J c-^-^ ifV U.I l/l^. 0f (imbxtm i ' s \ \ cii arn omni \^ If i/ J 1 1 - A, JJiUjclriiicI;^ S:aIJ '-\ 27 Beetanaji Street "j/;j?.v>.< .;/ tfajfun-Jten PORTRAIT GALLERY I — OF EMINENT MEN AND WOMEN OF EUROPE AND AMERICA. EMBRACING HISTORY, STATESMANSHIP, NAVAL AND MILITARY LIFE, PHILOSOPHY, THE DRAMA, SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND ART. WITH BIOGEAPHIES. BY EVERT A. DUYCKINCK, ADTHOR OP "portrait GALLERY OP EMINENT AMERICANS," "CYCLOPEDIA OP AMERICAN LITERATURE," "HISTORY OP THE T^'AR POR THE UNION," ETC, ETC. ILLUSTRATED WITH HIGHLY FINISHED STEEL ENGRAVINGS FROM ORIGINAL PORTRAITS BY THE MOST CELEBRATED ARTISTS. In Two Volumes. — Vol. I. NEW YORK: JOHNSON, FRY AND COMPANY, 27 EEEKMAN STREET. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1873, by JOHNSON, FRY AND COMPANY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. ^/ 1 PREFACE. BIOGRAPHY," says Archbishop Whately, " is allowed on all hands to be one of the most attractive and profitable kinds of reading." The reason of this is obvious. It has, when properly treated, the ease and variety of the most agreeable forms of literature, and its subject-matter most nearly concerns the reader. In its very nature it is bound to a certain interest of progress and development, such as we look for in the Drama. Reaching back fre- quently into the story of an ancient lineage, the infant human life is introduced with a species of historic interest in the concerns and opportunities of the family. The formative years of childhood succeed, with the influences of education which, if they do not create the character, go far to shape its manifes- tation to the world. How infinitely varied are these foims of development, how peculiar the action of the individual mind ! Then comes the great struggle for success as the years roll on, till the man, with noble endeavor, obtains the mastery, and whether in art, science, literature or public affairs, places himself on a pinnacle where he will be surveyed through all coming time. The end which crowns the work of the personal career is yet to be reached ; and as we have watched the rising of the hero with hope and anxiety, we look upon his age and departure with sympathy and admiration. To observe and chronicle the achieve- ments and vicissitudes of every year of busy life is the province of the biographer, and there are no resources of literature which may not on occasion be serviceable to the work. Hence, books of biography are more and more, in the hands of consummate masters of the art, claiming the highest rank in our libraries. They are no longer scant and meagre records of a few personal details, but, in the case of men of eminence, require for their perfection a vast deal of the resources of history and philosophy. In the hands of Macaulay and Carlyle, biography, in its most attractive exhibition, is made to do the work of histor)^, and nobly it accom- plishes the design. Nor is this simply a daring achievement of men of genius. The greater part of the knowledge which we have of history, it may safely be said, is at this day conveyed through the lives of distinguished personages. Looking at the work before us — the exhibition of the Lives of Eminent Men and Women of Europe and America, from the period of the Revolution to the present day — we find, when we have made up the list, a singularly general representaton of the nationalities of the present century as well as of (3) PREFACE. the various modes of illustrious achievement. All the great nations of Europe supply their men of thought and action, their great sovereigns, their founders of governments, their distinguished military chieftains, their statesmen, their philanthropists, their scientific discoverers, their poets and artists. The new birth of Italy is exhibited in the record of Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emanuel, and the early rule of Pope Pius ; France has her Marie Antoinette, her Charlotte Corday, her Napoleons, her Thiers ; Russia, her Alexander, with his grand work of national reform ; Germany emerges from the old revolution with her Goethe, Schiller, Humboldt, to enter upon the empire with King William, Bismarck and Von Moltke ; England is illustrated from the days of Johnson to those of Dickens and Tennyson in literature ; she has her statesmen in Bright, Cobden and Gladstone ; her v^^arriors on sea and land in Nelson and Wellington ; her philanthropists of both sexes from Wilberforce to Florence Nightingale ; her race of female novelists from Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte ; her inventors in such examples as Stephenson and Faraday ; Scotland has her Burns, Scott and Livingstone; Ireland her Burke, Goldsmith, Edge- worth, Curran, Grattan, and O'Connell ; while in the United States, all of the classes we have alluded to are represented in Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Webster, Fulton, Morse, Peabody, Bryant and others of either sex, and so we might enumerate the whole of the hundred and more subjects of these biographies. In no work of the kind, thus far published, has the same attention been given to Female Biography and Portraiture. One-third of the portiaits will be of illustrious women, eminent in history, literature, art or philanthropy. It has been the object to present these " lives " of persons of eminence suffi- ciently in detail to interest the reader in their personal history ; to exhibit, to the young particularly, the foundation of their success in early self-denial and resolu- tion ; to include all that can be gathered within the necessary limits to display the strong, essential elements of character. The artistical department of the work is greatly indebted to the ability of our native painter, Mr. Alonzo Chappel. In many instances the portraits have been re-drawn by him, while the selection of originals has been made from the most eminent painters, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Paul de la Roche, and others. They are here presented in a novel style, with characteristic accessories. Unusual pains have been taken in this country and in Europe, to obtain the most reliable authori- ties ; while the engraving of the whole has been entrusted to experienced artists of the highest reputation in London and New York, at a great outlay of cost. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PAGE. SAMUEL JOHNSON 5 OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 28 HANNAH MORE, 43 FREDERICK II., 60 EDWARD GIBBON, 75 MARIE ANTOINETTE, 87 DAVID GARRICK, 106 GEORGE WASHINGTON, 123 MADAME D'ARBLAY, 139 EDMUND BURKE, 159 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, 169 MARTHA WASHINGTON, 182 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 192 ROBERT BURNS, 204 CHARLOTTE CORDAY, 218 JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE, 226 JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE, 240 ABIGAIL ADAMS, . . . .255 GILBERT-MOTIER DE LAFAYETTE, 263 THOMAS JEFFERSON, 279 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 293 FRIEDRICH SCHILLER, 310 HENRY GRATTAN, 323 SARAH VAN BRUGH JAY, 334 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 344 ROBERT FULTON 360 MADAME DE STAEL, 368 HORATIO NELSON, . 378 JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, 396 JANE AUSTEN, 409 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, 416 (ifEORGE STEPHENSON 433 liii I iv CONTENTS. SARAH SIDDONS, ^^ ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, 466 WALTER SCOTT, 476 DOROTHY PAYNE MADISON, .488 LORD BROUGHAM, 494 LORD BYRON, 507 •ELIZABETH FRY, 529 ROBERT PEEL, S39 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 544 FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS, 566 DUKE OF WELLINGTON, 577 THOMAS MOORE, 593 LYDIA HUNTLEY 8IG0URNEY, 605 ANDREW JACKSON, . . 615 SAMUEL JOHNSON IN all EngHsli biograpliy it is ad- mitted that the Life of Samuel Johnson, as exhibited by Boswell and his associates in the work, stands forth the fullest in detail and least likely to be exhausted in interest, one generation succeeding another since it was -written and the latest still perusing it with eager curiosity. Never before or since, has so minute and faithful a record been given to the world of the personal career of a man of letters, probably of any man in any sta.tion of life. The nearest approach to the nar- rative in Euglish literature is one in- spired by it, the life of Sir Walter Scott, by Lockhart, lDut that is com- jjaratively a simple production when placed by the side of the ^performance of his elder countryman. Of Burns, also, we know a great deal, as we do of the personality of Scott. The names of these men bring before us at once their noble traits of character, and we may conceive on the instant how they would thiuk and act under any cir- cumstances. So too of others of whom less has been written. We may know the men ; but we do not know so much of them as we may gather in a few hours from our book-shelves of the life of Johnson. Between what he ^^Tote of himself and what was written of him by others, of whom his great bi- ographer was only the chief, what with the revelations of his diaries, the can- dor of his correspondence and the vigorous impression of himself upon his moral writings, we may be inti- mately acquainted with him in his in- ner as well as his outer life through the entire seventy-five years of his ex- istence. For the story begins with his cradle. He was anecdotical even in his infancy. Non sine diis animosus infans. His friend, Sir Joshua Keynolds, turning his pencil in later years fi'om that scarred and seamed countenance, im- mortal on his canvas, in a fanciful pic- ture portrayed the child as he may then have appeared, a companion to his infant Hercules : " The baby figure of the giant mass, Of tilings to come at large." The portrait is that of a vigorous, healthy child, and in that respect it was but imaginary, for the real John- son was, in his early years, sickly and diseased, so miserable an object one of his aunts afterwards told him that (5) SAMUEL JOHNSON. "she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street." But Reynolds, always a poet painter, was intent upon a glorification of his subject. This seemingly unhap- py child came into the world in the city of Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, on the 18th of September, 1706. The house in which he was born is still standing in 1872 a familiar object to many pilgrims at the corner of a street opening named St. Mary's Square, "a tall and thin house of three stories with a square front and a roof rising steep and high," as it is de- scribed by Nathaniel Hawthorne who visited it, and as it may be seen repre- sented in many familiar engravings. Here at the time of the birth of his son Samuel, Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, was settled in a humble way as a book- seller and stationer. When he was more than fifty he was married to Sarah Ford, of a peasant family in Warwickshire. She was then at the age of forty. Two sons were born to them — Samuel, three years after the union, and three years later, Nathaniel, who died at the age of twenty-five. In the year of his son's birth, Michael Johnson was sheriff of the county ; he owned the house in which he resided and generally bore a respectable posi- tion in the place. His business as a bookseller was extended by his excur- sions into the neis-hborino; towns where he opened a shop on market days, held auctions and offered for sale works of various kinds, — ^law, history, mathe- matics and a good stock of divinity for the serious and, " to please the ladies," as one of his circulars informs us, a " store of fine pictures and paper-hang- ings " which were to be sold precisely at noon " that they may be viewed by daylight ;" for Michael Johnson was a conscientious man and would practice no deception even in the sale of pic- tures. He was of a strong and robust frame, but of a melancholy tempera- ment, arising it may be from a scrofu- lous taint which his son inherited with his disposition. The mother of John- son is described by Boswell as " a woman of distina;uished understand- ing ;" but fi'om the account we have of her from her son she was quite il- literate, so that she could not sympa- thize at all with her husband's love of books ; nor was she able to assist him in his business as it became less pros- perous and the family encountered the hardships of poverty. Her uneducated piety was sometimes troublesome to her son in his boyhood when she kept him home on Sundays to read the dull and sombre homilies of " The Whole Duty of Man ;" but she was kind to him with a mother's fondness enhanced by his sufferings from ill-health, and he always entertained a grateful re- collection of her. The first authentic anecdote of J ohn- son, as a child, belongs to his third year, when being thirty months old, at the advice of Sir John Floyer, a notable physician at Lichfield, he was taken by his mother to London to be relieved of his scrofulous disease, the King's Evil, as it was called, by the magical touch of Queen Anne, who, following the royal precedents from the days of Edward the Confessor, as may be read in Shakspeare, was supposed to be 1 gifted with power to relieve that com- SAMUEL JOimSON. plaiut. Johnson must have been among the last on whom that cere- mony was performed for which in the old editions of the Books of Common Prayer there was an especial religious service. Queen Anne was the last to practice this mode of cure. The iden- tical gold coin or " touch piece " which, according to custom the child Johnson received on the occasion may now be seen preserved as a curiosity in the British Museum. The Johnson family were inveterate tories and were in- clined to believe to the end in the effi- cacy of kings. Johnson professed to retain a recollection of this introduction to royalty, remembering a boy crying at the palace when he went to be touched and the appearance though shadowy of Queen Anne. He had, he told Mrs. Thrale, " a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood." Another incident of about the same time, savoring also of toryism, is of a decidedly apocryj^hal character, though circumstantially related to Bos- well by a lady of Lichfield whose grandfather witnessed the scene and which is also represented on a bas-re- lief of the monument to Johnson in front of his birth-place. In this he is pictured as a child of three years old held on his father's shoulders listening to the preaching of the famous high- church Doctor Sacheverell. It was impossible, the tale runs, to keep the boy at home, for "young as he was he believed he had caught the public spirit and zeal for Sacheverell and would have staid for ever in the church, satisfied with beholding him." Boswell gave the story in his book, for he thought it "curiously charac- teristic," but his editor, Croker, set the idle tale at rest by reminding the reader that at the time assigned the tory preacher was interdicted from preach- ing, and though he had visited Lich- field in his triumphal progress through the counties, it was when Johnson was but nine months old. There is also a stupid story of his having recited to his mother at the same tender age of three, four bad lines of his composi- tion, an epitaph on a duckling which he had trod upon and killed. Passing beyond these mythical in- ventions to the sober facts of biogra- phy we come upon a Dame Oliver, a schoolmistress, such as Shenstone has described, who taught the young Samuel to read English, a dame so wonderfully gifted that she could peruse black letter, calling upon her pupil to borrow from his father's stock a Bible for her in that character. Then came a preceptor, Tom Brown, who published a spelling-book which he dedicated to the universe ; and after him Hawkins, the usher of the Lichfield school, with whom Johnson learned much, passing to the upper form, literally into the hands of Mr. Hunter; for this head master "Avhipt me very well," as his great i:)upil af- terwards stated with pride, being prone as a moralist to defend this method of implanting learning in the youthful mind. He thought it much better than the emulation system which, he would say, created jealousy among fi-iends, while the flogging set- tled the matter at once and the knowl- edge was secured. Johnson, however, was an apt scholar and, notwithstand- SAMUEL JOKNSON. ing his admii'ation of the bii'cli, was probably very little indebted to it for his education. He early showed great powers of memory, an indication of a strong and fertile mind, that faculty implying both sunshine and replenish- ing of the soil. He would help his fellow pupils in their studies, and was so popular with them that they would call for him at his home and carry him to school in a sort of triumphal pro- cession, one stooping to bear him upon his back while two others suj)ported him on either side. His eyesight, which was defective from his birth, kept him from the usual boyish sports, but he contrived wonderfully well, as he afterwards said, " to be idle without them." Though capable of great ex- ertions, with a mind always actively employed, he was constitutionally en- couraged to fits of indolence which sometimes got the better of him, as he was often in the habit of confessing and lamenting. As a boy he liked to wander idly in the fields, talking to himself and had an immoderate fond- ness for losing himself in old romances such as the vicar ejected from Don Quixote's library. At the age of fifteen he was sent to the Grammar School of Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, Avhere he passed about twelve months, returning home to spend a couple of years " loitering," says his biographer, " in a state very unworthy his uncommon abilities." He was, however, all the while an om- nivorous reader, browsing on the mis- cellaneous stock of his father's books, one day lighting upon the Latin works of Petrarch, Avhich he devoured with avidity — certainly not the proof of an idle employment of his time. He had, moreover, already in his school exer- cises proved his ability in various po- etical translations of Virgil and Horace, so that, when in his nineteenth year he was, with the promised assistance of a gentleman of Shropshire, entered a commoner of Pembroke Collesre, Ox- ford, he carried with him a stock of attainments which at once gave him a creditable position at that University. On the night of his arrival he was in- troduced with his father, " who had anxiously accompanied him," to his in- tended tutor, Mr. Jorden, when, spite of his ungainly appearance, for he even then appears to have had something of that uncouthness of jierson and man- ner afterwards so much commented upon, he impressed the company favor- ably by his ready citation of a passage from Macrobius, an out-of-the-way au- thor for a novice to be acquainted with. But Johnson was no novice in learned reading ; and though he showed some waywardness in attendance ujjon rou- tine duties, he soon gained the respect of the authorities by his talent, and es- pecially attracted their attention by an easily executed brilliant translation into Latin verse of the Messiah of Pope, who is said to have remarked, on being shown the production by a son of Dr. Arbuthnot, then a student at Oxford, " The writer of this poem will leave it a question for posterity, whether his or mine be the original," Johnson passed about three years at the University, his course being great- ly impeded by his poverty, for the assistance which had been promised failed to be given, and the waning for- tunes of his father enabled him to eke SAMUEL JOimSOK out fur his son but a scanty support, which finall}^ failed altogether and com- pelled him to leave without a degree. So extreme Avas his want of resources that he could hardly maintain the or- dinary decencies of the place, going about, or rather, shrinking from view, with worn-out shoes, through which his feet were painfully visible, and when some friendly hand placed a new pair at his door, throwing them away Avith iudio-nation as an insult to his poverty. Such was the pride of John- son, an honest pride often shown in his career through life, which preserved his independence and kept him free from the baseness with which he might, from the associations into which he Avas incAdtably thrown, have otherwise been entansrled. His association Avith Oxford Avas doubtless one of the import- ant influences of his life, though it bore no immediate fruit in academic honors. He acquired there no inconsiderable knowledge of Greek, must have added largely to his stores of reading and, loA'er of learning as he ever Avas, been pro- portionately impressed Avith the genius of the place. He had some reputation Avhile there as " a gay and frolicsome felloAA"," it is said, and Avas disposed to be satirical and censorious. This he long afterwards characteristically ex- plained : " Ah, I Avas mad and violent. It Avas bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I Avas miserably poor, and I thought to fight my Avay by my liter- ature and my Avit ; so I disregarded all power and all authority." In truth there Avas seriousness enoucjh in his life at this time. During his first A'a- cation, passed at his home at Lich- field, he became the prey of so oppres- 2 siA^e a melancholy that existence Avas almost insupportable to him under the anticipation of impending insanity. It w*as but little relief to the evil at the time that the burden Avas imagin- ary, and that he shoAved the absurd- ity of his fears by engrossing them to the admiration of his physician Avith remarkable ability in most excellent Latin. The hypochondria, like the ter- rors of a dream, produced much suffer- ing ; but it Avas of a kind over which he learned to gain control, though its shadows accompanied him through life. It Avas also while at Oxford that he be- came the subject of those deep reli- gious conAactions which, Avith a dash of superstition, never departed from him. The seeds of piety AA'ere early implanted in him by his mother's teachings; but, as we have seen, the method was not alAvays Avell judged, and in his youth he Avas disposed to some laxity of opinion which Avas re- strained by the habits of Oxford and extinguished by a famous book of evangelical piety Avhich he met Avith there — " Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life." He took it up, he tells us, " ex- pecting to find it a dull book, as such books generally are, and perhaps to laugh at it, but I found LaAV quite an even match for me ; and this Avas the first occasion of my thinking in ear- nest of religion, after I became capa- ble of rational enquiry." Religion thenceforth became intimately associ- ated Avith his thoughts and actions. A few months after Johnson left Oxford his father died at Lichfield, at the age of seA^enty-six, leaAang scant property to his family ; for out of his effects the portion Avhich came to his 10 SAMUEL JOHNSON". son Samuel, excluding that whicli lie might ultimately derive from his moth- er, was but tAventy pounds. With this he was to begin the world at the age of twenty-two. But the regard in which his father had been held was something of an inheritance to him, and the knowledge which, according to the old proverb, siirvives houses and lands, was to prove its excellence. He looked to his scholarship as his first means of support. The prospect of advantage from it was for a long time not a cheering one. He began by ac- cepting the humblest position as a teacher, that of usher or under-master in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershii-e, to which he proceeded on foot. The situation was necessarily irksome to one of his temperament, Avho always grasped at knowledge with impatience, seldom during his life read- ing a book through, but, with an in- stinctive sagacity, hastily "plucking out the heart of its mysterj^" He was in his capacity of usher con- demned to the painful iteration of the rules of grammar, the inflections of nouns and the moods of verbs, with boys to whom to-day's lesson was a re- flection of that of yesterday, and identi- cal with that of the morrow — a melan- choly drudgery for the quick-minded Johnson ; it was doubtless also aggra- vated according to the manner of boys by half concealed ridicule of his pecu- liarities, and, when the whole was sup- plemented by what he considered " in- tolerable harshness " on the part of the titled patron of the school, he threw up the employment in disgust. A few months were sufficient for this un- happy experiment. Leaving Market-Bosworth with no other engagement in view, Johnson accepted an invitation from Mr. Hec- tor his school-fellow at Lichfield, to visit him at Birmingham. Johnson passed some time in this city, and there wrote his first book, a transla- tion from the French of a Voyage to Abyssinia by fiither Lobo, a Jesuit missionary, for which he received from the bookseller Warren with whom he lodged the payment of five guineas. With praiseworthy indus- try and sagacity, Boswell, with the assistance of Burke examined this book to ascertain if it bore any marks of that peculiarly rich and effective style which became known to the world as the peculiar manner of Johnson. So far as the translation itself was concerned they found only traces of the idiom of the original; but when they came to the preface their search was rewarded. In the words of Boswell "the Johnsonian style begins to appear." Iml^edded like rich nuggets in the flowing stream were some brilliant specimens of genuine Johnsonese, a foretaste of that inimitable generalization sup- ported by picturesque detail and ani- mating suggestions, enlivened by epi- gram and antithesi, a pomp of words in stately music supporting a burthen of thought — the comprehen- sion of the poet, the wit and philoso- pher. After a residence of about a year at Birmingham, he returned to Lich- field, where he made an ineffectual at- tempt at literary occupation by issu- ing proposals for publishing by sub- scription the Latin poems of Politian, SAMUEL JOHNSOK 11 with a life of the author, an under- talcing which found few to encourage it though the price was small ; so, nothing came of it. Two years now passed without any distinct employ- ment to further his prospects in life, when in July, 1736, he was married to a Mrs. Porter, the widow of a mer- cer at BiiTaingham with whom he had become acquainted in his former stay in that city during the life-time of her first hushand. There was a great disparity in the age of the pair, Johnson, at the time of the marriage, being in his twenty-seventh year and the bride in her forty-eighth. Nor was she remarkable for her per- sonal charms, or any refinement in her appearance, if we may credit the account of Garrick in his description of her to Boswell. But the mar- riage, notwithstanding all inequalities, proved a happy one. However the lady might appear to the youthful Garrick and the world, she was an angel of light to her husband, whose poverty she alleviated and consoled, and whose mental ability she had suf- ficient understanding to appi'eciate. This alliance brought with it eight hundred pounds, the widow's fortune, and, encouraged by this new resource, Johnson, Avho had failed in an en- deavor to procure the mastership of a grammar school in Warwickshire, re- solved to set vip a species of academy of his own. He accordingly hired an imposing looking house, at Edial, in the vicinity of Lichfield, and invited the attendance of pupils to board with him and be taught the Latin and Greek languages. Only three came, two of whom were David Garrick, of illustrious memory, and his brother George, sons of a gentle- man, a half-pay captain, at Lichfield. With such scant encouragement it is a marvel that Johnson's patience held out for a year and a half ; but it last- ed probably as long as his means ; and while these continued, spite of the drudgery of teaching, the home must have been to him a comfortable one, fascinated, as the young lover was — for Johnson was really a chivalric lover — with the perfections of his "Tetty," as he fondly called his wife Elizabeth, Johnson, who had employed some of his leisure at Edial Hall, as his house is called, in the construction of a portion of his tragedy " Irene," now by the advice of his friend Gilbert Walmsley, a gentleman of Lichfield, Register of its Ecclesiastical Court, a man of reading and influence, resolv- ed to jDursue the work with a view to its introduction on the stage. This directed his thoughts to London, the certain refuge of provincial literary as- pirants of all times. There if anywhere in England he might turn his literary talents, his sole capital, to account. His pupil, Garrick, about being sent to a school at Rochester to finish his education, Johnson's friend, Walmsley, gave them a joint letter to the head master, the Rev. Mr. Colson, a man of eminence as a mathematician. Com- mending to him the youthful Garrick, he wrote, " He and another neighbor of mine, one Mr. Samuel Johnson, set out this morning (March 2, 1737), for London, together; Davy Garrick to be with you early the next week, and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a 12 SAMUEL JOIIJS'SON. tragedy, and to see to get liimself em- ployed in some translation, either from the Latin or the French. Johnson is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes will turn out a fine tragedy-writer." Nothing particular api^ears to have come, so far as John- son was concerned, of Colson's letter. He was out of the way at Rochester in a quiet seclusion, and Johnson was to fight for his life against severe odds in the rough training-school of Lon- don. The booksellers were his first resort. Apjilying to one of the craft, with the intimation that he expected to get his living as an author, the dealer in hooks, surveying his robust frame with a significant look, remark- ed, "You had better buy a porter's knot ;" and the man who uttered this rude speech Johnson got to reckon among his best friends. Occasional literature offers the most available re- source to a young writer in search of employment, and Johnson was natur- ally rttracted to it in one of its better forms. Edward Cave, the son of a provincial shoemaker, with some edu- cation at Rugby school, had found his way into literature in London through his employment as a printer, and in the face of the usual auguries of failure, had successfully established the "Gentle- man's Magazine," the most famous pro- duction of its class and still surviving, though changed with the wants of the times, approaching its hundred and fiftieth year — a longevity utterly be- yond any of its short-lived race. "When Johnson came to London it had been five or six years in existence, and its fame had reached him at Lichfield. He had written a letter to its founder two or three years before, offering to contribute poems and criticisms, and he now addressed him again, propos- ing a new translation from the Italian of Father Paul Sai-pi's History of the Council of Trent. It was not, however, till about a year later that he became a contributor to the Magazine, his first appearance being as the author of a complimentary Horatian ode in Latin, addressed to Sylvanus Urban, as the editor designated himself on the title- page of his work. After this he was engaged as a regular contributor, and for several years derived his chief sup- port from this source. There were no parliamentary reporters in those days, the publication of debates being inter- dicted; and to meet the public curi- osity Avithout violating the law, it was the custom of Cave to jjublish a dis- guised account of the proceedings un- der the name of " Reports of the De- bates of the Senate of Lilli^^ut," in which the leading sjieakers figured under absurd disguised names, in a clumsy slang language invented for the occasion. The mask was awkwardly worn, and not intended to conceal the features. In this contrivance Johnson was employed in the " Gentleman's Magazine " to ^YYite out the debates, often from the scantiest of material, be- ing left to his oAvn resources to supply thought and words. This he did with much effect, bestowing his best elo- quence it is said on the side of the to- ries, of whom from his childhood he was among the most resolute if not the most bigoted. Services like these might have se- cured a scanty compensation barely sufficient to keep soul and body toge- SAMUEL JOimSON. 13 tlier, with little comfort for either ; but Johnson, happily, mindful of his poet- ical faculty, employed it in these early months in the metropolis on a task which raised him at once to a higher level, gave him assurance of a posi- tion in the world of letters, and which doubtless had the most favorable effect upon his character in sustaining him through the dark days, aye, years of trial and hardships yet before him. Pope was at this time at the height of his reputation, in the maturity of his powers, having produced his best works, and among the latest his ex- quisite adaptation, to modern English society, of the satires and epistles of Horace. This was a sj)ecies of liter- ature eminently adapted to gain the admiration of Johnson, whose own reading was always subservient to a better appreciation of the daily life around him. Few scholars, so inti- mate with the past, have lived so heartily in the present as Johnson. No author has more closely identified the life of all asjes in his writings, or so demonstrated its essential moral unity. It was an easy labor for him, therefore, to supply with modern ex- amples the scheme of an ancient poet who had made Rome in the fulness of its development the subject of his song. In the sagacity and moral force of Juvenal he had an author to his liking, and in his descriptions of city life a strong ground for his sympathy. It is quite worthy of being noticed that the first important production which John- son gave to the world is stamped with the name of London. Choosing the third satire of Juvenal for his subject, that quaint picture of Rome, sketched by the departing Umbritius as he shakes off the dust of the town from his feet, he transferred its spirit to the world of England of his own times, and he accomplished this so gracefully, with so much of taste, feeling and power, that it secured him at once a distinguished place among the poets of En2;land. It is interestina; to trace the modest manner in which this work Avas brought forward. We first hear of it in a very supplicating letter to Cave, the printer, a letter which no- thing but extreme poverty could have extracted from a man like Johnson on such an occasion. He sulmiits the poem to his consideration, thinly dis- guised as the production of another, a person, he writes, who " lies at pre- sent under very disadvantageous cir- cumstances of fortune," and, a conces- sion which is the strongest proof of his necessity, offers to alter any stroke of satire which the printer may dis- like. Cave, upon this, sends the author a " present " for his immediate relief, ac- cepts the work, and suggests the name of Dodsley the publisher for the. ti- tle page. Dodsley proves quite willing to have a share in it, thinking it, as he said, " a creditable thing to be con- cerned in;" and so, one morning in May, 1738, the very same on Avhicli appeared Pope's " Epilogue to the Sa- tires," a sequel to the " Imitations of Horace," Johnson's " London " was given to the world. It was the first introduction of the name of Samuel Johnson to the polite society of Eng- land, and it was a sufficient one. The literati of London hailed in the new poet a rival or successor to Pope ; the scholars of Oxford Avere delighted, and li SAMUEL JOimSON. Pope himself approved the work. Be- ina; told that the author was an otscure man named Johnson, for his name did not appear on the title page, he re- marked that he would soon be brought to light. So favorable generally was the reception of the j^oem that a sec- ond edition of it was called for in a week. Comparing this work with the simul- taneous production of Pope, the satire of the man of twenty-nine with that of the man of fifty, the preference must be given to youth over experience. It is quite fair to test Pope by the quo- tations from his writings — for no Eng- lish wi'iter has been quoted to such an extent — but there are more remember- ed familiar lines in Johnson's " Lon- don," than in Pope's " 1738," as the satire was called on its first appear- ance. While the poem thus gained its author reputation, its success did lit- tle to mend his fortunes. It produced him only ten guineas, half the sum or less, that was given at the time for a hack political pamphlet ; and Johnson was left a living illustration of one of the finest lines in the poem itself: "Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed." That poverty was so pressing that Johnson in his despair Avould again have assumed the office of a teacher, the mastership of a school in Leicester- shire beino; offered to him and willinsr- ly accepted, if he could have complied with the condition. To hold the situ- ation, it was necessary that he should have the degree of Master of Arts. Oxford was thought of and set aside, the request being considered too bold a one for that high quarter ; but Earl Gower, a patron of the school, thought it worth while to solicit through a friend the intervention of Dean Swift to secure the coveted honor from the University of Dublin. The English nobleman plead hard for " the poor man" whom he wished to serve, de- scribinsc him in his letter " starved to death in translating for booksellers, which has been his only subsistence for some time past." But fortunately nothing came of it ; else Johnson might have been lost to London and the world, and served only as a notable head-master or a curiosity among ped- agogues in the local annals of a county history. The law seems then to have been thought of, and Johnson had many requisites in subtilty and force of mind for the profession ; but here again a degree was wanted, and the project, if seriously entertained, was abandoned. So he was left to the booksellers. Reviving the plan of a translation of Father Paul Sarpi, a prospectus was is- sued, some subscriptions obtained and several sheets of the work printed,when it was found, a strange coincidence, that it had been already undertaken by an- other Samuel Johnson in London ; and in the discussion which ensued between the two, the execution of it was given up by both. At the conclusion of one of his letters to Cave, relating to the translation, Johnson signs himself Im- pransKS. He had not dined that day, a statement which might mean some- thing or nothing; but in Johnson's case it has been generally taken to mean something — for Johnson, in com- mon Avith his needy literary brethren of the day, may very likely have been in want of a dinner — and the absence SAMUEL JOPINSOJS". 15 of a dinner to Johnson was no slight privation. So the years wore on while Johnson who was now living with his wife in lodgings in London or its vici- nity, eked out a scanty subsistence by minor literary labors, chiefly essays, biographies and translations for the " Gentleman's Magazine." In 1744, on the death of the poet Savage, he pub- lished anonymously a life of that ex- traordinaiy adventurer, whom he had known intimately in his parti-colored career in the metropolis, whose as- sumptions and gleams of dashing prosperity he wondered at, whose poverty he had shared and ^vhose fate he pitied. The book in which Johnson narrated his adventm-es is unique in biography. We know not where to find anything so natural, candid and spontaneous, so feeling and at the same time amusino- a sketch of a va2:abond existence. It is essentially the history of a bastard with an instinct for high life in his composition triumphant over all the mortifications and disasters of debt and poverty; a sketch wonder- fully real and as ideal as any fancifully embellished portrait drawn by the pencil of Lamb. Indeed, it somehow recalls to us in its sjjirit Elia's account of the " triumphant progress " of that splendid borrower, Ralph Bigod, Esq., in his exquisite Essay on "The Two Eaces of Men." The shifts and expe- dients of a poor devil author, the grandeur of his mind supplying any deficiencies of his pocket, have never been more graphically related than in this charming biography by Johnson. It is pervaded throughout by the finest sense of humor, and is the highest jjroof which can be afforded of John- son's superiority to the casual, improv- ident career of the careless company into which he was often thrown in the early period of his life in London. On every page there is the revelation of some absurd folly or pretension, or of darker profligacy, yet the picture upon the whole is a genial one ; for Johnson, though he knew its minutest peculi- arities, was- so far above the scene in moral elevation as to look calmly upon it with the eye of a philosopher, as a curious study of human nature. It is a delightful mingling of details and generalities ; the actual losing its gross- ness in the ideal. In other hands. Sav- age would most likely have appeared as an indifferent poet and profligate si^endthrift, cruelly treated by his ti- tled, disreputable mother, if his story was credited; but, in himself, an im- practicable vagabond whom no kind- ness could serve or generosity, how- ever large, relieve, and who, for those times, met an apj^ropriate fate in an early departure from life within the walls of a debtor's prison. But the pen of Johnson coiild never be em- ployed in unfeeling censure of the un- fortunate, nor "even of the criminal. The scamp is never disguised in his narrative, though he sometimes ap- pears to be playing with the subject ; while the moral that ends the story, "that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued, Avill make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible," loses none of its force by the fairness, indulgent sympa- thy and good humor of the nari'ative on which it is built. The rapidity with Avhich the book 16 SAMUEL JOHNSON. was written lias been commented upon as something remarkable, forty-eiglit of its printed octavo pages being writ- ten at a sitting which lasted through the night — a noticeable thing, certain- ly, when it is considered that it is not altogether a simple, straightforward, flowing narrative ; but, that it is con- stantly interrupted by pregnant reflec- tions, its sentences pointed with wit and tied up in knots of philosophy. But Johnson was full of his theme, and what he wrote he had doubtless often muttered to himself in his ha- bitual reflections on the adventures of his hero as they passed before him. A book comjiosed in such a manner could not fail of attention, especially as the sul)ject of it was already a per- son of notorious public interest, whose career had been invested "wath the xm- failing attraction of piquant scandal in high life. Boswell tells us how Sir Joshua Reynolds, " on his return from Italy, met with it in Devonshire, know- ing nothing of its author, and began to read it while he was standing with his arm leaning against a chimney-piece. It seized his attention so strongly, that, not being able to lay down the book till he had finished it, Avhen he at- tempted to move, he found his arm totally benumbed." The year following the production of the biography of Savage, Johnson puljlished a pamphlet of " Observations on the tragedy of Macbeth," with pro- posals for a new edition of Shake- speare, which gained him the commen- dation of Warburton, who was then engaged on a similar undertaking. Johnson began his studies for the work, but it was for a time laid aside for another of more jiressing impor- tance, his " Dictionary of the English Language," the plan of which was is- sued in 1747. The work was a joint enterprise of the trade, seven London booksellers, at the head of whom was Dodsley, contracting for its composi- tion at the price of fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds. The prospectus Avas dedicated to the Earl of Chester- field, the fashionable patron of letters of the time, who sent the author the accustomed gratuity of ten guineas for the compliment. The labor involved in such an undertaking Avould have been far more formidable to most other authors than it j^roved to John- son, who, confident of his own abilities, in a resolute way resolved the task into one of great simplicity, expending his strength mainly on the definitions and illustrations from classic authors. Em- ploying no less than six assistants as amanuenses, he handed over to them for transcription passages or sentences from the best English authors which he had selected for the purpose, with the word which he intended to illus- trate, underlined. The word was writ- ten on a slip of paper with the accom- panying citation, and thus the Diction- ary was in a great part formed as an index of classic authors. When thus arranged in alphabetical order, defi- nitions were added, with etymologies, derived from the best authorities. Of coui'se, he was under great obligations to his predecessors ; but the work was distinctly marked by his mental habits, and consequently, notwithstanding the increased value of later philological acquirements in his successors, is re- produced to this day for our libraries SAMUEL JOHNSON. 17 as enipliatically Johnson's Dictionary. Opening the single capacious volume now in use, no unmeet representative of the burly form of Johnson, as Au- gustus compared. Horace to the fat lit- tle roll of his poems, we may light at random on pages illuminated by his philosophical acumen, rich with the stores of his various reading from the Bible and Shakespeare, through the best English authorship to Pope and Swift, while, interspersed with the sound, manly definitions, are several touches of satire and humor, inter- ■ posed, not more, perhaps, by prejudice, than as a relief to the weary labor of the work. In one of these he defines the word oats, " a grain, which, in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland, supports the people ;" and in another, " pension," as " an al- lowance made to any one without an equivalent, in England, being generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his conn- try," and " pensioner — a slave of state, hired by a stipend to obey his master," definitions which were rather incon- venient to him, when he came himself to occupy that relation to his country. To the word " Lich," which enters into the composition of Lichfield, his native town, he adds an interpretation of the latter word, " the field of the dead, a city in Staffordshire, so named from martyred Christians," with the invoca- tion. Salve magna pai'ejis ! The Dictionary was seven years in progress. On the eve of its appear- ance, in 1755, Lord Chesterfield soiight to revive the good feeling of the author towards him exhibited at the start, ])y some handsome notices of the book in 3 advance in the periodical essays enti- tled, " The World ;" but, Johnson, who had been provoked by neglect in a visit or two which he had paid to the no- bleman's drawin2:-room, or knockinof in vain at his door, was in no humor to dedicate to him the finished work. On the contrary, he spurned the flat- tering overtures, and in a spirit of in- dependence, the echo of which rings in noble halls to this day, addressed a remarkable letter to the Earl, Avhich has done more to keejD the writer in popular remembrance than the best pages of his "Eambler." To grace the title-page of his Diction- ary, Oxford conferred upon Johnson the degree of M. A. in 1755; LL.D. came twenty years later from that University, and, in the meantime, the same degree had also been given by Dublin. It was only in the latter part of his life that he was known by the title so familiar to us, of Dr. Johnson. In the interval, while Johnson was engaged upon the Dictionary, he had published in 1749 a companion to his "London," in a version of the tenth satire of Juvenal, which he entitled, " The Vanity of Human "Wishes." In this, as in his previous version, he had to contend in the literal part of his work with the muse of Dryden, who ti'anslated both poems ; but Johnson had the advantage of a wider interpre- tation in his introduction of modern instances and manners ; while his be- nevolent disposition led him to soften the asperities of the original. In the fierce picture of a vicious old age, for instance, which darkens the brilliancy of the Latin poem, Johnson has intro- duced, — an idea entirely of his own conception, — a sketch of tlie decline of life, animated by purity and virtue : " But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime ; An age that melts with unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away ; Whose peaceful day benevolence endears, ■Wliose night congratulating conscience cheers ; The gcn'ral fav'rite as the gen'ral friend ; Such age there is, and who shall wish its end ?" The sketch of the life of the man of letters is also his own, sadly inspired by his observation and experience : — " Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, Nor melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade ; Yet hope not life from griei or danger free. Nor think the doom of man revers'd for thee ; Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awliile from letters, to be wise ; There mark what ills the scholar's life assail. Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail." In one noble historic passage he has fairly rivalled the genius of Jtivenal, that in which the career of Charles XII. is substituted for that of Hanni- bal. In fertility of incident, ease and rapidity of movement, the union of personal emotion with historic gran- deur, it stands unrivalled. Every school-boy knows it, and the story as told in these verses is "familiar as household words," of the hero who "left the name at which the world grew pale. To point a moral or adorn a tale." For this poem Johnson received but fifteen guineas from Dodsley — a small advance on the previous poem. The year 1849 saw also the produc- tion on the stage of Drury Lane of Johnson's tragedy of " Irene," which had been for some time finished. It was brought forward by Garrick, who gave it his best support, including himself, Barry and King in the cast, Avith Mrs. Gibber and Mrs. Pritchard ; but it was by no means well adapted for the stage, being deficient in dra- matic interest and variety of incident — a didactic poem in fact, in the form of dialoo;ue. It was carried through nine nights ; the profits of Avhich to the au- thor, with the sum paid by the pub- lisher, amounted to nearly three hun- dred pounds. On the first night the play was in danger, at an unfortunate passage, of being damned. Johnson, on being asked how he felt as to the failure of his tragedy, stoically replied, " Like the Monument ! " He knew his powers too well to tempt the dramatic line asrain. The " Vanity of Human Wishes " and " Irene" were succeeded in the spring of the following year by the " Rambler," a series of moral essays, somewhat after the plan of the " Spectator," the first number being published on the 20th of March, and others following in suc- cession on the Saturday and Tuesday of each week till its conclusion with the two hundred and eighth number, on the 14th of March, 1752. The work, as a whole, is distinguished from its predecessors in this lighter school of literature by its prevailing serious- ness. The " Rambler " is for the most part a collection of lay sermons or moralities not unworthy of the j)ulpit; for Johnson was quite capable of this part of the office of a clergyman, and many a sermon was preached in Eng- land which he had furnished to the cloth at a guinea a piece. Among his private prayers and meditations Avhich escaped destruction at his hands, is a solemn invocation of divine support at SAMUEL JOHXSO^. 19 his entrance on this work ; and the as- piration to do something for the glory of God and the good of man was never lost sight of by him in its progress. "With the exception of two numbers by his learned friend Mrs. Carter, and some three or four trifling communi- cations, it was entirely written by him. The numbers Avere j^ublished at two- pence, and Johnson received two gui- neas for each. Though compared with the " Spectator," there is a certain heavi- ness in the style, and the thoughts are often of a sombre cast; yet to an in- telligent and sympathizing reader, who has seen enough of life to value it at its true worth, these essays may still be read with much of that admiration which they awakened in their author's own period. Their object is essentially self-knowledge, and it is imparted from the author's experience with the wis- dom of a philosopher and the familiar kindness of an intimate. Like Chau- cer's " Clerk of Oxenforde," " Sounding In moral virtue was his speecli, And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach." The "Rambler" is not a book to be opened in a careless moment, for the stj'le is out of fashion ; but it requires a reader of little sagacity to penetrate to its profound stores of thought and feeling ; and as he pursues his way through apologues and allegories, he will be rewarded by many delightful sketches of character, enlivened by jest and humor. The same week in Avhich the " Eam- bler" was brought to an end, Johnson was called upon to mourn the loss of his wife, his beloved " Tetty," Avho had been with him, his consoler and friend, through nearly sixteen years of priva- tion and strug-firle. She lived to see the establishment of his reputation as one of the foremost poets and prose writers of his time. He had greatly relied on her approval of the early numbers of the "Rambler." " I thought very well of you before," said she, "but I did not imagine you could have written anything equal to this ;" and Johnson treasured the observation with the warmth of a lover. When he resumed his work after her death, he chose a particular room in the garret to write it, because he had never seen her in that place, and the rest of the house Avas in- supportable to him. To the end of his days he kept the anniversary of her death Avith deA'Out religious exercises. Though he had closed the "Ram- bler," sick at heart Avith the burden of his private sorroAvs, the essay Avas a form of literature too well suited to his mental habits to be long abandoned. Accordingly, we find him in the spring of 1753, Avhile he Avas still la- boring on the Dictionary, engaging in f lu'nishing various papers to the " Ad- venturer," a ncAv periodical of the old " Spectator" fashion, conducted l)y his friend Dr. IlaAvkesAvorth. In this and the folloAving year he AATOte twenty- nine numbers of that work, which is chiefly remembered by his participa- tion in it. The topics upon Avhich he mainly relied were those of literature and philosophy in its application to every-day life, for he constantly held, Avith Milton's "Adam," in his discourse Avith the angel Raphael : " That not to know at largo of things remote From use, obscure and subtle, but to know That which before us lies in daily life Is the prime wisdom." 20 SAMUEL JOHNSON. Following the production of tlie Dictionary, after an interval, in wliich lie was engaged upon the "Literary IMagazine," for wliicli lie wrote chiefly reviews of books, he again resumed, in April, 1758, the now classic style of the Essayists, in "The Idler," con- ducted wholly by himself, in a weekly series continued for two years. These papers were not published on a sepa- rate sheet like the "Rambler," but originally appeared in a weekly news- paper called "The Universal Chroni- cle." Twelve of the hundred and three were contributed by Johnson's friends; the rest were from his own pen. Their general character ranks them with their predecessors in the " Eambler " and " Adventurer ; " but they are of a lighter cast, with more of variety in the treatment than the former. The stjde, too, is more easy and idiomatic; for Johnson, as he mingled with the world, threw more of the charm of his familiar conver- sation into his writinsrs. While the " Idler " was in progress, Johnson, in the spring of 1759, pub- lished his romance "The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," the locality doubtless a reminiscence of the travels of Father Lobo, which he had translated. Like others of his best writings it was written with great rapidity, being composed in the even- ings of a single week, the motive of this exertion being to procure a sum sufiicient to pay the exj^enses of his mother's funeral and some small debts left by her. She had continued to reside at Lichfield, and had reached the venerable age of ninety. Johnson had constantly contributed to her sup- port, and her last days were cheered by his heartfelt correspondence. Eas- selas is a collection of philosophic re- flections on the aspirations and disap- pointments set in a slender framework of narrative and description. The ideas suggested by the scenery and characters, however, cover any defects or inconsistencies of detaiL The con- ception of a happy valley is pleasing to the imagination, and the dialogue is supported, not by any dramatic in- terest, but by a certain melancholy grace in the sentiment. The adven- tures in the world are of a general character, and used only for the pur- pose of introducing the reflections. The moral of the whole, the vanity of all things human, is indicated in the opening sentence of the book, a kind of musical incantation to which the rest responds : " Ye, who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope ; Avho expect that age will per- form the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow ; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Al)yssinia." It is the old moral, since the days of Solomon ; but it is gently touched, and its tone of disappoint- ment never runs into the language of despair ; and as we close the book we feel that the shadows cast over the scene are from the mountain heights of a higher existence beyond. The last thoughts of the volume are given to the charms of knowledge and the solace of immortality. For this work Johnson received from his publishers a hundred pounds, to which they added twenty- five on its reaching a second edition. SAMUEL JOIIK-SOK 21 The next incident of importance in Johnson's life, which affected his whole future career, was his acceptance of a pension from George III. in 1762, shortly after his coming to the throne. The amount was three hundred pounds, sufficient with Johnson's moderate wants to provide for his comfort and support his independence, for which the resources of his writings had not • always proved adequate. A few years before he had been arrested for a debt of less than six pounds, and had escaped a temporary lodgement in a debtor's prison by the friendly aid of Hichard- son the novelist. Some surprise might have been caused by Johnson receiving a pension at all ; for, with his Jacobite tendencies, he had shown but little con- sideration for the house of Hanover; but the ueAV reign offered an oppor- tunity for the fusion of parties. Bute, the prime minister, was a Tory, and the recognition of Johnson's services to literature and morality was sure to be approved liy the persons in the na- tion whose good opinion was best worth having. The annuity was thus conferred without pledges or condi- tions, simply as an honor paid to lite- rature and j)ersonal worth. In this spirit it was received by Johnson, who could afford to smile while his detract- ors quoted his definitions of pension and jDensioner in the Dictionary. " The event," as Macaulay has observed, " produced a change in Johnson's whole way of life. For the first time since his boyhood, he no longer felt the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to in- dulge his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the morning without fearing either the printer's devil or the sheriff"'s officer." From that moment, indeed, he aj)- peared almost exclusively before the world as a man of leisure and society. He was at the age of fifty-three, a time of life when men of toil Ions: for some enjoyment of the fruits of their labors, and Johnson's had been emphatically a life of care and anxiety. " Ho\v hast thou purchased this experience ? " says the fantastical Spaniard in Shakespeare to his knowing attendant. Moth. " By my penny of observation." If such gifts could be estimated in coin, John- son had expended a fortune in the ac- quisition. He had been brought l)y his poverty, in a hard struggle for ex- istence, into close contact with the realities, where dangers were at every step to be avoided, and where character was in constant risk of suffering ship- wi'eck. A high sense of duty and a morl)id conscientiousness had pre- served his integrity, while he was de- licately sensitive to every shade of good or evil. A quarter of a century had passed since he first went up to London with Garrick, — years filled with thought and painful effort, the study of men and of books in depart- ments of life and learning whex-e both Avere at theii- highest intensity; and he had been almost daily called to turn the lessons to account in some en- during form of literary composition — essays, filled with knowledge of the world and animated by philoso2)hy like those of the "Rambler;" imagi- native tales like "Rasselas;" liiogra- phies like that of Savage, and poetry. 92 SAMUEL JOHNSON. still leaning ujion actual life and his- tory, as in "The Vanity of Human Wishes." If, like his prototype, Ben Jonson, he had been gifted with the power to write dramas, the circle of his experience and attainments would have been complete ; and still a vast deal of what Ben put into his plays or its equivalent may be found in the Essays of Johnson. With this fullness and ripeness of acquisition and development, having proved his powers before the world in writings, the great merit of which was universally acknowledged, Johnson now enters upon a new stage of exist- ence, in which he supports a peculiar character uni(|ue in English social his- tory. This was the part, above all others, of the great talker of his time. It is not so much, after this, what Johnson writes as what he says, that eno-acjes the attention of his readers. For the remaining twenty years of his life, he is to be known chiefly by his conversational talent, and for our ap- preciation of this, we are indebted to a person as singular as himself. Of the eight volumes which compose the standard edition of " Boswell's John- son," six are taken uj) with the reports of these conversations. It would be vain to attempt within our present limits to describe them. They exhibit various shades of opinion on almost every subject, moral, social, literary, po- litical, which entered into the thoughts of the age ; for they were held with its representative men, its divines, its statesmen, authors, men of fashion, and a herd of others less distinguished, who sought to light their tapers at that abundant flame. Sometimes, indeed. Johnson talked for effect, or rather risked the appearance of it to draw out all that could be said on a question ; he was occasionally rude and repul- sive ; now and then, prejudiced ; but, in general, he appeared the great mas- ter of common sense, genial, indulgent, tolerant ; dogmatic it is true, but with the dogmatism of a man who had re- flected much, and, on topics of moral interest, was not to be lightly shaken in his argument ; terse and pointed in his expressions, going dii'ectly to the heart of the matter in the language of everyday life. For a result like this, Johnson, had he foreseen it, might have sacrificed much of his time and inclinations. But Boswell was of great use to John- son in many ways, and spite of the great diversity in their characters and tempers, was not merely tolerated but grew to be loved by him. Much has been said of the relation between them, and some wonder has been expressed that an intimacy should exist between a man of such mental grandeur and so weak a follower. Perhaps the best solution of the apparent inconsist- ency may be found in the remark that Johnson was not in all respects so strong, or Boswell so weak as each has been represented. A character so lofty may possibly be conceived admitting of no associates but those of equal height in genius, virtue and attain- ments. But as such an individual sel- dom, if ever, exists, the personages to compose his court must be proportion- ally rare. It is not in the course of ordinary human nature to meet with such select associations. It is a motley Avorld we live in, Avhere the great and SAMUEL J0IINS0:N'. 23 tlie little iu every rsvnk and quality are freely mingled togetlier. Men of vii'- tiie and men of intellect are every day supporting various relations -with oth- ers of less integrity and inferior in- telligence. Nothing is more common in the world than to find what are called great men surrounded by com- paratively little men. It may be, as Pope says, that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" or that the crafty and designing seek to ally them- selves to the powerful from motives of self-interest; or that weakness seeks strength to sujiport itself, while inde- pendent greatness stands aloof from its fellows. Jealousy is easily pro- voked among equals, so that like does not always affect like in the jiractieal conduct of life. Greatness needs the presence of littleness to show its ele- vation. A vast deal of the machinery of greatness, too, must be worked by inferiors. Now, Boswell stood in va- rious necessary relations to Johnson. In the matter of temperament — of a sound physical constitution, eager for enjoyment, pursuing with zest the good, and alas some of the evil things of life — his animal spirits were a cor- rective of the habitual melancholy of Johnson. He came at intervals of his busy existence to cheer the lonely sage with gossip of the world, not only of London, where he was admitted to the best society, but of his northern home, and of the continent where he had visited Voltaire, and become intimate with the popular hero of the day in his island fastness — the patriotic Paoli. There was no better reporter of the humors of men than Boswell, and no one, so easily as Johnson, could sift the grain of wheat from his absur- dities. When Johnson was in com- pany, who so useful as Boswell to divert the stream of conversation into the proper channel to float the great Leviathan of the deep? He was as necessary to the chief talker of the evening as the inferior c\o^Yn to the master joker in the ring, the provoker and victim of his wit. He was wil- ling to suffer anything in the way of rebuke and mortification, that his ad- mired luminary might shine with the greater lustre. We may not always respect the voluntary slave, but we must often be thankful to him for what he accomplished, when his im- pertinent nonsense elicited the wisdom of his master. How was the fully charged electrical machine to display its vigor unless an obsequious hand was extended to receive the shock? What Sancho Panza was to Don Quix- ote, his page to Falstaff, his squire to Hudibras, Boswell was to Johnson. But no man had more illustrious friends than Johnson; and Boswell, had he been suddenly carried off after that first unpromising interview in Davies' back parlor, would have been a greater loss to posterity than to him ; for had he not his Club—" The Club " — with Garrick and Goldsmith, Key- nolds and Burke, and a host of asso- ciates worthy of their society for members ; and for long years another home of his own in the hospitable mansion of his friend Thrale, a man of wealth, sympathizing with men of letters, Avhere also he found a still more attractive species of Boswell, spiced Avith the piquant humors of her sex, in the fair Mrs. Thrale, bet- 24 SAMUEL JOIIXSON. ter known "by lier later matrimonial designation, Hester Lynch Piozzi. As in the case of Boswell, she was suffi- ciently distinguished by her intellec- tual attainments to qualify her for a partial appreciation of the greater mind of Johnson. We must now pass rapidly over the remainina: incidents in the life now hastening to its close. The long-pro- mised edition of Shakspeare was pub- lished in 1765. It was not a great achievement in critical or learned illus- tration of the text ; but it is memo- rable in English literature for its noble preface, in which Johnson, forgetting the limitations of his own poor dra- matic talent in " Irene," interprets as no one ever more knowingly and feel- ingly interpreted, the transcendent ge- nius of the author whom he had so eloquently pictured in verse : — - " Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new; Existence saw liim spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil'd after him in vain." After an interval of ten years he published " A Journey to the "West- ern Islands of Scotland," an account of a tour which he had made with Boswell in the autumn of 1773. He was in his sixty-fourth year, in the height of his London fame, and the ex- cursion for him or any other man was then considered quite an extraordi- nary undertaking. The expedition had been talked of for years. In 1764, when he Avas visiting at Ferney, Bos- well had mentioned the design to Vol- taire. " He looked at me," says he, "as if I had talked of going to the North Pole, and said, ' You do not in- sist on my accompanying you ? ' ' No, sir.' 'Then I am very willing you should go.'" At the present day a great deal of the amusement of John- son's book exists in the air of impor- tance given to a journey which is gone through with every season by hun- dreds of cockney tourists, and which, even in Johnson's time, had no more inconvenience than a trifling excur- sion to the Adirondacks, or other par- tially settled mountain district has now in our own country. The travel- ers started together in August from Edinburgh, where Johnson joined Boswell, pursued their way along the eastern coast of Scotland by St. Andrews, Dundee, Aberdeen, and the region bordering the Murray Frith to Inverness, the last place which then, says Johnson, " had a regular commu- nication by high roads with the south- ern counties." There they bade adieu to post-chaises and "mounted their steeds," traversins: the rock-hewn road by the side of Lough Ness to its southern extremity, whence they cross- ed the Highland region, a simple two days' journey, to the western coast, coming out at Glenelg, opposite the Isle of Sky. This and the adjacent Island of Eaasay were pretty tho- roughly explored, while Johnson was nobly entertained by the Macleods, the hereditary clansmen. In Sky his Jacobite predilections were gratified by an introduction to Flora !Macdon- ald, the good angel of the Pretender after the rebellion of '45, and he had the sublime satisfaction of sleeping in the very bed which Charles Edward had passed a night in, when, in the disguise of her female attendant, he had been conducted by his fair guar- SAMUEL JOHNSON. 25 dJan to the spot. " I would liave given a good deal," said Johnson the next morning at breakfast, "rather than not have lain in that bed." So Bos- well tells us in his fuller account of the tour, which admirably supple- ments the more staid narrative of Johnson. Both accounts are admi- rable in their way. Johnson gives a philosopher's account of the High- landers ; but if any one desires to see what the journey really was, and how the great Leviathan conducted him- self under the novel circumstances, he must read the report of it by Bos- well. "Without crossing to the more remote of the Hebrides, "far amid the melancholy main," the travellers took a southerly course from Sky, visited Mull and lona, — at the men- tion of which Johnson's style expands in an expression of the loftiest patriot- ism — and at the end of October were again on the mainland in retreat to London. The same year that Johnson pub- lished his account of this journey, the rising war with the Colonies being then the topic of the day, he wrote a pam- phlet, of some interest historically to American readers, entitled "Taxation no Tyranny." Though well constructed in point of style, it is generally ad- mitted to have done the author little credit by its constitutional principles, his main consideration being that the colonists should be content with their position, as they enjoyed a similar "virtual representation" to that of the greater part of Englishmen, Avhom he admitted, withoixt any desire or suspicion of reform, were not directly represented at all. He was old and 4 conservative, and planted himself firm- ly on the established order of things, as if commercial tyranny and parlia- mentary restraint could go on for ever. When he speaks of the suppression of the revolt, it is in the terms of one conscious of superior force, who had but to will to execute. It would be humanity, he thought, to put a sufli- cient army in the field to " take away not only the power but the hope of resistance, and by conquering without a battle, save many from the sword." Bancroft, contrasting the suffering, in early privations, which Johnson had escaped, with that which he would in- flict, charges him with " echoing to the crowd the haughty rancor, which pass- ed down from the king and his court to his council, to the ministers, to the aristocracy, their parasites and follow- ers, with nothing remarkable in his party zeal, but the intensity of its bitterness ; or in his manner, but its unjDaralleled insolence ; or in his argu- ment, but its grotesque extravagance." Another literary work yet remained to Johnson, one worthy of his pen and in which he gathered the ripest fruits of his critical studies and his personal association with men of letters. Tow- ards the close of 1777, an association of the London booksellers resolved upon the publication of an extensive collection of the English poets, with brief preliminary biographies, to be obtained, if possible, from the pen of Johnson. He readily entered into the plan, naming two hundred guineas for his work, which was acceded to. At the outset his purpose was to give only a few dates, with a short general charac- ter of each poet ; but as he warmed 26 SAMUEL JOHNSON. in the execution, the design was ex- panded, especially in the more im- portant subjects, into the full bio- graphies and elaborate critical and philosophical discussions which ren- der the series in the estimate of Bos- well, generally admitted by the read- ing world, " the richest, most beautiful, and, indeed, most perfect production of Johnson's pen." Exceptions may be taken to particular opinions, to the political prejudices in the case of Mil- ton, and his singular want of appre- ciation of the poetical powers of Gray, some of whose finest verses he treats with the levity and ignorance of a pert school-boy ; but upon the whole, especially where the topics fall within the range of common life, Avhere oppor- tunity is afforded for symjDathy with humanity, the great test of biographic excellence, the " Lives " may be read with admiration and delight. In the style Johnson is at his best. As he grew older, his mind seems to have worked itself clear of its early incum- brances. We no longer meet with the artificial mannered tone of the " Ram- bler." He was full of his subject, and enters upon the narration with the ease of conversation. There is no other book in the English language equally great, it has been observed, produced between the age of sixty-eight and seventy-two. It was the last harvest of the author's genius ; and the work is marked on many a page with the most touching expressions of feeling. In writing the lives of others he was portraying his own. The career was soon to be broufjht to a close. Some of the most illus- trious of his friends were preceding him to the grave. Goldsmith died in 1774, Garrick in 1779, and Thrale was called away, the greatest afiliction of the kind which could have befallen him, for it deprived him of a home, in 1781. In the year following, his own household was invaded, in the death of Robert Levett, a humble physician of the lower classes, to whom, with the blind Miss Williams, another unhappy victim of poverty, Mrs. Demoulins, and yet other nondescripts, agreeing in nothing but their common misery, he had charitably given a hoene. The inmates were constantly annoying him with their quarrels ; but even this dis- turbance had become a kind of relief to his loneliness. In a copy of verses of singular feeling, he paid a tribute to the lowly Avorth of Levett, which will outlive many compliments to the great who in their life-time would have looked down with contempt upon their subject. Compare the treatment of the noble Chesterfield with that of the insig- nificant Levett, and you may take the measure of Johnson's pride and hu- mility, honest virtues both, one sup- porting the other. There was some- thing heroic in the magnanimity of Johnson towards the poor and suffer- ing. The incident will, while his name lasts, never be forgotten, of his bearing home with him on his back, thi'ough Fleet street, a poor victim of disease and ignominy, which Hazlitt, in one of his lectures to a London audience, pronoiinced "an act worthy of the good Samaritan." In the summer before he died, in August, 1774, Dr. Johnson paid his last visit to his old home at Lichfield. SAMUEL JOIII^SOK 27 While there, lie narrated to a young clergyman attaclied to the cathedral, an incident of his life, one of the most touching and pathetic in all biography. He recalled how in the closing years of his father's life, more than fifty years before, he had been guilty of a single act of disobedience, refusing on a par- ticular occasion through pride to at- tend him at one of his petty sales of his stock at Uttoxeter market. His father went alone, but long after he was dead, Johnson often accompanied him thei'e in imagination. At last, a few years before his death, desiring to atone for his fault, he resolved upon an extraordinary act of humiliation. He went to the very spot where his father had been accustomed to keep his stand in the market-place at Ut- toxeter, and stood there a considerable time bare-headed in the rain. "In contrition," he said, " I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory." After this, there remains for us but to state the departure of this pious penitent. His health was gradually failing him. In the summer of 1784, having previously suffered from an at- tack of paralysis from which he had recovered, he felt his feebleness in- creasing, and had some thought of es- caping the severities of the coming win- ter by a visit to Italy, which was aban- doned for lack of means. His mental strength remained, meanwhile, unim- paired, "While in the country, in Oc- tober, he translated an ode of Horace, in which the poet moralizes on the lessons of mortality in the changing seasons : " Who knows if Jove, who counts our score, Will toss us in a morning more ?" But few were now left. Returnins: to London in the middle of Novem- ber he became more seriously ill, his thoughts reverting to his departed friends and solaced with the comforts of religion, while the cheerful activity of his mind was shown during his sleepless nights in translating the Greek epigrams of the Anthologia into Latin verse. When the last hour came he met it with thorough equa- nimity, fully conscious of the event, counting the thin falling sands of life. His last words to the daughter of a friend who came to visit him were, " God bless you, my dear." And so in his old home in Bolt Court, within the sound of his beloved Fleet Street, on the thirteenth of December, 1784, Johnson expired. On the twentieth his remains were laid in Westminster Abbey by the side of his friend Gar- rick. Their pilgrimage to London was ended. OLIVER GOLDSMITH, THE family of Golclsmith, of Eng- lish origin and on the Protestant side, liad been long settled in Ireland and furnished various clergymen in dif- ferent offices to its established church, when Oliver, the subject of this notice, was born at Pallas, in the County of Longford, on the 10th of November, 1728. His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, was rector of the parish, married to the daughter of the head- master of the diocesan school at El- phin, which he had attended, and at the time of Oliver's birth was the par- ent of three children, struggling to maintain a decent position in the world on an income, all told, of forty pounds a "year — an average sum in the remu- neration of poor curates which has passed from the poet's verse into a species of proverb. The picture of the clergyman drawn by Goldsmith in the " Deserted Village " has been generally supposed to refer to his father, and it exhibits in enduring colors the simple virtues of the man and the home into which the poet was born. Many traits of Charles Goldsmith's amiable dispo- sition are again reflected in the " Vicar " of Wakefield, and his portrait was also (28) drawn by his son in the sketch of the father of the " Man in Black," in the Citizen of the World. Oliver's first instructor, the village schoolmistress, dame Delap,who taught him his letters, reported him the dull- est of boys and " impenetrably stupid ;" and when, at the age of six, he fell into the hands of a male preceptor, Thomas Byrne, a somewhat vagrant character, he acquired more of his unsettled hu- mors and fondness for music than of any book learning he may have pos- sessed. It is said that at this time his mind became well stored with the ballad lore and superstitions of the peasantry — incentives to his imagina- tion and lessons in story-telling. The family were now at Lissoy, not far from Pallas, in considerably improved cir- cumstances, the poor pastor having succeeded to a better living at that place. While at school there, Oliver was visited by a severe attack of small- pox, which left its marks permanently on his countenance, adding to the em- barrassment of a somewhat heavily built, ungainly figure. From the aca- demy at Lissoy he was sent to a su- perior school kept by the Rev. Mr. \.0r^£O '^liaf.w'i {K^^ ^;.^^^/^--^ OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 29 Griffin, at Elj^liiu, where one of liis uncles resided. There, amidst the jeers of his companions at his clumsi- ness and stupidity, he made some ac- quaintance with Ovid and Horace, and was thus led into that pathway of the muses, which, spite of all prognostica- tions, no one of his generation was to pursue to greater advantage. There was time enough before him yet, for he was now only in his ninth year, and there were soon indications that he was to be something more than the butt of his ill-mannered associates. One day at his uncle's at Elphin there was a little dance, when Oliver, in the gay- ety of his spirits ventured a pas seul on the floor. " Ah ! " says the fiddler, " ^Esop !" upon which the boy, stopping in his hornpipe, turned the laugh upon his assailant in his first recorded coup- let: " Heralds ! proclaim aloud I all saying, See ^sop dancing, and his monkey playing." Thus, this first trifling display of his poetic talent recalls the last brilliant eftbrt of his muse published after his death, "Retaliation." From the cra- dle to the grave, it was the fortune of the good-humored Goldsmith to be constantly thrown upon the defensive. After a year or two with Mr. Griffin, Goldsmith passed to the hands of an- other clerical instructor, Mr. Campbell, at Athlone ; thence, in his thirteenth year, to another reverend gentleman, Mr. Hughes, at Edgeworthstown, with whom, at the age of sixteen, he con- cluded his school studies. On leaving home at the close of his last holiday, he met with an adventure of an amus- ins: character. A month in the life of Goldsmith, it may be remai'ked, would have been nothing without its adven- ture ; and of all places in the world for an adventure, Ireland, with its rol- licking ways of life, was, in his days, the readiest to furnish one. Setting out from Ballymahon, where his friends had provided him with a horse and a guinea, on his way to Edgeworthstown, he found himself at night half-way on his journey, in the town of Ardagh. Falling in with a notorious wag, one Kelly, and conscious of the unaccus- tomed presence of the guinea in his pocket, with something of an air of importance, we may suppose, enquiring for an inn, he was directed to the house of a gentleman of the place, named Featherstone. Mistaken by the ser- vants for an expected guest, his horse was taken care of according to his di- rection by the servants, and, entering the mansion, he stoutly called upon the proprietor for a liberal supper, order- ing wine and magnanimously inviting the wife and daughter of his landlord to join him. Mr. Featherstone saw the mistake and humored it, enjoying the style of the young student with whose father he had been acquainted at college. Parting with his guest at bed-time he received an order for a hot cake in the morning, and it Avas not till breakfast was over that Goldsmith was allowed to appreciate the jest which had been played upon him. In this case, however, he had been no loser; nor has the world been since, for the joke furnished him with the main incident in his comedy, "She Stoops to Conquer," over which to this day many thousands of persons are every season enjoying their hearty laugh. 30 OLIVEE GOLDSMITH. The time had now come for Oliver to be sent to college, Trinity College, Dublin, where his elder brother Henry had preceded him, entering as a pen- sioner. Owing to an exercise of false generosity in sacrificing his income to portion a daughter married to a gen- tleman's son, Goldsmith's father was unable to support him at the univer- sity in the same comfortable though in- ferior rank. Oliver was consequently throAvn upon one still lower, the low- est grade of all, that of sizer or ser\'itor, which gave him board and instruction free of expense, with a small charge for his room, while he Avas to perform various minor duties in return, of which sweeping the courts in the morning, carrying the dishes from the kitchen to the table of the FelloAvs and waiting in the hall until they had dined, after which he might dine there himseK, were among the number. He also was entitled or compelled to wear in token of his servitude, a black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves with a distinctive red cap. For such privileges a higher degree of scholarship was expected on entering than from the nobler fellow commoners who paid their way and were dressed in more gentlemanly at- tire. The sizers Avere generally mature in age and better qualified in learning than the other students. Goldsmith, however, was still young, at the age of seventeen. In the account of the de- linquencies of his youth Avhich occupy so unseemly a proportion of his biog- raphies, it must be set down to his credit that he passed his rigorous ex- amination successfully. He was, how- ever, not much of a student at college. His sensitive nature felt all " the slings and arrows" daily cast upon him by the " outrageous fortune " which con- demned him to ignominious servitude and suffering, in a seat of the Muses, Avhere all should have been cheerful sunshine; and he was, moreover, con- stantly insulted by a brutal tutor, a Mr. Theaker "Wilder, a cold-blooded mathematician, Avho confounded all moral and intellectual qualities, " think- ing he was witty when he Avas simply malicious," an ugly fellow Avith his spite and ignorance to handle poor Goldsmith at an examination. For, with whatever learning he may have possessed, he was profoundly ignorant of Goldsmith's nature. Long after- Avards, AA'hen his pupil Avas at the height of his fame, this unhappy man came to a violent end, being found dead one morning on the floor of his room Avith some bruises on his person, a disaster attributed to his disreputable mode of liA'ino". While Goldsmith was bearing these inflictions he Avas cast more deeply into poverty by the death of his father, in his second year at the College, AA'hen the scanty remittances from home ceased, and he Avas thrown upon casual loans from his friends to supply his narroAV ne- cessities — not, hoAvever, Avithout some assistance from his oAvn genius. He composed street ballads, for Avhich he found a ready sale, receiving five shil- lings for each from a bookseller in the city ; and, Avhat Avas more agreeable to his nature, his instinctive pride in au- thorship was gratified by listening to them at night as they were sung by the criers in the streets — a consolatory suggestion, Ave may hope, to him in the midst of his humiliations of the OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 31 " All hail hereafter ! " There were other incidents, too, of a rougher cha- racter, of this college life. Feuds be- tween gownsmen and the town people were not uncommon in Dublin in the last century. A riot occurred, in which a bailiff who had arrested a student was assailed, the peace of the city was disturbed, and several lives lost in the tumult. Goldsmith was not a ring- leader in this affair, but he had been out Avith the rioters, and was publicly admonished for favoring the tumult. To redeem his character, he tried the next month for a scholarship, and fail- ing in this, succeeded in gaining a trifling " Exhibition," worth about thirty shillings. Characteristically enough, he celebrated this little tri- umph by a dancing party, of more frolic than exj^ense, in his upper rooms, and in the midst of the hilarity was confronted by his savage tutor for his infringement of the rules. The tutor from words proceeded to vio- lence, and Goldsmith was so roughly and ignominiously handled. Wilder, with his mathematical attainments, being a redoubted pugilist, that Goldsmith, stung by the disgrace, de- termined to escape from the College. Selling his books, he improvidently loitered in Dublin till his stock was reduced to a shilling, with which he set out for Cork, with a vague inten- tion of going to America. The shil- ling sujDported him for three days, and when the proceeds of such clothes as he had to sell were exhausted, he began to feel the sufferings of hunger. Late in life he told Reynolds how, after fasting at this time for twenty-four hours, a handful of gray peas, given him by a girl at a wake, was the most delicious meal he had ever tasted. Utterly desti- tute, he turned homeward, was met on his way by his brother Henry, who re- lieved his wants and accompanied him back to College. There he remained to the end of his four years' course, takins: his deo:ree of Bachelor of Ai'ts in 1749. "The popular picture of him in these Dublin University days," writes his biographer, Forster, " is little more than of a slow, hesitating, some- what hollow voice, heard seldom, and always to great disadvantage in the class-rooms ; and of a low-sized, thick, robust, ungainly figure, lounging about the College courts in the wait for misery and ill-luck." Something, doubt- less, is to be added to this notion of Goldsmith on the score of reading and scholarship. Though, as he afterwards told Malone in London, " I made no great figure at the University in mathe- matics, which was a study much in re- pute there, I could turn an ode of Ho- race into English better than any of them." But of all who were students at the University during his service there, certainly he appeared the least likely to be enthroned at its gate in a monumental statue. Yet there he now stands, in the exquisite workmanship of the sculptor Foley, clad in his habit as he lived, his right hand, falling at ease, holding a j^en, his left support- ing an open book, his countenance re- flecting at once his humor and intelli- gence — the oppressed servitor of 1745 — the most interesting tradition of the University a century afterwards. From Collesre Goldsmith returned home, and uncertain as to his pros- pects, with no settled resolution, passed 32 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. three years in a desultory mode of living, occasionally visiting his brother Henry, the clergyman, in the village school at Lissoy ; and what was more to his inclination, freely partaking in the junketings and frolics of the care- less company of the place. As the clerical life seemed to be the natural resource of the family, his mother, his brother-in-law, Hodson, for whom the elder Goldsmith had made the sacrifice in the matter of his daughter's dowry, and his uncle, the Rev. IVIr. Contarine, who was often visited by Goldsmith at his parsonage in Roscommon, all united in urging Oliver to take holy orders. The advice was not much in accordance with his habits or inclina- tions, but he accepted it, and after the necessary interval, presented himself to the Bishop of Elphin for ordina- tion. Various explanations are given of his rejection — one, that he was too young ; another, that his doubtful re- cord at College had preceded him; another, which is quite probable, that he had neglected the preliminary stu- dies ; and yet a fourth, that his dress stood in the way, particularly a most unclerlcal pair of scarlet breeches, which he wore on the occasion. The next resource for Goldsmith was provided by his uncle Contarine, the only one of the family who seems to have had much faith in him, or done much for him. He obtained him the situation of tutor or companion in the family of a gentleman of his county named Flinn, which lasted for a year, when it was broken up by Goldsmith charging one of the household with unfair play at the card-table. So it must have been upon the whole a rather free-and-easy sort of life under the roof of Mr. Flinn. He parted with it somehow with money in his pocket, thirty pounds, it is said, and rode away with a good horse to Cork, where, a second time, according to a letter written to his mother, he enter- tained the idea of going to America. He actually, he says, paid his passage in a ship bound for that country, but being off with a festive party in the country when the wind proved favor- able, " the captain never inquired after me, but set sail with as much indiffer- ence as if I had been on board." The generous steed with which he set out had been sold, the money the animal brought had been spent, and the thirty guineas had been reduced to two, the greater part of which was expended upon a broken down, raw-boned horse, to which "generousbeast" ashestylesit, he gave the name of Fiddleback. Leav- ing Cork for home on the back of this Rozinante, with five shillings in hand, expecting to recruit his finances from an old college friend on the road, who had often expatiated to him on his hos- pitality, he parted Avith half a crown to a beggar on the way, and in this impov- erished condition reached the dwelling where he looked for relief. His account of his reception, an admirable speci- men of his early literary talent, recalls the incidents and humor of the pictu- resque Spanish novels. Indeed, Laza- rillo de Tormes himself might have been the hero of his adventure. Another attempt was now to be made in one of the professions, and the law was thought of, — kind-hearted Uncle Contarine, whose benevolence was worthy of his early intimacy with OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 33 tlie good Bishop Berkeley, furnishing out of his slender clerical revenue fifty pounds to set him on the track. He was to proceed to London to keep the usual terras; but got no further than Dublin, where he was stripped of all his money at the gambling table by one of his Irish acquaintances. This sent him back to his home. Uncle Con- tarine receiving him with kindness. A few months after, at the siiggestion of another relative, the chief clerical dig- nitary of the family, Dean Goldsmith, of Cloyne, the third and last of the professions, that of medicine was re- solved upon and Uncle Contariue again stepped forward to furnish the pecu- niary outfit for Edinburgh, where the study was to be prosecuted at the Uni- versity. Here Goldsmith remained a year and a half, becoming a member of its Medical Society and attending the lectures, particularly admiring the scope and ability of Munro, the pro- fessor of anatomy. He found pleasure in his studies, in a letter to his uncle, speaking of the science as " the most pleasing in nature, so that my labors are but a relaxation, and, I may truly say, the only thing here that gives me pleasure." There is a hint of his em- ployment, probably as a tutor, in the family of the Duke of Hamilton, to eke out his resources ; but the remittances of the generous Contarine, though lim- ited, Avere sufficient to su2:)port some indulgence in dress, as the tailor's bills yet extant indicate in their items of sky-blue satin, rich Genoa velvet and high claret-colored cloth; Avhile there was something left to undertake a visit to the Continent to perfect his medical studies at one of its universities. Paris 5 was resolved upon for this purpose, and in the spring of 1754, Oliver em- barked on his round-about way thither in a ship to Bordeaux. But, as luck would have it, the vessel was driven by a storm into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, whei'e the j^assengers were seized, on the charge of being recruits for the French service, and Goldsmith with difficulty procured his liberation after a fortnight's imprisonment. It was some consolation afterwards to reflect that had he been allowed to proceed with the vessel he would probably have been drowned with the crew — shipwrecked at the mouth of the Garonne. Fmding another shij) ready for Holland, he took his passage for Rotterdam, arri- ved there safely, proceeded to Leyden, and presently reported in a very agree- able letter to his Uncle Contarine, the state of medical learning at its Univer- sity, at which he was for some time a student. He noAv gained some sup- jiort as a teacher of his native language, in which we may suppose he turned his knowledge of French to account. Habitual cheerfulness, with a physical constitution of great endurance, en- abled him to support a life of make- shifts, which to a less courageous tem- perament would have been nnendu- rable. Encouraged by the example of the Baron Ilolberg, then recently deceased, who, following his own in- clinations in a career of adventure had risen by his exertions from a youth of poverty to the highest rank in the lite- rature of Denmai'k, he determined to pursue the somewhat vagrant course Avhich, in the career of that eminent man had preceded his acquisition of fame and fortune. As Holberg's story 34 OLIVEE GOLDSMITH. was afterwards told by Goldsmitli liimself, " without money, recommend- ations or friends, lie undertook to set out upon liis travels, and make the tour of Europe on foot. A good voice and a trifling skill in music were the only finances he had to support an un- dertaking so extensive ; so he travelled by day, and at night sang at the doors of peasant's houses to get himself a lodging,"* The exact counterpart of this is the story of Goldsmith's life for the year 1755. Setting out in Febi"u- ary, he made some stay at Louvain, in Flanders, at whose University, it is said, he obtained his degree of Bachelor of Medicine. He is to be traced at Brus- sels and Antwerp, and signally at Paris where he attended the chemical lectures of Rouelle, admired Mademoi- selle Clairon, then the delight of the stage, and, as we may gather from what he subsequently wrote, was no unenlightened spectator of the down- ward tendencies of the French mon- archy. Travelling through Switzerland, Goldsmith appears to have made the acquaintance of Voltaire at Geneva, and, crossing the Alps, to have pene- trated Italy as far at least as the chief cities of Lombardy and Florence. In the beginning of 1756, he was again in England. On his landing.at Dover, at the age of twenty-eight, begins with him the real struggle for life. He is too old for dependence upon the scant re- sources of home any longer ; the ani- mal spirits of youth in their first ef- fervescence have subsided, and he can * Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning. no longer hide his mortifications in a foreign land, or divert them by its novelties and amusements. The hard realities of English life are before him ; hard enough they had recently proved to the indomitable moral energy and strength of Johnson ; how will Gold- smith with his susceptibilities and weaknesses encounter them? With suffering and humiliation enough, as we shall see, but with a glorious tri- umph in the end. Happily, the strug- gle was relieved by the cheerfulness of his disposition, and " a knack of hoping," as he called it, in which he had great advantages over Johnson, while his imagination and sense of humor invited him to a certain superi- ority over the lowest parts he was called upon to perform. _ We may con- stantly observe him in his writings turning his discomfitures to profit, and even as he had fluted his way through poverty on the Continent, making with the magic of his pen, his petty miseries " discourse most excellent music." It was not an easy thing at the very en- trance upon this new period of his ca- reer, for this starving man to get even from Dover to London. He accom- plished it, it is said, by a turn at low comedy Avith some strolling players in a barn, and had offered his services on the way as a hireling in an apothecary's shop. The latter became one of his earliest resources in London in em- ployment Avitli one Jacob, on Fish Street Hill, for Avhom he pounded drugs, and by whose assistance he was promoted to a humble physician for the poor of the class of Johnson's friend Levett. It is of this period of his life that the story is told of his perseve- OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 35 ranee in keeping possession of his hat, of which a respectful patient pertina- ciously sought to relieve him. He held it firmly to his breast to conceal the patch in the dilapidated second-hand velvet coat in ^yhich he "was support- ing his professional reputation. A poor patient, a printer's M'orkman in- troduces him to his master, Richard- son, the author of Clarissa, who gives him some employment as proof- reader. One of his fellow Edinburgh students falling in with him at this time was constrained to listen to two or three acts of an abortive tragedy, and to a still more chimerical project of proceeding to the Holy Land to de- cipher the inscriptions on the " M'rit- ten mountains." From this wildness of the imagination, he is recalled by the daily drudgery of usher to a clas- sical school kept at Peckham, in the neighborhood of London, to which he was introduced by another of his Ed- inburgh companions, the son of its proj)rietor. Dr. Milner. There would seem to have been some obscui'e ser- vice of this kind in another situation not long before, not so easily traced as that at Peckham, the memory of which survives in various anecdotes related by the family, exhibiting a fondness for practical jokes in the servants' hall — proof of the ignominy of the posi- tion as well as of the incumbent's in- nate love of fun and frolic. Like his contemporary, Johnson, who had en- dured the same infliction, he had no reason to remember it with equanimity. Both were at a disadvantage in ap- pearance and personal peculiarities. The usher or under-teacher of his time comes up in Goldsmith's writings with a feeling of anything but ad miration. He had not been, however, many months with Dr. Milner, in the school at Peckham, when he made the ac- quaintance, at his table, of Griffiths, the bookseller, of Paternoster Row, who was engaged in the publication of the " Monthly Review." The " Critical Review," the literary character of which was maintained by Smollett, was then pressing him hard, and Grif- fiths was on the look-out for contribu- tors. Struck by some remarks of Gold- smith, the publisher, thinking he might serve his purpose, procured from him some specimens of his powers as a critic. Their merits were perceived by the shrewd eye of Grifiiths, and Gold- smith was secured, body and mind, for a year, to be boarded and lodged with his employer, be paid a small salary, and write articles as called upon for the Review. Griffiths, who was much of a screw, held him to a strict account in the employment of his time, and when his daily task was done, it was at the mercy not only of the publisher himself but of his wife, who tampered with the articles. This arrangement with Griffiths lasted fiv^e months of the year, when it was broken off. It was a long time for Pegasus to be kept in harness. Goldsmith resented his treat- ment, Griffiths also had his complaint, and the contract was closed. In dis- gust at the poor reward of literary ex- ertion, the author, Avho as yet hardly ventured to call himself such, returned to the school at Peckham. Dr. Milner, who had shown himself in the affair with Griffiths desirous to promote the welfare of Goldsmith, now undertook, 36 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. througli the influence of an East India director, to procure him a medical ap- pointment at a foreign station ; and while this affair was in progress, he devoted himself assiduously to the pre- paration of an independent work which should give his friends and the public some assurance of his talents. The subject which he chose was an Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learn- ing in Europe, as the book was en- . titled on its publication. While Goldsmith was engaged on the composition of this work, he was assured of the success of his friend Milner's application for his employ- ment in the East. He was in fact ap- pointed physician to one of the fac- tories of the East India Company on the Coromandel coast. His spirits were raised in consequence, and he applied .himself more heartily to the Essay, looking to its success to supply the means for his outfit, and endeavorins; with honest pride and confidence to enlist his friends in Ireland in pro- curing su1)scriptions for the book. The letters "which he Avrote for this pur- pose ai'e in his best vein, full of kindly feelings towards his correspondents, with that genial humor which Avas never more fully awakened than when he thought of the home associations of his youth. In one of these epistles to Byanton, at Ballymahon, he let his pen wander on in a fine strain of rhap- sody, picturing to himself, what he evidently considered the greatest ab- surdity, the future fame of Goldsmith ! Could he but have tasted then the reality of this posthumous applause ! For he was entering upon his darkest hours of disappointment. From some unexplained cause the Coromandel ap poiutment was taken fi-om him and given to another ; and when, in des- pair, he offered himself at Surgeons' Hall for examination as a hospital mate, with an eye perhaj^s to the ex- ample of Smollett and service in the navy, he was rejected as incompetent. This was his last attempt at profes- sional life. Fortunately, the doors of a wider temple were opening before him. But they were to be entered through much sorrow. Goldsmith, after his separation from Griffiths, was still called upon for occasional essays for the Eeview, to which he had re- cently contributed four articles to pro- pitiate the publisher to become secu- rity for him with his tailor in pro- viding a new suit of clothes for the Surgeon's examination. Before the debt was paid, the keeper of poor Goldsmith's quarters, in his humble retreat in Green Arbor Court, was ar- rested, and his wife came in tears, sup- plicating her lodger for relief. Gold- smith being himself in arrears to the coiiple, there was a double claim upon him as a man and a debtor. The first was with him always sufficient. To provide means on the emergency, the new suit went to the pawnbroker's, M^hile Griffiths' four books for review were deposited as security for a loan with a friend. Immediately upon this, the publisher demanded payment for the clothes or their instant return to him, calling also for the books. In vain Goldsmith asked for delay, while Griffiths had no words for him but those of insult and imputations of fraud. Tlie letter which Goldsmith wrote in reply has been preserved — a OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 37 most toucliino; memorial of his suffer- ings. Manfully rebuking Griffiths for his aspersions, lie deprecates his inter- pretation of his character, and, the one ray of light in this dax'k epistle, trusts that on the appearance of his book from Mr. Dodsley's press, the " bright side of his mind " may be revealed to his reviler. But Griffiths, setting aside his avarice, could have needed no in- struction on this point. He knew Goldsmith's merits, and was ready to negotiate Avith him for a Life of Vol- taire, out of the allowance for which the debt to the tailor was paid. The publication of the Essay on Polite Learning followed, and gave the au- thor at once a respectable standing in the world of letters. He had written an independent book, in which he had manfully and tenderly protested against the assumptions which stood in the way of men of genius, and it could hardly be perused by a candid, intelligent reader without ranking its author among their number. His course from the date of the publica- tion of this work was onward. The Essay on Polite Learning, though relieved by much happy illustration, was, upon the whole, a purely didactic work, where the free- dom of movement of the writer's mind was fettered by the conditions of the subject. Nor had he a fair opportu- nity as yet to exhibit his peculiar vein in the magazines, in which his writings had been confined mainly to reviews. He was now to appear in his individ- ual character, subject to no law but that of his humor, as the genial essay- ist, to which department of literature, aftei- all that had been accomplished in the Tatlers, Spectators, and Guar- dians, he was to impart an ease and gracefulness entirely his own. At the solicitation of Wilkie, a bookseller in St, Paul's Churchyard, he undertook the preparation of a collection of mis- cellaneous papers to be published weekly in a distinct pamphlet fonn, to which he gave the title, " The Bee." The 'first number appeared at the be- ginning of October, 1759, and was fol- lowed by seven others, the contents of which were all furnished by himself. Somehow, as a whole, the publica- tion, though it contained a nimiber of very pleasing papers, was not success- ful. It was too much of a miscellany to fasten the attention of the town. At least we may infer this from the better reception of the writer's next ventui'e in this line, when he had the advantage of greater apparent unity in one Continuous thread upon which to hang his observations. This was but a couple of months later, when he commenced in the new daily paper started by Newbery, the " Public Led- ger," the series of letters in the char- acter of a Chinese Philosopher visiting England, subsequently collected under the title of " The Citizen of the World." Under this thin disguise he had the privilege of satirizing with greater freedom than he might otherwise have assumed, the vices and follies of the day ; while a certain piquancy in the invention of his observer. Lien Chi Altangi, the curiosities of whose " flow.- ery land" were then coming into fash- ionable vogue, gave an interest to re- flections on matters of government and politics, which had become dull and wearisome in the ordinary forms of dis- 3S OLIVER GOLDSMITH. cussion. Goldsmitli, too, by this time, from liis practice in magazines and reviews, had become a thorough adept in the arts of composition in this lighter walk of literature, and success had given him courage to trust to his own genius. The volumes of the " Citi- zen of the World" contain some of his most charming -\vi-itings. The style, in his unapproachable idiomatic felic- ity, invests the most familiar topics with interest, while it is frequently the medium of new ideas, on the most im- portant. He is more than once in ad- vance of his age as a reformer on ques- tions of national and domestic policy, ventilates various sound notions of so- cial as well as political economy, and is always on the side of virtue and humanity. His satire on occasion is sufficiently pungent ; but it has no bit- terness, and is always sheathed in the most exquisite humor. As the papers grew in number from week to week, his wit, so far from flagging, acquired new powers by exertion; his touch was at once lighter and more assured ; and in his introduction of the " Man in Black," disguising his benevolence under an assumption of cynicism, and in " Beau Tibbs," who sought to con- ceal the poverty of his poor vain life by the pretences of the imagination, he added two new and delightful char- acters, worthy of association with Roger de Coverley and his friends in the " Spectator," to the gallery of Eng- lish Action. The enterprise of Newbery in his various literary undertakings now gave Goldsmith constant employment, with a paymaster ready to assist him in his occasional extra pecuniary necessities, the result usually of his generosity and hospitality. The squalid lodging in Green Arbor Court was deserted for respectable rooms in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, where, in the spring of 1761, we hear of Johnson as a visitor, and a year or so later, also under the wing of Newbery, our author is in pleasant rural quarters at Islington, daily entertaining his fi'iends in the intervals of his preparation of a series of letters on the History of England, which, with an eye to popular favor, were set forth on their publication as addressed by a nobleman to his son. The device was successful enough, the knowing ones of the day variously at- tributing the book to Lords Chester- field, Orrery and Lyttelton ; so true in that time were the lines of Pope : " Let but a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens and the sense reiines." The year 1764 is memorable in the life of Goldsmith, for in that he wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield," and com- pleted his poem of the "Traveller." The first knowledge which we have of the former is in a striking scene in which Johnson appears as an actor. The story as related by Johnson him- self with great exactness is thus given by Boswell. " I received," said John- son, " one morning, a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at Avhich he was in a OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 39 violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a work ready for the press, which he produced to ma I looked into it, and saw its merit ; told the landlady I should soon return ; and having gone to a booksel- ler, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he dis- charged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill." The bookseller to whom Johnson sold the work was Francis Newbery, nephew to the pub- lisher of the " Citizen of the World," by whom it was kept more than a year before it was issiied from the press. Meanwhile, the elder Newbery had issued " The Traveller ; or, a Pros- pect of Society, a Poem by Oliver Gold- smith, M. B.;" the first of his publica- tions to which he had put his name on the title-page. He felt, doubtless, that it Avas a distinct personal revelation of himself, something which he might emphatically call his own, and leave to the world as a representation of his peculiar powers. To point out the beauties of this poem, would be to comment upon every passage ; and, indeed, it may be safely left to the admiration of its myriad readers. Thougli praised by Johnson and successful at the start, passing in a few months through four editions, it grew, by degrees, like all works of ge- nius, in popular estimation. The best test of its merit is that now, after the extraordinary production of a new race of poets of the highest powers in the nineteenth century, it is as secure of ad- miration as ever. And the same may be said of the ever enduring "Vicar," which was less appreciated on its first appearance than the poem. " The first pure example in English literature," says Forster " of the simple domestic novel," and in spite of all attempts since, still the purest and brightest. Every one knows and loves its exqui- site grace and humor, its idyllic scenes, its characters daily repeated in real life, and ever new to us in the book ; the jests which never tire, the moralities which never grow stale, the tender hu- manity which lurks in every sentence, its cheerful gayeties and the darkening shadows over the gentle picture, which bring still stronger into relief, the ami- ability and charity of the whole. Whatever Goldsmith touched with his pen he seemed to turn into an en- during monument of himself. By two brief productions he had now secured lasting fame as poet and novelist ; his next attempt was in the humorous drama, and there, too, though his con- temporaries failed fully to perceive the fact, he again wrote his name high on the lists of the genius of his country men. Of his two comedies, "The Good Natured Man," first produced in 1768, and " She Stoops to Conquer," five years afterwards, the last has proved the most successful. In their own day they met with considerable opposition, for they came to supplant a school of sentimental comedy, if comedy so tearful a business can be properly called, which then held pos- session of the stage. " During some 40 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. years," Macaulay tells us, " more tears were shed at comedies than at trage- dies; and a pleasantry wliicli roused the audience to anything more than a grave smile was reprobated as low. It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the ' Good Natured Man,' that in which Miss Richland finds her lover attended by the bailiff and the bailiff's folloAver in full court dresses, should have been mercilessly hissed, and should have been omitted after the first night." It seems to have been a hard struggle with the audi- ence, but the humor of Goldsmith, se- . conded by the irresistible powers of Ned Shuter, the original Croaker, car- ried the day. Johnson, who, whatever liberties he may have taken with Gold- smith in conversation, was always strong in his favor on critical occa- sions, stood firmly by his side at the production of both his plays. He furnished the Prologue to the " Good Natured Man," and worthily received the dedication of " She Stoops to Con- quer." " It may do me some honour," writes Goldsmith, " to inform the pub- lic that I have lived many years in in- timacy with you. It may serve the interest of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impair- ing the most unaffected piety." In the later play, produced, like its prede- cessor, at Covent Garden Theatre, un- der the management of the elder Col- man, Shuter was the Hardcastle and Quick the Tony Lumpkin of the ori- ginal cast. Mrs. Bulkley represented the young lady heroine in both pieces. Miss Richland in the one and Miss Garrick, who Hardcastle in the other. had unluckily rejected the " Good Ma- tured Man," when offered to him for perfoiTuance at Drury Lane, disinterest- edly furnished the prologue spoken by Woodward to "She Stoops to Con- quer." Intermediate between the two plays, in 1770, appeared Goldsmith's second poem, a companion piece to " The Tra- veller," "The Deserted Village." It was dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds. As its name imports, its design is to contrast a picture of rural felicity, with its loss in the abandonment of home under the pressure of wealthy oppression. In this respect, as Macau- lay has remarked, " it is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its happy days is a true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish vil- lage. The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to two different countries, and to two different stages in the prospect of society. He had assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content and tranquility, as his Auburn. He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day and forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster; but by joining the two, he has produced some- thinor which never was and never will be seen in any part of the world." But, notwithstanding all its errors of situation and political economy, the poem will be read for its felicitous scenes and imagery. " Sweet Aubui'n " remains, and will still continue to be OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 41 the " loveliest village of the plain ;" and though, as a fact, men do not decay where "wealth accumulates," the se- quel of the passage has a sterling ring whenever and wherever it can be ap- plied : " Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can malso them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, "When once destroyed, can never be suppUed." No one knew better than Goldsmith the truth in social economy, that lux- ury, far from being the enemy, is the friend of civilization, by creating new wants and calling forth for their sup- ply the higher arts of man. He had advocated this idea in his Chinese Letters in the " Public Ledger." " Ex- amine," says he there, " the history of any country remarkable for patience and wisdom, you will find they would never have been wise had they not been first luxurious ; you Avill find poets, philosophers, and even patriots, march- ing in luxury's train." But the ex- igencies of his poem led him appa- rently to take another view of the matter. However, few readers think of the philosophy of the poem, or judge it by the rules of Adam Smith, while thousands admire its descrip- tions of the Village Preacher, the homely " splendors," a cabinet Dutch picture, of the ale-house, and the sweet rural scenery which surrounds it. The works which we have described, by which Goldsmith survives, the po- ems, the novel, the plays, were written for fame. There were a host of others, of which Histories of Rome, England, Greece, and a History of Animated Nature, wi-itten by contract for the 6 booksellers, were to supply his imme- diate necessities. They gave him a re- venue which he freely expended upon his friends, but any vanity of dress or hospitality which they may have led him to assume, cost him dear in the constant drudgery to which they sub- jected him. And yet mth all his ef- forts he was constantly in pecuniary embarrassment. It is painful to sur- vey his life in the details of his petty miseries as they have been disclosed to view by his minute biographers. It is still more painful to think what fine powers were lost to the world by his sudden death in the midst of his embar- rassments, when the ink was hardly dry on his splendid fragment " Retali- ation," a poem, one of the happiest of its kind, a series of living portraits, literary companions to those of Rey- nolds, of his eminent fellow-members of the Club — Burke, Garrick, Cumber- land and Reynolds among the num- ber. What a sketch misht he have written with equal candor, good na- ture, and still more of feeling, of John- son. But it was not so to be. There is something very melancholy in the history of this last exertion of Gold- smith's poetical faculty. It was writ- ten to meet a studied provocation by the members of the old social Club. In his absence it was proposed to -write an epitaph upon him, Garrick ever ready upon such occasions, and the in- veterate punster, Caleb Whitefoord, appearing as the leading instigators. Garrick's has been preserved, and is often quoted : "Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness call'd Noll, Wlio wrote like an angel, but talk'd like poor Poll. •' i2 OLIVEE GOLDSMITH. The verses, whatever were written, reached Goldsmith, who was called up- on to "retaliate." And in how just and kindly a manner, in a general way, he set about the task, pointing his sen- tences the most severe with wit with- out malice, and tempering censure with the most considerate of praise. Before he had finished the poem, leaving a line on Reynolds half ended, he was taken ill of the fever, which after a few days' illness carried him off on the 4th of April, 1774. He had only re- cently completed his forty-fifth year. He was buried in a gi-ave in the churchyard of the Temple, near his residence. No stone was placed there at the time to mark the spot, and the exact place where the poet was inter- red cannot at the present day be de- termined. A public funeral had been proposed, but a private ceremony was thoua;ht more in accordance with the circumstances of his death. But on the stairs which led to his chambers, in Brick Court, was gathered, beside the few family mourners, a number of the homeless poor women whom he had befriended. A monument, sug- gested by Reynolds and sculptured by NoUekens, Avas not long after erected in Westminster Abbey, to which John- son furnished the Latin inscription, weighty with words of admiration for his friend and his writings, which the love of posterity daily confirms. A portion of the lines are intelligi- ble enough, even to persons unfamiliar with the language, so often have they been cited and admired. We allude to the opening : OlIVARII GOLBSMITn, PoetEe, Physici, Historici, qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit. The whole has been literally and elegantly rendered by Mr. Forster. We give it entire, omitting the records of the close : poet's birth and death at the Of Oliver QoLDSMirn — Poet, Naturalist, Historian, ■who left scarcely any kind of writing untouclied, and touched nothing that he did not adorn : Whether smiles were to be stirred or tears, commanding our emotions, yet a gentle master In genius lofty, lively, versatile, in style, weighty, clear, engaging — The memory in this monument is cherished by the love of Companions, the faithfulness of Friends, the reverence of Readers. <^yi..^ HANNAH MORE. HANNAH MORE was born m 1745, at the village of Stapleton, Gloucestershire, England, where lier father, Jacob More, a man of a learned education, was then, in charge of a char- ity school. He was of a respectable family and had been intended for the church, but was led by want of means to the inferior occupation of a country schoolmaster. He was a tory and high-churchman, though other mem- bers of the family were Presbyterians. He married a farmer's daughter, like himself a person of sound intellect. There were five daughers the issue of this marriage, of whom Hannah was the youngest but one. She exhibited in her earliest childhood a remarkable quickness of apprehension, learning to read between her third and fourth year, and before she had reached the latter, recited her catechism in church to the admiration of the village rector. Her nurse, who is described as a pious old woman, had a distant flavor of lit- erature about her, having lived in the family of the poet Dryden, and thus early the name and fame of " glorious John," became familiar to her infant charge. "The inquisitive mind of the little Hannah," says her biographer, Roberts, " was continually prompting her to ask for stories about the poet Dryden." At the age of eight, the child had developed an eager thirst for learning, which her father was abun- dantly able to gratify out of the stock of his professional acquisitions. His stock of books was scanty, the greater part of them having been lost in his re- moval from his birth-place in Norfolk- shire to Stapleton ; but he supplied the deficiency from his memory, taking his daughter upon his knee and narrating to her stories of the Greeks and Ro- mans, " reciting to her the speeches of his favorite heroes, first in their origi- nal language to gratify her ear with the sound, and afterwards translating them into English ; particularly dwel- ling on the parallels and wise sayings of Phitarch; and these recollections made her often afterward remark, that the conversation of an enlightened pa- rent or preceptor, constituted one of the best parts of education." In this, and in other particulars of the mental growth and literary pro- cess of Hannah More, we are remind- ed of the similar intellectual develop- ment of Maria Edgeworth. She also was mainly taught in her childhood (43) 44 HANNAH MOEE. by her father, and constantly incul- cates in her admirable writings for the young, the advantage of this family oral instruction. Indeed, Avith impor- tant differences, there is a certain pa- rallelism in the career of- the two per- sonages. Both entered the literary field early, were welcomed by the i:)ub- lic at the start and continued to study and wi'ite under favorable circum- stances, through an imusually prolong- ed term of life. Miss Edgeworth, in- deed, was born twenty-two years later, but the two were on the earth together for sixty-six years, and, during the most stirring events of that period circling about the era of the French Revolu- tion, were in their prime. Both Avere favorites of society, and saw much of the most cultivated people of their times. The object of both, as authors, was the improvement of their readers, and there was a great resemblance in the method of their labors in their plain, practical instructions on educa- tional topics, though one drew more froln every-day experience and illus- trated the lesson Avith gaiety and hu- mor, while the other, as we shall see, appealed constantly to the sanctions of religion and Christianity. In this respect, one, in fact, supplements the other. Add Hannah More to Maria EtlgcAvorth, and you have a perfect whole. Hannah More gained from her father an early knoAvdedge of Latin, Avhich she afterwards improved and constantly maintained. She also gradually ac- quired an intimate acquaintance Avith French in reading and speaking. It was her parents' design that the chil- dren should be qualified to conduct a lady's boarding school; and for this purpose the eldest sister was sent to a French school at Bristol. Returning at the end of each week to pass the Sunday at home, she communicated what she had learned to Hannah, Avho proved an apt pupil. This scheme of education succeeded so well, that about the year 1757, the eldest sisters opened the projected boarding school at Bristol, and prosecuted it from the beginning Avith success. Hannah, then at the age of tAvelve, Avas taken Avith them and continued her studies with the double incentive of the loA^e of knowledge, and a maintenance for life invoh^ed in its immediate acquisition. Addison's "Spectator," the constant companion of the generation in which she Avas born, Avhich has lit the way to so many youthful minds in the pur- suit of letters and cheerful observation of the world, Avas the first book, we are told, which at this time engrossed her attention. The arrival of the elder Sheridan, the father of Richard Brins- ley, who came to deliver his famous lectures on oratory at Bristol, proA-ed an interesting point in Miss More's life. Sheridan had been on the boards at Druiy Lane, a species of riA^al to Garrick, and had for years been con- nected Avith the theatre at Dublin. When he left the stage, he devoted himself to the cause of education. His lectures, Ave may suppose, retained the best part of his theatrical declamation. They made a great impression on the mind of Miss More, then in her six- teenth j^ear. She addressed some A'erses to Sheridan, AA'hich led to his making her acquaintance. In all this, her mind Avas doubtless directed or as- HANliTAH MORE. 45 sisted in a tendency to dramatic com- position wliicli soon manifested itself, and, in no long time, resulted in lier sharing the glories of the British stage. She was also benefited at this early- period of her life hj her acquaintance Avith Ferguson the astronomer, who delivered a course of popular lectures at Bristol ; and still more by the in- sti'uctions of a Mr. Peach, a linen-dra- per of the town, a man of cultivation in English literature, who had been the friend of Hume, and claimed the credit of removing from his History of England, more than two hundred Scotticisms. Encouraged by such as- sociations as these, and inspired by the work of education in her sisters' school, with Avhich she was connected, she, now in her seventeenth year, executed her first important literary work. It grew out of the recitations in the school, which she observed were often drawn from plays, the moral character of which would not bear too close an inspection. In a minor way, as Racine wrote his sacred dramas of " Esther " and " Athalie," at the request of Ma- dame de Maintenon in her religious days, for performance before her young ladies at St. Cyr, so Miss Hannah More prepared her pastoral drama, '"The Search After Happiness." It is in a number of scenes in ten syllable rhym- ed verse, interrupted by occasional lyric effusions. In accordance with its moral intent, we have in the drama four ladies sev- erally discontented with the world meeting in a grove in search of the happiness which they had not found in fashion, a vain pursuit of science, the seductions of imagination or the languors of indifference, for in each of these varieties have Eujihelia, Cleora, Pastorella and Laurinda, been in turn engrossed. Florella, a young, virtuous, contented shejDherdess, does the honors of the grove ; and Urania, an antique maiden of greater authority, reviews the passions of them all, shows their inefficiency for beings of immortal growth, and points the way to the better life, bidding them : " On holy faith's aspiring pinions rise, Assert your birthright, and assume the skies." The moral is a good one, the pictures of life in a certain general way, accord- ing to the fashion of the literature of the time, are piquant and animated; but we question whether young ladies of the present era are often employed in recitations from this elegant poem'. Neither, on the other hand, do they declaim passages from the wicked plays it was intended to supersede. The argument of Miss More, as it is given in her prologue, is insufiicient. It begs the whole question of dramatic power and interest. People do not necessarily become vicious by even the ardent impersonation of such passions as she would supersede by the utter- ance of simple, moral and religious re- flections, or ]\Ii's. Siddons, who bore a most estimable character, would have become from her performance of Lady Macbeth, one of the most wicked per- sons of her sex. Miss More, in truth, concedes this by her lively jjictures of the world in this very innocent pasto- ral drama, and when she herself came to write for the stage, she invoked the passions she here laments. From a very early period of her life, 46 HANNAH MOEE. Miss More attached herself to persons of eminence and distinction in the so- ciety by which she was surrounded. As she couhl have gained little from the position in which she was placed, one of a group of several maiden la- dies earning their living by school- teaching, the attentions which she re- ceived must have been wholly owing to her happy disposition and literary acquirements. Besides Latin and French, she cultivated the Spanish and Italian tongues. From the latter she translated and adapted some of the dramatic works of Metastasio. Most of these were destroyed. One of them, based on the Opera of Kegulus, she afterwards extended into a tragedy in five acts, entitled "The Inflexible Captain." It Avas about the time Ave are vsriting of, when she was at the age of tAventy- tAvo, that a Mr. Turner, a gentleman of wealth, living on a fine estate, and nearly double her OAvn age, fascinated by her agreeable qualities, proposed to her in marriage and Avas accepted. The thing got so far that she quitted the school, and made some expensive pre- parations for her neAv mode of life. Mr. Turner, hoAvever, liesitated, and the marriage Avas broken off. He, hoAvever, settled an anniiity upon her, to enable her to devote hei'self to her literary pursuits, and on his death left her a thousand pounds. We now reach a memorable point in Miss More's life, the year of her first introduction to London society. In the year 1774, Avhen she was approach- ing the age of thirty, she A'isited the metropolis Avith tAvo of her sisters, and was introduced to David Garrick, Avho had been enlisted in her favor by see- ing a letter, shoAvn to him by a com- mon friend, in which she described her emotions on witnessing his perform- ance of Lear. The great actor Avas a very sociable and friendly man, highly appreciative of literary excellence, and doubtless thought not the less of it Avhen it Avas displayed by an agreealjle young lady in admiration of himself The acquaintance soon rij^ened into an intimacy, which remained unbroken durinsj his life. The theatre Avas then in the ascendant, and Miss More, spite of her recommendations of the simple moral drama in her pastoral play at Bristol, entered heartily into its de- lights. She Avas present at the perform- ance of Sheridan's first dramatic pro- duction, the "Rivals," of AA'hich she says : — " On the Avhole I Avas tolerably entertained." She also Avitnesses a re- presentation of General Burgoyne's " Maid of the Oaks." Garrick Avas for the time unable from ill health to ap- pear upon the stage. " If he does not get Avell enough to act soon," Avrites the enthusiastic Hannah, "I shall break my heart." Miss More had a very useful friend in London in Miss Reynolds, the sister of Sir Joshua, by whom also she was much admired. Garrick and Reynolds oj^ened to her an enti-ance to the fore- most literary society. The former in- troduced her to Mrs. Montagu, then in the ascendant Avith all her charms of Avit and cleA^erness, the presiding deity of those Montagu House assem- blies, Avhich gave a new and lasting name to the female cultiA*ators of litera- tiire, the " Blue Stockings." It ori- ginated Avith Admiral BoscaAA'en, whose HANNAH MORE. 47 wife was one of tlie most brilliant of the set. Looking one evening at Dr. Stillingfleet's gray stockings, wliick were quite out of keeping with, the fashionable requirements of the time, he christened the free-and-easy com- pany the " Blue Stocking Society." It was a palpable hit. A name was wanted for a new thing imder the sun in England, a cultivated lady courting society and challenging attention for her literary attainments. In those gos- siping days, so brightly reflected in the letters of Walpole,i.he term was caught up with avidity, and from that day to this literary ladies have had to endure this nonsensical appellation because slo- venly Parson Stillingfleet appeared one night at Mrs. Montagu's in blue wors- ted stockings. A letter addressed by Miss More to one of her sisters, to be found in her published correspondence, gves us an interesting view of this learn- ed society. It would appear from a sub- sequent letter of Miss More, that this party at Mi-s. Montagu's was on a Sunday evening, a fact of which she was reminded by a letter from home containing a clerical admonition from Dr. Stonehouse. She received it in good part, and acknowledged the de- linquency. " Conscience," she writes, " had done its office before ; nay, was busy at the time ; and if it did not dash the cup of pleasure to the ground, infused at least a tincture of worm- wood into it." The thought recurs to her again at a Sunday's dinner at Mrs. Boscawen's ; but as she reflects she finds there is preaching and solemnity in life everywhere, even in its gayest moments — a truth worth remembering by a certain class", of moralists — very touching in its expression by Miss More. After her return at night from this Sunday dinner, she Avrites, " One need go no further than the company I have just left, to be convinced that 'pain is for man,' and that fortune, talents, and science are no exemption from the universal lot. Mrs. Montagu, eminently distinguished for wit and virtue, the wisest where all are wise, is hastening to insensible decay by a slow but sure hectic. Mrs. Chapman has experienced the severest reverses of fortune, and Mrs. Boscawens' life has been a continued series of afflic- tions, that may almost bear a parallel ■with those of the righteous man of Uz." Hannah More's acquaintance with Dr. Johnson deserves a separate para- graph. She came up to London with a desire of all things to see the great Doctor, for whom she had always a sincere admiration and respect. His moral writings in the " Eambler," greatly influenced her thought and style. The attentions paid to John- son strike readers of the present day with surprise. A first interview ^vith him was looked forward to w^ith the greatest anxiety, and, when accom- plished, was frequently recorded as a prominent event in life. The honors paid to literature and art in the high social importance and esti- mation of Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick and Biu'ke and their fellows, are cer- tainly to the credit of English life in that much abused eighteenth century. The world has since grown more de- mocratic, and literature, perhaps, through the press, more powerful, but the republic of letters would then ap- i8 HANNAH MORE. pear to have been more fully recog- nized as a social institution than at present. Miss More first met Johnson at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds. It was frequently a matter of uncer- tainty whether a new comer would be received by the learned Doctor with a growl or a smile. It depended very much upon his physical condition, and that often influenced his mind, when he became moody and sj)lenetic. On handing Miss More up-stairs to the drawing-room where Johnson had al- ready arrived, Reynolds advised Miss More of the risk she was running. The more pleasant was consequently her surprise when the dreaded Leviathan came forward to meet her, as described by her biographer, " with good humor in his countenance, and a macaw of Sir Joshua's in his hand, and still more, at his accosting her with a verse fi'om a Morning Hymn which she had 'SATit- ten at the desire of Sir James Stone- house," They were soon on a most excellent footing. Miss More was pre- sently taken by Miss Reynolds to Johnson's house. " Can you picture to yourselves," writes one of Hannah's sisters who was with her, to the family at home, "the palpitation of our hearts as we approached his mansion ?" They talked with the Doctor about his "Tour to the Hebrides," which was just coming out, and were introduced to the Doctor's protege, Mrs. Williams, the blind poet, whose conversation they found lively and entertaining. The Doctor was told how Miss Hannah on coming in, before he made his appear- ance, had seated herself in his great chair with the hope of catching a little ray of his genius, which he, of course. laughed at, saying that he never sat in that chair, and that it reminded him of an adventure of Boswell and him- self in the Highlands ; how, when they were stopping a night at an inn at the place where they imagined the weird sisters had appeared to Macbeth, they were quite deprived of rest at the idea, and how, the next morning, they were informed that all this happened in quite another part of the country. Miss Reynolds also told the Doctor of the raptures the ladies were in as they rode along in the carriage at the pros- pect of visiting him, when he shook his head at Hannah, and said " she was a silly thing ! " At tea, one evening at Sir Joshua's, she was placed next to Johnson and had him entirely to herself. "They were both," ■«Tites her sister Sarah, " in remarkably high spirits ; it was certainly her lucky night ! I never heard her say so many good things. The old genius was extremely jocular, and the young one very pleasant. You would have imagined we had been at some comedy, had you heard our peals of laughter. They, indeed, tried which could 'pepper the highest,' and it is not clear to me that the lexicographer was really the highest seasoner." The record of another visit to John- son is of interest, for its reference to the personal history of the Mores. It occurs in a letter of one of the sisters in 1776. "If a wedding," she writes from London to the family at Bristol, " should take place before our return, don't be surprised, — ^between the mo- ther of Sir Eldred and the father of my much-loved Irene ; nay, Mrs. Mon- tagu says, if tender words are the pre- HANI^AH MORE. 49 cursors of connubial engagements, we may expect great things ; for it is no- thing but ' chihl,' ' little fool, ' love,' and ' dearest.' After much critical dis- course, he turns round to me, and with one of his most amiable looks, which must be seen to form the least idea of it, he says : ' I have heard that you are encraored in the useful and honorable employment of teaching young ladies,' upon which, with all the same ease, familiarity and confidence we should have done had only our own dear Dr. Stonehouse been present, we entered upon the history of our birth, parent- age and education ; showing how we were born Avith more desires than gui- neas ; and how, as years increased our appetites, the cupboard at home began to grow too small to gratifythem ; and how, Avith a bottle of watei", a bed, and a blanket, we set out to seek our for- tunes; and how we found a great house, with nothing in it ; and how it was likely to remain so, till looking into our knowledge-boxes, we haj)pen- ed to find a little laming, a good thing when land is gone, or rather none : and so at last, by giving a little of this laming to those who had less we got a good store of gold in return ; but how, alas ! we wanted the wit to keep it. 'I love you both,' said the inamorato — ' I love you all five — I never was at Bristol — I will come on purpose to see you — what ! five wo- men live happily together ! — I Avill come and see you — I have sjjent a hap- py evening — I am glad I came — God for ever bless you, you live to shame duchesses.' lie took his leave with so much warmth and tenderness, we were quite affected at his manners." 7 The " Sir Eldred " alluded to at the beginning of the letter, was the hero of a legendary tale, entitled, " Sir El- dred of the Bower," Avhich Hannah More had shortly before published in London — a ballad of the modern school of Goldsmith's Edwin and Angelina, in the same easy, gentle measure. A faultless hero marries the blameless daughter of a neio-hborins: knight, all in the 2:)rettiest rural scenery and sur- roundings, when the lady's long lost brother returns from the wars to clasp her in his arms. Sir Eldi'ed, who is passionate, finds them in this attitude and slays the stranger on the spot, the wife dies on the instant in sympathy with her brother, and Eldred lives a little longer in too wretched a condi- tion for the muse to describe. The poem was accepted as a certificate of the talents of the author by the lite- rary world of the day. Johnson ad- mired it, recited its best passages from memory, and contributed a stanza of his own to the poem, and Garrick, at a little party at her house, gave the finest pathetic expression to its tender melancholy. "I think," writes Han- nah, " I never was so ashamed in my life; but he read it so superlatively, that I cried like a child. Only think what a scandalous thing, to cry at the reading of one's own poetry ! I could have beaten myself ; for it looked as if I thought it very moving, which, I can truly say, is far from being the case. But the beauty of the jest lies in this : Mrs. Garrick twinkled as well as I, and made as many apologies for crying at her husband's reading, as I did for crying at my own verses. She got out of the scrape by pretending 50 HANNAH MOEE. she was touched at the story, and I^ by saying the same thing of the read- ing. It furnished us witli a great laugh at the catastrophe, when it woukl really have been decent to have been a little sorroAvful." Garrick, who was a mas- ter of courtly compliment, in occasional society verses, wrote a few stanzas on "Sir Eldred," signed, "Roscius," in which he celebrates the triumph of a female genius over the wits of the other sex. Miss More was not behind the versatile David in these poetical atten- tions. She addressed a tame sonnet to the river Thames, on Mr. and Mrs. Garrlek's birthday, and wrote a rather clever ode to Dragon, his housedog, at Hampton, in which she introduces some pretty compliments to Roscius on his retirement from the stasje. No inamorato was ever more devoted to a lover than Miss More to Garrick, in attendance upon his last perform- ances at Drury Lane. Her devotion was paid not less to his kindly qualities as a man, than to his genius as an actor. He was one of the first to give her a helping hand on her ai-rival in London. He welcomed her to his seat on the Thames at Hampton, where she passed many days and weeks, domesticated as a member of the family while he read to her, she tells us, " all the Avhimsical correspondence, in prose and verse, which for many years, he had carried on with the first geniuses of the age " — the very letters, Ave presume, which are now gathered in the two ample qiiartos of the " Garrick Correspondence," to which the epistles of Hannah herself contributed not the least delightful pages. We may follow her in her charming letters, through her visits to Drury Lane during Garrick's last sea- sons on the stage. "Let the Muses shed tears," she writes in 1776, "for Garrick has this day sold the patent of Drury Lane Theatre, and will never act after this winter. Sic transit gloria mundi ? He retires with all his blushing honors thick about him, his laurels as green as in their early spring. Wlio shall supply his loss to the staa:e ? Who shall now hold the master-key of the human heart ? Who direct the passions with more than magic jDower ? Who purify the stage ? and who, in short, direct and nurse my dramatic muse ? " Of the last anon. On the very day that Garrick took his leave of the stage, after he had intro- duced the whole series of his perform- ances in London, Miss More wrote from Bristol to the departing Eoscius — " I think by the time this reaches you I may congratulate you on the end of your labors and the completion of your fame — a fame Avhich has had no parallel, and will have no end. Surely, to have suppressed your talents in the moment of your highest capacity for exerting them, does as much honour to your heart as the exertion itself did to your dramatic character ; but I cannot trust mj'self on this subject, because, as Sterne says, ' I am Avriting to the man himself;' yet I ought to be in- dulged, for, is not the recollection of my pleasures all that is left to me of them ? Have I not seen in one season that man act seven and twenty times, and rise each time in excellence, and shall I be silent ? Have I not spent three month under the roof of that man and his dear, charming lady, and received from them favors that would take me another three months to tell HANNAH MORE. 51 over, and shall I be silent ? " In tlie distribution of souvenirs of the last performance of Garrick, Miss More re- ceived from him the shoe buckles which he wore in Don Felix, upon which Mrs. Barbauld wrote a doggrel epigram : — "Thy buckles, O Garrick, thy friend may now use, But no mortal hereafter shall tread In thy shoes." Miss More's intimacy ^viih. Garrick was continued after his retirement from the stage, when, though he jjlayed no more, he still, like Pope's departed lady of fashion, " o'erlooked the cards." She sends him from time to time various little items of theatrical gossip fi'om the provincial stage at Bungay, where she is on a visit, and Avhere the Nor- wich tragedians play several of his pieces — " Cymon," " Bon-Ton," and " The Clandestine Marriage," which he wi'ote with Colman. " A certain Mi's. Ibbott plays Mrs. Heidleburg more than tolerably, and a pretty-look- ing Mrs. Simpson was very pleasing in Fanny ;" and at Bristol, how Reddish was there with an extempore Mrs. Reddish, which excited much scandal and opposition, " this being the second or third wife he had produced at Bris- tol : in a short time we have had a whole bundle of Reddishes, and all re- markably impungent ;" and how Red- dish was pelted at his benefit, " but didn't mind that, for he had a great house." But the most important topic of the correspondence, at least for the gentle Hannah, was the prej^aration of a certain tragedy of " Percy," which she had under way with an eye to the stao-e. The first two acts were c;ot off in August, 1777, to Garrick, who ac- knowledges their receipt, addressing Miss More as "My dear Nine" — all the Muses rolled into one. He talks of a visit to Bath and Bristol. " Mrs. Garrick," he says, "is studying your two acts. "VVe shall bring them with us, and she will criticise you to the bone. A German commentator (Mon- taigne says) will suck an author dry- She is resolved to dry you up to a slender shape, and has all her wits at work upon you." Presently she sends the third and fourth acts. "I shall leave the fifth unfinished till I am so happy as to be indulged with your in- structions. I am at a loss how to man- age it. As to madness, it is a rock on which even good poets split ; — what, then, will become of me ? It is so difiicult and so dangerous, I am afraid of it." Meantime Garrick is stimu- lating her anxieties, " I hope you will consider your dramatic matter with all your wit and feeling. Let your fifth act be worthy of you, and tear the heart to pieces, or wo betide you ! I shall not pass over any scenes or parts of scenes that are merely written to make up a certain number of lines. Such doino^s, Madam Nine, will neither do for j'ou nor for me." At last the play, dry- nursed by Garrick, was, through his agency, accepted by Harris, the man- ager of Covent Garden, and brought upon the stage. Garrick wrote both prologue and epilogue, in the former Avittily stii'ring up that anomalous per- sonage the Chevalier D'Eon. Hannah pronounced both excellent, and had an amusing altercation, which she de- scribes, over the price with the author, who, of course, would receive nothing. " Dryden," he said, " used to have five 52 HANNAH MOEE. guineas apiece, but as lie was a riclier man lie would he content if I Avould treat him witli a handsome supper and a Lottie of claret. We haggled sadly about the price, I insisting that I could only aiford to give him a beef- steak and a pot of porter; and at about twelve we sat do^vn to some toast and honey, with which the tem- perate bard contented himself." The play under Garrick's auspices proved a decided success. Both Mr. and Mrs. Garrick were present with her at its first j)erf oi'mance, when it was brought out in December, It had a run of seventeen nights, and that, too, while the School for Scandal was in its first season. It was published with a dedi- cation to Earl Percy, for which she re- ceived the thanks of that noble house, communicated to her by Dr. Percy. Home, the author of Douglas, was then in London to witness the produc- tion of his new play of Alfred, which proved a failure. This did not, hoAV- ever, prevent his complimenting his rival on her success. Mrs. Montagu and her blue stocking friends Avere, of course, on hand with their applause. "VYe get in the author's letters a glimpse or tAvo of the acting. " One tear is worth a thousand hands," she Avrites ; " and I had the satisfaction to see even the men shed them in abun- dance." " Mrs. Barry is so very fine in the mad scene, in the last act," Avrites Miss More, " that though it is my OAvn nonsense, I ahvays see that scene with pleasure." LeaAdng Sir Joshua's one evening after dinner, when the com- pany had sat doAA^n to cards, to Avitness that particular act, she is shocked at entering the theatre to see " a A'ery in- different house. I looked (she adds) on the stage and saAv the scene was the inside of a prison, and that the hero- ine, AA^ho Avas then speaking, had on a linen goAATi. I Avas quite stunned, and really thought I had lost my senses, when a smart man, in regimentals, be- gan to sing, ' HoAV happy could I be with either.' " LeAvis had been taken ill, and the " Beggar's Opera " substi- tuted for " Percy." The pecuniary re- sults were very gratifying, the author's nights, sale of the copy, etc., amount- ing to near six hundred pounds, Avhich Garrick 'invested for her on the best security at five per cent. A first im- pression of the play of four thousand copies Avas sold at once, and a second went off rapidly. Some forty years after this first success, " Percy " was re- vived at the same theatre, with Miss O'Neil for the heroine. About a year after the production of " Percy," Miss More was summoned to London by the death of Garrick. She joined Mrs. Garrick at her express desire, Avas with her Avhile prepara- tions Avere being made for the public funeral in Westminster Abbey, and witnessed the ceremony from a gallery overlooking the grave. Her descrip- tion of the scene is full of feeling. " We Avere no sooner recoA^ered from the fresh burst of grief on taking our places, than I east my eyes the first thino; on Handel's monument, and read the scroll in his hand — 'I know that my Redeemer liA'eth.' Just at three, the great doors burst open, Avith a noise that shook the roof; the organ struck up, and the Avhole choir, in strains only less solemn than the ' arch- angel's trump,' began Handel's fine HANNAH MOKE. 53 anthem. The Avhole choir advanced to the grave, in hoods and surplices, singing all the way ; then Sheridan, as chief mourner ; then the body, (alas ! whose body !) Avith ten noblemen and gentlemen, pall-bearers ; then the rest of the friends and mourners ; hardly a dry eye — the very players, bred to the trade of counterfeiting, shed genuine tears." The friendship formed with Mrs. Garriek in the life-time of her husband remained unbroken during their long subsequent career. Miss More was for several years her con- stant guest. She was with her in her first season of bereavement, and, in her correspondence, gives several touching anecdotes of her conduct during: the early period of her affliction. At the time of Garrick's death. Miss More had a second play Avhich had partly undergone his revision, ready for the stage. It Avas entitled " The Fatal Falsehood," and Avas brought out the same year Avith some success, though inferior to that Avhich had at- tended " Percy." Miss Young played in it Avith much effect. The prologue Avas AATitten ])y the author ; the ejiilo- gue, by Sheridan, a fine piece of Avit in an amusing picture of lady authorship, delivered in the character of an envi- ous poetaster. The remainder of the year 1779 Avas mostly passed by Miss ]\Iore Avith Mrs. Garriek at Hampton in close retire- ment, but, she Avrites, " I am never dull, because I am not reduced to the fatigue of entertaining dunces, or of beins: obliged to listen to them. We dress like a couple of scaramouches, dispute like a couple of Jesuits, eat like a couple of aldeiTaen, Avalk like a couple of porters, and read as much as any tAvo doctors of either university." One day came " the gentlemen of the Museum to fetch poor Mr. Garrick's legacy of the old plays and cui'ious black-letter books, tJwugh they loere not things to he read, and are only A^aluable to anti- quaries for their age and scarcity ; yet I could not see them carried ofE Avith- out a pang." The Avords AA^hich Ave haA-e marked in italics are noticeable, show- ing the neglect into Avhich the early English literature about the time of Shakespeare had fallen. These are the very plays from Avhich Charles Lamb gathered his choice volume of Drama- tic Specimens. Had Miss More fully entered into their sj^irit, her OAvn tra- gedies might have been improA^ed by the acquaintance, Avith a better chance than they are having of being read by her posterity. The old intercourse Avas still and for several years after kept up Avith the literary society of London which met at Sir Joshua's, Mrs.Vesey's, Mrs. Boscawen's, aged Mrs. Delany's and the rest ; but Ave hear less and less of fashionable gaieties at the theatre or elseAA'here. A groAving seriousness Avas at Avork in the mind of the fair author, Avhich was leading her to ncAV schemes of moral improvement. In the mean time, she summed up her observations rather than experiences of the Avorldly life of the day in tAvo sprightly poems, first printed together in 1780, and pub- lished Avith additions in 1786. In one of these, entitled " The Bas Bleu ; or. Conversation," she celebrated the in- tellectual social intercourse which ani- mated the i^arties of Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Vesey, and sighed for the de- parted days when the winged Avords 54 HANNAH MORE. of Garrick, Jolinson and Burke gave flight to the friendly hours. " And Lyttleton's accomplished name, And witty Pulteney shared the fame ; The men, not bound by pedant rules. Nor ladies precieuses ridieides : For polished Walpole showed the way. How wits may be both learned and gay ; And Carter taught the female train. The deeply wise are never vain. ***** Here rigid Cato, awful sage ! Bold censor of a thoughtless age, Once dealt his pointed moral round, And not unheeded fell the sound ; The muse his honored memory weeps. For Cato now with Roscius sleeps 1 " "Cato," Miss Seward thought Avas an odd " whig-title " for the tory John- son. " I could fancy him," she writes to her friend, Court Dewes, " saying to the fair author, ' You had better have called me the first Whig, Madam, the father of the tribe, who got kicked out of Heaven for his republican prin- ciples.' " " Florio ; a Tale for Fine Gentlemen and Ladies," was appropriately dedi- cated to Horace Walpole, not, we can hardly imagine, without a tinge of co- vert satire, though the terms in which she proj)itiates the wit are highly flat- tering. The story is well told in octo- syllabic verse, bearing a general resem- blance in its moral to Dryden's " Cy- mon and Iphigeneia," though the cir- cumstances are quite different, — in the one case a youth being rescued from clownishness and neglect, in the other from foppery and licentiousness. In both, the motive power is a charming woman. Florio, the spoilt child of fortune ; passing his life in fashionable frivolities, a smatterer in literature, a free-thinker, or rather no-thinker in re- ligion, is brought to a knowledge of himself by the simple attractions of a country Celia, for whom at first he has a great contempt ; but he carries back with him to London a spark of love and nature's fire in his breast, and by the light which this kindles, all the meritricious attractions of the metrop- olis which had formerly fascinated him grow pale and worthless. He hurries back to the country and the poem con- cludes with the triumph of virtue in a marriage with the pious Celia. The sketch of Florio in his days of worldli- ness is much the best of the poem. Miss More's acquaintance with Ho- race Walpole began in the literary soirees at Mrs. Vesey's and was per- petuated in visits to Strawberry Hill, and a correspondence which was con- tinued through the life of its noble owner. There is a great deal of com- pliment in the letters on both sides ; Walpole was always fond of ladies' society, and gratefully recij)rocated the attentions of a lady who might have been his satirist. Miss More, on the other hand, was attracted to him by his kind attentions to Mrs. Vesey in her failing health, "my dear, infirm, broken-spirited, Mrs. Vesey," as she calls her in one of her letters. The home life of the five sisters at Bristol was, in the meanwhile under- going a change. Hannah, enriched by her literary pursuits, bought a small country residence near Bristol, which had acquired the name of " Cowslip Green," and spent more of her time in rural occupations. In 1789 her sisters having acquired sufiicient property by their labors retired from the charge of the school to pass their time between a town residence which, with the aid of HANNAH MORE. 55 Hannali, they had erected for them- selves at Bath and the retreat at Cow- slip Green. They now began to em- ploy themselves in what became the serious occupation of their lives, the establishment of schools for the educa- tion of the neglected poor in their neighborhood. The first of these was started at Chedder, in the vicinity of Bristol. In setting this on foot, Miss More had to encounter a redoubtable giant of the old tory breed, in a person whom she describes as " the chief des- pot of the village, very rich and very brutal ; " but she was not to be deter- red by any such lions in the way, " so," says she, " I ventured to the den of this monster, in a country as savage as him- self, near Bridgewater." She was met by an argument which Avas very com- mon in those days in England, and which she had often practically to re- fute, that " religion was the worst thing for the poor, for it made them lazy and useless." It was in vain that she rep- resented to these country landowners that men would become more industri- ous as they were better principled, and that she had no selfish ends in her un- dertakings. It was, however, by ap- pealing to their selfish interests that she was at last permitted to proceed. " I made," says she, " eleven of these agreeable visits ; and as I improved in the art of canvassing, had better suc- cess. Miss Wilberforce would have been shocked, had she seen the petty tyi-ants whose insolence I stroked and tamed, the ugly children I praised, the pointers and spaniels I caressed, the cider I commended, and the wine I swallowed. After these irresistible flatteries, I inquired of each if he could recommend me to a house; and said that I had a little j^lan which I hoped would secure their orchards from being robbed, their rabbits from being shot, their game from being stolen, and which might lower the poor-rates." The squirearchy upon this relented and soon the benevolent Miss More had nearly three hundred children in the school learning the elements of a reli- gious education. While this work was going on in the country. Miss More was appealing to the world in' her -wi-itings, which were now assuming a direct reformatoiy tone with an earnest inculcation of religious principle as the governing motive of life. Her first as- sault was directed against fashionable follies and vices which she had hitherto tickled in verse. She now resumed the argument in prose with a heavier em- phasis. Her " Thoughts on the Impor- tance of the Manners of the Great to General Society," first printed anony- mously in 1798, as a sequel or aid to a royal proclamation Avhich had just been issued against irreligion and im- morality, was a bombshell thrown into the ranks, not of the grossly wicked, but of those who were considered good sort of people, whom she desired to bring to a higher standard of justice and morality. It was a vigorous pro- test against luxury and extravagance, pointing out the selfishness and conse- quent hard-heartedness of indulgence, with a special effort to correct the evils arising from the ill ol)servance of Sunday, and the prevalent passion for play. In the course of her remarks, the author speaks of a singular custom which then prevailed, " the petty mis- chief of what is called card money','' in 56 HANl^AH MORE. the exaction of a part of tlieir wages from servants to pay for the playing cards furnished to the guests ! She denounces this as " a worm which is feedino: on the vitals of domestic vir- tue." She argues too the old social question of " the daily and hourly lie of Not at Home^'' for which she wonld provide some suitable phrase for the necessary denial to a visitor, in prefer- ence to the education of the servant in the art of lying. She makes an appeal also for " hair-dressers," as a peculiarly oppressed class of Sunday laborers. Not long after, in 1791, this pro- duction was followed by an elaborate prose composition of a similar charac- ter, " An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World," in which the general neglect of Christianity by leading men of the time was compared with its open avowal by the Sidneys, Hales and Clarendons of a former age; the benevolence of the day was tested in its motives; Christian education shown to be neglected, and a revival of its vital spirit declared to l)e a ne- cessity of the period. A copy of the work reached Horace Walpole, who speaks of it in a letter to Miss Berry : " Good Hannah More is laboring to amend our religion, and has just pub- lished a book called ' An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World.' It is prettily written, but her enthu- siasm increases ; and when she comes to to-svn, I shall tell her that if she preaches to people of fashion, she will be a bishoj) in imrtibus infideliumr In pursuing her labors in the instruc- tion and amelioration of the condition of the poor. Miss More began the issue of a series of popular tracts, Avritten in a i^lain attractive style, suited to the comprehension of the peasant class for which they were intended. They were written with such marked ability that they soon took a wider range and were largely circulated throughout Great Britain and America. It is sufficient to allude to such nan-atives among them as "The Shepherd of Salisbuiy Plain," and such allegories as "Parley the Porter," to remind the reader of their scoj^e and spii-it. The foiTner has passages Avorthy of De Foe ; the latter might have been Avritten liy Bunyan. The theory of the author's religious teaching of the poor, Avas in general very simple. In one of her letters published in the " Whalley Corres- pondence," referring more particularly to the conduct of her charity schools, she says, "My grand principle is, to infuse into the minds of the young people as much Scriptural knowledge as possible. Setting them to get by heart such portions of the Bible as shall take in the general scheme of doctrine and practice, then bringing that knoAvledge ■ out, by easy, simple and intelligilile conversation, and then grafting it into their minds as a prin ciple of action, and making all they learn practical and of j^ersonal appli- cation, seems the best method. I am extremely limited in my ideas of in- structing the poor. I would confine it entirely to the Bible, Liturgy and Ca- techism, Avhich, indeed, includes the Avhole of my notion of instruction. To teach them to read, Avithout gi\dng them principles, seems dangerous ; and I do not teach them to Avrite, CA^en in my weekly schools. Almost all I do is done by conversation, by a simple HANNAH MOEE. 57 exposition of texts, whicli I endeavor to make as lively and interesting as I can, often illustrating what is difficult by instances drawn from common life. To those who attend four Sundays without intermission, I give a penny, provided they are at school by prayer- time ; this promotes regularity of at- tendance more than anything. Tarts and gingerbread occasionally are a pleasant reward. Clothing I cannot afford to such multitudes as my differ- ent schools consist of, but at "Whitsun- tide, I give them all some one article of dress. If there is a large family of boys, for Instance, I give to one a jacket, to another a shirt, to a third shoes, to a fourth a hat, according to their re- spective wants; to the girls, a white calico apron, and muslin cap and tip- pet, of which I will send you one for a pattern if you wish it." Strange that in the carrying out such simple works of benevolence as this, Miss More should have been thwarted and even persecuted. Though as con- servative as any person in the kingdom, she was charged Avith undermining the British constitution and encouraffinsr French revolutionary propagandism with her nefarious proceedings; with unsettling the established order of British society ; with assisting " Me- thodism," as if that were an unpardon- able sin. The curate of Blaydon who presided over her district was especially unfriendly, and at one time succeeded in closing the school which was for a time re-opened. The controversy on the subject became fierce and lasting. Various meetings were held, numerous pamphlets were written. No less than thirty-four distinguished persons, most . 8 of them of the clerical order, took part in the discussion. Miss More was fairly distracted by the agitation, and fell sick in consequence. Meanwhile, she was continuing the series of her didactic writings, by the publication in 1799 of one of the largest and most elaborate of her works, entitled " Strictures on the Modern System of Female Educa- tion." The book abounds with sound practical suggestions on subjects of every-day life. Though earnest in the ultimate reference of all to the sanc- tions of Christian precept, it is marked by a general moderation of thought. About the year 1802, Miss More left her residence at Cowslip Green for one more convenient in the vicinity, which proved so attractive, that the town house at Bath was also relinquished for it. This new situation, known by the name of Barley Wood, became thenceforward identified with the fam- ily, continuing their home till Miss Han- nah More became the sole survivor, and finally quitted it for another residence after a sojourn of fully a quarter of a century. From this spot her frequent correspondence Avith Wilberforce was dated, and thence went forth several of her most important books to the world. In 1805, she published the work entitled " Hints Towards Form- ing the Character of a Young Princess," written at the earnest request of Bishop Porteus, who, it is said, favored the design of placing the education of the young Princess Charlotte, for whom it was intended, under her care. The next important publication by Miss More is that, Avith the exception perhaps of her more popular tracts, by Avhich she is best known at present, 58 HANNAH MOEE. — tlie novel, if it may he so called, en- titled " Ccelebs in Searcli of a Wife." Immediately popular at the time when it was first issued — it ran through eleven editions Avithin nine months — it is still the most read of its author's productions. A simple test is at hand. The seven volumes of the American edition of her complete works belong- ing to a large city circulating library are before us. Six are clean and un- injured by use ; the remaining one con- taininor " Ccelebs " is worn with hand- ling, and ready to fall in pieces. The poems and the moral essays, the in- struction for peasants and princesses, the lay sermons, worthy of Dr. Blair, and with something of his style, are forgotten : the novel, lightly as it touches the heart and life, is remem- bered and read. It is hardly fair, how- ever, to regard it simply as a novel. It is in reality, as its second title imports, a series of observations on domestic habits and manners, religion and mo- rals. " Love itself," as the author re- marks in the preface, " appears in these pages, not as an ungovernable impulse, but as a sentiment arising out of qual- ities calculated to inspire attachment of persons under the dominion of reason and religion, brought together by the ordinary course of occurrences in a private family party." With this un- derstanding the work may be read without disappointment ; otherwise, it misrht be thouiiiht to lack invention and interest in the plot, which is of the sim- plest. It certainly, with all its sermon- izing, has many entertaining sketches of society and lively exhibitions of char- acter. There is nothing very extrava- gant or any way impossible in the model young lady of the writer's imagination, who is brought forward to engage the affection of the scrutinizing and ex- acting young bachelor. The key-note of the book is struck in the first chap- ter, which is devoted to the perfections of Mother Eve, as exhibited by John Milton, in his immortal epic. Lucilla, the irresistible heroine of the book, is the daughter of most exemplary par- ents, a pious, practical and literary father, a graceful and elegant hostess her mother. She herself has all the domestic and a proper share of the philanthropic virtues. "Fresh as a rose and gay as a lark," she rises at six in the morning in summer, gives two hours to reading in her closet, has an interview with the housekeeper on the state of the larder, and enters the break- fast room, a charming spectacle of health, cheerfulness and culinary ac- complishments. " Her conversation, like her countenance, is compounded of liveliness, sensibility and delicacy." She teaches her little sisters, is modest and engaging, visits the poor and reads Latin with her father every day. Cce- lebs, with credit to himself, is smitten through and through by the archer god at the first sight of her in the four- teenth chapter. Twenty-five more are occupied before the wedding comes on, in playing her off through a series of important discussions on social and ed- ucational topics by persons of the most decisive ways of thinking. The con- versations are always sensible and in- structive, sometimes amusing. The book is the gathering up on the part of the author — it was published when she was sixty-four — of a cheerful lifetime of thought and experience. HANNAH MORE. 59 "We have still to record several other of her books : " Practical Piety," published in 1811 ; and the collection of essays entitled " Christian Morals," put forth the next year; "An Essay on the Character and Practical Writ- ings of Saint Paul," in 1815; and " Moral Sketches of Prevailing Opin- ions and Manners', Foreign and Domes- tic," in 1819, A month after the pub- lication of this last work, Miss More's sole surviving sister Martha died ; the others had Leen called away within a few preceding years. In 1S22 she no- tices in one of her letters from Barley Wood, the death of " my ancient and valued friend, Mrs. Garrick. I spent above twenty winters under her roof, and gratefully rememl)er not only their personal kindness, but my first intro- duction through them into a society re- markable for rank, literature and tal- ents. Whatever was most distinguished in either was to be found at their table." It was a backward glance through near- ly fifty years by a venerable lady at seventy-seven. Though visited by fre- quent and severe illness, she was to survive ten years longer. In 1828, she finally left her home at Barley Wood, a name endeared to the Christian world, for a new residence at Clifton, where on the 7tli of September, 1833, she placidly closed a life which must ever be regarded with admiration and afl^ec- tion. A letter from one of the wor- thiest of her friends. Sir Robert Inglis, to the Rev. Dr. McVickar, in New York, records her Christian departure, " Though her mind has been eclipsed by her advancing years, — for she was in the eighty-ninth year of her life, — and though there was no longer any continuous flow of wisdom and of pie- ty from her lips, yet the devotional habit of her days of health, gave even to the weakness of decay a sacred char- acter, and her affections remained strong to the last. On Thursday (two days before she expired) she became more evidently dying, her eyes closed, she made an effort to stretch forth her hands, and exclaimed to her favorite sister, now for many years departed, 'Patty — joy.' And when she could no longer articulate, her hands remained clasped as in 2:)rayer." The five sisters lie interred within a plain enclosure in Wrington church- yard, a large stone slab recording their names, the dates of their birth and of their deaths. The portrait of Hannah More was painted in her early days by Sir Joshua Reynolds. As described by a recent English writer, " it represents hei small and slender figure gracefully at- tired; the hands and arms delicately fine, the eyes, large, dark and lus- trous ; the eyebrows well marked and softly arched ; the countenance beam- ing with benevolence and intelligence." Mr. S. C. Hall, who visited her at Bar- ley Wood about 1825, thus decribes her appearance : — " Her form was small and slight, her features wrin- kled with age ; but the burden of eighty years had not impaired her gracious smile, nor lessened the fire of her dark eyes, the clearest, the brightest and the most searching I have ever seen." FREDERIC II. THE celebrated King of Prussia was in no respect indebted for his personal greatness to the virtues or ex- ample of his immediate progenitors. His grandfather Frederic I., the first of the House of Brandenburg who as- sumed the title of hing, was a weak and empty prince, whose character was taken by his own wife to exemplify the idea of infinite littleness. His father, Frederic William, was a man of a violent and brutal disposition, ec- centric and intemperate, whose princi- pal, and almost sole pleasure and pur- suit, was the training and daily super- intendence of an army disproportion- ately greater than the extent of his do- minions seemed to warrant. It is how- ever to the credit of Frederic William as a ruler, that, notwitstanding this expensive taste, his finances on the whole Avere well and economically ad- ministered ; so that on his death he left a quiet and happy, though not wealthy country, a treasui'e of nine millions of crowns, amounting to more than a year's revenue, and a well-disciplin- ed army of 76,000 men. Thus on his accession, Frederic II. (or as, in consequence of the ambiguity of his father's name, he is sometimes call- (CO) ed, Frederic III.) found, ready prepar- ed, men and money, the instruments of war; and for this alone was he in- debted to his father. He was bom January 24th, 1712. From Frederic William, parental tenderness was not to be expected. His treatment of his whole family, wife and children, was brutal: but he showed a particular antipathy to his eldest son, from the age of fourteen upwards, for which no reason can be assigned, except that the young prince manifested a taste for lit- erature, and preferred books and music to the routine of military exercises. From this age, his life was embittered by continual contradiction, insult, and even personal violence. In 1730, he endeavored to escape by flight from his father's control ; but this intention being revealed, he was arrested, tried as a deserter, and condemned to death by an obedient court-martial ; and the sentence, to all appearance, would have been carried into effect, had it not been for the interference of the Emperor of Germany, Charles VI. of Austria. The king yielded to his urgent entreaties, but with much reluctance, saying, " Austria will some day perceive what a serpent she warms in her bosom." FEEDEKIC II. 61 In 1732, Frederic procured a remission of this ill treatment by contracting, much against his will, a marriage with Elizabeth Christina, a j^rincess of the house of Brunswick. Domestic hap- piness he neither sought nor found; for it appears that he never lived Avith his wife. Her endowments, mental and personal, were not such as to win the affections of so fastidious a man, but her moral qualities and conduct are highly commended ; and, excej^t in the resolute avoidance of her society, her husband through life treated her with high respect. From the time of his marriage to his succession, Frederic resided at Eheiusberg, a village some leagues north-east of Berlin. In 17 3i, he made his first campaign with Prince Eugene, but without displaying, or finding opportunity to display, the military talents by which he was dis- tinguished in after-life. From 1732, however, to 1740, his time was princi- pally devoted to literary amusements and society. Several of his published works were written during this period, and among them the " Anti-Machiavel," and " Considerations on the Character of Charles XII. ;" he also devoted some jDortion of his time to the study of tactics. His favorite companions were chiefly Frenchmen: and for French manners, language, cookery and philo- sophy, he displayed through life a very decided preference. The early part of Frederic's life gave little promise of his future energy as a soldier and statesman. The flute, em- broidered clothes, and the composition of indifferent French verses, seemed to occupy the attention of the young di- lettante. His accession to the throne, May 31, 1740, called his dormant ener- gies at once into action. He assumed the entire direction of government, charging himself with those minute and daily duties which princes gene- rally commit to their ministers. To discharge the multiplicity of business which thus devolved on him, he laid down strict rules for the regulation of his time and employments, to which, except when on active service, he scru- pulously adhered. Until an advanced period of life he always rose at four o'clock in the morning; and he be- stowed but a few minutes on his di'ess, in respect of which he was careless, even to slovenliness. But peaceful employments did not satisfy his active mind. His father, content with the possession of a powerful army, had never used it as an instrument of con- quest : Frederic, in the first year of his reign, undertook to wrest from Aus- tria the province of Silesia, On that country, which, from its adjoining sit- uation, was a most desirable acquisi- tion to the Prussian dominions, it ap- pears that he had some hereditary claims, to the assertion of which the time was favorable. At the death of Charles VI., in October, 1740, the here- ditary dominions of Austria devolved on a young female, the afterwards cele- brated Maria Theresa. Trusting to her weakness, Frederic at once marched an army into Silesia. The peojjle, being chiefly Protestants, were ill affected to theii" Austrian rulers, and the greater part of the country, except the for- tresses, fell without a battle into the King of Prussia's possession. In the following campaign, April 10th, 1741, was fou2;ht the battle of Molwitz, 62 FEEDEEIO II. wliicli requires raention, because in this engagement, tlie first in wliicli he com- manded, Frederic displayed neither the skill nor the courage which the whole of his subsequent life proved him really to possess. It was said that he took shelter in a windmill, and this gave rise to the sarcasm, that at Molwitz the King of Prussia had covered him- self with glory and with flour. The Prussians however remained masters of the field. In the autumn of the same year they advanced within two days' march of Vienna ; and it was in this extremity of distress, that Maria Theresa made her cslebrated and af- fecting appeal to the Diet of Hungary. A train of reverses, summed up by the decisive battle of Czaslaw, fought May 17th, 1742, in which Frederic display- ed both courage and conduct, induced Austria to consent to the treaty of Breslaw, concluded in the same sum- mer, by which Silesia, with the excep- tion of a small district, was ceded to Prussia, of which kingdom it has ever since continued to form a part. But though Prussia for a time en- Joyed peace, the state of European politics was far from settled, and Frederic's time was much occupied by foreign diplomacy, as well as by the internal improvements which always were the favorite objects of his solici- tude. The rapid rise of Prussia was not regarded with indifference by other powers. The Austrian govern- ment was inveterately hostile, from offended pride, as well as from a sense of injury ; Saxony took part with Austria ; Bussia, if not an open en- emy, was always a suspicious and un- friendly neighbor ; and George II. of England, the King of Prussia's uncle, both feared and disliked his nephew. Under these circumstances, upon the formation of the triple alliance be- tween Austria, England, and Sardinia, Frederic concluded a treaty with France and the Elector of Bavaria, who had succeeded Charles VI. as Emperor of Germany ; and antici- pated the designs of Austria upon Silesia, by marching into Bohemia in August, 1744. Diu'ing two campaigns the war was continued to the advan- tage of the Prussians, who, under the command of Frederic in person, gained two signal victories with inferior num- bers, at Ilohenfriedberg and Soor. At the end of December, 1745, he found himself in possession of Dres- den, the capital of Saxony, and in a condition to dictate terms of peace to Austria and Saxony, 1)y which Silesia was again recognized as jDart of the Prussian dominions. Five years were thus spent in ac- quiring and maintaining possession of this important province. The next ten years of Frederic II.'s life passed in profound peace. During this jieriod he applied himself diligently and suc- cessfully to recruit his army, and reno- vate the drained resources of Prussia. His habits of life were singularly uniform. He resided chiefly at Pots- dam, apportioning his time and his employments with methodical exact- ness; and, by this strict attention to method, he was enabled to exercise a minute superintendence oyer every branch of government, without es- tranging himself from social pleasures, or abandoning his literary pursuits. After the peace of Dresden he com- FKEDERIC II. 63 menced his " Histoire de mon Temps," which, iu jiddition to the history of his own wars in Silesia, contains a general account of European politics. About the same period he wi'ote his "Memoirs of the House of Branden- burg," the best of his historical works. He maintained an active correspond- ence with Voltaire, and other of the most distinguished men of Europe. He established, or rather restored, the Academy of Sciences of Berlin, and was eager to enrol eminent foreigners among its members, and to induce them to resort to his capital ; and the names of Yoltaire, Euler, Maupertuis, La Grange, and others of less note, testify his success. But his avowed contempt for the German, and admira- tion of the French literature and lan- guage, in which all the transactions of the Society were carried on, gave an exotic character to the institution, and crippled the national benefits which might have been expected to arise from it. The story of Fredei'ic's association with Voltaire, as narrated in his usual vivid manner by Macaulay, is worthy of being given in detail, for its illus- tration of the characters of both these extraordinary personages. It may fairly be prefaced Avith the same WTit- er's account of the king's entertain- ment of his literary friends at Potsdam. " It was the just boast of Schiller, that in his country no Augustus, no Lorenzo, had watched over the infancy of art. The rich and energetic lan- guage of Luther, driven by the Latin from the schools of pedants, and by the French from the palaces of kings, had taken refuge among the pcojile. Of the powers of that language, Fre- deric had no notion. He generally spoke of it, and of those who used it, with the contempt of ignorance. His libraiy consisted of French books ; at his table nothing was heard but French conversation. The associates of his hours of relaxation Avere, for the most part, foreigners. Britain fur- nished to the royal cii'cle two distin- guished men, born in the highest rank, and driven by civil dissensions from the land to which, under happier circumstances, their talents and virtues might have been a source of strength and glory. George Keith, Earl Mar- ischal of Scotland, had taken arms for the house of Stuart in 1715, and his younger brother James, then only sev- enteen years old, had fought gallantly by his side. "When all was lost they retired together to the Continent, roved from country to country, served under many standards, and so bore themselves as to win the respect and good-will of many who had no love for the Jacobite cause. Their long wanderings termin- ated at Potsdam ; nor had Frederic any associates who deserved or obtained so large a share of his esteem. They were not only accomplished men, but nobles and warriors, capable of serving him in war and diplomacy, as well as of amusing him at supper. Alone of all his companions they apjiear never to have had reason to complain of his demeanor towards them. Some of those who knew the palace best pro- nounced that the Lord Marischal was the only human l)eing whom Frederic over really loved. " Italy sent to the parties at Pots- dam the ingenious and amiable Alga- 64 FREDEEIC II. rotti, and Bastiani, the most crafty, cautious, and servile of Abbes. But the greater part of the society which Frederic had assembled round him, was di'awn from France. Maupertuis had acquired some celebrity by the journey which he made to Lapland, for the purpose of ascertaining, by actual measurement, the shape of our planet. He was placed in the chair of the Academy of Berlin, a humble imitation of the renowned Academy of Paris. Baculard D'Arnaud, a young poet, who was thought to have given promise of great things, had been in- duced to quit his country, and to reside at the Prussian Court. The Marquess D'Argens was among the king's favor- ite companions, on account, as it should seem, of the strong opposition between their characters. The parts of D'Ar- gens were good, and his manners those of a finished French gentleman ; but his whole soul was dissolved in sloth, timidity, and self-indulgence. His was one of that abject class of minds which are superstitious without being reli- gious. Hating Christianity with a rancor which made him incapable of rational inquiry : unable to see in the harmony and beauty of the universe the traces of divine power and wisdom, he was the slave of dreams and omens ; — would not sit down to table with thirteen in company ; turned pale if the salt fell towards him ; begged his guests not to cross their knives and forks on their plates ; and would not for the world commence a journey on Friday. His health was a subject of constant anxiety to him. Whenever his head ached, or his pulse beat quick, his dastardly fears and effeminate j)re- cautions Avere the jest of all Berlin. All this suited the king's purpose ad- mirably. He wanted somebody by whom he might be amused, and whom he might desjiise. When he wished to pass half-an-hour in easy polished con- versation, D'Argens was an excellent companion ; when he wanted to vent his spleen and contempt, D'Argens was an excellent butt. " With these associates, and others of the same class, Frederic loved to spend the time which he could steal fi-om public cares. He wished his sup- per-parties to be gay and easy ; and invited his guests to lay aside all re- straint, and to forget that he was at the head of a hundred and sixty thou- sand soldiers, and was absolute master of the life and liberty of all who sat at meat with him. There was, therefore, at these meetings the outward show of ease. The wit and learning of the company were ostentatiously displayed. The discussions on history and litera- ture were often highly interesting. But the absurdity of all the religions known among men was the chief topic of conversation ; and the audacity with which doctrines and names venerated throughout Christendom were treated on these occasions, startled even per- sons accustomed to the society of French and English free-thinkers. But real liberty, or real affection, was in this brilliant society not to be found. Absolute kings seldom have friends : and Frederic's faults were such as, even where perfect equality exists, make friendship exceedingly precarious. He had indeed many qualities, which, on a fii'st acquaintance, were captivating. His conversation was lively ; his man FEEDERIC II. 65 ners to tliose wliom he desired to please were even caressing. No man could flatter with more delicacy. No man succeeded more completely in inspiring those who aj)proached him with vague hopes of some great advantage from his kindness. But under this fair ex- terior he was a tyrant — suspicious, disdainful, and malevolent. " Potsdam was, in truth, what it was called liy one of its most illustrious inmates, the Palace of Alcina. At the first glance it seemed to be a delightful spot, where every intellectual and phy- sical enjoyment awaited the happy adventurer. Every new comer was received with eager hospitality, intoxi- cated with flattery, encouraged to ex- pect prosperity and greatness. It was in vain that a long succession of favor- ites who had entered that abode with delight and hope, and who, after a short term of delusive happiness, had been doomed to expiate their folly by years of wretchedness and degradation, raised their voices to warn the aspirant who approached the charmed threshold. Some had wisdom enough to discover the truth early, and spirit enough to fly without looking back ; others lin- gered on to a cheerless and unhonored old age. We have no hesitation in saying that the poorest author of that time in London, sleeping on a bulk, dining in a cellar, with a cravat of paper, and a skewer for a shirt-pin, was a happier man than any of the literary inmates of Frederic's court. " But of all who entered the en- chanted garden in the inebriation of delight, and quitted it in agonies of rage and shame, the most remarkable was Voltaire. To Berlin he was in- 9 vited by a series of letters, couched in terms of the most enthusiastic friend- ship and admiration. For once the rigid parsimony of Frederic seemed to have relaxed. Orders, honorable of- fices, a liberal pension, a well-served table, stately apartments under a royal roof, were offered in return for the pleasure and honor which were expect- ed from the society of the first wit of the age. A thousand louis were re- mitted for the charges of the journey. No ambassador setting out from Berlin for a court of the first rank, had ever been more amply supplied. But Vol- taire was not satisfied. At a later period, when he possessed an ample for- tune, he was one of the most liberal of men ; but till his means had become equal to his wishes, his greediness for lucre was unrestrained either by jus- tice or by shame. He had the effron- tery to ask for a thousand louis more, in order to enable him to bring his niece, Madame Denis, the ugliest of co- quettes, in his company. The indeli- cate rapacity of the poet produced its natural effect on the severe and frueal king. The answer was a dry refusal, 'I did not,' said his majesty, 'solicit the honor of a lady's society.' On this, Voltaire went off into a jjaroxysm of childish rage. ' Was there ever such avarice ? He has hundreds of tubs full of dollars in his vaults^ and hag- gles with me aboiit a poor thousand louis.' It seemed that the nesjotiation would be broken oft'; but Frederic, with great dexterity, affected indiffer- ence, and seemed inclined to transfer his idolatry to Baculard d'Arnaud. His majesty even wrote some bad verses, of which the sense was, that 66 FKEDEEIC II. Voltaire was a setting sun, and that Arnaud was rising. Good-natured friends soon carried the lines to Vol- taire. He was in his bed. He jumped out in his shirt, danced about the room Avith rage, and sent for his passjDort and his post-horses. It was not diffi- cult to foresee the end of a connection which had such a beginning. "It was in the year 1750 that Vol- taire left the great capital, which he was not to see again till, after the lapse of nearly thirty years, he returned, bow- ed down by extreme old age, to die in the midst of a splendid and ghastly triumph. His reception in Prussia was such as might well have elated a less vain and excitable mind. He wi'ote to his friends at Paris, that the kindness and the attention with which he had been welcomed surpassed description - — that the hing was the most amiable of men — that Potsdam was the para- dise of philosophers. He was created chamberlain, and received, together with his gold key, the cross of an order, and a patent ensuring to him a pen- sion of eight hundred pounds sterling a-year for life. A hundred and sixty pounds a-year were promised to his niece if she survived him. The royal cooks and coachmen were put at his disposal. He was lodged in the same apartments in which Saxe had lived, when, at the height of power and glory, he visited Prussia. Frederic, indeed, stooped for a time even to use the lan- guage of adulation. He pressed to his lips the meagre hand of the little grin- ning skeleton, whom he regarded as the dispenser of immortal renown. He would add, he said, to the titles which he owed to his ancestors and his sword, another title, derived from his last and proudest acquisition. His style should run thus : — Frederic, King of Prussia, Margrave of Brandenburg, Sovereign Duke of Silesia, Possessor of Voltaire. But even amidst the delights of the honey -moon, Voltaire's sensitive vanity began to take alarm. A few days after his arrival, he could not help telling his niece, that the amiable king had a trick of giving a sly scratch with one haud while patting and stroking with the other. Soon came hints not the less alarming because mysterious. ' The supper parties are delicious. The king is the life of the company. But — I have operas and comedies, reviews and concerts, my studies and books. But — but — Berlin is fine, the princess charm- ing, the maids of honor handsome. But, ' " This eccentric friendship was fast cooling. Never had there met two per- sons so exquisitely fitted to plague each other. Each of them had exactly the fault of which the other was most im- patient; and they were, in different ways, the most impatient of mankind. Frederic was frugal, almost niggardly. When he had secured his plaything, he began to think that he had bought it too dear. Voltaire, on the other hand, was greedy, even to the extent of im- pudence and knavery; and conceived that the favorite of a monarch who had barrels full of gold and silver laid up in cellars, ought to make a fortune, which a receiver-general might envy. They soon discovered each other's feel- ings. Both were angry, and a war be- gan, in which Frederic stooped to the part of Harpagon, and Voltaire to that of Scapin. It is humiliating to relate. FEEDEEIC II. 67 that the great warrior and statesman gave orders that his guest's allowance of sugar and chocolate should be cur- tailed. It is, if possible, a still more humiliating fact, that Voltaire indem- nified himself by pocketing the wax- candles in the royal ante-chamber. Disputes about money, however, were not the most serious disputes of these extraordinary associates. The sarcasms of the king soon galled the sensitive temper of the poet. D'Arnaud and D'Argens, Guichard and La Metric, might, for the sake of a morsel of bread, be willing to bear the insolence of a master; but Voltaire was of another order. He knew that he was a poten- tate as well as Frederic ; that his Eu- ropean reputation, and his incompara- ble power of covering whatever he hated with ridicule, made him an ob- ject of dread even to the leaders of armies and the rulers of nations. In truth, of all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants who had never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name. Principles unassailable by rea- son, i^rinciples which had withstood the fiercest attacks of power, the most valuable truths, the most generous sen- timents, the noblest and most graceful images, the purest reputations, the most august institutions, began to look mean and loathsome as soon as that withering smile was turned upon them. To every opponent, how- ever strons; in his cause and his tal- ents, in his station and his character, who ventured to encounter the great scoffer, might be addressed the caution which was given of old to the Arch- angel : ' I forewarn thee, shun His deadly arrow ; neither vainly liope To be invulnerable in those bright arms, Though temper'd heavenly; for that fatal dint, Save Him who reigns above, none can resist.' " We cannot pause to recount how often that rare talent was exercised against rivals worthy of esteem — how often it was used to crush and torture enemies worthy only of silent disdain — hoAv often it Avas perverted to the more noxious purpose of destroying the last solace of earthly misery, and the last restraint on earthly power. Neither can we jiause to tell how often it was used to vindicate justice, hu- manity, and toleration — the principles of sound philosojihy, the principles of fi'ee government. Causes of quaiTel multiplied fast. Voltaire, who, partly from love of money, and partly from love of excitement, was always fond of stock-jobbing, became implicated in transactions of at least a dubious char- acter. The king was delighted at hav- ing such an opportunity to humble his guest; and bitter reproaches and complaints were exchanged. Voltaire, too, was soon at war with the other men of letters who surrounded the king ; and this irritated Frederic, who, however, had himself chiefly to blame : for, fi'om that love of tormenting which was in him a ruling passion, he per- petually lavished extravagant praises on small men and bad books, merely in order that he might enjoy the mor- tification and rage which on such oc- casions Voltaire took no pains to con- ceal. His majesty, however, soon had reason to regret the pains which he 68 FEEDERIC II. had taken to kindle jealousy among tke members of his household. The whole palace was in a ferment with literary intrigues and cabals. It was to no purpose that the imperial voice, which kept a hundred and sixty thou- sand soldiers in order, was raised to quiet the contention of the exasperated wits. It was far easier to stir up such a storm than to lull it. Nor was Fred- eric, in his capacity of wit, by any means without his own share of vexations. He had sent a large quantity of verses to Voltaire, and requested that they might be returned, with remarks and correction. ' See,' exclaimed Voltaire, ' what a quantity of his dirty linen the kino- has sent me to wash ! ' Talebear- ers were not wanting to carry the sar- casm to the royal ear; and Frederic was as much incensed as a Grub Street writer who had found his name in the ' Dunciad.' " This could not last. A circumstance which, when the mutual regard of the friends was in its first glow, would merely have been matter for laughter, produced a violent explosion. Mau- pertuis enjoyed as much of Frederic's good- will as any man of letters. He was president of the Academy of Ber- lin; and stood second to Voltaire, though at an immense distance, in the literary society which had been assem- bled at the Prussian court. Frederic had, by playing for his own amusement on the feelings of the two jealous and vainglorious Frenchmen, succeeded in producing a bitter enmity between them. Voltaire resolved to set his mark, a mark never to be eflTaced, on the forehead of Maupertuis ; and wrote the exquisitely ludicrous diatribe of "Doctor Akakia." He showed this little piece to Frederick, who had too much taste and too much malice not to relish such delicious pleasantry. In truth, even at this time of day, it is not easy for any person who has the least perception of the ridiculous to read the jokes on the Latin city, the Patagonians, and the hole to the centre of the earth, without laughing till he cries. But though Frederic was di- verted by this charming j^asquinade, he was unwilling that it should get abroad. His self-love was interested. He had selected Maupertuis to fill the chair of his Academy. If all Europe were taught to laugh at Maupertuis, would not the reputation of the Aca- demy, would not even the dignity of its royal patron, be in some degree compromised? The king, therefore, begged Voltaire to suppress his per- formance. Voltaire promised to do so, and broke his word. The diatribe was published, and received with shouts of merriment and applause by all who could read the French language. The king stormed. Voltaire, Avith his usual disregard of truth, protested his innocence, and made up some lie about a printer or an amanuensis. The king was not to be so imposed upon. He ordered the pamphlet to be burned by the common hangman, and insisted upon having an apology from Voltaire, couched in the most abject terms. Voltaire sent back to the king his cross, his key, and the patent of his pension. After this burst of rage, the strange pair began to be ashamed of their violence, and went through the forms of reconciliation. But the breach was irreparable ; and Voltaire FRE13EEIC II. G9 took liis leave of Frederic for ever. They parted with cold civility; but their hearts were big with resentment. Voltaire had in his keeping a volume of the king's poetry, and forgot to re- turn it. This was, we believe, merely one of the oversights which men set- ting out upon a Journey often commit. That Voltaire could have meditated plagiarism is quite incredible. He would not, we are confident, for the half of Frederic's kingdom, have con- sented to father Frederic's verses. The king, however, who rated his own writings much above their value, and who was inclined to see all Voltaire's actions in the worst light, was enraged to think that his favorite compositions were in the hands of an enemy, as thievish as a daw and as mischievous as a monkey. In the anger excited by this thought, he lost sight of reason and decency, and determined on com- mitting an outrage at once odious and ridiculous. "Voltaire had reached Frankfort. His niece. Madam Denis, came thither to meet him. He conceived himself secure from the power of his late master, when he was arrested by order of the Prussian resident. The pre- cious volume was delivered up. But the Prussian agents had, no doubt, been instructed not to let Voltaire escape without some gross indignity. He was confined twelve days in a wretched hovel. Sentinels with fixed bayonets kept guard over him. His niece was dragged through the mire by the soldiers. Sixteen hundred dol- lars were extorted from him by his insolent Jailers. It is absurd to say that this outrage is not to be attri- buted to the king. "Was anybody punished for it ? Was anybody called in question for it ? Was it not consist- ent with Frederic's character ? Was it not of a piece with his conduct on other similar occasions ? Is it not no- torious that he repeatedly gave private dii'ections to his officers to pillage and demolish the houses of pei'sons against whom he had a grudge — charging them at the same time to take their meas- ures in such a way that his name might not be compromised? He acted thus towards Count Buhl in the Seven Years' War. Why should Ave believe that he would have been more scru- pulous with regard to Voltaire ? " Turning from this exhibition of dis- creditable royal vanity and meanness, we may with more satisfaction look upon the service of Frederic to the state in its civil as well as military development, and study the real great- ness of this extraordinary man. In the cause of education he was active, both by favoring the universities, to which he sought to secure the services of the best professors, and by the es- tablishment of schools wherever the circumstances of the neighborhood rendered it desirable. It is said that he sometimes founded as many as sixty schools in a single year. This period of his reign is also marked by the commencement of that revision of the Prussian law (a con- fused and corrupt mixture of Roman and Saxon Jm-isprudence) which led to the substitution of an entirely new code. In this important business the Chancellor Cocceii took the lead ; but the system established by him under- went considerable alterations from FEEDEEIC 11. time to time, and at last was remodel- led in 1781. For the particular merits or imperfections of the code, the law- yers who drew it up are answerable, rather than the monarch ; but the lat- ter possesses the high honor of ha\dng proved himself, in this and other in- stances, sincerely desirous to assure to his subjects a pure and ready admiais- tration of justice. Sometimes this de- sire joined to a certain love and habit of personal inquiry into all things, led the kino; to a meddling and mischiev- ous interference with the course of jus- tice ; but in all cases his intention seems to have been pure, and his conduct proves him sincere in the injunction to his judges : — " If a suit arises between me and one of my subjects, and the case is a doubtful one, you should al- ways decide against me." If, as in the celebrated imprisonment of Baron Trenck, he chose to perform an arbi- trary action, he did it openly, not by tampering with courts of justice: but these despotic measures were not fre- quent, and few countries have ever enjoyed a fuller practical license of speech and printing, than Prussia un- der a simply despotic form of govern- ment, administered by a prince natu- rally of impetuous passions and stern and unforgiving temper. That temper, however, was kept admirably within bounds, and seldom suffered to appear in civil aft'airs. His code is remark- able for the abolition of torture, and the toleration granted to all religions. The latter enactment, however, re- quired no great share of liberality from Frederic, who avowed his indif- ference to all religions alike. In crim- inal cases he was opposed to severe punishments, and was always strongly averse to shedding blood. To his sub- jects, both in person and by letter, he was always accessible, and to the peas- antry in j^articular he displayed pater- nal kindness, patience, and condescen- sion. But, on the other hand, his mili- tary system was frightfully severe, both in its usual discipline and in its punishments. Numbers of soldiers de- serted, or put an end to their lives, or committed crimes that they might be given up to justice. Yet his kindness and familiarity in the field, and his fearless exposure of his own person, endeared him exceedingly to his sol- diers, and many pleasing anecdotes, honorable to both parties, are pre- served, especially during the cam- paigns of the Seven Years' War. During this peace Austria had re- cruited her strength, and with it her inveterate hostility to Prussia ; and it became known to Frederic that a se- cret agreement for the conquest and partition of his territories existed be- tween Austria, Kussia, and Saxony. The circumstances of the times were such that, though neither France nor England were cordially disposed to- wards him, it was yet open to him to negotiate an alliance with either. Frederic chose that of England ; and France, forgetting ancient enmities, and her obvious political interest, im- mediately took part with Austria. The odds of force apparently were overwhelming; but, having made up his mind, the King of Prussia dis- played his usual promptitude. He demanded an explanation of the views of the court of Vienna, and, on receiv- ing an unsatisfactory answer, signified FREDERIC II. 71 that lie considered it a declaration of war. Knowing tliat tlie court of Saxony, contrary to existing treaties, Avas secretly engaged in the league against him, he marched an army into the electorate in August, 1756, and, almost unopposed, took military pos- session of it. He thus turned the enemy's resources against himself, and drew from that unfortunate country continual supplies of men and money, without which he could scarcely have supjjorted the protracted struggle which ensued, and which is celebrated under the title of the Seven Years' War. The events of this war, how- ever interesting to a military student, are singularly unfit for concise narra- tion, and that from the very circum- stances which displayed the King of Prussia's talents to most advantao-e. Attacked on eveiy side, compelled to hasten from the pursuit of a beaten, to make head in some other quarter against a threatening enemy, the ac- tivity, vigilance, and indomitable reso- lution of Frederic must strike all those who read these campaigns at length, and with the necessary helj) of maps and plans, though his profound tactical skill and readiness in emersjen- cies may be fully appreciable only by the learned. But when these compli- cated events are reduced to a bare list of marches and countermarches, vic- tories and defeats, the spirit vanishes, and a mere caput mortuum remains. The war being necessarily defensive, Frederic could seldom carry the seat of action into an enemy's country. The Prussian dominions were sulgect to continual ravage, and that country, as well as Saxony, paid a heavy price that the possession of Silesia might be decided between two rival sovereisjns. Upon the whole, the first campaigns were favorable to Prussia; but the confessed superiority of that power in respect of generals (for the king Avas admirably supported by Prince Fer- dinand of Brunswick, Prince Henry of Prussia, Schwerin, Keith, and others) could not always countervail the great superiority of force Avith Avhich it had to contend. The celel>rated A'ictoiy won by the Prussians at Prague, May 6th, 1757, was balanced by a severe de- feat at Kolin, the result, as Frederic confesses, of his own rashness ; but, at the end of autumn, he retrieved the rcA^erses of the summer, by the bril- liant A'ictories of Eosbach, and Leu- then or Lissa. In 1758, Frederic's contempt of his enemy lulled him into a false security, in consequence of AA'hich he Avas surprised and defeated at Hochkirchen. But the campaigns of 1759 and 17G0 Avere a succession of disasters by which Prussia Avas reduced to the A'erge of ruin ; and it appears, fi'om Frederic's correspondence, that, in the autiimn of the latter year, his reverses led him to contemplate sui- cide, in preference to consenting to what he thousrht dishonorable terms of peace. The next campaign Avas bloody and indecisive ; and in the fol- lowing year the secei^sioii of Eussia and France induced Austria, then much exhausted, to consent to a peace, by which Silesia and the o'her posses- sions of Frederic Avere secured to him as he possessed them before the Avar. So that this enormous expense of blood and treasure produced no result what- ever, except that of establishing the 72 FEEDEEIC II. King of Prussia's reputation as tlie first living general of Europe. Peace was signed at the castle of Huberts- burg, near Dresden, Feb. loth, 1763. The brilliant military reputation which Frederic had acquired in this arduous contest did not tempt him to pursue the career of a conqueror. Pie had risked everything to maintain pos- session of Silesia ; but if his writings speak the real feelings of his mind, he was deeply sensible to the sufferings and evils which attend upon war. "The state of Prussia," he himself says, in the " Histoire de mon Temps," " can only be comj^ared to that of a man riddled with wounds, weakened by loss of blood, and ready to sink under the weight of his misfortunes. The nobility was exhausted, the com- mons ruined, numbers of villages were burnt, of towns ruined. Civil order was lost in a total anarchy : in a word, the desolation was universal." To cure these evils Frederic applied his earn- est attention ; and by grants of money to those towns which had suft'ered most ; by the commencement and con- tinuation of various great works of public utility ; by attention to agricul- ture ; by draining marshes, and settling colonists in the barren, or ruined por- tions of his country; by cherishing manufactures (though not always with a useful or judicious zeal), he succeed- ed in repairing the exhausted popula- tion and resources of Prussia with a rapidity the more wonderful, because his military establishment was at the same time recruited and maintained at the enormous number, considering the size and wealth of the kingdom, of 200,000 men. One of his measures deserves especial notice, the emancipa- tion of the peasants from hereditary servitude. This great undertaking he commenced at an early period of his reign, by giving up his own seignioral rights over the serfs on the crown do- mains : he completed it in the year 1766, by an edict abolishing servitude throughout his dominions. In 1765, he commenced a gradual alteration in the fiscal system of Prussia, suggested in part by the celebrated Helvetius. In the department of finance, though all his experiments did not succeed, he was very successful. He is said, in the course of his reign, to have raised the annual revenue to nearly double what it had been in his father's time, and that without increasing the pressure of the people. In such cares and in his literary pursuits, among which we may espe- cially mention his "History of the Seven Years' War," passed the time of Frederic for ten years. In 1772, he engaged in the nefarious project for the first partition of Poland. It does not seem, however, that the scheme originated, as has been said, with Frederic: on the contrary, it appears to have been conceived by Catherine II., and matured in conversations with Prince Henry, the King of Prussia's brother, during a visit to St. Peters- burg. By the treaty of pai"tition, which was not finally arranged till 1777, Prussia gained a territory of no great extent, but of importance from its connecting Prussia Proper with the electoral dominions of Brandenburg and Silesia, and giving a compactness to the kingdom, of which it stood greatly in need. Frederic made some FREDEEIC II. 73 amends for liis conduct in tliis matter, by the diligence Avith Avhicli he labored to improve his acquisition. In this, as in most circumstances of internal administration, he Avas very successful ; and the country, ruined by war, mis- government, and the Lrutal sloth of its inhabitants, soon assumed the as- pect of cheerful industry. The Kin2: of Prussia once more led an army into the field, when, on the death of the Elector of Bavaria, child- less, in 1778, Joseph II. of Austria conceived the plan of re-annexing to his own crown, under the j^lea of vari- ous antiquated feudal rights, the great- er part of the Bavarian territories. Stimulated quite as much by jealousy of Austria, as by a sense of the injus- tice of this act, Frederic stood out as the assertor of the liberties of Ger- many, and proceeding with the utmost 23oliteness from explanation to expla- nation, he marched an army into Bo- hemia in July, 1778. The war, how- ever, which was terminated in the fol- lowing S2:>riug by the peace of Teschen, was one of manoeuvres, and partial en- gagements ; in Avhich Frederic's skill in strategy shone Avith its usual lustre, and success, on the Avhole, rested Avith the Prussians. By the terms of the treaty, the Bavarian dominions Avere secured, nearly entire, to the rightful collateral heirs, Avhose scA'cral claims were settled, while certain minor stip- ulations were made in faA'or of Prussia. A fcAV years later, in 1785, Frederic again found occasion to oppose Aus- tria, in defence of the integrity of the Germanic constitution. The Emperor Joseph, in prosecution of his designs on Bav^aria, had formed a contract 10 Avith the reigning elector, to exchange the Austrian proA^inces in the Nether- lands for the Electorate. Dissenting from this arrangement, the heir to the succession entrusted the advocacy of his rights to Frederic, AA'ho lost no time in negotiating a confederation among the chief powers of Germany, (knoAvn by the name of the Germanic League,) to support the constitution of the empire, and the rights of its seA^eral princes. By this timely step Austria Avas compelled to forego the desired acqiiisition. At this time Frederic's constitution had begun to decay. He had long been a sufferer from gout, the natural consequence of indulgence in good eat- ing and rich cookery, to Avhicli through- out his life he Avas addicted. Towards the end of the year he began to experi- ence great difficulty of breathing. His complaints, aggravated by total neglect of medical adA^ce, and an extravagant appetite, Avhich he gratified by eating to excess of the most highly seasoned and uuAvholesome food, terminated in a confirmed dropsy. During the lat- ter months of his life he suffered griev- ously from this complication of disor- ders ; and through this period he dis- displayed remarkable patience, and consideration for the feelings of those around him. No expression of suffer- ing Avas alloAved to pass his lips ; and up to the last day of his life he con- tinued to discharge Avith punctuality those political duties which he had im- posed upon himself in youth and strength. Strange to say, Avhile he ex- hibited this extraordinary self-control in some respects, he Avould not abstain from the most extravagant excesses in u FEEDERIC II. diet, though they were almost always followed by a severe aggravation of his sufferings. Up to August 15th, 1786, he continued, as usual, to receive and answer all communications, and to des- patch the usual routine of civil and military business. On the following day he fell into a lethargy, from which he only partially recovered. He died in the course of the night of August 16. The published works of the King of Prussia were collected in twenty-three volumes, 8vo. Amsterdam, 1790. We shall here mention, as completing the body of his historical works, ihe " Me- moires depuis la Paix de Huberts- bourg," and " Memoires de la Guerre de 1778." Among his poems, the most remarkable is the " Art de la Guerre ; " but these, as happens in most cases, where the writer has thought fit to em- ploy a foreign language, have been lit- tle known or esteemed, since their au- thor ceased to rivet the attention of the world by the brilliance of his ac- tions, and the singularity of his char- acter. Of the personal appearance of the king. Old Fritz, as he was familiarly called by the people, we have this graphic sketch by his latest biographer, Carlyle : " A king every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king. Presents himself in a Spartan simplicity of vesture ; no crown but an old mili- tary cocked-hat; no sceptre but one like Agamemnon's, a walking-stick out of the woods, which serves also as a riding-stick; and for royal robes, a mere soldier's blue coat with red fa- cings, coat likely to be old, and sure to have a great deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in color or cut, end- ing in high, over-knee, military boots, which may be brushed, but ai"e not permitted to be blackened or varnish- ed. The man is not of godlike phy- siognomy, any more than of imposing stature or costume : close shut mouth with thin lips,- prominent jaws and nose, receding brow, by no means of Olympian height; head, however, is of long form and has superlative gray eyes in it. Not what is called a beau- tiful man, nor yet, by all appearance what is called a happy one. On the contrary, the face bears evidence of many sorrows, as they are termed, of much hard labor done in this world ; and seems to anticipate nothing but more still coming. Quiet stoicism, ca- pable enough of what Joy there were, but not expecting any worth mention ; great unconscious and some conscious pride, well tempered with a cheery mockery of humor, — are Avritten on that old face ; which carries its chin well forward, in spite of the slight stoop about the neck ; snuffy nose ra- ther flung into the air, under its old cocked-hat, — like an old snuffy lion on the watch ; and such a pair of eyes as no man or lion or lynx of that cen- tury bore elsewhere, according to all the testimony we have."* * The main portion of this narrative is from the "Gallery of Portraits and Memoirs," pub- lished under the superintendence of the "So- ciety for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." The episode on the intimacy of tlie sovereign ■with Voltaire is from Macaulay's article on Frederic in the Edinburgh Review. EDWARD GIBBON alBBON has so well told the story of his life in his memorable Auto- biography, that subsequent writers in their account of the man, including his editor, the persevering Milman, have had no other course to pursue than to follow closely the details of his narra- tive. The Autobiography is indeed an extraordinary production among the works of its class. Its style is charm- ing, with just enough of that elevation which gives such peculiar emphasis to the author's great work to impart to or- dinary incidents a certain indescribable animation which we can find nowhere more agreeably displayed. Written evi- dently with the consciousness of the value of his " History " to the world, it unfolds to us the processes of acci- dent or study by which he gradually reached that great work. It was not till he felt that he had some claims upon the attention of the world by the completion of the History that he un- dertook the preparation of his personal memoir ; and he proceeded in it with so much care that he left for his friend and literary executor, Lord Sheffield, no less than six different sketches of the work, all in his own handwriting. From all of these, the " Memoirs," as they now stand, were constructed. Their motive is expressed in a few opening sentences, revealing at the start a certain pride of authorship and sense of the importance of the task ; egotistical, of course, for to be success- ful in literary compositions one must be in love with his subject, so that a man who undertakes to write his au- tobiography should he first assured that he is in love with himself If this were the only qualification, how- ever, it must be admitted there would be few failures in productions of this class. " In the fifty-second year of my age," Gibbon commences, " after the completion of an arduous and suc- cessful work, I now jiropose to employ some moments of my leisure in review- ing the simple transactions of a private and literary life. Truth, naked, un- blushing truth, the first virtue of more serious history, must be the sole re- commendation of this personal narra- tive. The style shall be simple and familiar: but style is the image of character; and the habits of correct ■\vi'iting may produce, without labor or design, the appearance of art and study. My own amusement is my motive, and will be my reward : and if these sheets (75) 76 EDWAKD GIBBOE". are communicated to some discreet and indulgent friends, tliey will be secreted from the public eye till the author shall be removed beyond the reach of criti- cism or ridicule." Following then this best authority, the historian himself, we ascend with him in the records of his ancestry to the eleventh century, when the Gib- bons of Kent flourished in that old English county. One of the family was architect or castle-builder of King Edward III. ; another, was captain of the Eno-lish militia in the reio-n of Eli- zabeth. An alliance by marriage con- nected the. historian, in the eleventh degree, with a Lord High Treasurer of England of the days of Henry VI., the historic Baron Say and Scale who was beheaded by the insurgents in the Kentish Rebellion, and who, in Shahe- speare's play is reproached by Jack Cade with erecting a grammar school, setting printers at work, building a paper mill, and having men about him " who usually talk with a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear." " Our dramatic poet," writes the his- torian of the Roman Empire " is gene- rally more attentive to character than to history ; and I much fear that the art of jDrinting was not introduced into England till several years after Lord Say's death : but of some of these me- ritorious crimes I should hope to find my ancestors guilty; and a man of letters may be proud of his descent from a patron and martyr of learning." At the beginning of the seventeenth century a branch of the family settled in London in mercantile life and pros- pered, Edward, the grandfather of the historian, acquiring wealth as a draper and rising to a government appoint- ment as one of the commissioners of the customs. Unhappily he became a director of the South Sea Company, and his previous fortune of sixty thou- sand pounds was lost in the wreck of that extraordinary speculation. Es- caping from his creditors with a small allowance, he was however enabled by his energy to repair his losses and be- come again a man of consideration for his property. His son Edward was educated at Westminster School and at Cambridge, enjoyed the advantages of foreign travel, and on his retui'n represented the tory interest in parlia- ment as a borough member. He mar- ried the daughter of James Porten, a London merchant, and of this union, the first child, Edward, the subject of this notice, was born at the family es- tate at Putney, in the County of Surry, on the 27th of April, old style, 1737. So weak appeared the constitution of the child, that his father, to preserve the family designation, thought fit to call each of his five brothers who suc- ceeded him by the name of Edward ; yet they all died in their infancy, leav- ing;: the first-born to maintain the hon- ors of the title. The care of Edward in his feeble childhood fell to his aunt, Mrs. Catharine Porten, who watched over him with the greatest assiduity, and to whose kind care he attributed the preservation of his life. At the age of seven he was jjrovided with a domestic tutor named Kirkby, a man of some ingenuity as an author and grammarian, from whose hands, at the end of eighteen months, he was sent to a school at Kingston, where, as he tells EDWAKD GIBBON. 77 us, " by the common methods of disci- pline, at the expense of many tears and some blood, I purchased the knowledge of the Latin syntax." The authors which he studied at this time, or, as he expresses it, "painfully construed and darkly understood," were the lives of Cornelius Nepos and the fables of Phsedrus. The one gave him his first glimpses of the history of Greece and Rome ; the other taught him in an at- tractive form " the truths of morality and prudence." After two years' study at the school, frequently interrupted by sickness, he Avas recalled by his mother's death, which brought him again within the attentions of his aunt, a lady of cultivated understanding, who encouraged his mental develop- ment and inspired him with an ar- dent pursuit of knowledge. " To her kind lessons," he says, " I ascribe my early and invincible love of reading, which I would not exchano^e for the treasures of India." Owing to her fa- ther's losses in business, Mrs. Porten, in u spirit of independence, in keeping with her high character, opened a boarding-house for the scholars of "Westminster School. Her nephew, Edward, now at the age of twelve, joined her in this neAv residence and was immediately entered at the school, which, as we have seen, his father had attended before him. The boy still needed the care of his devoted aunt; his studies were still broken in uj^on by his maladies, while " in the space of two years, interrupted by danger and debility," as he informs us, he "pain- fully climbed into the third form." All this while his lessons were of the elementary character, leaving him to " acquire in a riper age the beauties of the Latin and the rudiments of the Greek tona:ue." Unable to miusle in the sports of the school, his leisure with his aunt was doubtless largely given to reading. Pie was already familiar with Pope's Homer, Dryden's Vii'gil, Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and had "turn- ed over many English pages of poetry and romance, of history and travels," in his maternal grandfather's library. A severe nervous affection now led to his withdi'awal from Westminster to seek relief from the mineral waters at Bath, and some time was passed at vari- ous residences, his education being car- ried on in the most desultory manner, till at about sixteen his constitution unexpectedly developing ncAv powers and throwing off his former complaints, after an unprofitable attempt to pursue his studies with Francis, the translator of Horace, who proved too careless for the duty which he assumed, the young Gibbon, ~n'ithout further preparation, before he had accomj^lished his fifteenth year, was entered by his father as a student at Magdalen College, Oxford. Imperfectly trained in the regular academic studies in consequence of his frequent attacks of illness, the youth carried Avith him to the University an extraordinary stock of miscellaneous reading, which had already been con- centrated iipon history, especially in reference to Gi-eece and Rome. He had eagerly perused all that he could lay his hands upon relating to these subjects in translations of the ancient authors, and had penetrated beyond the classic period into the later Byzan- tine period and the outlying history 78 EDWAED GIBBON. of the East. " Before I was sixteen," says he, " I Lad exhausted all that could be learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Tm'ks ; and the same ardor urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot, and to con- strue the barbarous Latin of Pocock's Albufaragius." Nor was this merely the gratification of an idle curiosity. The historic passion was already de- veloped within him, as is shown by his careful study of geography and chro- nology. He sought order and accuracy in the confusion of the early dates, and perplexed himself with the systems of rival authorities. His sleep was dis- turbed by the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew com- putation. With such acquirements, " I arrived at Oxford," says he, " with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ig- norance, of which a school-boy would have been ashamed." The transition to the University was well calculated to make a mark- ed impression on a youth whose intel- lectual faculties were thus alive for wonder and admiration. Entering with all the privileges of wealth, " I felt myself suddenly raised from a boy to a man ; the persons, whom I respect- ed as my superiors in age and acade- mical rank, entertained me with every mark of attention and civility; and my vanity was flattered by the velvet cap and silk gown which distinguished a gentleman-commoner from a plebeian student. A decent allowance, more money than a school-boy had ever seen, was at my o^vn disposal ; and I might command, among the tradesmen at Oxford, an indefinite and dangerous latitude of credit. A key was deliv- ered into my hands, which gave iue the free use of a numerous and learn- ed library: my apartment consisted of three elea:ant and well furnished rooms in the new building, a stately pile, of Magdalen College; and the adjacent walks, had they been fre- quented by Plato's disciples, might have been compared to the Attic shade on the banks of the Ilissus." With such advantages shielding the student so effectually in his defects of special preparation, one would have thought the course of an ingenuous youth would have been steadily onward without in- terruption. Every opportunity was in his way to amend his deficiencies, with a large liberty for the prosecution of his favorite studies. But too much appears to have been left to his choice ; his tutors were compliant and indiffer- ent, and he took advantage of their neglect, giving himself freely to the amusements and dissipations of the place. He needed restraint and pre- scribed duties, and from both he was exempt in the privileged ease of the college. But though he was acquiring little in exact learning or mental disci- pline, his mind was not inactive. In his first long vacation he was intent upon writing a book which involved much learned reading, on "The Age of Sesostris," and actually accomplish- ed a portion of it. On his return to the University, he engaged in a course of religious reading, excited by the pe- rusal of Dr. Middleton's " Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers possessed by the Church in the Early Ages," a work so consonant with Gibbon's later habits of thought, that it is surprising EDWAED GIBBOK 79 that lie did not then accept its skepti- cism in relation to the pretensions iip- on which the Romanists relied. But his prejudices were then enlisted on the side of what he considered author- ity, and with the wholesale ardor of youth, accepting as an inference from the miraculous claims of the Church of Rome, its whole series of doctrines, having finished his conversion by him- self chiefly from the writings of Bos- suet, he got access to a Jesuit priest in London, and " at his feet solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of heresy." As the act of a youth of sixteen, in the situation of life in which Gibbon Avas placed, it exhibits a cer- tain courao-eous enthusiasm of charac- ter, not less than the vanity or indis- cretion to which it might be readily assigned. Looking back upon it in af- ter life, he writes, "To my present feelings, it seems incredible that I should ever believe that I believed in trausubstantiation." This boyish freak cost the convert his luxurious abode in Magdalen and trans- ferred him accordina; to an arrans-ement made by his father to the care of Mr. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister at Lausanne, in Switzerland, who was now charged with the continuance of his studies with the view of disengao;- ing his mind from his new ecclesiasti- cal opinions. A better choice of a preceptor could hardly have been made than this calm, clear-headed, mode- rate, benevolent M. Pavilliard, a man of learning and information, who speedily acquired an influence over his pupil, and in no long time, " the various articles of the Romish creed disappearing like a di'cam," brought him into full communion with the Protestant Church of Lausanne. "It was here," writes the mature Gibbon, "that I suspended my religious in- quiries, acqixiescing with imjilicit be- lief in the tenets and mysteries, which are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants." But it was not only in his amended religious creed that Gibbon profited by the instructions of his new teacher. The whole current of his life was changed by this transfer to Switzer- land. In place of the luxurious quar- ters of the fellow commoner at Ma2;da- len, he was now, with a tightened purse, submitting to the small econo- mies of a mea2;re residence in a dull street of an unhandsome town, with his studies to begin anew in the ele- ments of a foreign language. It was much to his credit that he accepted the new conditions with equanimity. Here, indeed, at Lausanne, his educa- tion as a source of power and strength may fairly l)e said to have begun. He not only became thoroughly acquaint- ed with French and accustomed to write and speak it, but he thought in it and incorjiorated its finer spirit with his mental processes. His Eng- lish prejudices disajipeared under this foreign culture, and the sphere of his criticism on history and its methods were greatly enlarged. He made himself also a master of the Latin and acquired a knowledge of the Greek, which he afterwards perfected. Choos- ing some classic Latin or French au- thor, he would translate from' one tongue into the other, and when the phrases had passed from his memory, would re-translate his work into the 80 EDWAED GIBBOlSr. otlier language and compare tlie result witL. the original from whicli he had started. In this way he became ac- complished in two foreign tongues. An intimate knowledge of Cicero led the way to his acquaintance with the whole series of the Latin classics, of which he made abstracts in French. A close study of logic gave dexterity to his critical faculties, which were set in motion and sharpened by the delight with which he perused the Provincial Letters of Pascal, from which he learn- ed the art of which he so often availed himself in his " History," of " manag- ing the weapon of grave and temperate irony, even on subjects of ecclesiasti- ca solemnity." The confidence and ac- tivity of his mind were shown in his opening a correspondence on points of learned inquiry with various distin- guished professors of Europe, in which he sustained his part with credit. Al- together, the five years of his novitiate at Lausanne, were well spent, and when, at the end of this time, he was recalled by his father to England, the foundation of his future literary great- ness may be said to have been already laid. An episode of his career as a student at Lausanne should not be forgotten. While there he fell in love with a learned and accomplished young lady, JNIademoiselle Curchod, the daugh- ter of a Swiss rural pastor, and would, if his father had not forbidden the un- ion, have made her his wife. " I sigh- ed," says he, with a philosophical equi- librium Avhich had now become his characteristic, " as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence and the hab- its of a new life." The lady was after- wards married to a native of Geneva, a rich banker of Paris, M. Necker, who as the minister of finance of the dying French monarchy, acquired an historic fame. Nor are the pair less known as the parents of that remarka- ble phenomenon in female intellect, the celebrated Madame De Stael. On his return to England Gibbon was greeted with all the warmth of her former affection by the kind aunt to whom he owed so much ; while his father, who had jiarted with him with an air of severity, was conciliated by the evident good effects of the pupilage to Avhich he had consigned him at Lausanne. In his mother-in- law, whom he had not before seen, he found a lady of understanding and esprit Avho appreciated his various ac- complishments. Under these auspices he was fi-ee to pursue with every ad- vantage of fortune, his own tastes and inclinations. The first employment which was thought of for him was that of secretary to a foreign embassy, if such a place could be found ; and it was partly to advance his pretensions to an api^ointment of the kind that he set about the completion of his first pub- lication, an " Essay on the Study of Literature," written in the French language, in which it was now easier for him to compose than in his own tongue. After a deal of preparation and revision it was issued in London in 1761, when its author was at the age of twenty-four. In the autobio- graphy will be found a retrospective criticism of the work, the candor of which, in its administration of praise and censure, is not without a certain kind of humor. While condemning its confusion and occasional obscurity he looks back upon it with, pride as the creditable production of a young "\\Titer of two-and-twenty, "who had read with taste, who thinks with free- dom, and who writes in a foreign lan- guage with spirit and elegance." The " Essay" also appeared in English, but the author speaks slightingly of the translation. The work, as might have been expected, was better received on the continent than in England. It at- tracted the attention of the savans of France, Holland and Switzerland, and paved the way for the writer's early admission into their ranks. While this Avork was in progress, Gibljou had been pursuing his studies with a diligence and zeal which had already become habitual to him and which not even the dissipations of a London season could effectually im- pair. On the receipt of the first quar- terly payment of a liberal allowance from his father, a large share of it was apj^ropriated to his literary wants. " I cannot forget," says he, "the joy with which I eschano-ed a bank-note of twenty pounds for the twenty volumes of the Memoirs of the Academy of In- scriptions ; nor would it have been easy, by any other expenditure of the same sum, to have procured so large and lasting a fund of rational amuse- ment." The choice indicates the scholar and the future historian. His readins: of the classic authors and their com- mentators was continued, and by a judicious method he fully incorporated what he read with his own reflections. " After glancing my eye," he tells us, " over the design and order of a new book, I susDended the jierusal till I 11 had finished the task of self-examina- tion, till I had revolved, in a solitary walk, all that I knew or believed, or had thought on the siTl^ject of the whole work, or of some particular chapter: I was then qualified to dis- cern how much the author added to my original stock ; and if I was some- times satisfied by the agreement, I was sometimes armed by the opposition of our ideas." His studies were however broken in upon by what to a person of his tastes was a novel sort of life. It was the period of the Seven Years' War, in which England participated, and the old chronic alarm of an invasion of the country had stirred up the enlist- ment of a local militia. The patriot- ism of the Gibbons was aroused in their residence in Hampshire, and in the battalion which was raised in the county the father was commissioned as major, and the son as captain. The work once undertaken, there was no easy or honorable mode of abandoning it, so that our embryo historian for two years and a-half was actively en- gaged in furthering and superintend- ing the various encampments of his restless regiment throu2;h the southern counties from Winchester to South- ampton. During these movements, in which his time was much engrossed by the bustling importance of the camp, there was, of course, little time for systematic reading, though that was not wholly resigned, while, as he fondly narrates, " on every march, in every joiu'ney, Horace was always in my pocket and often in my hand." Meanwhile, as his diary shows, he was j)lanning futui'c historical undertak- 82 EDWAED GIBBON. ings, meditating first the expedition of Charles VIII. of France into Italy ; then topics of English history, as the crusade of Richard I., the Barons' wars against John and Henry III., the His- tory of Edward the Black Prince, and settling down for a time, after a glance at Sir Philip Sidney, upon a kindred subject of mixed biography and his- tory, the life of Sir Walter Ealeigh. After extensive readin<>: reg:ardino^ this hero, finding, among other difiSculties, " his fame confined to the narrow lim- its of our language and our island," he looked abroad for a wider subject in the History of the Liberty of the Swiss and the Republic of Florence under the Medici. All these show his passion for history, to which he was turning even his military occupation to account. "The discipline and evo- lutions of a modern battalion," he writes, " gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion ; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been usdess to the historian of the Roman Empire." When the war was ended by the treaty of Paris, in 1763, the militia was disbanded and Giljbon was once more free to pursue his own inclina- tions. A month had hardly passed when he was again on the continent engaged in the round of foreign travel which Avas thou2:ht essential to com- plete the education of an English gen- tleman. Three or four months were passed in Paris in the study of its antiquities and literary resources, and in friendly communication with its men of letters, Avhen the journey was pursued to Switzerland and his now beloved Lausanne, where he was wel- comed with enthusiasm by his tutor Pavilliard, and lingered eleven months before he advanced into Italy. His classical studies had prepared him for the full appreciation of the latter country. He followed up its antiqui- ties with his usual energy, was im- pressed by all its Avonders with some- thing of a poetical imagination, and when he reached Rome, the literary dreams of his life were ready to be concentrated upon one endiiring vision, the realization of which in a perma- nent work was to give employment to the best years of his life. " It was at Rome," says he, " on the 1 5th of Oc- tober, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare- footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than of the empire; and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious woi"k." Returning to England in the sum- mer of 1765, he resumed for a time his engagements in the militia service with the rank of major and lieutenant colo- nel commandant ; and being joined by his friend M. Deyverdun, an accom- plished gentleman with whom he had become intimate in Switzerland, he en- gaged with him in 1767, in the publi- cation of a species of review or critical journal entitled, "Memoires Litteraires de la Grand Bretagne," which reached EDWAKD GIBBON. 83 a second volume the following year. To this miscellany Gibbon contributed among other papers a trenchant review of Lord Littelton's History of Henry H. The work, composed in French^ was not likely to meet with a large circulation ; but it gained reputation for the writers and introduced them to the acquaintance of David Hume, who was much admired as an historian by Gibbon, and who lived to enjoy with great unction the perusal of the first volume of his friend's Roman history. In his next publication, issued anony- mously in 1770, Gibbon entered the field in opposition to Warburton, in an attack upon that prelate's hj^othesis, in his " Divine Legation of Moses," of a revelation of the Eleusinian Mysteries by Virgil, in the sixth book of the ^neid. This Essay was our author's first publication in English. After this his studies were steadily directed to the work of preparation for his great work on the history of Rome. By the death of his father he came into pos- session of a moderate fortune, and was free to pursue his own plans in life. His time was divided between city and country. At the residence of his inti- mate friend and constant correspond- ent Mr. Holroyd, afterwards Lord Sheffield, in Sussex, he found a home where he was always aiDpreciated. In town he mingled freely in the fashion- able society of the metropolis, and in the literary clubs formed the acquaintance of the eminent wits of the time, John- son, Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith and the rest. Gathering his books about him in his house in London, he set seriously to work at the composition of the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Much of the learning re- quisite for his purpose he had already accumulated ; l:)ut a style was yet to be formed. "Many experiments," he tells us, " were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation : three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied "svith their effect." " Style," Buffon says, "is the man," and that of Gibbon truly represents his character — a com- posite union of his French and Eng- lish education, self-conscious, animat- ed and important. Language grew in his hands to be the most apt and forcible means for the adequate presentation of his subject, cover- ing the events of many centuries in the records of divers nations in every degree of culture from the most refined civilization to the rudest bar- barism, and producing a living picture of the whole, which moves and breathes in eveiy page. There is indeed a cer- tain mannerism in the language ; but this is common to the style of great authors and marks its individuality. It is cei-taiuly not a model for imita- tion on ordinary subjects; but in the privileged hands of Gibbon it is an instrument of great power, capable of conveying the finest meanings, distin- guished by its philosophical acumen, which has frequently the force of wit, and, above all, to be admired for its march to "the Dorian sound of flutes and, soft recorders," in the imposing progress of a grand historic narrative. Its condensation is wonderful. The most interostino; details feed the curi- osity of the reader while they are never suffered to fatigue his attention. The work in its thousands of pages glitters with perpetual novelty. Fact and philosophy are blended in happy union. It is one musical incantation from beginning to end. The industry of the author never flags; his literary genius is never at fault. In our author's previous studies we have seen something of his half con- scious preparation for this work. As he approached his task more closely he applied himself with greater devo- tion to its special requirements. Geo- graphy, chronology, the study of medals and anticjuities no less than the ordi- nary historic authorities were his con- stant care. His reading was indefati- gible ; so that when he began to write, his mind being fully charged with the sultject, the most costly materials were on every side at hand for the construc- tion of his edifice. Two things are particularly noticeable in his language : one, the constant presentation of the object in the foreground of his sen- tences ; the other, the choice of motives which he steadily presents to the reader in his balancing of opinions. While engaged in the composition of the early portions of the history, Gibbon by family influence was re- turned to parliament for a borough. He sat in the House of Commons for several years, supporting steadily by his vote through the progress of the American question, the tory adminis- tration of Lord North, for whose per- sonal qualities he had the highest admiration. As usual, he was turning his experience to account for the great work of his life. " The eight sessions," says he, " that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian." A more immediately practical result was his appointment at the instance of Lord Loughborough as one of the Lords of Trade, which brought an addition to his income of between seven and eight hundred pounds per annum. This was continued for three years, when it was brought to an end by the fall of Lord North's administration, which closed Gibbon's parliamentary career. The reception of his history was, however, now making him amends for his losses. The first volume, pub- lished in 1770, was succeeded by the second and third in 1781, bringing the work to the fall of the Western Em- pire. Its success was immediate. " I am at a loss to describe it," wiites Gibbon, " without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression (of the first volume) was exhausted in a few days ; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand ; and the bookseller's property was twice invaded by the pirates of Dub- lin. My book was on every table, and almost on every toilette ; the historian was crowned by the taste or fashion of the day ; nor was the general voice disturbed by the barking of any ^?/'o- fane critic." The word " profane " is marked by the author's italics and re- fers to the storm of censure Avith which the chapters on the Early Progress of Christianity were greeted by the critics of a more sacred order, at the head of Avhom may be ranked Bishop Watson, whose reply was entitled " An Apology for Christianity." While allowing Gibbon every latitude for his criticism of the historical conditions of his theme. EDWARD GIBBO^^. 85 exceptions may certainly be taken to the contemptuous spirit with wliich he often approached the subject ; his lack of sympathy Avith its higher elements, and his departure in this instance from the usual course of his philosophical fairness. Nor less is to be censured a certain pruriency in his treatment of the relations of the sexes, which occa- sionally mars his work. Setting aside these defects, liis general accuracy has been admitted Ijy the most learned in- vestigators of his theme, and in the library of every scholar his work will Ije found by the side of the great classic historians of the world. Gibbon remained in England till 1783, when he removed to Lausanne, his old retreat, with the intention of making the place his permanent re- sidence. The motives which led to this chano-e were varied. Much was to he gained on the score of leisure and independence ; he would be free from the jjolitical and other distrac- tions of London, and at liberty to de- vote his best powers to the completion of his literary task ; while, on the score of economy, the income, which was hardly sufficient for the claims of so- ciety in England, more than met every liberal requisition in Switzerland. The companionship of his friend Mr. Dey- verdun, who had invited him to share his habitation in Lausanne, offered to him the comforts and resoui'ces of a home. Gibbon undertook to support the expenses of the house, Avhich was situated in one of the finest parts of the town, overlooking the Lake of Geneva and the mountains beyond. Here he brought his books and added to their number ; a picked collection of some six or seven thousand volumes. It was a full twelvemonth, however, as he informs us, before he " could re- sume the thread of regular and daily industry." Then, with all his re- sources at command, his work proceed- ed apace. The morning hours were regularly given to it, and he seldom allowed it to exceed the day, only at the last, when he Avas anxious for its completion, permitting it to trespass upon the evening. At the end of three years, the great labor was accom- plished. " I have presumed," says he in his Memoir, in allusion to a passage already cited, " to mark the moment of conception : I shall now commem- orate the hour of my final deliver- ance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, be- tween the hours of eleven and twelve, that I Avrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a herceau or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake and the mountains. The air was tempe- rate, the sky Avas serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I Avill not dissemble the first emotions of Joy on recovery of my freedom, and perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and, a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlastintr leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatso- ever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must l)e short and precarious." Thus was brought to a close this 80 EDWAED GIBBON. noljle work, embracing a period of thirteen centuries, and connecting the e-reat eras of ancient and modern civili- zation. It begins with a review of the prosperity of the Eoman Empire in the age of the Antonines, and ends with a picture of the renewed glories of the imjjerial city in its present as- pect, when its " footsteps of heroes, the relics, not of superstition, but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new race of pilgrims from the remote and once savage countries of the north. Of these pilgrims," he says in conclu- sion in a retrospective glance at the entire work, " the attention will be excited by a history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire ; the great- est, perhaps, and most awful scene, in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are con- nected with many of the events most interesting in human annals : the art- ful policy of the Ctesars, who long maintained the name and imaore of a free republic ; the disorders of military despotism ; the rise, establishment and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople ; the division of the monarchy ; the invasion and settle- ments of the barbarians of Germany and Scythia ; the institutions of the civil law ; the character and religion | of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty j of the Popes ; the restoration and de- cay of the Western Empire of Charle- magne ; the crusades of the Latins in the East ; the conquest of the Saracens and Turks ; the ruin of the Greek Empire ; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age." Having finished his work, Gibbon proceeded to England to superintend its issue fi'om the press. The new por- tion, equal in extent to the old, formed three quarto volumes. It was given to the public on the fifty-first anniver- sary of the author's birthday, the fes- tival being celebrated by a literary dinner at the publisher's, Mr. Cadell's, at which a poem by Hayley was read, in which the historian was vaguely complimented Ijy association with Newton and Shakespeare. A better tribute to his fame is the silent and enduring admiration of successive generations of readers and the zeal of able translators and editors like Guizot and Milman, in assisting their compre- hension of his work. Returning to Lausanne, Gibbon re- mained there till 1793, when he again visited his friend Lord Shefiield in England. He was now afilicted with a troublesome dropsical affection, Avhich he had long neglected, and which he was at length compelled to submit to medical treatment. The surgeons gave him some relief, but were unable to cure the malady, ixnder the eft'ects of which he sunk rapidly at last, closing his days at his temporary lodgings in London on the 16th of January, 1704. ^narcc anfonuftt MARIE ANTOINETTE. MARIE ANTOINETTE was boru at Vienna, November 2d, 1753, the (lavghter of Francis of Lorraine, Emperor of Germany, and of Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and Empress of Germany, Persons whose curiosity or credulity may incline them to regard Avhat, after the event, are brought up as ominous coincidences, may be struck with the circumstance noticed by her biographers, that the birth of the ill-fated Queen of France occurred on the same day with that which is darkly marked in the calen- dar as that of the destruction of Lis- bon by the earthquake, an event which Ions: excited a fearful interest in the European community. It was indeed a troubled world into which Marie Antoinette was born. After unprece- dented queenly eftbrts which have gained her a distinguished name among the royal heroines of the Avorld, Maria Theresa, having vigorously defended her Austrian dominions and maintain- ed a resolute struggle with Frederic the Great, had seen her husband raised to the rank of Emperor, and the long European contest in which she had been engaged terminated by the treaty of Aix La Chapelle recognizing her succession and leaving her Avith the ex- ception of Silesia in enjoyment of her coveted territories. After a brief in- terval, the Seven Years' War, in which Austria was associated with France and Russia against Prussia, had fol- lowed, closing in 1763, and two years later, by the death of her husband Francis I., her son Joseph succeeding him as Emperor, she was left during the life-time of the latter free to repair the injuries of war by devoting herself to the peaceful welfare of her legiti- mate subjects, a task, with the bold work of reform which it required, hardly less hazardous as to its results than the contests of the battle-field. If Austria had gained nothing by the wars just concluded, France had lost much in the cession to England of Canada and her other North American colonies. To regain the lost prestige of France her minister for foreign af- fairs, the Duke de Choiseul, clung all the closer to his favorite policy, the alliance with Austria, and to advance the interests of the nation in this direc- tion, early jorojected a marriage be- tween Louis, the grandson of Louis XV., and heir to the French throne, (87) 88 MARIE ANTOINETTE. and Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Maria Theresa. When this affair was brought about by negotiation, Louis was a youth of fifteen, and his intend- ed bride a year younger, and the mar- riage had been contemplated for some time before, as we learn from a letter written by the Empress Queen to her young son-in-law just before the nup- tials, in which she says, " I have brought her up with this design ; for I have loner foreseen that she would share your destiny." AVhat that education had been we may gather from the revelations in the Memoirs of the Queen by her intimate friend Madame Campan. According to her account it had been much neg- lected. She tells of the pretences put forth in the Austrian court of the princesses answering addresses in Latin, when in reality they did not understand a single word of the lan- guage, and of a drawing being shown as the work of Marie Antoinette to the French Ambassador sent to draw up the articles for her marriage con- tract, when she had not put a pencil to it. She had acquired in her youth, however — no mean attainment — a good knowledge of Italian, having been taught by no less a person than the Al:)be Metastasio, many of Avhose great works were produced during his prolonged residence at Vienna. Of masic, that necessary accomplishment of a court, she appears before her arrival in France to have learnt little. French, she spoke fluently without writing it correctly, though some ex- ti'aordinary means had been taken to secure this branch of her education. Her mother, the Emj^ress Queen, had provided for her two French actors as teachers, one for pronunciation, the other for taste in singing ; but as ob- jection was made in France to the lat- ter on account of his bad character, an ecclesiastic, the Abbe de Vermoud, was chosen, whose influence over his pupil is described as unfavorable in subsequently leading her to treat with contempt the requirements of the French court. The preliminary arrangements of betrothal, involving -a great deal of state ceremony having been duly gone through with, the time came to con- duct the archduchess to Paris to accom- plish the marriage. The journey took place early in May, 1770. Leaving Vi- enna in an imposing procession, with loud expressions of regret on the part of the populace, she was received on the frontier of France near Kehl, in a splendid pavilion erected for the occa- sion, on a small island in the Rhine. The building consisted of a large saloon Avith two inner rooms, one of which was assigned to the princess and her companions from Vienna, the other to the titled personages \vho were to compose her court attendants in Paris, the Countess de Noailles, her lady of honor ; the Duchess de Cosse, her tire woman ; four ladies of the bed- chamber; a gentleman usher, and among others, the Bishop of Chartres, her chief almoner. Here a peculiar cere- mony was observed. The princess, ac- ' cording to prescribed etiquette was dis- robed of all that she had worn on the journey, that on entering the new kingdom she might retain nothing be- longing to a foreign court. When par- tially undressed she came forward and MARIE ANTOINETTE. 89 threw herself into the arms of the Countess de Noailles, soliciting in the most aflectionate manner her guidance and support. She was then invested in the brilliant paraphernalia becom- ing her position at the French court. Among the witnesses of these festivi- ties on the Khine was one observer, whose record of the scene, from the part he was afterwards to play in the world, is one of the memoral>le inci- dents of history. This was the poet Goethe, then a youth of twenty who had recently come to pursue his uni- versity studies at Strasburg. Sensi- tive then as ever to the claims and as- sociations of art, he tells us how he was shocked to see in the costly deco- rations of the pavilion, the cartoons of Raphael, woi'ked in tapestry, thrust into the side chambers while the main saloon was hung with tajiestries worked after pictures of modern French artists. Nor was this all. The subjects of the latter struck him as sin- gularly incongruous. " These pictures were the history of Jason, Medea and Creusa — consequently a story of a most wretched marrias-e. To the left of the throne was seen the bride striiggling against a horrible death, surrounded by persons full of sympa- thetic grief; to the right stood the father, horror-struck at the murdered babes at his feet ; whilst the fury in lier dragon car, drove through the air. ' What ! ' I exclaimed, regardless of bystanders ; ' can they so thoughtlessly place before the eyes of a young queen, on her first setting foot in her domin- ions, the representation of the most horrible marriage perhajDS that ever was consummated ! Is there amonc; the 12 architects and decorators no one man who understands that pictures repre- sent something — that they work upon the mind and feelings — that they pro- duce impressions and excite forebod- ings? It is as if they had sent a ghastly spectre to meet this lovely, and as Ave hear most joyous, lady at the very frontiers ! ' "* At that time there was in the gayety of the scene and the French court little encouragment for foreboding, and if any attention was paid to the remonstrances of Goethe, it was jjrobably only to smile at the eagerness of the youthful dilettante art student. He was a thinker, how- ever, accustomed to penetrate beneath the surface and not be imposed uj^on by the shows of things. He yielded willingly everything of admiration which could be demanded for the in- teresting sight of the young princess whose "beauteous and lofty mien, as charming as it was dignified," he after- wards recalled, but he could not fail to brand in his satiric verse the artifice by which a show of prosperity was kej^t up in the removing far from sight of the gay company, the halt, the lame and the blind, who might have thronged the way. In some lines writ- ten in French he contrasted the advent of our Saviour, who came relieving the sick and deformed, with that of the princess at which the unfortunate sufi:erers were made to disappear. Journeying towards the capital the princess was met at Compiegne by the reigning monarch with his grandson, the dauphin to whom she was betroth- ed, and ])y Avhom she was conducted to Versailles, where the marrias'e took * Life of Goethe, by Lewes, Am. £d.,Yol. I., p. 97. place on the 16th of May, amidst the most imposing festivities. An ill- omened accident however marred the rejoicings in Paris. A brilliant display of fireworks Avas to be exhibited on the Place Louis Quinze, in the centre of the city, and a huge scaffold had been erected for the purpose. On the night of the expected display the vast crowd of the great city were thronged round the spot to witness the brilliant show, when suddenly the platfoiTU was discovered to be on fire, and the flames spread with rapidity, setting off the fireworks in all directions, scattering death and terror through the masses. The injury directly inflicted by the fly- ing bolts was terrific, and the masses were trampled down in vain efforts to escape. More than fifty were killed, and over three hundred severely wounded in this disaster. The newly married dauphiness was at this moment ap- proaching the scene to share in the en- joyments of the people. She showed her feeling for the calamity by joining with her husband in sending their whole income for the year to the fami- lies of the sufferers. Moved to tears by the disaster, one of the ladies her attendants, to relieve her thoughts by substitutina: another emotion than that of pity, remarked that among the dead there had been found a number of thieves with their pockets filled with watches and other valuables which they had stolen in the crowd, adding that they had been well punished. " Ah, no ! " was the reply of the dau- phiness, "they died by the side of honest people." The impression made upon the court and people hj the dauphiness was highly favorable. She caiTied herself, e\"en at this early period, with an air of grace and nobility. Louis XV., who had miserably spent his life in devotion to beauty was enchanted with her. " All his conversation," we are told' by Madame Campan, "was about her graces, her vivacity, and the apt- ness of her repartees. She was yet more successful with the royal family when they beheld her shorn of the splendor of the diamonds with which she had been adorned during the ear- liest days of her marriage. When clothed in a light dress of gauze or taff'ety, she Avas compared to the Ve- nus de Medici and the Atalanta of the Marly gardens. Poets sang her charms, painters attempted to copy her features. An ingenious idea of one of the latter was rewarded by Louis XV. The pain- ter's fancy had led him to place the portrait of Marie Antoinette in the heart of a full-blown rose. This ad- miration naturally excited the jealousy of the profligate court favorite, Madame du Barry, whose political influence with the king was still powerful. She was opposed to the minister, the Duke of Choiseul, and with his fall a few months after the wedding of the dauphiness, the latter lost a much needed friendly supporter and guide to her inexperi- ence. Her chief adviser was now the Abbe de Vermond, who, having been her tutor before marriage, became her private secretary and confldant after. " Intoxicated," Avrites Madame Cam- pan, " Avitli the reception he had met with at the Court of Vienna, and hav- ing till then seen nothing of grandeur, the Al^be de Vermond admired and valued no other customs than those of MAEIE ANTOUSTETTE. 91 tlie imperial family ; he ridiculed tlie etiquette of the house of Bourbon in- cessantly; the young dauphiness was constantly invited by his sarcasms to get rid of it, and it was he who first induced her to suppress an infinity of practices of which he could discern neither the prudence nor the political aim." The court was ruled by eti- quette, and that of the most tedious and oppressive character. Nothing was to be done except in a prescribed way with the most rigid formalities. The dauphiness, gay and impulsive, and natural in her actions, was per- petually rebuked by the chief lady of her attendants, or rather the leading person appointed to guard her move- ments, the virtuous and ever punctili- ous Countess de Noailles, a dueana worthy of the- old court of Spain, where these personal restrictions were can'ied to their utmost possible excess. The lively dauphiness gave this lady the title of Madame V Jitiqitette, and whenever opportunity presented, sought relief from her oppressive cere- monial. Her life was really an im- prisonment governed by oppressive court usages, which all, in a certain way, the king and his mistresses in- cluded, submitted to, while they were avowedly violating every law of pro- priety and morality on which the cus- toms were founded. It is pleasing to read, as we often may, in the accounts of the early life of Marie Antoinette, how her generous nature at times found vent for itself in extraordinary acts of kindness and charity. Once, when she Avas hunting in the forest of Fontaine- bleau, an old peasant was wounded by the stag. On the instant, jumping from her open carriage, she placed the injured man in it with his wife and children and had the family taken back to their cot- tage. Some little time after she was found in her room with this old man, in the humblest manner staunching the blood which issued from a wound in his hand with her handkerchief, which she had torn up for the purpose. He had received some hurt in moving a heavy- piece of furniture at her request. On another later occasion, a little country boy, four or five years old, of a pleas- ing appearance, with large blue eyes and fine light hair, narrowly escaped being tramped upon by getting under the feet of her horses, as she was di'iven out for an airing. The child Avas saved, and its grandmother came out of her cottage by the roadside to receive it ; when the queen — for the incident occurred after she had come to the throne — stood up in the carriage and claimed the boy as her own, put in her way by Providence. Finding his mother was not alive, she under- took to provide for him herself, and bore him home on her knees, the boy violently kicking and screaming the whole time. A few days afterAvards he AA^as to be seen in the palace, his Avoollen cap and Avooden shoes ex- changed for the court finery of a frock trimmed Avith lace, a rose-colored sash with silver fringe, and a hat decorated Avith feathers. He Avas looked affcei till he grcAV up and displayed some character, joining the rejiuljlican army to obviate any prejudice Avhich might exist against him as the queen's favor ite, and meeting his death at the bat- tle of Jemappes. Acts like these show the impulses of 92 MAKie ANTOINETTE. the woman. Thoiigli in her early years, while she was simply the dauphiness, she had for companions the two brothers of her husband with their princesses, they were compelled to maintain the utmost secrecy in so simple a matter as enoraariner in the amusements of a theatrical entertainment among them- selves, in which they acted the chief parts, the dauphin being the only spec- tator. The performance had at least one good effect, if, as is stated, it awak- ened the dauphin to a proper appre- ciation of the charming qualities of his bride, to which he appeared for some time after their marriage to have been insensible. Now came the event which was to mark an era in the breaking up of the old system. Louis XV., in his long reign of fifty years, commencing with the honorable administration of Fleury, had as he. advanced plunged the nation deeper and deeper in financial embar- rassments, while in his surrender to his discreditable court favorites and mis- tresses, the Marchioness de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, and other intri2;ues of the vilest character, he had set the nation the example of the grossest licentiousness. The vices, hand- ed dovrn in a long succession of royal immoralities, tolerated in history by a certain outward brilliancy, had culmi- nated in the utter degradation of the court. The country was on the verge of bankruptcy, the oppression of the privileged classes had reached its height; the whole system of govern- ment was rotten ; and if the nation was to be preserved, it could only be by the casting oft of the old, and the infu- sion of new life into every department of the administration. At this crisis, at the age of twenty, Louis XVL, a pedantic youth, with little capacity of insight to supply the lack of experi- ence, came to the throne. ' His op- portunity consisted solely in his free- dom from the vices of his grandfather. For an old worn-out debauchee the nation was to receive as its Lead an uncorrupted well-meaning youth ; who also brought to the throne in exchange for the evil influences, of an unprinci- pled courtesan, Avho had been elevated from the 'dregs of society, the hopes and prestige of the daughter of a noble house in a queen, whose beauty and brilliant bearing might well have warm- ed the heart of the most gallant country in Europe. In other times they miglit have passed through this exalted life with credit to themselves and glory to the nation. In the age in which their lot was cast, two things were wanting to them, a thorough comprehension of the needs of the period, with ability to direct its issues. Failing in these, their course was uncertain, shifting, insin- cere, and though not without a pro- found pathetic interest, inevitably leadins: to the most io-nominious disas- ter. " Beautiful Highborn," chants the prose lyrist of our modern histori- cal literature, Thomas Carlyle, when writing of Marie Antoinette, " that wert so foully hurled low. Thy fault in the French Revolution, was that thou wert the symbol of the sin and misery of a thousand years ; that with Saint Bartholomews and Jacqueiies, with Gabelles and Dragonades and Parcs-aux-cerfs, the heart of mankind was filled full, — and foamed over into all-involving madness. To no Napo- MAEIE ANTOINETTE. 93 leon, to no Cromwell wert thou wed- ded : STicli sit not in the highest rank of themselves ; are raised on high by the shaking and confounding of all ranks ! As poor peasants, how happy, worthy had ye two been ! But by evil desti- ny ye were made a King and Queen of; and so are become an astonish- ment and a by-word to all times." The same vivid pen has pictured in words of fire the horrors of the death- bed of the departing king, and the greedy haste of the courtiers in usher- ing in his successor. " Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out ; but he is here, here at thy very life-breatli, and will extin- guish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality; sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void immensity; time is done and all the scaffolding of time falls wrecked with hideous clan- gor round thy soul : the pale kingdoms yawn open ; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee ! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on this bed of weariness, what a thought is thine ! Purgatory and Ilell-fire, now all too possible, in the prospect ; in the retrospect, — alas, what thing dids't thou do that were not better undone ; what mortal didst thou generously help ; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on ? Do the ' five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields, from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram, — crowd round thee in this hoxu-? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters ? Miser- able man! thou 'hast done evil as thou couldst : ' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mis- take of nature, the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griflin devouring the works of men ; daily dragging virgins to thy cave ; — clad also in scales that no spear would pierce ; no spear but Death's ? A grifiin not fabulous but real ! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for thee. * * * It is now the 10th of May, 1774. He will soon have done now. This tenth May-day falls into the loathsome sick-bed ; but dull, un- noticed there : for they that look out of the windows are quite darkened ; the cistern-wheel moves discordant on its axis ; Life, like a spent steed, is panting towards the goah In their remote apartments Dauphin and Dau- phiness stand road-ready ; all grooms and equerries booted and spurred : waiting for some signal to escape the house of pestilence. And hark ! across the Qj^il-de-Beuf, what sound is that ; sound ' terribly, and absolutely like thunder ? ' It is the rush of the whole court, rushing as in Avager, to salute the new Sovereigns. Hail to your Majesties ! The Dauphin and Dau- phiness are King and Queen ! Over- powered Avith many emotions, they two fall on their knees together, and, with streaming tears, exclaim : ' O God, guide us, protect us, Ave are too young to reign.' " * So Marie Antoinette became the Queen of France. The new reign Avas * The French KeA-olution, Book I., Ch. iv. 91- MAKIE A^^TOINETTE. hailed with acclamations by the people. The king was at least free from the gross vices of his predecessor, and the miserable influence of such creatures as Du Barry was at an end. The government, however, could not as easily throw off the encumbi'ance of the vast debt which the preceding pro- fligacy and corruption had heaped upon it. Monopoly and restriction every- where prevailed; the demands upon the people in one form or another of taxation were every day becoming greater, while the means of paying them were less. Every department of the administration was encumbered with privileged abuses. With all his insensibility, the new sovereign could not fail to j^erceive these evils, and in the appointment of the experienced and j)hilosophic Turgot, an economist in advance of the times, to the high oflSce of comptroller general of finance, he gave a pledge to the people that their interests would not be disregard- ed. The difficulties and embarrass- ments, ending in his overthrow, which the minister experienced in carrying out his work of reform, which con- sisted simply in abolishing odious re- strictions fettering the industry of the country, and reducing the expenditure, to avoid bankruptcy, disclosed the evils under which the nation was suf- fering from the oppression of the yjrivileged classes, and the little hope there was of effecting any improve- ment with their concurrence. They were unwilling to yield anything. The court also was embarrassed by its old traditions and cumbrous machinery of ceremonial, which, outliving its uses, became an encouragement of the very evils it was originally contrived to prevent. If its various social con- trivances had one object to secure more than another, it was the protection of the character of those within their sphere ; but the whole system had now degenerated according to its necessary tendencies into a vexatious, burden- some formalism, inviting suspicion, detraction and slander. In the open life of most court circles of the present day the character of Marie Antoinette would be understood and appreciated, her vivacity or folly would be taken at their proper value, and her harmless freedoms, though they might subject her to the charge of levity and thoughtlessness unbecoming the re- sponsibility of her station, could not, however misrepresented, long be mis- taken for vice and criminality. It is singular, showing the hold the court traditions had upon the mind of the French people, that, while they were sighing for freedom and entertaining the wildest dreams of natural liberty, they were holding the queen to the strictest requirements of an artificial court, and condemning her for the most innocent actions. On one occasion, early in her reign, she expressed a de- sire to see the sun rise, a phenomenon which she had never before witnessed, and a party was arranged for the purpose, in which she took the precau- tion to include the ladies attending on her person to accompany her, at three o'clock in the morning to the heights of the gardens of Marly — a simple enough proceeding, which was travestied in a wicked and licentious ballad, attri- buting to her the ^s•orst motives. This was circulated by her enemies, MARIE AINTOINETTE. 95 wlio never lost an opportunity of ca- lumniatino: her. Instances of this kind might be multiplied from her Memoirs. The motive of such hostilities appears to have been supplied in the jealousies of various ladies about the court whom she had taken little pains to conciliate, in the general dislike to the Austrian alliance, and, when the question of political liberty was fully before the people, her natural and irrepressible leaning to the cause of the aristocracy and monarchy. It is curious to note the etiquette Avhich was practised at the French court in the days immediately preced- ins; the Ilevolution. One of the cus- toms which Marie Antoinette abolish- ed in coming to the throne was that of dining every day in public, Avheu, ac- cording to ancient usage, the queen was waited upon only by persons of her own sex, titled ladies, who j^re- sented the jolates kneeling — a sjiectacle highly attractive to country people, who had thronged to see the dau- phiness undergoing this ceremony. There were others of a more private nature which she could not so well escape. ]\Iadam Campan gives an amusing account of the absurd pro- ceedings attending tlie queen's toilette. " It Avas a master-piece of etiquette ; every thing done on the occasion was in a prescribed form. Both the lady of honor and the tire-woman usually at- tended and officiated, assisted by the first femme de chavihre and tAvo in- ferior attendants. The tire- woman put on the petticoat, and handed the gown to the queen. The lady of honor poured out the water for her hands, and put on her body linen. When a princess of the royal family happened to be present while the queen was dressing, the lady of honor yielded to her the latter act of office, but still did not yield it directly to the princess of the blood ; in such a case, the lady of honor Avas accustomed to present the linen to the chief lady in waiting, Avho, in her turn, handed it to the princess of the blood. Each of these ladies observed these rules scrupulously, as affecting her rights. One Avinter's day it happened that the queen, Avho AA'as entirely undressed, was just going to put on her body linen ; I held it ready unfolded for her ; the lady of honor came in, slipped off her gloA^es, and took it. A rustling Avas heard at the door ; it Avas opened : and in came the Duchess d'Orleans ; she took her gloves off, and came forAvard to take the gar- ment ; but as it Avould have been wrong in the lady of honor to hand it to her, she gave it to me, and I handed it to the princess : a further noise — it Avas the Countess de Provence ; the Duchess d'Orleans handed her the linen. All this while the queen kept her arms crossed upon her bosom, and appeared to feel cold : Madame obserA-ed her uncom- fortable situation, and merely laying doAATi her handkerchief, Avithout taking off her gloA'es, she put on the linen, and in doing so knocked the queen's cap off. The queen laughed to conceal her impatience, but not until she had mut- tered several times : ' Hoav disagree- able ! hoAV tiresome ! ' " It is not surprising that the queen uttered this exclamation, for the pecu- liar incident just related Avas but one of a series of similar annoyances, which in one relation or another might "hap- 96 MAKIE ANTOINETTE. pen any hour of the clay. From niorn- ine: till nin^lit, before she arose and after she was installed in her royal bed, eti- quette was continually at her elbow. The manoeuvres of the toilet were more circumstantial than the rites of an an- cient Roman sacrifice, and quite as sa- cred and obligatory. This matter of dress was an affair of the highest mo- ment, a sort of public transaction taking place at high noon, a state performance to be witnessed in due order and se- quence by princes of the blood, cap- tains of the guards and other great officers. The king's brothers, the Count de Provence and the Count d' Artois, we read, came very generally to pay their respects while the queen's hair was dressing, and if these princes had any sense of humor, it must have been something amazing to them to witness the erection on the human head of that proud edifice, puffed up by hidden contrivances and decorated by such su- perb millinery and flower and feather- work beyond the art of any painted savage. The queen, it must l)e ac- knowledged, took kindly to this species of manufacture. Early in her reign, by the kind intervention of the Duchess de Chartres, contrary to all precedent, a famous milliner from the outer world of the great city. Mademoiselle Bertin, was introduced into the royal house- hold, with whom the queen planned an infinity of new dresses, — a new fashion every day, to the equal delight and distraction of the fashionable society of Paris. " Every one," we are told, " wished to have the same dress as the queen, and to Avear the feathers and flowers to which her beauty, then in its brilliancy, lent an indescribable charm. The expenditure of young women was necessarily much increased ; mothers and husbands murmured at it ; some giddy women contracted debts; unpleasant domestic scenes occurred; in many families quarrels arose; in others, affection was extinguished ; and the general report was, that the queen would be the ruin of all the French ladies." Connected with this extravacrance of dress there arose a great scandal, much to the detriment of the queen, though, in reality, she was not at all responsible for it. This was the com- plicated affair, famous in law and his- tory, of The Diamond Necklace, a curi- ous embroglio of roguery, imj^licating various notable personages, and for a time apparently the queen, Avhile she suffered not for any act of her own but for being involved in an evil system of things which rendered so stvipen- dous a fraud a possible achievement. The story at every turn of its many involutions, throws a wondrous light upon the state of society in France at the period. "VVe can but indicate its general outline, referring the reader for the entire plot to the energetic dra- matic dithyrambic narrative of Car- lyle. The main agent in the plot, though not the prime mover, was that strange personage, of the dying mon- archy. Prince Louis de Rohan, a profli- gate nobleman who had by family in- fluence and intrigue gathered to him- self a great many extraordinary honors and distinctions with splendid emolu- ments. Archbishop of Strasbourg,Grand Almoner of France, Commander of the Holy Ghost, Cardinal, Commendatorof St. Wast d' Arras, " one of the fattest MARIE ANTOINETTE. 97 benefices," says Carlyle, " here below.''' In the early part of his cai'eer he had been remarkable for his dissipation; as lie advanced in life, he j^layed the courtier and became ambitious. At the age of thirty-six he had the honor on behalf of the nation of receiving Marie Antoinette on her first arrival in France, and subsequently, while she remained the dauphiuess, was sent am- bassador to Vienna, where he main- tained an amazing style of pomp and disj)lay, till his extravagance brought him deeply in debt. He was no favor- ite with the empress queen, who de- spised his profligacy, so unbecoming his sacred character, and would have had him recalled. He moreover of- fended the dauphiness by a witticism in one of his dispatches reflecting on her mother in relation to one of the least defensible acts of her reign, de- scribing Maria Theresa standing with the handkerchief in one hand weeping for the woes of Poland, and with the sword in the other ready to divide the land and take her share. This was sent to the last minister of Louis XV., D' Aiguillon, who communicated it to the king and he to Du Barry, when it became the jest of the day among the courtiers. Marie Antoinette, it is said, never forgave this. She may very Avell, too, have had a natural dislike to the perpetrator of the sarcasm. However this may be, Avhen she became queen, De Rohan, greatly to his chagrin, was refused admittance at court. To be compelled to remain outside of that charmed circle was a perpetual torment to a man of his tastes and dispositions. His rapid preferments and rise to the dignity of Lord Cardinal would seem 13 to have made him little auiends for the exclusion. We are now to be introduced to an other personage, more remarkaljle in her way than the cardinal in his, a bold adventuress, one of the boldest who e^'er displayed the arts and capa- city of uusexed womanhood. This was the Countess Lamotte, as she was call- ed, with royal blood in her veins, in an illegitimate way, a descendant of one of the numerous mistresses of Henry IL of France. Her ancestor. Saint Eemi, had been enriched and the family had kept up its state for several genera- tions till it had fallen into utter worth- lessness and bankruptcy, and its latest representative, Jeanne, a little girl, is one day picked up, a beggar on the highway, by the Countess Boulainvil- liers, and under lier patronage becomes, to quote the nomenclature of Carlyle, " a nondescript of mantua-maker, sou- brette, court beggar, fine lady, abigail, and scion-of-royalty," — a person, in fine, with natural and acquired tastes, pas- sions and propensities, needing of all things money for their support. As a compliment to her royal ancestry, the court, grovvTi economical or indifferent, after so many generations, grants her a poor thirty pounds a-year. Looking round for ways and means, her first thought is to visit the place of the alienated possessions of her family, in hopes to discover possible flaws in the title, which comes to nothing. All that she gains there is a husband, a private in the army, and thus she becomes Madame Lamotte, or, as she styles her- self, dignifying her plebeian help-mate, the Countess Lamotte. A few years pass, Lamotte is no longer a soldier, 98 MARIE ANTOINETTE. his wife's patroness, tlie Countess, is dead, and with her pension about dou- bled, all insufficient for her wants, Ma- dame, or the Countess Lamotte is living in humble quarters on the edge of the court in the to^vn of Versailles. Still, with an eye to her family deserts or pretensions, she one day goes to his eminence, the Cardinal Rohan, a proper person as she thinks, in his capacity of Grand Almoner to gain her some more adeqnat(3 allowance from the royal treasury. The cardinal, affected doubt- less by lier piquant address, — for, with- out being beautiful, she had a coun- tenance which her intellect or artful manners could make attractive, — was moved to reply, not by an advance of money, of which, with all his revenues, he appears never to have had any sur- plus, but with the advice to appeal to the queen. In recommending this re- source, he expressed his great disap- pointment that he had not access to her presence to assist in the application. Lamotte, whose natural keenness ad- versity had sharpened, saw thoroughly into the character of the cardinal, and gigantic as the game was, quite unap- proachable to a meaner intellect, resolv- ed in the consciousness of her strength to malce him her dupe. Her knowledge of the court and her means of access to several of its inferior servants, with the occurrence at this time of an extra- ordinary opportunity, were the means, to her, all things considered, of one of the boldest and most successful at- tempts ever made on human credulity. The opportunity was the chance in some dexterous way of getting posses- sion of a necklace of diamonds, quite capable of being converted into the handsome sum of about four hundred thousand dollars in gold, for such a thing is not to be profared by estima- ting it in a paper currency. AlloAving for the difference of values, it might probably be estimated in this year, 1872, at about half a million. The preparation of this magnificent work had been the one idea, to surpass all others of his princely constructions of this sort, of tlie court jeweler, M. Boch- mer. He had held that position in the days of Louis XV., and the necklace was his clief d^euvre^ not too expensive for the enormous waste of that era, or for the revenues lavished upon the court mistress Du Barry, for Avhose or- namentation it had been intended. As pictui'ed in an ordinary representation before us in common printers' ink from a wood-cut, it quite glorifies the page with its sparkling drops of light. It must have been indeed a brilliant ob- ject to look upon. Here is Carlyle's description of it from the engraving. " A row of seventeen glorious dia- monds, as large almost as filberts, en- circle, not too tightly, the neck, a first time. Looser, gracefully fastened thrice to these, a three-wreathed festoon, and pendants enough (simple pear-shaped, multiple star-shaped, or clustering am- orphous) encircle it, enwreath it, a sec- ond time. Loosest of all, softly flowing round from behind, in priceless cate- nary, rush down two broad threefold rows ; seem to knot themselves round a very queen of diamonds on the bo som ; then rush on, again separated, as if there were length in plenty ; the very tassels of them were a fortune for some men. And now lastly, two other in- expressible threefold rows, also with MAEIE ANTOINETTE. 99 tlieir tassels, will, wLen the necklace is on and clasped, unite themselves be- hind into a doubly inexpressible six- fold row ; and so stream down, together or asunder, over the hind-neck, — we may fancy, like lambent Zodiacal or Aurora-Borealis fire." A work like this, in tradesman's phrase, was locking up a great deal of money, and its owner, a tradesman, must needs be anxious for its sale. It was naturally offered at the new court ■ — something worthy the attire of the youthful brilliant Austrian queen, but though there were vanity and expense enouo'h left, retrenchment was the order of the day, and, in comparison with previous reigns, royalty was poor and parsimonious. Earlier ministers of finance mio'ht have manas-ed it, but the budgets of Turgot and Necker had no place for such an item, and the people Avere on the track of these ex- travagances with a fearful vengeance in store. To the credit of Marie An- toinette, she gave no countenance to its acceptance, remarking, on the pro- ject being brought before her, that " we have more need of seventy-fours than of necklaces." She advised its being broken up ; but this was to sac- rifice the idea of its constructor. He was not yet ready to abandon the greatest achievement of his career. He would not, or could not, solve the pro- blem for himself. There was one, how- ever, at hand ready enough to do it — the Countess Lamotte, both able and willing. A necessary preliminary, the cardinal, was already in her toils. Re- turning to De Rohan a few days after the interview in which he had advised her to have recourse to the queen, she informs him that she had obtained ad- mittance to her, been favorably re- ceived, and taken the opportunity to sj)eak of the grief of the cardinal in his exclusion from the royal favor, and obtain permission to j^resent his vindi- cation. The cardinal accordingly made her the medium of his aj)ology, and received in return a note, appa- rently in the queen's writing, expres- sinsc her satisfaction at learniuo- that he was innocent, and promising at some indefinite future time the audience he solicited, in the mean time enjoining him to be discreet. The bait was swallowed, and hence- forth the cardinal, who of all men on earth should have had the best eye for trickery, was but a puppet in the hands of this intriguing woman. The correspondence was continued ad libi- tum^ the artful messenger, from her ready resources, having a supply of sufficiently specious answers ready on demand. Presently, in judicious se- quence, the money card is played and wins. The queen commissions the Grand Almoner to borrow for her sixty thousand francs for a charitable object, and the sum is paid, as requested, into the hands of Lamotte. A second ap- plication for a like sum succeeds equally well — payments for the time being made in royal letters of thanks. The Lamottes, thus handsomely pro- vided with the means, set up an es- tablishment at Versailles, and, that the cardinal mioht not observe it, and thus have his suspicions aroused, he is saga- ciously advised by a letter fi-om the queen to visit his diocese in Alsace, which he does. Successful negotiations like these 100 MARIE ANTOIISrETTE. encouraged a move to get possession of the necklace, a fascinating object sufficient to call forth the Lest poAvers of the most consummate roguery. Her show of living at Versailles l>eiLg attributed to favors received from the queen, Lamotte, through an emissary, began to approach the jeweler Boch- mer on the subject of the diamonds, and gets him to think she might assist in the negotiation at court. Presently she announces to him that an eminent personage has been commissioned to purchase on behalf of the crown. The cardinal is sent for, and on his arrival in Paris is told that the queen wishes him, as a special mark of her favor, to buy the necklace for her without the knowledge of her husband, and that she will pay for it out of her income. He receives an authorization from her, pledges himself for the whole amount, promises quarterly payments, and the jewelers seeing the queen's authority, and understanding that he is acting confidentially for her, place the neck- lace in his hands. Arrangements are now made for the delivery of the jewel. This Lamotte contrives shall take place at her hoiise at Versailles, to be there given by her to a messenger of the queen, the cardinal being present to witness the transaction. He arrives at dusk with a valet bearing the casket containing the necklace; it is placed in her hands, and the confidential valet of the queen arriving, receives it and bears it away — the cardinal looking through the glazed window of an al- cove in the apartment, satisfying him- self of the identity of the receiver. It is high time for some recognition from the queen. This is prettily prepared by Lamotte in evasive aj)proaches tc an interview. On a previous occasion the cardinal had accompanied her in a midnight visit to the gardens of Ver- sailles — there being much talk and idle scandal of the queen's summer Avalks and musical parties there at that hour, and as he apjieared to l)e near j the royal person in the obscurity, she hurries away seemingly frightened at the approach of some members of the court, dropping, however a rose for his eminence, with the cheering words : " You know what that means." This, though evasive as the pursuit of the unapjoroachable in dreams, feeds his hopes for the time. When the neck- lace has been delivered, Lamotte in- vites the cardinal to take his place among the courtiers in the gallery of the Q5il-de-Boeuf, where she has ob served the queen has a customary motion of the head as she passes through the throng on her way to the chapel. This of course is to be inter preted as a special mark of regard for the cardinal. He perceives it, and accepts it as sudh. Another royal mandate again sends him out of the way to Alsace, while Lamotte de- spatches the necklace to her husband in London, where it is broken up and sold for the benefit of the conspirators. The day of payment now arrives, and the jeweler looks to the cardinal ; out of the proceeds of the jewels Lamotte produces a sum of money as interest, and the principal is not forthcoming Meanwhile the jewelers have made their acknowledgments for the trans- action at court, where nothing of course is known about it, and the whole bur- den is thrown upon the cardinal. At MARIE ANTOINETTE. 101 length, in August, 1785, a year and a half after the beginning of those trans- actions with Lamotte — so long had he been the victim of pretences and for- geries — the cardinal is summoned to the presence of the king and queen, and confronted by the depositions of the jewelers and the financier from whom he had bori'owed money for the queen. He pleads the royal authority for his act, and the writing on which he relies is pronoimced a forgery. He is arrested and sent to the Bastille, whither shortly the Countess Lamotte is sent after him. Not long after, Vil- lette, who personated the queen's valet, and Mademoiselle Leguet, who repre- sented the queen herself in the gardens of Versailles, the deceivers of the car- dinal, are also arrested. The plot now becomes clearer, and, when the Avhole case is before the court, the prince car- dinal is acquitted of fi-aud, though sent into exile by the king for his mischievous alisurdities, while Lamotte ex23iates her wickedness with flogging, branding on both shoulders, and a sentence of imprisonment for life, which is not fully executed, for after a while she escapes to England, and one ■ day, from some unseemly cause, is found precipitated from a high win- dow to the street pavement, which ends her remarkable career. Anecdotes might be multijjlied of the gay life of the court during the first ten or fifteen years of the new reign, of the festive entertainments at Versailles, of the queen's innocent pastoral amusements in her little re- treat of the Petit Trianon, where she sought to realize that rustic simplicity which had been the dream of the poets of the age — a court simplicity, howev- er, with music from the opera, in the background, laces and ribbons un- known to the genuine Arcadia, and the graces and aifectations of the fash- ionable Avorld ; but we must refer the reader for these things to the gossiping pages of Madame Campan. In her Me- moirs, much may be read of the petty jealousies of the court, great often in their results; of the gradual ascendan- cy gained by the queen over her hus- band, who at first neglected her ; of ber intimacy with the members of her household, the Princess de Lamballe and the Countess de Polignac ; of her mortification in the early years of her reign when she was childless, and of the delight of the nation, when after the birth of a princess in 1778, in 1781 an heir was born to the throne. On the latter occasion, the artificers and traders of Paris went to Versailles in a body, carrying the various insignia of their callings, with some humorous accessories. Even the chimney sweep- ers, we are told, turned out, " quite as well dressed as those that appear upon the stage, carrying an ornamented chimney, at the top of which M-as perch- ed one of the smallest of their fra- ternity. Th e chairmen carried a sedan, highly gilt, in which were to be seen a handsome nurse and a little dauphin. The smiths hammered away upon an auA^il, the shoemakers finished off a little pair of boots for the dauphin, and the tailors a little suit of the uni- form of his regiment. The kins: en- joyed the sight for a long time from the l)alcony. So general Avas the en- thusiasm that (the police not having carefully examined the procession) the 102 MAEIE ANTOraETTE. grave-diggers Bad the impudence to send tlieir deputation also, with the emble- matic devices of their ill-omened occu- pation " — ill omened surely, if read hj the light of the dire revolutionary pro- ceedings of the few succeeding years. The market women were received — a deputation from them — into the queen's bed-room, one of them read- ing to her an address written by La Harpe, piquantly engraved on the in- side of a fan, Avhich she handed to her without any embarrassment. This was peculiarly French. Fancy an English market - woman approaching Queen Victoria on such an occasion in that style ! The fish - women, the ^^o/s- mrdes, spoke their addresses and sang their son^s in honor of the event, with abundant good humor and gayety. Fol- lowing upon these rejoicings came the bustle and stir of the American war, which the queen is said to have made popular at court, favoring the negotia- tor Beaumarchais, and humoring the extraordinary attentions paid to Frank- lin. The time came when she looked back upon this enthusiasm as a source of evil to the dynasty in the encouragement of the democracy which was sweeping away old institutions; but meantime the danger was unsus- pected, and France was avenged on the American continent for her loss of Canada to England. The personal appearance of the queen at this time has been described by La- martine : " On her arrival in France, her beauty had dazzled the whole kingdom, a beauty then in all its splendor. The two children whom she had given to the throne, far from impairing her good looks, added to the attractions of her person, that character of mater- nal majesty which so well becomes the mother of a nation. The presentiment of misfortunes, the recollection of the tragic scenes of Versailles, the uneasi- ness of each day somewhat diminished her youthful freshness. She was tall, slim and graceful, — a real daughter of Tyi'ol. Her naturally majestic car- riage in no way impaired the grace of her movements : her neck risinsc ele- gantly and distinctly fi'om her shoul- ders gave expression to every attitude. The Avoman Avas perceptible beneath the queen, the tenderness of heart Avas not lost in the elevation of her destiny. Her light broAvn hair was long and silky, her forehead, high and rather projecting, was united to her temples by those fine curA^es which give' so miich delicacy and expression to that seat of thou2;ht or the soul in women : her eyes of that clear blue which recall the skies of the North or the waters of the Danube; an aquiline nose, Avith nostrils open and slightly projecting Avhere emotions palpitate and courage is evidenced ; a large mouth, bril- liant teeth, Austrian lips, that is, j^ro- jecting and well defined ; an oval countenance, animated, varying, im passioned, and the ensemhie of these features replete with that expression, impossible to describe, Avhich emanates from the look, the shades, the reflec- tions of the face, AA^hich encompasses Avith an iris, like that of the Avarm and tinted vapor Avhich bathes objects in full sunlight — the extreme loveliness Avhich the ideal conveys, and which by giA^ng it life increases its attrac- tion. With all these charms, a soul yearning to attach itself a heart easi- MAEIE ANTOINETTE. 103 ly moved, but yet earnest in desire to itself; a pensive and intelligent smile, with nothing of vacuity in it, nothing of preference or mere acqiiaintanceship in it, because it felt itself worthy of friendships. Such was Marie Antoinette as a woman." In the political events which suc- ceeded so rapidly, ending in the over- throw of the monarchy, the queen, in common with the kinsr, was charo-ed with duplicity in her professions of adherence to the will of the nation. Though of a generous kindly nature, her inclinations, when the issue came to be made, were naturally with the aristocratic party. It would be expect- ing perhaps too much of any sovereign at that day to yield gracefully to such sweeping reforms as were then insti- tuted in France. The deeds of violence and lawlessness which were dailj^ com- mitted by the people, might well seem to Justify the conviction that the only safety for the state was in power and repression, and that this force belonged of right to the ancient monarchy. The misfortune of the king "was the emi- gration of members of the court and the formation of a hostile party outside of the country, to whose assistance he was lookino; for redress. " In forminir a judgment on the terrible events of the French Revolution," says a recent writer, " it must never be forgotten that this disposition of the court to rely on foreign aid and to subdue the revolution by foreign influence, was the inexpiable crime of the king and queen. It Avas ridiculous to talk of Louis as a tyrant. It was an outrage to ascribe to the queen, as a woman, any single action which would not have become the noblest of her sex. Whatever may have been the short- comings of her Austrian education and the frivolity of her early habits, mis- fortune and dano;er awakened in her a force of will, a cliearness of intelligence, a power of language, and a strength of soul, which speak with imperishable eloquence in every line of the letters written by her after the commence- ment of the revolution. But, although these qualities of the queen do her the highest honor, and in this respect the publication of her most private corres- pondence can only exalt her reputation, yet these papers render still more appa- rent the fact that she had but little po litical judgment, and that neither she nor the king ever conceived the possi- bility of dealing honestly with the rev- olution. At each successive stage in that protracted tragedy, there was a secret policy always at work in the opposite sense, and that policy, relying mainly on external support was their destruc- tion."* It was more, however, by sufferance than action that the queen was to be distinguished in those days of trial. Events moved rapidly. There was hardly more than a single step from the freedom of the court to the re- straint of the prison, and the part borne by Marie Antoinette, at any time, could scarcely be anything more than that of a simple adviser of the king, in a feeble, capricious sort of way. She had no senate to influence, no army to command, no royal will to execute. The policy of the nation was shaped by its necessities. Bankruptcy * Art. CoiTCspondence of Marie Antoinette, Edinburgh Review, April, 186G. 104 MARIE ANTOraETTE. and starvation were tlie imperial ru- lers, and were inexorable in their de- mands for reform. All that could be done to palliate or defer had been done in previous reigns. The waters had been dammed up beyond the power of human engineery to control them fur- ther, and the deluge was inevitable. rhe only escape for royalty was timely abdication, if the reformers had been willing to spare it as an agent of their work. The king was made both an instrument and a sacrifice. His forced acquiescence in the constitution, which he had no real intention to i'esj)ect, gave a sanction to the revolutionary proceedings, and henceforth, after a few shiftless efforts at intrigue, and one weak attempt to escape, there was nothina: left but submission. The story of the last years of the royal family in this constantly dark- ening revolutionary period is one of the saddest narratives in all history. In" their powerless, helpless condition, the insincerity forced upon them by their position, might surely have been fora:iven. To brina; them to death was an unnecessary crime ; to accompany that death with the brutalities which attended it, was the act of fiends. The first scene in this great drama in which Marie Antoinette prominently figures, is in its first act in that incursion of the mob at Versailles, in the night of the 5th of October, 1789, when driven from her bed-chamber, she appeared in early morning in a balcony of the pa- lace with her children, confronting the infuriated crowd in the court-yard be- low. When they ordered the children away, as if to shut out from their view that appeal to tenderness and pity, the queen appeared alone before them, her hands and eyes raised to heaven, appa- rently expecting instant death— an act of heroism which must have tamed for the moment the ferocity of her j^erse- cutors, whose wanton, libellous detrac- tion, assailing her fair fame, was even more cruel than theii' personal vio- lence. The ignominious escort to Paris follows upon this, and the prolonged virtual imj)risonment in the palace of the Tuilleries, the king, shorn of his prerogatives, a jiuppet in the hands of the Assembly. Wearied at length of this anomalous position, in concert with the emigrant nobles, encouraged by the decision of the queen, in June, 1791, he endeavors to make his es- cape from the kingdom. The queen had been for some time busy in pre- paration for the departure. Madame Campan, who was still with her, was employed in getting together and for- warding to Brussels a complete ward- robe for the family. On the 20th, the king, Avith the queen, their children and his sister Elizabeth, leave the Tuil- leries clandestinely in flight for the frontier. The Journey has been gene- rally well arranged, but failing in some of its details, chiefly through a slight loss of time on the route, the actual cause of disaster it is said being the king's j)ersistence in stoppmg to gratify his appetite by eating a meal at a friend's house, is fatally checked, late in the evening; of the 21st at Va- rennes. The king, showing himself from a window, "has been recognized, and a band of young patriots effect his capture. The party is brought back in triumph to the Tuilleries and guarded there more rigorously than before. MARIE ANTOINETTE. 105 Thougli untried, tliey are already vir- tually condemned, and their lives, in tlie rapid deterioration of political par- ties, are at the mercy of a mob. In vain has the king sworn to obey the Constitution, completed at last by the National Assembly. The Legislative Assembly, their successors, are more intolerant, and a mob, in the interest of the Republicans, on the 20th June, 1792, finds its way into the inner court of the Tuilleries, demanding conces- sions of the king, crowning his majesty with the red revolutionary cap, while the queen with difficulty escapes wear- ing just siich another, getting off by placing a tri-colored cockade in her head-dress. This is but child's play, however, to the events at the Tuille- ries of the 10th of August, one of the dark days of history, when the insur- rectionary factions, commencing the reign of terror, di'ove the royal family as their only escape from immediate massacre to take refua;e in the National Assembly, while the faithful Swiss guard laid down their lives in defence of the palace. The queen would have remained to risk their fate and there met death in defence of the cro-\vn ; but she was moved by an appeal for her children and submitted. The As- sembly decreed that the royal family should be lodged in the Temple, an ancient fortress or castle in the heart of the city. Here for a time, under strict confinement, making the best of their situation, the royal party, though suffering greatly, solaced their misfor- tunes by mutual acts of affection and kindness, till the king was separated fi-om them. In December, he was car- ried forth to his trial by the Conven- tion which had succeeded to the As- sembly, and on the 21st suffered death at the hands of the public executioner, having previously been permitted the grace, or rather the final torture, of a parting interview with his family. Four months after the death of the king, the dauphin was separated from his mother in the Temple, and the queen was left with the king's sister, Madame Elizabeth, to endure the a2;2;ra- vated sorrows and humiliations heap- ed upon her. In August, 1793, she was removed to the still more cruel prison of the Conciergerie, in the vaults of the Palace of Justice, and in October was led to the court above to undergo the mockery of a trial aggravated by the fiercest and most revolting? indio-ni- ties. She endured all with a heroism worthy the daughter of Maria Theresa. The only charity she esj^erienced, was in her speedy execution on the 16th, when she was conducted amidst the jeers of the populace to the spot, the Place Louis Quinze, where, nine months before, the king had met his fate, and there, her last glance toward the Tem- ple, and her last thoughts on her chil- dren, she too suffered death by the guillotine. li DAVID GARRICK. DAVID GAREICK was born at tlie Angel Inn, Hereford, on the 19th February, 1716,* He was French by descent. His paternal grandfather, David Garric, or Garrique, a French Protestant of good family, had escaped to England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, reaching London on the 5th of October, 1685. There he was joined in the following December by his wife, who had taken a month to make the passage from Bordeaux in a wretched bark of fourteen tons, " with strong tempests, and at great peril of being lost." Such was the inveteracy of their persecutors, that, in effecting their own escape, these poor people had to leave behind them their only child, a boy called Peter, who was out at nurse at Bastide, near Bordeaux. It was not until May, 1687, that little Peter was restored to them by his nurse, Mary Mougnier, who came over to London with him. By this time a daughter had been born, and other sons and daughters followed ; but of a numerous family three alone surviv- ed — Peter, Jane, and David. David * This narrative is abridged from an admira- ble presentation of the career of Garrick in the Quarterly Review. (106) settled at Lisbon as a wine mei chant, and Peter entered the anny in 1706. His regiment was quartered at Lich- field ; and, some eighteen months after he received his commission, he married Arabella, the daughter of the Rev. Mr. Clough, vicar choral of the cathedral there. There was no fortune on either side, but much affection. The usual result followed. Ten children were bom in rapid succession, of whom sev- en survived. Of these the third was David, who made his appearance some- what inopportunely, while his father, then a lieutenant of dragoons, was at Hereford on recruiting service. Lichfield was the home of the fami- ly. There was good blood on both sides of it, and they were admitted in- to the best society of the place, and held in deserved respect. David was a clever, bright boy ; of quick observa- tion, apt at mimiciy, and of an enga ging temper. Such learning as the grammar - school of the town could give he obtained; and his training here, and at Edial some years after- wards under his townsman Samuel Johnson, produced more of the fruits of a liberal education than commonly results even from schooling of a more DAVID GAEEICK. 107 elaborate and costly kind. Tlie occa- sional visits of a strolling troop of play- ers gave tlie future Roscius his first toste of the fascinations of the di'ama. To see was to resolve to emulate, and before he was eleven years old he dis- tinguished himself in the part of Ser- jeant Kite in a performance of Far- quhar's " Recruiting Officer," organiz- ed for the amusement of their friends by his companions and himself. Meanwhile the cares of a numerous family were growing upon his parents. To meet its expenses, his father ex- changed from the dragoons, into a marching regiment, and went upon half-pay. Peter, the eldest boy, had gone into the Navy ; and upon the in- vitation of the uncle, whose name he bore, young David, then only eleven, was sent to Lisbon, apparently with the expectation that a provision for life would be made for him in his un- cle's Imsiness. But either his uncle had no such intention, or the boy found the occupation distasteful, for his stay in Portugal did not extend over many months. Short as it was, he succeeded in making himself popular there by his vivacity and talents. After dinner he would be set upon the table to recite to the guests passages from the plays they were familiar with at home. A very pleasant inmate he must have been in the house of his well-to-do bachelor uncle. No doubt he was sent home with something handsome in his pock- et ; and when a few years afterwards the uncle came back to England to die, he left his nej^hew 1000/., — twice as much as he gave to any others of the family. Garrick's father, who had for some years been making an inefl^ectual strug gle to keep his head above water xipon his half-pay, found he could do so no longer, and in 1V31 he joined his regi ment, which had been sent out to gar rison Gibraltar, leaving behind him his wife, broken in health, to face sin gle-handed the debts and duns, the worries and anxieties, of a large fami- ly. In her son David she found the best support. His heart and head were ever at work to soften her trials, and his gay spirit doubtless brighten- ed with many a smile the sad wistful- ness of her anxious face. The fare in her home was meairre, and the dresses of its inmates scaiity and well worn ; still there were loving hearts in it, which were di'awn closer together by their very privations. But the poor lady's heart was away with the father. " I must tell my dear life and soul," she WTites to him in a lettei', which reads like a bit of Thackeray or Sterne, " that I am not able to live any longer without him ; for I grow very jealous. But in the midst of all this I do not blame my dear. I have very sad dreams for you but I have the pleas- ure when I am up, to think, were I with you, how tender. .... my dear would be to me ; nay was, when I was with you last. O ! that I had you in my arms. I would tell my dear life how much I am his — A. G." Her husband had then been only two years gone. Three more weaiy years were to pass before she was to see him again. This was in 1736, and he returned, shattered in health and spirits, to die within little more than a year. One year more, and she, too, the sad faithful mother, whose " dear 108 DAYID GAEEICK. life " was restored to lier arms only to be taken from them by a sterner part- ing, was herself at rest. During his father's absence Garrick had not been idle. His busy brain and restless fancy had been laying up stores of observation for future use. He was a general favorite in the Lich- field circle — amusing the old, and head- ing the sports of the young — winning the hearts of all. Gilbert Walmsley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court, a good and wise friend, who had known and loved him from childhood, took him under his si:)ecial care. On his suggestion, possibly by his help, Dav- id and his brother George were sent as pupils to Johnson's academy at Edial, to complete their studies in Latin and French. Garrick and Johnson had been friends before, and there was in- deed but seven years' difference in their ages. But Johnson even then impress- ed his pupil with a sense of superiority, which never afterwards left him ; while Garrick established an equally lasting hold upon the somewhat caiiriclous heart of his ungainly master. From time to time he was taken by friends to London, where, in the theatres that were to be the scenes of his future triumphs, he had opportunities of studying some of the leading perform- ers, whom he was afterwards to eclipse. Even in these early days the dream of cojiing with these favorites of the town had taken possession of him. But he kept it to himself, well knowing the shock he would have inflicted on the kind hearts at home, had he suggested to them the possibility of such a career for himself. By the time his father returned from Gibraltar Garrick was nineteen. A pro- fession must be chosen, and the law ap- pears to have been thought the fittest for a youth of so much readiness and address, and with an obviously unusu- al faculty of speech. Some fu^'ther preliminary studies were, howevei, in- dispensable. He could not afford to go to either university, and in this strait his friend V ""almsley bethought him of a " dear old friend " at Rochester, the Rev. Mr. Colson, afterward Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, a man oi em- inence in science, as a person most like- ly to give young Garrick the instruc- tion in " mathematics, philosophy, and humane learning " which was deemed requisite to comj^lete his education. To him, therefore, a letter was de- spatched, asking him to undertake the charge, from which we get an authen- tic and agreeable picture of the young fellow's character. " He is a very sensible fellow, and a good scholar, nineteen, of soljer and good dispositions, and is as ingenious and promising a young man as ever I knew in my life. Few instructions on your side will do, and in the intervals of study he will be an agreeable com- panion for you. This young gentleman has been much with me, ever since he was a child, and I have taken much pleasure in instructing him, and have a great affection and esteem for him." Mr. Colson accepted the proposal ; but by the time the terms had been arrang- ed, another young native of Lichileld, in whom Walmsley felt no slight inter- est, had determined to move southward to try his fortunes, and was also to be brought under Mr. Colson's notice. This was Samuel Johnson, whose DAVID GAEPJCK. 109 Edial Academy liad by this time been starved out, but for whom. London, the last hope of ambitious scholars, was still open. He had written his trage- dy of "Irene," and it had found pro- vincial admirers, Walmsley among the number, who thought a tragedy in verse the oi:>en sesame to fame and for- tune. For London, therefore, Johnson and Garrick started together — John- son, as he used afterwards to say, with two-pence-halfpenny in his pocket, and Garrick with three halfpence in his ; a mocking exaggeration, not very wide, however, of the truth. For some reason not now known Garrick did not go to IVir. Colson in a week. On reaching town he lost no time in getting himself admitted to the Honorable Society of Lincoln's Inn (19th March, 1737) by payment of the admission fee, the only act of member- ship which he appears ever to have performed. He stayed in London with Johnson for some time, and their fi- nances fell so low that they had to bor- row five pounds on their joint note ft'om one Wilcox, a bookseller and acquaintance of Garrick's, who after- wards proved one of Johnson's best friends. Most probably Garrick's plans of study under Mr. Colson were disconcerted by the illness of his father, who died within a month after Garrick 'lad started from Lichfield. Nor was it antil the death soon afterwards of the Lis])on imcle, and the opening to Gar- rick of his £1000 legacy, that he found himself in a condition to incur that ex- pense. Late in 1737 he went to Roches- ter, and remained with Mr. Colson for some months, but with what advantage can be only matter of conjecture. Early in 1738 Garrick returned to Lichfield. By this time his brother Peter had left the navy, and returned home. There were five brothers and sisters to be provided for, so Peter and he clubbed their little fortunes, and set up in business as wine merchants in Lichfield and London. David, Ijy this time tolerably familiar with the ways of town, and not unknown at the coffee-houses where his wines might be in demand, took charge of the London business. Vaults were taken in Dur- ham Yard, between the Sti-and and the river, where the Adelphi Terrace now stands, and here Foote, in his usual vein of grotesque exaggeration, used to say, he had known the great actor " with three quarts of vinegar in the cellar, calling himself a wine mer- chant." Of Garrick at this period we get a vivid glimpse from Macklin, an estal> lished actor, who was then Garrick's inseparable friend, but was afterwards to prove a constant thorn in his side through life, and his most malignant detractor after death. Garrick " was then," as Macklin told his own bio- grapher Cooke, " a very sprightly young man, neatly made, of an express- ive countenance, and most agreeable manners." Mr. Cooke adds, upon the same authority : — " The stage possessed him wholly ; he could talk or think of nothing but the theatre ; and as they often dined together in select parties, Garrick rendered himself the idol of the meeting by his mimicry, anecdotes, etc. With other funds of information, he possessed a number of good travel ling stories " (with which his youthful voyage to Lisbon had apparently sup- 110 DAVID GAERICK. plied him), " whicli he narrated, sir " (added the veteran), " in such a vein of pleasantry and rich humor, as I have seldom seen equalled." There could be only one conclusion to such a state of things. The wine business languished ; that it was not wholly ruined, and Garrick with it, shows that with all his love of society he was able to exercise great prudence and self-restraint. " Though on plea- sure bent, he had a frugal mind." Early habits of self-denial, and the thoughts of the young brothers and sisters at Lichfield, were enough to check everything like extravagance, though they could not control the pas- sion which was hourly feeding itself upon the study of plays and inter- course with players, and bearing him onwards to the inevitable goal. Their society, and that of the wits and critics about town, were the natural element for talents such as his. He could even then turn an epigram or copy of verses, for which his friend Johnson would secure a place in the " Gentleman's Magazine." Paragraj^hs of dramatic criticism frequently exercised his pen. He had a farce, " Lethe," accepted at Drury Lane, and anothei', " The Lying Valet," ready for the stage. Actors and managers were among his inti- mates. He had the entree behind the scenes at the two great houses, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and his his- trionic powers were so well recognized, that one evening, in 1740, when Wood- ward was too ill to go on as harlequin, at the little theatre in Goodman's Fields, Garrick was allowed to take his place for the early scenes, and got vhi-ough them so well that the sub- stitution was not surmised by the audience. Nor had his been a mere lounger's delight in the pleasures of the theatre. The axiom that the stage is nought, which does not " hold the mirror up to nature," had taken deep hold upon his mind. But fi'om the actual stage he found that nature, especially in the poetical drama, had all but vanished, and in its place had come a purely conventional and monotonous style of declamation, with a stereotyped system of action no less formal and unreal. There was a noble opening for any one who should have the coui'age and the gifts to return to nature and to truth, and Garrick felt that it was " in him " to effect the desired revolution. Nor Avas that reform far distant. The veiy next summer was to decide Garrick's career. His broodings were now to take actual shape. But before hazard- ing an appearance in London he wisely resolved to test his powders in the coun- try ; and with this view he went down to Ipswich with the comj^auy of Gif- fard, the manager of the Goodman's Fields Theatre, and made his appear- ance under the name of Lyddal as Aboan in Southern's tragedy of " Oroonoko." This he followed up by several other characters, both tragic and comic, none of them of first im- portance, but sufficient to give him ease on the stage, and at the same time enable him to ascertain wherein his strength lay. His success was linques- tionable, and decided him on appealing to a London audience. The quality in which Garrick then and throughout his career surpassed all his contemporaries was the povyer DAVID GAERICK. Ill of kindling with the exigencies of the scene. He lost himself in his part. It spoke through him ; and the greater the play it demanded of emotion and passion, the more diversified the ex- pression and action for which it gave scope, the more brilliantly did his genius assert itself. His face answer- ed to his feelings, and its workings gave warning of his words before he uttered them ; his voice, melodious and full of tone, though far from strong, had the penetrating quality hard to define, but which is never wanting either in the great orator or the great actor ; and his figure, light, graceful, and well balanced, though under the average size, was equal to every de- mand which his impulsive nature made upon it. We can see all this in the portraits of him even at this early period. Only in those of a later date do we get some idea of the command- ing power of his eyes, which not only held his audience like a spell, but con- trolled, with a power almost beyond endurance, his fellow performers in the scene. But from the first the power must have been there. He had noted well all that was good in the professors of the art he was destined to revolutionize ; and he had learned, as men of ability do learn, even from their very defects, in what direction true excellence was to be sought for. Long afterwards he used to say that his own chief successes in " Richard the Third " were due to what he had learn- ed through watching Eyan, a very in- difPerent actor, in the same part. Richard was the character he chose for liis first London trial ; a choice made with a wise estimate of his own pow- ers, for the display of which it was eminently fitted. At this time the pai-t was in the possession of Quin, whose "manner of heaving up his words, and labored action," as de- scribed by Davies, were the best of foils to the fiery energy and subtle varieties of expression with which Gar- rick was soon to make the public familiar. He appeared, by the usual venial fiction on similar occasions, as a " gentleman Avho never appeared on any stage." The house was not a great one ; still the audience was nu- merous enough to make the actor feel his triumph, and to spread the report of it widely. They were taken by sur- prise at first by a style at once so new and so consonant to nature. "To the Just modulation of the words," says Davies, " and concurring expression of the features, from the genuine workings of nature, they had been strangers, at least for some time. But, after Mr. Garrick had gone through a variety of scenes, in which he gave evident proof of consummate art, and perfect knowledge of charac- ter, their doubts were turned into sur- prise and astonishment, from which they relieved themselves in loud and reiterated applause." A power like this was sure of rapid recognition in those days, when theatres formed a sort of fourth estate. Gar- rick's first appearance was on the 19th of October, 1741. He repeated the character the two following nights, then changed it for " Aboan," his first part of the Ipswich Series. Tlie audi- ences were still moderate, and his sal- ary, a guinea a night, moderate in proportion. But fame had carried the 112 DAVID GAREICK. repoi-t of tlie new wonder from the obscure corner of the city, near the Minories, in which his friend GifFard's theatre was situated, to the wits and fashionable people in the West-end. Richard was restored to the bills. " Goodman's Fields," says Da\'ies, " was full of the sj^lendors of St. James's and Grosvenor Square; the coaches of the nobility filled up the space from Temple Bar to White Chapel." What Garrick valued more than all this concourse of fashionables, men of high character and undoubted taste flocked to hear him ; and on the 2nd of November, Pope, ill and failing, who had come out early in the year to see Macklin's " Shylock," and had re- cognized its excellence, was again tempted from his easy chair at Twick- enham by the rumor of a worthy suc- cessor having arisen to the Betterton and Booth of his early admiration. " I saw," said Garrick, describing the event long afterwards to the somewhat mag- niloquent Percival Stockdale, " our lit- tle poetical hero, dressed in black, seated in a side-box near the staere, and viewing me with a serious and earnest attention. His look shot and thrilled like lightning through my frame, and I had some hesitation in proceeding from anxiety and from Joy. As Rich- ard gradually blazed forth, the house was in a roar of applause, and the con- spiring hand of Pope showered me with laurels." Pope returned to see him twice; and his verdict, which reached Garrick through Lord Orrery, shows how deeply he was impressed by Garrick's fresh and forcible style, and the genuine insj^iration which animated his performance. "That young man never had his equal as an actor, and he will never have a rival.'' Pope dreaded that success would spoil him ; but Garrick's genius was not of the ungenuine kind, which is spoiled by success. He knew only too well how far his best achievements fell short of what his imagination con- ceived. Others might think his de- lineations could not be improved. Not so he; for act as long as he might, there was no great part, in Shakespeare especially, which would not constantly present new details to elaborate, or suggest shades of significance or con- trast which had previously escaped him. The praise of old Mrs. Porter, herself the greatest tragedian of her time, who had come up to town to see him from her retirement in the country, must have spoken more eloquently to him than even Pope's broad eulogium, and in it, too, there was the prophecy of the " All hail, hereafter." " He is born an actor, and does more at his first appearance than ever anybody did with twenty years' practice ; and, good God, what will he be in time ! " The Duke of Argyle and Lord Cobham, great authorities in stage matters, pro- nounced him superior to Betterton. The very conflicts of opinion to which such high commendations gave rise were the best of fame for the young ar tist. They drew crowds to the theatre ; and even before the end of 1741, it was often far too small to accommodate the numbers that flocked for admittance. The humlile salary of a guinea a night was clearly no adeqiiate return for such merits. Gifi^ard ofiEered him a share in the management upon eqi;al terms; and within the next few months the DAYID GAREICK. 113 foundation of the actor's ultimate great fortune was laid. Sucli success could not fail to pro- voke tlie jealousy of those performers who had hitherto occupied the fore- most ranks. It was a virtual condem- nation of all they had trained them- selves to think true acting. " If this young fellow is right, then Ave have all been wrong," said one, as if in that statement were included a final verdict asrainst him. "This," remarked the sententious Quin, " is the wonder of a day ; Gan-ick is a new religion ; the people follow him as another White- field ; but they will soon return to church again." Return, however, they did not. A new era had begun ; and Garrick, whose ready jien did not al- ways do him such good service, was able to retort the sarcasm in a smart epigram, of which these two lines have kept their place in literature : " When doctrines meet with general approba- tion, It is not heresy but Reformation." While people were still in admira- tion at the tragic force of his Richard, he sur^H-ised them by the display of comic powers, scarcely less remarkable, in Clodio in the "Fop's Fortune," Fondlewife in Congreve's " Old Bache- lor," and other characters ; thus early demonstrating his own doctrine that " there must be comedy in the perfect actor of tragedy," of which he was af- terwards to furnish so brilliant an example. His lively farce of "The Lying Valet " (produced in December, 1741), established his re2:)utation as a writer, at the same time that it gave him in Sharp a field for the airy viva- city, the ever-bubbling gayety of tone, 15 the talent of making witty things doubly witty by the way of saying them, for which he was afterwards so famous. Some of his friends (his townsman Newton, the future Bishop, then tutor to Lord Carpenter's son, among the number) thought his ap- pearance in such j^arts a mistake. " You, who are equal to the greatest parts, strangely demean yourself in acting anything that is low or little," he wrote, ISth Januar}', 1742. "There are abundance of people who hit ofi:' low humor and succeed in the cos- comb and the buffoon very well ; but there is scarce one in an age who is capable of acting the hero in tragedy and the fine gentleman in comedy. Though you perform these parts never so well, yet there is not half the merit in excellins; in them as in the others." Sound enough advice in the main and to actors of limited scope, and most politic as a warning, by which Garrick profited, not to let himself down by playing merely farce parts. But there is no good reason why an actor of the requisite genius should not play Touch- stone as well as Othello, Sir Toby Belch as well as Coriolanus, with no more loss of caste than Shakespeare for hav. ing vrritten them. But then there must be the requisite genius to Justify the attempt. This Garrick had, as was soon afterwards proved, when he pass- ed fi'om King Lear to Abel Dnigger, in "The Alchemist," from Hamlet to Bayes in " The Rehearsal," and left his severest critics in doubt in which he was most to be admired. Indeed it was just this wide range of power, this Shakesperian multiformity of concep- tion, which was the secret of Garrick's IM DAVID GAEEICK. greatness, and, after his death, made even the cynical Walpole confess that he was "the greatest actor that ever lived, both in comedy and tragedy." Newton himself was struck by this a few months later. He had just seen Garrick's Lear, and after giving him the opinion of certain friends that he far exceeded Booth in that character, and even equalled Betterton, he goes on to say : — "The thing that strikes me above all others is that variety in your act- ing, and your being so totally a differ- ent man in Lear from what you are in Richard. There is a sameness in every other actor. Gibber is something of a coxcomb in everything : and Wolsey, Syphax, and lago, all smell strong of the essence of Lord Foppington. Booth was a philosopher in Gato, and was a philosopher in everything else ! His passion in Hotspur I hear was much of the same nature, whereas yours was an old man's jjassion, and an old man's voice and action ; and, in the four parts wherein I have seen you, Richard, Cha- mout, Bayes, and Lear, I never saw four actors more different from one another, than you are from yourself." His Lear, like his Richard, seems from the first to have been superb. Cooke, indeed, in his " Memoir- of Mack- lin" says the first and second perfor- mances of the part disappointed that severe critic. It did not sufllciently in- dicate the infirmities of the man " four- score and upwards " — the curse did not break down, as it should have done, in the impotence of i-age — there was a lack of dignity in the prison scene, and so forth. Garrick took notes of Mack- lin's criticisms on all these points. withdrew the play for sis weeks, and restudied the character in the interval. Of the result on his next appearance Macklin always spoke with rajiture. The curse in particular exceeded all he could have imagined; it seemed to electrify the audience with horror. The words " kill— kill— kill," echoed all the revenge of a frantic king, " whilst his pathos on discovering his daughter Gordelia drew tears of com- miseration from the whole house. In short, sir, the little dog made it a chef d^ceuvre, and a chef d'osuvre it contin- ued to the end of his life." While the town was ringing with his triumphs, and his brain was still on fire with the fulfilment of his cher- ished dreams, GaiTick did not forget his sober partner in business nor the other good folks at Lichfield, to whose genteel notions his becoming a stage- jjlayer, he knew, would be a terrible shock. The Ipswich performances had escaped their notice; and brother Peter, when in town soon afterwards, found him out of health and spii'its. It was the miserable interim " between the actinof of a dreadful thintj, and the first motion" of it. Garrick, though he had quite made up his mind to go on the stage, was afraid to break the news to his family. But he did so the day after his delid at Goodman's Fields while the plaudits of his audience were yet sounding in his ears, in a let- ter to his brother and partner, dcj^re- cating his censure with an unassuming earnestness which speaks volumes for the modesty of the artist, and the simple and loving nature of the man : — • " My mind, " he writes, " (as you m\ist know) has been always inclined \ DAVID GARRICK. lis to the stage, nay, so sti'ongly so that all my illness and lowness of spirits was owing to my want of resolution to tell you my thoughts Avhen here. Finding at last both my inclination and interest required some new way of life, I have chose the most aijreeable to myself, and though I know you will be much displeased at me, yet I hoj^e when you shall find that I may have the genius of an actor, without the vices, you will think the less severely of me, and not be ashamed to own me for a brother. . . Last night I played Richard the Thii'd to the sur- prise of everybody, and as I shall make very near £300 per annum by it, and as it is really what I doat upon, I am resolved to pursue it." The wine business at Durham Yard, he explained, had not prospered — £400 of Garrick's small capital had been lost^and he saw no prospect of re- trieving it. He was prepared to make every reasonable arrangement with his brother about their partnership, and in his new career better fortune awaited him, of which his family should share the fruits. But the news spread dismay in the old home at Lich- field; their respectability was com- promised by one of their blood becom- ing a " harletry player," and getting mixed up with the loose morals and shifty ways of the theatrical fraternity. Before Peter's reply reached him. Gar- rick must have known that his fame was secure. But the tone of his re- joinder is still modest, though firm. Writinar ajrain on the 27th, he assures his brother that even his friends, " who were at first surprised at my intent, by seeing me on the stage, are now well convinced it was impossible to keep me off." As to company, " the best in town " Avere desirous of his, and he had received more civilities since he came on the stage than he ever did in all his life before. Leonidas Glover has been to see him every night, and goes about saying he had not seen acting for ten years before. " In short, were I to tell you what they say about me, 'twould be too vain, though I am now writing to a brother , . . I am sorry my sisters are under such uneasinesses, and, as I really love both them and you, will ever make it my study to apj^ear youi* affectionate brother, D. Garrick." A less modest or more selfish man would have thrown off Avith some im- patience the weak scruples of his fam- ily about loss of caste. When they found their brother making his way in the highest quarters, and becoming well to do at the same time, the views of his family underwent a change. It was not, however, till the 2nd of De- cember, 1741, that Garrick threw off the mask and performed under his own name. By this time even they must have begun to doubt whether honor was not more likely to accrue to them than discredit from the step which he had taken. But it must have been no small pain to him to have the vulgar estimate of his profession thrown so remorselessly in his teeth by his own kindred. Garrick paid the actor's accustomed penalty for success by being overwork- ed. Between his first appearance in Oc- tober, 1741, and the following May, when the Goodman's Fields Theatre closed, he played no less than one hun iir. DAVID GAREICK. dred and thirty-eight times, and for the most part in characters of the greatest weight and importance in both tragedy and comedy. Among the former were Richard, Lear, Pierre ; among the hit- ter, Lord Foppington, in Gibber's "Careless Husband," Fondlewife and Bayes. The range of character and passion which these pai'ts covered was immense. To have played them at all, new as he was to the stage, was no common feat of industry, but only ge- nius of the most remarkable kind could have carried him through them, not only Avithout injury, but with positive increase, to the high reputation his first performances had created. In Bayes he was nearly as popular as in Richard and Lear ; and he made the part sub- servient to his purpose of exposing the false and unnatural style into which actors had fallen, by making Bayes speak his turgid heroics in imitation of some of the leading performers. But when he found how the men whose faults he burlesqued — good, worthy men in their way — were made wretch- ed by seeing themselves, and what they did in all seriousness, held up to derision, his naturally kind heart and good taste made him drop these imi- tations. Garrick's true vocation was to teach his brethren a purer style by his ovm example, not to dishearten them by ridicule. Mimicry, besides, as he well knew, is the lowest form of the actor's art, and no mere mimic can be a great actor, for sincerity, not simulation, is at the root of all great- ness on the stacje. The success of Garriok at Goodman's Fields emptied the patent houses at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and the patentees had recourse to the law to compel Giffard to close his theatre Garrick was secured for the next sea son at Drury Lane. But as that house did not open till September, and the people of Dublin were impatient to see him, he started off for that city early in June, and remained there play- ing a round of his leading parts till the middle of August. An epidemic which raged during the greater part of this time, caused by distress among the poor, and by the great heat, got the name of the Garrick Fever. But the epidemic which he really caused was not among the poor, but among the wits and fine ladies of that then fashionable and lively city, Avho were not likely to be behind his English admirers in enthusiasm. He was be- rhymed and feted on all hands, and from them he got the title of Roscius, which to this hour is coupled with his name. During this engagement he added Hamlet to his list of characters. Like his Richard and his Lear it was treated in a manner quite his own, and like them it was from the first a success, but was, of course, much elaborated and modified in future years. At Drury Lane Garrick found him- self associated with his old friend Macklin, who was deputy manager and with that " dallying and danger ous" beauty, Peg Woffington, under whose spell he appears to have fallen as early as 1740. As an actress she was admirable for the life, the nature, and the crace which she threw into all she did, set ofi^ by a fine person, and a face, which, as her portraits shoAv, though habitually pensive in its ex- pression, was capable of kindling into DAYID GAEEICK. in passion, or beaming with tlie sudden and fitful lights of feeling and fancy. She had been literally picked out of the streets of Dublin as a child crying "halfpenny salads," and trained by a rope-dancer, Madame Violante, as one of a Lilliputian company, in which she figured in such parts as Captain Mac- heath. Like Rachel and many other celebrated women, she contrived, it is hard to say how, to educate herself, so that she could hold her own in conver- sation in any society; and such was her natural jrrace, that she excelled in characters like Millamant and Lady Townley, in which the well-bred air of good society was essential. Frank, kindly and impulsive, she had also wit at will, to give piquancy to the exj)res- sions of a very independent turn of mind. She never scrupled to avow that she preferred the company of men to that of women, who " talked," she said, " of nothing but silks and scandal." The men returned the compliment by being very fond of her comj)any. " Forgive her one female error," says Murphy, " and it might fairly be said of her that she was adorned with every vir- tue." But when Garrick first fell un- der her fascination, these frailties had not been developed. She was then in the bloom of her beauty, — and how charming that was we can see from Hogarth's exquisite portrait, — and though suitors of Avealth and rank surrounded her, genius and youth had probably more charms for her than gold and fine living. Garrick was deep- ly smitten by her, and he seems for a time to have thought her worthy of an honorable love. For one season he kept house together with her and Macklin, and they were visited by his friends, Johnson and Dr. Hoadley among the niimber. It was thought he would marry her ; but Peg's aberrations — her " one female error " — grew too serious. She was in truth an incurable coquette. Garrick's heart was touched, hers was not. It cost him a good many strag- gles to break his chains, but he broke them at last, and left her finally in 1745 to the rakes and fools who were out- biddino; each other for her favors. He was worthy of a better mate; and he was to find one before very long, for in March of the folloAving year (1746) the lady came to England Avho was to replace his feverish passion for the wayward Wofiiugton, by a de- votion which grew stronger and deeper T^dth every year of his life. This was the fair Eva Maria Veigel, which latter name she had changed for its French equivalent Violette. She was then twenty-one, a dancer, and had come from Vienna with recommendations from the Empress Theresa, who was said to have found her too beautiful to be allowed to remain within reach of the Emperor Frederick I. Jupiter Carlyle, returning from his studies at Leyden, found himself in the same packet with her, crossing from Helvoet to Harwich. She was disguised in male attire, and this, although traveling un- der the protection of a person who call- ed himself her father, and two other foreigners. Carlyle took the seeming youth for " a Hanoverian Baron com- ing to Britain to pay his court at St. James's." But the lady becoming alarmed by a storm during the pas- sage, her voice, no less than her fears, at once betrayed her to Carlyle. This lis DAVID GAEEICK. led to an avowal of her profession, and of tlie object of her journey, and the young handsome Scotchman took care not to leave London without seeing his fair fello^^'-traveler on the Opera stage, where he found her dancing to be " ex- quisite." Such was the general ver- dict. The dancing of those days was not a thing in which every womanly feeling, every refined grace, was vio- lated. It aspired to delight by the 2")oetry of motion, not to amaze by com- plexities of distortion, or brilliant mar- vels of muscular force. Beautiful, modest, accomplished, the Violette not only charmed on the stage, but soon found her way into fashionable society. So early as June, 1746, Horace Walpole writes to his friend Montague : " The fame of the Violette increases daily. The sister Countesses of Burlington and Talbot exert all their stores of sullen partiality and competition for her." The Countess of Burlington took her to live with her, and was in the habit of attending her to the the- atre, and waitino- at tke side-wines to throw a shawl over her as she left the stage. These attentions, due solely to the charm of the young lady, and the enthusiasm of her patroness, vrere quite enough to set in motion the tonsrues of the Mrs. Candors and Sir Benjamin Backbites of society. The Violette, they began to Avhisper, was a daughter of Lord Burlington, by a Florentine of rank; and when, upon her marriage vfith Garrick in 1749, she received a handsome marriage portion from the countess, this was considered conclu- sive evidence of the scandal. It was not, however, from the earl, but from the countess that the dowry came. It consisted of a sum of five thousand pounds, secured on one of her lady- shij>'s Lincolnshire estates, Garrick on his part settling ten thousand pounds on his bride, with seventy pounds a year of pin-money. It is quite possi- ble that the security for five thousand pounds granted by the countess was simply an equivalent for some such sum previously handed over to her by the young lady. But the parties kept their own counsel in their arrange- ments, and so left the busy-bodies at fault. The countess, it is said, looked higher for her young friend than the great player, as a countess with so cele- brated a beauty in hand was likely to do ; and it was not without difficulty that Garrick won what proved to be the great prize of his life. He had on one occasion to disguise himself as a woman, in order to convey a letter to his mistress. But the fact of her receiv ing it bespeaks the foregone conclusion that he had won her heart ; and, that fact once ascertained, the countess was probably too wise to oppose further resistance. How attractive in person the young dancer was her portraits sur- vive to tell us. What her lover thoiight of her appears from some verses which he wrote in the first happiness of what we cannot call his honeymoon, for their whole married life was one honeymoon ' ' 'Tis not, my friend, her speaking face. Her sliape, her youth, her winning grace, Have reached my heart ; the fair one's mind Quick as her eyes, yet soft and kind — A gayety with innocence, . A soft address, with manly sense ; Ravishing manners void of art, A cheerful, Arm, yet feeling heart, Beauty that charms all public gaze. And humble, amid pomp and praise." DAVID GAERICK. 119 What Garrick owed to the happy cir- cumstances of his man'iage, can scarcely be stated too highly. In his home he found all the solace which grace, re- finement, fine intelligence, and entii'e sympathy could give. As artist, these were invaluable to him ; as manager, a man of his sensibilities must have broken down without them. In 1747, two years before his marriage, he had, along with Mr. Lacy, become patentee of Drury Lane Theatre, to which his performances had been confined, with the exception of a second visit to Dub- lin in 1745-6, and a short engagement at Covent Garden in 1746-7. So well had he husbanded his means since his dihut at the end of 1741, that he was able, with some help fi'om friends, to find eight thousand pounds of the twelve thousand pounds which were required for the enterprise. Lacy took charge of the business details, while all that related to the performances de- volved upon Garrick. He got together the very best company that could be had, for, to use his own words, he " thousfht it the interest of the best actors to be together," knowing well, that apart from the great gain in gen- eral eft'ect, this combination brings out all that is best in the actors themselves. At starting, therefore, he drew round him Mrs, Gibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Woflington, among the wo- men ; Barry, Macklin, Delane, Havard, Sparks, Shuter, among the men. Later on he secured Quin andWoodward, and, whenever he could, he drew into his com- pany whatever ability was in the mar- ket. He determined to bring back the public taste, if possible, from panto- mime and farce, to performances of a more intellectual stamp. Johnson Avi'ote his fine prologue to announce the princii:)les on which the theatre was to be conducted, and threw upon the public, and with justice, the re sponsil)ility, should these miscarry, by the well-known lines, — "The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, For those, who hve to please, must please to hve." The public, as usual, fell back after a time upon its love for " iuexi^licable dumb show and noise," and Garrick had no choice but to indulge its taste. But in these early days the array of varied ability which his company presented, backed by his own genius, filled, as it well might, the theatre nightly. Garrick's sympathies with literature and literary meu were very great. He formed a fine library, and not only formed but used it. He was well vers- ed in the literature of Europe, especial- ly of Italy and France. He wrote well himself. His prologues and vers desode- te are even now pleasant reading. He would turn off one of his prologues or epilogues in two hours. As a rule, an epigram — such as his famous one on Goldsmith — took him five minutes. There was no man of literary eminence in England with whom he was not on a friendly footing. " It has been the business, and ever will be, of my life," he wrote to Goldsmith in 1757, "to live on the best terms with men of ge- nius." When such men wanted money, his purse was always at their command and in the handsomest way. Sterne, Churchill, Johnson, Goldsmith, Mur- phy, Foote, had many proofs of this helpful sympathy, not to speak of men of lesser note. 120 DAYID GARPJCK. " The animated graces of the player," Colley Gibber has well said, " can live no longer than the instant breath and motion that present them, or at best can but faintly glimmer through the memory or imperfect attestation of a few surviving spectators." There are many descriptions, and good ones, of Garrick's acting ; but the most vivid pen can sketch but faintly even the outlines of an actor's Avork, and all the finest touches of his art necessarily perish with the moment. Of Garrick, however, we get some glimpses of a very life-like kind, from the letters of Lichtenberg,the celebrated Hogarthian critic, to his friend Boie. Lichtenberg saw Garrick in the aiitumn of 1775, when he was about to leave the staee, in Abel Drugger, in Archer in the " Beaux Stratagem," in Sir John Brute in the " Provoked Wife," in Hamlet, in Lnsignan in Aaron Hill's version of " Zaire," and in Don Leon in Beau- mont and Fletcher's " Kule a Wife and Have a Wife." He brought to the task of chronicler powers of observa- tion and a critical faculty scarcely second to Lessing's. " What is it," he wi'ites, " which gives to this man his great superiority ? The causes, my friend, are numerous, and very very much is due to his peculiarly happy organization. . . . In his entire figure, movements, and bearing, Mr. Garrick has a something which I have seen twice in a modified degree among the few Frenchmen I have known, but which I have never met with amonff the many Englishmen who have come under my notice. In saying this I mean Frenchmen of middle age, and good society, of course. If, for exam- ple, he turns towards any one with an inclination of the person, it is not the head, not the shoulders, not the feet and arms alone, that are employed, but each combines harmoniously to produce a result that is most agreeable and apt to the situation. When he steps upon the stage, though not moved by fear, hope, jealousy, or other emotion, at once you see him and him alone. He Avalks and bears himself amona: the other perfoiiners like a man among marionettes. From what I have said, no one will form any idea of Mr. Gar- rick's deportment, unless he has at some time had his attention arrested by the demeanour of such a well-bred Frenchman as I have indicated, in which case this hint would be the best description. His stature inclines ra- ther to the under than the middle size, and his figure is thickset. His limbs are charmingly proportioned, and the whole man is put together in the neat- est way. The most practiced eye can- not detect a flaw about him, either in details, or in ensemhie, or in movement. In the latter one is charmed to observe a rich reserve of power, which, as you are aware, when well indicated, is more agreeable than a profuse expenditure of it. There is nothins: flurried, or flaccid, or languid about him, and where other actors in the motion of their arms and legs allow themselves a sjiace of six or more inches on either side of what is graceful, he hits the right thing to a hair, with admirable firmness and certainty. His manner of walking, of shrugging his shoulders, of tucking in his arms, of putting on his hat, at one time pressing it over his eyes, at another pushing it sideways DAYID GARRICK. 121 off his forehead, all done with an airy motion of the limits, as though he were all right hand, is consequently refresh- ing to witness. One feels one's self vigorous and elastic, as one sees the vigor and precision of his movements, and how perfectly at ease he seems to be in every muscle of his body. If I mistake not, his compact figure contrib- utes not a little to this effect. His sym- metrically fonned limbs taper down- ward from a robust thigh, closing in the neatest foot you can imagine ; and in like manner his muscular arm ta- pers off into a small hand. What ef- fect this must produce you can easily imagme. A description like this, aided by the many admirable portraits which exist, enables us to see the very man, not merely as he appeared on the stage, but also as he moved in the brilliant social circle, which he quickened by the vivacity, the di'ollery, the gallant tenderness to women, and the kindly wit, which made him, in Goldsmith's happy phrase, " the abridgment of all that is pleasant in man." When Lich- tenberg saw Garrick he was fifty-nine. But with such a man, as Kitty Clive had said of herself and him some years before, " What signifies fifty-nine ? The public had rather see the Garrick and the Clive at a hundred and four than any of the moderns." His was a spirit of the kind that keeps at bay the signs of age. " Gout, stone, and sore throat," as he wrote about this period ; " yet I am in spirits." To the two first of these he had long been a martyr, and sometimes suffered honibly from the exertion of acting. When he had to play Richard, he told Craddock, "I 16 dread the fight and the fall ; I am af- terwards in agonies." But the audi- ence saw nothing of this, nor, in the heat of the peribrmance, was he con- scious of it himself. It is obvious that Lichtenberg at least saw no trace in him of failing power, or of the bodily weakness which had for some time been warning him to retire. He had medi- tated this for several years ; l>ut at last, in 1775, his resolution was taken. His illnesses were growing more frequent and more severe. People were beginning to discuss his age in the papers, and, with execrable taste, a public appeal was made to him by Governor Penn to decide a bet which had been made that he was sixty. " As you have so kindly pulled off my mask," he replied, " it is time for me to make my exit." He had accumulated a large fortune. The actors and actresses with whom his greatest triumphs were associated were either dead or in retirement. Their successors, inferior in all ways, were little to his taste. The worries of management, the ceaseless wrang- ling with actors and authors which it involved, fretted him more than ever. Pie had lived enough for fame, and yearned for freedom and rest. At the end of 1775 he disposed of his in- terest in Drury Lane to Sheridan, Lin- ley, and Ford. " Now," he wrote, " I shall shake off my chains, and no cul- prit in a jail-delivery will be happier." When his resolution to leave the stage was known to be finally taken, there was a rush from all parts, not of England only, but of Europe, to see his last performances. Such were the crowds, that foreigners who had come to England for the purpose were un- 122 DAVID GAERICK. able to gain admission. While all sorts of grand people were going on tlieir knees to him for a box, with characteristic kindness, he did not for- get his humbler friends. The piece selected for his farewell was " The "Wonder ; " and it was an- nounced, with Garrick's usual good taste, simply as a performance for " the benefit of the Theatrical Fund." No gigantic posters, no newsj:)aper puffs clamorously invoked the public inter- est. The town knew only too well what it was going to lose, and every corner of the theatre was crammed. In his zeal for the charity of which he was the founder, and to which this " mean " man contributed over £5000, Garrick had written an occasional Pro- logue, to bespeak the good-will of his audience in its favor. It has all his wonted vivacity and point, and one line — "A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind " — has passed into a household phrase. This he spoke as only he could speak such things. He had entire command of his spirits, and he even thought that he never played Don Felix to more advantage. So, at least, he wrote to Madame Necker eight days afterwards ; but when it came to taking the last farewell, he adds — " I not only lost the use of my voice, but of my limbs, too ; it was indeed, as I said, a most awful moment. You would not have thought an English audience void of feeling, if you had then seen and heard them. After I had left the stage, and was dead to them, they would not suffer the petite piece to go on ; nor would the actors perform, they were so affected ; in short, the public was very generous, and I am most grateful." Garrick did not enjoy his retirement long. While on his wonted Christmas visit to the Spencers at Althorpe, in 1778, he was attacked by his old ail- ment. He hurried back to his house in the Adelphi, and, after some days of great pain and prostration, died upon the 20th of January following. His funeral at Westminster Al^bey was uj)on an imposing scale. Among the pall-bearers were Lord Camden, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Spencer, Viscount Palmerston, and Sir W. W. Wynne, and the members of the Lite- rary Club attended in a body. " I saw old Samuel Johnson," says Cumber- land, "standing beside his grave, at the foot of Shakespeare's monu- ment, and bathed in tears." Johnson wrote of the event afterwards as one that had eclipsed the gayety of nations. In October, 1822, at the extreme age of ninety-eight, Mrs. Garrick was found dead in her chair, having lived in full possession of her faculties to the last. For thirty years she would not suffer the room to be opened in which her husband had died. " He never was a husband to me," she said, in her old age, to a fi'iend ; " during the thirty years of our marriage he was always my lover!" She was buried, in her wedding sheets, at the base of Shake- speare's statue, in the same grave which forty-three years before had closed over her " dear Davie." £':U.--£d j.-ap-;