumes, to an extent almost fabulous in those days ; and when Boling- broke's stamp carried Grub-street by storm, it was the solitary survivor of that famous siege. Doubling its price, it yet fairly held its ground ; and at its close it was not only paying Government 29/ a week on account of the halfpenny stamp upon the numbers sold, but had a circulation in volumes of nearly ten thousand. Altogether, it must often have circulated before the stamp, thirty thousand, which might be multiplied by six to give a corresponding popularity in our day. Nevertheless Steele had been for some time uneasy and restless. Thus far, with reasonable fidelity, the armistice on his side had been kept ; but from day to day, at what he believed to be the thick- ening of a plot against public liberty, he found it more and more difficult to observe the due restraints ; and not seldom latterly, perhaps in spite of himself, his thoughts took the direction of politics. " He has been mighty impertinent *^ of late in his Spectators," wrote Swift to Stella, " and " I believe he will very soon lose his employment." That was, to Steele, the last and least thing at present. What he wanted, was a certain freedom for himself which hardly consisted with the plan of the Spectator; and he therefore resolved to substitute an entirely new set of characters. He closed it in December 1712, and he announced a new daily paper, called the Guardian, for the following March. Into this new paper, to which Addison (engaged in preparing Cato for the stage) did not for a considerable time contribute, he carried the services of the young poet whose surprising genius was now the talk of the town. Steele had recognised at once Pope's surpassing merit, and in his friendly critic Pope welcomed a congenial friend. He submitted verses to him, altered them to his pleasure, wrote a poem at his request, and protested himself more eager to be called his little friend, Dick Distich, than to be complimented with the title of a great genius or an eminent hand.' He was so recreated, ^ An accomplished friend of mine Correspondence professing to have (in Athenctum and Notes and Que- been interchanged between himself ries) has succeeded in establishing and Steele at this time, and on that the various letters in Pope's which the statement in the text is 240 QUARREL WITH SWIFT. [♦S/V Rtchavd in short, as lie afterwards wrote to Addison, with " the " brisk sallies and quick turns of wit which Mr. Steele " in his liveliest and freest humours darts about him," that he did not immediately foresee the consequence of engaging with so ardent a politician. Accordingly, just as Swift broke out into open quarrel with his old asso- ciate, we find Pope confessing that many honest Jacobites were taking it very ill of him that he continued to write with Steele. The dispute with Swift need not detain us. It is enough if we use it to show Steele's spirit as a gentleman, who could not retort an injustice, or fight wrong with wrong. When, after a very few months, he stood up in the House of Commons to justify himself from libels which had exhausted the language of scurriHty in heaping insult upon him and his, the only personal remark he made was to quote a handsome tribute he had formerly ofi'ered to their writer, with this manly addition : " The gentleman " I here intended was Dr. Swift. This kind of man I '* thought him at that time : we have not met of late, but " I hope he deserves this character still." And why was he thus tender of Swift ? He avowed the reason in the last paper of the JEnglishman, where he says that he knew his old friend's sensibility of reproach to be such, that he would be unable to bear life itself under half the ill lan- guage he had given to others. Swift himself had formerly described to Steele those early days when he possessed the sensitive fear of libel to an extraordinary degree, and this had not been forgotten by his generous adversary. But what really was at issue in their quarrel ought to be stated, since it forms the point of departure taken by Steele, not simply from those who differed but from many who agreed with him in politics.'^' Principles are out of " the case," said Swift, " we dispute wholly about per- " sons." " No," rejoined Steele, " the dispute is not " about persons and parties, but things and causes^'^?' Such had been the daring conduct of the men in po\^^, and such their insolent success, that Steele, at a time based, only assumed their existing truth generally is expressed in those shape in later years, when it suited letters, as to the relations now sub- Pope's purpose so to place them sisting between Pope and bteele, I before the world. But that the entertain no doubt. Sieele.~\ in the house of commons. 241 ■when few had the courage to speak out, did not scruple to declare what he believed to be their ultimate design. " Nothing," he wrote to his wife some few months after the present date, "nothing but Divine Providence can " prevent a Civil War within a few years." Swift laughed, and said Steele's head had been turned by the success of his papers, and that he thought himself mightily more im- portant than he really was. This may have been so ; but whatever imaginary value he gave himself, he was at least ready to risk, for the supposed duty he thought also in- cumbent on him. Nor was it little for him, in his posi- tion at that time, to surrender literature for politics ; to resign his Commissionership of Stamps ; and to enter the House of Commons. He did not require Pope to point him out lamentingly to Congreve, as a great instance of the fate of all who are so carried away, with the risk of being not only punished by the other party but of suffer- ing from their own. Even from the warning of Addison, that his zeal for the public might be ruinous to himself, he had turned silently aside. Not a day now passed that the most violent scurrilities were not directed against his pen and person, in which one of Swift's "under- " writers," Wagstaff, made himself conspicuous ; and CoUey Cibber laughs at the way in which these scribes were already labouring to transfer to his friend Addison the credit of all his Tatlers and Spectators. Nevertheless he went steadily on. " It is not for me," he remarked with much dignity, " to say how I write or speak, but it is for " me to say I do both honestly ; and when I threw away " some fame for letters and politeness, to serve the nobler " ends of justice and government, I did not do it with " a design to be as negligent of wh^t should be said of '' me with relation to my integrity, -^o, wit and humour *' are the dress and ornament of the mind ; but honesty " and truth are the soul itself' We may, or may not, think Steele discreet in the choice he made ; but of his sincerity and disinterestedness, there ought to be no doubt whatever. When at last, upon the publication of his Crisis, which was but the sequel to those papers in the Guardian that led to his election for Stockbridge, the motion was made to expel him for ha\ing " maliciously insinuated that the 242/ DEATH OF QUEEN ANNE. [S/V Richurd xtrotestant succession in the House of Hanover is in " danger under her Majesty's administration/' the Whigs rallied to his support with what strength they could. Eobert Walpole and General Stanhope took their place on either side of him as he waited at the bar, and Addison prompted him throughout his spirited and temperate de- ience.//He spoke, says one who heard him, for near three hours; with such temper, eloquence, and unconcern, as gave entire satisfaction to all who were not prepossessed against him. But perhaps the most interesting occur- rence of that memorable day was the speech of Lord Finch. This young nobleman, afterwards famous as a minister and orator, owed gratitude to Steele for having repelled in the Guardian a libel on his sister, and he rose to make his maiden speech in defence of her defender. But bashfulness overcame him ; and after a few confused sentences he sat down, crying out as he did so, "It is " strange I cannot speak for this man, though I could " readily fight for him ! " Upon this, such cheering rang through the House, that suddenly the young lord took heart, rose again, and made the first of a long series of telling and able speeches. Of course, however, it did" not save Steele, who was expelled by a majority of nearly a hundred in a house of four hundred members. <^t was a short-lived triumph, we need hardly say. Soon came the blow which struck down that tyrant ma- jority, dispersed its treason into air, consigned Oxford to the Tower, and drove Bolingbroke into exile. Eagerly Steele wrote to his wife from the St. James's coffeehouse, on the 31st of July 1714, that the Queen was dead»; It was a mistake, but she died next day. Three days later, he writes from the Thatched-house, St. James's, that he has been loaded^with compliments by the Regents, and assured of soja^hing immediately. Yet it was but little he obtained, '^e received a place in the household (Sur- vey orship of the royal Stables) ; was placed in the com- mission of peace for Middlesex; and, on subsequently :9ing up with an address from that county, was knighte^^ L little before he became Sir Hichard, however, the mem- ber for Truro resigned the supervision of the Theatre Royal (then a government office, entitling to a share in the patent, and worth seven or eight hundred a year), and SUeIe.~\ IN OPFICE AT DRURY LANE. 243 the players so earnestly petitioned for Steele as his suc- cessor, that he was named to the offijj^j^" His spirits " took such a lively turn upon it," says Cibber, " that, " had we been all his own sons, no unexpected act of filial " duty could have more endeared us to him.'* Whatever the coldness elsewhere might be, here, at any rate, was warmth enough. Benefits past were not benefits forgot, with those lively good-natured men. They remembered, as Cibber tells us, when a criticism in the Tatler used to fill their theatre at a time when nothing else could ; and they knew that not a comedian among them * but owed something to Eichard Steele, whose good nature on one occasion had even consented that Doggett should announce the Tatler as intending to be bodily present at his benefit, and had permitted him to dress a fictitious Isaac Bicker- stafi" as himself, for amusement of the crowded house.^ -, The politicians Steele certainly foun.d less mindful of the past than the players. But, if we show that the course he took in the prosperous days of Whiggism difi'ered in no respect from that which he had taken in its adverse days, some excuse may perhaps suggest itself for the dis- pensers of patronage and of&ce. He entered Parliament for Boroughbridge, the Duke of Newcastle having given him his interest there ; and for some time, and with some ' I have spoken of this already ; " others on the stage were made but I may here add that the most *' to appear real great peisons, and humble, as well as the highest, ob- *' not representatives. This was a tained his good word ; and it would " nicety in acting that none but be difficult to give a better instance, ** the most subtle player could so in a few lines, at once of his kindness *' much as conceive." and his genius as a critic of players, ^ This was on Monday the 16th than by what he says of a small of January 1709-10, Mr. Bickerstaff actor of Betterton's time: "Mr. having gravely promised in Satu^- * ' William Peer distinguished him- day's Tatler, in reply to a letter ** self particularly in two charac- from Doggett saying it would bring ** ters, which no man ever could him the greatest house since the '* touch but himself. One of them visit of the Morocco ambassador, "was the speaker of the pro- that he'd come in between the first " logue to the play which is con- and second act of Love for Love " trived in the tragedy of Hamlet, (pleased at his choice, he told him, "to awake the conscience of the of so excellent a play, and looking " guilty princess, Mr. William on him as the best of comedians), *' Peer spoke that preface to the and would remain in the R. H. box * ' play with such an air as repre- over the pit until the end of the " sented that he was an actor ; and fourth act. The applause at the " with such au inferior manner as fictitious Isaac's appearance was " only acting an actor, that the tremendous. B 2 244 HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATES. \_Sir Richurd success as a speaker, lie took part in the debates. To judge from his criticism on orators, one might suppose himself to have been a proficient in the art ; and he was doubtless more than an average speaker. He knew how to avoid, at any rate, what he points out as a great error committed by the speakers of his day, in confounding oratory with passion, and thinking the si vis me flere as applicable in the one as in the other case. If any man would exert an uncontrolled influence over those who listen to him, said Steele, never let him lose control over himself. This was no great period for oratory, however. No successor had yet appeared to Henry St. John in the Commons, nor even to Eobert Harley. ; Steele wittily described the House, at the time, as consisting very much of silent people oppressed by the choice of a great deal to say, and of eloquent people ignorant that what they said was nothing to the purpose ; and as it was, he tells us, his own ambition to speak only what he thought, so it wai his weakness to think such a course might have its use Undoubtedly such a course he did absolutely take ; no^ does he at any time seem, out of deference to party or its prejudices, to have compmmised a single opinion sincerely entertained by him„^ ^- He attacked every attempt to give power to the Church independent of the State ; he held that all eagerness in clergymen to grasp at exorbitant power, was but popery in another form ; * and he created much ofi'ence by declar- ing that, if Eome pretended to be infallible and England ^ A further remark made by him ** ciety ; and (what was the most in the course of this argument is " melancholy part of the whole) well worth attention and reflection ' ' that Protestants " (he is speaking in the present day. **I am now of the extreme High Church party) " brought," he says, " by the natu- ' ' must be reduced to the absurdity " ral course of such thoughts, to "of renouncing Protestant as well " examine into the conduct of Chris- "as Christian Principles, before " tians, and particularly of Protest- "they can pretend to make their " ants of all sorts. One thing drew "practices and their professions " on another: and. as little conversant "consistent. This I resolved to " as I have heretofore been in such " represent ; and have done it, "matters, I quickly found that " without regard to any one sort of " Christianity was neither unintel- " them more than another. lam " ligible, nor ill-natured ; that the " mox-e and more persuaded, every " Gospel does not invade the rights " day, that it is fitting to under- ** of mankind, nor invest any men "stand Religion, as well as to " with authority destructive to so- " praise it." Steele.'^ caheer as a politician. 245 to be always in the right, lie saw little difference between the two// In his prosperity Harley had no assailant more bitter, and in his adversity no more generous opponent, than Steele. ''I transgressed, my lord, against you," he said, " when you could make twelve peers in a day ; I " ask your pardon when you are a private nobleman." As he had fought the Schism bill under the Tories, under the Whigs he pleaded for toleration to the Eoman Catho- lics. " I suppose this," he wrote to his wife, " gave a " handle to the fame of my being a Tory ; but you may " perhaps by this time have heard that I am turned Pres- " byterian, for the same day, in a meeting of a hundred " parKament-me^, I laboured as much for the Protestant " Dissenters. '^^0 man was so bitter against the Jacobites, as long as any chance of their success remained ; but none so often or so successfully interceded on their behalf for mercy, when the day had gone against them^The mis- chief of the South Sea scheme was by Steelie more than any man exposed ; but, for such of the Directors as had themselves been its dupes, no man afterwards spoke so charitably. Walpole had befriended him most on the question of his expulsion, and he admired him more than any other politician ; yet he alone in the House spoke against Walpole's proposition about the Debt, " because " he did not think the way of doing it just." Addison was the man he to the last admired the most, and, not- withstanding any recurring coolness or difference, loved the most on earth ; but, on the question of Lord Sunder- land's Peerage bill, he joined Walpole against Addison, and with tongue and pen so actively promoted the defeat of that mischievous measure, that we may even yet, on this score, hold ourselves to be his debtors. To this rapid sketch of Steele's career as a politician, it might seem superfluous to add his complaint against those who neglected him, or that, when the Duke of Newcastle had been so mean as to punish his opposition to the Peerage bill by depriving him of his Drury-lane appointment (to which, we may interpose, he was restored as soon as Walpole returned to office), he should thus have written to Lady Steele : " I am talking to my wife, " and therefore may speak my heart, and the vanity of it. '* I know, and you are witness, that I have served the ?i46 DULL MR. WILLIAM WHisTON. \_Sir Richmd " Eoyal Family witli an nnreservedness due only to " Heaven ; and I am now (I thank my brother Whigs) " not possessed of twenty shillings from the favour of the " Court." But neither should we attempt to conceal, that a man of a different temperament and more self-control would hardly at this time, after all the opportunities his own genius had opened to him, have needed the exercise, or have complained of the absence, of such " favour." So it was, however ; and we must take the man even as he was, subject to all the remarks which duller men in his own day, or greater men since, may have thought themselves entitled to make upon him. Such remarks do not then seem to have troubled him very much, and per- haps his reputation may survive them now. On the day after his speech in the House of Commons interceding for mercy to the South Sea Directors, Mr. William Whiston, for whom also he had interceded formerly when in straits hardly less difficult, met him at Button's. " Why, Sir " Richard," said the worthy man, " they say you have " been making a speech in the House for the South Sea " directors." " Well," said he quietly, " they do say so." To which Whiston, who confesses that he had been a little nettled personally some time before by a ludicrous remark of Sir Richard's, made the somewhat illogical reply, " Then how does this agree with your former writing " against the scheme ? " " Mr. Whiston," rejoined Steele, " you can walk on foot, and I can not." Of course the dull man tells the anecdote by way of showing that Steele could change his opinions for his interest, but that is not the construction any well-informed reader will put upon it. To look after his own interest at any time, was the very last thing Steele ever thought of doing ; and as to the matter in question, it was notorious that in speaking for Lord Stanhope and the other misguided men, he discharged himself only of a debt of kindness that could have no effect, save such as might be unfavour- able, upon his own fortune. It was simply his wit and good breeding that politely had declined debate, and left Mr. Whiston in the enjoyment of his own sordid fancy. Very far indeed from such admission as any such fancy would father on him, that he owed to the ministers the Steele. '\ treatment by the whigs. 247 coach lie rode in, are those repeated complaints, at this very time, of the utter absence of all ministers' favours, which might more wisely perhaps, with a little dignity and self-denial, have been spared. This we have already said, though we will^ot say that the complaints were altogether unjust. The Whigs treated Steele badly. They never sufficiently remembered the actual service he had rendered them, and their cause, when actual danger was abroad.^ Nor was he without ample justification for the statement he left on record against them, in his Apo- logue of the husbandman and the bridge ; with which the subject may be left, also in these pages. There was, he said, a certain husbandman in a certain kingdom, who lived in a certain place under a certain hill, near a certain bridge. This poor man was a little of a scholar, being given to country learning, such as astrological predictions of the weather, and the like ; and one night, in one of those musings of his about his house, he saw a party of soldiers belonging to a prince in enmity with his own, coming towards the bridge. Off he immediately ran, and drew up that part which is called the draw-bridge. Then, calling his family, and getting his cattle together, he put forward his plough, behind that his stools, and his chairs behind them ; and by this means stopped the march till it was day-Hght, when all the neighbouring lords and gentlemen, being roused by this time and thoroughly waked from sleep, were able to see the enemy as well as he. Hereupon, with undoubted gallantry and spirit, they crowded on to oppose the foe, and in their zeal and hurry, pitching our poor husbandman over-bridge, and his goods after him, they most effectually kept out the invaders. And a great mercy was that accident, for it was nothing less than the safety of the kingdom. There- fore ought no one, pursues the author of the Apologue, to be discomfited from the public service, by what had happened to this rustic. For, though he was neglected at the present, and every man said he was an honest fellow and no one's enemy but his own in exposing his all, and though nobody said he was every one's friend but his own, still the man had ever after the liberty, the in- valuable liberty and privilege, that he, and no other but he and his family, should beg on the bridge in aU times 248 everyone's friend but his own. \_Sir Richard following. And lie is begging on the bridge accordingly to this very hour. It is not our desire to extenuate the failings of Sir Richard Steele, the begging on the bridge included; nor have we sought to omit them from this picture of his career. But his claim to have had more liberal con- sideration, is quite apart from the question of whether he would himself have been likely very greatly to profit by it. We much doubt if he would. His genius, and the means then open to it, might have sufficed for all his wants, if in a worldly sense he could have been more true to his own opportunities. But it was unhappily of the very essence of his character, that any present social impression took, so far, the place of all previous moral resolutions; and that, bitterly as he had often felt the " shot of accident and the dart of chance," he still thought them carelessly to be brushed aside by the smiling face and heedless hand. No man's projects for fortune had so often failed, yet none were so often renewed. Indeed the very art of his genius told against him in his life ; and that he could so readily disentangle his thoughts from what most gave them pain and uneasiness, and direct his sensibility at will to flow into many channels, had the reverse of a favouring tendency towards the balance at his banker's. But such a man is no example of improvidence for others. Its ordinary warnings come within quite another class of cases ; and, even in stating what is least to be commended in Steele, there is no need to omit what in his case will justify some exceptional consideration of it. At least we have the example of a bishop to quote, for as much good nature as we can spare. Doctor Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, was a steady friend of Steele's, and consented ultimately to act as executor and guardian to his children. He accompanied him and Addison one day to a Whig celebration of King William's anniversary, and became rather grave to see the lengths at which the festivity threatened to arrive. In the midst of his misgivings, in came a humble but facetious Whig on his knees, with a tankard of ale in his hand; drank it off to the immortal memory; and tben, still in his kneeling posture, managed to shuffle out. " Do laugh," whispered Steele to the bishop, next to whom he sat, ** it's humanity Steele.'] blenheim and grub street. 249 " to laugh." For which, humane episcopal exertion, carried to a yet higher tolerance in his own case at a later period of the evening, Steele sent him next morning this pleasant couplet, " Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, All faults he pardons, though he none commits." In another humorous anecdote of this date, Hoadly was also an actor with Steele. They went together on a visit to Blenheim, and sat next each other at a private play got up for the amusement of the great Duke, now lapsing into his last illness ; when, as they both observed how well a love-scene was acted by the Duke's aide-de-camp, Captain Fishe, " I doubt this fish is flesh, my Lord," whispered Steele. On going away, they had to pass through an army of laced coats and ruffles in the hall ; and as the Bishop was preparing the usual fees, " I have not " enough," cried his companion, and much to the episcopal discomposure proceeded to address the footmen, told them he had been much struck by the good taste with which he had seen them applauding in the right places up stairs, and invited them all gratis to Drury-lane theatre, to whatever play they might like to bespeak. At this date it was, too, that young Savage, for whom Wilks had produced a comedy at Drury-lane, was kindly noticed and greatly assisted by Steele ; though all the stories of him that were afterwards told to Johnson by his ill-fated friend, only showed how sorely poor Sir Richard needed assistance himself. He surprised Savage one day by carrying him in his coach to a tavern, and dictating a pamphlet to him, which he was sent out into Grub-street to sell ; when he found that Sir Richard had only retired for the day to avoid his creditors, and had composed the pamphlet to pay his reckoning. Johnson also beHeved, on the same authority, that at one of Steele's great dinner parties he had been obhged to dress up in expensive liveries, and to turn to use as additional footmen, certain bailiffs whose attendance, though unavoidable, might not else have seemed so creditable.' It was from Savage, too, Johnson heard the ^ "I have heard," says the Ex- *' lustrious person who having a aminer (No. 11), " of a certain il- " guard du corps that forced their 250 BOND ENFORCED BY ADDISON. \_Sir Rtchard story of the bond put in execution against his friend by Addison, which Steele mentioned, he said, with tears in his eyes. Not so, however, did Steele tell it to another friend, Benjamin Yictor, who, before Savage's relation was made public, had told it again to Garrick. To Yictor, Steele said that certainly his bond on some expensive furniture had been put in force ; but that, from the letter he received with the surplus arising from the sale, he knew that Addison only intended a friendly warning against a manner of living altogether too costly, and that, taking it as he believed it to be meant, he met him afterwards with the same gaiety of temper he had always shown. This story is not incredible, we think ; and to invent, as Mr. Macaulay has done, another story in place of one so well authenticated, involved at least some waste of ingenuity. One may fairly imagine such an incident following not long after the accession of King George, when, in his new house in York-buildings, Steele gave an extravagant entertainment to some couple of hundred friends, and amused his guests with a series of dramatic recitations, which (one of his many projects) he had some thought of trying on an extended plan, with a view to the more regular supply of trained actors for the stage. For, though Addison assisted at this entertainment, and even wrote an epilogue ^ for the occasion making pleasant mirth of the foibles of his friend — *^\ The Sage, whose guests you are to-night, is known To watch the public weal, though not his own, " &c. / — nay, though we can hardly doubt that he showed no reluctance himself to partake of the burgundy and champagne, Addison may yet have thought it no un- friendly act to check the danger of any frequent repetition of indulgences in that direction. And, even apart from * ' attendance upon him, put them but it was certainly written by Ad- '* into livery, and maintained them dison, as the lines themselves bear ** as his servants : thus answering internal proof. It was first printed, ** that famous question, Quis custo- and with Addison's name, in the *^clietipso8custodes?'' eighth volume of that now rare ^ Doctor Drake attributed this book, Nichols's Select Collection of epilogue to Steele himself, and has Poems. been followed by subsequent writers; Steele.'^ girls and boys. 251 the nights they now very frequently passed together at Button's new coffee-house, we have abundant evidence that the friendly relations, though certainly not all the old intimacy, continued. <0n the day following that which Kfted Addison to the rank of Secretary of State, Steele dined with him ; and on the next day he wrote to his wife, that he was named one of the Commissioners for Forfeited Estates in Scotland./^ The duties of this office took him much from home in his latter years ; and, before we close "vvith the brief mention those years may claim from us, we will give a parting glance at what his home had now become. For the greater part of the time since he moved from Bury- street, he has lived in Bloomsbury-square. His wife has borne him four children, two boys and two girls, of whom the eldest boy, Richard, Lord Halifax's godson, died in childhood, and the second, Eugene, a few years before his father. His girls survived him, and the eldest became Lady Trevor. The old sudden alternations of sunshine and storm have continued between himself and Prue. There have been great wants and great enjoyments, much peevishness and much tenderness, quarrels and reconciliations numberless ; but very manifestly also, on the whole, the children have brought them nearer to each other. He is no longer his dearest Prue's alone, but, as he occasionally signs himself, "Your — " Betty — Dick — Eugene — Molly's — affectionate Richard " Steele." At his own request, his wife's small fortune has been settled on these children ; and one of her letters to him, upon the result of this arrangement with her mother, appears to have begun with the expression of her thank- fulness that the children would at least have to say hereafter of their father that he kept his integrity. He gives her iacessant reports of them, when she happens to be absent. He tells her how Moll, who is the noisiest little creature in the world, and as active as a boy, has bid him let her know she fell down just now, and did not hurt herself; how Madam Betty is the gravest of matrons in her airs and civilities ; how Eugene is a most beautiful and lusty child ; and how Dick is becoming a great scholar, for whenever his father's Virgil is shown him he makes shrewd remarks upon the 253 LAST LETTERS TO PRUE. [5/> Richard pictures. In that same letter he. calls her his "poor, *' dear, angry, pleased, pretty, witty, silly, everything " Prue ; " and he has never failed, through all these years, to send her the tenderest words on the most trivial occasions. He writes to her on his way to the Kit-Katt, in waiting on my Lord Wharton or the Duke of Newcastle. He coaxes her to dress well for the dinner, to which he has invited the Mayor of Stockbridge, Lord Halifax, and Mr. Addison. He writes to her in the brief momentous interval, when, having made his defence in the House of Commons, he was waiting for the final judgment which Addison was to convey to him. He writes to her when he has the honour of being received at dinner by Lord Somers ; and he writes to her from among the " dancing, *' singing, hooping, hallooing, and drinking " of one of his elections for Boroughbridge. He sends a special despatch to her for no other purpose than to tell her she has nothing to do but be a darling. He sends her as many as a dozen letters in the course of his journey to Edinburgh ; and when, on his return, illness keeps them apart, one in London, the other at Hampton-court, her happening to call him Good Dick puts him in so much rapture, that he tells her he could almost forget his miserable gout and lameness, and walk down to her. Not long after this, her illness terminated fatally. She died on the morrow of the Christmas Day of 1718. Of the remaining ten years of his own subsequent life, many of both the private and public incidents of which have already been mentioned by anticipation, the occur- rences of the greatest interest were his controversy with Addison on the Peerage bill, where we hold him, as we have already said, to have had much the advantage of his adversary in both his reasoning and conclusions ; and the production of his comedy of the Conscious Lovers, the most carefully written and the most successful, though in our opinion, with much respect for that of Parson Adams (who thought it as good as a sermon), not the best of his comedies. Of the projects that also occupied him in this interval, especially that of his fish-pool invention, we have nothing to say, but that Addison, who certainly did not sneer at him in the " little Dicky" of the second Old Whig, ought to have spared him, not less, the sneer in Sleek. 'I DEATH. 253 tliat pampUet at his " stagnated pool.'' Steele did not retort, however, with anything more personal than an admiring quotation from Cato ; and his Plebeian forms in this respect no contrast to the uniform tone in which he spoke of his friend, with whom his transient difference would assuredly soon have heen composed if another year of life had been spared to Addison. But his children were Steele's greatest solicitude, as well as chief delight, in these latter years ; and, amid failing health and grow- ing infirmities, he is never tired of superintending their lessons, or of writing them gay and entertaining letters, as from friend or playfellow. After three years' retire- ment in Wales, attended by his two little daughters, he died there at the age of fifty-three. He had survived much, but neither his cheerful temper nor his kind philosophy. He would be carried out in a summer's evening, where the country lads and lasses were at their rural sports, and with his pencil give an order on his agent for a new gown to the best dancer. That was the last thing seen of Eichard Steele. And the youths and maidens who so saw him in his invalid chair, en- feebled and dying, saw him still as the wits and fine ladies and gentlemen had seen him in his gaiety and^youth, when he sat in the chair of Mr. Bickerstafi", treating pleasure for himself by the communication of pleasure to others, and in proportion to the happiness he distributed increasing his own. . ^ CHAELES CHUECHILL; 1731—1764. The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill. With Copious Notes, and a Life of the Author. Bij W. Tooke, F.E.S. 3 vols. 12mo. London : 1844. Mr. William Tooke sets us a bad example in his " copious notes," ^ which, we do not propose to follow. Our business is with Churchill ; and not with the London University, or with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, or with the Reform Bill, or with the Penny Postage Bill, or with the Dissenters' Marriage Act, or with the Whigs in general, or with Lord Campbell in particular, or with the Popish Ascendency, or with the voters of Metropolitan Boroughs, or with the members From the Edinburgh Review, January 1845. With additions. 2 The common tendency of re- marks upon individuals is to the too free, indulgence either of blame or praise ; and what is here said of Mr. Tooke does not altogether, I fear, escape this reproach. No one who examines the book under review, however, will say that the remarks in the Essay were unprovoked or without ample justification. Still I would gladly now have omitted them, if I could have done so with- out leaving uncorrected much grave error, or without exposing to pos- sible misrepresentation hereafter both the matter and the motive of them. So long, however, as Mr. Tooke's "Copious Notes" of unpro- voked and unscrupulous personal attack, continue to disfigure what might easily have been made the best edition of a true English poet, their writer can have no good cause of complaint. I should add that the quotations in these pages from Churchill's Poetry and Satire, have not been taken from Mr. Tooke's volumes, but from the edition of the Poems (the third) issued in 1766 by the poet's brother and executor, John Churchill. The Fragment of a Dedication to War- hurton is of later date, being the only composition of Churchill's not published until after his death. 25 G A DEAD HAND AT A LIFE. [^C/iavks who represent tliem in Parliament. There are many- reasons why Mr. Tooke should not have named these things, far less have gone out of his way so lavishly to indulge his contempt and abuse of them ; but we shall content ourselves with mentioning one. If the editorial pains bestowed upon them had been given to his author, we should probably not have had the task, which, be- fore we speak of Churchill, we shall discharge as briefly as we may, of pointing out his editorial deficiencies. It would be difficult to imagine a worse biographer than Mr. Tooke. As Dr. Johnson said of his friend Tom Birch, he is " a dead hand at a Life.'' Nor is he a more lively hand at a Note. In both cases he compiles with singular clumsiness, and his compilations are not always harmless. But, though Mr. Tooke is a bad biographer and a bad annotator, he is a far worse critic. If it were true, as he says, that "the character of " Churchill as a poet, may be considered as fixed in the " first rank of English classics" (i. xiii), we should have to place him with Shakespeare and Milton, in the rank above Dryden and Pope. If the Rosciad were really, as Mr. Tooke thinks, remarkable for its " strength of imagi- *' nation " (i. xxxiv), we should have to depose it from its place beside the Dimciads, and think of it with the Para- dise Losts. And indeed we shall be well disposed to do this, when Mr. Tooke establishes the critical opinion he adopts from poor Dr. Anderson, that the Cure of Saul, a sacred ode by Dr. Brown, " ranks with the most distin- " guished lyric compositions'' (iii. 302). This Dr. Brown, the author of the flat tragedy of Bar- harossa, and a vain, silly, impracticable person, is described by Mr. Tooke to have been " a far wiser and better man " than Jeremy Bentham" (iii. 109) ; whose " always " mischievous, but happily not always intelligible, gib- " berish," is in a previous passage ranked with " the " coarse blasphemy of Richard Carlyle" (iii. 107). It is in the same discriminating taste we are told, after this, that Dr. Francklin's Translation of Sophocles is " a bold " and happy transfusion into the English language of the " terrible' simplicity of the Greek tragedian " (iii. 298) ; — poor Dr. Francklin being as much hke the terrible simplicity of the Greeks, as Mr. Tooke resembles Aris- Churchill.'] a worthy task ill-done. 257 tides, or an English schoolmaster is like the Phidian Jove. The reader will not suppose that Mr. Tooke, a wealthy and respectable solicitor of long standing, and a gentle- man who appears to have been really anxious to do good after his peculiar fashion, has not had ample time to set himself right on these points, when we mention the fact of his first appearance as Churchill's editor no fewer than forty years ago. Forty years ago, when he was in the flush of youth, and George the Third was King, he aspired to connect himself with the great satirist. AYhat turned his thoughts that way, from the " quiddets and " quillets, and cases and tenures and tricks '' that sur- rounded him in his daily studies, he has not informed us. But, among his actions of scandal and battery, the echo of Churchill's rough and manly voice was in that day lingering still ; and an aspiring young follower of the law could hardly more agreeably indulge a taste for letters, than among the mangled and still bleeding reputations of the Duellist, the Candidate, and the Ghost. We have yet reason to complain, that he did not improve this taste with some little literary knowledge. In his notes to his favourite satirist he has drawn together, no doubt, a great mass of information ; which cannot, however, be in any manner useful except to those who know better than himself, not only how to select what is of any worth in it, but how to reject what is utterly worthless : and unhap- pily, where it is not matter of fact but of opinion, even this chance is not left to them. Whether he praises or blames, Mr. Tooke has the rare felicity of never making a criticism that is not a mistake. Nothing of this kind, committed forty years back, has he cared to correct ; and' every new note added, has added something to the stock of blunders. He cannot even praise in the right place, when he has such a man as Dr. Garth to praise. Garth was an exquisite creature ; a real wit, a gentleman, a friend, a physician, a philosopher ; and yet his Satire was not "admirable," nor his Claremont " above mediocrity," nor his Translations from Ovid " spirited and faithful " (iii. 16-17). In an earHer page, Mr. Tooke has occasion to refer to the writer of a par- ticular panegyric, whom he calls Conyngham (ii. 317). 258 EDITORIAL BLUNDERS. \Charles This exemplifies anotlier and abundant class of mistakes in his volumes. The writer was Codrington, and the lines were addressed to Garth on his Dispensary. Mr. Tooke has to speak of the two Doctors William King ; and he attributes the well-known three octavos of the King of St. Mary's-hall to the King of Christ-church (iii. 173). He has to speak of Bishop Parker, Marvell's antagonist, and lie calls him Archbishop Parker (ii. 171) ; a singularly- different person. He condemns Churchill for his public appearance in a theatre with a celebrated courtesan, whom his next sentence, if correct, would prove to have been a venerable lady of between eighty and ninety years old (i. 47) ; — the verses quoted having been written sixty-three years before, to the Venus of a past generation. If an anecdote has a point, he misses it ; and if a question has two sides, he takes the wrong one. He gravely charges the old traveller Mandeville mth wilful want of veracity, and with having " observed in a high northern latitude "the singular phenomenon of the congelation of words " as they issued from the mouth, and the strange medley " of sounds that ensued upon a thaw" (ii. 76) : — vulgar errors, we need hardly say. Sir John Mandeville wrote conscientiously, according to the lights of his times ; and qualifies his marvellous relations as reports. The con- gelation of words was a pure invention of Addison's, palmed off upon the old traveller. In matters more closely connected with his subject, Mr. Tooke is not more sparing of errors and self-contradic- tions. He confounds Davies, the actor and bookseller — Johnson's friend, Garrick's biographer, and a reasonably correct as well as fairly informed writer — with Davis, an actor not only much lower in the scale than Davies, but remembered only by the letter Mr. Tooke has printed (i. 36-7). He tells us, with amazing particularity, that " Churchill's brother John survived him little more than " one year, dying, after a week's illness only, on the 18th " November 1765." (i.'lvi) : the truth being that John, who was a surgeon- apothecary in Westminster, survived his brother many years ; published, in the character of his executor, the fifth collected edition of his works as late as 1774 ; and was recommending the use of bark to Wilkes, whose medical attendant he became, as late as 1778. In ChurchilL'\ self-contradictions. 259 one place he says that he, Mr. Tooke, has endeavoured, without success, to ascertain the truth of a statement that Churchill had a curacy in Wales, and became bankrupt in cider speculations there ; suppositions which, unable to substantiate, he rejects (i. xxv). Yet in another place he speaks, without a doubt, of Churchill's " flight from " his curacy in Wales" (iii. 28) ; and in a third, tells us decisively that Churchill's " own failure in trade as a " cider- dealer," had ^' tinctured him mth a strong and " unfounded prejudice " against the merchants of London (ii. 318). At one time he relates a story of Churchill's having incurred a repulse at Oxford, on account of alleged deficiency in the classics, to acquaint us that it "is ob- " viously incorrect" (i. xxi). At another, he informs us that " the poet's antipathy to colleges may be dated from " his rejection by the University of Oxford, on account of " his want of a competent skill in the learned languages" (ii. 227). No opportunity of self-contradiction is too minute to be lost. Now he says that the price of the Rosciad was half-a-crown (i. 114), and now that it was but " the moderate price of one shilling " (ii. 167). Now that Lord Temple resigned in 1761 (i. 170), and now that the resignation was in 1762 (ii. 29). Now that the Apology was published in April 1761 (i. 115), and, six pages later (i. 121), that it was published in May of that year. Now that Churchill's Sermons were twelve in number (i. xxvi), and now, quoting Dr. Kippis, that they were ten (iii. 318). These instances, sparingly selected from a lavish abundance, will probably suffice. We shall be equally sparing of more general examples that remain. Mr. Tooke, as the character of this literary performance would imply, has no deficiency on the score of boldness. Thus, while he thinks that " the Rev. " Doctor Croly, in his classical and beautiful play of " Catiline^ has at once shown what a good tragedy should " be, and that he is fully equal to the task of producing " one" (ii. 297), he has an utter contempt for the Words - worths and Coleridges. " What language," he indignantly exclaims, before giving a specimen of the latter poet in a lucid interval, " could the satirist have found sufficiently " expressive of his disgust at the simplicity of a later " school of poetry, the spawn of the lakes, consisting of s 2 260 ELEGANT EXTRACTS. [Ckarks " a mawkisli combination of the nonsense verses of the *' nursery, with the Rhodomontade of German mysticism " and transcendentahsm ! " (i. 189). This is a Httle strong, for a writer like Mr. Tooke. Nor, making but one exception in the case of Lord Byron, does he shrink from pouring the vials of his critical wrath upon every Lord who has presumed to aspire to poetry. Not the gentle genius of Lord Surrey, or the daring passion of Lord Buckhurst ; not the sharp wit of my Lords Rochester and Buckingham, or the earnestness and elegance of Lord Thurlow; can shake the fierce poetical democracy of Mr. William Tooke. " The claim of the whole lot of " other noble poets," he observes with great contempt, " from Lord Surrey downwards — the Buckinghams, the *' Roscommons, the Halifaxes, the Grenvilles, the Lyttle- ^' tons of the last age, and the still minor class of Thur- " lows, Herberts, and others of the present generation, " have been tolerated as poets, only because they were " peers.'' (iii. 262.) A contempt of grammar, as of nobility, may be observed to relieve the sense and the elegance of this passage. But this is a department of Mr. Tooke's merits too ex- tensive to enter upon. When he talks of " a masterly " but caustic satire" (i. xl), and of " plunging deeper and " more irrecoverably into," &c. (i. xli), we do not stop to ask what he can possibly mean. But his use of the pre- positions and conjunctions is really curious. His " and " to which we would refer our readers accordingly, and " to whose thanks we shall entitle ourselves for so doing" (iiL 157) ; his " and from which but Httle information " could be collected, he was at the same time confident " that none others existed, and which the lapse of time " has confirmed " (iii. 296) ; are of perpetual recurrence in the shape of and who, or but which, and may be said to form the pecuHarity of his style. On even Mr. Picker- ing's Aldine press, a genius of blundering has laid its evil touch. The errors in the printing of the book are exe- crable. Not a page is correctly pointed from first to last ; numbers of lines in the text (as at iii. 216-17) are placed out of their order ; and it is rare when a name is rightly given. But enough of a distasteful subject. We leave Mn Tooke and pass to Churchill. Churchill.'] two races of men. 261 Exactly a hundred years after the birth of Dryden, Charles Churchill was bom. More than a hundred years were between the two races of men. In 1631, Hampden was consoling Eliot in his prison, and discussing with Pym the outraged Petition of Right ; in 1731, Walpole was fl}ing at Townshend's throat, and suggesting to Gay the quarrels of Lockit and Peachum. Within the reach of Dryden's praise and blame, there came a Cromwell and a Shaftesbury ; a Wilkes and a Sandmch exhausted Churchill's. There is more to affect a writer's genius in personal and local influences of this kind, than he would himself be willing to allow. If, even in the failures of the first and greatest of these satirists, there is a dash of large- ness and power ; there is never wholly absent from the most consummate achievements of his successor, a some- thing we must call conventional. But the right justice has not been done to Churchill. Taken with the good and evil of his age, he was a very remarkable person. An English clergyman, who, in conjunction with his rectory of Rainham in Essex, held the curacy and lecture- ship of St. John the Evangelist in Westminster, from 1733 to his death in 1758, was the father of Charles Churchill. He had two younger sons : William, who afterwards chose the church for his profession, and passed a long, quiet, unobtrusive life within it ; and John, brought up to the business of medicine. The elder, named Charles after himself, he from the first especially designed for his own calling ; and he sent him in 1739, when eight years old, as a day-boy to Westminster school. Nichols was then the head master, and the second master was (not Lloyd, as Mr. Tooke would in- form us, but) Johnson, afterwards a bishop. Vincent Bourne was usher of the fifth form, and Dr. Pierson Lloyd (after some years second master), a man of fine humour as well as of rare worth and learning, was usher at the fourth. Churchill, judging from the earliest notice taken of him, must have been already a robust, manly, broad-faced little fellow, when he entered the school ; all who in later life remembered him, spoke of the premature growth and fulness both of his body and mind ; ' and 1 Mr. Cunningham has sent me a Rosciad with a MS note by Sir John copy of the seventh edition of the Cullum respecting the opinion enter- 262 BOYS AT WESTMINSTER SCHOOL. [Charks he was not long in assuming the place in Ms boys' circle, which, quick-sighted lads are not slow to concede to a deserving and daring claimant. He was fond of play ; but, when he turned to work, was a hard and a successful worker. There is a story of one of his punishments by flogging, which only increased and embittered the temper that provoked it ; but there is another, of a literary task by way of punishment, for which the offender received public thanks from the masters of the school. " He " could do well if he would," was the admission of his enemies ; and the good Dr. Lloyd loved him. There were a number of remarkable boys at West- minster then. Bonnell Thornton was already in the upper forms ; but George Colman, Kobert Lloyd, Rich- ard Cumberland, and Warren Hastings, were all, with very few years' interval, Churchiirs contemporaries ; and there was one mild, shrinking, delicate lad of his own age, though two years younger in the school, afraid to lift his eyes above the shoestrings of the upper boys, but encouraged to raise them as high as Churchill's heart. He stood by Cowper in those days ; and the author of the Task and the Talle-Talk repaid him in a sorer need. Indeed, there was altogether a manly tone of feeling among these Westminster scholars. In whatever respect they fell short of any promises of their youth, when they grew to manhood, they yet continued true to all that in those earlier days had pledged them to each other. Never, save when two examples occurred too flagrant for avoid- ance, in a profligate duke and a hypocritical parson, did Churchill lift his pen against a schoolfellow. Mr. Tooke says that the commencement of a satire against Thornton and Colman was found among his papers ; but there is no proof of this ; and we doubt, in common with Southey, the tained of its author by Sir John's * ' told me that Churchill when a Suffolk neighbour, and Churchill's " boy never showed the faintest old schoolfellow, Lord Bristol, which " glimmer of genius. May 1781." is somewhat opposed to that in the Sir John is mistaken as to the age text. ** This excellent poem," says of Churchill, who was only nine-and- Sir John, " was one of the earliest, twenty at the production of the ** if not the first production of the Rosciad, and there will perhaps be "author, who was now about 37 no great harm in assuming that Lord *' years old. He was of the same Bristol was not much more correct " class at Westminster School with in his boyish recollection of his cele- ** Frederick Earl of Bristol, who brated schoolfellow. Churchill.'] a profession ill-chosen. 263 alleged desertion of poor Lloyd which is said to have sug- gested the satire. Even Warren Hastings profited hy his old connexion with Westminster, when Wilkes deserted his supporters in the House of Commons to defend the playfellow of his dead friend ; and the irritahle Cumher- land so warmed to the memory of his school companion, as to call him always, fondly, the Dryden of his age. Literature itself had become a bond of union with these youths before they left the Westminster cloisters. The Tahle-Talk tells of the " little poets at Westminster,'' and how they strive "to set a distich upon six and five." Even the boredom of school exercises, more rife in Eng- lish composition then than since, did not check the scrib- bling propensity. All the lads we have named had a decisive turn that way ; and little Colman, emulating his betters, addressed his cousin Pulteney from the fifth form with the air of a literary veteran. For, in the prevailing dearth of great poetry, verse- writing was cultivated much, and much encouraged. Again it had become, as Lady Mary Montagu said of it a few years before, as common as taking snuff. Others compared it to an epidemical dis- temper — a sort of murrain. Beyond all doubt, it was the rage. " Poets increase and multiply to that stupendous " degree, you see them at every turn, in embroidered " coats, and pink-coloured top-knots." Nor was it pro- bable, as to Churchill himself, that he thought the dress less attractive than the verse-tagging. But his father, as we have said, had other views with respect to him. He must shade his fancies with a more sober colour, and follow the family profession. It was an unwise resolve. It was one of those resolves that more frequently mar than make a life. The forced control of inclinations to a falsehood is a common parent's crime ; not the less grievous when mistaken for a virtue. The stars do not more surely keep their courses, than an ill-regulated manhood will follow a mis-directed youth. This boy had noble qualities for a better chosen career. Thus early he had made it manifest, that he could see for himself and feel for others ; that he had strong sensi- bility and energy of intellect ; that where he had faith, lie had steadiness of purpose and enthusiasm : but that, closely neighbouring his power, were vehemence, will, 264: AN ILL-CO^'SIDERED MARRIAGE. [Charks and passion; and that these made him confident, in- flexible, and very hard to be controlled. From the com- pelled choice now put before him, one of two results was sure. He would resist, or he would succumb : in the one case, boasting exemption from vice, would become himself the victim of the worst of vices ; or in the other, with violent recoil from the hypocrisies, would outrage the proprieties of life. The proof soon came. Churchill had given evidence of scholarship in Latin and Greek as early as his fifteenth year, when, offering himself a candidate for the Westminster foundation, he went in head of the election ; but, on standing for the studentship to Merton-college, Oxford, three years later, he was rejected. Want of learning, premature indulgence of satirical tastes, and other as unlikely causes, have been invented to explain the rejection ; but there can be little doubt that its real cause was the discovery of a marriage imprudently contracted some months before, with a Westminster girl named Scot, and accomplished within the rules of the Fleet. A marriage most imprudent, most unhappy. It disqualified him for the studentship. It introduced his very boyhood to grave responsibilities which he was powerless to discharge, almost to compre- hend. What self-help he might have exerted against the unwise plans of his father, it crippled and finally destroyed. There is hardly a mistake or suffering in his after life, which it did not originate, or leave him without the means of repelling. That it was entered into at so early an age, and that it was effected by the scandalous faci- lities of the Fleet, were among its evil incidents, but not the worst. It encumbered him with a wife from whom he could not hope for sympathy, encouragement, or assist- ance in any good thing ; and to whom he could administer them as little. Neither understood the other ; or had that real affection which would have supplied all needful knowledge. The good clergyman received them into his house soon after the discovery was made. The compromise seems to have been, that Churchill should no longer oppose his father's wishes, in regard to that calling of the Church to which he afterwards bitterly described himself decreed, " ere it was known that he should learn to read." He Churchill^ london amusements. 265 was entered, but never resided, at Trinity in Cambridge. There was a necessary interval before the appointed age of ordination (for which he could qualify without a degree), and he passed it quietly : the first twelve months in his :£ather's house ; the rest in retirement, for which *' family " reasons '' are named but not explained, in the north of England. In that retirement, it is said, he varied church reading with " favourite poetical amusements ; " with what unequal apportionment, it might not be difiicult to guess. The already congenial charm he may be supposed to have found in the stout declamation of Juvenal, in the sly and insinuating sharpness of Horace, and in the indignant eloquence of Dryden — had little rivalry to fear from the fervid imagination of Taylor, the copious elo- quence of Barrow, or the sweet persuasiveness of South. In 1753 he visited London, to take possession, it is said, of a small fortune in right of his wife ; but there is nothing to show that he got the possession, however small. It is more apparent that the great city tempted him sorely; that boyish tastes were once more freely indulged; and that his now large and stalwart figure was oftener seen at theatres than chapels. It was a great theatrical time. Drury-lane was in its strength, with Garrick, Mossop, Mrs. Pritchard, Foote, Palmer, Woodward, Yates, and Mrs. Olive. Even in its comparative weakness, Covent-garden could boast of Barry, Smith, Shuter, and Macklin ; of Mrs. Gibber and Mrs. Vincent ; and, not seldom, of Quin, who still lingered on the stage he had quitted formally two or three years before, and yet seemed as loth to depart from reaUy, as Ghurchill, on these stolen evenings of enjoyment, from his favourite front row of the pit. Nevertheless, the promise to his father was kept : and, ha\"ing now reached the canonical age, he returned to the north in deacon's orders ; whence he removed, with little delay, to the curacy of South Cad- bury in Somersetshire. Here he ofiiciated till 1756, when he was ordained priest, and passed to his father's living at Kainham. Both these ordinations without a degree, are urged in special proof of his good character and reputation for singular learning ; but there is reason to suspect his father's influence as having been more powerful than 266 SUCCEEDS TO HIS father's curacy. [Charles either. " His behaviour," says Dr. Kippis, writing in the Biographia Britannica, '' gained him the love and esteem " of his parishioners ; and his sermons, though some- " what raised above the level of his audience, were com- " mended and followed. What chiefly disturbed him, " was the smaUness of his income.''' This, though con- nected with a statement as to a Welsh living now rejected, has in effect been always repeated since, and may or may not be true. It is perhaps a little strange, if his sermons were thus elevated, commended, and followed, that no one recognised their style, or could in the least commend them, when a series of ten were published with his name eight years later ; but the alleged smallness of his income admits of no kind of doubt. He had now two sons, and, as he says himself, "prayed and starved on forty pounds " a-year." He opened a school. It was bitter drudgery. He wondered, he afterwards told his friends, that he had ever submitted to it; but necessities more bitter over- mastered him. What solid help this new toil might have given, however, was still uncertain, when, in 1758, his father died ; ^ and, in respect to his memory, his parish- ioners elected the curate of Rainham to succeed him. At the close of 1758, Charles Churcliill was settled in Westminster, at the age of twenty- seven, curate and lecturer of St. John's. It was not a very brilliant change, nor did it enable him as yet to dispense with very mean resources. " The " emoluments of his situation," observes Dr. Kippis, who was connected with the poet's friends, and, excepting where he quotes the loose assertions of the Annual Regis- ter, wYotQ on the information of Wilkes, "not amounting " to a fall hundred pounds a-year, in order to improve " his finances he undertook to teach young ladies to read " and write English with propriety and correctness ; and " was engaged for this purpose in the boarding-school of " Mrs. Dennis. Mr. ChurchiU conducted himself in his " new employment with aU the decorum becoming his " clerical profession." The grave doctor would thus gently indicate the teacher's virtue and self-command, in ^ He died, Mr. Cunningham in- is tbe entry of the administration of forms me, intestate. In the Prero- his effects. gative Will Office, Doctors' Commons, Churchill.'^ tutor in a lady's school. 267 showing him able to control, by the proper clerical de- corums, his instruction of Mrs. Dennis's young ladies. Mr. Tooke's biography more confidently asserts, that not only as the servant of Mrs. Dennis, but as " a parochial '' minister, he performed his duties "svith punctuality, " while in the pulpit he was plain, rational, and emphatic." On the other hand, Churchill himself tell us that he was not so. He says that he was an idle pastor and a drowsy preacher. We are assured, among the last and most earnest verses he composed, that " sleep at his bidding " crept from pew to pew." With a mournful bitterness he adds, that his heart had never been mth his pro- fession ; and that it was not of his own choice, but through need, and for his curse, he had ever been ordained.' It is a shallow view of his career that can differently regard it, or suppose him at its close any other than he had been at its beginning. Mr. Tooke, after his peculiar fashion, would " divide the life into two distinct and dis- " similar portions ; the one pious, rational, and consistent ; " the other irregular, dissipated, and licentious." During the first portion of seven- and- twenty years, says this philosophic observer, "with the exception of a few ^ "Much did I wish, e'en whilst I Much did I wish, though little could kept those sheep, I hope, Which, for my curse, I was ordain'd A friend in him who was the friend to keep, of Pope." Ordain'd, alas ! to keep through y ^.v at, £ need, not choice. In the same poem occurs the fine Those sheep which never heard their aP^s^^oP^e *« ^^^^^ ^^^nd of Pope : shepherd's voice " Doctor ! Dean ! Bishop ! Glo'ster ! Which did not know,' yet would not ^^^ ^7 ^^^^ ! learn their way, ^^ haply these high titles may accord Which stray'd themselves, yetgriev'd With thy meek spirit ; if the barren that I should stray ; sound _ Those sheep which my good father Of pride delights thee, to the top- (on his bier ^ost round Let filial duty drop the pious ^^ Fortune's ladder got, despise not tear) oiie Kept well, yet starv'd himself, e'en ^or want of smooth hypocrisy at that time undone, Whilst I was pure and innocent of ^^o, far below, turns up his won- rhyme, dering eye, Whilst, sacred dulness ever in my ^"^^y without envy, sees thee placed view. so high.' Sleep at my bidding crept from pew The lines are in the Dedication to to pew; Warburton, iii. 317-19; 325-6. 268 UNSETTLED THOUGHTS AKD PLANS. [Charks " indiscretions, his conduct in every relation, as son, as " brother, as husband, as father, and as friend, was " rigidly and exemplarily, though obscurely virtuous ; " while the remaining six years present an odious con- " trast." Why, with such convictions, Mr. Tooke edited the odious six years, and not the pure twenty-seven ; why he published the poems, and did not collect the sermons ; the philosopher does not explain. For ourselves let us add, that we hold with no such philosophy in ChurchilPs case, or in any other. Whatever the corrupting influence of education may be, or whatever the evil mistakes of early training, we believe that Nature is apt to show her- self at all times both rational and consistent. She has no delight in monsters, and no pride in odious contrasts. Her art is at least as wise as Horace desciibes the art of poetry to be : she joins no discordant terminations to beginnings that are pure and lovely. Such as he honestly was, Churchill can afi'ord to be honestly judged ; and, when he calls it his curse to have been ordained, he invites that judgment. He had grave faults, and paid dearly for them ; but he set up for no virtue that he had not. In the troubled self-reproaches of later years, he recalled no pure self- satisfactions in the past. To have been " Decent and demure at least, As grave and dull as any priest," was all the pretence he made. It was his disgrace, if the word is to be used, to have assumed the clerical gown. It was not his disgrace to seek to lay it aside as soon as might be. That such was the direction of his thoughts, as soon as his father's death removed his chief constraint, is plain. His return to Westminster had brought him back within the sphere of old temptations; the ambition of a more active life, the early school aspirings, the consciousness of talents rusting in disuse, again disturbed him ; and he saw, or seemed to see, distinctions falling on the men who had started life when he did, from the Literature which he might have cultivated with yet greater success. Bon- nell Thornton and Colman were by this time established town wits ; and with another schoolfellow (his now disso- Churchill.^ old temptations revived. 269 lute neighbour, Robert Lloyd, weary also of the drudgery of his father's calling, to which he had succeeded as an usher in Westminster school, and on the eve himself of rushing into the life of a professed man of letters), he was in renewed habits of daily intercourse. Nor, to the dis- content thus springing up on all sides, had he any power of the least resistance in his home. His ill-considered marriage had by this time borne its bitterest fruit ; it being always understood in Westminster, says Dr. Kippis, himself a resident there, "that Mrs. Churchill's im- " prudence kept too near a pace with that of her hus- " band." The joint imprudence had its effect in growing embarrassment ; continual terrors of arrest induced the most painful concealments ; executions were lodged in his house; and his life was passed in endeavours to escape his creditors, perhaps not less to escape himself. It was then that young Lloyd, whose whole life had been a sad impulsive scene of licence, threw open to him, without further reserve, his own reckless circle of dissi- pation and forgetfulness. It was entered eagerly. In one of his later writings, he describes this time ; ' his credit gone, his pride humbled, his virtue undermined, himself sinking beneath the adverse storm, and the kind hand, whose owner he should love and reverence to his dying day, which was suddenly stretched forth to save him. It was that of the good Dr. Lloyd, now under-master of Westminster : he saw the creditors, persuaded them to accept a composition of five shillings in the pound, and lent what was required to complete it. In this, with the generous wish to succour his favourite pupil, there may have been the hope of one more chance of safety for his son. But it was too late. At almost the same instant, young Lloyd deserted his ushership of Westminster to throw himself on literature for support ; and Churchill, resolving to try his fate as a poet, prepared to abandon his profession. A formal separation from his wife, and a first rejection by the booksellers, date within a few months of each other. At the close of 1760, he carried round his first effort in verse to those arbiters of literature, then all-powerful ; 1 In The Conference, ii. 19^-195. S70 FIRST EFFORTS IN LITERATURE. [CharleS for it was tlie sorry and helpless interval (so filled mth calamities of authors) when the patron was completely gone, and the public had not fairly come. The Bard, written in Hudibrastic verse, was contemptuously rejected. But, fairly bent upon his new career, he was not the man to waste time in fruitless complainings. He wrote again, in a style more likely to be acceptable ; and the Conclave, a satire aimed at the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, would have been published eagerly, but for a legal opinion on the dangers of a prosecution, interposed by the book- seller's friend. This was at once a lesson in the public taste, and in the caution with which it should be catered for. Profiting by it, Churchill with better fortune planned his third undertaking. He took a subject in which his friend Lloyd had recently obtained success ; in which severity was not unsafe ; and to which, already firm as it was in the interest of what was called the Town, he could nevertheless give a charm of novelty. After " two " months' close attendance at the theatres," he completed The Rosciad. It is not known to what bookseller he offered it, but it is certain that it was refused by more than one. Pro- bably it went the round of The Trade : a trade more remarkable for mis-valuation of its raw material, than any other in existence. He asked five guineas for the manuscript (according to Southey, but Mr. Tooke says he asked twenty pounds), and there was not a member of the craft that the demand did not terrify. But he was not to be baffled this time. He possibly knew the merit of what he had done. Here, at any rate, into this however slighted manuscript, a something long restrained within himself had forced its way ; and a chance he was deter- mined it should have. It was no little risk to run in his position ; but, at his own expense, he printed and pub- lished The Rosciad. It appeared without his name, after two obscure advertisements, in March 1761. A few days served to show what a hit had been made. They who in a double sense had cause to feel it, doubt- less cried out first ; but Who is He ? was soon in the mouths of all. Men upon town spoke of its pungency and humour ; men of higher mark found its manly verse Churchill.'] the rosciad. 271 ticism to discuss ; and discontented Whigs, in disfavour at Court for the first time these fifty years, gladly wel- comed a spirit that might help to give discontent new terrors, and Revolution principles new vogue. Thus, m their turn, the wit, the strong and easy verse, the grasp of character, and the rude free daring of the Rosciad, were, within a few days of the appearance of its shilKng pamphlet, the talk of every London cofi'eehouse. One remarkable piece of writing in it might well startle the town by the power it displayed. It was the full length picture of a noted frequenter of the theatres in those days, who had originated some shameful riots against Garrick's management of Drury-lane, the very vileness of whose character had been hitherto his protec- tion, but who now saw himself gibbeted to universal scorn, where no man could mistake him, and none administer rehef. It is one of the masterpieces of Eng- lish satire ; and, being dependent for its interest on something higher than the individual likeness, it may still be presented, as Churchill desired it should be left, without a name. A CHARACTER. With that low cunning, which in fools supplies, And amply too, the place of being wise ; Which Nature, kind indulgent parent, gave To qualify the blockhead for a knave ; With that smooth falsehood, Avhose appearance charms. And reason of each wholesome doubt disarms, Which to the lowest depths of guile descends, By vilest means pursues the vilest ends. Wears friendship's mask for purposes of spite, Fawns in the day, and butchers in the night ; With that malignant envy, which turns pale, And sickens, even if a friend prevail. Which merit and success pursues with hate, And damns the worth it cannot imitate ; With the cold caution of a coward's spleen. Which fears not guilt, but always seeks a screen, Which keeps this maxim ever in his view — What's basely done should be done safely too ; With that dull, rooted, callous impudence, Which, dead to shame and ev'ry nicer sense. Ne'er blush'd, unless, in spreading vice's snares, She blunder' d on some virtue imawares ; With all these blessings, which we seldom find, Lavish'd by nature on one happy mind. 273 FITZGERALD AND WEDDERBURNE. [Charks Came simpering on : to ascertain whose sex Twelve sage, impannell'd matrons would perplex. Nor male, nor female ; neither, and yet both ; Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth ; A six-foot suckling, mincing in Its gait ; Affected, peevish, prim, and delicate ; Fearful It seem'd, tho' of athletic make. Lest brutal breezes should too roughly shake Its tender form, and savage motion spread O'er Its pale cheeks, the horrid manly red. Much did It talk, in Its own pretty phrase, Of genius and of taste, of players and plays ; Much too of writings, which Itself had wrote, Of special merit, though of little note ; For Fate, in a strange humour, had decreed That what It wrote, none but Itself should read : Much too It chattered of dramatic laws, Misjudging critics, and misplac'd applause, Then, with a self-complacent jutting air, It smil'd. It smirk'd. It wriggled to the Chair ; And, with an awkward briskness not Its own, Looking around, and perking on the throne. Triumphant seem'd : when that strange savage Dame, Known but to few, or only known by name, Plain Common Sense appear' d, by Nature there Appointed with plain Ti-uth to guard the Chair, The pageant saw, and, blasted with her frowoi, To Its first state of Nothing melted down. Nor shall the Muse (for even there the pride Of this vain Nothing shall be mortified) Nor shall the Muse {should fate ordain her rhymes, Fond, pleasing thought ! to live in after-times) "With such a trifler's name her pages blot ; Known be the Character, the Thing forgot ! Let It, to disappoint each future aim. Live without sex, and die without a name ! Other likenesses there were, too, named as well as gibbeted, because taken from a more exalted and more pubHc stage; and, prominent among them, the Scotch lawyer, WEDDERBURNE. To mischief train' d, e'en from his mother's womb, Grown old in fraud, tho' yet in manhood's bloom, Adopting arts by which gay villains rise. And reach the heights which honest men despise ; Mute at the bar, and in the senate loud, Dull 'mongst the dullest, proudest of the proud ; A pert, prim. Prater of the northern race, Guilt in his heart, and famine in his face. Stood forth : and thrice he waved his lily hand— And thrice he twirl'd his tye — thrice strok'd his band. Churchill7\ yates and mossop. 273 But these, masterly as they might be, were only " limbs " and flourishes ; " for of course the substance of the satire was its picture of the Stage. And how finished was the portraiture, how vivid its reflection of the originals, how faithful the mirror it set up, in which the vainest, most sensitive, and most irritable of mankind, might see them- selves for nothing better than they were, will appear in even the few incomplete subjects we here borrow from its gallery. TATES. In characters of low and vulgar mould, Where nature's coarsest features we behold, Where, destitute of ev'ry decent grace, TJnmanner'd jests are blurted in your face, There Yates with justice strict attention draws. Acts truly from himself, and gains applause. But when, to please himself or charm his wife, He aims at something in politer life, When, blindly thwarting Nature's stubborn plan, He treads the stage by way of gentleman. The Clown, who no one touch of breeding knows. Looks like Tom Errand dress'd in Clincher's clothes. Fond of his dress, fond of his person grown, Laugh'd at by all, and to himself unknown, From side to side he struts, he smiles, he prates. And seems to wonder what's become of Yates. SPARKS, SMITH, AND EOSS. Sparks at his glass sat comfortably down To separate frown from smile, and smile from frown ; Smith, the genteel, the airy, and the smart. Smith was just gone to school to say his part j Ross (a misfortune which we often meet) Was fast asleep at dear Statira's feet ; Statira, with her hero to agree. Stood on her feet as fast asl-eep as he. Mossop, attach'd to military plan. Still kept his eye fix'd on his right-hand man. Whilst tho mouth measures words with seeming skill, The right-hand labours, and the left lies still ; For he resolved on scripture -grounds to go. What the right doth, the left-hand shall not know. With studied impropriety of speech He soars beyond the hackney critic's reach ; To epithets allots emphatic state, Whilst principals, ungrac'd, like lackies, wait ; In ways lirst trodden by himself excels. And stands alone in indeclinables ; 374 BARRY AND QuiN. [Charles Conjunction, preposition, adverb, join To stamp new vigour on the nervous line ; In monosyllables his thunders roll. He, she, it, and, we, ye, they, fright the soul. BARRY. In person taller than the common size, Behold where Barry draws admiring eyes ! When lab' ring passions, in his bosom pent. Convulsive rage, and struggling heave for vent, Spectators, with imagin'd terrors warm, Anxious expect the bursting of the storm : But, all unfit in such a pile to dwell. His voice comes forth, like Echo from her cell ; To swell the tempest needful aid denies, And all adown the stage in feeble murmurs dies. What man, like Barry, with such pains, can err In elocution, action, character ? What man could give, if Barry was not here, Such well applauded tenderness to Lear ? "VVTio else can speak so very, very fine, That sense may kindly end with ev'ry line ? Some dozen lines before the ghost is there, Behold him for the solemn scene prepare. See how he frames his eyes, poises each limb, Puts the whole body into proper trim. From whence we learn, with no great stretch of art. Five lines hence comes a ghost, and, Ha ! a start. When he appears most perfect, still we find Something which jars upon, and hurts the mind ; Whatever lights upon a part are thrown We see too plainly they are not his own. No flame from Nature ever yet he caught ; Nor knew a feeling which he was not taught ; He raised his trophies on the base of art. And conn'd his passions, as he conn'd his part. QUIN. His words bore sterling weight ; nervous and strong. In manly tides of sense they roU'd along. Happy in art, he chiefly had pretence To keep up numbers, yet not forfeit sense. No actor ever greater heights could reach In all the labour'd artifice of speech His eyes, in gloomy socket taught to roll, Proclaim'd the sullen habit of his soul. Heavy and phlegmatic he trod the stage. Too proud for tenderness, too dull for rage. When Hector's lovely widow shines in tears Or Rowe's gay rake dependent virtue jeers, With the same cast of features he is seen To chide the libertine, and court the queen. From the tame scene, which without passion flows, With just desert his reputation rose : Nor les3 he pleased, when, on some surly plan. He was, at once, the actor and the man. Churchill?^ david garrick. 275 HAVARD AND DAVIES. Here Havard, all serene, in the same strains Loves, hates, and rages, triumphs, and complains ; His easy vacant face proclaim'd a heart Which could not feel emotions, nor impart. AVith him came mighty Davies. On my life That Davies hath a very pretty wife ! Statesman all over ! — In plots famous grown ! — He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone. DAVID GARRICK. Last Garrick came. — Behind him throng a train Of snarling critics, ignorant as vain. One finds out, — "He's of stature somewhat low, — Your hero always should be tall you know. True natural greatness all consists in height." Produce your voucher, Critic. — "Sergeant Kite." Another can't forgive the paltry arts, By which he makes his way to shallow hearts ; Mere pieces of finesse, traps for applause — " Avaunt ! unnatural Start, affected Pause." For me, by Nature form'd to judge with phlegm, 1 can't acquit by wholesale, nor condemn. The best things carried to excess are wrong : The start may be too frequent, pause too long ; But, only us d in proper time and place, Severest judgment must allow them gi-ace. If bunglers, form'd on Imitation's plan, Just in the way that monkies mimic man, Their copied scene with mangled arts disgrace, And pause and start with the same vacant face, We join the critic laugh ; those tricks we scorn Which spoil the scenes they mean them to adorn. But when, from Nature's pure and genuine source, These strokes of acting flow with generous force, When in the features all the soul's portray' d. And passions, such as Garrick' s, are display'd, To me they seem from quickest feelings caught : Each start is Nature, and each pause is Thought. * * « * * The judges, as the sev'ral parties came, With tamper heard, with judgment weigh' d, each claim And, in their sentence happily agreed, In name of both. Great Shakespeare thus decreed. " If manly sense, if nature Hnk'd with art ; If thorough knowledge of the human heart ; If powers of acting, vast and uncoufined ; If fewest faults, with greatest beauties join'd ; If strong expression, and strange powers which lie Within the magic circle of the eye ; If feelings which few hearts, like his, can know. And wliich no face so well as his can show. Deserve the preference ; — Garrick ! take the chair, Nor quit it— till thou place an Equal there." T 2 276 EFFECTS OF THE RosciAD. [CJiaries To account for the reception Satire commonly meets with in the world, and for the scant numher of those who are offended with it, it has been compared to a sort of glass wherein beholders may discover every body's face but their own. The class whom the Rosciad principally offended, however, could discover nobody's face but their own. It was the remark of one of themselves, that they ran about the town hke so many stricken deer. They cared little on their own account, they said ; but they grieved so very much for their friends. " Why should " this man attack Mr. Havard ? " remonstrated one. " I " am not at all concerned for myself ; but what has poor " Billy Havard done, that he must be treated so cruelly ?*' To which another with less sympathy rejoined : '' And " pray, what has Mr. Havard done, that he cannot bear " his misfortunes as well as another ? " For, indeed, many more than the Billy Havards had their misfortunes to bear. The strong, quite as freely as the weak, were struck at in the Rosciad. The Quin, the Mossop, and the Barry, as we have seen, had as little mercy as the Sparks, the Ross, and the Davies ; and even Garrick was too full of terror at the avalanche that had fallen, to rejoice very freely in his own escape. Forsooth, he must assume indifference to the praise ; and suggest with off-hand grandeur to one of his retainers, that the writer had treated him civilly no doubt, with a view to the freedom of the theatre. He had the poor excuse for tfiis fribbling folly (which Churchill heard of, and punished), that he did not yet affect even to know the writer ; and was him- self repeating the question addressed to him on all sides, Who is He ? It was a question which the Critical Reviewers soon took upon themselves to answer. They were great authorities in those days, and had no less a person than Smollett at their head. But here they bungled sadly. The field which the Rosciad had invaded, they seem to have thought their own ; and they fell to the work of resentment in the spirit of the tiger commemorated in the Rambler, who roared without reply and ravaged without resistance. If they could have anticipated either the resistance or the reply, they would doubtless have been a little more dis- creet. No question could exist of the authorship, they Churchill^ the apology. 277 said. The thing was clear. Who were they that the poem made heroes of? Messrs. Lloyd and Colman. Then, who could have written it ? Why, who hut Messrs. Lloyd and Colman ? " Claw me^ claw thee, as Sawney " says ; and so it is ; they go and scratch one another " like Scotch pedlars.'* Hereupon, for the Critical Review was a " great fact " then, Lloyd sent forth an advertise- ment to say that he was never " concerned or consulted" about the publication, nor ever corrected or saw the sheets. He was followed by Colman, who took the same means of announcing "most solemnly" that he was " not in the least concerned." To these were added, in a few days, a third advertisement. It stated that Charles Churchill was the author of the Rosciad; and that his Apology addressed to the Critical Reviewers, would imme- diately be published. Before the close of the month this poem appeared. On all who had professed to doubt the power of the new writer, the effect was prompt and decisive. The crowd so recently attracted by his hard hitting, now gathered round in greater numbers, to enjoy the clattering descent of such well-aimed blows on the astonished heads of unprepared reviewers. One half of the poem was a protest against the antipathies and hatreds that are the general welcome of new-comers into literature — the fact in natural history, somewhere touched upon by Warbur- ton, that only pikes and poets prey upon their kind. The other half was a bitter depreciation of the Stage ; much in the manner, and hardly less admirable than the wit, of Hogarth. Smollett was fiercely attacked, and Garrick was rudely warned and threatened. Coarseness there was throughout, but a fearless aspect of strength ; too great a tendency to say with willing vehemence whatever could be eloquently said, but in this a mere over- assertion of the consciousness of real power. In an age where most things were tame, except the practice of profligacy in all its forms ; when Grray describes even a gout, and George Montagu an earthquake, of. so mild a character that " you might stroke them ; " it is not to be wondered at that this Apology should have gathered people round it. Tame, it certainly was not. It was a curious con- trast to the prevailing manner of even the best of such 278 A SKETCH OF STROLLING ACTORS. \Charles things. It was a fierce and sudden change from the parterres of trim sentences set within sweetbrier hedges of epigram, that were, in this line, the most applauded performances of the day. Walter Scott's favourite passage in Crahbe was the arrival of the Strolling Players in the Borough. It was among the things selected by Lockhart to read aloud to him, during the last mournful days in which his con- sciousness remained. Excellent as it is, however, it is hut the pale reflection of those masterly lines in the Apology which we are now about to quote. As Garrick read them, he afterwards told his friends, he was so charmed and raised by the power of the writing, that he really forgot he was delighted when he ought to have been alarmed. He compared himself to the Highland officer who was so warmed and elevated by the heat of the battle, that he had forgot, until he was reminded by the smarting, that he had received no less than eleven wounds in different parts of his body. THE STROLLERS. The strolling tribe, a despicable race, Like wandering Arabs, shift from place to place. Vagrants by law, to justice open laid, They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid, And fawning cringe, for wretched means of life, To Madam May'ress, or his Worship's Wife. The mighty monarch, in theatric sack. Carries his whole regalia at his back : His royal consort heads the female band, And leads the heir-apparent in her hand ; The pannier' d ass creeps on with conscious pride, Bearing a future prince on either side. No choice musicians in this troop are found To varnish nonsense with the charms of sound ; No swords, no daggers, not one poison'd bowl ; No lightning flashes here, no thunders roll ; No guards to swell the monarch's tmn are shown ; The monarch here must be a host aloTie. No solemn pomp, no slow processions here ; No Ammon's entry, and no Juliet's bier. By need compell'd to prostitute his art. The varied actor flies from part to part ; And, strange disgrace to all theatric pride ! His character is shifted with his side. Question and answer he by turns must be, Like that small wit in Modern Tragedy Who, to patch up his fame — or fill his purse — Still pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse ; Churchill^ fright of garrick. 279 Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known, Defacing first, then claiming for his own. In shabby state they strut, and tatter' d robe ; The scene a blanket, and a barn the globe. No high conceits their moderate wishes raise, Content with humble profit, humble praise. Let dowdies simper, and let bumpkins stare, The strolling pageant hero treads in air : Pleas'd for his hour, he to mankind gives law, And snores the next out on a truss of straw. But if kind fortune, who sometimes we know Can take a hero from a puppet show. In mood propitious should her fav'rite call, On royal stage in royal pomp to bawl. Forgetful of himself he rears the head, And scorns the dunghill where he first was bred. Conversing now with well-dress'd kings and queens, With gods and goddesses behind the scenes. He sweats beneath the terror-nodding plume. Taught by mock honours real pride to assume. On this great stage, the World, no monarch e'er Was half' so haughty as a monarch-player. The effect of the Apology y as we have said, was instant and decisive. Davies tells us that Smollett wrote to Garrick, to ask him to make it known to Mr. Churchill, that he was not the writer of the notice of the Rosciad in the Critical Revieio. Garrick himself wrote to Lloyd Avith affected self-humility, as " his pasteboard Majesty of " Drury-lane," to praise Mr. Churchill's genius, and to grieve that he should not have been vindicated by their common friend from Mr. Churchill's displeasure.* The player accepted the poet's warning. There was no fear of his repeating the hetise he had committed. To his most distinguished friends, to even the Dukes and Dowagers of his acquaintance, he was careful never to omit in future his good word for Mr. Churchill ; and never, even when describing the "misery" t\iQ Rosciad had inflicted on a dear companion, did he forget his own J ** In his Bosciad he rale' d me " justly or not. If the first, you " too high, in his Apology he may " should certaiuly have opened your ** have sunk me too low; he has done " heart to me and have heard my " as his Israelites did, made an " apology ; if the last, you should * ' Idol of a calf, and now— the Idol " as a common friend to both have •' dwindles to be a calf again ! To " vindicated me, and then I might " be a little serious, you mentioned ' ' liave escaped his Apology. But *' to me some time ago that Mr. '* be it this or that or t'other, I am ** Churchill was displeased with me, "still his gi'eat admirer," etc. — •** you must have known whether Garrick to Uobert Lloyd. 280 UNSUCCESSFUL ACTING. [Charks " love to Cliurcliill/' Affection for the satirist prevailed still over pity for his victims ; and the manager and the poet lived together in amity, and Churchill dined at Hampton, to the last. " I have seen the poem you mentioned, the JRosciad,'^ writes Garrick's friend. Bishop Warburton, " and was " surprised at the excellent things I found in it ; but " took Churchill to be a feigned name, so little do I know " of what is going forward ;'' — this good Bishop little thinking how soon he was to discover a reality to himself in what was going forward, hardly less bitter than Garrick had confessed in the letter to Lloyd, " of acting a *' pleasantry of countenance while his back was most *' wofully striped with the cat-o'-nine tails." The lively actor nevertheless subjoined : " I will show the supe- " riority I have over my brethren upon this occasion, " by seeming at least that I am not dissatisfied." He did not succeed : the acting was not so good as usual, and the superiority not so obvious. For in truth his brethren had the best of it, in proportion as they had less interest in the art so bitterly, and, it must be added, so unjustly assailed. " It was no small consolation to us," says Davies, with great naivete, " that our master was " not spared." Some of the more sensible went so far as to join in the laugh that had been raised against them ; and Shuter asked to be allowed to " compote " and make merry with the satirist— a request at once conceded. On the other hand, with not a few, the publication of Churchill's name had aggravated offence, and re-opened the smarting wound. But their anger did not mend the matter. Their Anti-Rosciads, Triumvirates, Examiners, and Churchilliads, making what reparation and revenge they could, amounted to but the feeble admission of their opponent's strength; nor did hostilities more personal accomplish other than precisely this. Parties who had met to devise retaliation, and who were observed talking loud against the Satirical Parson in the Bedford coffee- house, quietly dispersed when a brawny figure appeared, and Churchill, drawing ofi" his gloves with a particularly slow composure, called for a dish of cofiee and the Rosdad. Their fellow-performer, Yates, seeing the same figure darken the parlour-door of the Rose tavern where he Churchill?^ attacks upon the satirist. 281 happened to be sitting, snatched up a case-knife to do summary justice ; and was never upon the stage so heartily laughed at, as when, somewhat more quietly, he laid it down. Foote wrote a lampoon against the Clumsy Curate, and with a sensible after-thought of fear (excellent matter of derision to the victims of a professed lampooner), suppressed it. Arthur Murphy less wisely published his, and pilloried himself ; his Ode to the Naiads of Fleet Bitch being but a gross confession of indecency as well as imbecility — which was more than Churchill charged him with.' " No more he'll sit," exclaimed this complacent and courageous counter-satirist, whose verses, silly as they are, will give us a glimpse of the Where and the How our hero sat at the theatre, * ' In foremost row before the astonisli'd pit ; In brawn Oldmixon's rival as in wit ; And grin dislike, And kiss the spike ; And giggle, ) j And fiddle. And wriggle ; J ( And diddle," &c. &e. But Churchill returned to his front row, " by Arthur " undismayed;" and still formidable was his broad burly face, when seen from the stage behind that spike of the orchestra. " In this place he thought he could best " discern the real workings of the passions in the actors, " or what they substituted in the stead of them," says Davies, who had good reason to know the place. There is an affecting letter of his in the Garrick Correspondence, deprecating the manager's wrath. " During the run of " Cymheline,^^ he says (and of course, his line being the heavy business, he had to bear the burden of royalty in that play), " I had the misfortune to disconcert you *' in one scene, for which I did immediately beg your '' pardon ; and did attribute it to my accidentally seeing *' Mr. Churchill in the pit, with great truth ; it rendering " me confused and unmindful of my business." Garrick ^ Very diflFerent was Robert he rendered worthy tribute not alone Lloyd's masterly Epistle to C. to Lis friend the author of the Ros- Churchill^ in which, while he gib- ciad, but to "manly Johnson," and beted (xray, and other true men uf the *' Murphy, or Durfey, for it's all the time, same, " 283 RESTRAINTS THROWN ASIDE. \_Charles miglit have been more tolerant of poor Davies, recollecting that on a recent occasion even the royal robes of Richard had not wrapt himself from the consciousness of that ominous figure in the pit; and that he had grievingly written to Colman of his sense of the arch-critic's too apparent discontent.^ Thus, then, had Churchill, in little more than two months, sprung into a notoriety of a very remarkable, perhaps not of a very enviable kind, made up of admi- ration and alarm. What other satirists had desired to shrink from, he seemed eager to brave ; and the man, not less than the poet, challenged with an air of defiance the talk of the town. Pope had a tall Irishman to attend him after he published the Dunciad, but Churchill was tall enough to attend himself. One of Pope's victims, by way of delicate reminder, hung up a birch rod at Button's ; but Churchill's victims might see their satirist any day walking Covent-garden unconcernedly, provided by himself with a bludgeon. What excuse may be sug- gested for this personal bravado will be drawn from the incidents of his early life. If these had been more auspicious, the straightforward manliness of his natural character would more steadily have sustained him to the last. As it was, even that noblest quality did him a dis- service ; being in no light degree responsible for his violent extremes. The restraint he had so long submitted to, once thrown aside, and the compromise ended, he thought he could not too plainly exhibit his new existence to the world. He had declared war against hypocrisy in all •stations, and in his own would set it no example. The pulpit had starved him on forty pounds a-year ; the public had given him a thousand pounds in two months ; and he proclaimed himself, with little regard to the decencies in doing it, better satisfied with the last service than with the first. This was carrying a hatred of hypocrisy beyond the verge of prudence — indulging it indeed, with the satire it found vent in, to the very borders of licentiousness. He stripped off his clerical dress by way of parting with his last disguise, and appeared in a blue coat with metal 1 "My love to Churchill; his ** ceived about the house." — Garrick *' being sick of Richard was per- to George Colman. Churchill.'] curacy of st. john's resigned. 283 buttons, a gold-laced waistcoat, a gold-laced hat, and ruffles.^ Dean Zacliary Pearce, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, remonstrated with him. He replied that he was not conscious of deserving censure. The Dean thereupon observed, that the habit of frequenting play-houses was unfitting, and that the Rosciad was indecorous ; to which he rejoined, that so were some of the classics which the Dean had translated. The " dull dean's " third remon- strance as to dress, met with the same fate ; and it was not until the St. John's parishioners themselves took the matter in hand, a few months later, that Churchill resigned the lectureship of that parish. It was just that they should determine it, he said ; and the most severe assailant of his turbulent life would hardly charge him with indifference, at any time, to what he really believed to be just. The date of his good fortune, and that of the comfort of his before struggling family, his " brother John " and sister Patty," were the same. The complainings of his wife were ended when his own poverty was ended, by the generous allowance he set aside for her support. Every man of whom he had borrowed was paid with interest ; and the creditors, whose compromise had left them without a legal claim upon him, received, to their glad amazement, the remaining fifteen shillings in the pound. " In the instance," says Dr. Kippis, " which " fell under my knowledge as an executor and guardian, " Mr. Churchill voluntarily came to us and paid the ftdl " amount of the original debt." It was not possible with such a man as this, that any mad dissipation or indulgence, however countenanced by the uses of the time, could wear away his sense of its unworthiness, or entirely silence remorse and self- reproach. Nor is it clear that Churchill's heart was ever half so much with the scenes of gaiety into which he 1 In one of the numberless and The better to deceive, puts off the now utterly forgotten satires which gown ; Churchill's popularity provoked, the In blue and gold now strutting like Author of Churchill Dissected tells a peer us — Cocks his lac'd beaver with a mar- *' He skulks about, and, fearing to tial air." be known, 284 EPISTLE TO LLOYD. \_CharIes is now said to have recklessly entered, as witli the friend by whose side he entered them. It is indeed mournfully confessed, in the opening of the Epistle to that friend, which was his third effort in poetry, that it was to heal or hide their care they frequently met ; that not to defy but to escape the world, was too often their desire ; and that the reason was at all times but too strong with each of them, to seek in the other's society a refuge from himself. This Epistle, addressed to Lloyd, and published in October 1761, was forced from him by the public impu- tations, now become frequent and fierce, against the moral character of them both. Armstrong, in a poetical epistle to his friend "gay Wilkes," had joined with these detractors ; and his Bay suggested Churchill's Night. It ridiculed the judgments of the world, and defied its censure ; which had the power to call bad names, it said, but not to create bad qualities in those who are content to brave such judgments. It had some nervous lines, many manly thoughts, and not a little questionable philosophy ; but it proved to be chiefly remarkable for indicating the new direction of Churchill's satire. There had been rumours of his having intended a demolition of a number of minor actors hitherto unassailed, in a Smithfield Eosciad; and, to a poor man's pitiable depre- cation of such needless severity, he had deigned a sort of surly indignation at the rumour, but no distinct denial. It was now obvious that he contemplated other actors, and a very different theatre. Pitt had been driven to his resignation in the preceding month ; " and," cried Churchill here, amid other earnest praise of that darling of the people, *' What honest man hut would with joy suhmit, To bleed with Cato and retire with Pitt ! " " Gay Wilkes," at once betook himself to the popular poet. Though Armstrong's Epistle had been addressed to him, he declared that he had no sympathy with it whatever; and he was sure that Armstrong himself, then abroad, had never designed it for publication. Other questions and assurances followed ; and so began the friendship which only death ended. Wilkes had little Churchill.'] JACK wilkes. 285 strength or sincerity of feeling of any kind ; but there is no doubt that all he had was given to Churchill, and that he was repaid with an affection as hearty, brotherly, and true, as ever man inspired. All men of all parties who knew John Wilkes at the outset of his extraordinary career, are in agreement as to the fascination of his manners. It was particularly the admission of those whom he had assailed most bitterly. " Mr. Wilkes," said Lord Mansfield, " was the plea- " santest companion, the politest gentleman, and the best " scholar, I ever knew." *' His name," said Dr. John- son, " has been sounded from pole to pole as the phoenix " of convivial felicity." More naturally he added : " Jack has a great variety of talk ; Jack is a scholar ; " and Jack has the manners of a gentleman." And every one will remember his characteristic letter to Mrs. Thrale : " I have been breaking jokes with Jack Wilkes " upon the Scotch. Such, madam, are the vicissitudes '* of things." There is little wonder that he who could control vicissitudes of this magnitude, should so quickly have controlled the liking' of Churchill. He was the poet's elder by four years; his tastes and self- indulgences were the same ; he had a character for public morality (for those were the days of wide separation between public and private morality) as yet unimpeached; and when they looked out into pubhc life, and spoke of political affairs, they could discover no point of disagreement. A curious crisis had arrived. Nearly forty years were passed since Yoltaire, then a resident in London, had been assured by a great many persons whom he met, that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward, and Mr. Pope a fool. Party went to sleep soon after, but had now reawakened to a not less violent extreme. The last shadow of grave opposition to the House of Hanover vanished with the accession of George III in 1760 ; and there was evil as well as good in the repose. With the final planting of the principle of freedom, implied in the quiet succession of that House, men grew anxious to reap its fruit, and saw it nowhere within their reach. Pitt's great administration, in the latter years of George II, merged these opening dissatis- g86 VIOLENCE OF PARTY SPIRIT. \Charles factions in an overruling sense of national glory ; but, with the first act of the young King, mth the stroke of the pen that made Lord Bute a privy councillor, they rose again. Party violence at the same time reawakened ; and, parody- ing Yoltaire's remark we may say, that people were now existing who called William Pitt a pretender and Bubb Dodington a statesman. To '' recover monarchy from the inveterate usurpa- " tion of oligarchy," was, according to the latter eminent person's announcement to his patron, the drift of the Bute system. The wisdom of a younger party in more modern days, which (copying some peevish phrases of poor Charles the First) compares the checks of our English constitution to Venetian Doges and Councils of Ten,' had its rise in the grave sagacity of Bubb Dodington. The method of the proposed ''recovery " was also notable, and has equally furnished precedents to later times. It was simply to remove from power every man of political distinction, and replace hink.-.with a convenient creature. Good means were taken. The first election of the new reign was remarkable for its gross venality, nor had "undertakers" been so rife or so active since the reign of James the First. One borough even pubhcly advertised itself for sale; and so far, by such means at least, the desired success ap- peared within easy reach. But any shrewd observer might foresee a great impending change under the proposed new system, in the reaction of all this on the temper of the people out of doors. Sir Robert "VYalpole did strange things with the House of Commons, but for great popular purposes ; and already it was manifest enough, that a mere bungling imitation of such things, for purposes wholly unpopular, would be quite a different matter. In a word, it was becoming tolerably clear to such a man as Wilkes, who had managed again to effect his return for the borough of Aylesbury, that a good day for a Demagogue was at hand. He possessed the requisites for the character. He was clever, courageous, unscrupulous. He was a good scholar, expert in resource, humorous, witty, and a ready master ^ When this Essay was written England party under his protection, (early in 1845) Mr. Disraeli had and the expressions referred to will taken what was called the Young be found in Coningshy. Churchill^ alliance with wilkes. 287 of the arts of conversation. He could '* abate and dis- " solve a pompous gentleman ^' with singular felicity. Churchill did not know the crisis of his fortune that had driven him to patriotism. He was ignorant, that, early in the preceding year, after loss of his last seven thousand pounds on his seat for Aylesbury, Mr. Wilkes had made an unsuccessful attempt upon the Board of Trade. He was not in his confidence when, a little later, Mr. Wilkes offered to compromise with Government for the Embassy to Constantinople. He was dead when, many years later, Mr. Wilkes settled into a quiet supporter of the worst of " things as they were." What now presented itself in the form of Wilkes to Churchill, had a clear unembar- rassed front, — passions unsubdued as his own, principles rather unfettered than depraved, apparent manliness of spirit, real courage, scorn of conventions, an open heart and a liberal hand, and the capacity of ardent friendship. They entered at once into an extraordinary alhance, offensive and defensive. It is idle to deny that this has damaged Churchill with posterity, and that Wilkes has carried his advocate along with him into the Limbo of doubtful reputations. But we will deny the justice of it. It is absolutely due to Churchill that we should regard Wilkes from the point of view he presented between 1761 and 1764. He was then the patriot untried, the chamberlain unbought, befriended by Temple, countenanced by Pitt, persecuted by Bute, and, in two great questions which affected the vital inter- ests of his countrymen, he was the successful assertor of English liberty. It is impossible to derive, from any part of their intercourse, one honest doubt of the sincerity of the poet. He flung himself, with perhaps unwarrantable heat^ into Wilkes's personal quarrels ; but even in these, if we trouble ourselves to look for it, we find a public principle very often implied. The men who had shared with Wilkes in the obscene and filthy indulgences of Medmenham Abbey, were the same who, after crawling to the favourite's feet, had turned upon their old associate with disgusting pretences of indignation at his immorality. If, in any circumstances, Satire could be forgiven for approaching to malignity, it would be in the assailment of such men as these. The Eoman senators who met to 288 EXCUSES FOR A SATIRIST. \_Charles decide the fate of turbots, were not more worthy of the wrath of JuvenaL As to those Medmenham Abbey proceedings, and the fact they indicate, we have nothino^ to urge but that the fact should be treated as it was. The late wise and good Dr. Arnold lamented that men should speak of religious liberty, the liberty being irreligious ; and of freedom of conscience, when conscience is only convenience. But we must take this time now under consideration as we find it, — politics meaning something quite the opposite of morals ; and one side shouting for liberty, while the other was crying out for authority, without regard in the least to what neither liberty nor authority can give us, without patient earnestness in other labour of our own, of obe- dience, reverence, and self-controL "We before remarked, that Churchill's genius was affected by this characteristic of the time ; and that what,, as he so often shows, might otherwise have lain within his reach, — even Dryden's massive strength, even Pope's exquisite delicacy, — this arrested. It was this which made his writing the rare mixture it too frequently is, of the artificial with the natural and impulsive ; which so strangely and fitfully blended in him the wholly and the partly true; which impaired his force of style with prosaical weakness ; and which (to sum up all in one extreme objection), con- trolling his feeling for nature and truth by the necessities of partisan satire, levelled what he says, in too many cases, to a mere bullying reissue of conventional phrases and moral commonplace. Yet he knew what the tempta- tion should have weigh*ed for, even while he yielded to it; and, from the eminence where Satire had placed him, only yearned the more eagerly for the heights above. *' Broad is the road, nor difficult to find Which to the house of Satire leads mankind ; Narrow and unfrequented are the ways, Scarce found out in an age, which lead to Praise." But it is not by the indifferent qualities in his works that Charles Churchill should be judged, and, as he has too frequently been, condemned. Judge him at his best ; judge him by the men whom he followed in this kind of composition ; and his claim to the respectful and enduring Churchill.'] varieties of satire. 289 attention of the students of English poetry and litera- ture, becomes manifest. Of the gross indecencies of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, he has none. He never, in any one instance, whether to fawn upon power or to trample upon weakness, wrote licentious lampoons. There was not a form of mean pretence, or servile assumption, which he did not denounce. Low, pimping politics, he abhorred : and that their vile abettors, to whose e:5j:posure his works are so incessantly devoted, have not carried him into utter oblivion with themselves, sufficiently argues for the sound morality and permanent truth expressed in his manly verse. He indulged too much in personal invective, as we have said ; and invective is too apt to pick up, for instant use against its adversaries, the first heavy stone that lies by the wayside, without regard to its form or fitness. The EngHsh had not, in his day, borrowed from the French those nicer sharpnesses of satire which can dispense with anger and indignation ; and which now, in the verse of Moore and Ber anger, or in the prose of our pleasant Mr. Punch, suffice to wage all needful war mth hypocrisy and falsehood. In justice let us add to this latter admission, that Satire seems to us the only species of poetry which appears to be better understood than formerly. There is a painful fashion of obscurity in verse come up of late years, which is marring and misleading a quantity of youthful talent ; as if the ways of poetry, like those of steam and other wonderful inventions, admitted of original improvements at every turn. A writer like Churchill, who thought that even Pope had cramped his genius not a little by desert- ing the earher and broader track struck out by Dryden, may be studied with advantage by this section of young England ; and we recommend him for that purpose. Southey is excellent authority on a point of the kind ; and he held that the injurious efiects of Pope's dictator- ship in rhyme were not a little weakened, by the manly, free, and vigorous verse of Churchill, during his rule as tribune of the people. Were we to ofier exception, it would rest chiefly on the fourth published poem of Churchill, which followed his Night, and precedes what Southey would call his tribu- nitial career. This was the first book of the Ghost, con- 290 POETICAL TRISTKAM SHANDY. [Charks tinued, at later intervals, to tlie extent of four books. It was put forth by the poet as a kind of poetical Tristram Shandy — a ready resource for a writer who seized care- lessly every incident of the hour ; and who, knowing the enormous sale his writings could command, sought immediate vent for thoughts and fancies too broken and irregular for a formal plan. The Ghost, in his own phrase, was " A mere amusement at tlie most ; A trifle fit to wear away The horrors of a rainy day ; A slight shot-silk for summer wear, Just as our modern statesmen are." And though it contained some sharply written character, such as the well-known sketch of Dr. Johnson (Pomposo), and the allusions to laureat Whitehead ' (whom he never ^ Mr. Cunningham has favoured me with a characteristic notice of this attack, by Whitehead himself, copied from the Nuneham MSS, which is well worth preserving in a note. The popularity of Churchill is not more strikingly reflected in it, than the fiue-gentleman airs with which men of the class of Mr. Whitehead affected to regard him. The distinguished laui-eat, it will be observed, is shocked to hear from Lord Nuneham (to whose letter he is replying) that he is alleged to have spoken dis- respectfully of Churchill at Lady Talbot's, when he really cannot re- collect having ever heard the name mentioned in such company. Never- theless as he procee