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Title: The Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies Vol 12 of 12
Date of first publication: 1847
Author: C. Cox
Date first posted: April 23, 2014
Date last updated: April 23, 2014
Faded Page eBook #20140446
This eBook was produced by: Marcia Brooks, Donna M. Ritchey & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
Edmund Halley, the second English philosopher of the later day of Newton, was born October 29, 1656, at his father's country-house at Haggerston, near London: Mr. Halley the father was a wealthy soap-boiler in Winchester Street. The son was educated at St. Paul's School, of which he was captain at fifteen years of age. He had then begun to lay the foundation of that store of various knowledge for which he was afterwards so remarkable. At Midsummer, 1673, when, before he was quite seventeen, he was entered at Queen's College, Oxford, he was strong in Latin,[Pg 6] Greek, and Hebrew, and stronger in mathematics and astronomy: he had discovered for himself the alteration of the variation of the needle, before he found in books that it was already known. In 1676 he commenced his career by publishing in the Philosophical Transactions a direct geometrical method of finding the aphelia and eccentricities of the planets.
The father, a tradesman of the old school, supplied his son liberally with astronomical instruments. To understand this, the reader must remember that the London man of business in the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries was generally a friend of knowledge, and not unfrequently a promoter of it who had learned its value at one of the Universities. The poor creature of the eighteenth century, who is described as asking his son what learning was worth on 'Change, and whether Aristotle ever made cent. per cent., belongs to another race of men, which will soon be quite extinct. The schism between learning and commerce seems to have been a consequence of the two revolutions, and of the religious and political animosities to which they led. It is by no means unlikely that Halley's father was capable of reading and judging of his son's first paper. Be this as it may, the son, thus encouraged by his father, applied himself to the observation of Jupiter and Saturn, and detected, for the first time, that acceleration of the one and retardation of the other, the explanation of which has since been made so strong a confirmation of the theory of gravitation. Desiring to amend the tables of these planets, he soon saw that nothing could be done without better catalogues of stars than then existed: and learning that Hevelius and Flamsteed were employed on such work in the northern hemisphere, he fixed on the south as the scene of his own operations. With his father's consent, effectively shown by an allowance of 300l. a year, he chose St. Helena as a proper spot from which to observe; for that island he set sail in November, 1676, still a minor, with a recommendation from the king to the East India Company. His principal instruments were a large sextant, quadrant, and telescope, and a pendulum[Pg 7] clock. He remained at St. Helena two years, not much pleased with the climate, nor with the disposition of the Governor towards him. He formed[1] a catalogue of 350 stars, observed a transit of Mercury over the sun, and suggested the use which (in the case of Venus) has since been made of such phenomena in determining the distance of the sun from the earth. He observed also that increase of curvature in the moon's orbit at and near the half moons, which was afterwards explained by Newton as a consequence of gravitation. And, on the voyage out, he discovered the necessity of shortening the pendulum of the clock as the ship approached the equator, which was also afterwards explained by Newton, to whom Halley's observations first conveyed the knowledge of the phenomenon. The catalogue was published in 1679, under the title of Catalogus Stellarum Australium.
Immediately after Halley's return, in November, 1678, he was created Master of Arts (Oxford) by Royal Mandate, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. This body immediately dispatched him on a mission to Hevelius, the celebrated astronomer of Dantzig, to examine and report on the mode of observing of the latter. Hevelius would not use the telescope, contending that observations might be better made without it, and challenging inspection. Halley arrived at Dantzig, May 16, 1679, and immediately commenced a course of observations with Hevelius, which he continued till the end of July, when he returned to England, satisfied that his coadjutor's observations were certainly good. Hevelius, in his records of this year, calls him a very pleasant guest, a most honest man, and a sincere lover of truth.
In 1680 and 1681 Halley travelled in France and Italy, partly in company with Nelson, afterwards well known as the author of a work on Feasts and Fasts. At[Pg 8] the end of 1681 he married the daughter of Mr. Tooke, Auditor of the Exchequer: with this lady he lived upwards of fifty-five years. From 1682 to 1684 he was engaged at his residence in Islington with the commencement of a series of lunar observations. He intended to continue them for eighteen years, the period of a revolution of the moon's node (which, as we shall see, he afterwards accomplished). But the death of his father, and some legal difficulties in which his property was thereupon involved, obliged him to "postpone all other considerations to the defence of his patrimony." He published many papers at this time: and in 1685 and 1686 took that remarkable share in the production of Newton's Principia which we have described in our memoir of Newton. It was while his own affairs were embarrassed by the great fire and suits at law that this miracle of energy (for Halley is nothing less) occupied himself with the question of gravitation, sought for information from Hook, Wren, and Newton, found out what the latter had done, induced him to begin the Principia, interested the Royal Society in its continuance, kept Newton up to his engagement, prevented him from mutilating it in disgust, undertook to see the work through the press, paid the expense of printing, and made himself thoroughly master of its contents, the most difficult task of all.
In 1691 the Savilian Professorship at Oxford became vacant, and Bishop Stillingfleet was requested to recommend Halley. Whiston informs us he had it from Dr. Bentley, that the bishop, hearing that Halley was not a believer in Christianity, desired to be excused until his Chaplain (who was Bentley himself) should have talked with the reputed infidel. In the conversation which thereupon took place, Halley "would not so much as pretend" to believe, and the appointment was elsewhere given. We shall presently see that some counter-evidence has been offered on this point. In 1696, the same year in which Newton was appointed to the Mint in London, Halley was appointed Comptroller of that at Chester. At the end of two years he applied to King William for[Pg 9] means to pursue his magnetical observations. The request was granted; he was appointed a Captain in the Navy, and the command of the Paramount, one of the class of vessels called Pinks, was given to him. He set out in November of that year, and had crossed the Line, when he was induced to return, by finding that his crew were little inclined to obey him, and that his First Lieutenant was himself a mutineer. At his return, this officer was dismissed the service; and Halley set out again in September, 1699, no longer Captain only, but Commodore, with two ships under his command. He now traversed the Atlantic, touching at the Brazils, the West Indies, St. Helena, &c., and collected materials for the chart of magnetic variations, which he published on his return. In 1701 he sailed again to survey the British Channel, of which he published a chart. He was then sent to the Adriatic, to assist in the formation of harbours in the Emperor's dominions; and on his return in November, 1703, threw off his epaulettes and put on his gown again, being appointed Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford. It is not known that anything was said this time about his religious opinions. In his capacity as Professor, he edited a splendid edition of the Conic Sections of Apollonius, in 1710. More than this, he deciphered and published, from an Arabic manuscript, a translation of the work of Apollonius De Sectione Rationis. Not that he understood a word of Arabic, but he had a few pages which had been translated by Dr. Bernard, which he used, with the diagrams, as a key to the rest. And Dr. Sykes, the Professor of Hebrew, assures us that Halley brought to him emendations of this Arabic text, pointing out what was said, and what ought to have been said, and what Dr. Sykes found might have been said with much slighter alteration than Halley could have supposed.
Halley became resident in town again some years before 1713, for he was largely mixed up with Newton in the proceedings against Flamsteed, and was a member of the Committee which drew up the Commercium Epistolicium, in the dispute with Leibnitz (see our memoir[Pg 10] of Newton on both these points). He must take his share of the blame of both transactions; but some of those who have endeavoured to defend Newton have made Halley his scapegoat. This is not fair; there is nothing about the general demeanour of Halley which would lead any one to suppose that his faults would tend in that direction: indeed, we may safely say, that the objectionable conduct in both cases is not at all the usual excesses of a character like his, energetic, facing opposition, not caring for it nor fearing it, and using none but the most open means of meeting it. This is Halley, the above cases excepted; put them aside, and judge him by the rest of his conduct, and we cannot help inferring that when upon two occasions we find him acting in the weaker part of Newton's character, and not in that of his own, he was acting under the influence of Newton, whom of all men he most loved and respected. It was not in Halley to break the seal of Flamsteed's catalogue, without giving notice to the latter; but when we find him exhibiting the proof sheets in a coffee-house, and boasting of his corrections, we see that he is himself again.
In 1713 Halley became Secretary to the Royal Society, and in 1720, after the death of Flamsteed, he was appointed to succeed the latter. His labours at the Observatory consisted principally in the execution of his favourite old plan of taking lunar observations, through a whole period of the moon's nodes, from 1722 to 1739. He was now old, and the period during which he held the post of Astronomer Royal, compared with those of his predecessor Flamsteed and his successor Bradley, is hardly entitled, if we look at its effect upon the progress of science, to be called more than a strong twilight night between two bright summer days. But he had done his work and earned his fame: and he died January 14, 1741-2, in the 86th year of his age. He was buried at Lee, near Blackheath. One son of his lived to maturity, and died before him.
An account of Halley must be very long or very short: and ours, of the two, must have the latter quality. We[Pg 11] need do no more than name, as prominent instances of his success, among labours which are less generally understood, his discovery of the long inequality of Jupiter and Saturn—his southern catalogue of stars—his magnetic charts—his editions of the Greek Geometer Apollonius—his important discovery, from the Chaldean eclipses, of the acceleration of the moon's mean motion—his famous prediction of the return of the comet which now bears his name—his explanation of the appearance of Venus by day—his recommendation of the transit of that planet for the determination of the sun's distance—his application of the barometer to the measurement of heights—his theory of the trade-winds—his estimation of the vapour raised from the sea—his algebraical researches on equations—his learned and decisive inquiry into the circumstances of the landing of Julius Cæsar in Britain—his tables of mortality, the first constructed, made from the registers at Breslau—his researches in the application of Algebra to the theory of lenses, which turned Lagrange, at the age of seventeen, from a follower of the ancient geometry to one of the modern analysis—his improvements in logarithms—his improvements in the diving-bell. The celebrated prediction on the comet was published in 1705, and was the result of a calculation of the orbits of a large number of recorded comets. The orbits of those of 1531, 1607, and 1682 bore such a resemblance to each other, that Halley was led to believe these three comets were but one. The calculation of the orbits was at that time a work of much skill.
There is no one of the multifarious branches of knowledge which Halley cultivated in which he did not prove himself capable of surpassing all his contemporaries, except only Newton in mathematics and physics. He realises the idea of the admirable Crichton. Such varied knowledge, so deep in all its parts, such universal energy, so equally distributed through a long life—have hardly a parallel. If any one were to ask which we thought most likely, another Halley or another Newton, that is, as extraordinary a man as the former or as the latter, we should reply—without denying the vast superiority of[Pg 12] Newton in those points in which he was superior—that we should think the second more reasonably to be expected than the first. Wherever Halley laid his hand, to do work cut out by himself, he left the mark of the most vigorous intellect, the soundest judgment, the most indomitable courage against difficulties. His share in the production of the 'Principia,' as explained in our 'Memoir of Newton,' entitles us to say that but for him, in all human probability, that work would not have been thought of, nor when thought of written, nor when written printed.
Halley was a mathematician of the first order, called off by a love of application from the enlargement of the bounds of the exact sciences; but carrying away with him a power in those sciences which never, that we know of, failed him in his need, except in the great question, the solution of which was reserved for Newton. And here his character is distinctly seen. Instead of expending his force upon this one subject, and withdrawing himself from all his various objects of pursuit, he proceeded to inquire among those who were likely to have considered the subject, what degrees of success they had obtained. Possibly he had it in his mind to try, in the event of his finding nothing, what he could have done himself: and we know enough of his power over the incipient methods, which were organized by Newton and Leibnitz, to think it tolerably certain that he would have had some success. But there would have been no one Principia written by one man. Halley would have thrown his first results among the mathematicians, and would have proceeded, in conjunction with others, to build up by degrees the edifice of which Newton never even spoke about the foundation till he had almost erected the superstructure. But the moment Halley found the man who could do what was wanted, he gave up the idea of being his fellow-labourer, and almost made him do it. He armed himself with the influence of the Royal Society, a body which contributed most powerfully to the result: indeed, without such a force at his command, it is difficult to see how even Halley, with all his management, could have kept[Pg 13] a sufficient hold upon the timid and retired student, who would rather his transcendant powers should be useless, than be subject to the common lot of all greatness, envy and opposition. There is not so curious a spectacle in the history of science, as Halley and Paget appointed a Committee by the Royal Society (a unit before a cipher) "to keep Mr. Newton in mind of his promise."
We have before spoken of the opinions of Halley on religion, as a matter of recent[2] investigation. On the one hand, there is the statement of Whiston, which we have cited. In answer to this, it is fully shown that the point on which Halley's orthodoxy was suspected, lay in[Pg 14] his supposed belief that the material world was from all eternity, a belief from the imputation of which his writings show he was desirous to clear himself. We have no doubt that Bentley made the statement to Whiston; but seeing in our own day that people will constantly affirm others to be no believers in Christianity, upon a standard of doctrine formed in their own minds, with which those whom they speak of will have nothing to do, we can conceive it to be just as possible that Halley, in his conference with Bentley, came out one of Bentley's unbelievers. And if they got into a controversy, all who know the character of Bentley will remember that he cared little for any aspersion. Mr. Rigaud brings forward the certificate given to Halley by his own College, when he was a candidate for the Professorship, bearing testimony to his "genius, probity, sobriety, and good life," and asks whether these words could be used of a professed sceptic. If the word piety had been there, it would have been more to the purpose; to us the words seem evasive. We pass over minor testimonies, such as that of Sir William Browne, that Halley attended church when he was a student at Oxford, and so on, to come to the point which we think has not been, and cannot be, got over.
In 1734, Dr. Berkeley, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, published his famous tract called 'The Analyst, or a Discourse addressed to an Infidel Mathematician.' All the world knew that Halley was the person intended; and the pamphlet raised a controversy which, from first to last, produced nearly thirty pamphlets or reviews. Berkeley's object was to show that mathematicians admitted in fluxions mysteries as great as those which, as he asserted, many of them rejected in theology. There is cited from the second edition of the Biographia Britannica, a story, to the effect that Garth excused himself for not believing Christianity, and cited Halley as his leader and authority: and that Addison told this story to Berkeley. On this story Mr. Rigaud observes, "It must be acknowledged that if it had the authority of Berkeley, there would be no escaping from the conclusion which it involves." Now, it has the authority of Berkeley.[Pg 15] In his answer to an opponent, entitled 'A Defence of Freethinking in Mathematics,' London, 1735, 8vo. page 10, speaking of Addison, whom he names, Berkeley says, "He [Addison] assured me that the infidelity of a certain noted mathematician, still living, was one principal reason assigned by a witty man of those times for his being an infidel." And his opponent, Dr. Jurin (under the name of Philalethes Cantabrigiensis), a man likely to be well informed on the current topics of his day, has nothing to answer as to Addison or Halley, but only says of the disciple, "Surely this witty man is in jest; at least he was no wise man." We agree with Mr. Rigaud that there is no escaping from the conclusion. We heartily wish that this attack and defence of religion and religions, by means of authoritative names, were done and over; but as long as it is continued, it must be done correctly. There is no shade of feeling, from perfect indifference to grovelling superstition, no kind of doctrine, from atheism to the extreme of submission to church authority, which may not boast the support of some names of powerful intellect. And we have always observed, that in proportion as these names are relied on, evidence and argument are abandoned. We agree with Dr. Jurin, that the witty man above mentioned was no wise one; but he has plenty of imitators in all sects and all churches.
Alexander Pope was born in London, one account says in Lombard Street, another in the Strand, another in Cheapside; according to his own statement in Spence's Anecdotes on the 21st, according to Warton and Johnson on the 22nd of May, 1688. Notices of his parentage occur in various parts of his writings. In his 'Letter to a Noble Lord' (Lord Hervey), published in 1733, after mentioning that his father was a younger brother, he adds:—"He was no mechanic, neither a hatter, nor....a cobbler, but in truth of a very tolerable family; and my mother of an ancient one." And in his 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot' (otherwise entitled the 'Prologue to the Satires'), which appeared in 1734, he says, speaking of himself,—
"Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause
Whilst yet in Britain honour had applause)
Each parent sprung."
To which in the folio edition of 1735 the following note is subjoined:—"Mr. Pope's father was of a gentleman's family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole heiress married the Earl of Lindsay. His mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York. She had three brothers; one of whom was killed; another died in the service of King Charles; the eldest, following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in Spain, left her what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family."
The facts that may be considered to be ascertained are these: His father, Alexander Pope, was the younger of the two sons of a clergyman of the Church of England, settled in Hampshire, and was born (it has been said, after the death of his father) about the year 1642. Being intended for a mercantile life, he was placed, when a boy, with a merchant in Lisbon, where he became a convert to popery. Pope's own notion that he was of the family of the Earls of Downe (in the Irish peerage)—in consequence of which extraction it is asserted by a writer in the Biographia Britannica that he once intended to give a piece of plate to Trinity College, Oxford, in memory of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder, who was uncle of the first Earl of Downe—appears to be without any foundation.[3] His father became a wholesale linen-merchant in Lombard Street, London, and married Editha, one of the seventeen children of William Turner, Esq., of Burfit Hall, in Yorkshire, another of whom was married to Samuel Cooper, the celebrated miniature-painter. Mrs. Pope, whose family was Roman Catholic, had been previously married to a person of the name of Racket, and had by him a son, Charles, whose wife was the Mrs. Magdalen Racket often spoken of as the poet's sister: he styles her in his will his sister-in-law.
Pope's father would be forty-six when his son was born, and his wife two years older. They had no other children. Very soon after, we are told, Mr. Pope retired[Pg 18] from business, scared by the Revolution, but carrying away with him about 20,000l. It is affirmed that, instead of investing his money or placing it out at interest, he locked it all up in a chest, from which he took from time to time what his expenses required—"being conscientiously determined," says Johnson, "not to entrust it to the government." But he might have found other profitable ways of employing it which would not have offended his conscience, if he had not distrusted the general security of the new order of things. After all, it is probable enough that the story may be without any foundation, and also that the amount of the fortune with which Mr. Pope retired from business may have been much exaggerated. Martha Blount told Spence that it was only ten thousand pounds. What is certain is, that he established himself in the first instance in Kensington, where he bought a small estate; and that he afterwards sold this property, and took up his residence at Binfield, in Windsor Forest, where he had purchased a house and about twenty acres of land. He survived till November, 1717, when he died suddenly, at the age of seventy-five, in his son's house at Twickenham, to which he had removed from Binfield a short time before. Writing to his friend, Edward Blount, immediately after, Pope says, "He has left me to the ticklish management of so narrow a fortune, that any one false step would be fatal." His character has been drawn by his son in some lines that follow those quoted above:—
"Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,
Nor marrying discord in a noble wife;
Stranger to civil and religious rage,
The good man walked innoxious through his age:
No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie.
Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language but the language of the heart.
By nature honest, by experience wise,
Healthy by temperance and by exercise;
His life, though long, to sickness passed unknown,
His death was instant and without a groan."
The information that the old gentleman had not married a noble wife might, but for the necessities of the rhyme, have been spared; for, however respectable, he certainly does not seem to have belonged to the class in which marrying into a noble family is customary. As for Pope's mother, it is probable that, like the mothers of most remarkable men, she may have been a woman of superior natural endowments and strength of character; but he would seem to have been misled by his filial affection, which was very strong, when he describes her, in his 'Letter to Lord Hervey,' as having been "as well born and educated as the lady whom his lordship had made choice of to be the mother of his own children." Lady Hervey, a daughter of General Lepel, was celebrated for her talents and accomplishments as well as for her beauty; and a collection of her Letters, which was published after her death, proves that she must have been one of the best educated women of her time. A single letter of Pope's mother, on the other hand, which has been preserved (first printed in Bowles's edition of Pope's works), would seem to prove her to have had scarcely any literary education. It is addressed to her son, and runs, or hobbles, as follows:—"My Deare—A letter from your sister yust now is come and gone, Mr. Mannock and Charles Racket, to take his leve of us, but being nothing in it doe not send it. He will not fail to coll here on Friday morning, and take ceare to cearrie itt to Mr. Thomas Doncaster; he will dine wone day with Mrs. Dune, in Ducke-street: but the day will be unsirton, soe I think you had better send itt to me. He will not fail to coll here, that is Mr. Mannock." It is evident from this that the old lady was no mistress of orthography and punctuation; but the dislocated state of the expression is perhaps only the effect of haste. The letter is preserved among the many curious epistolary scraps on the backs of which Pope scribbled the rough draughts of his Iliad and Odyssey; and the handwriting is a very good one. Some portions of the translation of Homer are transcribed by the old lady in the same hand. Mrs. Pope lived till June, 1733, when she died at the age of ninety-three. She[Pg 20] was dead, therefore, when the 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot' was published; but she must still have been in existence when the beautiful lines in which she is there mentioned were written:—
"Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age;
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky."
From his father Pope is said to have inherited his crooked person, and from his mother his constitutional headaches; as, indeed, he has himself intimated in some lines originally written for this same 'Epistle,' but afterwards rejected:—
"But, friend, this shape, which you and Curll admire,
Came not from Ammon's son, but from my sire;
And, for my head, if you'll the truth excuse,
I had it from my mother, not the Muse."
In the poem, as it actually stands, he speaks of himself as lean and short, afflicted with a cough like Horace, and having one shoulder higher than the other, like Alexander the Great.
In this 'Epistle to Arbuthnot,' Pope has himself described his life as a "long disease;" and he is said to have been from his infancy of a delicate constitution, though it was not till he was about twelve years old that his features assumed the appearance of ill health. He is recorded to have been a gentle and sweet-tempered child; but it was not only when he was young, as Johnson relates, that his voice was so pleasing as to obtain for him the name of the little nightingale: the fact is mentioned by Lord Orrery, who, in his 'Remarks on the Life and Writings of Swift,' says of Pope:—"His voice in common conversation was so naturally musical, that I remember honest Tom Southerne used always to call him the little nightingale." Southerne knew Pope all his life, and survived him. Notwithstanding[Pg 21] his musical voice, however, Pope had no knowledge of the art of music.
It has been stated upon his own authority that by the time he was eight years old he had learned to read of an old aunt (who must have been a sister of his mother's), and to write by copying printed books. He was now put under the care of the family priest, whose name was Banister, and who long afterwards resided with the Tichbourne family. Banister began teaching him Latin and Greek together, but had him in charge only for about a year. He was then sent to a Catholic seminary at the village of Twyford, near Winchester, where, being as yet only ten years old, he wrote a satire on his master. From Twyford he was removed to another seminary (that is, a Catholic school), taught by a master of the name of Deane, in London, first for a short while in Marylebone, then at Hyde Park Corner. Under his two last masters, he used to say, he did little but lose what he had learned from his first. This seems to have brought him to the close of his twelfth year. He then returned to his father's house at Binfield, and was there for a few months under a fourth priest. "This," he said to Spence, "was all the teaching I ever had, and, God knows, it extended a very little way. When I had done with my priests, I took to reading by myself, for which I had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry; and in a few years I had dipped into a great number of the English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. This I did without any design but that of pleasing myself; and got the languages by hunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than read the books to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my fancy led me; and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods just as they fall in his way. These five or six years I still look upon as the happiest part of my life." On another occasion, after stating that he had taught himself both Greek and Latin, he added, "I did not follow the grammar, but rather hunted in the authors for a syntax of my own; and then began translating any part that pleased me, particularly in[Pg 22] the best Greek and Latin poets; and by that means formed my taste, which, I think verily, about sixteen was very nearly as good as it is now."
He has said, in his 'Epistle to Arbuthnot:'—
"As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came;
I left no calling for this idle trade,
No duty broke, no father disobeyed."
He told Spence that he had begun writing verses farther back than he could well remember. When he was about eight years old he read Ogilby's translation of Homer; and even in the latter part of his life, while holding Ogilby's poetic skill in contempt, he used to speak with rapture of the pleasure he had derived from this first large poem with which he had become acquainted. From Ogilby's Homer he proceeded to Sandys's Ovid, which he also greatly enjoyed; as he did likewise a very bad translation of part of Statius. When he was about twelve, and before he had left Mr. Deane's school at Hyde Park Corner, he wrote a kind of play, which he got acted by his schoolfellows. He describes it as having been composed of speeches from Ogilby's Iliad tacked together with verses of his own. A little after this he began an epic poem on the subject of Alcander, Prince of Rhodes. "I wrote four books toward it," he said to Spence, "of about a thousand verses each, and had the copy by me, till I burned it, by the advice of the Bishop of Rochester (Atterbury) a little before he went abroad (in 1723)." He had endeavoured, he added with a smile, to collect all the beauties of the great epic writers into this one work; "there was Milton's style in one part, and Cowley's in another; here the style of Spenser imitated, and there of Statius; here Homer and Virgil, and there Ovid and Claudian." This taste for rhyming had been all along encouraged by his father. His mother told Spence that her husband, "who," she said, "was an honest merchant, and dealt in Hollands wholesale," although no poet himself, used to set his son to make English verses when very young. "He was[Pg 23] pretty difficult in being pleased," she added; "and used often to send him back to new-turn them. These are not good rhymes; for that was my husband's word for verses." Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were the young poet's principal favourites, and for a time he preferred the two former to the last; but eventually he at least took Dryden for his master and his model. "I learned versification," he said to Spence, "wholly from Dryden's works; who had improved it much beyond any of our former poets; and would have probably brought it to its perfection, had not he been unhappily obliged to write so often in haste. Dryden always uses proper language; lively, natural, and fitted to the subject. It is scarce ever too high or too low; never, perhaps, except in his plays."
A period of about seven years passed in this manner in Windsor Forest, bringing him from the age of between twelve and thirteen to that of between nineteen and twenty, or from about A.D. 1700 to 1707. Of his poetical compositions of this period which have not been preserved, besides the epic of Alcander, which was about two years in hand (his thirteenth and fourteenth), mention is made of a tragedy on the subject of St. Geneviève, a comedy, panegyrics on all the princes of Europe, and a translation of the story of Acis and Galatea from Ovid. He told Spence indeed that in the scattered lessons he set himself about that time he translated above a quarter of the Metamorphoses; and the meaning seems to be that the translation was in verse. That of Cicero's treatise De Senectute, which he also executed in the same early period, was of course in prose. And before he was twenty-one, when he first came before the world as a poet, he had written the following pieces which remain among his works:—his 'Ode on Solitude,' when he was about twelve; his verses 'To the Author of a Poem entitled Successio' (Elkanah Settle), at fourteen, and soon after printed in a volume of Lintot's Miscellanies; his 'Imitations of English Poets,' Chaucer, Spenser, &c., some of which were executed when he was fourteen; his 'Translation of the First Book of the Thebais[Pg 24] of Statius,' in 1703; that of 'The Epistle of Sappho to Phaon' from Ovid, about the same time; his modernized versions of Chaucer's 'January and May,' and 'Wife of Bath's Prologue,' at sixteen or seventeen; his Pastorals at sixteen; and the first portion of his 'Windsor Forest' at about the same age, although it was not completed till 1712.
He emerged, too, occasionally from his country retreat, and was already beginning to make himself heard of in the world. He has himself in one of his Letters mentioned the fact of his having seen Dryden, whom, however, he says he was not so happy as to know. It is related by his early biographer Ruffhead that he had himself taken for this purpose to Will's Coffee-house, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, where Dryden was wont every evening to take his armed chair, in winter by the fire, in summer in the balcony. As Dryden died in 1700, this must have happened when Pope was only about twelve years old. We cannot, therefore, think with Mr. Roscoe (Life of Pope, p. 17) that the circumstance is the same with that mentioned in a letter to Swift from Sir Charles Wogan, in which Sir Charles says, "I had the honour of bringing Mr. Pope from our retreat in the Forest of Windsor to dress à la mode, and introduce at Will's Coffee-house." Most probably the incident of the boy being taken, or going by himself, merely to look upon the object of his veneration—Virgilium tantum vidi (I have but seen Virgil) is his own expression—took place while he was at school in London. He returned to the metropolis, we are told, for a short time when he was about fifteen, to take lessons in French and Italian. One of the first persons of distinction to whom he became known was Sir William Trumbull, who, after having been ambassador to the Pope, and then Secretary of State from 1691 to 1697, had retired to Easthamstead, the place of his nativity, which is in the neighbourhood of Binfield. Sir William was a good classical scholar, and greatly enjoyed reading and talking of the Greek and Roman writers, and about literary subjects generally, with his young acquaintance. They used, Pope told Spence, to ride[Pg 25] out together three or four days in the week, and at last almost every day. Afterwards, when they separated, they carried on a correspondence by letters, which has been in part preserved, and extends from October, 1705, to within a short time of the death of Sir William in 1716. In 1704 Pope was introduced by Trumbull to Wycherley, the poet and dramatist, then broken down in mind as well as in fortune, but still enjoying considerable literary reputation. It was thought at first by Pope a great compliment to be consulted by the veteran in the revision and correction of a quantity of new poetry which he was then preparing for the press; but the verses were so bad, and Wycherley's vanity and impatience, augmented and made more unmanageable by his decay of memory, so great, that the honour was soon forgotten in the trouble, and he was at last glad to make his escape from both. His printed correspondence with Wycherley, which begins in December, 1704, ends in May, 1710; but they continued good friends till Wycherley's death, about five years after. Another person with whom he formed an acquaintance about the same time was Walsh, also known as a poet, and really possessed of much taste and good sense. He told Spence that he got acquainted with Walsh when he was about fifteen; but their printed correspondence shows that they did not meet till after April, 1705, on the 20th of which month Walsh writes to Wycherley returning Pope's Pastorals, which the latter had sent to him, and expressing his strong desire to know the author. They were accordingly introduced, and Pope spent a part of the summer of this same year with Walsh at his seat of Abberley, in Worcestershire. Walsh, he told Spence, used to encourage him much, and to tell him that there was one way left of excelling; "for, though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct;" "and he desired me," said Pope, "to make that my study and aim." Their connected correspondence ceases in October of that year; but there is a note from Walsh, dated in July, 1707, desiring Pope to say when he will have a coach and horses sent for him to Worcester, and expressing a hope[Pg 26] of seeing him before the end of the month. Walsh died the following year, at the age of forty-nine.
It appears to have been about this time also that Pope became acquainted with Mr. Henry Cromwell, a man of fashion, and not unknown in literary circles, but more distinguished in the world of gallantry and dissipation. Pope and he became very intimate, and a correspondence took place between them, which some years after (in 1727) was given to the world by the notorious Edmund Curll, to whom the letters had been sold by a quondam friend of Cromwell's, Mrs. Eliza Thomas, a woman of pleasure, but also of some literary talent, which had attracted to her the complimentary notice of Dryden. Pope for this put the lady in the Dunciad, where she figures under the name of Corinna. The correspondence with Cromwell extends from March, 1708, to December, 1711, ceasing many years before Cromwell's death. In the notes to the Dunciad, Pope's letters to this gentleman are described, not quite correctly, as having been written when he was almost a boy, and it is added that the author was ashamed of them "as very trivial things, full not only of levities, but of wrong judgments of men and books, and only excusable from the youth and inexperience of the writer." In Spence's Anecdotes Pope is made to say, it is difficult to understand with what precise meaning:—"My letters to Cromwell were written with a design that does not generally appear; they were not written in sober sadness."
Other acquaintances and admirers of his genius which his 'Pastorals' and some other pieces, while as yet circulating only in manuscript, procured for him, were George Granville (afterwards Lord Lansdowne), Garth, Betterton, and, as he told Spence, not long after these, St. John (afterwards Lord Bolingbroke). To these names may be added those of Congreve, Swift, Atterbury (Bishop of Rochester), Lord Somers, and others, whom he has commemorated in his 'Epistle to Arbuthnot:'—
"———————————Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;
[Pg 27]Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise,
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured, my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read,
E'en mitred Rochester would nod the head,
And St. John's self, great Dryden's friend before,
With open arms received one poet more.
Happy my studies, when by these approved!
Happier their author, when by these beloved!"
At last in the year 1709 his first pieces that were printed appeared in the Sixth and last volume of the collection entitled 'Miscellany Poems,' which had been begun by Dryden and was published by Jacob Tonson, then occupying the shop at Gray's Inn Gate, in which, at a later date, when Tonson had removed to the Shakspeare's Head, over against Catherine Street in the Strand, Thomas Osborne established himself. Tonson, it appears, had applied to Pope upon the subject of printing his Pastorals, or one of them, some years before this. A note from him, dated the 20th of April, 1706, runs as follows:—"Sir, I have lately seen a Pastoral of yours in Mr. Walsh's and Congreve's hands, which is extremely fine, and is approved of by the best judges in poetry. I remember I have formerly seen you at my shop, and am sorry I did not improve my acquaintance with you. If you design your poem for the press, no person shall be more careful in the printing of it, nor no one can give greater encouragement to it, than, Sir, yours, &c." The volume, when it came out in 1709, contained the following pieces by Pope:—'January and May, or the Merchant's Tale, from Chaucer;' 'The Episode of Sarpedon, translated from the Twelfth and Sixteenth Books of Homer's Iliad;' and all the four 'Pastorals.' There is also an anonymous imitation of part of the Cento of Ausonius, a probable author of which it would be difficult to assign if it be not by him. Among the other contents were two laudatory addresses, inscribed, the first, 'To my Friend, Mr. Pope, on his Pastorals, by Mr. Wycherley;' the other, 'To Mr. Pope, by another hand;' and the volume, which closed with Pope's Pastorals, began with those of Philips.[Pg 28] In 1711 Pope published his 'Essay on Criticism,' without his name. In one part of 'Spence's Anecdotes' he is made to state that he showed this work to his friend Walsh in 1706; but there is no doubt some mistake here. In another place he is represented to have said, "My Essay on Criticism was written in 1709, and published in 1711; which is as little a time as ever I let anything of mine lie by me." As afterwards printed under his own inspection it was declared in the title to have been written in 1709. One account makes it to have at first attracted little or no notice; but the traditional story to that effect is irreconcilable in some of its details with known facts; it is certain, at any rate, that it was soon generally and eagerly read: the first edition consisted of a thousand copies; there appears to have been a second the same year; and it is certain that it reached a fourth in 1713. It was violently attacked by Dennis and others; but their furious invectives, consisting in great part of personal abuse of the author, did it no harm.
It is stated by Mr. Roscoe, Pope's latest biographer, that the publication of the 'Essay on Criticism' was followed by that of 'The Rape of the Lock,' in its first form, or without the machinery of the sylphs and gnomes, in the same year. It appeared without the name of the author, in a volume of Miscellanies published by Lintot. And the poem, Mr. Roscoe conceives, was not republished, as we now have it, till the year 1714, when Lintot brought it out in an octavo pamphlet by itself. He will have it, therefore, that a letter from Pope to Martha Blount, accompanying a copy of the poem, and dated May 25, 1712, refers to the second or enlarged impression, and that the date should probably be May 25, 1714. But this account of the matter is irreconcilable with various passages in Pope's correspondence. For instance, Craggs, in a letter dated May 23, 1712, writes:—"But where hangs the Lock now? I hear no more of it; will it come out in Lintot's Miscellany or not?" This seems to make it quite clear that the first edition had not yet come out. It must have been that edition, apparently, which Pope sent to Miss Blount two days after the date[Pg 29] of Craggs's letter. Then we have a letter from Sir William Trumbull, dated March 6, 1713, thanking Pope for a copy of the poem received on the 26th of the preceding month. This cannot have been the first edition; nor can March, 1713, mean here what we should now call March, 1714, unless the correspondence be misarranged; for after Sir William's letter we have another from Pope to him, dated April, 1713. From all this it seems to be certain that, although the poem may have been written and circulated in manuscript in 1711, it was not printed even in its original form till 1712; and probable that it appeared in its enlarged form early in the following year.[4]
If there be any truth in the account given by Warburton, the additions to 'The Rape of the Lock' were made after Pope became acquainted with Addison. When the idea of the machinery occurred to him, Warburton tells us, he communicated it to Addison, who, however, received it coldly, and dissuaded him from making any alteration; "for that the poem in its original state was a delicious little thing, and, as he expressed it, merum sal." Now we know that Addison and Pope were not acquainted till some time after the beginning of the year 1712. Addison had noticed the 'Essay on Criticism,' in highly laudatory terms, in the 253rd number of the Spectator, published 20th December, 1711. On the 20th of January, 1712, Steele writes to Pope, "I have received your very kind letter. That part of it which is grounded upon your belief that I have much affection and friendship for you, I receive with great pleasure. That which acknowledges the honour done to your Essay,[Pg 30] I have no pretence to. It was written by one whom I will make you acquainted with; which is the best return I can make to you for your favour." Steele himself had probably not been long known to Pope at this time. Arbuthnot and Prior, who belonged to the opposite political party of the Tories, were earlier acquaintances. Gay, who became one of his most intimate friends, had introduced himself by dedicating to him his poem called 'Rural Sports,' published in 1711.
The circumstances in which 'The Rape of the Lock' originated are known to most readers. Belinda, the heroine of this most brilliant of mock epics, was Miss Arabella Fermor; the ravisher of her lock of hair was Lord Petre; the common friend at whose happy suggestion Pope wrote the poem, which was perfectly successful in its immediate purpose, the restoration of the lady's good-humour, and the reconcilement of the two families, was an old gentleman, Mr. Caryl, of West Grinstead, in Sussex. Pope, however, in a jeu d'esprit, published in 1715, under the title of 'A Key to the Lock, or a Treatise proving, beyond all contradiction, the dangerous tendency of a late Poem entitled The Rape of the Lock to Religion and Government, by Esdras Barnivelt, Apoth.,' satirized the attempts to discover a secret political meaning in certain famous works of fiction, by pretending that Belinda was Great Britain; the Peer, the Earl of Oxford (Harley); the lock which he had cut off, the Barrier Treaty; Clarissa, who lent the scissors, Lady Masham; Thalestris, who provoked Belinda to resent the loss of the lock, the Duchess of Marlborough; and Sir Plume, her beau, Prince Eugene. The true Sir Plume, by the bye, was a Sir George Brown; he was very angry at the figure he was made to act, and no wonder. Spence assures us, however, that he is pictured to the life.
Pope's 'Messiah, a Sacred Eclogue, composed of several passages of Isaiah the Prophet, written in imitation of Virgil's Pollio,' appeared in the Spectator for the 14th of May, 1712. It was introduced by Steele in the following words:—"I will make no apology for entertaining the reader with the following poem, which[Pg 31] is written by a great genius, a friend of mine in the country, who is not ashamed to employ his wit in the praise of his Maker." The name of the author is, however, intimated or hinted in the paper for the 12th of November in the same year, in which a correspondent is made to ask whether the poem is not by Mr. Pope.
Pope's letter to Steele on the spirit of the verses said to have been repeated by the Emperor Adrian on his death-bed appeared, not in the Guardian, as stated by Mr. Roscoe, but in the 532nd number of the Spectator (for November 10th, 1712). Nor did Steele accompany it, as Mr. Roscoe supposes, by any observations of his own upon the question which it discussed. The letter, as Pope complains in another written to Steele on the 29th of November, had not been intended for publication; and Steele's objections which he notices in his second letter must have been objections privately communicated to him. Nor was the translation contained in the first letter, and which Steele printed, the verse translation which Mr. Roscoe gives; this, as far as we can find, was never published either in the 'Spectator' or in the 'Guardian;' the version in the 'Spectator' No. 532 is a literal prose version. Nor was the Ode entitled the 'Dying Christian to his Soul' printed in either of those publications, as Mr. Roscoe's account would lead us to suppose; although it appears from Pope's correspondence that it was written at Steele's request made on the 4th of September, 1712. Pope contributed several prose papers to the 'Spectator' and 'Guardian' in the course of the years 1712 and 1713.
In the 'Spectator' for October 30, 1712, which is by Addison, mention is made of "the late Miscellany published by Mr. Pope, in which there are many excellent compositions of that ingenious gentleman." Of this 'Miscellany' we do not find that Mr. Roscoe takes any notice. Perhaps it may have been that published by Lintot, containing the first edition of the 'Rape of the Lock.' Mr. Roscoe states that "several of the productions of Pope at this period are to be ascribed to[Pg 32] the solicitations of Steele"; and in particular his Ode for Music (Ode on St. Cecilia's Day), which, it is added, was first published in 1713, separately, by Lintot. By a letter from Steele dated November 12, 1712, and Pope's answer four days after, we learn that 'The Temple of Fame' was then communicated to Steele and Addison, but had been written two years before. In the printed title it is stated to have been written in 1711. When or where it first appeared, Mr. Roscoe does not inform us. In the advertisement prefixed we are told that the hint of it was taken from Chaucer's House of Fame; but in truth, the whole of the latter half of it is a very close version from that poem. The earlier portion, however, which is the finest, is mostly Pope's own.
Mr. Roscoe assigns the composition of the 'Elegy to the Memory of an unfortunate Lady' to the year 1712. When or how it was first published we are not informed. All the researches of all Pope's biographers and commentators have failed to throw much light upon the subject of this beautiful poem. Warton affirms that the name of the lady was Wainsbury. Mr. Roscoe takes no notice of the account given by his predecessor Bowles, who in his edition of Pope's Works (1808) says:—"The story, which was told to Condorcet by Voltaire, and by Condorcet to a gentleman of high birth and character, from whom I received it, is this:—That her attachment was not to Pope, nor to any Englishman of inferior degree, but to a young French prince of the blood-royal, Charles Emanuel, Duke of Berry, whom in early youth she had met at the court of France. In 1710, if we give this date to the Elegy, the Duke of Berry must have been in his twenty-fourth year, being born 1686." Johnson thinks that the 'Elegy' was written about the time when the 'Essay on Criticism' was published, or in 1711.
Having now finished his 'Windsor Forest,' the first part of which had been written in 1704, Pope published it in 1713. The same year he wrote a Prologue to Addison's tragedy of Cato, which was printed by Steele, along with Garth's Epilogue, in the thirty-third number of the Guardian, published on the 18th of April.[Pg 33] He also soon after drew up and published his humorous jeu d'esprit in prose, entitled 'Narrative of the Frenzy of J. D.,' in retaliation upon Dennis for his attack upon the new tragedy. This interference, however, for some reason or other, was not well taken by Addison, who even went the length of getting Steele to write to Lintot, desiring him to tell Dennis that he wholly disapproved of what Pope had done, and that when the 'Narrative' had been offered to be communicated to him before its publication he had said that "he could not, either in honour or conscience, be privy to such a treatment, and he was sorry to hear of it." This was no doubt the beginning of an estrangement between Pope and Addison, which, as commonly happens in such cases, other things soon occurred to widen.
In this year also happened Pope's quarrel with Ambrose Philips. In the month of April, Steele published in the Guardian a series of papers upon Pastoral Poetry, written according to one account by himself, according to another by Tickell, the intimate friend of Addison, the last of which, published on the 17th of April, concluded by declaring that, as Virgil was the true successor of Theocritus, so Virgil was succeeded by his son Spenser, Spenser by his eldest-born Philips. On this Pope wrote an additional paper, in which, comparing the Pastorals of Philips with his own, which it may be remembered had been published in the same volume, he professed to give the preference on all points to the former, but so managed the matter as to make his pretended criticism from beginning to end a piece of ridicule upon poor Philips. Steele's haste or carelessness must have been extreme, if, as is asserted, he did not see the joke; at all events he printed the paper, which makes the fortieth number of the Guardian, published on the 27th of April (not the 17th, as Mr. Roscoe has it). When the jest exploded, as of course it did immediately, Philips was furious; and he and Pope were ever after bitter enemies.
The latter, however, would seem to have continued for some time after this on good terms with Addison. The following passage in a letter to Addison, which[Pg 34] appears to have been written in 1713, is supposed to allude to the ironical criticism on Philips:—"As I hope, and would flatter myself, that you know me and my thoughts so entirely as never to be mistaken in either, so it is a pleasure to me that you guessed so right in regard to the author of the Guardian you mentioned." What follows shows the relation in which he stood at this time to Steele, and also what was thought of this Whig connection by some of his friends of the opposite party:—"But I am sorry to find it has taken air that I have some hand in these papers, because I write so very few as neither to deserve the credit of such a report with some people, nor the disrepute of it with others. An honest Jacobite spoke to me the sense or nonsense of the weak part of his party very fairly, that the good people take it ill of me that I write with Steele, though upon never so indifferent subjects. . . . . I cannot imagine whence it comes to pass that the few Guardians I have written are so generally known for mine: that in particular which you mention I never discovered to any man but the publisher (meaning the editor, Steele), till very lately; yet almost every body told me of it. . . . . The little I have done, and the great respect I bear Mr. Steele as a man of wit, has rendered me a suspected Whig to some of the violent; but, as old Dryden said before me, it is not the violent I design to please." He adds:—"I generally employ the mornings in painting with Mr. Jervas, and the evenings in the conversation of such as I think can most improve my mind, of whatever denomination they are." We know from others of his letters that he was in London taking lessons from Jervas in the autumn of this year. He pursued the art so far as to make copies of several pictures, some of which still exist.
We may here mention, what is not noticed by Mr. Roscoe, that in a volume which Steele published, with his name, in 1714, under the title of 'Poetical Miscellanies, consisting of Original Poems and Translations, by the Best Hands' (printed for Tonson), there appeared for the first time Pope's 'Wife of Bath's Prologue,' with which the collection opens, and also two passages translated[Pg 35] by Pope from the Seventh and Thirteenth Books of the Odyssey. The volume, which is dedicated to Congreve in a very encomiastic address, contains likewise contributions from Gay and Tickell, and several from Philips.
Others of Pope's compositions had probably appeared before this in the collections called Miscellanies which were published from time to time both by Tonson and Lintot. Mr. D'Israeli, in his Quarrels of Authors, has given from an account-book of Lintot's some very curious information respecting the prices which appear to have been paid for various pieces of Pope's by that publisher. For the translations of the First Book of Statius, and of the Fable of Vertumnus and Pomona from the Fourth Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, he paid on the 19th of February, 1712, 16l. 2s. 6d.; for the first edition of the Rape of the Lock, on the 21st of March, 1712 (a date which confirms what we have advanced above as to the time of the first publication of the poem), 7l.; for Windsor Forest, on the 23rd of February, 1712 (that is, we suppose, 1713), 32l. 5s. 5d.; for the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day (or Ode for Music), on the 23rd of July, 1713, 15l.; for the Additions to the Rape of the Lock, on the 20th of February, 1714, 15l.; for the Temple of Fame, on the 1st of February, 1715, 32l. 5s.; for the Key to the Lock, on the 31st of April, 1715, 10l. 15s. 1d. These were probably all first editions. There is also an entry under date of the 17th of July, 1716, of 15l. for the Essay on Criticism, which, as we have seen, had originally been printed five years before for Tonson.
A translation of Homer had been very early suggested to Pope by his friend Sir William Trumbull. He had submitted some specimens to Sir William before April, 1708, as appears from a letter of Sir William's of that date, in which he says:—"I must say that I entirely approve of your translation of those pieces of Homer; . . . . nay, I am confirmed in my former application to you, and give me leave to renew it upon this occasion; that you would proceed in translating that incomparable poet, to make him speak good English," &c. We have[Pg 36] seen that after this Pope published some specimens of translation from the Iliad in 1709, and from the Odyssey in 1714. Before the latter appeared, he had, after consulting with his friends, and especially with Addison, made up his mind to undertake the task of producing a complete version of the former poem. His proposals were issued in the beginning of November, 1713. The work was published by subscription, and 654 copies were subscribed for, at the price of six guineas for the six quarto volumes. By the arrangement made with Lintot, who obtained the publication by offering the highest terms, all these copies were to be supplied to the author, and he was besides to have 200l. for each volume. The entire sum that Pope obtained for the work was thus 5320l. 4s. It occupied him for nearly seven years. The first volume was published in June, 1715;[5] the second in 1716; the third in 1717; the fourth in 1718; the fifth and sixth in 1720.
At the same time with the publication of Pope's first volume, another translation of the First Book of the Iliad came out, professing to be by Tickell. Pope, however, believed it to be really the performance of Addison, and was greatly irritated. It appears to have been under the feelings excited by this suspicion that he wrote the famous character of Addison under the name of Atticus, which, however, although sent to Addison at the time, was not published till many years afterwards, when it was inserted as a portion of the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot.' Still Addison and he came to no actual rupture; and, after all, no sufficient evidence has been produced to[Pg 37] show that Addison had any thing to do either with the composition or with the publication of the rival translation bearing Tickell's name.
In March, 1716, Pope established himself in the house and grounds at Twickenham where he spent the remainder of his life. He had only, however, a lease of the place. The estate at Binfield was sold, and his father and mother accompanied him to his new residence. His father, however, as we have already mentioned, survived only to November, 1717.
While his 'Homer' formed his principal task, Pope still found leisure to produce other occasional poetical pieces. Of these the most remarkable was his 'Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard,' the most impassioned of all his writings, which it appears from a letter to Martha Blount was principally, if not wholly, composed during a visit which he made to Oxford in the autumn of 1716. In 1717 he published the first volume of a general edition of his poems, in folio, and also in quarto, to accompany his 'Homer.' He also continued his study of the art of painting under Jervas, in whose house he used commonly to lodge when he came to town.
It was during this period, too, that his intimacy and correspondence with the famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu began and terminated. They had been well known to each other before her ladyship left England with her husband in August, 1716; they corresponded all the time she remained at Constantinople, and till her return to England in November, 1718; the poet then induced his fair friend to take a house at Twickenham; she afterwards, at his request, sat for her portrait to Sir Godfrey Kneller; their intercourse went on very harmoniously for some time; but circumstances, the nature of which is matter only of conjecture and dispute, ere long produced a change; it is evident that something which Pope had written or done, probably with no such intention, had offended the lady; and by the year 1720 a complete alienation appears to have taken place. It was not till some years after this, however, that matters came to an open quarrel between them.[Pg 38] In 1717 Pope lost his friend Parnell, and Garth and Rowe both died in the course of the following year. In 1721 he published an edition of the poems of Parnell. And the same year came out his edition of Shakespeare in six quarto volumes, for which Tonson, the publisher, paid him 217l. 12s. It did not add to his reputation; and exposed him to the triumphant correction of Theobald, who, as Johnson has expressed it, "first in a book called Shakespeare Restored, and then in a formal edition, detected his deficiencies with all the insolence of victory." Pope's name at first made his edition go off well; a large part of the impression, consisting of 750 copies, was disposed of at the original high price of six guineas; but some years afterwards 140 copies, which remained in the hands of the publisher, brought only 16s. each.
His proposals for translating the Odyssey appear to have been issued by Pope in the latter part of the year 1722. The work was to consist of five volumes, the price of which to the subscribers was to be five guineas; but the subscription was stated to be not solely for his own use, but partly for that of two of his friends, by whom he was to be assisted in the work. These were Fenton and Broome, by whom the prose notes to the Iliad had been principally contributed. The contract with Lintot, the publisher, was the same as for that work, except that only 120l. was to be paid for each volume, in addition to the copies provided for the subscribers, who amounted to 574. In this way Pope would receive 3613l. 2s., out of which he had to pay his assistants. One account is that Fenton had 600l., and Broome 300l.; another, which is more probable, makes Fenton to have had only 300l., and Broome, by whom all the notes were written, 500l. The translation of the Odyssey did not occupy nearly so much time as that of the Iliad: Johnson says that the work was finished in 1725; Mr. Roscoe only states that the three first volumes were published in that year, and does not say when the two others appeared.
In 1727 the three first volumes of the collection of Miscellanies by Pope and Swift were published under[Pg 39] the care of the former. They contained, among other pieces, the celebrated treatise of Martinus Scriblerus, On the Bathos, or The Art of Sinking in Poetry, which is supposed to have been principally the composition of Pope. It called forth a violent outcry from the mob of low writers of all kinds satirized in it, many of whom gave vent to their rage through the press. In retaliation Pope wrote The Dunciad, which, in its original form, extending to only three books, was first brought out in Dublin, in July, 1728. The sensation which it excited, and the eagerness with which it was read, are sufficiently indicated by the fact that no fewer than six subsequent editions, one of them printed in Dublin, the others in London, appeared before the end of the same year. The first perfect edition, however, was published in London, in March, 1729, in quarto, and with notes. The work was immediately multiplied by many other impressions; an injunction which had been obtained by the original publisher having been subsequently dissolved by the Lord Chancellor King, on the ground that the affidavit by which it had been sought did not state either that the copyright had been acquired from the author, or who the author was. That the poem, however, was Pope's nobody appears to have entertained a doubt from the first. In this original form of 'The Dunciad,' the part of the hero of the poem was assigned to Theobald.
Pope's next publication was his Epistle addressed to Lord Burlington, originally entitled On Taste, then Of False Taste, lastly Of the Use of Riches. It was published in 1731, being the first written of the Four Moral Essays of which it is now arranged as the last. It was followed in 1732 by what is now the third of the Moral Essays, that on the same subject addressed to Lord Bathurst, which was also originally an epistle, but was afterwards converted into a dialogue. The First Part of the 'Essay on Man,' addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, appeared, anonymously, in 1733; the three remaining Parts in the course of that and the following year. Meanwhile, in December, 1732, Gay, the one of all Pope's friends to whom perhaps he was most attached,[Pg 40] died at the early age of forty-six; and in June of the year following he lost his mother at that of ninety-three.
The Epistle to Lord Cobham, 'Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men,' now the first of the Moral Essays, was published in 1733; that entitled 'Of the Characters of Women,' addressed 'To a Lady,' that is, to Miss Martha Blount, and now standing as the Second Essay, in 1735. The first of the Imitations of Horace, that of the First Satire of the Second Book, also appeared in 1733, with the title of 'Dialogue between Alexander Pope of Twickenham, in Com. Midd., Esq., on the one part, and his Learned Counsel on the other,' that is, Mr. Fortescue. This last production occasioned open war between Pope and his old friend Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who, taking offence at a couplet in the piece which she applied to herself, entered into an alliance with Lord Hervey, who had also smarted under the rod of the great satirist, and, in conjunction with his lordship, addressed an abusive epistle in verse 'To the Imitator of Horace.' It was soon followed by another addressed 'To a Doctor of Divinity (Dr. Sherwin) from a Nobleman at Hampton Court,' which, however, is believed to have been the performance of Hervey alone. To this Pope immediately wrote and published a reply in prose, dated the 30th of November, 1733, and entitled, 'A Letter to a Noble Lord, on occasion of some Libels written and propagated at Court in the year 1732-3.'
In 1734 appeared the highly finished poem now arranged as the Prologue to the Satires, under the title of 'An Epistle from Mr. Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot;' and in the same year, the 'Imitation of the Second Satire of the Second Book of Horace.' In 1735 Pope published a second volume of his collected poetical works, under the title of 'Miscellaneous Poems,' printing it, like the former, both in folio and in quarto. His modernized versions of two of Donne's Satires, or, as he entitled them, 'The Satires of Dr. John Donne Versified,' are supposed to have appeared for the first time in this volume.
His next publication was that of his 'Letters.' It has already been mentioned that some letters of Pope's[Pg 41] to his friend, Henry Cromwell, having fallen into the hands of Curll, were published by him in 1727. In 1729, Pope himself printed some of the letters that had passed between him and Wycherley. No more of his correspondence was given to the world till in May, 1735, Curll announced in the 'Daily Postboy' 'Mr. Pope's literary Correspondence for thirty Years, from 1704 to 1734,' and soon after brought out a volume with that title, which went through three editions in the same year. It was followed by two more volumes in 1735, by a fourth in 1736, and by a fifth in 1737. In 1735, also, there appeared several other collections entitled, 'Letters of Mr. Pope and several Eminent Persons,' which appear to have been mostly copied from Curll's edition. The account that Curll gave of the manner in which the letters came into his possession was designed to make it appear that they had been secretly sent to him by Pope himself; and a sort of suspicion has continued to exist that Pope may have taken this way of bringing before the world what it might have been thought indecorous for him to take part openly in publishing. We must think that this imagination is irrational at all points, both in the motives by which it supposes Pope to have been actuated, and in the interpretation which it puts upon the various circumstances of the affair. Pope, however, immediately proceeded to prepare for the press a genuine edition of his correspondence with his friends, which came out, in quarto and also in octavo, in the beginning of the year 1737. It was followed in the same year by a booksellers' edition, in 3 volumes octavo, professing to contain all the letters given in the author's own edition, and also all those that were genuine in the former collections, together with some never before printed. This affair likewise drew from Pope two humorous pieces in prose, entitled 'A Horrid and Barbarous Revenge by Poison on the Body of Mr. Edmund Curll, Bookseller,' and 'A Further Account of the most deplorable Condition of Mr. Edmund Curll,' in allusion to an assertion which Curll had gravely made in one of[Pg 42] his volumes that he had been one day taken by Pope to the Swan Tavern in Fleet-street, and dosed with half a pint of Canary in which antimony had been mixed. These were both published in 1736.
A few years after this a volume of the correspondence of Swift with Pope and others of his friends was published in Dublin, which Curll immediately pirated, and reproduced under the title of 'Dean Swift's Literary Correspondence for twenty-four Years, from 1714 to 1738; consisting of original Letters to and from Mr. Pope, Dr. Swift, &c., 1741.' It is not clearly understood how these letters were obtained by Faulkner, the Dublin publisher; advantage was no doubt taken by some party or other of the state of mental incapacity into which Swift had by this time fallen. Their appearance seems to have given great annoyance to Pope.
Meanwhile, in 1737, he had published no fewer than four more Imitations of Horace; namely, those of the 'First Epistle of the First Book,' addressed to Lord Bolingbroke; of the 'Sixth Epistle of the First Book,' addressed to Mr. Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield; of the 'First Epistle of the Second Book,' addressed to the King (George II.) under the name of Augustus; and of the 'Second Epistle of the Second Book,' addressed to Colonel Cotterell of Rousham, near Oxford. They were all published separately by Dodsley. In the same year he produced his Imitation of Horace's 'Ode to Venus' (the First of the Fourth Book). The following year he published his Two Dialogues entitled 'One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight,' which are now arranged as the 'Epilogue to the Satires.' In 1740 appeared, under the title of 'Selecta Poemata Italorum,' and bearing the name of Pope as the editor, a collection of Latin poems by Italian writers, which had been previously published in one volume in 1684 with the title of 'Anthologia,' and, as is supposed, under the care of Atterbury. In 1741 he brought out, in two volumes quarto, his collected letters and prose works, including the 'Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus,' which were now published for the first time, but had been written by himself and Arbuthnot[Pg 43] many years before. Finally, early in 1742, appeared the 'Fourth Book of the Dunciad;' and in the following year a new edition of the entire poem, in which it was brought to the state in which we now have it, with Cibber substituted as the hero in the place of Theobald. Cibber had provoked the poet's vengeance by a scurrilous attack he had printed the preceding year under the title of 'A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope, inquiring into the Motives that might induce him in his satirical Works to be so frequently fond of Mr. Cibber's Name.' In 1744, after the publication of the new Dunciad, Cibber replied in 'Another occasional Letter to Mr. Pope,' but was not honoured with any further notice.
The Dunciad, in its new form, was the last work which Pope sent to the press. All that he did in the short remainder of his life was to revise and correct his former writings. He died at his house at Twickenham, about eleven o'clock at night, on the 30th of May, 1744, a few days after the completion of his fifty-sixth year.
By his will, dated the 12th of December, 1743, Pope left all his manuscript and unfinished papers to his friend Lord Bolingbroke; and to the Reverend Mr. William Warburton, the property of all such of his works already printed, as he had written, or should write, commentaries or notes upon, and which had not been otherwise disposed of or alienated, and also all the profits which should arise from such posthumous editions as he should publish without future alterations. Warburton, already celebrated as the author of The Divine Legation of Moses, and other works, had become known to Pope about the year 1738, having drawn his attention by a series of papers which he had published in the periodical work called The Republic of Letters, in reply to an attack made upon the Essay on Man by a French writer, M. de Crousaz, who had endeavoured to show that the system of philosophy expounded in the poem was opposed to revealed religion. An intimate friendship rapidly grew up between them; Pope soon after introduced Warburton to his old friend, Mr. Allen, of Prior Park,[Pg 44] near Bath, whose niece and heiress Warburton eventually married, and by whose interest he was, sixteen years after Pope's death, promoted to the bishopric of Gloucester; and in his last days, the great poet both employed Warburton's pen in writing the annotations and other explanatory matter published with the new Dunciad, and availed himself of his counsel and assistance in the revision of his other writings. The first complete edition of Pope's works was published by Warburton, in nine volumes, in 1751. Before this, however, the position which he occupied as Pope's literary executor had involved Warburton in a remarkable controversy. In 1749 appeared an octavo volume, entitled 'Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, on the Idea of a Patriot King, on the State of Parties at the Accession of King George the First.' The Letters were anonymous, but were well known to be by Lord Bolingbroke, who was still alive. No one of Pope's friends had, down to the hour of his death, evinced greater affection for him than Lord Bolingbroke had done. But now, in an Advertisement prefixed to these Letters, a statement was made, to the effect that the original draughts of them had been entrusted some years before to Pope, on his express promise that they should be shown only to five or six persons, who were named to him, and that nevertheless it had been discovered since Pope's death that he had had an edition of 1500 copies of them secretly printed. All this was told in the rudest terms; Pope was not named, but designated throughout by the terms, "this man," and "this person," and the worst possible construction was put upon the proceeding, which was stigmatised as nothing else than a deliberate fraud and breach of trust. The editor of the Letters, and the writer of the Advertisement, is believed to have been Mallet, by whom Bolingbroke's other writings were published after his death; Mallet had quarrelled with Pope, and was probably glad of this occasion to indulge his personal spite; but he must nevertheless be supposed to have written what he did with Bolingbroke's consent and approval. In the circumstances, the attack was certainly as outrageously unreasonable[Pg 45] a one as ever was made. Pope could not have had the papers printed with any other design except to preserve what he believed would do honour to his friend. Warburton immediately wrote and published a vindication of Pope, in the form of 'A Letter to the Editor of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism,' &c. To this Mallet, or Bolingbroke, replied, in 'A Letter to the most Impudent Man living.' Such was the end of a friendship which had subsisted without interruption, and had seemed only to grow warmer as it grew older, for nearly forty years.
To his friend Martha Blount, described as "younger daughter of Mrs. Martha Blount, late of Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square," Pope bequeathed "out of a sincere regard and long friendship for her," the sum of 1,000l., to be paid immediately on his decease, all the furniture of his grotto, the urns in his garden, all his household goods, chattels, plate, and whatever else he had not otherwise disposed of in his will, and also for her life, the produce or interest of all his estate, money, and bonds, after the payment of his debts and a few legacies. According to Miss Blount's own account to Spence, "everybody thought Mr. Pope worth a great deal more than he left behind him. What was over, after paying legacies, &c., did not amount to 2,000l. (beside the 1000l. left to her, and mentioned in the will)." Teresa and Martha Blount were members of an old Roman Catholic family, resident at Maple-Durham, near Reading, and sisters of Edward Blount, who was very intimate with Pope from an early date, till his death in 1726. Nicholas St. John, the great-great-grandfather of Pope's friend Bolingbroke, married a lady of this family, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Blount, of Maple-Durham. Pope's acquaintance with them is conjectured by his biographers to have begun about the year 1707; but Spence quotes Martha Blount herself as expressly stating that her first acquaintance with Pope was after he had begun the Iliad. His first attachment appears to have been to Teresa, the elder, who is said to have possessed much more talent and wit than her sister;[Pg 46] but Martha ultimately became his favourite. There is no reason, however, for supposing that any warmer feeling than that of friendship ever existed on either side. Above sixty letters to and from these ladies are published in the editions of Pope's correspondence by Bowles and Roscoe.
This distinguished statesman was the eighteenth male heir of his family in lineal descent. His ancestors traced up to the time of the Norman Conquest. They took their name from the small town of Walpole, in Norfolk, on the confines of Lincolnshire, where they had a residence, until one of them exchanged the family seat for Houghton, in the same county. Sir Edward Walpole, the grandfather of our premier, was returned by the borough of Lynn-Regis to the Convention Parliament of April, 1660, which voted the restoration of Charles II. For the loyal zeal he displayed, this Sir Edward received the Order of the Bath. He was an eloquent speaker, and had great weight and personal influence in parliament. He was also noted as a thorough man of business in town, and as a joyous and hospitable host in the country. Robert, the eldest son and heir of this Sir Edward, became a warm Whig, and was actively engaged with those who brought about the Revolution[Pg 48] of 1688. He sat in parliament for Castle Rising, in Norfolk, from the first of William and Mary until his death in the year 1700. He, too, was a good man of business, and, though of very convivial habits, he greatly improved the family estate by living much in the country, and attending to agriculture and to all his own affairs. His farms were the best managed in the county which has since become the best English school for farmers. He had nineteen children by one wife—Mary, only daughter and heiress of Sir Jeffery Burwell, of Rougham, in Suffolk. The great Sir Robert was his third son and fifth child. He was born at Houghton on the 26th of August, 1676. He was educated at a private school at Massingham, and afterwards on the foundation at Eton, and at King's College, Cambridge. At college he attracted notice by his natural talent and vivacity, and—still more—by his determined Whiggism. Being seized by a malignant small-pox, he was attended by Dr. Brady, the famous historical advocate of Toryism. "We must take care to save this young man," said the doctor, "or we shall be accused of having purposely neglected him because he is so violent a Whig!" And when, contrary to all expectation, the young man recovered from the frightful disease, Brady said, "His singular escape seems to me a sure indication that he is reserved for important purposes." Although naturally averse to the study of languages, he applied himself with sufficient diligence to become a fair classical scholar; and he contracted a taste for Horace, and acquired a familiar acquaintance with his works, which lasted for life. On other subjects and studies more immediately connected with the affairs of actual life, he showed great powers of application. His mind was solid rather than brilliant; but he had a keen faculty of observation, and this he improved by practice in society. There was a Saxon heartiness in his manner which attracted friends, and when he himself contracted an affection for a man it was generally steady and lasting. This was proved in the days of his greatness by his college companions, Doctor Hare and Doctor Bland, whom he promoted in[Pg 49] the church, the first to be Bishop of Chichester, the second to be Provost of Eton College and Dean of Durham. Walpole himself was destined for the church, but his views were altered by the death of his eldest surviving brother, which left him heir to the family estate. With that confidence in his own powers, without which greatness is rarely achieved, he used to say in after-life, when he was prime minister, that if his brother had not died he would have been Archbishop of Canterbury.
He became heir to the estates in 1698. He immediately gave up his scholarship at King's College, and very shortly withdrew from the University altogether, to reside with his father in Norfolk. There, he was noted as a keen sportsman, good shot, bold rider, jovial companion, and knowing farmer, skilled in soils, sub-soils, and manures, in the breed of horses, oxen, and sheep, in the price of markets, and in all those things which concern rural economy. His father, like the good man of business that he was, felt that a landed proprietor ought to know all these matters, and was very anxious that his son should attend the markets as regularly as any farmer in the country. This was not, and never has been, the usual training of statesmen and prime ministers; but many a statesman would have been the better for it, and Walpole would not have been the prime minister that he proved himself if he had been without it. Age had not altered his father's convivial habits. The old gentleman still drank like a Squire, and insisted that his son should drink two glasses for his one, inasmuch as he was younger and stronger, and could discreetly carry more wine under his belt, and it was unseemly that the son should be quite sober while the father was drunk. This was a vital part of the moral philosophy of Houghton. Sir Robert took his wine rather freely all the days of his life, without injuring his robust constitution; but the family philosophy, or the effects of it, were lost upon his sons. The heartless, effeminate Horace Walpole neither drank nor did anything else like his bluff father; and if he got rid of, or[Pg 50] was constitutionally disqualified for, some of the family vices, he also slipped off all the family, manly virtues.
On the 30th of July, 1700, Walpole married, in Knightsbridge Chapel, Catherine, daughter of Sir John Shorter, Lord Mayor of London, a young lady of great beauty and many accomplishments. On the 28th of November of the same year his jovial old father died, and left him in possession of the family estate, which was then better than 2000l. per annum. He immediately entered parliament as member for Castle Rising. So soon as he took his seat he engaged actively in business, and joined the Whigs in promoting the Protestant succession and thwarting the designs of the Jacobites. His first attempt at parliamentary oratory does not appear to have been very successful or brilliant; but he soon commanded attention and respect as an able man of business, an acute politician, and a good practical debater. The great leaders of the Whig party felt his value; and in March, 1705, when their influence had risen in parliament and in the cabinet, Walpole was appointed one of the council to Queen Anne's consort, Prince George of Denmark, then Lord High Admiral. Taking the lead in that council, he showed so much prudence, firmness, and industry under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, that he won the confidence and esteem of the great Duke of Marlborough and Lord Godolphin. Every session he assumed a higher position in parliament; and in 1708, on his promotion to the office of Secretary at War, the management of the House of Commons was entrusted to him by his party. His able management of the war-office, his energy and promptitude, contributed greatly to the successful campaigns of Marlborough in the Low Countries. In 1710 he was appointed one of the managers of the impeachment of the notorious Doctor Sacheverel. He had strongly and wisely opposed that proceeding in private, foreseeing that persecution would only give importance to an insignificant and very ridiculous priest; but he was compelled to give way to his elders and superiors, and when the impeachment had been determined upon, the duty of[Pg 51] conducting it devolved chiefly upon him, as ministerial leader in the Commons. His speech before the Lords was much admired: it was, in parts, humorous and witty, the drollery lying in his imitating Sacheverel's style, and long stringing of abusive epithets. But the unlucky prosecution of the turbulent high-church parson was attended by all the evil consequences he had anticipated. The effects were disastrous to his party, and contributed to its final overthrow. When the serious farce was over, Walpole, though not much given to literary composition, published a pamphlet, entitled 'Four Letters to a Friend in North Britain upon the Publishing the Trial of Dr. Sacheverel,' in which he laboured to identify the party who supported Sacheverel with the Jacobites, who were secretly plotting to raise the Pretender to the throne. He was right; but at the very head of that party, though veiled and masked, stood Queen Anne herself, who, having no children to succeed her, felt scruples of conscience as to her conduct to her father, and an eager longing that the crown, after her death, should devolve to her exiled and proscribed half-brother. By the intrigues of Mrs. Masham, Harley, and St. John (which have been described in our memoir of Marlborough), and by disunion among themselves, the Whig administration was soon broken up. The unprincipled Harley, who became Tory premier, set so high a value on Walpole's abilities and influence, that he endeavoured to persuade him to accept a place in the new administration, and declared him to be worth half his party. But the quick-sighted politician saw that Harley was building his fabric on a quicksand; and prudence and patriotism alike dictated his refusal to have any connexion with that adventurer, or with St. John, who began to plot against Harley the moment their joint plots against the Whigs had been crowned with full success.
The triumphant Tories, who had taken the command of the army out of the hands of the great Marlborough, now charged the ex-ministers with extensive corruption and inaccuracy in the public accounts, and maintained their accusations with all the virulence of party spirit.[Pg 52] The defence of his colleagues was ably conducted in parliament by Walpole, who understood accounts much better than any of them. To punish his zeal for his friends, and to disqualify him for the offices of advocate and witness, a similar accusation was directed against himself personally. On the 17th of January, 1712, a majority of the House resolved that while secretary-at-war he had been "guilty of a high breach of trust and of notorious corruption," and that he should be committed to the Tower and expelled the House. All that had been attempted to be charged against him was the receipt of two sums of 500l. each, to which, by precedent and usage, he appears to have been fairly entitled. Walpole justified his trifling "perquisites," as Marlborough had done his great ones; but this did not prevent the Tories from declaring that his punishment was too mild—that he deserved to be hanged. Meanwhile his Whig friends regarded him as a martyr to their cause, and flocked daily to his apartment in the Tower, which bore the appearance of a crowded levée rather than that of a state-prison. In the leisure he enjoyed there he did more for his vindication with his pen than he could have done in the face of his enemies who had already condemned him and resolutely closed their party ears to his bold voice: he wrote and printed a pamphlet which was considered by his friends, and by most impartial and well-informed men, as a complete refutation of the charges affecting his character. Disdaining to make any concession, he remained a prisoner in the Tower until the prorogation of parliament. He was forthwith re-elected for Lynn Regis; but (in accordance with a doctrine afterwards declared illegal in the case of John Wilkes) he was declared incapable of sitting in that parliament. At the general election which followed the dissolution of July, 1713, he was again returned by the burgesses of Lynn; and when—on the 16th of February, 1714—that new parliament assembled, he quietly took his seat.
A few months after this, on the accession of George I., Walpole, with his brother-in-law, Viscount Townshend, had a principal share in the formation of the Whig administration.[Pg 53] He was himself appointed paymaster-general of the forces and of Chelsea Hospital. After the rash Jacobite rebellion of 1715, and the dissolution of parliament which took place that same year, the Whig ministry were so far strengthened by an increased and apparently steady majority, that they had the opportunity of avenging themselves, constitutionally, for the persecution they had endured from their predecessors in power. At the same time it was imperative on them, as ministers of the first king of the house of Hanover, to denounce, and, if possible, extinguish the faction that had nearly succeeded, in the last years of Queen Anne, in altering the Protestant succession to the throne. Vindictive feelings were alien to Walpole's jovial nature; he had suffered severely from the malice of his enemies, but he, for one, did not pursue them for personal motives or for mere revenge. His object was national. He drew up the report on which the impeachments and attainders that followed were founded, and took a leading part in the several prosecutions; yet he showed no rancour, and shrank from the violence of those who would have visited the offences of the Harleys and St. Johns with death on the scaffold.
During the difficulties caused by the rebellion in the North, Walpole was appointed first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. From the moment of that high promotion state-affairs began to improve: he was the best financier of that day, the man of business most attentive to details; and he spared himself no toil, no trouble. The fatigue and anxiety he suffered at that alarming crisis brought on a severe illness. Before his recovery the memorable Septennial Bill, which had been prepared with his concurrence, was passed. It was, perhaps, scarcely justifiable, on constitutional grounds, to prolong the duration of a parliament that had only been chosen for a shorter term; but the extraordinary circumstances of the country, a threatened invasion, a strong party—possibly even a parliamentary majority—favourable to the claims of the Pretender, rendered a dissolution[Pg 54] at that time highly dangerous to the public peace and to the safety of the crown.
The Septennial Bill was, in its origin, intended to secure the new dynasty of Hanover on the throne of these kingdoms; and it indisputably had that effect. Dissension in the cabinet, and the constant intrigues of the Hanoverian courtiers and the king's mistresses, broke up this administration, which otherwise would have had a fair chance of stability; and in April, 1717, Walpole delivered up his seals to the king, in spite of his majesty's earnest solicitations that he would retain them in connection with a new ministry. Before his resignation, Walpole had submitted to parliament a plan for reducing the interest of the national debt, and for establishing a sinking fund. The resolutions had already been agreed to, but the bill for giving effect to them was left to his successors to carry through. (See 5 Geo. I., c. 3.) Walpole remained in opposition until 1720. Meanwhile he distinguished himself by the ability and practical knowledge with which he opposed the measures of government. He exposed the South Sea scheme for liquidating the national debt (a scheme originally entertained by Harley) when first propounded by the government; and, though parliament was deluded by its plausibility and magnificence, and scarcely listened with patience to his arguments, the country had soon reason to remember his remarkable prediction that "Such will be the delusive consequences, that the public will conceive it a dream."
In June, 1720, he consented to take office, and was appointed paymaster of the forces, his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, being at the same time appointed president of the council. But Walpole did not engage much in business until the ruinous panic caused by the failure of the South Sea speculations had verified his worst predictions. The king, the whole court, the country—without distinction of parties—then looked up to him as the only Palinurus: he was unanimously called upon to devise measures for the restoration of public credit. No pilot had ever to steer through a more[Pg 55] perilous sea; no minister was ever placed in a more difficult position. The terror and phrenzy of the public, the indignation of parliament, the utter helplessness of his colleagues in office, and the equivocal connection of not a few of those colleagues and of not a few of the court with the scheme and the operations in 'Change Alley', were terrible obstacles to the proper consideration of so pressing a subject. Except Walpole, everybody seemed to shrink from it. Even the Prince of Wales had joined in the general scramble; and there was scarcely a lord or duke, or great lady in the land but had speculated in the South Sea stock, or in some one or more of the many companies which had grown as rapidly out of that parent scheme as fungi out of rotten wood. What mortal man could then do, Walpole did, and with most admirable promptitude and decision. It was impossible to repair the mischief already done, or to indemnify parties for the tremendous losses they had sustained, but he succeeded, in a miraculously short space of time, in restoring public credit and tranquillity; and he displayed both firmness and moderation in the punishment of those who had been guilty of participation in the frauds of the fatal company. Had he been swayed by the vindictive humour of some public men, or by the outcry of the ignorant multitude, hundreds of governors, directors, sub-directors, and shareholders would have been driven out of the country or have pined away the remainder of their lives in prison, and there would have been a confiscation of property and a continued prosecution which must have reduced many thousands of families to ruin and absolute penury.
Marlborough's son-in-law, Lord Sunderland, at the head of the ministry, had been accused of receiving fictitious stock; but, by the great parliamentary influence and earnest exertions of Walpole, he was acquitted. He was not, however, sufficiently cleared in public estimation to retain his office of first lord of the treasury; and on his resignation, in April, 1721, Walpole was appointed to his place, with an administration submissive to his views, and highly favourable to his interests. By his consummately wise and prudent conduct in the great[Pg 56] panic year of 1720, this statesman has an imperishable claim on the admiration and gratitude of his country.
Having restored confidence, and settled for a time the sadly deranged financial affairs of the country, Walpole immediately turned his attention to commerce, feeling a happy assurance that the resources of these kingdoms were immense, and that everything was to be hoped from an extended freedom of trade.
He found heavy taxes and restrictions upon the imports and exports of many of the most important articles of commerce; and with a spirit far in advance of his age, he removed them. One hundred and six articles of British manufacture were allowed to be exported, and thirty-eight articles of raw materials to be imported duty free. In June, 1723, the king created Walpole's son a peer, by the title of Baron Walpole, of Walpole, in the county of Norfolk. Walpole had declined this honour himself, from the fear of losing his influence over the House of Commons if removed to the Upper House; but other marks of royal favour were not wanting. In 1724 he was created a Knight of the Bath, and in 1726 was installed a Knight of the Garter. But though strong in parliament, and standing well with the king, Walpole was continually in danger from the intrigues of the court. On the accession of George II., however, Walpole was so fortunate as to find a protector in Queen Caroline, whose influence over the king enabled her to maintain Walpole in office, although a change had been determined upon, and afterwards to support him against the persevering machinations of all parties.
Among the many anecdotes which the witty and sarcastic (and not always reliable) Horace Walpole has recorded of his father and his times, there is one relating to the behaviour of the courtiers on the accession of George II., when it was confidently anticipated that dismissal and disgrace would fall upon Sir Robert. All the nobility and gentry in town ran to kiss hands. Lady Walpole went amongst the rest, but she could not make her way "between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer to the queen than[Pg 57] the third or fourth row." "But," continues Horace, "no sooner was she descried by her majesty, than the queen said aloud, 'There I am sure I see a friend!' The torrent divided and shrunk to either side; 'and, as I came away,' said my mother, 'I might have walked over their heads, if I had pleased.'"
The history of Sir Robert Walpole's long administration would be little less than a history of his times. There were no important debates in parliament, no deliberations in the cabinet, no negotiations with foreign states, in which he did not bear the most conspicuous part as the first statesman of his day. The most remarkable measure proposed by him, and that which is perhaps the most creditable to his talents as the minister of a commercial country, was the excise scheme, brought forward by him in 1733. The object of this measure was to convert the Customs duties payable upon certain articles of import immediately on their arrival in port, into excise duties payable on taking them out of warehouses for home consumption. He also proposed to confine the taxed commodities to a few articles of general consumption, and to exempt from taxation the principal necessaries of life and all the raw materials of manufacture. "A thriving system," said Walpole—"a system of bonding or warehousing for re-exportation, may easily be instituted, which will tend to make London a free port, and, by consequence, the market of the world!" The plan itself, and the arguments by which he supported it, prove the soundness of his views of taxation and commerce; but, unhappily, the measure was artfully misrepresented as a scheme for a general excise, and the country being misled by the able writers opposed to the minister, by the clamours of those interested in existing abuses, but more than all by the unpopular name of "excise," were almost unanimous in its condemnation. Public feeling became at length so excited that a popular outbreak seemed to threaten any further progress with the bill; and Sir Robert was very reluctantly obliged to abandon it. He was fully persuaded of its great advantages to the country, but said, "I will not be the minister[Pg 58] to enforce taxes at the expense of blood." In more tranquil times another minister was enabled to pass the bill, but so modified and altered that while the most unpopular parts of it were retained, those which would have favoured manufactures and commerce were omitted.
In 1737 the court influence of Walpole was much shaken, first by the violent and indecent quarrel between the king and Frederick, Prince of Wales (father of George III.) and the avowed and active hostility of the prince to the king's government, and especially to Walpole; and secondly, by the death of Queen Caroline. The high regard of the queen for the able minister was testified even on her death-bed. Turning to Walpole, who, with the king, was standing mournfully by her bedside, she said to him, "I hope you will never desert the king, but continue to serve him with your usual fidelity;" and, pointing to the king, she added, "I recommend his majesty to you." Shortly afterwards, the king showed Walpole an intercepted letter, in which it was affirmed, that in the queen the minister had lost his sole protector. "It is false," said he; "you remember that on her death-bed the queen recommended me to you."
The minister, however, soon found himself in the midst of great embarrassments, from some of which Caroline, who had an extraordinary influence over the mind of her husband, might very possibly have saved him, had she lived. Peace was indispensable to the development of his commercial views and schemes of internal improvement, and Walpole had, all along, been essentially a peace minister. But the king, the people, a very strong minority in the Commons, and a decided majority in the Lords, were now eager for war with Spain. This martial passion was excited by orators and authors; by essays, poems, satires, ballads; and it was kept up by all manner of paltry tricks; the best known, but not the meanest of which, was the producing at the bar of the House, as the victim of Spanish cruelty, a fellow who had lost his ears on an English pillory. A cry ran through the land that we were truckling to Spain, and the true, stout, English-hearted Walpole was held[Pg 59] up to detestation as a coward. Still he endeavoured to avert this uncalled-for war, as a great national calamity, which would increase taxation and the public debt, which would interrupt all his home reforms, and which would be almost sure to end without obtaining from the jealous Spaniards that freedom of navigation and trade with their vast colonies in South America, which we more especially aimed at; but he was taunted, insulted, assailed on every side, and was finally overpowered by the union of so many parties in favour of the war. The nation had been filled by a dream of glory, prize-money, conquest, and revenge; and, on the 19th of October, 1739, war was declared in London in the most jubilant manner. Several of the leaders of the triumphant opposition walked in procession after the heralds, who had to proclaim, by sound of trumpet, that an indefinite quantity of human blood was to be shed; and the Prince of Wales, not far behind these political friends, stopped before a tavern at Temple-bar, to drink, with the mob, "Success to the war!" Walpole, in the meanwhile, was uttering, in a sure spirit of prophecy, "They may ring the bells now, but they will soon be wringing their hands!"
He was soon made to feel how much his popularity had suffered from his opposition to the war, and he feared that any failure would be laid to his charge. He entreated the permission of the king to resign, but his majesty exclaimed, "Will you desert me in my greatest difficulties?" and refused to accept his resignation. In the midst of the discussions upon the Spanish war he had also been deserted by the Duke of Argyle, whose talents in debate and personal influence became a serious obstacle to his measures. Discord ensued in the cabinet, and the opposition in parliament became more strenuous than ever. In February, 1740, a motion was made by Sandys for an address to the crown for the removal of Sir Robert Walpole "from his majesty's presence and counsels for ever." No distinct charges were made against the minister to justify so strong an address; but every complaint against the measures of his government, foreign or domestic, during the last twenty years, was used as a[Pg 60] reason for his dismissal. "If it should be asked," said Sandys, "why I impute all these evils to one person, I reply, because one person grasped in his own hands every branch of government; that one person has attained the sole direction of affairs, monopolised all the favours of the crown, compassed the disposal of all places, pensions, titles, ribands, as well as all preferments, civil, military, and ecclesiastical." Walpole defended himself with becoming boldness and dignity, and referred with pride to the successes of his administration. The motion was negatived by a large majority, and a similar motion in the House of Lords met with the same fate. But, notwithstanding this triumph, his power was nearly exhausted. A dissolution immediately followed; his opponents were active at the elections; many of his friends kept back; he himself was indolently confident of success, and on the meeting of the new parliament he found himself in a bare majority. After several close divisions, he was, on the 2nd of February, 1742, left in a minority of sixteen, on the Chippenham election case. On the 6th he was created Earl of Orford by the king, and on the 11th he resigned. On taking leave of him, the king burst into tears, expressed his regret for the loss of so faithful a counsellor, and his gratitude for his long services. The minister's enviable good humour followed him into retirement, and hardly ever forsook him until his mortal illness.
Though driven from office, he was consulted by the king as to the formation of the new ministry, and was, in a manner, allowed to name his successors. His successor in the Treasury was none other than his old friend and dependent, Lord Wilmington, the Sir Spencer Compton of former days, who might have been Prime Minister at the accession of George II., if he had possessed talent and spirit, and had not quailed before Sir Robert Walpole. No sooner was the new administration formed under Pulteney (which, through the influence and address of Walpole, had been composed chiefly of Whigs), than an attack was made upon the ex-minister. The clamour against him was mainly kept up by Pitt,[Pg 61] Lyttelton, the Grenvilles, and all those young men in parliament whom Walpole had been accustomed to call "the boy patriots." On the 9th of March Lord Limerick moved in the House of Commons for a secret committee to inquire into the administration of Sir Robert Walpole during the last twenty years; but his motion was lost by a majority of two. Lord Limerick very soon made a second motion, but proposed to include only the last ten years in his inquiry. This motion was carried by a majority of seven, and a committee of secrecy was appointed. Of the twenty-one members of this committee, nominated by ballot, all except two had been Walpole's uniform opponents. The committee, failing to obtain the evidence of corruption which they had expected, endeavoured to pass a bill of indemnity to all persons who would make discoveries; but this invidious and unjust measure was rejected by the House of Lords. The committee nevertheless made a report, in which they charged Walpole, 1, with having used undue influence at elections; 2, with grants of fraudulent contracts; and 3, with peculation and profusion in the expenditure of the secret service money. These charges were but ill supported, and, considering the clamours that had been raised against the minister, the decided enmity of the committee, and the ample means at their disposal, the report must be regarded, if not as a verdict of acquittal, at least as one of not proven. A motion for renewing the inquiry was repeated in the following session, but was defeated by a large majority. From this time Walpole took very little part in public affairs. He was frequently consulted by the king, who never ceased to value his sagacity and great experience; and he retained much political influence, but rarely spoke in the House of Lords, having observed to his brother that he had left his tongue with the Commons. The eloquent Pulteney, who at the very commencement of his administration had committed the mistake of transferring himself to the House of Lords as Earl of Bath, had by that single step sacrificed his popularity and lost all the influence which his eloquence had given him in the Commons. It[Pg 62] is said that the first time on which Walpole, as Lord Orford, met Pulteney in the Upper House, he said to him, with a smile, "My Lord Bath, you and I are now two as insignificant men as any in England." "In which," adds the narrator of the anecdote, "he spoke the truth of Pulteney, my Lord Bath, but not of himself, for my Lord Orford was consulted by ministers to the last days of his life."[6]
When confined by sickness, his son Horace would have amused him by reading modern histories; but the old statesman had no taste for such things, saying that he knew too well how they were made. In 1743, in his last speech, and one of the finest ever delivered in the House of Lords, he endeavoured to apprise the nation of its danger. On the 5th of November, 1744, the king, through Lord Cholmondeley, earnestly desired his presence in London before the meeting of parliament. A stormy session was anticipated, and the rebellion of 1745, if not foreseen, was in reality on the point of breaking out. The reply of the ex-minister was spirited and noble; he was sick, and suffering much pain, but he would endeavour to travel to Court, and would do all that an old man could for his king and country. He came to London, and assisted George II. in reorganising the cabinet, and in quieting the furious opposition, by bringing about a general coalition of parties, "which," says Lord John Russell, "smoothed the great sea of parliamentary debate; and the session was remarkable for producing scarcely a single division." But the journey, and his exertions in London, were too much for the veteran statesman. After dreadful sufferings from the stone, which he bore with admirable fortitude, he died on the 18th of March, 1745, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and was buried in the parish church at Houghton.
The character of no public man has ever been more misrepresented than that of Walpole. He had the misfortune to be actively opposed by the first wits of his[Pg 63] day. The brilliant talents of Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, Swift, and Pope filled the press with sarcasms, and misled the public by the most artful misconstruction of his acts. Even the stage was made subservient to opposition. In parliament he had also able opponents, men of greater, or at least more brilliant abilities and acquirements than himself, but not perhaps more able or more ready in debate, while in true knowledge of business he indisputably surpassed them all. As in the case of the Duke of Marlborough, the wits, the brilliant men, the writing men of the day, were all on the wrong side. Supported as his opponents were by the literary talents of their friends, and having more plausible and popular topics to dilate upon, they succeeded in maintaining a perpetual outcry upon the minister. As he entertained a contempt for mere oratory, unsupported by sober argument and solid facts, and as he had no great respect for political or party literature, he seems for a long time to have been insensible to their power of working mischief. He did not see that people end by believing in the falsehood which is incessantly repeated, and that the reputation of the living, and the good fame of the dead, may be sacrificed, or for a long time committed, by a few brilliant epigrammatic sentences, which tickle the ear, and sink into the memory. How far Walpole deserved the defamation he met with, may in some measure be judged from the fact, that no points of his policy met with so much execration as his Excise scheme, and his resistance to the Spanish war, both of which have been heartily applauded by posterity. As regards the corruption with which he was charged, Burke affirmed that he was less amenable to it than any minister who ever served the Crown for so great a length of time. He gave bribes, but he received none. The nice arrangements by which places and patronage are made sufficient to retain the adherents of a party and ministry, were not so well understood as at later periods. Instead of providing for their friends, sons, or nephews, Walpole slipped bank notes into the open palms of members of parliament, and bought their particular votes for measures beneficial[Pg 64] to their country, because they would have money for them, or vote on the other side. Lord Carteret, one of his enemies and successors, publicly declared as soon as he got into power, "that it was impossible to govern England but by corruption."
At all events the Commons, being then comparatively unrestrained by popular election, were more open to corruption than at the present day, and the low morality of the times encouraged it. It has been well said by a recent writer—"Yet public opinion is right in distinguishing between the giver and the receiver of a bribe. If he gave pensions to members of parliament, he used the votes which he had bought to secure the peace and promote the prosperity of his country. If he sometimes procured money for the king's continental projects, he kept them on the whole within bounds. And it must be remembered, that the right of the Crown to follow a personal policy stood far higher at that time than now. Openly avowing the loose principles of his age, his conduct was rather above than below his professions. He laughed at boyish notions, as he called them, of patriotism and virtue, in the same jovial spirit in which he drank and swore; and it was therefore natural that his opponents should forget that, while they were intriguing with the Jacobites, he was maintaining and firmly establishing the throne of a constitutional king. There is no reason to suppose that he wasted the public money on converts when they were to be had on easier terms. 'According to your wish,' he writes to his brother Horace, then ambassador at Paris, 'I enclose a letter for you to show to the cardinal and M. Amelot. It is necessary to take in the two great men; and if they are willing to be satisfied with fine words, I am sure there is nothing so cheap.' This humorous consciousness of the undignified nature of his minor political acts is characteristic of a strong-minded man, and of an age of growing earnestness. It is, however, from the great results of his conduct that his real justification must be drawn. It was well that the first two Hanoverian Sovereigns appreciated his[Pg 65] merits. George II. has often been accused of coldness and heartlessness; but he never forgot the words of his wife, who, on her death-bed, recommended her husband and her kingdom to the care and protection of Walpole."[7]
The extremely difficult circumstances in which Walpole was placed by the claims of the Pretender and the unpopularity of the House of Hanover during the first and second reigns of that House, ought always to be pleaded in his justification. His zeal for the Protestant succession and for the maintenance of peace was certainly the main principle of his political life and administration. He was, for his time, wonderfully averse to bloodshedding, and to all the extreme severities of law. The suppression of the rebellion in 1745 when he was in his grave, was followed by ten times more vengeance and cruelty than the suppression of the rebellion of 1715 when he had a voice in the council. He had a magnanimity above all the resentments of the private man. He was never known to do a personal injury, and he scarcely ever revenged one done to himself. He spared the lives and fortunes of many who, by law, had forfeited both, and who would have taken his if their relative positions had been changed. He recalled the dangerous Bolingbroke [St. John] from his long exile in France, and only smiled at the malice and the political plots with which this benefit was repaid. He did many kind things to irreconcilable enemies, and conferred many benefits on ungrateful friends. The same great authority—Burke—who vindicated him from the charge of systematic corruption thus sums up his great services as a minister:—"The prudence, steadiness, and vigilance of that man, joined to the greatest possible lenity in his character and his politics, preserved the crown to this royal family; and with it their laws and liberties to this country."[8]
In private life Walpole was distinguished by his[Pg 66] hearty good nature and social disposition. He had little to remind one of the wary politician, or of the successful, triumphant statesman who had been prime minister for more than twenty years. He looked, acted, and spoke like a plain country gentleman who had rarely quitted his estates. His conversation and manners were somewhat rough and boisterous, even as they always had been, whether in court or cabinet. "I am no professor of ceremony," he wrote to Archibald Duke of Argyle: and no man of his station was less ceremonious. But he had at all times of his life the happy art of making friends, and great powers of persuasion. For business of all kinds he had an extraordinary capacity, and the ease with which he executed it led Lord Herbert to say that "he did every thing with the same ease and tranquillity as if he was doing nothing." He afforded a striking contrast to his contemporary the Duke of Newcastle, who was always in a hurry and fluster, who was always doing and never done, and of whom it was said that he looked like a man that had lost half an hour in the morning and was running after it all the rest of the day. Walpole was most hospitable, without the slightest ostentation. Though his habits were so homely, he had many elegant tastes. He was fond of pictures; he was a judge of the merits of high art; and he formed at Houghton the best collection of old masters which had been seen in England since the days of Charles I. Unfortunately the collection of the Whig minister, like that of the Stuart sovereign, was allowed to be broken up and sent out of the country. The pictures at Houghton were mostly bought by the Great Catherine, Empress of Russia.
Walpole never showed any cynical humour, and lived, to the last, with mankind as if he thought well or hopefully of them; but his long ministerial experience had not left on his mind a very favourable impression of the men who meddled with politics and sought for aggrandisement through the avenues of parliament. He was accustomed to say in his old age that it was a fortunate thing so few men could be prime ministers, since every[Pg 67] prime minister must see so much of the trickery and baseness of human nature.
No adequate life of this great statesman has ever been written; but there are good materials collected by Archdeacon Coxe in his 'Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole;' and every full history of the reigns of George I. and II. bears testimony to the political importance of the man, to his energy, ability, and success. His immediate successors lived upon the fragments of his system, which they had laboured to destroy. During his term of office the national prosperity made immense strides. The unhappy Savage, who had tasted of the minister's as well as of Queen Caroline's bounty, spoke truth, even in a panegyric, when he said—
"Now arts, and trade, and plenty glad the Isle."
The intellectual character of Swift, a singular combination of the robust and the fanciful, may be said to be half English, half Irish; and he may be considered to have been himself half an Englishman, half an Irishman. If he was actually born in Ireland, he was of English descent by both parents; and it so happened that all that portion of his life in which his mind and character must have been formed, extending from the earliest years of his infancy to middle age, was more or less equally divided between the two countries.
His father's was an English family of old respectability. The eldest branch had been long seated in Yorkshire; and one of its members, Barnam Swift, who passed under the name of Cavaliero Swift, and who is described as a man of wit and humour, had in 1627 been created by Charles I. Viscount of Carlingford in the Irish peerage. He died in 1642, leaving only a daughter, who is stated to have been married to the[Pg 69] notorious Robert Fielding, Esq., commonly called Beau Fielding, or the handsome Fielding. To a younger branch belonged the Reverend Thomas Swift, who died Rector of St. Andrew, Canterbury, in 1592, and was succeeded in his benefice by a son William, who afterwards became Rector of Harbledown, near Canterbury, and died in 1624. There is extant a published sermon by this William Swift, who was a divine of some reputation. His wife, Mary Philpott, was heiress to a considerable estate, the right of managing or at least of disposing of which, however, she is said to have retained in her own hands. It is affirmed, too, that she was a capricious, ill-natured, and passionate woman; and the tradition in the family was, that she had disinherited her only son for no greater crime than that of robbing an orchard when he was a boy. It is not so stated, but the orchard, we should suppose, must have been her own. At any rate it appears that all the inheritance that came to the share of this son, whose name was Thomas, was a small property in the parish of Goderich, in Herefordshire, which brought him about a hundred a year. What became of the rest of Mrs. Swift's estate we are not told; but the lady's picture, as well as that of her husband, is still preserved, or at least was in the possession of the family in the latter part of last century, and shows her, we are assured, to have had the look of a shrew. Thomas the son, adopting the profession of his father and his grandfather, became Vicar of Goderich, and also of Bridstow in the same county; suffered severely for his steady and ardent loyalty in the civil war, having been heavily fined, besides losing both his livings; and died in 1658. He married Elizabeth Dryden, of the family of the poet; and by her he had ten sons and four daughters. Of the sons, Godwin, the eldest, studied at Gray's Inn, and was called to the bar; and, having married a relation of the Ormond family, went over to Ireland, and was appointed by the first duke, when lord-lieutenant, attorney-general of the palatinate of Tipperary. The second son, named Thomas, married the eldest daughter of Sir William Davenant, the poet,[Pg 70] and left a son Thomas, who became Rector of Puttenham in Surrey. Of the remaining sons of the Vicar of Goderich, Dryden, William, Jonathan, and Adam are stated to have all come over to Ireland and lived and died there. The only one of the four, however, who left any issue was Jonathan. He was the father of the Dean.
Of this Jonathan Swift the elder very little is known. He had, we are told, "some employments and agencies," a "reputation for integrity," and "a tolerable good understanding;" and had married, we are not told when, a lady of a very ancient Leicestershire family, Mrs. Abigail Erick (the same name with Herrick or Heyrick), who, however, brought him no fortune. He appears to have come over to Ireland about the time of the death of his father in 1658. In Hilary Term, 1665, he was admitted an attorney and member of the King's Inns, Dublin, by the style of Jonathan Swift, Gentleman. On the 14th of November in the same year he petitioned their honours the Benchers for the office of steward of that Society, become void by the death of Thomas Wale; representing that he himself, his father, and their whole family, had been always very loyal and faithful to his majesty and his royal father, and had been very great sufferers upon that account; and that for the preceding six or seven years he had been much conversant about the said Inns, and was very well acquainted with the duty and employment belonging unto the steward thereof, he having assisted the said Thomas Wale in entering of the orders of their honours. He was accordingly admitted steward on the 26th of January, 1666. But he held his office little more than a year. The register of the King's Inns records the presentation at a council of the Benchers on the 15th of April, 1667, of "the humble petition of Abigail Swift, widow," showing that it had pleased God to take away her husband, the late steward of the Society, unexpectedly, and that, being left a disconsolate widow, she had this affliction added to her, that there was due to her from the several members of the Society, for commons and cost commons, about[Pg 71] six score pounds sterling, which she was noways able to get in without their honours' assistance; she therefore craved that her late husband's brother, William Swift, who had manifested himself very willing to assist her, but had been refused payment by various members upon pretence that he had no authority to receive the money, might be duly authorized and appointed to gather in what was due.
The widow was left with an infant daughter, said to have been born in 1666, and according to the common account, she was on the 30th of November, 1667, being St. Andrew's day, delivered of her celebrated son Jonathan, in a small house, now, or at least a few years ago, known as No. 7 in Hoey's Court, Dublin. Sir Walter Scott, in his Life of Swift, first published in 1814, states that the house was still pointed out by the inhabitants of that quarter; adding in a note—"The antiquity of its appearance seems to vindicate the truth of the tradition. In 1809 it was occupied by Mrs. Jackson, a dealer in earthenware." The fact of Swift having been born in Dublin on St. Andrew's day is also expressly asserted in the account entitled 'Anecdotes of the Family of Swift: a Fragment,' which was first published, we believe, by Dr. Hawkesworth in his edition of 'Swift's Works,' 1761, with the assertion that the original manuscript, in Swift's own hand, was lodged in the University Library of Dublin, and which has since been quoted and referred to by all Swift's biographers as drawn up by himself. If the manuscript be really in Swift's handwriting, there is an end of all dispute or doubt about the matter; in that case, if he did not actually draw up the account, he at least adopted it, which, so far as regards the authenticity of the facts, comes to the same thing. But if we were to decide by the internal evidence, we should be disposed to conclude that the paper was not written by Swift. It has not from beginning to end a trace of his style or manner; the relation which it gives of some things is such as would seem very unlikely to have proceeded from him; the expression in one passage, where a disorder which he contracted in his youth is stated to[Pg 72] have "pursued him with intermissions of two or three years to the end of his life," would almost imply that it had not been written till after his death. With regard to the place of his birth, too, we have the express assurance of Pope in 'Spence's Anecdotes,' that Swift told him that he was born in the town of Leicester. Spence's editor, Mr. Singer, observes that Pope probably misunderstood the Dean; "Pope, however," he adds, "seems to have been convinced he was right, for in a letter to Dean Swift he calls England his native country." We do not know upon what authority Mr. Singer goes on to remark that, although Swift would often say, when he was provoked at the ingratitude of Ireland, "I am not of this vile country, I am an Englishman," yet "in other moments he never denied that he was born in Dublin, and sometimes even pointed out the house in which he was born."
All the Irish writers about Swift of course stand up for the story of his having been born in Dublin; but their reasoning is not always so intelligible as were to be desired. We cannot make much, for instance, of the following attempt at settling the point by Counsellor Duhigg, in his 'History of the King's Inn,' Dublin, 1806:—"The birth of our great countryman shall be now ascertained beyond cavil or doubt. He was born on the 30th of November, 1667; and in the following month of January his mother renews a complaint of arrears to the Bench, with a pathetic representation of her necessary distress. How many contradictions were heretofore reconciled to make him a native of Leicester! His mother must be presumed to travel post, and at ease, for the purpose of appearing at the King's Inns, in five weeks from her lying-in." Now, this would be a little more satisfactory if the exact date of the petition had been given; for "the month of January" is not necessarily only five weeks from the 30th of November. It might be within a day of nine weeks. But, even if the date of the petition should prove to be the 1st of January, it would not go for much unless it appears from the petition itself that Mrs. Swift was actually in Dublin when it was[Pg 73] presented. Why not print it in full, as her other petition has been printed? It is strange that it should be merely mentioned by Mr. Matthew Weld Hartstonge, Sir Walter Scott's correspondent, in nearly the same vague way in which it is referred to by Counsellor Duhigg. "I have seen," says Mr. Hartstonge, "another petition from Mrs. Abigail Swift, presented to the Society of King's Inns, in January, less than two months after the birth of her son." Touching the supposition of Swift having been born at Leicester, Counsellor Duhigg proceeds, sarcastically or contemptuously—"All this is to be believed in preference to his own account, or the attestation of a respectable friend." Swift's own account is the 'Fragment,' which we have admitted must be taken as conclusive on the point if it be really in the Dean's handwriting: it is Sheridan, we suppose, who is alluded to as the respectable attesting friend. "However," concludes the Counsellor, "fancy or falsehood must, I believe, yield to recorded truth, which would be settled beyond contradiction if abstracts of King's Inns' accounts had been printed during the Dean's life, which laudable custom has been only adopted from the year 1797. Let an integrity similar to Swift's mark future anecdotes, and the preceding circumstances ascertain his birth, the profession of his father, and the honest but unmerited adversity of the surviving parent."
After all, it may be admitted that the probabilities are in favour of Mrs. Swift having remained in Dublin till after her delivery and the settlement of her late husband's affairs. But she certainly afterwards returned to Leicester, though the biographers do not inform us when; and, with the exception of occasional visits to her son, she spent the remainder of her life there. It may be presumed that she returned to live with or near some of her own relations. The following, however, is the romantic account of Swift's first acquaintance with England, which is given in the so-called autobiographical Fragment:—"When he was a year old, an event happened to him that seems very unusual; for his nurse, who was a woman of Whitehaven, being under an absolute necessity of[Pg 74] seeing one of her relations, who being then extremely sick [this is not exactly Swift's usual grammar], and from whom she expected a legacy; and being extremely fond of the infant, she stole him on shipboard unknown to his mother and uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he continued for almost three years. For when the matter was discovered, his mother sent orders by all means not to hazard a second voyage till he could be better able to bear it. The nurse was so careful of him that before he returned he had learned to spell; and by the time that he was five years old he could read any chapter in the Bible."
His mother, we are left to suppose from this narrative, remained in Ireland for some years. The common account is that she and her family were at first supported chiefly or solely by her late husband's eldest brother, Godwin Swift. By him Jonathan, when six years of age, was sent to the school of Kilkenny, where his name is still shown cut by himself upon one of the forms. Thence at the age of fourteen he was removed to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was admitted on the 24th of April, 1682. But his uncle Godwin, though making a good figure, is represented to have been in reality an embarrassed man; he had lost much money, it is said, and involved himself in difficulties by some speculations in iron-works and other unfortunate projects; and, if his affairs were in so deranged a state, his allowances to his sister-in-law and his nephew may have been both scanty and irregular. The account given in the 'Fragment' is, that while Swift was at the university, "by the ill-treatment of his nearest relations, he was so much discouraged and sunk in his spirits, that he too much neglected some parts of his academic studies, for which he had no great relish by nature, and turned himself to reading history and poetry; so that, when the time came for taking his degree of bachelor, although he had lived with great regularity and due observance of the statutes, he was stopped of his degree for dulness and insufficiency, and at last hardly admitted, in a manner little to his credit, which is called in that college[Pg 75] speciali gratia. And this discreditable mark, as I am told, stands upon record in their college registry."
It is certainly extremely difficult to believe that this is Swift's own account. The manner does not seem to be that natural to a man writing about himself even in the third person; it is unlike Swift's manner in any circumstances. No reason appears why, if he was the writer of the account, he should desire to conceal that fact; if the account be in his own handwriting, he cannot be supposed to have had any such desire; yet the above passage manifestly either never did proceed from his pen or is intended to leave the impression that it was written by somebody else. Putting aside the evidence of the handwriting—about which, so far as we are aware, we have nothing more than the assertion of the first editor, or the correspondent from whom he received the paper—we should say that, looking both to the manner and to the matter of this passage, it is in the highest degree improbable that it should have been written by Swift himself. Not only are the facts mentioned in it some of them such as he would not have been forward to record of himself, although they had been true, and as he would scarcely have recited in the terms here made use of, if ever so true, unless he had been condemned to write this sketch of his life as an act of penitence and self-mortification; but the account is at least in one remarkable point directly contrary to what he well knew to be the fact, and a fact of which the most distinct evidence would go down to posterity. It may have been that his bachelor's degree, which he obtained on the 15th of February, 1686, was conferred upon him by special grace or favour, by which, perhaps, we are to understand that he was found insufficiently acquainted with some parts of the learning required. We may remark, however, that he does not appear to have been "stopped of his degree;" for he obtained it rather before the usual time. But what are we to think of the assertion that "he had lived with great regularity and due observance of the statutes?" It must be held to be all but impossible that Swift could have written this, when the fact is known to be, as ascertained[Pg 76] by Dr. Barrett, Vice-Provost of Trinity College, from the registers of the University, that at least the whole of the latter portion of his academic life was marked by an almost uninterrupted succession of irregularities and punishments. "I find," says the learned Vice-Provost (Essay on the Earlier Part of the Life of Swift, 1808), "that between the periods of 14 November, 1685, and 8 October, 1687, he had punishments on him, whether confirmed or taken off, upwards of seventy weeks; that after he had received the above-mentioned punishments, he appears both out of commons and unpunished for ten weeks and upwards; whence (and as I do not believe the censure wrought any reformation in him) I am inclined to believe that he spent the three or four months subsequent to his censure in the country, his high spirit being unable to brook the disgrace." It appears that most of his punishments were for non-attendance in chapel; but he also incurred a large amount of fines by what is called town-haunting, that is, being absent when the night-roll was called. Instead of the money being exacted for the latter offence, however, he was on the 18th of March, 1687, publicly admonished for notorious neglect of duties. At last, on the 30th of November, 1688—the very day on which he completed his twenty-first year—he and another, for their share in a rebellion against the junior dean, in which they are declared to have conducted themselves in a more intolerable fashion than the rest of those engaged, were sentenced not only to be suspended like the others, but at nine o'clock in the morning on the 3rd of December following to crave pardon of the said dean in the public hall on their bended knees; and, as it is stated, under date of the 8th of January, 1689, that all the persons thus suspended were on that day restored, we should seem to be forced to the conclusion that the degradation was actually gone through by Swift.
It has been suggested, indeed, that he may have escaped the humiliating ceremony by leaving the university, which he appears to have done about this time. Yet in that case it is to be presumed he would have borne a[Pg 77] stigma away with him which would have prevented his subsequent admission into the university of Oxford. The indignity of the public pardon-asking, however, seems to have been the last and greatest that he underwent. His connection with his alma mater was not terminated by expulsion, as some of his biographers have asserted. But when he left college, probably early in the year 1689, he found nothing to detain him in Ireland and nothing to do with himself there; and so, crossing the sea, he made his way, travelling, we are told on foot, to where his mother was living in Leicestershire.
At what time Mrs. Swift had returned to England we are not informed. Mr. Godwin Swift had died while his nephew was at college, leaving a large family of fifteen sons and three daughters, by four wives (the last of whom survived him for many years), and, if we are to take the common account, very little property to be divided among them. According to Scott, the burthen of supporting Swift now fell upon another of his uncles, Dryden William Swift, and upon Willoughby Swift, the son of this Dryden William, who was already settled as a Lisbon merchant. But here there is apparently some mistake. According both to the Fragment, from which the particulars respecting Swift's relations and his early life are mostly drawn, and to the Pedigree prefixed to it, he had no uncle named Dryden William, but two uncles, one named Dryden, the other named William, who are both expressly stated to have died without issue. There was another uncle Willoughby, of whom nothing more than the name is given; but the Willoughby who was settled as a merchant at Lisbon was the eldest son of Godwin Swift. We may add that the language of the Fragment scarcely countenances the statement of the modern biographers that Godwin died a poor man. "Godwin," it is there said, "left several children, who have all estates." "He was an ill pleader," it is added, "but perhaps a little too dexterous in the subtle parts of the law." The three words "a little too," we are informed in a note, "were interlined in the original some time after it was first written, and were designed by the[Pg 78] Doctor to be a sneer upon the memory of his uncle." This note is signed D. S., by which we are probably to understand Deane Swift, the grandson of Godwin, one of whose four wives, the Fragment states, "to the great offence of his family, was co-heiress to Admiral Deane, who was one of the regicides." By this lady Godwin had a son named Deane, who was the father of the Deane Swift, the writer of the note. The latter died in 1783, leaving a son Theophilus, who was therefore the great-grandson of Godwin, not his grandson, still less the grand-nephew of the Dean, as Scott carelessly designates him. This Theophilus Swift, who was well known both in the literary and in the political world, died in 1815.
The Fragment states that Swift continued some months with his mother in Leicester; after which, it is added, "he was received by Sir William Temple, whose father had been a great friend to the family, and who was now retired to his house called Moor Park, near Farnham, in Surrey." Nothing is said in this document of the relationship between Mrs. Swift and Lady Temple, which is mentioned in the common accounts. And since Swift's cousin Thomas (the same who afterwards became vicar of Puttenham) had also, as it appears, resided with Temple, it may be presumed that the connection between the two families had really begun in the patronage of the Swifts by old Sir Thomas Temple, when master of the rolls in Ireland. A relationship between the Temples and Swift's mother could scarcely have much availed his cousin, the nephew of his father.
Swift's cousin had, according to his own account, acted as domestic chaplain in Temple's family; Swift, who was not yet in orders, seems to have been employed as a sort of amanuensis. Nor for some time, according to the common account, was he treated otherwise than as a very humble dependent. Gradually, however, he acquired the confidence of the retired statesman and diplomatist. This was more especially the case after he had returned from a visit to Ireland which he had been advised to make, apparently some time in the year 1691, in order to get over an ill state of health into which he had fallen.[Pg 79] Growing worse instead of better, he soon returned to Moor Park. He was now, we are told, often trusted with matters of great importance; and anecdotes are preserved which would imply that, even when King William visited Temple to consult with his old friend on affairs of state, Swift was admitted both to their conferences and to the social board at which they sat down together. It is said that his majesty offered the future dean a troop of horse if he would go into the army, and one day condescended to initiate him in the Dutch mode of cutting asparagus. When the bill for triennial parliaments was under discussion, the Fragment relates, Swift was dispatched by Temple to the king to state to his majesty the reasons why he ought to suffer the measure to pass; and, being well versed in English history, it is added, he expounded the true state of the case briefly to the king, and more at length to the Earl of Portland. But, although he may have acquitted himself to his own satisfaction, he failed in carrying his point. "This," the narrative proceeds, "was the first time that Mr. Swift had any converse with courts, and he told his friends it was the first incident that helped to cure him of vanity." Swift, however, was not at this time under twenty-one years old, as the Fragment asserts; the Triennial Bill was brought into the House of Commons in 1693, at which date he was in his twenty-fifth year.
Before this he had taken steps to enter the church. On the 4th of June, 1692, he was admitted of Hart Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford; and on the 5th of July following he went down to the university and took his degree of M.A. It seems to have been nearly two years after this that Temple offered him a situation, worth about 120l. a year, in the Irish Rolls office, in which he had succeeded his father as master; but Swift refused to give up his purpose, and they parted in mutual displeasure in the beginning of May, 1594. Having been recommended to Lord Capel, the lord lieutenant, Swift, after a visit to his mother at Leicester, went over to Ireland with the intention of taking holy orders; but when he arrived there he found that he could not attain[Pg 80] his object without a certificate of his conduct during the time he had resided in Temple's family. Obliged therefore to apply to his late patron, he wrote to him, on the 6th of October, what is known as his "penitential letter," having been found with that indorsement in Lady Temple's hand. It is certainly in a sufficiently humble strain. Having explained the necessity of the certificate, he proceeded: "The sense I am in how low I have fallen in your honour's thoughts has denied me assurance enough to beg this favour till I find it impossible to avoid . . . . I entreat that your honour will . . . please to send me some certificate of my behaviour during almost three years in your family; wherein I shall stand in need of all your goodness to excuse my many weaknesses and oversights, much more to say anything to my advantage. The particulars expected of me are what relate to morals and learning, and the reasons of quitting your honour's family, that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill actions. They are all left entirely to your honour's mercy, though in the first I think I cannot reproach myself any further than for infirmities." The letter would seem to have mollified Temple, for letters for deacon's orders were granted to Swift on the 28th of October. Those for priest's orders followed on the 13th of January, 1695; and almost immediately after he was presented to the prebend of Kilroot, in the diocese of Connor, worth about a hundred a year.
To this country parish, in the north of Ireland, Swift now retired. But in the summer of the following year, on the invitation of Temple, he returned to Moor Park; and some time after, about the beginning of the year 1697, he resigned his prebend in favour of a friend. He continued to live with Temple, on a perfectly friendly and confidential footing, till the death of the latter on the 27th of January, 1699. Temple, besides leaving him a small legacy in money, evinced the estimation in which he held him by intrusting him with the charge of publishing his literary remains.
Long before this Swift's had been a busy and practised pen both in prose and verse. So early as in[Pg 81] February, 1692, soon after his return to Moor Park from the visit he had made for the sake of his health to Ireland, we find him thus expressing himself in a letter to a friend, the Reverend John Kendall, vicar of Thornton, in Leicestershire, whom he calls his cousin:—"There is something in me which must be employed, and, when I am alone, turns all, for want of practice, into speculation and thought; insomuch that, these seven weeks I have been here, I have writ and burned, and writ again, upon all manner of subjects, more than perhaps any man in England." Scott says that his first verses were a translation of one of Horace's Odes (the 18th of the Second Book, Non ebur neque aureum, &c.); and that they were produced at Oxford when he went down to take his degree in July, 1692. But his three Pindaric Odes, as they are styled, after the manner of Cowley, are all of earlier date: the first, to Archbishop Sancroft, having been written in May, 1689; the second, to Sir William Temple, in June of the same year; the third, and most famous, to the Athenian Society, in February, 1691. This fashion of writing is said to have been recommended to him by Temple and his wife, who were both great admirers of Cowley. The Ode to Sancroft, however, is stated in the heading to have been written at the desire of the Bishop of Ely (Dr. Turner, who was deprived the following year). All this, by the bye, may show that Swift had brought a considerable reputation for talent with him from the university, and that his biographers probably underrate his importance and the position that he occupied during the earlier part of his residence with Sir William Temple. It may be true, however, as Johnson says he had been told, that when he showed his Ode to the Athenian Society to Dryden, the latter, after perusing the elaborate composition, pronounced judgment in the decisive words, "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet." Swift's proud and vindictive nature never forgot this; and he has spoken of Dryden with the bitterest contempt in several of his writings.
The Pindaric Odes were followed in November, 1693, by an address, in ordinary rhyme, to Congreve, and in[Pg 82] December of the same year by another poem in the same form on an illness from which Temple had just recovered. The latter in particular has considerable merit. But a few years later he is believed to have produced in prose what must be regarded as throwing whatever he had written in verse completely into the shade. The year 1697 is assigned as that in which he composed both the 'Battle of the Books' and the 'Tale of a Tub,' although they were not published till 1704. The former was a contribution to the famous contest first about whether the superiority in genius and learning was to be assigned to the ancients or the moderns, latterly respecting the authenticity of the Epistles of Phalaris, which had arisen out of an essay of Temple's. Swift, of course, ranged himself on the side of his patron and the ancients, joining Arbuthnot and the other wits of Oxford against Bentley, the great, and, it must be admitted, in so far as regards erudition and argument, the victorious champion on the other side. The 'Tale of a Tub' is a satire of a much more comprehensive scope, as well as of a far higher order in all respects. In genius and felicity of execution, indeed, it is unequalled by anything else that Swift has written, or by anything of the same kind in the language. Swift never avowed the authorship, and his parson-cousin, as he used to call him, Thomas Swift, the vicar of Puttenham, had the impudence to put forward in print a claim to the principal merit both of the conception and execution of the work; but the evidence, both internal and external, upon which it is assigned to the Dean may nevertheless be held to be quite conclusive and satisfactory. The recklessness and occasional indecorum of the merriment would have made it in any circumstances inconvenient for a clergyman to have such a production printed with his name, or distinctly understood to be his; and in point of fact Swift very early found that the mere suspicion or current imputation of his having written the 'Tale of a Tub' formed a serious impediment in the way of his professional advancement. The main drift of the satire, it is true, was directed against Popery and Presbyterianism,[Pg 83] and its direct object was the exaltation of the Church of England; but many persons, not unnaturally, were shocked at the treatment of any religious subject in such a fashion, and the author was suspected by some and represented by more to be in reality an enemy and scorner of all religion. This, however, was certainly a character that Swift did not deserve. However great the eccentricities and indiscretions to which he occasionally gave way, that he was throughout his life a sincere and steady believer in Christianity can admit of no doubt.
Scott has printed as Swift's a short unfinished piece of verse entitled 'On the Burning of Whitehall, in 1697' (meaning, it is supposed, that the lines were written in 1697, Whitehall having been burned in 1691), which, it is stated, "occurs in his handwriting, and with his corrections, among the papers of Mr. Lyons," who was vicar of Goderich and a friend of Swift. If this poem be really by Swift, it furnishes another probability against the Fragment, containing the sketch of his ancestry and early life, being his. In the Fragment Charles I. is spoken of as "that blessed martyred prince;" the poem concludes as follows:—
"But mark how Providence, with watchful care,
Did Inigo's famed building spare!
That theatre produced an action truly great,
On which eternal acclamations wait;
Of kings deposed most faithful annals tell,
And slaughtered monarchs would a volume swell;
Our happy chronicles can show alone
——————————-tyrants executed one."
Most probably neither the Fragment nor the poem is Swift's. The verses, though nervous and striking, do not resemble his manner either in their merits or their defects. And in whatever doubt we might have been left as to how, with his peculiar politics, Whig in civil matters and Tory in ecclesiastical, he might have felt and expressed himself at some time of his life respecting Charles I., the fact, we believe, is that in his undoubted writings he has always spoken of his execution with decided condemnation and horror.[Pg 84] The several writings of Sir William Temple, which after his death were published by Swift, will be found enumerated in our Life of Temple. The Fragment states that upon Temple's death he removed from Moor Park to London, "and applied by petition to King William, upon the claim of a promise his majesty had made to Sir William Temple, that he would give Mr. Swift a prebend of Canterbury or Westminster." "The Earl of Romney," the narrative proceeds, "who professed much friendship for him, promised to second his petition; but, as he was an old, vicious, illiterate rake, without any sense of truth or honour, said not a word to the king. And Mr. Swift, after long attendance in vain, thought it better to comply with an invitation given him by the Earl of Berkeley to attend him to Ireland as his chaplain and private secretary; his lordship having been appointed one of the Lords Justices of that kingdom. He attended his lordship, who landed near Waterford, and Mr. Swift acted as secretary during the whole journey to Dublin. But another person had so insinuated himself into the earl's favour by telling him that the post of secretary was not proper for a clergyman, nor would be of any advantage to one who only aimed at church preferments, that his lordship, after a poor apology, gave that office to the other. In some months the deanery of Derry fell vacant; and it was the Earl of Berkeley's turn to dispose of it. Yet things were so ordered, that, the secretary having received a bribe, the deanery was disposed of to another, and Mr. Swift was put off with some other church livings not worth above a third part of that rich deanery, and at this present not a sixth. The excuse pretended was his being too young, although he was then thirty years old." With these words the Fragment ends. The person who supplanted Swift in the office of secretary to Lord Berkeley was a Mr. Bushe. He is said to have received a thousand pounds from the person who afterwards obtained the deanery of Derry. Another account, however, is that Swift's appointment was prevented by the interference of Dr. King, the Bishop of Derry, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin. Swift, at any[Pg 85] rate, quarrelled with Lord Berkeley upon this occasion, and left his lordship's lodgings in the Castle. But he did not throw up his situation of chaplain; he even seems to have kept up his friendly intercourse with the rest of the family; and at least a formal reconcilement soon took place with the earl, by whom he was presented to the rectory of Agher, and the vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan. To these preferments were added in the year 1700 the prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick's cathedral, Dublin; making altogether, Scott calculates, an income of between 350l. and 400l. a-year. According to Mr. Mason, however, the historian of St. Patrick's Cathedral, this estimate is far too high. Mr. Mason, on the evidence of Swift's own account-books, infers that in 1703 the annual produce of all his preferments was under 200l., and that it became afterwards still less.
Swift continued to reside in Dublin, having apparently returned to the Castle after his reconciliation with Lord Berkeley, till the year 1700. "It is during his residence with Lord Berkeley," observes Scott, "that Swift appears first to have given way to the playfulness of his disposition in numerous poetical jeux d'esprit, which no poet ever composed with the same felicity and spirit. Of this class are the inimitable Petition of Mrs. Frances Harris; the verses on Miss Floyd, a young lady of beauty and spirit, who was also an inmate of the family; and some other pieces written during this period. But the most solemn waggery was the Meditation on a Broomstick, composed and read, with infinite gravity, as an existing portion of the Honourable Mr. Boyle's Meditations, which, it seems, Lady Berkeley used to request Swift to read aloud more frequently than was agreeable to him.[9] In such company, and with such amusements, his time glided happily away, and he retained a high regard for the ladies of the family during the rest of his life. Lady Betty Berkeley, in particular, afterwards Lady[Pg 86] Betty Germaine, was, to the end of his career, one of his most valuable and most valued correspondents."
In 1700 he took possession of his living of Laracor, which was situated near the northern extremity of the county of East Meath, and fixed his residence there. He remained without any further preferment for more than a dozen years; but a great change nevertheless took place in his position, in various respects, in that space of time.
We will first sketch the history of his public career. From the commencement of his residence at Laracor he had been in the habit of making frequent, almost annual, visits to England. Besides that his mother still lived, he naturally wished to keep up his connexion both with the literary and political world of London, and generally with the country which, if not that of his birth, he continued to look upon as that in which his best prospects of preferment lay. He appears to have been in England in the summer of 1701, when he published his first political pamphlet, 'A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome, with the Consequences they had upon both those States,' being a covert attack upon the recent conduct of the House of Commons in the impeachment of Lord Somers and his colleagues for the share they had in the Partition Treaty. It attracted much attention, and was attributed for some time to Lord Somers, and afterwards to Bishop Burnet. He returned to England in 1702, and it was now that, upon his avowing himself the author of the 'Discourse,' his intimacy commenced with Somers and Halifax (Charles Montagu), and also with the Earl of Sunderland, to whom he had previously been slightly known. It must have been in one of these earliest visits to the English metropolis, too, that he became acquainted with Addison, Arbuthnot, and others of the famous wits who used to assemble at Button's Coffee-house, where, it is related, he and they first encountered. His own renown as one of the greatest wits of the day, if not the greatest of them all, was established and spread among all classes by the publication in 1704 of the 'Tale of a Tub,' of which no one[Pg 87] from the first seems to have doubted that he was the author. After this he is supposed to have written or begun many tracts on civil and ecclesiastical politics, which he did not publish, and which have not been preserved. Up to this time his friends had chiefly belonged to the Whig party, to which he had himself been attached since his first introduction to any connexion with public affairs under the auspices of Sir William Temple. He had all along, however, as he constantly affirmed, been a high churchman in religion; and there his principles drew him towards the Tories. It was fated, as was to have been anticipated from such a position of things, that he should not long remain in the camp where he now found himself. In the beginning of the year 1708 he proceeded to England with a commission from the Irish bishops to solicit from the ministry the same remission of the first-fruits by the crown for the augmentation of the livings of the poorer clergy in Ireland, which had been granted in England four years before. His application, however, to Lord Godolphin upon this subject was entirely unsuccessful. At the same time he considered himself to be ill-used by both Somers and Halifax, and his just claims to be neglected, in his failure to obtain any preferment for himself. He remained in England till the end of April, 1709; and during this space he published his 'Sentiments of a Church of England Man with respect to Religion and Government;' his famous ironical 'Argument to prove that the Abolishing of Christianity in England may, as things now stand, be attended with some inconveniences;' his 'Letter from a Member of the House of Commons in Ireland to a Member of the House of Commons in England concerning the Sacramental Test;' and his 'Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners, by a Person of Quality;' all in defence both of religion and of the established church and ecclesiastical system. It was now too that he began his ludicrous persecution of Partridge the Astrologer, in his 'Predictions for the year 1708, by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.,' and other jeux d'esprit, in[Pg 88] the same style.[10] These Isaac Bickerstaff jocularities are especially memorable as having by their success led Steele to assume the same nom de guerre when he soon after set on foot the 'Tatler,' the first number of which was published on the 12th of April, 1709, and to which also Swift contributed several papers.
After nearly a year and a half of almost complete rustication at Laracor, the news of the sudden ministerial revolution in the autumn of 1710, when Godolphin and his colleagues were turned out by Harley and the Tories, again drew Swift from his retirement. Having been again commissioned by the Irish bishops to solicit, in conjunction with two of their own number, the remission of the first-fruits and twentieths, he set sail on the 1st of September, and reached London on the 9th. He was received as usual by his old Whig friends, and renewed his intimacy with Addison and Steele; but both Godolphin and Somers met him as if they had felt that he was already estranged; and by the 1st of October he had discharged his first bolt of satire and contempt at the former in his caustic rhymes entitled 'The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician's Rod' (in allusion to the resignation of Godolphin, whose family name was Sidney, and his compulsory breaking of his treasurer's staff). Three days after he was introduced to Harley, who received him, as he has recorded, "with the greatest respect and kindness imaginable." On the 7th he waited upon the new premier again, by appointment, with the professed object of personally opening to him the affair of the first-fruits. His own account, written at the time, will best show how eagerly he was sought to be gained or secured:—"I had no sooner told him my business but he entered into it with all kindness; asked me for my powers and read them; and read likewise the memorial I had drawn up, and put it into his pocket to show the queen; told me the measures he would take;[Pg 89] and, in short, said everything I could wish; and told me he must bring Mr. St. John and me acquainted; and spoke so many things of personal kindness and esteem, that I am inclined to believe what some friends had told me, that he would do everything to bring me over. He desired me to dine with him on Tuesday; and, after four hours being with him, set me down at St. James's Coffee-house in a hackney-coach." On the 10th he writes:—"I dined with Mr. Harley to-day. . . . Harley told me he had shown my memorial to the queen, and seconded it very heartily; and he desires me to dine with him again on Sunday." On the 14th:—"I suppose I have said enough, in this and a former letter, how I stand with the new people; ten times better than ever I did with the old; forty times more caressed. I am to dine tomorrow at Mr. Harley's; and, if he continues as he has begun, no man has been ever better treated by another." On the 21st:—"I dined this day with Mr. Harley. . . . . I stayed till nine before Mr. Harley would let me go, or tell me anything of my affair. He says the queen has now granted the first-fruits, and twentieth parts, but he will not yet give me leave to write to the archbishop, because the queen designs to signify it to the bishops in Ireland in form, and to take notice that it was done upon a memorial from me, which Mr. Harley tells me he does to make it look more respectful to me, &c. And I am to see him on Tuesday . . . . . I believe never anything was compassed so soon, and purely done by my personal credit with Mr. Harley, who is so excessively obliging, that I know not what to make of it, unless to show the rascals of the other party that they used a man unworthily who had deserved better."
The connexion thus auspiciously begun with Harley and St. John quickly ripened into the closest intimacy; and it is to the credit of all parties that the unusual association between the mere wit and the man of letters and the powerful ministers of state was conducted from the first without the slightest degree of either servility on the one side, or exaction or assumption on the other. It is evident from their whole subsequent history,[Pg 90] that both Harley and St. John really liked Swift; they each retained the strongest regard for him, as he on his part did for them, even after they had become the open and bitter enemies of one another. Meanwhile, the conspicuous familiarity with which he was treated by the chiefs of the party, made Swift's acquaintance an object of ambition with every inferior member; casting off Halifax, quarrelling with Steele, and even separating himself from Addison, he now became the close associate of Peterborough, and Prior, and Pope, and whoever else were most distinguished either in politics or in literature on that side. It was under Swift's auspices that the Club or Society of Brothers was formed, in which the choice of these Tory wits and statesmen mingled in a union that for the time at least was in feeling, as well as in form and fashion, fraternal, and in which the enjoyments of social intercourse and relaxation were heightened and ennobled by projects and designs worthy of a learned academy. It was by means of this society, which numbered sixteen members, that Swift contemplated the accomplishment of an object expounded in a letter to Harley, now become Earl of Oxford, which he published with his name, in May, 1712, under the title of 'A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue.' Harley, however, although he gave fair promises, neglected or delayed doing anything in the matter; and all that came of Swift's proposal was that it drew forth various answers, in some of which he was charged with having principally in view the creation of a place of profit for himself.
Long before this, however, the literary powers of their new ally had been made largely available, and turned to good account, by the ministry in another line. 'Sid Hamet's Rod' had been followed by other squibs in the same style, as the occurrences of the day called them forth. Almost immediately upon his coming over he had undertaken the entire conduct of the weekly paper of his party, the 'Examiner,' which had been started a few weeks before. St. John, Prior, Atterbury,[Pg 91] and others had contributed the earlier papers; but from No. 14 to No. 45, or from the 2nd of November, 1710, to the 7th of June, 1711, the Examiners were all by Swift. They are written with great power, and are filled with the most unsparing invectives against Godolphin, Somers, Sunderland, and others of his old friends. He was induced, according to his own account, to drop the paper in consequence of his style having been discovered, and the many enemies he found he was making. But both while he had the 'Examiner' upon his hands and after he had given it up, his fertile and ready pen was ever and anon startling the town with some separate party brochure, usually anonymous. Among these productions may be especially noted, 'A short Character of His Excellency Thomas Earl of Wharton, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,' a sketch of great severity,[11] which appeared in November, 1710; 'The Conduct of the Allies and of the late Ministry in beginning and carrying on the War,' which was published in the end of November, 1711, while the question of the peace was under discussion in the House of Commons, and which produced an immense effect; and 'Some Remarks on the Barrier Treaty between her Majesty and the States General,' a continuation of the same argument. It was at this period also that he began, under the title of 'A History of the Peace of Utrecht,' the work which eventually grew into 'The History of the last Four Years of Queen Anne,' but which was not published till many years after his death. Nor ought we to forget the important service which he did by the paper which he addressed, about the end of the year 1711, to the more zealous and impatient section of his party, under the title of 'Some Advice humbly offered to the Members of the[Pg 92] October Club,' with the object of inducing them to refrain from pressing an extreme course of policy upon Harley, the effect of which was immediately to divide and ere long to break up the club.
But all this while Swift had obtained nothing for himself; nothing had been done to advance his fortunes or reward him for his services by the ministry who owed him so much. Harley had indeed, early in their connexion, put into his hand a fifty-pound Bank-note, by way of payment for his contributions to the 'Examiner,' which he had indignantly rejected. What he distinctly let his friends understand that he wanted was preferment in his profession, his appointment to a distinguished station in the English church. But time passed on, and he still remained only Prebendary of St. Patrick's and Vicar of Laracor. One day when Harley and St. John were calling him Jonathan, in their usual familiar way, he remarked that he supposed they would leave him Jonathan as they had found him. It is believed, however, that the blame did not lie with the ministers. Swift had himself, in fact, raised the barriers which obstructed his promotion. The mind of the Queen had long been strongly prepossessed against him as the writer of the 'Tale of a Tub.' Sharpe, Archbishop of York, had especially taken pains to impress upon her the impropriety of promoting the author of a production which he represented as in reality a profane satire upon all religion. But, as if this had not been enough, Swift had recklessly drawn upon himself the enmity of one of the most potent personages at court, the Duchess of Somerset, whom, on the suspicion that she had exerted her influence on some occasions to thwart the ministers, he assailed in a manner never to be forgiven, in a bitter jeu d'esprit, entitled 'The Windsor Prophecy,' which he produced in December, 1711. It is asserted by Sheridan that some time after this the ministers recommended Swift to fill a vacant bishopric, which is conjectured to have been that of Hereford, which became vacant on the 20th of November, 1712. "But the Duchess of Somerset," continues Sheridan, "who entertained[Pg 93] an implacable hatred against him, determined to move heaven and earth to prevent his promotion taking place. She first prevailed on the Archbishop of York to oppose it, whose remarkable expression to the Queen was, 'That her majesty should be sure that the man whom she was going to make a bishop was a Christian.' But, as he would give no better token for this surmise than that Swift was supposed to be the author of the 'Tale of a Tub,' the bishop was considered as acting officiously, out of too indiscreet a zeal, and his interposition was of no avail. The Duchess then went in person to the Queen, and, throwing herself on her knees, entreated, with tears in her eyes, that she would not give the bishopric to Swift; at the same time presenting to her that exceedingly bitter copy of verses which Swift had written against her, called 'The Windsor Prophecy.' The Queen, upon reading them, was stung with resentment at the very severe treatment which he had given to a lady who was known to stand highly in her favour, and bestowed the bishopric on another." Dr. Philip Brise was translated to Hereford from St. David's on the 6th of February, 1713. Some other church preferments were disposed of about the same time without Swift's name being mentioned. Upon this he sent a distinct intimation to Harley that he should retire. It was then arranged that Dr. Sterne, Dean of St. Patrick's, should be removed to the bishopric of Dromore, and that Swift should be appointed to the deanery. The warrant in his favour was signed on the 23rd of February; and early in June Swift left England, and, returning to Ireland after his absence of nearly three years, took possession of his new dignity. Dean of St. Patrick's he was destined to remain for the rest of his life—and indeed, we may say, to keep that title as his own for ever. In his own day he was universally known, both in Ireland and in England, by the name of "The Dean," alone; and he remains the Dean, par excellence; the Dean of Deans, the only Dean, so to speak, still.
But before he had yet taken up his residence in Dublin, or had enjoyed more than a few weeks of quiet at[Pg 94] Laracor, he was again summoned to England. Harley and St. John, unlike or opposite in many points of temper and character, had long been diverging from each other, and from close allies and partners in power had now become all but open enemies and competitors for the supreme or sole direction of affairs. It was thought that Swift was the only person by whose influence there was any chance that they might yet be reconciled. He seems to have returned to England in September.[12] He remained for nearly nine months, during which he resumed his pen as a party pamphleteer, and plied it with as much activity and vigour as ever. It was now that he produced, among other attacks upon his original friends of the other side, his scourging philippic entitled 'The Public Spirit of the Whigs, set forth in their generous Encouragement of the Author of The Crisis (Steele), with some Observations on the Seasonableness, Candour, Erudition, and Style of that Treatise.' Lord Orrery asserts that Swift wrote this piece with the consent, if not the encouragement, of the ministry; but one passage in it reflecting both upon the Scotch, whom it characterised as "a poor fierce northern people," and upon the union with Scotland, which was represented in the light of an imprudent and degrading marriage by a person of quality with a woman of inferior rank, whose only portion was a swarm of beggarly relations, excited such a flame of resentment as had well nigh proved fatal both to the writer and his patrons. Both the printer and the publisher were by a vote of the House of Lords ordered into the custody of the black rod; Swift's old enemy, Lord Wharton, loudly demanded that every means should be taken to discover the villainous author of the false and[Pg 95] scandalous libel; and all the Scotch nobility then in London went in a body to the queen, with the Duke of Argyle at their head, to insist upon his being punished. It was found necessary actually to issue a proclamation offering a reward of 300l. for his discovery; but Harley managed so that Swift, although nobody had for a moment doubted that he was the man, was not molested. Meanwhile the favour in which he stood seemed to rise higher every day. At the public levees of the lord-treasurer he was a more conspicuous figure than the minister himself, taking upon him the principal part both of the talk and the business, treating the persons of highest rank with the most ostentatious or condescending familiarity, and appearing almost to sway and direct every thing. Yet the old obstacle in a higher quarter remained as insuperable as ever. While an alarm was again spread that he was going to be made a bishop, he could not obtain for himself even the almost valueless office of historiographer royal. At the same time all the exertions he made, all the appeals he addressed to both, in the hope of effecting an accommodation between Harley and St. John, proved utterly vain. At last in the beginning of June, 1714, when the inevitable catastrophe was evidently close at hand, he left London, and proceeded to the house of an old acquaintance, the Reverend Mr. Gery, vicar of Upper Letcombe, in Berkshire. Here he wrote the paper entitled 'Some Free Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs,' which, however, was not then published. When the dismissal of Harley on the 27th of July left St. John at the head of affairs, Swift was again sought by both. One of St. John's first acts was to get a treasury order signed by the queen for the payment to Swift of a thousand pounds, to which he conceived he had a claim, in the circumstances of the case, as being required to defray certain extraordinary expenses connected with his induction to his deanery, but which he had never been able to obtain from Harley. At the same time St. John made both Lady Masham and Mrs. Barber write to the Dean entreating him in the strongest terms to return to town.[Pg 96] But when he read Harley's letter, received almost by the same post, in which the ex-minister requested his friend to accompany him on his journey to his countryseat in Herefordshire, Swift did not hesitate, but instantly wrote to Dublin to solicit a renewal of his licence of absence, and prepared to obey that summons. The death of the queen, however, on the 1st of August changed the position of all parties; and Swift (from whom, by the bye, the event intercepted his thousand pounds) set out for Ireland about a fortnight after.
It was during this visit to England, we may here mention, that Swift formed the Scriblerus Club, to which we owe the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus and other performances in the same style. The members were, besides himself, Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, together with Harley and St. John (now become Earl of Oxford and Viscount Bolingbroke); nor were the two ministers merely nominal associates. In the altered state of things that had taken place, the Society of Brothers appears to have discontinued its meetings.
But we must now notice some passages of Swift's private life, which have become as famous, and have as much interested the curiosity of posterity, as any thing in the course of his public history.
The only relations, as we have seen, that he had ever known, nearer than uncles, aunts, and cousins—with none of whom he seems to have kept up much intercourse from the time he left college—were his mother and his sister. While he was living as chaplain in the family of Lord Berkeley, or about the year 1700, his sister married a tradesman of the name of Fenton. Lord Orrery's account is that the marriage took place with the consent and approbation of her uncles and relations, and that, although the man was in trade, his "fortune, character, and situation were esteemed by all her friends suitable for her in every respect." "But," continues his lordship, "the marriage was entirely disagreeable to her brother. It seemed to interrupt those ambitious views which he had long since formed: he grew outrageous at the thoughts of being brother-in-law to a tradesman.[Pg 97] He utterly refused all reconciliation with his sister, nor would he even listen to the entreaties of his mother, who came over to Ireland under the strongest hopes of pacifying his anger, having in every other instance found him a dutiful and an obedient son; but his pride was not to be conquered, and Mrs. Swift, finding her son inflexible, hastened back to Leicester, where she continued till her death." According to other accounts, however, Fenton, who was a currier in Dublin, and advanced in life, was a worthless character, and was upon the eve of bankruptcy when the marriage took place. It is asserted, too, by Mr. Deane Swift that Swift not only offered his sister all he had in the world, amounting to about 500l., if she would break off the match, but supported her after her husband's affairs went to ruin.
It was after Swift was settled at Laracor that his mother came to visit him. On arriving in Dublin she took up her lodgings at the house of a Mr. Brent, a printer in George's Lane, husband of the Mrs. Brent who afterwards became the Dean's housekeeper, and whose gossiping propensities he has made merry with in several of his rhymes. Mrs. Swift, who, Scott remarks, "had much of her celebrated son's peculiar humour," amused her landlady's credulity, we are told, "by pretending she had come to Ireland to receive the addresses of a lover, and under that character received her son Jonathan's first visit, before she acquainted Mrs. Brent with the trick she had put upon her curiosity." So long as his mother lived Swift appears to have visited her every time he came to England, which, as we have stated, was at least once every year. Upon these and other occasions when he travelled, he sometimes, according to Lord Orrery, went in a waggon, but more frequently would walk all the way from Holyhead to Leicester or London. On his way, his lordship adds, "he generally chose to dine with waggoners, hostlers, and persons of that rank; and he used to lie at night in houses where he found written over the door Lodgings for a penny." He walked all the way, if we may believe the common story, when he went from Dublin to take[Pg 98] possession of his living of Laracor. His mother died at Leicester, at the age of seventy, on the morning of Monday, the 24th of April, 1710, as he has himself recorded in a memorandum written at the time when he received the news at Laracor, which was not till the evening of Wednesday, the 10th of May, by a letter dispatched from Dublin by his sister, Mrs. Fenton, the day before, inclosing one to her from a friend in Leicester dated on the day of the death. So that, unless Mrs. Fenton kept back the intelligence, which seems improbable, it then took more than a fortnight for a letter to come from Leicester to Dublin. Mrs. Swift had been ill all the winter, and had been confined to her bed and in a state of great weakness and suffering for the last month or six weeks. "I have now," her son adds, after noting down these particulars, "lost my barrier between me and death: God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to heaven be through piety, truth, justice, and charity, she is there."
But other women, not of his blood, also figure in his story. He has himself related the first of his love-affairs (if it is really to be considered such) of the particulars of which we have any record, in a letter written nearly forty years after it happened. It makes, taken all together, rather a curious little romance of real life. "When I went a lad to my mother," he says, "after the Revolution, she brought me acquainted with a family, where there was a daughter, with whom I was acquainted. My prudent mother was afraid I should be in love with her; but when I went to London she married an innkeeper in Loughborough, in that county, by whom she had several children." The man's name, it seems, was Perkins, and the inn he kept was the George. The maiden name of his wife, Swift's flame—he calls her his mistress in the course of the letter—was Betty Jones; and her family appears to have been related to that of the Dean: his mother, he says, used to call her mother cousin. They were pretty well off too; for the old lady left her daughter property to the value of 500l.;[Pg 99] and upon this Betty subsisted, having separated from her husband, who had turned out a rogue. Swift seems to have heard nothing more of her till about the year 1722, when a daughter of hers, Anne Perkins, the only one then surviving of several children she had, wrote to him from London. "The subject of the girl's letter," he says, "was, that a young lady of good fortune was courted by an Irishman, who pretended to be barrack-master-general of Ireland, and desired me, as an old acquaintance of her mother, Betty Jones, alias Perkins, to inquire about this Irishman. I answered that I knew him not, but supposed he was a cheat: I heard no more." It may be suspected that the "young lady of good fortune" was no other than Anne herself, and we fear that, notwithstanding Swift's warning, she found the self-styled Irish barrack-master-general irresistible. Swift goes on to inform his correspondent that now, in January, 1729, had come a letter to him from Betty Jones, alias Perkins, herself, telling him that her daughter Anne had married an Irishman of the name of Giles—that he had died—and that the widow, having gone over to Ireland to collect some debts due to her deceased husband, had resolved to settle there, and, intending to open a shop in Dublin, would, with his leave, borrow three guineas from his housekeeper, Mrs. Brent, which the mother would repay when the Dean should draw upon her in England. Swift did not know what to think of the application, but he desires his friend to send for the person calling herself Mrs. Giles and examine her strictly. "I would be ready," he says, "to sacrifice five pounds on old acquaintance to help the woman." But he adds, "I suspect her mother's letters to be a counterfeit, for I remember she spells like a kitchen-maid." In her lover's imagination at least, it may be inferred from this last expression, Betty Jones had remained pictured as a person of some education and refinement.
But we have also a letter relating to this affair written by him immediately after he had seen good to drop his flirtation, or whatever more it may have amounted to, with poor Betty. This letter, to which we have already[Pg 100] had occasion to refer for another purpose, is addressed to the Reverend John Kendall, Vicar of Thornton, in Leicestershire, whom he calls his good cousin, and is dated Moor Park, 11th February, 1691. He says here: "I shall speak plainly to you, that the very ordinary observations I made with going half a mile beyond the university, have taught me experience enough not to think of marriage till I settle my fortune in the world, which I am sure will not be in some years; and even then itself, I am so hard to please that I suppose I shall put it off to the other world. How all that suits with my behaviour to the woman in hand you may easily imagine, when you know there is something in me which must be employed . . . . It is this humour that makes me busy when I am in company to turn all that way: and since it commonly ends in talk, whether it be love or common conversation, it is all alike. This is so common that I could remember twenty women in my life to whom I have behaved myself just in the same way; and, I profess, without any other design than that of entertaining myself when I am very idle, or when something goes amiss in my affairs. This I always have done as a man of the world, when I had no design for anything grave in it, and what I thought at worst a harmless impertinence; but whenever I begin to take sober resolutions, or, as now, to think of entering into the church, I never found it would be hard to put off this kind of folly at the porch. Besides, perhaps in so general a conversation among that sex, I might pretend a little to understand where I am, when I am going to choose for a wife; and though the [most] cunning sharper of the town may have a cheat put upon him, yet it must be cleanlier carried than this, which you think I am going to top upon myself. And truly, if you knew how metaphysical I am that way, you would little fear I should venture on one who has given so much occasion to tongues; for though the people is a lying sort of a beast (and I think in Leicester above all parts that I ever was in), yet they seldom talk without some glimpse of reason, which I declare (so unpardonably jealous I am) to[Pg 101] be a sufficient cause for me to hate any woman any further than a bare acquaintance . . . . Your hints at particular stories I do not understand . . . . I should not have behaved myself after that manner I did in Leicester if I had not valued my own entertainment beyond the obloquy of a parcel of very wretched fools, which I solemnly pronounce the inhabitants of Leicester to be." This is all highly curious, and may be taken as giving us the key to much of Swift's character, and more especially to his mode of proceeding in other more memorable cases of the same kind. In the present letter he describes himself as "naturally temperate," and as not at all in danger of being hurried into any imprudence by mere passion; and the whole history of his relations and intercourse with the other sex compels us to conclude that he never was, properly speaking, in love, although he was fond of female society—of what Spenser calls "the calm of pleasant womankind,"—and although more women than one were at different times the objects of his strong, but not passionate regard. Though not of a warm, he was yet of an affectionate nature; but his attachments to women do not appear to have differed greatly in character from those which united him to his male friends. His mother, Harley, and Stella, seem to have been all loved much in the same way.
If he ever was really in love, it would seem to have been with Miss Jane Waryng, a lady of a respectable family in the North of Ireland, whose brother had been his chum at college. We learn what is known of the history of this affair from two of his letters to the lady, whom he designates by the title of Varina. The first is dated April 29, 1696, and would appear to have been written from his first living of Kilroot, in the county of Down. We gather from it that Miss Waryng was in ill health, that she had been so before Swift knew her, and ever since, and that she made that circumstance her principal argument for delaying their union. The letter throws some light, of which his biographers have not availed themselves, upon the somewhat obscure and disputed[Pg 102] circumstances that led to his resignation of his benefice, and his return to Moor Park some months after it was written. It appears that he had already been invited to return by Sir William Temple, and that he contemplated accepting the invitation. "You have now," he says, "had time enough to consider my last letter, and to form your own resolutions upon it. I wait your answer with a world of impatience; and if you think fit I should attend you before my journey, I am ready to do it. My Lady Donegal tells me, that it is feared my Lord Deputy will not live many days; and, if that be so, it is possible I may take shipping from hence; otherwise I shall set out on Monday fortnight for Dublin, and, after one visit of leave to his Excellency, hasten to England; and how far you will stretch the point of your unreasonable scruples to keep me here, will depend upon the strength of the love you pretend for me. In short, Madam, I am once more offered the advantage to have the same acquaintance with greatness that I formerly enjoyed, and with better prospect of interest. I here solemnly offer to forego it all for your sake. I desire nothing of your fortune; you shall live where and with whom you please, till my affairs are settled to your desire; and in the mean time I will push my advancement with all the eagerness and courage imaginable; and do not doubt to succeed." Whether any hesitation or caprice on the part of the lady delayed his departure does not appear. It is quite clear that he was at this time willing and eager to marry her. "But listen," he says, "to what I here solemnly protest, by all that can be witness to an oath, that, if I leave this kingdom before you are mine, I will endure the utmost indignities of fortune rather than ever return again, though the king would send me back his deputy." The letter is long, and is throughout in the same earnest strain, leaving no doubt of the writer's sincerity. It is by far the most impassioned letter that Swift is known ever to have written to any woman. But after a lapse of four years we find him in a very different mood. The second letter to Miss Waryng (no longer Varina) is dated from[Pg 103] Dublin, 4th May, 1700, and is in answer to one in which she appears to have given signs of a willingness to surrender at last. He had now been for some time in possession of Laracor and the other annexed livings. "Madam," he begins, "I am extremely concerned at the account you give of your health; for my uncle told me he found you in appearance better than you had been in some years, and I was in hopes you had still continued so. God forbid I should ever be the occasion of creating more troubles to you, as you seem to intimate!" She had inquired what had given his temper the sudden turn that had altered the style of his letters since he last came over. "If there has been that alteration you observe," he replies, "I have told you the cause abundance of times. I had used a thousand endeavours and arguments to get you from the company and place you are in; both on account of your health and humour, which I thought were like to suffer very much in such an air and before such examples. All I had in answer from you was nothing but a great deal of arguing, and sometimes in a style so very imperious as I thought might have been spared, when I reflected how much you had been in the wrong." "The other thing you would know," he continues, "is, whether this change of style be owing to the thoughts of a new mistress. I declare, upon the word of a Christian and a gentleman, it is not; neither had I ever thoughts of being married to any other person but yourself." He had desired, it seems, an account of her fortune; but it was with no such design as she professed to imagine. "I have told you," he observes, "many a time that in England it was in the power of any young fellow of common sense to get a larger fortune than ever you pretended to." He had made the inquiry merely that he might consider whether what she had (which he understands is about 100l. a-year) would be sufficient, with his own poor income, to make one of her humour easy in a married state. "The dismal account you say I have given you of my livings," he adds, "I can assure you to be a true one; and since it is a dismal one, even in your own opinion, you can best draw consequences[Pg 104] from it." The place where he has been appointed to reside, situated within a mile of a town called Trim, twenty miles from Dublin, has no house; so that the only way is either to build one, for which he is too poor, or to hire one at Trim, where there is hardly one to be got. He proceeds for some time longer in the same discouraging strain; and then winds up as follows:—"I desire, therefore, you will let me know if your health be otherwise than it was when you told me the doctors advised you against marriage, as what would certainly hazard your life. Are they or you grown of another opinion in this particular? Are you in a condition to manage domestic affairs with an income of less, perhaps, than 300l. a-year? Have you such an inclination to my person and humour as to comply with my desires and way of living, and endeavour to make us both as happy as you can? Will you be ready to engage in those methods I shall direct for the improvement of your mind, so as to make us entertaining company for each other, without being miserable when we are neither visiting nor visited? Can you bend your love and esteem and indifference to others the same way as I do mine? Shall I have so much power in your heart, or you so much government of your passions, as to grow in good humour upon my approach, though provoked by a—? Have you so much goodnature as to endeavour by soft words to smooth any rugged humour occasioned by the cross accidents of life? Shall the place wherever your husband is thrown be more welcome than courts or cities without him?" This unusual style of catechising would not be rendered more palatable by the intimation subjoined, that whenever she could heartily answer the questions he had asked in the affirmative, he should be ready to marry her, even though neither her fortune might be large nor her person beautiful. Competency in the one, he says, and cleanliness in the other is all he will look for. We may presume that this letter effectually finished the romance of Varina.
Varina was succeeded by a more celebrated name. The account that Swift himself has given of Esther Johnson,[Pg 105] or Stella, appears to be correct. She was born, he tells us, at Richmond, in Surrey, on the 13th of March, 1681; she was therefore thirteen years and a half younger than Swift. "Her father," he adds, "was a younger brother of a good family in Nottinghamshire, her mother of a lower degree; and indeed she had little to boast of her birth." Lord Orrery, who notices the common scandal that both she and Swift were the illegitimate children of Sir William Temple (which appears to have rested on nothing, and is opposed to all the probabilities and almost possibilities of the case, in so far at least as Swift is concerned), describes Stella's father as having been Temple's steward. Scott makes him to have been by profession a merchant in London; Stella's mother he describes as "a woman of acute and penetrating talents, the friend and companion of Lady Giffard, Temple's favourite sister, and cherished by her with particular respect and regard until the end of her life." "Johnson, the father," he adds, "died soon after Stella's birth; but Mrs. Johnson and her two daughters were inmates of Moor Park for several years." Swift's account is that he had known Esther from the time she was six years old, and had "had some share in her education, by directing what books she should read, and perpetually instructing her in the principles of honour and virtue." "She was sickly," he says, "from her childhood until about the age of fifteen; but then grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London, only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in perfection." At Sir William Temple's Miss Johnson contracted an intimate friendship with another lady of more advanced years, Mrs. Rebecca Dingley. Temple at his death left her 1000l.; she seems to have had previously about 500l. of her own; and her fortune afterwards received an accession of about 500l. more. Mrs. Dingley had also an annuity of twenty-seven pounds. When Swift found himself settled in Ireland, after his presentation to Laracor, he invited the two ladies to come over to that country; and they removed[Pg 106] thither in the year 1700. His own account is that upon a consideration of the higher interest of money in Ireland, which was then ten per cent., while all the necessaries of life were at half the price they bore in England, and also very much for his own satisfaction, who had few friends or acquaintance in Ireland, he prevailed upon them to settle in that country. He appears to have been in England when they came over; and at first they took up their residence in Dublin. When he took possession of his living of Laracor, they accompanied him to that quarter; but they only occupied the parsonage when he left it on a visit to Dublin or to England, residing at other times in lodgings in the neighbouring town of Trim, or in the house of Dr. Raymond, the vicar of that parish, who was a married man. And when Swift, upon becoming Dean of St. Patrick's, removed to Dublin, while they accompanied him to that city, the same plan of life was observed; whenever he left the Deanery the two ladies established themselves there; but when he was at home they had their own lodgings on Ormond Quay, on the other side of the Liffey.
Swift acknowledges that, when they first came over, "the adventure looked so like a frolic, the censure held for some time, as if there were a secret history in such a removal." But this, he says, soon blew off by Miss Johnson's excellent conduct. In this account, written a few hours after her death, the Dean has painted her endowments, both moral and intellectual, in brilliant colours. She appears to have possessed considerable force and decision of character, and much readiness and vivacity; but perhaps more robustness than delicacy of nature. The incident of her, when a house in which she and Mrs. Dingley lodged was attacked by a parcel of robbers, stealing softly to her dining-room window, putting on a black hood to avoid being seen, priming her pistol, gently lifting up the sash, taking her aim with the utmost presence of mind, and discharging the pistol loaded with bullets into the body of one of the villains who stood the fairest mark, and who died of the wound the next morning, was no doubt a proof of her heroism at four-and-twenty;[Pg 107] but if, when going about the affair so deliberately, she could have managed to wing the fellow instead of shooting him dead, it would perhaps have been as well. A lady wont to have her health drunk for having killed her man, in whatever circumstances, does not present exactly the most attractive image of feminine loveliness. And surely the grossness which we find both in Swift's letters to Stella and in some of her own bons-mots is something beyond what can be wholly accounted for by the peculiar manners of that day. These bons-mots, by the bye, of which Swift has preserved a short collection, hardly any of them rise above mere liveliness or smartness. From what Swift says, however, she must have had more education and instruction than is supposed by Scott, who represents her as having been "deficient in many of the most ordinary points of information." Swift tells us that her memory was not of the best, and that her frequent attacks of illness, for the most of her life, had prevented her from making the progress in reading which she would otherwise have done; but he adds:—"She was well versed in the Greek and Roman story, and was not unskilled in that of France and England. She spoke French perfectly, but forgot much of it by neglect and sickness. She had read carefully all the best books of travels, which serve to open and enlarge the mind. She understood the Platonic and Epicurean philosophy, and judged very well of the defects of the latter. She made very judicious abstracts of the best books she had read. She understood the nature of government, and could point out all the errors of Hobbes both in that and religion. She had a good insight into physic, and knew somewhat of anatomy, in both which she was instructed in her younger days by an eminent physician, who had her long under his care, and bore the highest esteem for her person and understanding."
In regard to the eminent personal attractions of Stella, we have, in addition to what is said by Swift, the testimony of Mrs. Delany, who saw her once by accident, as reported to Scott by a friend to whom that lady had been known. Mrs. Delany, we are told, "was struck with[Pg 108] the beauty of her countenance, and particularly with her fine dark eyes. She was very pale, and looked pensive, but not melancholy, and had hair black as a raven." With such advantages of mind and form, even her equivocal position in reference to Swift did not prevent her from being seriously addressed by at least one other admirer. This was the Rev. Dr. William Tisdall, a friend of Swift's. His proposals, however, were rejected by Stella; and although Swift appears to have been charged by Tisdall with interfering to obstruct the success of his suit, it is most probable that no active interference on his part was required, and that the lady's affections were already his own. This was in the early part of the year 1704: a letter from Swift to Tisdall, written from London on the 20th of April in that year, would imply that the lover had already had his refusal, although he might not have given up all hope. It would seem too that the whole affair had passed while Swift was in England. "I appeal to my letters to herself," he writes, "whether I was your friend or not in the whole concern; though the part I designed to act in it was purely passive, which is the utmost I will ever do in things of this nature, to avoid all reproach of any ill consequence that may ensue in the variety of worldly accidents. Nay, I went so far to her mother, herself, and I think to you, as to think it could not be decently broken; since I supposed the town had got it on their tongues, and therefore I thought it could not miscarry without some disadvantage to the lady's credit. I have always described her to you in a manner different from those who would be discouraging; and must add, that, though it has come in my way to converse with persons of the first rank and of that sex more than is usual to men of my level and of our function, yet I have nowhere met with a humour, a wit, or conversation so agreeable, a better portion of good sense, or a truer judgment of men and things; I mean here in England, for as to the ladies of Ireland I am a perfect stranger. As to her fortune, I think you know it already; and if you resume your designs and would have further intelligence, I shall send you a particular account."[Pg 109] He had said in the preceding part of the letter that if his fortune and humour served him to think of marriage, he would certainly, among all persons on earth, make the choice that had been made by Tisdall; but this, he declares, was the utmost he had ever given way to; "and I must assure you sincerely," he adds, "that this regard of mine never once entered into my head to be an impediment to you." It is impossible, however, to suppose that he can have been ignorant or unsuspicious of the state of poor Stella's heart. As for her, she appears from this time, as Scott observes, "to have considered her destiny as united to that of Swift." And the world, too, seems to have looked upon her as his. She never had another lover, and, with the exception of a visit of five or six months to England in 1705, she never was after this out of Ireland, or separated from Swift while he was in that country.
Why Swift did not at this time marry Stella, to whom he was undoubtedly much attached, as well as she to him, has been the subject of much conjecture and speculation, into which we cannot here enter. But it does not appear that for the present Stella found her position, however peculiar, to be an unhappy one, or would have found it such, however long it had continued, if she might only have been allowed to believe while she lived that she occupied without a rival the highest place in Swift's regard.
This, however, was not to be. It was during Swift's long visit to England, which began in September, 1710, that he first saw Esther Vanhomrigh, who has become famous under the appellation of Vanessa. Her mother was an Englishwoman; her father, Bartholomew Vanhomrigh, had been a Dutch merchant, who had been employed by King William as commissary of stores in the Irish war, and afterwards held the appointments of muster-master-general and a commissioner of revenue. At his death he left property to the value of about 16,000l. to be divided equally among his two sons and two daughters, of whom Esther was the elder. About the year 1709 Mrs. Vanhomrigh (the name, according[Pg 110] to Lord Orrery, is to be pronounced Vannummery) had come over from Ireland, and settled in London, in a house in Bury Street, St. James's, near that in which Swift was lodged. During his absence of nearly three years, Swift communicated to Stella an account of the proceedings of nearly every day, in a series of letters, which he dispatched about once a fortnight, and which form what is known as his 'Journal to Stella,' making by far the most interesting and illustrative portion of his biography. So early as on the 25th of September, we find him noting as follows:—"I was so lazy to-day that I dined at next door;" which there can be no doubt from the sequel was at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's. It has been suggested that the connection of the Vanhomrighs with Ireland may have probably first brought Swift and them acquainted. Another entry, under date of the 8th of October, is: "I was at a loss to-day for a dinner, unless I would have gone a great way; so I dined with some friends that board hereabout, as a spunger." At last, on the 30th, he writes: "I dined to-day at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's." Meanwhile, however, Stella's curiosity had been awakened. In his next letter we find him, on the 8th of November, parrying a question she had put: "What do you mean—'That boards near me, that I dine with now and then?' I know no such person; I do not dine with boarders. What the pox! you know whom I have dined with every day since I left you better than I do. What do you mean, sirrah?" But a new interest was already springing up in Swift's bosom, and faster perhaps than he was himself aware. Esther Vanhomrigh, not yet twenty, and if not pre-eminently beautiful, yet lively and graceful, had been fond of reading before she knew Swift, and this habit and the tastes which it inspired naturally drew them together. He became the director, and in some sort the companion of her studies, and soon no doubt found, for all the flattery of the great and the charms of his spreading celebrity, that his happiest hours were those spent in the society of this interesting girl. "From several passages in the Journal," says Scott, "Swift's constant and intimate[Pg 111] familiarity in the Vanhomrigh family is manifest; and it is plain also he soon felt that his acquaintance with Miss Esther was such as must necessarily give pain to Stella. While Vanessa was occupying much of his time, and much doubtless of his thoughts, she is never once mentioned in the Journal directly by name, and is only twice casually indicated by the title of Vanhomrigh's eldest daughter. There was, therefore, a consciousness on Swift's part that his attachment to his younger pupil was of a nature which could not be gratifying to her predecessor, although he probably shut his own eyes to the consequences of an intimacy which he wished to conceal from those of Stella. Miss Vanhomrigh, in the mean while, sensible of the pleasure which Swift received from her society, and of the advantages of youth and fortune which she possessed, and ignorant of the peculiar circumstances in which he stood with respect to another, naturally, and surely without offence either to reason or virtue, gave way to the hope of forming a union with a man whose talents had first attracted her admiration, and whose attentions, in the course of their mutual studies, had by degrees gained her affections, and seemed to warrant his own." What followed is to be chiefly gathered from Swift's poem of 'Cadenus and Vanessa,' which is supposed to have been written in 1713, and must have been written after he obtained his deanery, the name Cadenus being an anagram of Decanus (the Dean). It appears that Vanessa at last intimated to him the state of her affections in language which he could not affect to misunderstand. This was probably after he had begun to prepare for returning to Ireland. "He answered the avowal of Vanessa's passion," Scott continues, "at first in raillery, and afterwards by an offer of devoted and everlasting friendship, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem. Vanessa seems neither to have been contented nor silenced by the result of her declaration, but, to the very close of her life, persisted in endeavouring, by entreaties and arguments, to extort a more lively return to her passion than this cold proffer was calculated to afford." This was the state in which[Pg 112] matters stood when Swift returned to Ireland, in June, 1713. "The effect," Scott afterwards observes, "of his increasing intimacy with the fascinating Vanessa may be plainly traced in the Journal to Stella, which, in the course of its progress, becomes more and more cold and indifferent, and breathes fewer of those aspirations after the quiet felicity of a life devoted to M. D. [Stella and Mrs. Dingley] and the willows at Laracor, uses less frequently the affectionate jargon called the 'little language,' in which his fondness at first displays itself, and in short exhibits all the symptoms of waning affection. Stella was neither blind to the altered style of his correspondence, nor deaf to the rumours which were wafted to Ireland. Her letters are not preserved; but, from several passages of the Journal, it appears that they intimated displeasure and jealousy, which Swift endeavours to appease."
The remainder of the story can here be only very rapidly sketched. The death of Mrs. Vanhomrigh, in the year 1714, was soon followed by that, first, of one of her sons, then of the other; upon which the two sisters, towards the close of that year, came over to Ireland, to which Swift had returned a few months before. Fixing their residence in Dublin, they appear to have remained there for above two years. What is certain is, that during all this time Swift had kept up a correspondence with Vanessa, in which he had repeatedly answered her passionate appeals in the language of love, though somewhat cautiously employed, and mixed up with much apparent levity and occasional coldness. The series of their letters commences in 1712, and they distinctly assume the tone of an understood mutual affection from the time of their first separation in the summer of the following year. Swift's visits to Vanessa, after she and her sister came over to Ireland, appear also to have been always clandestine, or so conducted as to imply the existence of feelings on both sides which it was desired to conceal from the world. In short, as to the nature of the affection which Swift professed to entertain for Vanessa there can be no doubt; it was not mere friendship,[Pg 113] but love. This we have under his own hand. With regard to Stella the case is quite different: whatever construction we may put upon his conduct, whatever inference we may draw from particular expressions, he has nowhere explicitly declared himself her lover; on the contrary, he has repeatedly affirmed, both in writing of her and to her, that friendship, and not love, was the sentiment he had felt for her from the first. It may be that the difference is to be accounted for by the more impassioned nature of Vanessa, and the impossibility of evading her vehement and urgent appeals; it may be that he was really no more in love with the one than with the other. But, at any rate, the fact is, that he repeatedly declares himself to be the lover of Vanessa, and uniformly affirms that he was only the friend of Stella. Nevertheless, it is asserted that some time in the year 1716 he was clandestinely married to the latter. And the fact may possibly be so, although the evidence on which it has been assumed is extremely unsatisfactory, and it has been regarded as improbable by perhaps the most careful inquirers into Swift's history. If this marriage took place at the date assigned to it, Vanessa would be then in Dublin. But some time in the year 1717 she and her sister removed to a property they had near the village of Celbridge,—or, as it is called in Irish, Kildrohod, about ten or twelve miles from that city. For the first two or three years that they were here, Vanessa appears to have met Swift only when she occasionally came to Dublin; but from about the beginning of the year 1720 he repeatedly visited her at Ce1bridge. Scott has given some interesting particulars connected with these visits from the information of a correspondent. "Marley Abbey, near Celbridge," he tells us, "where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety by his own account) showed the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of Miss Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden when a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well, and his account[Pg 114] of her corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company; her constant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden. Yet, according to this authority, her society was courted by several families in the neighbourhood, who visited her notwithstanding her seldom returning that attention; and he added, that her manners interested every one who knew her. But she avoided company, and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said that, when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean, she always planted, with her own hand, a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called Vanessa's Bower. Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot. They had formerly, according to the old man's information, been trained into a close arbour. There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey, which had a romantic effect, and there was a small cascade that murmured at some distance. In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them."
Towards the close of the year 1720 Miss Mary Vanhomrigh, who had long been in a declining state of health, died. No dates are given as the story is told by Scott and others; but it would seem to have been in less than two years after the death of her sister that the hapless Vanessa also, the last of her race, was permitted to escape to the rest of the grave. It is said that she at last wrote to Stella, requesting to know the connexion between her and Swift; that she received an answer informing her that they were married; that at the same time Stella sent the Dean Vanessa's letter; and that in a paroxysm of rage he rode with it instantly to Marley Abbey, and, having flung it down on the table before her, instantly remounted his horse without uttering a word. She had received her death-stroke; but she lingered for about[Pg 115] three weeks; and before she breathed her last she revoked a will she had made in favour of Swift, and left her property, amounting to about 8000l., to a Mr. Marshall, afterwards a judge of the Irish Court of Common Pleas, and to Dr. Berkeley, afterwards the celebrated Bishop of Cloyne. She also delivered to them a complete copy, in her own hand, of all the letters that had passed between herself and Swift, with an injunction to publish them, which however it was thought proper at the time to disregard. But some extracts were long afterwards printed; and the entire correspondence was at last given to the world by Scott in 1808. Swift's poem of 'Cadenus and Vanessa' was published, it is not known through what agency, soon after the death of Miss Vanhomrigh.
It does not appear that during Vanessa's illness Swift either visited her, or made any attempt to alleviate her misery under the terrible blow with which he had struck her to the earth; but upon hearing of her death he left the deanery, and, hurrying to the south of Ireland, remained absent for two months without any one knowing where he was. Stella too, his biographers tell us, upon receiving Vanessa's letter, had retired in much indignation to Wood Park, the residence of Swift's friend, Charles Ford, Esq., in the neighbourhood of Dublin. But this must, from the date of the composition, be the very visit which Swift has himself celebrated in his poem entitled 'Stella at Wood Park, 1723;' and both the light and jocular style of the verses, and even some of the particulars mentioned in them, must be considered to preclude the possibility of the visit having been made in the circumstances alleged. We may observe, that besides these verses relating to Stella, in 1723, we find among Swift's poems another effusion, of which she is the subject, in 1725; verses to her on her birth-day, in 1719, in 1720, in 1722, in 1724, in 1725, and in 1727; and two other pieces addressed to her in 1720. In none of these compositions is there a trace of love or passion. After they both found themselves again together in Dublin, their way of life appears to have soon or immediately resumed its wonted course. Their marriage, if it had[Pg 116] taken place, had made no difference upon the system they had pursued from the first. "Nothing," says Lord Orrery (a believer in the marriage), "appeared in their behaviour inconsistent with decorum or beyond the limits of platonic love. They conversed like friends, but they industriously took care to summon witnesses of their conversation; a rule to which they adhered so strictly, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove they had ever been together without some third person." Stella, however, who, as Swift has himself recorded, had had frequent attacks of sickness all her life, fell in 1724 into a state of ill health from which she never recovered; and she died on the evening of Sunday, the 28th January, 1728. Orrery describes her as having been "absolutely destroyed by the peculiarity of her fate." But this is mere matter of opinion rather than of anything like fact or evidence.
The remainder of Swift's history presents him only in his character of a literary man, and political writer. In 1720 he first came forward as an Irish patriot, by the publication of a tract entitled 'A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures, &c., utterly Rejecting and Renouncing everything Wearable that comes from England.' Lord Orrery says, "To that pamphlet he owed the turn of the popular tide in his favour. His sayings of wit and humour had been handed about, and repeated from time to time among the people. They had the effect of an artful preface, and had pre-engaged all readers in his favour. They were adapted to the understanding and pleased the imagination of the vulgar; and he was now looked upon in a new light, and distinguished by the title of The Dean." The pamphlet was presented by the grand juries of the county and city, as a seditious, factious, and virulent libel; the printer was seized and brought to trial; but, although a verdict was with much difficulty obtained by Lord Chief Justice Whitshed which left the matter in the hands of the court, it was eventually thought prudent by the government to stop further proceedings. A number of squibs, lampoons, and other minor performances in the same spirit followed; till, in 1724, his attack upon the patent[Pg 117] which had been granted the preceding year to William Wood, to furnish a copper coinage of a certain amount for the use of Ireland, suddenly raised him to such a height of popular favour as has rarely been attained by any writer or public man. His famous Letters directed against Wood's scheme, professing to be written by "M. B. Drapier" (or Draper), are among the most vigorous productions of his pen. In the spring of 1726 he revisited England, and spent a few months there, principally with his friend Pope at Twickenham. During this visit he was introduced at the court of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., where he frequently made his appearance and attracted great attention. He returned to England, recalled by the serious illness of Stella, in August; and soon after his departure appeared, anonymously, his renowned 'Travels into several Nations of the World, of Lemuel Gulliver.' Few works that have ever been published have excited the eager and universal avidity with which this was read on its first appearance; it had an interest for all classes and all ages; it was at once the most pungent of political satires, and the most ingenious and entertaining of fictions. 'Gulliver's Travels' were followed in the next year by three volumes of 'Miscellanies,' prepared for the press by Pope, and consisting of pieces written by the two friends. A fourth volume was added in 1733. In March, 1727, Swift again visited England, and remained till the beginning of October. This was the last time he left Ireland. After the death of Stella, in January following, he resumed his pen as an Irish patriot, and produced in the course of the next six or eight years many short political pieces. Several of his more elaborate compositions in verse were also published about this time. In 1731 he got into a controversy with the Dissenters principally upon the subject of the Test Act, which was continued for some years; and about the same time we find him contending with the bishops in his own church upon the extent of the episcopal authority. In 1732 an edition of his collected works was brought out in four volumes by Faulkner, the Dublin bookseller. In 1735 he composed, among other pieces in verse, his poignant poetical satire entitled[Pg 118] the 'Legion Club,' directed against the Irish House of Commons, which had excited his indignation by its opposition to the tithe on pasture lands, or tithe of agistment as it is called. This was his last poetical performance of any length. About the same time he performed his last part as an agitator in civil politics by exerting himself against a scheme of the Primate, Boulter, for a new regulation of the Irish exchanges,—in this instance, however, without success. Not long after this, his memory began rapidly to decay; the fits of sudden rage to which he had always been subject, became much more frequent and more ungovernable; from the summer of 1740 he could no longer be accounted to be in possession of his reason; the dissolution of his understanding was succeeded by a state of furious lunacy, accompanied with severe physical suffering; and this lasted till his death, on the 19th of October, 1745. His remains were interred in the great aisle of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where a conspicuous tablet placed on an adjoining pillar records the spot, in the memorable words composed by himself:—"Hic depositum est corpus Jonathan Swift, &c., ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit." [Here he rests, where fierce indignation can no longer lacerate his heart.] By a will dated in May, 1740, he left the principal part of his property to found an hospital for lunatics in Dublin. What he was both intellectually and morally, the facts that have been related must be left to show. Many passages in his private history remain obscure and imperfectly intelligible after all the investigation that has been bestowed upon them; and where he may seem to have acted the most strangely and unaccountably much may be unknown by which his conduct might perhaps have been explained and vindicated. He possessed, undoubtedly, some high moral qualities; and where he erred it is probable that he also suffered. As a writer and thinker, he is one of the most masculine, and at the same time one of the most original, in our prose literature; and in his own style, the language can boast of no greater master of wit and humour.
"I was born," says Hogarth in his Memoirs of himself, "in the City of London, November 10, 1697. My father's pen, like that of many authors, did not enable him to do more than put me in a way of shifting for myself. As I had naturally a good eye, and a fondness for drawing, shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant; and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play; and I was, at every possible opportunity, employed in making drawings. I picked up an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learnt to draw the alphabet with great correctness. My exercises when at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercise itself. In the former I soon found that blockheads with better memories could much surpass me; but for the latter I was particularly distinguished."
To this account of Hogarth's childhood we have only to add, that his father, an enthusiastic and laborious[Pg 120] scholar, who, like many of his craft, owed little to the favour of fortune, consulted these indications of talent as well as his means would allow, and bound his son apprentice to a silver plate-engraver. But Hogarth aspired after something higher than drawing ciphers and coats-of-arms; and before the expiration of his indentures he had made himself a good draughtsman, and obtained considerable knowledge of colouring. It was his ambition to become distinguished as an artist; and not content with being the mere copier of other men's productions he sought to combine the functions of the painter with those of the engraver, and to gain the power of delineating his own ideas, and the fruits of his acute observation. He has himself explained the nature of his views in a passage which is worth attention.
"Many reasons led me to wish that I could find the shorter path,—fix forms and characters in my mind,—and instead of copying the lines, try to read the language, and, if possible, find the grammar of the art by bringing into one focus the various observations I had made, and then trying by my power on the canvass how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply them to practice. For this purpose I considered what various ways, and to what different purposes, the memory might be applied; and fell upon one most suitable to my situation and idle disposition; laying it down first as an axiom, that he who could by any means acquire and retain in his memory perfect ideas of the subjects he meant to draw, would have as clear a knowledge of the figure as a man who can write freely hath of the twenty-five letters of the alphabet and their infinite combinations." Acting on these principles, he improved by constant exercise his natural powers of observation and recollection. In his rambles among the motley scenes of London he was ever on the watch for striking features or incidents; and not trusting entirely to memory, he was accustomed, when any face struck him as peculiarly grotesque or expressive, to sketch it on his thumb-nail, to be treasured up on paper at his return home.
For some time after the expiration of his apprenticeship, Hogarth continued to practise the trade to which[Pg 121] he was bred; and his shop-bills, coats-of-arms, engravings upon tankards, &c., have been collected with an eagerness quite disproportionate to their value. Soon he procured employment in furnishing frontispieces and designs for the booksellers. The most remarkable of these are the plates to an edition of Hudibras, published in 1726: but even these are of no distinguished merit. About 1728 he began to seek employment as a portrait-painter. Most of his performances were small family pictures, containing several figures, which he calls 'Conversation Pieces,' from twelve to fifteen inches high. These for a time were very popular, and his practice was considerable, as his price was low. His life-size portraits are few; the most remarkable are that of Captain Coram in the Foundling Hospital, and that of Garrick as King Richard III. But his practice as a portrait-painter was not lucrative, nor his popularity lasting. Although many of his likenesses were strong and characteristic, in the representation of beauty, elegance, and high-breeding he was little skilled. The nature of the artist was as uncourtly as his pencil; he despised, or affected to despise, what is called embellishment, forgetting that every great painter of portraits has founded his success upon his power of giving to an object the most favourable representation of which it is susceptible. When Hogarth obtained employment and eminence of another sort, he abandoned portrait-painting, with a growl at the jealousy of his professional brethren, and the vanity and blindness of the public.
March 25, 1729, Hogarth contracted a stolen marriage with the only daughter of the once fashionable painter, Sir James Thornhill. The father, for some time implacable, relented at last; and the reconciliation, it is said, was much forwarded by his admiration of the 'Harlot's Progress,' a series of six prints, commenced in 1731, and published in 1734. The novelty as well as merit of this series of prints won for them extraordinary popularity; and their success encouraged Hogarth to undertake a similar history of the 'Rake's Progress,' in eight prints, which appeared in 1735. The third, and perhaps the most popular, as it is the least objectionable[Pg 122] of these pictorial novels, 'Marriage Alamode,' was not engraved till 1745.
The merits of these prints were sufficiently intelligible to the public: their originality and boldness of design, the force and freedom of their execution, rough as it is, won for them an extensive popularity and a rapid and continued sale. The 'Harlot's Progress' was the most eminently successful, from its novelty rather than from its superior excellence. Twelve hundred subscribers' names were entered for it; it was dramatised in several forms; and we may note, in illustration of the difference of past and present manners, that fan-mounts were engraved, containing miniature copies of the six plates. The merits of the pictures were less obvious to the few who could afford to spend large sums on works of art; and Hogarth, too proud to let them go for prices much below the value which he put upon them, waited for a long time, and waited in vain, for a purchaser. At last he determined to commit them to public sale; but instead of the common method of auction, he devised a new and complex plan with the intention of excluding picture-dealers, and obliging men of rank and wealth, who wished to purchase, to judge and bid for themselves. The scheme failed, as might have been expected. Nineteen of Hogarth's best pictures, the 'Harlot's Progress,' the 'Rake's Progress,' the 'Four Times of the Day,' and 'Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn,' produced only 427l. 7s., not averaging 22l. 10s. each. The 'Harlot's Progress' was purchased by Mr. Beckford, at the rate of fourteen guineas a picture; five of the series perished in the fire at Fonthill. The 'Rake's Progress' averaged twenty-two guineas a picture; it has passed into the possession of Sir John Soane, at the advanced price of five hundred and seventy guineas. The same eminent architect became the proprietor of the four pictures of an Election, for the sum of 1732l. 'Marriage Alamode' was disposed of in a similar way in 1750; and on the day of the sale one bidder appeared, who became master of the six pictures, together with their frames, for 115l. 10s. Mr. Angerstein purchased them, in 1797, for 1381l., and they now form a striking feature in our National Gallery.[Pg 123] We have related the chief events of Hogarth's life, which might have been expanded by the relation of many anecdotes, some of them puerile, few of them characteristic. Indeed, the character of an artist like Hogarth may be best drawn from his works, and we shall therefore add, not a catalogue, for they are too numerous, but an account of, with remarks upon, some of his chief and most remarkable productions.
From the time when the young Hogarth began to jot down imaginary faces and other rude forms upon the margin of his school exercises, to the further stage in the progress of his imitative talent, when he learned to scratch upon silver tankards and copper plates; and onward to the still further stage, when, as it were in correspondence with the satirical images he had formed in his mind by patient thought, he sketched real faces upon his thumb-nail; in all these several processes of his education as an artist, through what intense reflection, not only upon human nature and human society, but upon the possibility of making the deepest things intelligible to the eye of the casual observer, must the great moral painter have passed, before he could produce such a picture as the one we now copy! Take it rough as we give it. It is printed from a leaden cast of a wooden block, copied from his own engraving upon copper. It is probable that his own print fell far short of his conceptions; and that their translation and retranslation into the language in which we must put them before a million of readers, may abate something of their force and fervency as expounded by himself. But no defect in the mechanical processes by which conceptions like Hogarth's are made apparent to all the world, can much detract from their originality and truth. The rudest copy must partake in a great degree of the nature of the original model. The Apollo is still an Apollo, though he is hawked about the streets in plaster for a shilling. Look at the original picture in the National Gallery; there is still, in the few elements of which that scene is composed, an intensity of truth[Pg 124] which "lectures on the vanity of pleasure as audibly as anything in the Ecclesiastes."
The series called 'The Marriage Alamode' consists of six pictures. The personages of this tragical drama are taken from the upper walks of society. The son of a nobleman seeks an alliance with the daughter of a wealthy London citizen. On the one side there is a pedigree from William the Conqueror, but an estate embarrassed by improvident expenditure; on the other, there is humble birth, but great riches. The parents settle this ill-assorted marriage; those who are to be made happy or wretched, virtuous or vicious, for the rest of their lives, care little about the matter. The preliminaries are arranged; the marriage has taken place; the first solemn farce is over; the tragedy begins in the scene before us.
There is no after misery arising out of domestic unhappiness, which is perhaps comparable to the habitual wretchedness and degradation which ensue, when a man and his wife, in whatever station they may be placed, have no pleasures in common. That purest of friendship—that almost only real friendship—which results from a correspondence of tastes and inclinations in two persons of different sexes allied "for better or worse," requires no excitements from without. From the moment when they cease to sympathise as to the sources of happiness, come weariness, and disgust, and hatred, and all the horrid train of ills that belong to domestic discord. The scene in the first print requires no development of the catastrophe to make us understand its present wretchedness. The lady has passed the night in her splendid mansion, amidst a crowd of visitors. She has snatched an hour or two of broken and feverish sleep, and has risen unrefreshed to a late breakfast. The servants have been unable to repair the disorder of the previous night. It is noon; but the candles are still burning; the furniture is disarranged; the floor is strewed with music, and book of games, and overturned chairs—the emblems of midnight riot. It is in scenes like this, that the sources of our purest enjoyments become to us curses. What is innocent relaxation to the pure in heart, is converted into a minister to evil passions and corrupting[Pg 125] idleness, in those who have no elevating or useful employments, and who embitter life in the vain pursuit of pleasures that can only be won as the solace of honest exertion. The husband has spent his night from home—how vainly, how unwisely! The "jaded debauchee"—his dress disordered, his features pale and fallen, his whole attitude expressive of that withering satiety which has drunk the dregs of what is called pleasure, and found nothing but poison in the cup—tells a tale of the ruin which has overwhelmed thousands, and which will continue to overwhelm, till all classes of men, the richest as well as the poorest, learn to seek for happiness in the exercise and the cultivation of the higher qualities of their nature; till the restraints and the incentives of a truly moral and religious education shall have taken the place of the corrupting processes by which we are led away from the knowledge of what we are and what we ought to be. Truly might this unhappy man say, as the representative of a class, in the exquisite words of the poet—
"No more—no more—oh never more on me
The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,
Which out of all the lovely things we see
Extracts emotions beautiful and new,
Hived in our bosom like the bags o' the bee."
Don Juan, Canto I.
All the real happiness of this world for him has perished. Pleasure has been "weighed in the balance and found wanting"—deep degradation and misery are beginning to "cast their shadows before." Neither the besotted husband nor the careless wife can listen to the silent remonstrances of the old steward, who comes to them with a bundle of unpaid bills in his hand, and a file with only one receipt upon it. The uplifted hand and careworn face of the faithful servant distinctly paint the ruin which he sees approaching in debt and dishonour. The catastrophe, indeed, is more sudden than he expects. In the four following pictures, we see that
"The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us."
The tragedy ends with adultery, and murder, and suicide. Hogarth put forth his strength in these pictures to exhibit the short cut to ruin which too often presents itself to the desperately vicious. In the 'Harlot's Progress,' and the 'Rake's Progress,' he exhibits the longer but not less certain road upon which crime and misery are destined to travel in company. Whether this great painter laid his scenes in high or in low life, his object was equally to show, as Walpole has well expressed it, that "the different vices of the great and the vulgar lead by various paths to the same unhappiness." He was too keen an observer of human nature not to see that station only decides the form and colour of our evil doings. Crime is a leveller of all distinctions.
Half a century after the apprentices of London had ceased to act as a body, and lost the political importance they had possessed in former times, Hogarth produced his 'Industry and Idleness.' He looked round upon the state of society then existing, and drew his pictures of life from the realities which met his observation. Apprentices to handicraft were, in Hogarth's time, as they are now, chiefly taken from the ranks of those who labour with their hands; and if they came to be placed above that necessity, the elevation was, in most cases, the result of their own industry and good conduct. The moral painter has exhibited to us, in his first plate, the fellow apprentices in a weaver's workshop. The one, whose open, modest, and intelligent countenance at once wins our regard, is carefully intent upon the duty of his occupation; the other, whose vulgar and unintellectual face is indicative of the habitual grossness of his character, is fast asleep. The porter-pot on the loom and the tobacco-pipe by its side show that his drowsiness proceeds from indulgence rather than from fatigue. He is equally indifferent to the noise of the cat which is playing with his shuttle, and to the angry step of his master, who is entering the door with a cane uplifted for his chastisement. The accessories of the scene are few and[Pg 127] simple, but they assist the development of its characters. The industrious apprentice has fixed upon the wall some papers which may incite him to persevere in his course of diligence, such as the Life of Whittington: the idler has stuck up a profane ballad of that day, called 'Moll Flanders.' The ''Prentice's Guide' of the one is carefully preserved; that of the other is torn and dirty. The artist, in this first plate of his series, has made the difference of the two characters that he intends to contrast in their conduct and their fortunes perfectly intelligible. He has strikingly availed himself of the general inclination to associate certain qualities of the mind with certain forms of countenance and modes of expression. Hogarth was a great physiognomist,—so much so that Lavater, who endeavoured to reduce physiognomy to a science, has chosen the face of the idle apprentice, in the fifth print of this series, to illustrate a part of his system, in showing how profligacy leaves its indelible traces on the features of its unhappy victims,—how men "erase Nature's works" by habits of low indulgence.
The two prints of 'The Industrious Apprentice at Church,' and 'The Idle Apprentice Gaming,' tell their own story; and they need little comment. In this series of prints, the artist has avoided the refined and ingenious elaborations of his main design, which distinguish most of his other great performances. This he did upon system. He himself says, "As the prints were intended more for use than ornament, they were done in a way that might bring them within the purchase of those whom they might most concern. Yet, notwithstanding the inaccuracy of the engraving, what was thought conclusive and necessary for the purpose for which they were intended, such as action and expression, &c., are as carefully attended to as the most delicate strokes of the graver would have given; sometimes more: for often expression, the first quality in pictures, suffers in this point, for fear the beauty of the stroke should be spoiled; while the rude and hasty touch, while the fancy is warm, gives a spirit not to be equalled by high finishing." But although these prints are much simpler[Pg 128] in their conception than those of the Marriage Alamode, the Rake's Progress, the Election, and others, the peculiar genius of Hogarth sufficiently exhibits itself in them. In the second plate the modest and ingenious apprentice performing the office of devotion, and joining in the services of the church with a young woman, whose countenance is equally prepossessing (intended for his master's daughter), at once claims the attention and sympathy of all who look on the picture. This is the main object of the painter. We see in the calm and contented face of the apprentice, the assurance of a happy life, whatever be his fortune. The wealth and the honours which he ultimately reaches are not necessary to make him respected. He does his duty in the station in which he is now placed; and the good wishes of good men already wait on him. This is the moral of the painter; but he surrounds his principal characters, as Shakspeare always does, with the accidental realities of life. The man asleep in the same pew with the apprentice—the corpulent woman, full of her own self-importance—the shrivelled pew-opener, humbly intent upon her devotional studies—these characters show the accuracy of Hogarth's observation, and they assist rather than injure the main effect of the design.
Turn we to the revolting contrast—the idle apprentice gambling upon a tomb. The images of death are about him—those images which teach man the worthlessness even of the higher aspirations of more worldly wisdom—of the love of power or of riches—the worthlessness of everything but truth and virtue. Yet he is surrendered to the basest of excitements with the basest of companions. Look at that horrid face of vacancy and cunning—the blackguard with the patch over his eye. We shall see him again in the series—the associate in crime, and the betrayer of the unhappy apprentice. Wickedness is in companionship with filth and rags—not the result of poverty alone, but of depravity. The self-respect of the wretched apprentice is utterly destroyed. He is insensible to shame. He is far beyond the beadle's stripes. His heart is utterly hardened.[Pg 129] The courses of evil into which the idle apprentice is precipitated are so gross and revolting, that it is possible many a young man may exclaim,—"What is all this to me? I shall never fall so low!" That may be true; but the only sure preventive of such a fearful degradation is to resist the beginnings of evil. Careful parents, diligent instructors, kind but prudent masters, may and do save the inexperienced from the temptations which surround them; but all these restraints are sometimes leaped over. This truth is quaintly but beautifully expressed by one of our old poets, George Herbert:—
"Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers.
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises;
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of glory ringing in our ears;
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array,
One cunning BOSOM-SIN blows quite away."
The Germans, who are not deterred by the apprehension of becoming tedious from exhausting every subject which they undertake to write upon, have a 'Commentary on Hogarth,' in five volumes, in small 8vo. This work, which was first published at Göttingen, 1794-1799, is the production of G. C. Lichtenberg, a man of great talents, who was professor of natural philosophy or physics in the university of Göttingen, and had a very high reputation as a teacher and lecturer. One of the volumes of this commentary is devoted to the series of 'Industry and Idleness.' The views of the author are very peculiar, and expressed in language which would sound quaint and mystical to an English ear. We may, nevertheless, give one or two specimens.
Our readers will have already seen that it was the intention[Pg 130] of Hogarth to exhibit a succession of extreme contrasts in the pursuits and the fortunes of the two apprentices. In the first plate, which Lichtenberg describes as the stem of the whole, the two heroes are presented together—the one usefully employed, the other in the stupor of sottishness. The second and third plates are part and counterpart—the one representing the industrious youth engaged in the duties of public worship, the other showing the unhappy idler violating the Sabbath with the lowest of companions. The fourth and fifth plates are also pairs: the fourth exhibits the one apprentice in the confidence of his master; the fifth represents the other apprentice discharged and sent to sea. The German critic, referring to this succession of contrasts, says, "Hogarth has associated the histories of his two heroes in so masterly a manner, that not only each picture seems rightly paired with its counterpart (which, indeed, would be required), but he has contrived also to connect the several pairs so cleverly with one another that each seems engrafted on the other." For instance, the actual consequence of the increasing confidence of the benevolent master in the industrious apprentice was, that he should become a partner in his business and marry his daughter: this is the subject of the sixth plate. The contrast to this, exhibited in the seventh plate, is the idle vagabond returned from sea,—fallen still lower than before,—incapable of steady labour,—unfitted for domestic peace,—consorting with an abandoned woman in a den of filth and wretchedness. The eighth and ninth plates are again pairs. In the sixth and seventh, the one had reached the point of happiness,—the other of misery. In the eighth and ninth, the one reaches the eminence of an honourable ambition,—the other is precipitated into an abyss of guilt and misery: the one becomes sheriff of London,—the other is engaged in robbery and murder in a night cellar. The catastrophe of this drama is now evident. In the tenth plate, as in the first, the industrious and the idle apprentice are brought together again: the murderer is charged with his crimes before the magistrate. Their chances of happiness and prosperity were once the same;—there is a fearful distance[Pg 131] now between them. The curtain might have dropped here, but Hogarth has chosen to make his design palpable to all. The last pair of the series, the eleventh and twelfth plates, represent the murderer dragged to execution,—the industrious and virtuous citizen Lord Mayor of London.
It must be manifest that Hogarth has taken extreme cases in the conduct of this story. It is not always that industry ends in wealth and civic honours;—it is not always that idleness conducts to ignominy and death by the executioner. Upon this point Lichtenberg speaks with somewhat of a caustic humour:—
"In order to display the consequences of industry and idleness, our artist has chosen the lives of two weavers. To be sure with German journeymen weavers, he could not have carried his design into effect,—at least not with so much force of contrast. Whoever in Germany has learnt a trade, may easily, if he commences properly, make an end at the gallows with éclat. But, in opposition to the gallows, there is with us no proportional reward for industry: virtue and rectitude of conduct have happily no need of such a stimulus. Indeed, the representation of noiseless domestic happiness (although certainly the greatest, perhaps even the only true happiness of the world) cannot be well chosen by an artist who adopts the graver as the instrument of teaching moral truths to the class of mankind who are called 'the lower.' A coach with six horses before and two footmen behind is more easily depicted, at least it is more easily understood, than the nursery with its six children about the table, or even, if it so happens, with one half around it and the other half under it, and the two happy parents at either end. . . . Hogarth thus wisely chose, for more than one reason, to contrast the gallows with outward magnificence, which, happily, however, may very well exist together with internal peace. In Hogarth's country it is not unfrequent that the son of a weaver or a brewer may distinguish himself in the House of Commons, and his grandson or great-grandson in the House of Lords. O what a land! in which no cobbler is certain that the[Pg 132] favours of his great-grandson may not one day be solicited by kings and emperors. And yet they grumble!"[13]
Hogarth was unquestionably right in selecting contrasts that addressed themselves at once to the senses. It was his business to arrest the thoughtless in their hasty steps to evil,—to confirm the prudent in their steady march towards good. In the conduct of his story there is not the slightest violation of probability. He chose instances that have occurred, and that are still occurring; and he clothed them with the most striking accessories of reward and punishment. Our artist, however, did not neglect the intermediate contrast between the final contrast of the Lord Mayor's carriage and the murderer's cart. In the several stages of industry there are shown,—the satisfaction of being usefully employed,—the calm content of a humble and pious spirit,—the honest pride of receiving the confidence of a discriminating employer,—the happiness of a well-assorted marriage. In the several stages of idleness there are shown,—the misery of a sottish indifference,—the feverish anxiety of low and profane excitements,—the reckless daring of the callous ruffian who despises even the tears of a mother,—the coward terrors and loathsome degradation of illicit intercourse. Without reaching the extreme honour or the extreme punishment which Hogarth has delineated, there is quite enough to show in these several contrasts what are the natural rewards of industry and the natural punishments of idleness.
The terms "Industry" and "Idleness" may perhaps require some explanation. Gambling in the churchyard, on ship-board, or engaged in robbery, the idle apprentice seems to have as much to do as the industrious apprentice attending the service of the church, in his master's counting-house, or sitting as magistrate. Barrow, one of the most eloquent and logical of our great divines, has put the distinctions between laborious idleness and profitable industry very admirably:—"Industry doth not consist merely in action; for that is incessant in all persons, our mind being a restless thing, never abiding in a[Pg 133] total cessation from thought or from design; being like a ship in the sea, if not steered to some good purpose by reason, yet tossed by the waves of fancy, or driven by the winds of temptation, somewhither. But the direction of our mind to some good end, without roving or flinching, in a straight and steady course, drawing after it our active powers in execution thereof, doth constitute industry." Again:—"Sloth, indeed, doth affect ease and quiet, but by affecting them doth lose them; it hateth labour and trouble, but by hating them doth incur them. It is a self-destroying vice, not suffering those who cherish it to be idle, but creating much work and multiplying pains unto them; engaging them into divers necessities and straits, which they cannot support with ease, and out of which, without extreme trouble, they cannot extricate themselves."
Idleness is a state of temptation. There is an old saying—"a working monk is assaulted by one devil, but an idle one is spoiled by numerous bad spirits." The degree of the temptation is only a question, perhaps of time, perhaps of opportunity. But that the path of sloth is full of pit-falls no one can doubt. Take the commonest case of a slothful labourer—made slothful, probably, against his original desire, by a weak and corrupt administration of the laws for the relief of sickness and impotency. He begins by being a pauper—he goes on to practise the arts of a poacher—he ends with the desperate courses of a thief. Take the equally common example of a "man on the town"—a fine gentleman with a large appetite for pleasure and a small income for its gratification. He commences by incurring debts which he has no prospect of discharging—he goes on by trusting to the gaming-table for the supply of his wants—the gaming-table is a very uncertain bank, and he looks at last to operations more within the control of his own will—he finishes as a swindler. Take, lastly, the not unfrequent example of a tradesman who neglects his business. His charges of rent and servants begin to press heavily upon him:—the ordinary receipts of his trade will not meet his engagements;—he begins to abuse one of the[Pg 134] greatest instruments of commerce, the power of obtaining credit;—he buys goods, and sells them at a loss, to patch up the demands upon him, or he enters upon the desperate career of "accommodation bills"—that is, of exchanging promises to pay for other promises to pay, each equally worthless, raising money upon them at a high rate of interest;—lastly, he absconds, and finishes as an outlawed bankrupt. These are a few of the many intermediate steps between the first abandonment to sloth, associated with the first departure from integrity, and the ultimate vengeance of the offended laws.
But to return to our great moral painter. When Hogarth made it a part of the fate of his Idle Apprentice that he should be turned away and sent to sea, the painter showed that one of the means of reformation which society provides for sloth and imprudence was bestowed upon his depraved hero. A restless will, impatient of the restraints of unvarying labour, sometimes finds a field for honest and useful exercise in the adventurous variety of a sailor's life. The discipline, too, of a ship is so strict, that idleness is there driven out of its ordinary course of shifts and expedients. Hence a sea life often produces a salutary change in the character of an imprudent but not thoroughly corrupted youth. A sailor's duties may absorb those energies that, in other situations, might crave for the excitements of dissipation: but it is a mistake to imagine that a life on ship-board can produce any salutary effects upon a wicked and obdurate disposition; or that a young man can discharge his duties as a seaman, and still preserve his hatred of steady labour and his love of base gratifications. It requires the same qualities to make a good sailor as a good citizen—industry, perseverance, obedience, integrity. The idle apprentice is not likely to display these qualities. His fate may be read in Hogarth's wonderful plate. The figures are few;—but they all tell the story. Look at the group around "Tom Idle's" sea-chest. The unhappy boy has thrown his indentures overboard;—his mind is intent upon a vulgar joke suggested by the place in the river where the boat is passing;—his demeanour is so reckless that one[Pg 135] of the sailors, with a coarse warning, is exhibiting to him a cat-o'-nine tails—the other, with his hard features of admonition, is pointing to the gibbet on the flat shore. But there is one of that group who would touch his heart by other associations—it is his weeping mother. Without being plunged into the lowest depth of obstinacy, he might affect to despise the terrors with which those rough monitors seek to affright him. But a mother's tears;—if he resist these tokens of all she has done and all she has felt for him, of all she hopes and all she dreads in this parting hour,—he is lost. She "is clinging with the fondness of hope not quite extinguished to her brutal, vice-hardened child." He meets her love with a base and desperate ribaldry. He is lost!
The sixth print of the series represents the Industrious Apprentice married to his former master's daughter. They are now in partnership, as their joint names on the sign (signs were then common in London) indicate. It is the morning after the marriage. The door is beset by clamorous beggars, by noisy musicians, and by still more noisy butchers with marrow-bones and cleavers. On occasions like these, those who whine for alms, and those who compel a boon by making themselves disagreeable, are abundantly gratified; for then the most sensible are apt to forget that what is bestowed upon the idle in the way of gift is so much taken away from the store which maintains the diligence of the industrious. The peculiar humour of Hogarth is poured out in this print. The beggar in the tub, bawling out his new song to "the happy pair"—the stiff-legged bow of the drummer receiving his pay,—the eager gaze of the one butcher, and the bullying roughness of the other, who is driving back the Frenchman with the violoncello,—all these are characteristic traits of the motley population of a great city. We shall add a few sentences from Lichtenberg, which may amuse if they do not instruct.
"It is the custom in England, or at least in London, for the butchers to make before the houses of the newly married on the morning after the wedding,—if they think it will pay them for their trouble,—a kind of wild[Pg 136] Janizary music. They perform it by striking their cleavers with the marrow-bones of the animals they have slain. To comprehend that this music is,—we shall not say, supportable, for that is not here the question,—but that it is not entirely objectionable, we shall observe that the breadth of the English cleaver is to that of the Germans nearly in the same proportion as the diameter of the English ox is to that of Germany. When, therefore, properly struck, they produce no despicable clang; at least certainly a better one than logs of wood emit when thrown to the ground; and yet the latter are said to have occasioned the invention of the rebeck. We are even of opinion that if the cleavers were duly tuned and proportioned, as perhaps was the case with the hammers of Pythagoras, they would probably produce a music far superior to that of some newly-invented harmonicons, constructed of nails, cucumbers, and bricks.[14] We shall not urge that this music must be rendered more agreeable by the concatenation of ideas it excites, and which refer to roast-beef, though it is evident that in this case the notion must mingle with the finer feelings produced by the music. It is incredible of what subtle but intelligible signs the stomach may make use to indicate to the heart that it is united very closely to it in their common citadel."
The contrast exhibited in the seventh plate has been already noticed. The Idle Apprentice has returned from sea—unchanged, unrepenting. He plunges at once into more fatal and desperate courses. He has entered upon a career of robbery. In a wretched garret, in companionship with a depraved woman, he wakes in the night in a condition of extreme terror. A cat has come down the chimney, and he fancies he hears the officers of justice. "The sound of a shaken leaf shall chase him."
The eighth plate represents the City Feast of Goodchild, who has become Sheriff of London. This was a natural course of advancement for industry and integrity[Pg 137] accumulating wealth. The course which the Industrious Apprentice has pursued, properly fits him for public trusts and public duties. Hogarth, in the print before us, has, with his usual felicity, represented the coarse enjoyments of a city feast. The eager clamour for fresh supplies—the gloating satisfaction of the healthful feeder, and the exhausted appetite of the apoplectic one,—these are traits of every-day occurrence, which Hogarth has not exaggerated. The guttling of corporations, miscalled hospitality, is the greatest abuse of our municipal institutions. The "Companies," who habitually feast with all the pampered luxuriousness of a Roman emperor, have enormous funds at their disposal, some of which they dole out in charity, and more of which they employ in their courses of wasteful riot; and this they call "making good for trade." Properly applied, these funds would eradicate want instead of cherishing it, and bestow sound and elevating instruction upon those who now suffer the debasement of ignorance;—properly applied, these funds would empty our prisons and fill our schools.
Municipal honours and municipal privileges belong to our constitution. They are the outward rewards to the middle classes for managing their own affairs. They are honest objects of ambition which are open to all men. But the "board-day" and the "council" dinner are what the really useful members of corporations despise. Something of "high festival," to commemorate some public triumph—something of profuse hospitality to welcome a new functionary—may be, without impropriety, tolerated and encouraged; beyond this is waste and vanity. Changes are taking place amongst us which may restore municipal corporations to their real uses, and destroy their abuses;—and then an upright and intelligent citizen may be proud of his Company and his Corporation. "The Londoners," says an eloquent writer, "loved their city with that patriotic love which is found only in small communities, like those of ancient Greece, or like those that arose in Italy during the middle ages." It will be so again when those institutions, "which now seem only to exist for the delectation of epicures and[Pg 138] antiquaries," become again conspicuous instruments in the advancement of civilization.
In the third plate of the series, which represents the profanation of the Sabbath by the Idle Apprentice and his ignorant companions, the fellow with the patch over his eye is a prominent character. In the ninth plate we find him again associated in crime with the wretched idler. In a night-cellar they are busily engaged in dividing their booty. Their accomplices are thrusting their murdered victim into a trap-door. Behind is a scene of brutal debauchery. But the hour of retribution is fast approaching. The profligate companion of the devoted apprentice is betraying him to the officers of justice. His career will soon be at an end: the catastrophe is beginning.
We have now traced the Industrious and the Idle Apprentice to that point where their future career must be determined. The one is a magistrate of the first city in the world—the other is an apprehended felon. The course of their progress, each to such different results, is natural and certain. Is there anything of chance in these violent contrasts? Look at the history of all criminals—it is that of Hogarth's apprentice. The stages are idleness, depraved excitements, contempt of the Sabbath, profligate companionship, disobedience, contempt of the affections which God implanted in us for our happiness and our instruction, obduracy of heart, desperation, and death by the laws. Look at the history of all those who have advanced themselves from small beginnings to wealth and honour—it is that of Hogarth's apprentice. The stages are industry, calm enjoyments, love of social worship, few and tried friends, obedience, cherishing of the pure affections, perseverance in well-doing, honest ambition, public respect. Hogarth kept strictly to the true and the probable in both his examples.
The moral lesson Hogarth intended to convey would have wanted much of its force had any of the usual experiences of life been violated to give it point. How faithfully the course of idleness and depravity has been depicted, we need nothing beyond the observations of[Pg 139] every day to inform us. The prosperity of the industrious and well behaved is, however, so frequently attributed to "chances" and "lucky hits," that the tale Hogarth has told of his Industrious Apprentice is by many felt to be less natural than the other. We think it is not so. The fortunate circumstances which occur to lift the industrious upward, are, as much as their other advantages, the effects of that industry and good conduct, without which they would not have been so placed that "lucky chances" could occur or could benefit them. So, in the instance before us, without a long previous course of industrious and trustworthy conduct, the Industrious Apprentice would not have been in a situation for the good fortune of being the husband of his master's daughter and the partner in his firm. The biography of every nation is full of instances of men who, by talents and useful inventions, have raised themselves to a commanding position in society. But all men are not endowed with such talent; and it does not appear to have been the intention of Hogarth to represent their progress. He intended rather to exhibit the prosperity which might be attained by the practice of virtues which no man is naturally incapable of exercising, and to indicate a path to consideration which no man wants more than the will to follow. He has represented an extreme case, certainly. There are many lesser elevations than that of the chief-magistracy of London, on which the industrious and wise man may rest happy and comfortable. Nevertheless, many of our readers would be surprised to learn how large the proportion is of those who have attained that dignity from the lowest beginnings.
We have little to say in explanation of the last noble picture of the series. The murderer is at the bar of justice—his accomplice is giving evidence against him—his weeping mother is pressing forward in her agony to implore mercy. The magistrate is the former fellow-apprentice of the criminal. The curtain may fall. The tragedy is ripe. The execution and the Lord Mayor's Show are the accessories which can add nothing to its lessons.[Pg 140] The Rake's Progress.
"Riches, like insects, when conceal'd they lie,
Wait but for wings, and in their season fly.
Who sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store,
Sees but a backward steward for the poor;
This year a reservoir, to keep and spare;
The next a fountain, spouting through his heir,
In lavish streams to quench a country's thirst,
And men and dogs shall drink him till they burst."
Pope, one of the keenest observers of human life that ever threw his thoughts into verse, has thus described the natural and common succession of Prodigality to Avarice. Hogarth has painted the consequences of this succession, and, we think, with greater truth than the poet has described them.
The miser is dead;—his heir comes to open the "reservoir." The man who, when living, denied himself a coat,—whose old shoes are patched with a piece cut out of the cover of the family Bible,—is honoured "with customary suits" of black and escutcheons when he is dead. The undertaker is covering the miser's room with these preparations for "lying in state;" the heir is being measured for his mourning garments. The strong chests are opened; the conveyances, the mortgage-deeds, the bonds, are exposed to view; the moneybags are explored; the secret hoards are found in the crazy walls. Up to the moment when he took to his bed, and left his crutches against his comfortless chimney,—a monument of "the ruling passion strong in death,"—the avaricious man was intent to save. For years the meat-jack had been put away in the cupboard to rest,—for years the hearth had sent forth no comfortable blaze:—
"Tenants with sighs the smokeless towers survey,
And turn th' unwilling steeds another way;
Benighted wanderers the forest o'er
Curse the saved candle and unopen'd door."
The heir will change all. No longer will the old crone, who is about to kindle the unaccustomed fire, be called upon to put the rush-light in the save-all; no longer will the starved cat pry into every hole for a morsel of food; no longer will the journal of the master of that house record such a fact as "May the 5th, 1721, put off my bad shilling." The heaps of gold are no longer to be secretly gazed upon, or applied to produce other heaps of gold: they are open to the day;—they are ready for the hard-featured man of business to purloin while he makes his inventory, and for the unhappy youth to abuse at the first moment when he takes possession of them. He has become familiar with vice, even under the severe discipline of his avaricious father. Perhaps that severe discipline has driven him to vice; certainly the want of confidence which must have subsisted between the father and the son must have confirmed his evil propensities, if it did not call them forth. He is a destroyer of female honour. The mother of the unfortunate girl whom he has tempted from the path of modesty exhibits his letters to her wretched daughter, who herself displays the ring which he had given her as a pledge of affection. The written words, and the more impressive symbol of vows and confidence, are despised. He has become the master of gold, and he offers gold in reparation. He has already formed a false estimate of the power of riches. He fancies that they can procure him not only outward pleasures but inward peace; that they can stand in the place of that satisfaction which results from the performance of our duty. We shall see where this mistake leads him. The delusion which he has indulged in abusing that confidence of woman, which is at the bottom of the holiest and purest affections of our nature—the delusion which he is still indulging in fancying that he can bestow peace, either upon his partner in evil or upon himself, by a money-payment, as the price of outraged feelings—will become habitual. He is entering upon systematic vice: his previous faults may have been those of ill-directed impulses; his possession of wealth converts those impulses into principles.[Pg 142] There can be no mistake as to the propensities of the hero of this series of prints; they are essentially low and degrading. The third plate exhibits him in a state of the most beastly drunkenness, in a night-tavern of London. He has beaten the watchman, and brought off his lantern as a trophy of victory; and he is now surrounded with abandoned women, who are rifling his pockets. It is not for us to describe this scene: Hogarth only could have painted it.
The question for us to ask at this stage of the 'Rake's Progress' is, What has the unhappy rich man obtained by the improper application of his riches? He has cast away the affection of a being who loved him; he has surrendered himself to the indulgence of every desire which his passions and his vanity have prompted; he has sounded the depths of the lowest profligacy, as it were in despair of finding excitement enough in the peculiar vices of his own station. Has he found any happiness? Has he not rather found not only the stunning consciousness of wrong-doing, but positive pain even in that wrong-doing? The nature of this positive pain of evil conduct has been well put by Dr. Chalmers, in the work we have already quoted:—"In counterpart to the sweets and satisfactions of virtue, is the essential and inherent bitterness of all that is morally evil. We repeat, that, with this particular argument, we do not mix up the agonies of remorse. It is the wretchedness of vice in itself, not the wretchedness which we suffer because of its recollected and felt wrongness, that we now speak of. * * * * Who can doubt, for example, the unhappiness of the habitual drunkard? and that, although the ravenous appetite by which he is driven along a stormy career meets every day, almost every hour of the day, with the gratification that is suited to it. The same may be equally affirmed of the voluptuary, or of the depredator, or of the extortioner, or of the liar. Each may succeed in the attainment of his specific object; and we cannot possibly disjoin from the conception of success, the conception of some sort of pleasure; yet in perfect consistency we affirm, with a[Pg 143] sad and heavy burthen of unpleasantness or unhappiness on the whole. He is little conversant with our nature who does not know of many a passion belonging to it, that it may be the instrument of many pleasurable, nay, delicious or exquisite sensations, and yet be a wretched passion still; the domineering tyrant of a bondsman, who at once knows himself to be degraded, and feels himself to be unhappy."[15]
We are arrived at the point of the 'Rake's Progress,' when, having run through a long course of prodigality, the hour of retribution is arriving in the form of pecuniary embarrassment. In this course of prodigality he has greatly injured himself; has he benefited others? Pope, who lived at a time when there were very false notions abroad in the world as to the effects of profuse expenditure upon the condition of society, makes the miser "a backward steward for the poor." He was the "reservoir;" his heir is the "fountain" who is to slake "a country's thirst." The same poet, in his description of "Timon's villa," falls into the same mistake. Here
"All cry out, what sums are thrown away!"
and yet, according to the satirist,
"——hence the poor are cloth'd, the hungry fed,
Health to himself, and to his infants bread,
The labourer bears."
Whatever may be the temporary and local effects when "sums are thrown
away" upon those who live, or appear to live, upon the follies of
others, there can be no doubt that the enduring and general benefits
of judicious expenditure, of what is truly called "profitable
expenditure," are of infinitely greater importance to the community.
The poet felt this himself; but he was blinded by the notion of his
day, that unless the rich were profuse, the poor would starve. He
says, in the same epistle in which he thinks that the "sums thrown
away" afford the labourer bread,—
[Pg 144]
"Bid harbours open, public ways extend,
Bid temples worthier of the god ascend;
Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain;
The mole projected break the roaring main;
Back to his bounds the subject sea command,
And roll obedient rivers through the land."
Such are some of the modes in which riches can be judiciously expended; and whatever is saved from a wanton consumption of wealth goes to increase the capital of the community, and to become the source of those public conveniences which enable all capital to work more profitably, and of those public monuments of the higher feelings of our nature, which elevate the character of individuals and of nations.
The fourth picture of the 'Rake's Progress' represents the commencement of the penal consequences of crime—those consequences which are direct and positive, and which alone are deeply felt by the habitual profligate. In this picture the Rake is represented as arrested for debt. He is proceeding to court on a gala-day—for private depravity amongst men does not debar them from the customary honours of their station—and his chair is stopped by a sheriff's officer. By one of those chances which rather belong to romance than to real life, the young woman whom the hero of the tale had so deeply injured is passing by. She has clung to a virtuous and reputable course of life; she has saved money; and with the generosity that belongs to woman, she at once devotes her earnings to the release of her betrayer. In point of character and composition this, if not one of the most striking of Hogarth's works, is singularly excellent. The surprise of the profligate in being taught this practical lesson of the effects of his imprudence, the earnest simplicity of the female who shows the means of his release, the stern and peremptory mandate of the sheriff's officer—all these are represented most skilfully. Nor are the accessories of the picture less valuable. Hogarth has introduced an episode which forcibly illustrates the great moral which he constantly kept in view—that vice is a leveller of all distinctions. A knot of blackguard[Pg 145] boys are gambling on the pavement: two are earnestly engaged at cards; two others, one of whom is a shoe-black, are at dice; the shoe-black has lost his clothes, but unsated, he offers to stake his only means of industrious existence, his brushes and blacking-pot. The rake himself has gone through precisely the same temptations—and he has not resisted them. The scene of the dirty gamblers takes place before "White's," a celebrated gaming-house of that day: the moral is such as Hogarth only could have hit off.
In the commencement of his career, the Rake spurned the ties of affection, which, if properly strengthened, might have made his life happy, and saved him from misery and degradation. He has rejected the woman that he might have loved; he now plights his faith to one whom he weds for her riches only. In the fifth plate of the series, he stands before the altar, placing the ring on the finger of a deformed and aged lady, who, with folly equal to his guilt, believes that she can find happiness in such an ill-assorted union. In the back part of the scene, the injured young woman, to whom he had given his early vows, is entering the church, to forbid the solemnization of the marriage. The marriage-law of that day probably justified, or appeared to justify, such an interruption. There are several strokes of Hogarth's peculiar humour in this picture; such as the creed destroyed by damp, the commandments cracked, and the poor's box covered over with a spider's web.
The Rake is again master of riches. How does he employ them? He has married to repair his fortunes; satiated with the dissipation that he delivered himself over to, he now rushes to the last and most perilous excitement—the gaming-table—as another substitute for honourable occupation. The picture in which Hogarth represents this—the final vice which leads to the catastrophe—is the sixth of the series. Never were the hateful effects of this demoniacal passion more forcibly delineated. The gambling-house here represented is one that would now be called low. Perhaps in Hogarth's days, fortunes were not lost and won[Pg 146] amidst gilded saloons, where every luxury that can pamper the senses is administered to the devoted victims. The scene presented is certainly not such as is exhibited in the present times, when men of rank do not hesitate to enter a gambling-house in broad day, secure that the thin disguise of a Club may prevent the interruptions of a prying police, and believing, perhaps, that vice looks less hideous when she is surrounded with mirrors that show her at full length. The gambling-house to which Hogarth has taken his hero is a wretched den, where crime and misery are already wedded even in externals. In this place, there is no selection of companions; pickpockets and highwaymen sit side by side with the laced coat of him the world calls "gentleman." There is no ballot for the admission of sharpers with a pedigree, to the exclusion of sharpers without. The Rake is in the centre of the picture; he has staked his all, and has lost it. He is on his knees, imprecating vengeance on his bare head, from which, in his rage, he has stripped his periwig. He has overturned the chair on which he was sitting, and a dog is barking at his exhibition of impotent frenzy. On his right is another maddened victim, stamping and cursing, with clenched fists, ready to do the last bidding of despair. On his left, in a mute reverie of melancholy or mischief-planning, sits a highwayman, who has lost the fruits of his last crime; he is, perhaps, thinking deeply of the gallows, for the boy halloos to him in vain to take the liquor he has ordered. The highwayman is seated before a grated fire-place—a precaution not unnecessary in a place where the fiercest passions are let loose. In spite of such precaution, the room is on fire, and the watchman rushes in to alarm the inmates. With two exceptions, the occupation of the gamesters is so absorbing, that none assist in putting out the flames, or think of escaping from the danger. The usurer is still lending money to a gamester whose substance is not quite exhausted; the winner of the stakes is still sweeping the golden heaps into his pocket; another infuriated loser is determined to murder the man who has ruined him, in spite of the common danger by which they[Pg 147] are surrounded. All this is true to nature; and there is not a character or incident in the picture that may not be studied with advantage.
The transition from the gaming-house to the prison is not a mere straining after effect: one succeeds to the other by the most easy progression. The Rake is here, but how changed! It is a remarkable instance of Hogarth's power of delineating character, that in every shifting scene, with the furrows of years and crime and suffering upon his face, we can trace the identity of the unhappy hero of this story, from the first exhibition of heartless profligacy to the last manifestation of human woe. In prison we see the man prematurely old—surrounded by a complication of wretchedness which has done its work upon him, and made the expression of his face one of the most tragically striking in all Hogarth. "Here," says Mr. Lamb, "all is easy, natural, undistorted; but withal what a mass of woe is here accumulated!—the long history of a misspent life is compressed into the countenance as plainly as the series of plates before had told it. Here is no attempt at Gorgonian looks which are to freeze the beholder, no grinning at the antique bed-posts,[16] no face-making, or consciousness of the presence of spectators in or out of the picture; but grief kept to a man's self, a face retiring from notice with the shame which great anguish sometimes brings with it,—a final leave taken of hope,—the coming on of vacancy and stupefaction,—a beginning alienation of mind looking like tranquillity." Certainly this masterly description is no exaggeration of the wonderful merits of this figure. The complexity of misery is indeed frightful. The profligate sits in the beggarly common-room of a London prison. A century has made a material difference both in the comforts and discipline of these places;—but there is misery enough and vice enough within the walls of a prison for debt, to make one wish that the time was past when the unfortunate should be thus[Pg 148] exposed to the contamination of the wicked, and both should be shut out from the power of making an effort to repair the injury they have caused to their creditors. In this wretched den there are, his wife assailing him with threats and reproaches, and the female whom he had betrayed, accompanied by her child, fainting at the sight of his accumulated misery. He had made an effort to exercise the talents which he in some degree possessed, by writing for the stage—the first resource of the sanguine author. The play is just returned from the manager, who has rejected it. The under-turnkey is pressing him for his fees; the pot-boy is demanding payment for the beer which he has called for without the means of purchasing it. In such a moment his brain becomes a chaos—the prison leads to the mad-house. To each print of this series, Hogarth has affixed some lines of his own composition. They are not of the highest order, for it is seldom given to one man to excel in two such different walks; but the verses are curious, and a specimen (the one given with the plate of the 'Prison-scene') will not displease our readers:—
"Happy the man whose constant thought
(Tho' in the school of hardship taught)
Can send remembrance back to fetch
Treasures from life's earliest stretch;
Who, self-approving, can review
Scenes of past virtues that shine through
The gloom of age, and cast a ray
To gild the evening of his day.
Not so the guilty wretch confin'd;
No pleasures meet his roving mind,
No blessings fetch'd from early youth,
But broken Faith, and wretched truth,
Talents idle and unus'd,
And every gift of heaven abus'd;
In seas of sad reflection lost,
From horrors still to horrors tost,
Reason, the vessel leaves to steer,
And gives the helm to mad Despair."
The last print of this series is one of the most extraordinary[Pg 149] productions of Hogarth's pencil. It is thus described by Mr. Lamb:—"The concluding scene in the 'Rake's Progress' is perhaps superior to the last scenes of 'Timon.' If we seek for something of kindred excellence in poetry, it must be in the scenes of Lear's beginning madness, where the King and the Fool and the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire to produce such a medley of mirth, checked by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth; where the society of those 'strange bed-fellows' which misfortune have brought Lear acquainted with, so finely sets forth the destitute state of the monarch, while the lunatic bans of the one, and the disjointed sayings, and wild but pregnant allusions of the other, so wonderfully sympathize with that confusion, which they seem to assist in the production of, in the senses of that 'child-changed father.'
"In the scene in Bedlam, which terminates the 'Rake's Progress,' we find the same assortment of the ludicrous with the terrible. Here is desperate madness, the overturning of originally strong-thinking faculties, at which we shudder, as we contemplate the duration and pressure of affliction which it must have asked to destroy such a building; and here is the gradual hurtless lapse into idiocy of faculties, which at their best of times never having been strong, we look upon the consummation of their decay with no more of pity than is consistent with a smile. The mad tailor, the poor driveller that has gone out of his wits (and truly he appears to have had no great journey to go to get past their confines) for the love of charming Betty Careless—these half-laughable, scarce-pitiable objects take off from the horror which the principal figure would of itself raise, at the same time that they assist the feeling of the scene by contributing to the general notion of its subject:—
Madness, thou chaos of the brain,
What art, that pleasure giv'st, and pain?
Tyranny of Fancy's reign!
Mechanic Fancy, that can build
Vast labyrinths and mazes wild,
[Pg 150]With rule disjointed, shapeless measure,
Fill'd with horror, filled with pleasure,
Shapes of horror, that would even
Cast doubts of mercy upon heaven.
Shapes of pleasure, that, but seen,
Would split the shaking sides of spleen.[17]
Is it carrying the spirit of comparison to excess, to remark, that in the poor kneeling, weeping female, who accompanies her seducer in his sad decay, there is something analogous to Kent, or Caius, as he delights rather to be called, in 'Lear'—the noblest pattern of virtue which even Shakspeare has conceived—who follows his royal master in banishment, that had pronounced his banishment, and, forgetful at once of his wrongs and dignities, taking on himself the disguise of a menial, retains his fidelity to the figure, his loyalty to the carcase, the shadow, the shell, and empty husk of Lear?"
The Election prints are four in number:—1, The Feast; 2, The Canvass; 3, The Polling; 4, The Chairing. They were published separately: the first appearing in 1755, and the last in 1758. The "treating," which was in Hogarth's time so extensively employed for the debasement of electors, has been greatly curtailed by statute and by custom. But the evil practice still exists; and men who are about to discharge a duty which requires a sound exercise of the judgment are, in some places, kept in a state of riotous excess, which utterly disqualifies them for making a wise and honest choice of a representative. We are improved, no doubt, since Hogarth's time; and there are many amongst us who apply themselves to the discharge of the elective trust with the high spirit and conscientious prudence which show their sense of the obligation by which they are bound to their country to make a fit choice of one who is to protect the dearest interests of the community. But there are others, we apprehend, who would still sell "their birthright for a mess of potage." May they learn better.[Pg 151] 'The Election Feast' is, in many respects, one of the most wonderful of Hogarth's performances. The inexhaustible variety of character, and the distinctness with which the whole scene is brought out by the action and expression of the several groups and individuals, are apparent to the most superficial observation. To a person acquainted with the principles of art, the skill with which the scene is managed appears as perfect in its kind as the composition of any of the great pictures of the historical painters: let us endeavour to give a key to this remarkable work.
The candidate is at the top of the table, on the left of the picture. An old woman, such as the "fat woman of Brentford," in Shakspeare's 'Merry Wives,' is oppressing him with her caresses. An elector is knocking their heads together, in the spirit of impudent familiarity which election licence engenders. In the fore-ground, near the candidate, is a dealer in haberdashery, who has brought his ribands and gloves to bribe the electors' wives; he is paid by a promissory note, which he does not appear much to relish. The man in the wig, on the left of the candidate, is a person of some rank, who is writhing under the coarse jokes of the fellows at his side. The gluttonous clergyman next this group, who is suffering from the heated room and the chafing-dish, near him, over which he is warming his venison, is a character which of course is extinct. The practical jesters who are amusing themselves and their companions—the one by comparing chins with the fiddler, the other by making up the back of his hand to represent his neighbour's rueful face—belong to every age. The alderman at the bottom of the table in a fit of apoplexy—the wife threatening her husband with domestic vengeance if he refuses the tempting bribe, whose temptation is to be found in the rage of his little boy—the attorney knocked off his chair by a brickbat which has come through the window—and the man on the floor having gin poured upon his broken head—are fair examples of election occurrences, wherever men have not learnt to forego greediness, venality, and mob violence.[Pg 152] These things will perhaps always exist where there is popular ignorance. The flags of the rival candidates in Hogarth's print show the materials with which prejudice and passion work. On one is written "Give us our eleven days;"—in allusion to the alteration of style, which was an unpopular measure;—on another, carried by the mob without, appears "No Jews!"
One of the commentators on Hogarth has declared that he prefers the principal group of the canvass—that of the freeholder between the agents of the rival candidates—to the celebrated picture, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Garrick between tragedy and comedy. The sturdy yeoman is plied on each side by a partisan of either of the factions who are canvassing in a country town: each offers him a ticket for a dinner, and each pours money into his "itching palm." It is perfectly clear from the leer of his eye which candidate will have him;—he will sell himself to the highest bidder. This, to our minds, is tragedy as well as comedy;—the beginning is fun, the end misery and shame. When a man to whom a public trust is committed violates the conditions of that trust, and sells his conscience, it is evident that his morality must be fearfully low, and that he is a victim of the most debasing selfishness. We fear that such things still exist; although the progress of the people in the knowledge of their real interest and duties may have greatly abated the influence of direct corruption. If it were not so, political power vested in the mass of the community would be a curse instead of a blessing.
The other parts of this picture are in Hogarth's happiest manner. The smirking canvasser purchasing ribands and gewgaws for the ladies in the balcony of the inn, that he may win votes through their favourable report;—the cobbler and the barber disputing upon politics, and tracing out plans of battles and sieges over their pipe and pot—the landlady counting her gains;—the jolly voters feeding in right earnest at the inn-window;—the mob attacking the inn of the obnoxious candidate, and the fellow sawing down the sign upon which he is astride,[Pg 153] unconscious that he shall fall with it,—these are strokes of humour and delineation of character which can never be obsolete.
The feasting and the canvassing were preliminary to the actual conflict to which we next come. Our election scenes, which should have afforded to foreigners an example of popular rights exercised with that decency and sobriety which becomes England—the parent of free institutions—have often been such as to inspire them only with wonder and disgust. The circumstances attending an actual election have been greatly improved by recent legislative enactments. The limitation of the time of polling, and the multiplication of convenient places for receiving votes—as well as the previous registry—have taken away many of the scenes of riot and violence by which a poll was formerly disgraced. But the influence which perverts the suffrage still remains; corruption still often wins more than honesty.
This picture tells its own story with the usual effect of Hogarth's paintings. The parts of the booth appropriated to the rival candidates are denoted by their respective party colours. The persons elevated on chairs in each compartment would seem to be the chairmen of each candidate's committee, present at the booth to watch the proceedings. He who is the most remote does not appear to be satisfied with the state of the poll, as his gesture betrays uneasiness or impatience. The other seems to be absorbed in contemplation, and does not notice the person on his right hand, who appears to be sketching his portrait. The uneasiness of the chairman is not the only circumstance that signifies the persons in the outer portion of the booth to be the losing party. They are hard driven for votes. The man who has lost the use of his limbs, and, as appears from his vacant stare, of his intellect also, is brought to the poll, and the suggestions or solicitations of the polling-clerk before him, who tenders the Testament, are assisted by a whisperer behind. This whisperer has manacles on his legs, and a paper appears in his pocket, inscribed as 'The Sixth Letter to the People of England,'—circumstances[Pg 154] which denote him as Dr. Shebbeare, who was pilloried and imprisoned two years for a libel against the king. Behind him is a freeholder who has just been brought to the poll from a sick or dying bed. He has the party favours in his nightcap; and it may be remarked, perhaps, as one of those minute touches in which Hogarth excels, that the features of one of this poor man's supporters are turned so as to furnish considerable resemblance to a death's head. How unhappy it is that such contests should ever be associated with circumstances which must divest even a victory of that true distinction which it ought to confer!
There is still a further circumstance to denote the extremities to which one of the parties seems driven. Their attending lawyer appears disputing with the lawyer of the other party the validity of a vote which is proffered to their clerk. The voter is a pensioner who has lost both his arms and one leg in the wars. He takes hold of the book with his iron-hook hand, and the point disputed between the rival barristers seems to be, whether an oath thus taken, without a real hand to hold the book, can be valid. This is certainly a severe satire on the legal quibbles by which gnats are so often strained at, while camels are swallowed without the least difficulty. The circumstance seems to the clerk, who holds the book while the voter is taking the oath, so irresistibly comic, that he is constrained to lay his hand to his mouth to check his laughter. The whole scene is highly characteristic of the indifference with which the most solemn of human sanctions comes to be regarded when it has grown too familiar by excessive use. We rejoice greatly at the measures which have been lately taken, and are still in progress, for the purpose of doing away with unnecessary public oaths.
Among the subordinate circumstances of the scene we should not omit to notice the touch at the squibs which are so often circulated by the adverse parties at a contested election. We would hope that these, at least, have become more decent than they were in Hogarth's days: but even of this we do not feel quite certain. The character[Pg 155] of that which the old ballad-woman is circulating is expressed by the figure which it exhibits of a man hanging from a gallows. A party of men in the booth are reading a copy of this paper with much apparent glee.
And what is the moral of all this? Hogarth himself tells us; and, for the sake of telling it with what he considered more of point and effect, he has introduced an allegory—a licence which has the countenance of great masters, but to which our artist never in any other instance resorted. In doing so here, he doubtless fell into a mistake of judgment; but, as he has dealt with it, he has made it point most expressively the moral he intended to convey. The coach of Britannia is broken down, while the servants play at cards on the coach-box; and amidst the excitement and the din of party contests no one perceives her danger or hears her cries.
The fourth and last picture of the 'Election' we may consider to have been in some measure forced upon Hogarth by his subject, which required this as the completion of the story which he had undertaken to relate. This possibly accounts for the circumstance that the present is perhaps the least interesting picture of the series. The artist has, however, made the most of his subject, and brought into very efficient combination the various circumstances which characterize (we dare not yet use the past tense) the variously-modified excitements of a popular triumph. The poll having closed, the members, according to a custom much better "honoured in the breach than the observance," are placed in fine chairs, and paraded through the town on the shoulders of men. This custom, so unutterably ridiculous in itself, involves some peril to the triumphant candidate, particularly when, as in the present instance, he happens to be corpulent in person. Perhaps the time has not yet come for popular feeling to be satisfied without this ceremony: but, if there must be a parade, we hope the practice, which now begins to prevail in large towns, of displaying the member in an open chariot, will ere long be universally substituted for the literal "chairing."
The scene represents the chairing of both the members.[Pg 156] Only one of them is actually present, but the near approach of the other is indicated, in Hogarth's way, by his shadow on the wall of the court-house. The uproarious character of the proceedings is perhaps partly accounted for by the apparent fact that members of opposite principles have been elected. The confusion in the fore-ground is, however, to be distinguished from that in the back-ground. The latter seems merely a party uproar, whilst the former is the result of accident. The uproar appears in its progress to have alarmed a sow and her litter, which therefore set off at the top of their speed, effecting a very serious derangement of the procession in their progress. They have just overturned one old woman, and are about to terminate their career in the stream over which the first part of the procession is at the moment passing, or rather where it is detained by the obstinacy of an ass, which resists the efforts of its rider to turn it out of the road, and stands stock still. A dancing bear, with a monkey chaired on his shoulders, avails himself of this desirable opportunity of exploring the contents of the garbage buckets carried by the ass. The bear-leader, a sailor with a wooden leg, was preparing to withdraw his animal from the road, when he was interrupted by the necessity of defending himself against a thresher, who has pursued the pigs from the farm whence they started, and who is apparently angry with the sailor on account of the obstruction which his bear has occasioned on the bridge, in consequence of which the pigs run into the water. The thresher's flail, however, inflicts injury where not intended; the swing of the implement throws it so back as to strike one of the bearers of the chair on the temple, in consequence of which the member is on the point of being overthrown, unless we suppose the man who endeavours to uphold the chair to have succeeded in his object. This accident affects the nerves of the young lady who is looking over the church-wall at the procession, and she is represented fainting amidst the solicitude of her attendants. It was possibly intended by Hogarth to magnify the absurdity and alarm of the[Pg 157] member's momentary position by bringing into the scene the lady whose feelings were the most tenderly connected with his triumph and safety. This group of females is contrasted not only with the general scene, but with the chimney-sweeps close by, who appear highly to enjoy the uproar, and who unintentionally moralize mischief by fixing a pair of spectacles over the eye-holes of the death's head.
The series began with feasting in all the fulness of detail; the feasting and drunkenness with which the affair is to end, are only implied in the present picture. One barrel of beer has already been consumed by the rabble, one of whom prostrates himself to suck up the dregs, while the men beyond him are producing a fresh supply. In the large and handsome house on the same side of the picture—which belongs to a lawyer, as appears from the clerk at his desk in the upper story—preparations are making for more refined excess. A dinner of many covers is carried into the house for the entertainment of the gentry, who seem to have assembled there to celebrate the triumph of their favourite candidate. Among the persons assembled at the window, the one distinguished by his ribbon is the Duke of Newcastle, a celebrated nobleman of Hogarth's day, who was accustomed to interest himself personally in elections to an extent which would not now be considered seemly.
We should perhaps direct attention to the punning motto on the church-dial, "We must"—the sentence is supposed to be completed by the name of the dial,—"die all." A story is told of a gentleman who, not perceiving the point, such as it is, of the motto "We must," in its peculiar application to a dial, transferred it to a clock fixed on the front of his house.
The fray in the background seems to have been attended with some bloodshed; for the soldier who has retired from it, and is putting on his shirt at the right-hand corner of the picture, has his head bandaged, and a broken sword lies near him. Among the figures in the background, nearly undistinguishable from distance,[Pg 158] the woman beating—probably driving home—her husband, the butcher with his marrow-bone and cleaver, and the motto "Pro patria" in his cap, and the wounded man near him, are the most remarkable. The two latter characters we noticed for the sake of introducing Hogarth's own ironical remarks in reference to them, with which we may not unsuitably conclude this article:—
"These two patriots, who, let what party will prevail, can be no gainers, yet spend their time, which is their fortune, for what they suppose right, and for a glass of gin lose their blood, and sometimes their lives, in support of the cause, are, as far as I can see, entitled to an equal portion of fame with many of the emblazoned heroes of ancient Rome. But such is the effect of prejudice, that though the picture of an ancient wrestler is admired as a grand character, we necessarily annex an idea of vulgarity to the portrait of a modern boxer. An old blacksmith in his tattered garb is a coarse and low being:—strip him naked, tie his leathern apron round his loins,—chisel out his figure in freestone or marble, precisely as it appears,—he becomes elevated, and may pass for a philosopher or a deity."
As these remarks were intended to be satirical, we must make some allowance for their not being perfectly just.
We have said that we must restrict ourselves in our remarks to a portion of the works of Hogarth only. We have noticed all his series except the Harlot's Progress. As clever and as moral as the preceding, it yet, from the nature of the subject, leads the thoughts into a path it is more pleasant to avoid, and represents scenes of which "ignorance is bliss." Of his very numerous single prints, we can only notice two or three. 'The Cockpit' is a scene in which men of all ranks are represented as engaged in one brutalizing species of vice—amusement we will not call it. Here are a peer and a pickpocket, a French marquis and a chimney-sweep, a doctor and a horse-jockey, all busily engaged in the cruel excitement of a cock-match. They are one and all equally ignorant,[Pg 159] thoughtless, and depraved, whether they wear bagwigs or smock-frocks, or exhibit their cupidity in stealing a bank-note, or offering a bet. It is possible that the progress of education may have driven those who call themselves gentlemen from such open exhibitions of profligacy; but the spirit that formerly carried them to the dirty cockpit still allures them to the gorgeous saloon. The sepulchre is only whitened. But at the time when Hogarth painted, men of rank were to be constantly seen in such disgraceful society. The figure in the centre of the piece is a portrait of a nobleman of Hogarth's day, who, although he had the misfortune to be totally blind, had the greater misfortune to have his moral sense so dim as to place his chief gratification in excitements of this grovelling nature. On the left of the picture is an old man, a cripple with his crutch, deaf almost beyond the power of comprehension, for his features appear to give no signal of understanding the words of the man who is bawling to him through his ear-trumpet. Nothing can be finer or truer than the satire conveyed in the exhibition of these examples of human infirmity. Knowledge is shut out in these men from two of her chief inlets,—and yet they cultivate not that calm reflection which so peculiarly belongs to their condition, but cling to base excitements, in the spirit of which they are even precluded from completely participating. The group around the blind peer is arranged very skilfully; and the faces of the several characters all exhibit that deep meaning for which Hogarth is so remarkable. Five of the men about the unfortunate dupe are clamorous for him to bet with them. The vacant expression of his countenance, and the helplessness of his whole attitude, bewildered as he is by so many assailants, are expressed with surprising truth. At the moment of his embarrassment the fellow next the pit on his left hand is purloining a note. The cautious villainy expressed in this man's face is unrivalled. The post-boy, just above the thief, appears calling the blind man's attention to the pilfering that is going forward—but he is[Pg 160] utterly insensible to everything but the rage for betting which has taken possession of him.
The group on the right of the picture is as well defined in its principal action as that of the centre. In his eagerness to see the match, a man has fallen forward against the edge of the pit. With the exception of the round-faced person, whom he has crushed, nobody is moved by the uproar. The peer in his star and spectacle is as much absorbed by the battle as if he had not a particle of dignity to be ruffled by all this shouldering and elbowing;—the despair of the man in the right corner, and the deep abstraction of the other gamester, next the gentleman who has lost his periwig, are finely marked. In the third group on the left nothing can be more characteristic of such scenes than the eagerness of the countryman who stakes his crown,—the business-like gravity of the old fellow with a cock in a bag,—and the sedateness of his neighbour who is registering the wagers. The people in the lower tier are all actively engaged in making bets or quarrelling. The two men reaching to join the butt ends of their whips indicate, by this act, that they have closed a bet.
The other parts of the picture will be understood without any particular description. We cannot, however, omit to point out the extraordinary skill with which Hogarth in this, as in other of his performances, contrived to indicate some accessary of the scene by one of the minute touches which genius only can conceive. The shadow on the pit is that of a man. These scenes take place by lamp-light; and reflected from the lamp is the shadow of a gambler, who has been suspended from the ceiling in a basket, for the crime of not making good his stakes. Degraded as he is, the passion clings to him even in his punishment; he is offering his watch as another stake.
Of the celebrated 'March to Finchley,' the general subject is the march of the Foot Guards to their place of rendezvous on Finchley Common, in their way to Scotland against the rebels in the year 1745.[Pg 161] As the numerous circumstances which this picture embraces do not tell on any one point, it would be difficult to say anything in the way of illustration beyond what the picture itself relates, did we not possess the advantage of a very complete explanation by a writer who was a contemporary and friend of the artist. This explanation was for a long time attributed to Bonnel Thornton; but Mr. Samuel Ireland in his 'Graphic Illustrations of Hogarth,' states that the daughter of Saunders Welch, Esq., a magistrate of Westminster, informed him that the article was written by her father, an old and much-esteemed friend of the artist, whose portrait in oil of Mr. Welch is still extant, and is engraved in Ireland's work. The lady further informed him that this critique or explanation being published in the periodical paper called 'The Student,' occasioned some difference of opinion between her father and Hogarth. The critique does not, however, appear to have given any serious offence to the painter, notwithstanding the reported irascibility of his temper; for he said,—"I generally thought with the author of this paper, and when I differed from him I have found reason to take shame to myself."—And now to the explanation, in which we do not purpose implicitly to follow Mr. Welch, but shall, at our discretion, occasionally avail ourselves of other explanations, particularly of one which appeared in the 'Old Woman's Magazine,' and which Mr. John Ireland has copied, as well as the other, into his 'Hogarth Illustrated.'
The scene of the representation is laid at Tottenham Court Turnpike, the King's Head, Adam and Eve, and the Turnpike-house, being in full view; beyond which appear parties of guards, with baggage, &c., marching towards Highgate, with a distant prospect of the open country. The picture, considered as a whole, affords a view of a military march, and the disorders and humours connected with it.
Near the centre of the picture the painter has placed his principal figure, which is that of a handsome young grenadier, who seems distracted by the rival claims of[Pg 162] the women on his right hand and on his left. The one to his right appears to be a young woman who has become the victim of his passions, and by them has perhaps been reduced to her present condition of a ballad-singer. This woman, who holds his right arm, and regards him with mingled affection and distress, is strongly contrasted with the other, who appears to have equal claims upon him, and whose countenance expresses jealousy and rage at finding him thus situated, while her uplifted arm threatens him with the weight of her anger. The contrast between the two women is complete throughout; it seems to be even intimated, in Hogarth's own ingeniously indirect way, that they are of opposite political parties; all the wares in the ballad-woman's basket—such as the song of 'God save the King,' and a portrait, of the Duke of Cumberland—being of a loyal description; while the other, who appears to be a news-hawker, is furnished with a supply of exclusively Jacobite journals, the titles of which are apparent in the original painting. The cross on the cloak of the latter may also be intended to denote a difference of religion. The outrageous character of the proceedings of this woman has attracted the notice of the serjeant behind the group, and he seems prepared to interpose with no very gentle exercise of the authority with which he is invested. The hard-featured appearance of this man is in good contrast with the principal figure.
Near the left corner of the picture is another leave-taking scene between a drummer and his wife and child. The grief of the two latter is of so clamorous a description, that the man, to put an end to the scene, recurs to his drum, and is aided by the "ear-piercing fife" of the boy near him, the sweetness of whose figure affords an interesting contrast to the ruggedness of the objects around him. This figure is the portrait of a clever lad, to whom the Duke of Cumberland gave a commission at a subsequent period. Between this and the principal group appears a Frenchman, who is communicating to another person the contents of a letter which he holds in his hand. The person to whom he speaks appears to be[Pg 163] an old Highlander in disguise; he seems to be much interested in the information of the Frenchman, who is understood to state that a large French force had landed to assist the Pretender.
Those of our readers who have opportunities of seeing the original picture will observe that the innocent smile of the child which, being carried on its mother's back, has its face brought on a level with that of the Highlander, affords a beautiful and interesting contrast to the grim joy which the countenance of the latter exhibits.
The background of this portion of the picture displays the various brutal circumstances of a pugilistic combat. The combatants are encouraged by a well-dressed blackguard, while an aged female, moved by womanly compassion, endeavours to press forward to separate them, but is intercepted and held back by a fellow in the crowd, who does not desire the fray to be interrupted. Somewhat elevated above the rest of the mob, appears an excited little man, who by his clenched fists and animated appearance seems to imagine himself an actual party in the combat. This figure, which is understood to be the portrait of a cobbler of the real or nick name of Jocky James, is contrasted with the heavy figure of the man behind him. The whole of this scene of confusion has a charming contrast in the decent young woman who is raised above it on the baggage-cart, and is quietly suckling her child. A circumstance of repose of another kind is exhibited in the two old women who are smoking their pipes, and engaged in earnest confabulation upon the very summit of the baggage. It is highly instructive and interesting in this way to trace out the judiciously-introduced circumstances of contrast which most of the pictures of Hogarth exhibit.
There is a marked distinction between the character and tone of the circumstances in the separate portions of the picture, if we consider it as divided into two portions by the figures of the central group. All the characters represented in the portion which has hitherto engaged our attention are more or less seriously occupied,[Pg 164] while, on the contrary, the opposite portion exhibits little besides fun, frolic, and mischief.
Immediately to the left of the central group, an officer is offering a rude salute to a milkmaid, whose resistance endangers the safety of his ruffles. An arch-looking rogue of a soldier, perceiving the maid's attention to be thus engaged, avails himself of the opportunity to fill his hat from her milk-pail, while a young chimney-sweep hastens forward, and holds forth his sooty cap, soliciting the soldier to fill it when his own turn has been served. Another soldier points out the fun of this scene to a pieman; and while the simple fellow regards it with the utmost glee, the knavish soldier adroitly abstracts the pies from his board. All these prominent figures are connected in one incident by their mutual attention to and dependence on one another. Critics expatiate with warm and deserved praise on the richly-comic figure of the pieman, which is probably not exceeded by anything of the kind in any of Hogarth's works. It is a portrait, as is also the chimney-sweep; who, together with the fifer-boy, were hired by Hogarth to sit to him for half-a-crown a-piece.
The next principal group in the foreground is an illustration of gin-drinking. A soldier, with his dress in great disorder, has sunk upon the ground, overcome by the efficacy of that potent poison. Yet he calls for more; and two persons respond to the call. One, a mirthful comrade, endeavours to force him to drink water from his canteen; but from this the drunkard turns away with disgust, and holds out his hand for the dram which the female sutler readily fills out for him. But another arm is also held out for it. The emaciated child, which this woman carries on her back, stretches forth its little grasping hand, with earnest entreaty, for a taste of that burning fluid which it has been already taught to relish. This is painful, because it is true.
We may direct the attention of the reader to the chickens in front of this group. Welch informs us[Pg 165] that they had been pointed out as an exquisite absurdity by a contemporary, who was a professed connoisseur in painting. He had said that nothing could be more ridiculous than to introduce chickens so near such a crowd; and what increased the absurdity was, that the birds were not, as might naturally be expected, endeavouring to escape from the crowd, but were actually running towards what it is their nature to shun. Welch points, with well-authorized triumph, to a truly Hogarthian circumstance, which had escaped the notice of this acute critic. The chickens are seeking the parent-hen, the presence of which, in the pouch of the soldier who offers water to the drunken man, is indicated to the spectator by the appearance of one of the wings.
The corner of the picture, under the sign-post of the King's Head, is occupied by an honest tar on horseback, whose exuberant loyalty finds vent in the established maritime method. The loyalty of this man is understood to be contrasted with that of the fellow before him, with the countenance of a confirmed drunkard, who, with his gun on his shoulder and his bayonet in his hand, seems to threaten deadly measures against the enemy in the approaching conflict. The reader may, however, accept the alternative of another explanation, which supposes this man to be guarding from interruption the proceedings of his neighbour, who is filling his canteen through a hole which he has bored in a barrel of strong beer, with which a man is endeavouring to make his way through the crowd.
Among the figures in the background in this part of the picture, those which principally attract our attention are, the stately young officer, behind the last-mentioned group; the basket-woman; and the woman who defends herself from the rudeness of one fellow, while another abstracts some of the linen which she was engaged in taking down from the line on which it hung to dry.
The circumstances attending the publication of the engraving and the disposal of the picture were somewhat curious, and are best explained in the following notices,[Pg 166] which appeared in 1750, in the 'General Advertiser.' The first advertisement appeared in April:—
"Mr. Hogarth is publishing by subscription a print representing the march to Finchley in the year 1746, engraved on a copper plate, twenty-two inches by seventeen; the price 7s. 6d. Subscriptions are taken at the Golden Head in Leicester Fields, till the 30th of this instant, and not longer, to the end that the engraving may not be retarded. Note:—each print will be half-a-guinea after the subscription is over. In the subscription-book are the particulars of a proposal, whereby each subscriber of three shillings, over and above the said seven shillings and sixpence for the print, will, in consideration thereof, be entitled to a chance of having the original picture, which will be delivered to the winning subscriber as soon as the engraving is finished."
On the first of the next month the following appeared in the same journal:—
"Yesterday, Mr. Hogarth's subscription was closed; 1843 chances being subscribed for, Mr. Hogarth gave the remaining 167 chances to the Foundling Hospital. At two o'clock, the box was opened, and the fortunate chance was 1941, which belongs to the said hospital; and the same night Mr. Hogarth delivered the picture to the governors." Mr. John Nichols states, that he was informed by Mr. Nathaniel Thomas (who was many years editor of the 'St. James's Chronicle') that the general report at the time was, that the fortunate number belonged to a lady, who made a present of the picture to the hospital. It was deemed by many, at the time, an improper present. Hogarth himself, speaking of this picture, observes, "It was disposed of by lottery (the only way a living painter has any chance of being paid for his time) for 300l." * * "By the like means," he adds, "most of my former pictures were sold."
Soon after the lottery, Hogarth waited upon the treasurer to the Foundling Hospital, and informed him that the trustees were at liberty to dispose of the painting by auction. Scarcely, however, was the message delivered,[Pg 167] before he changed his mind, and never afterwards would consent to the measure he had originally proposed. The Duke of Ancaster offered the hospital 300l. for the picture; and Mr. John Ireland understood that a much larger sum was afterwards offered for it by another gentleman.
It is rather remarkable that this representation of purely English manners and humours should be dedicated to the King of Prussia. The cause of this deserves to be explained. Before publication, the plate was inscribed to George II., and the picture was taken to St. James's for his majesty's inspection. The king, who was a zealous soldier, but one of the most incompetent men on earth to enjoy a work of humour, or appreciate a work of art, was apparently prepared, from the title of the work, to expect a serious historical performance in honour of his favourite guards, who had marched so readily against the rebels. We may therefore imagine his amazement when the actual piece was placed before him. He was highly indignant that a painter should dare to satirize his gallant soldiers—for thus he viewed the matter—and sent back the picture with disgust. Some accounts state, however, though others are silent on that point, that the king sent the painter a guinea! Whatever be the particular facts, it is certain that Hogarth was so much mortified by the reception which his great work received from the king, that he altered the dedication, and inscribed it to the King of Prussia, as an encourager of the arts.
As a specimen of personal satire we may take The Distressed Poet. The principal figure in this work is understood to be a portrait of Lewis Theobald, who is best known as one of the editors of Shakspeare. Of this author the world has probably formed too unfavourable an opinion, in consequence of the ridicule which surrounds his name in Pope's 'Dunciad.' His edition of Shakspeare is by no means a contemptible performance, although his poems and plays are forgotten.
The print itself is an admirable composition; and the instruction which it contains lies deeper than the merely ludicrous effect at which it might be supposed the[Pg 168] artist had aimed. The poet is the representative of a class that the world has been always too much inclined to treat with cold contempt or more insolent pity. The poor and unknown man of letters, surrounded with all the discomforts that belong to an ill-conditioned domestic life,—and yet, in the midst of filth and wretchedness, surrendering himself to day-dreams of wealth and greatness,—is a being that most people are inclined to sneer at. But let the same author work himself into reputation and comparative prosperity, and the same people agree to idolize and flatter him—to make fêtes to exhibit him—to give dinners to hear him talk—to patronize as if they were the patronized. All this proceeds from mistakes on both sides. The author sees the public through a false medium, and the public have been pampered into an equally false estimate of the literary character.
The apparently wretched, but perhaps not totally unhappy being that Hogarth has delineated, is occupied in the composition of 'Riches, a Poem.' His ideas do not appear to flow with much facility; and his similes and metaphors, and rhymes, are to be sought in 'Bysshe's Art of Poetry,' which lies on his table. He sits half-clothed in his morning-gown, while his wife mends his one nether-garment, and his one shirt and ruffles are drying at the fire. His dress-sword is kicked about the floor, and the cat suckles her kittens on the coat which is to be paraded in the evening at the coffee-house or the theatre. His infant is vainly screaming in bed for a mother's help:—the poor woman is engaged in the not very feminine occupation of repairing her husband's outdoor habiliments, and in helplessly listening, with her "mild, patient face and gesture," to the remonstrances of the saucy milk-woman, who exhibits a tally, which nothing but the most hopeless poverty would have allowed to accumulate. The poet is insensible to the degradation which his gentle wife must endure; and he resigns himself to his filthy garret, and to the inconvenience and disorder of his whole household arrangements, to compose 'Riches, a Poem,'—or study 'A View of the Gold[Pg 169] Mines of Peru.' When his miseries arrive at their height,—when the milk-woman will trust not another pennyworth, and the baker talks of applying to the 'Court of Requests,'—he will resort to the 'Grub Street Journal,' a copy of which lies on the floor, for his means of existence. This is the last degradation,—equivalent to writing, at the present day, dishonest reviews,—attacking individual character—or garbling and misrepresenting private documents, because they are private.
And what is to prevent a man of letters from falling into the same pitiable condition as Hogarth's 'Distressed Poet?' First, a careful examination of his own qualifications before he adventures upon the perilous sea of literature, as the business of his life;—and, secondly, a just appreciation of the objects to which this dedication of his faculties and acquirements may be applied with real advantage to himself and to mankind.
The curious picture of 'The Gate of Calais' had its origin in a personal adventure, an account of which is necessary to its proper elucidation. The mind of the artist entertained a large measure of some of those partialities and prejudices which Englishmen who have not travelled, or had opportunities of enlarged observation, are apt to glory in as virtues. Among these is that blind partiality to everything English, and that disposition to depreciate and scorn everything that is not English, and above all everything that is French, which was very generally entertained up to a comparatively recent period, and which still lingers among the ignorant classes of society, or those whose minds still feed upon the garbage of dead or dying prejudices. It is one of the good signs of the times that the national prejudices which once appealed in open day, and were gloried in, have now retired to holes and corners and solitary places. Those of our readers who have attained to manhood will recollect the time when the windows of print-shops swarmed with prints that bodied forth the hatred and contempt of John Bull towards other nations, and particularly towards his nearest neighbours—the French. But now it will occasion a somewhat arduous[Pg 170] search among the London shops to find a single print or caricature of this description.
These things were doubtless in a great degree occasioned by our almost continual wars with the French, as well as by the measures taken to kindle or keep alive the national dislikes. Admitting this, it seems to us one of the most cogent arguments for peace, that war thus tends to sustain the mind in a diseased state, to distort the feelings, to corrupt the judgment, and to obscure the understanding. The French are a people who have been greatly changed since the time of Hogarth, and, with full allowance for the exaggeration permitted to a caricaturist, much of that view of the French which this engraving indicates does not now in any way apply to them.
If Hogarth in his conduct, as well as in the picture before us, exhibited strong national antipathies, we can only, in the way of excuse, remind our readers that such feelings were at that time common; and that it would have been considered almost un-English to have been without them. It was, besides, immediately after the conclusion of a sanguinary war with France, and before time had been allowed for the heated feelings excited by that contest to subside.
On the conclusion of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1747, Hogarth went over to France with the full determination, as it appears, to be displeased at everything he saw out of Old England. It must be admitted that France did at that time present much that was calculated to excite the ridicule of a satirist and the regret of a philanthropist. Mr. John Ireland remarks,—"For a meagre powdered figure, hung with tatters, torn à-la-mode de Paris, to affect the airs of a coxcomb and the importance of a sovereign, is ridiculous enough; but if it makes a man happy, why should he be laughed at? It must blunt the edge of ridicule to see natural hilarity defy depression; and a whole nation laugh, sing, and dance under burdens that would nearly break the firm-knit sinews of a Briton. Such was the picture of France at that period; but it was a picture which our English satirist could not contemplate with common patience."[Pg 171] Mr. Steevens has given the following account of Hogarth's line of conduct in France, as related by an eminent English engraver who was abroad at the time. Hayman, and Cheere the statuary, were of the same party.
"While Hogarth was in France, wherever he went, he was sure to be dissatisfied with all he saw. If an elegant circumstance, either in furniture or the ornaments of a room, was pointed out as deserving approbation, his narrow and constant reply was, 'What then? but it is French! Their houses are all gilt or befouled!' In the streets he was often clamorously rude. A tattered bag, or a pair of silk stockings with holes in them, drew a torrent of imprudent language from him.
"In vain did my informant (who knew that many Scotch and Irish were within hearing of these reproaches, and would rejoice at least in an opportunity of getting the painter mobbed) advise him to be more cautious in his public remarks. He laughed at all such admonitions, and treated the offerer of it as a pusillanimous wretch, unworthy of a residence in a free country,—making him the butt of his ridicule for several evenings afterwards. This unseasonable pleasantry was at last completely extinguished by what happened to him while he was drawing the 'Gate at Calais;' for, though the innocence of his design was rendered perfectly apparent on the testimony of other sketches which he had about him, which were by no means such as could serve the purpose of an engineer, he was told by the commandant, 'That, had not the peace been actually signed, he should have been obliged to have hung him up immediately upon the ramparts.' Two guards were then provided to carry him on shipboard, nor did they quit him till he was three miles from the shore. They then spun him round like a top on the deck, and told him that he was at liberty to proceed on his voyage without further attendance or molestation. With the slightest allusion to the ludicrous particulars of this affair poor Hogarth was by no means pleased. The leading circumstance in it his own pencil has perpetuated."
After this, it is but fair to give Hogarth's own account of the transaction, in which it will be seen that he lets[Pg 172] out so many prejudices as to render it manifest that the preceding account has not unfairly stated the class of feelings he entertained. His account has also the advantage of containing an explanation of the picture.
"After the 'March to Finchley,'" says the artist, "the next print I engraved was the 'Roast Reef of Old England;' which took its rise from a visit I paid to France the preceding year. The first time an Englishman goes from Dover to Calais, he must be struck with the different face of things at so little a distance. A farcical pomp of war, pompous parade of religion, and much bustle with very little business—to sum up all, poverty, slavery, and innate insolence, covered with an affectation of politeness, give you, even here, a true picture of the manners of the whole nation. Nor are the priests less opposite to those of Dover than the two shores. The friars are dirty, sleek, and solemn; the soldiery are lean, ragged, and tawdry; and as to the fishwomen—their faces are absolute leather!
"As I was sauntering about and observing them, near the gate, which it seems was built by the English when the place was in our possession, I remarked some appearance of the arms of England on the front. By this and idle curiosity I was prompted to make a sketch of it, which being observed, I was taken into custody; but not attempting to cancel any of my sketches or memorandums, which were found to be merely those of a painter for his private use, without any relation to fortification, it was not thought necessary to send me back to Paris. I was only closely confined to my own lodgings till the wind changed for England, where I no sooner arrived than I set about the picture;—made the gate my background, and in one corner introduced my own portrait, which has generally been thought a correct likeness, with the soldier's hand upon my shoulder. By the fat friar, who stops the lean cook that is sinking under the weight of a vast sirloin of beef, and two of the military bearing off a great kettle of soup-maigre, I meant to display to my own countrymen the striking difference between the priests, food, soldiers, &c., of two nations so contiguous that, in a clear day, one coast may be seen from the[Pg 173] other. The melancholy and miserable Highlander, browsing on his scanty fare, consisting of a bit of bread and an onion, is intended for one of the many who fled from this country after the rebellion in 1745."
As far as regards the motive, this and the prints of 'France' and 'England,' are certainly among the least commendable of Hogarth's pieces. In the instance of the 'Gate of Calais' we discern the desire to be revenged for a personal affront, as well as to gratify a national antipathy, and possibly to acquire popularity and profit by ministering to the prejudices of the multitude. He doubtless persuaded himself that his objects were higher and more laudable than these; but we can, at this distance of time, discover nothing to satisfy us that they were so. Horace Walpole remarks, in reference to the three pictures of which this is one,—"Sometimes, to please his vulgar customers, he stooped to low images and national satire, as in the two prints of 'France' and 'England,' and that of the 'Gate of Calais.' The last, indeed, has great merit, though the caricature is carried to excess. In all these the painter's purpose was to exhibit the ease and affluence of a free government, opposed to the wants and woes of slaves."[18] It is pleasant to remember, that even if, at the time of its publication, this picture had exhibited truth and not caricature, the French of the present day might still afford to smile at it. They are no longer the slaves whom Hogarth saw. Since his time, many long years of suffering, of vehement conflict, and of good and evil deeds, have wrought much change both in the circumstances of the nation and in the character of the people.
This print obtained the popularity which might be expected. The profile of the artist in it was copied for a watch-paper; and a wood-cut copy of the half-starved[Pg 174] French sentinel has often since headed the advertisements for recruits, where it has been opposed to the figure of a well-fed British soldier. Soon after the publication, the popular cantata, entitled 'The Roast Beef of Old England,' appeared. It was written by Hogarth's friend, Mr. Theophilus Forest, and was published under the sanction of the artist, being headed by a copy of his print. This performance explains the different characters in detail; for which reason we copy some portions of the recitative:—
"'Twas at the Gate of Calais, Hogarth tells,
Where sad Despair, with Famine, always dwells,
A meagre Frenchman, Madame Grandsire's[19] cook,
As home he steer'd his carcase, that way took,
Bending beneath the weight of famed Sir-loin,
On whom he often wish'd in vain to dine,
Good Father Dominick by chance came by,
With rosy gills, round paunch, and greedy eye;
Who, when he first beheld the greasy load,
His benediction on it he bestow'd;
And while the solid fat his finger press'd,
He lick'd his chaps, and thus the knight address'd.
* * * * *
A half starv'd soldier, shirtless, pale, and lean,
Who such a sight before had never seen,
Like Garrick's frighted Hamlet, gaping stood.
And gazed with wonder on the British food.
His morning mess forsook the friendly bowl,
And in small streams along the pavement stole.
* * * * *
His fellow-guard, of right Hibernian clay,
Whose brazen front his country did betray,
From Tyburn's fatal tree had hither fled,
By honest means to get his daily bread;
Soon as the well-known prospect he espied,
In blubbering accents dolefully he cried.
* * * * *
Upon the ground hard by poor Sawney sate,
Who fed his nose, and scratch'd his ruddy pate;
But when Old England's bulwark he descried,
His dear-loved mull, alas! was thrown aside;
[Pg 175]With lifted hands he bless'd his native place,
Then scrubb'd himself, and thus bewail'd his case."
The only known portrait in this performance, besides that of the artist, is that of the friar, for which Mr. Pine the engraver sat. He thus acquired the nickname of "Father Pine,"[20] in consequence of which he unsuccessfully endeavoured to persuade Hogarth to give the friar another face. It is said that, when he sat to our artist he was not aware to what purpose his likeness would afterwards be applied.
The satire of Hogarth was not often of a personal nature; but he knew his own power, and he sometimes exercised it. Two of his prints, 'The Times,' produced a memorable quarrel between himself on one side, and Wilkes and Churchill on the other. The satire of the prints of 'The Times,' which were published in 1762, was directed, not against Wilkes himself, but his political friends, Pitt and Temple; nor is it so biting as to have required Wilkes, in defence of his party, to retaliate upon one with whom he had lived in familiar and friendly intercourse. He did so, however, in a number of the 'North Briton,' containing not only abuse of the artist, but unjust and injurious mention of his wife. Hogarth was deeply wounded by this attack; he retorted by the well-known portrait of Wilkes with the cap of liberty, and he afterwards represented Churchill as a bear. The quarrel was unworthy the talents either of the painter or poet. It is the more to be regretted, because its effects, as he himself intimates, were injurious to Hogarth's declining health. The summer of 1764 he spent at Chiswick, and the free air and exercise worked a partial renovation of his strength. The amendment, however, was but temporary, and he died suddenly, October 26, the day after his return to his London residence in Leicester Square.
This eminent individual was one of those who leave behind them visible proofs of their skill and perseverance in those vast engineering works which seem almost destined to defy time. John Smeaton was born, according to most authorities, on the 28th of May, 1724, at Austhorpe, near Leeds, in a house built by his grandfather, and long afterwards inhabited by his family. His father was an attorney, and brought him up with a view to the legal profession. Our information respecting the domestic history of Smeaton is exceedingly scanty; it amounts to little more than that he very early displayed a taste for mechanical pursuits; delighting, it is said, even when a child in petticoats, to observe mechanics at work, and to question them respecting their employments. One of his biographers states that his toys were the tools of men; and that, while yet little more than an infant, he was discovered one day on the top of his father's barn, fixing something like a windmill.[Pg 177] But, passing over such symptoms of precocity, the evidence of which must always be received with caution, we find him, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, constructing a machine for rose-engine turning, and producing neat ornamental boxes, &c., for his friends. He appears to have been but little older when he cut, in a lathe of his own manufacture, a perpetual screw in brass, according to the design of his intimate friend Mr. Henry Hindley of York, with whom he joined enthusiastically in mechanical pursuits. By the age of eighteen years he had attained much practical skill in mechanical operations, and had furnished himself with many tools for performing them.
About this time, in the year 1742, in pursuance of his father's design, young Smeaton came to London, and attended the courts of law at Westminster Hall; but, finding the bent of his mind averse to the law, his father yielded to his wishes, and allowed him to devote his energies to more congenial matters. The next circumstance in his history related by his very brief biographers is his taking up the business of a mathematical-instrument maker, about the year 1750, when he was residing in lodgings in Great Turnstile, Holborn. In 1751 he tried experiments with a machine that he had invented for measuring a ship's way at sea; and in 1752 and 1753 was engaged in a course of experiments "concerning the natural powers of water and wind to turn mills and other machines depending on circular motion." From the latter investigation resulted the most valuable improvements in hydraulic machinery. In the construction of mill-work, Smeaton, during the whole of his useful career as a civil engineer, stood deservedly high; and, by his judicious application of scientific principles, he increased the power of machinery impelled by wind and water as much as one-third. The results of these experiments were published in 1759, after he had been able to give them a practical trial; and their value obtained for him the Copley gold medal of the Royal Society in that year. Smeaton had previously, in the year 1753, been made a member of the Royal Society; and he had[Pg 178] made some communications to the 'Transactions' even before that date. In 1754 he visited Holland and the Netherlands; and the acquaintance he thus obtained with the construction of embankments, artificial navigations, and similar works, probably formed an important part of his engineering education.
In 1766 Smeaton commenced the great work which, more than any other, may be looked upon as a lasting monument of his skill—the Eddystone Lighthouse.
This mighty work stands to the present day as firm as when Smeaton left it, and seems likely to remain for centuries yet to come. It was the third lighthouse built on the perilous rock from which it derives its name; and in order to understand the real merit of the enterprise, it will be desirable to show what was the nature of the two previous attempts to form a lighthouse at this spot.
As the Eddystone rocks lie nearly in the direction of vessels coasting up and down the Channel, they were unavoidably, before the establishment of a lighthouse there, very dangerous, and often fatal to ships; their situation, with regard to the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic, is such that they lie open to the swells of the bay and ocean from all the south-western points of the compass; so that all the heavy seas from the south-west quarter come uncontrolled upon the Eddystone rocks, and break upon them with the utmost fury. Sometimes when the sea is to all appearance smooth and even, and its surface unruffled by the slightest breeze, the groundswell meeting the slope of the rocks, the sea beats upon them in a frightful manner, so as not only to obstruct any work being done on the rock, but even landing upon it.
The nearest land to the Eddystone rocks is the point to the west of Plymouth called the Ram Head, from which they are about ten miles distant nearly south. As these rocks (called the Eddystone, in all probability, from the whirl or eddy which is occasioned by the waters striking against them) were not very much elevated above the sea at any time, and at high-water were quite covered by it, they formed a most dangerous obstacle[Pg 179] to navigation, and several vessels were every season lost upon them. Many a gallant ship, which had voyaged in safety across the whole breadth of the Atlantic, was shattered to pieces on this hidden source of destruction as it was nearing port, and went down with its crew in sight of their native shores. It was therefore very desirable that the spot should, if possible, be pointed out by a warning light. But the same circumstances which made the Eddystone rocks so formidable to the mariner rendered the attempt to erect a lighthouse upon them a peculiarly difficult enterprise. The task, however, was at last undertaken by a Mr. Henry Winstanley, of Littlebury in Essex, a gentleman of some property, and not a regularly-bred engineer or architect, but only a person with a natural turn for mechanical invention, and fond of amusing himself with ingenious experiments. His house at Littlebury was fitted up with a multitude of strange contrivances, with which he surprised and amused his guests; and he also had an exhibition of water-works at Hyde-Park Corner, which appears from a notice in the 'Tatler' to have been in existence in September, 1709. He began to erect his lighthouse on the Eddystone rocks in 1696, and it was finished about four years after. From the best information which can now be obtained it appears to have been a polygonal (or many-cornered) building of stone, and, when it had received its last additions, of about a hundred feet in height. Still the sea in stormy weather ascended far above this elevation, so much so that persons acquainted with the place used to remark, after the erection of Winstanley's building, that it was very possible for a six-oared boat to be lifted up upon a wave and to be carried through the open gallery by which it was surmounted. The architect himself, it is said, felt so confident in the strength of the structure, that he frequently declared his only wish was to be in it during the greatest storm that ever blew under the face of the heavens, that he might see what would be the effect. But these words were perhaps merely ascribed to him after the event. On the 26th November, 1703, he was[Pg 180] in the lighthouse superintending some repairs, when there came on the most terrible tempest which was ever known in England. Next morning not a vestige of the building was to be seen. It had been swept into the deep, as was afterwards found, from the foundation, not a stone, or beam, or iron bar remaining on the rock. The single thing left was a piece of iron chain, which had got so wedged into a deep cleft that it stuck there till it was cut out more than fifty years afterwards.
Such was the end of the first Eddystone Lighthouse. Soon after, the Winchelsea, homeward-bound from Virginia, was lost on the rocks, when the greater part of her crew perished. An Act of Parliament was then passed for the building of a new lighthouse, on a lease granted to a Captain Lovet, or Lovell, for ninety-nine years. It so turned out that on this occasion again the person employed to erect the structure was not a builder by profession. The individual whom Lovet made choice of for this purpose was a Mr. John Rudyerd, a silk-mercer on Ludgate-hill, whose recommendation appears to have been merely his general sagacity, and perhaps some genius which he was supposed to possess for mechanics. He began the building of his lighthouse in July, 1706; it was so far advanced that a light was put up about two years from that time; and in 1709 it was completed in all its parts. It differed from its predecessor in two important respects: being not of stone, but of wood; and not angular, but perfectly round. Its entire height was ninety-two feet.
This building, notwithstanding some severe storms which it encountered, particularly one on the 26th of September, 1744, stood till the 2nd of December, 1755. About two o'clock on that morning, one of the three men who had the charge of it, having gone up to snuff the candles in the lantern, found the place full of smoke, from the midst of which, as soon as he opened the door, a flame burst forth. A spark from some of the twenty-four candles, which were kept constantly burning, had probably ignited the wood-work, or the flakes of soot hanging from the roof. The man instantly alarmed his[Pg 181] companions; but, being in bed and asleep, it was some time before they arrived to his assistance. In the mean time he did his utmost to effect the extinction of the fire by heaving water upon it (it was burning four yards above him) from a tubful which always stood in the place. The other two, when they came, brought up more water from below, but as they had to go down and return a height of seventy feet for this purpose, their endeavours were of little avail. At last a quantity of the lead on the roof, having melted, came down in a torrent upon the head and shoulders of the man who remained above. He was an old man of ninety-four, of the name of Henry Hall, but still full of strength and activity. This accident, together with the rapid increase of the fire notwithstanding their most desperate exertions, extinguished their last hopes, and, making scarcely any further efforts to arrest the progress of the destroying element, they descended before it from room to room, till they came to the lowest floor. Driven from this also, they then sought refuge in a hole or cave on the eastern side of the rock, it being fortunately by this time low-water. Meanwhile the conflagration had been observed by some fishermen, who immediately returned to shore and gave information of it. Boats of course were immediately sent out. They arrived at the lighthouse about ten o'clock, and with the utmost difficulty a landing was effected, and the three men, who were by this time almost in a state of stupefaction, were dragged through the water into one of the boats. One of them, as soon as he was brought on shore, as if struck with some panic, took flight, and was never more heard of. As for old Hall, he was immediately placed under medical care; but although he took his food tolerably well, and seemed for some time likely to recover, he always persisted in saying that the doctors would never bring him round, unless they could remove from his stomach the lead which he maintained had run down his throat when it fell upon him from the roof of the lantern. Nobody could believe that this notion was anything more than an imagination of the old man; but on the twelfth day after the fire,[Pg 182] having been suddenly seized with cold sweats and spasms, he expired; and when his body was opened there was actually found in his stomach, to the coat of which it had partly adhered, a flat oval piece of lead of the weight of seven ounces five drachms. An account of this extraordinary case is to be found in the 49th volume of the 'Philosophical Transactions.'
As there was still more than half a century of their lease unexpired, the proprietors, who by this time had become numerous, felt that it was not their interest to lose a moment in setting about the rebuilding of the lighthouse. One of them, a Mr. Weston, in whom the others placed much confidence, made application to Lord Macclesfield, the President of the Royal Society, to recommend to them the person whom he considered most fit to be engaged. His lordship immediately named and most strongly recommended Mr. Smeaton, who had recently left the business of mathematical instrument maker, which he had practised for some years in London, and taken up that of a civil engineer, for which his genius admirably fitted him. Once more, therefore, the Eddystone Lighthouse was destined to have a self-educated architect for its builder. Mr. Smeaton has himself recorded the history of his lighthouse, in a very magnificent publication, from which we have derived the particulars regarding the preceding structures. When it was first proposed that the work should be put into his hands, he was in Northumberland, but he arrived in London on the 23rd of February, 1756. On the 22nd of March the architect set out for Plymouth, but, on account of the badness of the roads (how strangely such a statement reads now!), did not reach the end of his journey till the 27th. He remained at Plymouth till the 21st of May, in the course of which time he repeatedly visited the rock, and having, with the consent of his employers, determined that the new lighthouse should be of stone, hired work-yards and workmen, contracted for the various materials he wanted, and made all the other necessary arrangements for beginning and carrying on the work. Everything being[Pg 183] in readiness, and the season sufficiently advanced, on the 5th of August the men were landed on the rock, and immediately began cutting it for the foundation of the building. This part of the work was all that was accomplished that season, in the course of which, however, both the exertions and the perils of the architect and his associates were very great. On one occasion the sloop in which Mr. Smeaton, with eighteen seamen and labourers, was embarked, was all but lost in returning from the work.
During this time the belief and expressed opinion of most persons were, that a stone lighthouse would certainly not stand the winds and seas to which it would be exposed on the Eddystone. However, on the 12th of June, 1757, the first stone was laid.
From this period the work proceeded with great rapidity. On the 26th of August, 1759, all the stonework was completed. On the 9th of October following the building was finished in every part; and on the 16th of the same month the saving light was again streaming from its summit over the waves. Thus the whole undertaking was accomplished within a space of little more than three years, "without the loss of life or limb," says Mr. Smeaton, "to any one concerned in it, or accident by which the work could be said to be materially retarded." During all this time there had been only 421 days, comprising 2674 hours, which it had been possible for the men to spend upon the rock; and the whole time which they had been at work there was only 111 days 10 hours, or scarcely sixteen weeks. Nothing can show more strikingly than this statement the extraordinary difficulties under which the work had to be carried on.
A few particulars concerning the mode of constructing this remarkable building may be here desirable.
The present edifice is a circular tower of stone, sweeping up with a gentle curve from the base, and gradually diminishing to the top, somewhat similar to the swelling of the trunk of a tree. The upper extremity is finished with a kind of cornice, and is surmounted[Pg 184] with a lantern, having a gallery round it with an iron balustrade. The tower is furnished with a door and windows, and a staircase and ladders for ascending to the lantern, through the apartments of those who keep watch. In order to form his foundation, Smeaton accurately measured the very irregular surface of the rock, and made a model of it.
The materials employed in building the tower are moor-stone, a hard species of granite, and Portland stone. The granite rock was partially worked to form the foundations; and as the ground joint would be more subject to the action of the sea than any other, it was found necessary not only that the bed of every stone should have a level bearing, but that every outside piece should be grafted into the rock, so as to be guarded by a border thereof at least three inches in height above it, which would in reality be equivalent to the founding of the building in a socket of three inches depth in the shallowest part. On the 3rd of August, 1756, Smeaton fixed the centre point of the building and traced out part of the plan on the rock; and on the 6th nearly the whole of the work was set out. On the 4th of September the two new steps at the bottom of the rock and the dovetails were roughed out, and some of the beds brought to a level and finished, after very great labour. The stones for the several courses were rough worked at the quarries according to various drafts made by the engineer.
A part of the upper surface of the rock having been taken carefully off, but without the use of gunpowder, lest it should loosen the rock, six foundation courses dovetailed together were then raised on the lower part of the rock, which brought the whole to a solid level mass. These courses, with eight others raised above them, form the solid bed of the work, and take the form of the swelling trunk of a tree at its base. The courses of masonry are dovetailed together in the most skilful manner: the successive layers of masonry being strongly cemented and connected by oaken trenails or plugs, and the whole strongly cramped. The general weight[Pg 185] of the stones employed is a ton, and some few are two tons. In the solid work the centre stones were fixed first, and all the courses were fitted on a platform and accurately adjusted before they were removed to the rock.
The base of the tower is about 26 feet 9 inches in diameter, taken at the highest part of the rock. The diameter at the top of the solid masonry is about 19 feet 9 inches, and the height of the solid masonry is 13 feet from the foundation. The masonry may still be considered of solid construction to the top of the stone staircase, the height to the top of which, from the centre of the base, is 28 feet 4 inches. The height of the tower from the centre is 61 feet 7 inches; the lantern, the base of which is stone, is 24 feet; and the diameter of the tower below the cornice is 15 feet. The whole height is therefore 85 feet 7 inches, according to the scale given by Smeaton to his drawings.
The Eddystone Lighthouse has not only the merit of utility, but also of beauty, strength, and originality, and is itself sufficient to immortalize the name of the architect. The reader will find everything curious and interesting connected with this undertaking in Smeaton's splendid folio above referred to.
The upper part of the building, constructed of wood, was burnt in 1770, and renewed in 1774.
Smeaton, in his 'Narrative,' gives an account of an observation which he once made during a storm to see how the waves affected his lighthouse—a matter of no small moment to the reputation of the engineer of such a work. He stood on the Hoe and at the Garrison (two elevated spots at Plymouth), and from thence viewed the lighthouse through a telescope during very rough weather. "At intervals of a minute," says he, "or sometimes two or three (I suppose when a combination happens to produce one overgrown wave), it would strike the rock and the building conjointly, and fly up in a white column, enwrapping it like a sheet, rising at least to double the height of the house, and totally intercepting it from the sight; and this appearance being momentary,[Pg 186] both as to its rising and falling, we were enabled to judge of the comparative height very nearly by the comparative spaces alternately occupied by the house and by the column of water in the field of the telescope. Of this column I made an eye-sketch at the time; and must further observe, that while I was in the lighthouse, during the last interval of finishing, I particularly noticed the manner in which the waves began to gather, as soon as they came so near the house as to be sensible of the sloping rocks underneath them. Those waves, by degrees reaching higher as they came nearer, formed a deep hollow sea at the foot of the building; and then, falling into it, struck it with all imaginable fury."
Smeaton appears to have been by no means fully employed as an engineer for several years after the completion of the Eddystone Lighthouse; for in 1764 he became a candidate for the office of a receiver of the Derwentwater estate, the funds of which were, after its forfeiture in 1715, appropriated to Greenwich Hospital. On the last day of that year, chiefly, as he states in his account of the Eddystone Lighthouse, through the friendship of the Earl of Egmont and Earl Howe, lords of the Admiralty, he was appointed to this office. In this engagement he was happy in being associated with Mr. Walton, the other receiver, who took upon himself the management of the accounts, leaving Smeaton at leisure to devote his attention to improvements and to professional engagements. While he held the receivership he greatly improved the estate, the mines and mills of which required the superintendence of such a man to make them of their full value. Increasing business induced him, in 1775, to desire to relinquish this engagement, but he was prevailed on to retain it about two years longer.
Of the many useful works executed by Smeaton, Ramsgate Harbour perhaps holds, next to the Eddystone Lighthouse, the most prominent place. This work was commenced in 1749, but was carried on with very imperfect success until it was placed under his superintendence in 1774. This harbour, being enclosed by two[Pg 187] piers of about 2000 and 1500 feet long respectively, affords a safe refuge for ships where it was much needed; vessels in the Downs having been exposed to imminent risk during bad weather before it was constructed. Smeaton laid out the line of the great canal connecting the western and eastern shores of Scotland, from the Forth to the Clyde, and superintended the execution of great part of it. To his skill, in all probability, the preservation of old London bridge for many years was attributable. In 1761, in consequence of alterations made for the improvement of the navigation, one of the piers was undermined by the stream to a fearful extent. The first volume of Smeaton's 'Reports,' of which a second edition was published in 1812, contains a short mention of him preparatory to the volume, and in this is given the following paragraph, relating to this matter:—"On opening the great arch at London bridge, by throwing two arches into one, and the removal of a large pier, the excavation around and underneath the sterlings of that pier was so considerable as to put the adjoining piers, the arch, and eventually the whole bridge, in great danger of falling! The previous opinions of some were positive, and the apprehensions of all the people on this head were so great that many persons would not pass over or under it. The surveyors employed were not equal to such an exigency. Mr. Smeaton was then in Yorkshire, where he was sent for by express, and from whence he arrived in town with the greatest expedition. He applied himself immediately to examine the bridge and to sound about the dangerous sterlings as minutely as he could. The committee of Common Council adopted his advice, which was, to re-purchase the stones of all the city gates, then lately pulled down and lying in Moorfields, and to throw them pell-mell into the water, to guard these sterlings, preserve the bottom from further corrosion, raise the floor under the arch, and restore the head of water necessary for the water-works to its original power; and this was a practice he had before and afterwards adopted on similar occasions. Nothing shows the apprehensions of the bridge falling more than the[Pg 188] alacrity with which his advice was pursued: the stones were re-purchased that day; horses, carts, and barges were got ready; and the work was instantly begun, though it was Sunday morning."
The Calder Navigation was one of the great works which he successfully accomplished; and he provided with much skill for the effect of the impetuous floods to which that river is subject. The Spurn Lighthouse at the mouth of the Humber, some important bridges in Scotland, and many other works of like character, might also be mentioned.
About 1783 Smeaton's declining health rendered it necessary for him to avoid entering upon many new undertakings. He then devoted much attention to the publication of an account of the Eddystone Lighthouse, which was to have been followed by a 'Treatise on Mills,' and other works embodying his valuable experience as an engineer. The former of these was the only work he lived to complete; and it is a volume of great and permanent interest, detailing in the most minute and simple manner every circumstance worthy of record concerning the history or the construction of the lighthouse. It is dedicated to George III., who had taken much interest in the structure; and in the dedication, in explaining the circumstances which had deferred the appearance of the narrative so long after the completion of the building, the author observes, "I can with truth say, I have ever since been employed in works tending to the immediate benefit of your majesty's subjects; and indeed so unremittingly, that it is not without the greatest exertion that I am enabled even now to complete the publication." He had made some progress in this work before 1763; but it appears to have been laid aside for about twenty years, and was not published until 1791. On the 16th of September, 1792, while walking in his garden at Austhorpe, Smeaton was seized with an attack of paralysis; and on the 28th of October he died.
About the year 1771 several friends of Smeaton, engaged in kindred pursuits, formed themselves into a society which may perhaps be looked upon as the first[Pg 189] public recognition of the useful body of men who have since, under the name of Civil Engineers, done so much in developing the resources of this country. Untoward circumstances led to the dissolution of this society previous to Smeaton's death; but steps were taken to reorganize it before that event took place. The new Society shortly took steps for the publication in a collected form of Smeaton's numerous professional reports; but the work was not completed until 1812. It is in three quarto volumes, to which a fourth was subsequently added, consisting of his miscellaneous papers communicated to the Royal Society, &c. The Society alluded to is mentioned in the first volume of the 'Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers,' as still existing. The introduction to this volume contains a high eulogium on the talent of Smeaton as an engineer. Alluding to the Eddystone Lighthouse, it observes, "This, Smeaton's first work, was also his greatest; probably, the time and all things considered, it was the most arduous undertaking that has fallen to any engineer, and none was ever more successfully executed. And now, having been buffeted by the storms of nearly (now more than) eighty years, the Eddystone stands unmoved as the rock it is built on—a proud monument to its great author. Buildings of the same kind have been executed since, but it should always be borne in mind who taught the first great lesson, and recorded the progressive steps with a modesty and simplicity that may well be held up as models for similar writings. His Reports are entitled to equal praise; they are a mine of wealth for the sound principles which they unfold and the able practice they exemplify, both alike based on close observation of the operations of nature, and affording many fine examples of cautious sagacity in applying the instructions she gives to the means within the reach of art." The deliberation and caution always exercised in the works of Smeaton are well worthy of imitation; and to this may be attributed the almost unexampled success of his undertakings. So highly was his judgment appreciated, that he has been called the "standing counsel" of his profession,[Pg 190] and he was constantly appealed to by Parliament on difficult engineering questions. His improvements of wind and water mills have been mentioned already. The atmospheric steam-engine of Newcomen was the subject of similar experiments, attended with the like results; although the more important improvements of Watt threw Smeaton's efforts in this way comparatively into the shade. His improvements consisted chiefly in the proportions of the component parts of the machine; yet they effected so great a saving of fuel, that Boulton and Watt excluded them from their ordinary agreement—which was, to receive for the use of their patent-right one-third of the coal saved by their machine in comparison with those previously used. The low state of the mechanic arts in England led Smeaton, during the early part of Watt's career, to doubt the possibility of his machines being made with the required accuracy.
Smeaton also introduced many improvements in mathematical apparatus, and had an ardent love for science. He was particularly attached to astronomy, and had an observatory at Austhorpe, where, even during the most active part of his career, he occasionally resided.
In person he was of middle stature, broad and strong made, and of good constitution. His manners were simple and unassuming. His temper was warm, but not overbearing; and his social character unimpeachable.
Mrs. Dixon, one of Smeaton's daughters, was applied to by a committee of engineers, towards the close of the last century, for any information which would add to the scanty details already known of her father's life. In a letter which she directed to them in 1797, she alludes to the difficulty of stating aught which, though interesting to his immediate friends, would be so "to the public generally," on account of certain peculiarities in his character. "The plain anecdotes of a plain man like him," she remarks, "though interesting to individuals, could awaken little public curiosity—and perhaps give still less satisfaction when awakened; and, extraordinary as it may seem, his family, probably less than others, are in[Pg 191] possession of anecdotes concerning him; for, though communicative on all subjects, and stored with ample and liberal observations, of himself he never spoke. In nothing does he seem to have stood more single than in being devoid of that egotism which more or less affects the world. It required some address even in his family to draw him into conversation directly relative to himself, his pursuits, or his success."
Among the small number of anecdotes told concerning him by his daughter, are one or two illustrative of his feeling of independence in respect to pecuniary matters, and his refusal to allow motives of emolument to interfere with plans laid on other considerations. The Empress Catherine of Russia was exceedingly anxious to have his services in the prosecution of great engineering works in her dominions, and she commissioned the Princess De Askoff (as Mrs. Dixon spells it, but Daschkow as more usually given) to offer him his own terms if he would accede to her proposal. But his plans and his heart were bent upon the exercise of his skill in his own country, and he steadily refused all the offers made to him. It is reported that, when the Princess found her attempts unavailing, she said to him, "Sir, you are a great man, and I honour you! You may have an equal in abilities, perhaps, but in character you stand single. The English minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was mistaken, and my sovereign, to her loss, finds one man who has not his price!"
It is recorded of him, that, after the state of his health had induced him to withdraw from the labours of his profession, many persons importuned him from time to time to resume his professional avocations, influenced by a wish to have the advantage of his services in some projects which they had brought forward. But when their entreaties were backed by personal offers of emolument, he used to send for an old woman who took care of his chambers in Gray's Inn, and say, "Her attendance suffices for all my wants!" a reply which conveyed the intimation that a man whose personal wants were so[Pg 192] simple was not likely to break through a pre-arranged line of conduct for mere pecuniary considerations.
His daughter states that Smeaton on one occasion adopted a characteristic mode of discouraging the fashion then prevalent of playing at cards for high stakes. He was on intimate terms of acquaintance with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, and often spent a leisure hour in the evening at their house. On a few occasions he played at cards with them; and on one such evening "he effected the abolition of that inconsiderate indiscriminate play, amongst people of superior rank or fortune, which compels every one to join, and at their own stake too. My father detested cards, and, his attention never following the game, played like a boy. The game was Pope Joan; the general run of it was high; and the stake in Pope had accidentally accumulated to a sum more than serious. It was my father's turn by the deal to double it; when, regardless of his cards, he busily made minutes on a slip of paper, and put it on the board. The Duchess eagerly asked him what it was; and he as coolly replied, 'Your grace will recollect the field in which my house stands may be about five acres, three roods, and seven perches; which, at thirty years' purchase, will be just my stake; and if your grace will make a duke of me, I presume the winner will not dislike my mortgage.' The joke and the lesson had alike their weight: they never after played but for the merest trifle."
1 The reader will remember that forming a catalogue of stars includes the accurate determination of their places in the heavens by repeated observations: and the sextant and quadrant mode of proceeding implies very heavy calculation for each star.
2 See a pamphlet (printed by the Ashmolean Society at Oxford), the substance of which is from the papers of the late Professor Rigaud, written by his son, the Rev. Stephen Rigaud, entitled 'A Defence of Halley against the charge of Religious Infidelity,' Oxford, 1844, 8vo. Also, a letter in the monthly notices of the Astronomical Society, vol. vi., page 204. Mr. Rigaud, jun., considering it a duty to believe, whether the mind is convinced or not by the evidence, or else taking for granted that all professed unbelief is hypocrisy, naturally proceeds as in defending a criminal, and gives circumstances their weight as against a grave charge, instead of in support of one side of a simple historical fact. To us, who claim no right to charge any honest opinion whatever with criminality (not even Mr. Rigaud's opinion upon what constitutes crime) as long as the holder of it respects the rights of his fellow-men, and behaves as a man ought to do, these same circumstances are by no means so convincing as to him. And though we are gravely informed at the end of the pamphlet, that, in the author's opinion, none but minds "rejoicing in iniquity" can still admit this "charge" to be true, we will not be moved even by this curious preimputation upon ourselves, to say that the maker of it, who we have no doubt is honest, has committed a crime. But we must smile for all that. The Ashmolean Society, which printed the pamphlet, has prefixed the usual caveat, stating that they "desire it to be understood that they are not answerable as a body for any facts, reasonings, or opinions, advanced in papers printed by them." We have much pleasure in complying with their desire and understanding accordingly.
3 See note in Warton's 'Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope,' ii., 326; and 'Life' by Bowles, p. 17.
4 The passage in the letter to Martha Blount, which both Roscoe and Bowles interpret as referring to the additions made to the Rape of the Lock in the second edition, relates clearly to the other contents of the volume of Miscellanies, in which the first edition of the poem appeared:—"You have no hopes of entertainment but from the rest of this book, wherein, they tell me, are some things that may be dangerous to be looked upon: however, I think you may venture, though you should blush for it, since blushing becomes you the best of any lady in England," &c.
5 And therefore Mr. Roscoe ought to have perceived that the letter from Pope to the Earl of Burlington, giving an account of a journey to Oxford in company with Lintot, could not have been written, as he supposes, in August, 1714, and cannot refer to Pope's first visit to Oxford made in that year and month. (Life of Pope, p. 127; Works, viii. 290.) One of the longest and most remarkable paragraphs in the letter gives Lintot's account of an incident that had arisen out of the recent publication of the first volume of the Homer.
6 Doctor King: Political and Literary Anecdotes of his own Times.
7 Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xxxi.
8 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
9 The common accounts, however, make this to have happened, at a later period of Swift's life, during one of his visits to London.
10 See a full account of them in a paper entitled 'London Astrologers,' in Knight's London, iii., 246-249.
11 "It would be no unprofitable employment," we are told by a late editor of Swift's Works, "to compare this character of the earl with the deservedly celebrated delineation of Pope." No doubt the character of Philip Duke of Wharton, in Pope's 'Moral Essays,' is very deservedly celebrated; but the subject of Swift's tract is the Duke's father, Thomas Earl (afterwards Marquis) of Wharton.
12 Johnson says, "He was not suffered to stay in Ireland more than a fortnight before he was recalled to England." Lord Orrery's account is that he returned to England in the beginning of the year 1714. Scott's narrative is here destitute of dates, and vague. It may be gathered from Swift's correspondence that he probably reached London in the latter part of September, 1713. He had therefore spent about three months in Ireland.
13 Vol. v., p. 15.
14 This evidently is intended to ridicule some ephemeral projects of the time.
15 Chalmers's 'Bridgewater Treatise,' vol. i. p. 105.
16 This is an allusion to Sir Joshua Reynolds's picture of the Death of Cardinal Beaufort.
17 Lines inscribed under the plate.
18 In 'Beer Street' the English blacksmith tossing a Frenchman in the air with one hand is absolutely hyperbole. Hogarth has, however, in this instance the merit of having seen the bad taste of the circumstance, as he afterwards substituted a leg of mutton in the place of the Frenchman.
19 Hogarth's hostess.
20 "Friar Pine," according to Nichols.
[The end of The Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies Vol 12 of 12 by C. Cox]
