It is always interesting to observe the influence of a work of genius on other minds, and in connection with the Tale of a Tub a story told of his boyhood by William Cobbett is worth recording:

'I was trudging through Richmond,' he writes, 'in my blue smock-frock, and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes fell upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was written, "Tale of a Tub, price threepence." The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited.... It was something so new to my mind that though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought of supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he could see no longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and 'tumbled down' by the side of a haystack, 'where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me in the morning; when off I started to Kew, reading my little book.'

One of the greatest masters of prose in the language has also recorded the impression made upon him by this wonderful book. At the age of eighty-three Landor wrote: 'I am reading once more the work I have read oftener than any other prose work in our language.... What a writer! Not the most imaginative or the most simple, not Bacon or Goldsmith had the power of saying more forcibly or completely whatever he meant to say.' 'Simplicity,' said Swift, 'is the best and truest ornament of most things in human life;' and Landor, commenting on Swift's style, observes that 'he never attempted to round his sentences by redundant words, aware that from the simplest and the fewest arise the secret springs of genuine harmony.'

The volume containing the Tale of a Tub had also within its covers the Battle of the Books, which was suggested by a controversy that originated in France, and had been carried on by Sir W. Temple in England, as to the relative merits of the Ancients and the Moderns. Out of this, too, arose a discussion by some savants, with Richard Bentley (1662-1742), the greatest scholar of the age, at their head, with regard to the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris, a subject discussed in Macaulay's essay on Temple in his usually brilliant style. Swift, in the Battle of the Books sides with Temple and with Charles Boyle, the nominal editor of the Epistles, who, in the famous Reply to Bentley, fought behind the shield of Atterbury. In a combat, which takes place in the Homeric style, the enemies of the Ancients, Bentley and Wotton, are slain by one lance upon the field. The mighty deed was achieved by Boyle. 'As when a slender cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close pinioned to their ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till down they fell joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his fare.' The humour of the piece is delightful, and it matters not a whit for the enjoyment of it, that the wrong heroes gain the victory.

In 1708 Swift produced several pamphlets or tracts, and in one of them, the Argument against Abolishing Christianity, he found ample scope for the irony of which he was so consummate a master.

'Great wits,' he writes, 'love to be free with the highest objects; and if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they will speak evil of dignities, abuse the Government, and reflect upon the ministry; which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious consequence;' and he observes, in concluding the argument: 'Whatever some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months' time the Bank and East India Stock may fall at least one per cent. And since that is fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it.'

An amusing piece which appeared also at this time from Swift's pen, is of literary interest. Under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff he predicted the death, upon a certain day, of Partridge, a notorious astrologer and almanac maker. When the day arrived his decease was announced, and he was afterwards decently buried by Swift, despite a loud protest from the poor man that he was not only alive, but well and hearty. The town took up the joke, all the wits joined in it, and Steele, who started the Tatler in the following year (1709), found it of advantage to assume the name of Bickerstaff, which these squibs had made so popular. Swift loved practical jokes, and sometimes yielded to a license that bordered on buffoonery. He was now in London, charged with a mission from the Irish Church, and hoping for Church preferment himself. With the latter object in view he published the Sentiments of a Church of England Man (1708). Two years later, vexed at heart at being unable to gain for the Irish clergy privileges enjoyed by their English brethren, and foiled, too, in his ambition, Swift forsook the Whig party, which he had never loved, and going over to the Tories, fought their battle for some years with so masterly a pen, as to become a great power in the country.

Some time before his return to London in 1710, a weekly Tory paper had been started by Bolingbroke and Prior called The Examiner, and in opposition to it, upon September 14th in that year, Addison produced the Whig Examiner which lived a brief life of five numbers and died on the 8th of October. Three weeks later, on the 2nd November, after thirteen numbers of the Examiner had been published, Swift took up the pen, and from that date to June 14th, 1711, every paper was from his hand. Never before had a political journal exercised such power. In his change of party Swift was sincere in purpose, but unscrupulous in his methods of pursuing it, and to gain his ends told lies with a vigour that has rarely been surpassed. He is never delicate in his treatment of opponents, and when finer weapons would be useless, strikes with a sledge hammer. That such a writer, a master of every method most effective in controversy, should have been valued by the statesmen of the day is not surprising. When he forsook the Whig camp there was no opponent to pit against him, for neither Addison with his delicate humour, nor Steele with his brightness and versatility, could grapple with an enemy like this.

Swift's arrogance in these days of his power was that of a despot. He was doing great things for ministers, and took care that they should know it. He was proud of his self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great men, and great ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst into tears by rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should sing or he would make her.' 'I was at court and church to-day,' he tells Stella, 'I generally am acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud I make all the lords come up to me.' On one occasion he sent the Lord Treasurer into the House of Commons to call out the principal Secretary of State in order to say that he would not dine with him if he intended to dine late. He relates, too, how he warned St. John not to appear cold to him, for he would not be treated like a school-boy, and if he heard or saw anything to his disadvantage to let him know in plain words, and not to put him in pain by the change of his behaviour, for it was what he would hardly bear from a crowned head. 'If we let these great ministers pretend too much,' he says, 'there will be no governing them.' And in a letter to Pope he makes the following confession: 'All my endeavours from a boy to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and fortune that I might be treated like a lord ... whether right or wrong it is no great matter; and so the reputation of great learning does the work of a blue ribbon, and of a coach and six horses.'

It would be out of place in this volume to dwell on Swift's feats as a political writer; for us the most interesting fact connected with the years 1710-14 is that during that eventful period of Swift's life, in which he was hobnobbing with Ministers of State and doing them infinite service by his pen, he was writing at odd moments his inimitable Journal to Stella, and gaining the love which ended so tragically, of Hester Vanhomrigh. This strange chapter in Swift's life is closely bound up with his literary history, and must therefore be briefly noticed.

At Moor Park Swift, who was more than twenty years her senior, had seen Esther Johnson growing up into womanhood. He had been to her as a master, a position he always liked to assume towards women.[45] When he settled in Ireland it was arranged that Esther and her companion, Mrs. Dingley, should also live there. Her preceptor, in his regard for propriety, appears never to have seen Esther apart from the useful Dingley, and his letters are apparently addressed to both of them, but Esther knew, as we know, that all the tenderness and affectionate humour they contain was meant for her alone. Swift never writes as a lover, but the kind of love he gave to 'Stella' sufficed to bind her to him for life. If there were moments when she wished to escape from his power, the wish was hopeless. Having once submitted to his fascination, she was held by it to the end. Hester Vanhomrigh, who was about ten years younger than Stella, felt the same spell, and having a far less restrained nature than Miss Johnson, gave free expression to the passion which devoured her. Between his two admirers, for such they were, Swift had a difficult course to steer. To Stella he was linked by strong ties of companionship, and to her, according to some authorities, he was secretly married. Whether this were the case or not she had the larger claims upon him, and if one of the twain had to be sacrificed, Vanessa must be the victim.

In Cadenus and Vanessa (1713) a poem which every student of Swift will read, the author strove to achieve an impossibility. His aim was to ignore the lover and to assume the character of a master to an intelligent and favourite pupil, or of a father to a daughter. His dignity and age, he says, forbade the thought of warmer feelings.

'But friendship in its greatest height, A constant rational delight, On Virtue's basis fixed to last When love's allurements long are past, Which gently warms but cannot burn, He gladly offers in return; His want of passion will redeem With gratitude, respect, esteem; With that devotion we bestow When goddesses appear below.'

And this was Swift's method of dealing with a woman who confessed the 'inexpressible passion' she had for him, and that his 'dear image' was always before her eyes. 'Sometimes,' she wrote, 'you strike me with that prodigious awe, I tremble with fear; at other times a charming compassion shines through your countenance which moves my soul.' Swift had acted far more than indiscreetly in encouraging a friendship with Vanessa, and when she followed him to Dublin, in the neighbourhood of which she had some property, he knew not how to escape from the snare his own folly had laid. To Stella he had given 'friendship and esteem,' but, as he is careful to add, 'ne'er admitted love a guest;' the same cold gift was offered to Vanessa, but in vain. According to a report, the authority of which is doubtful, Miss Vanhomrigh wrote to Stella, in 1723, asking if she was Swift's wife. She replied that she was, and sent the letter she had received to Swift. In a towering passion he rode to Vanessa's house, threw the letter on the table, and left again without saying a word. The blow was fatal, and Vanessa died soon afterwards, revoking her will in Swift's favour and leaving to him the legacy of remorse. Having told in outline this episode in Swift's story, I return to the Journal to Stella, which dates from September 2nd, 1710, to June 6th, 1713.

Little did Swift imagine that the chit-chat he was writing every day for Esther Johnson's sake would be read and enjoyed by thousands who care little or nothing for the party questions upon which the strenuous efforts of his intellect were expended. The early years of the eighteenth century contain nothing more delightful than this Journal. Its gossip, its nonsense, its freshness and ease of style, the tenderness concealed, or half-revealed, in its 'little language,' and the illustrations it supplies incidentally of the manners of the court and town, these are some of the charms that make us turn again and again to its pages with ever-increasing pleasure. We enjoy Swift's egotism and trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys or Montaigne, and can imagine the eagerness with which the Letters were read by the lovely woman whose destiny it was to receive everything from Swift save the love which has its consummation in marriage. The style of the Journal is not that of an author composing, but of a companion talking; and it is all the more interesting since it reveals Swift's character under a pleasanter aspect than any of his formal writings. We see in it what a warm heart he had for the friends whom he had once learnt to love, and with what zeal he exerted himself in assisting brother-authors, while receiving little beyond empty praise from ministers himself.

In the winter of 1713-14 Swift joined the Scriblerus Club, an association of such wits as Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot, and Gay, and it was about this time that his friendship with Pope began. The members proposed writing a satire between them, and when Swift was exiled to Dublin as Dean of St. Patrick's, he pursued indirectly the suggestion of the Scriblerus wits by writing Gulliver's Travels (1726), a book that has made his name known throughout Europe, and in all the lands where English literature is read. Although Swift did not hesitate to make use of hints and descriptions which he had met with in the course of his reading, this is one of the most original works of fiction ever written, and one of the wittiest. Yet like almost everything that Swift wrote, it is deformed by grossness of expression, and in the latter portion by a malignant contempt for human nature which betrays a diseased imagination. The stories of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags, purified from coarse allusions, are the delight of children; but the description of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos excites disgust and indignation. He said that his object in writing the satire was to vex the world, and he has succeeded.

'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the sanest and healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a moral purpose will not justify the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state; since a moralist ought to hold with the Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In point of probability, too—for there are degrees of probability, proper even to the wildest fiction—the fourth part of Gulliver is inferior to the three others.... The mind rejects, as utterly impossible, the supposition of a nation of horses, placed in houses which they could not build, fed with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save, possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that milk in vessels which they could not make, and, in short, performing a hundred purposes of rational and social life for which their external structure altogether unfits them.'[46]

Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so outraged in the story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.

Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence of little people not six inches high, and of a country in which the inhabitants 'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,' the exactness and verisimilitude of the narrative, with its minute geographical details, make it appear so reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to resent the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book was full of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.' It is curious to note that Swift, who made a strange vow in early life 'not to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly,' should have done more to delight them than any author of his century, with the exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope wrote a joint letter to Swift on the appearance of the Travels, pretending that they did not know the author, and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.... It has passed Lords and Commons nemine contradicente, and the whole town, men, women, and children, are quite full of it.' A book which attained in the author's lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should have yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not know, but in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he alludes to the Travels, Swift says, 'I never got a farthing for anything I writ, except once, about eight years ago, and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for me.'

The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as short-sighted as it was cruel, is described at large in the second volume of Mr. Lecky's History. Swift, who hated Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the misgovernment which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.

In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use only Irish manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam,' he writes, 'mention a pleasant observation of somebody's, that Ireland would never be happy till a law were made for burning everything that came from England, except their people and their coals. I must confess, that as to the former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for them

"Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum—"

but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be thought scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.'

The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression under which Ireland laboured, and the Government answered it by prosecuting the printer. Nine times the jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they consented to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the prosecution was dropped.

Two years later the English Government granted a patent to a man of the name of Wood to issue a new copper coinage for Ireland to an extravagant amount, out of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of Kendal, it was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable profit at Ireland's expense. The country was aroused, and Swift, by the issue of the Drapier's Letters, purporting to come from a Dublin draper, roused the passions of the people to a white heat. It was known perfectly well from whom the Letters came, but no one would betray Swift, and when the printer was thrown into prison the jury refused to convict. The battle was fought with vigour, Swift conquered, and the patent was withdrawn. A brief passage from the fourth and final letter 'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will be seen that the writer is not afraid of plain speaking. After saying that the king cannot compel the subject to take any money except it be sterling gold or silver, he adds:

'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his accomplices, charging us with disputing the King's prerogative by refusing his brass, can have no place—because compelling the subject to take any coin which is not sterling is no part of the King's prerogative, and I am very confident, if it were so, we should be the last of his people to dispute it, as well from that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to his Majesty, as from the treatment we might in such a case justly expect from some, who seem to think we have neither common sense nor common senses. But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our fellow-subjects, and not our masters. One great merit I am sure we have which those of English birth can have no pretence to—that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of England; for which we have been rewarded with a worse climate—the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do not consent—a ruined trade—a House of Peers without jurisdiction—almost an incapacity for all employments—and the dread of Wood's halfpence. But we are so far from disputing the king's prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give a patent to any man for setting his royal image and superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to Japan; only attended with one small limitation—that nobody alive is obliged to take them.'

With much humour, in the last paragraph of the letter, Swift undertakes to show that Walpole is against Wood's project 'by this one invincible argument, that he has the universal opinion of being a wise man, an able minister, and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the King his master; and that as his integrity is above all corruption, so is his fortune above all temptation.'

Swift's arguments in the Drapier's Letters are sophistical, his statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice sometimes shameless, as, for instance, in recommending what is now but too well known as 'boycotting.' The end, however, was gained, and the Dean was treated with the honours of a conqueror. On his return from England in 1726, a guard of honour conducted him through the streets, and the city bells sounded a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with something like royal honours, and when Walpole talked of arresting him, he was told that 10,000 soldiers would be needed to make the attempt successful. The Dean's hatred of oppression and injustice had its limits. He defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from every kind of power.

In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate style, which makes his amazing satire the more appalling, Swift published A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for making them Beneficial to the Public. A more hideous piece of irony was never written; it is the fruit of an indignation that tore his heart. The Proposal is, that considering the great misery of Ireland, young children should be used for food. 'I grant,' he says,'this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. 'A very worthy person, he says, considers that young lads and maidens over twelve would supply the want of venison, but 'it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a little bordering upon cruelty; which I confess has always been with me the strongest objection against any project, how well soever intended.' The business-like way in which the argument is conducted throughout, adds greatly to its force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this satire, and nothing that surpasses it in power.

The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this pamphlet. Two years before he had paid his last visit to the country where, as he said in a letter to Gay, he had made his friendships and left his desires. On the death of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to gain some preferment there through the aid of Mrs. Howard, the mistress of George II., and returned to 'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved so well and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a poisoned rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728, Swift's burden of misanthropy was never destined to be lightened. His rage and gloom increased as the years moved on, and in penning his lines of savage invective against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit and wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his saeva indignatio:

'Could I from the building's top Hear the rattling thunder drop, While the devil upon the roof (If the devil be thunder-proof) Should with poker fiery red Crack the stones and melt the lead; Drive them down on every skull, While the den of thieves is full; Quite destroy that harpies' nest, How might then our isle be blest!'

It should be observed at the same time that even in his declining days, when his heart was heavy with bitterness, Swift indulged in practical jokes and in the most trivial pursuits. Vive la bagatelle was his cry, but it was the cry of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser pursuits of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew nothing. His hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape from despair. In 1740 he writes of being very miserable, extremely deaf, and full of pain. Sometimes he gave way to furious bursts of temper, and for several years before the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift died on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital for lunatics,

'And showed by one satiric touch No nation needed it so much.'

A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the 'glaring injustice' of the popular estimate of Swift, and by his forcible epithets has strengthened the grounds on which that estimate is built, observes that Swift's 'philosophy of life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his impious mockery extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of his works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes of our nature—revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'[47]

This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's was a many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with deep, though very limited affections, a man frugal to eccentricity, with a benevolence at once active and extensive. His powerful intellect compels our admiration, if not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is never wanting in strength, and is as clear as the most pellucid of mountain streams—these gifts are of so rare an order, that Swift's place in the literary history of his age must be always one of high eminence. Doubtless, as a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his language is admirably fitted for that end. What more then, it may be asked, can be needed? The reply is, that in composition, as in other things, there are different orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be a low kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and light,' to quote a phrase of his own, which distinguish our greatest prose writers. It lacks also the elevation which inspires, and the persuasiveness that convinces while it charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison, Swift, apart from his Letters, has none of Addison's attractiveness. No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn and contempt; but its author cannot express, because he does not possess, the sense of beauty.

Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of letters. He wrote neither for literary fame nor for money. His ambition was to be a ruler of men, and in imperious will he was strong enough to make a second Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret, 'how I governed Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift, "quaesitam meritis sume superbiam."' As a political pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was savagely in earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant. If argument was against him he used satire; if satire failed he tried invective; his armoury was full of weapons, and there was not one of them he could not wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the ministers who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have already said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's commanding genius gives even to his most trivial productions a measure of vitality. The student of our eighteenth century literature is arrested by the man and his works, and to treat either him or them with indifference would be to neglect a significant chapter in the history of the time.

[Sidenote: John Arbuthnot (1667-1735).]

John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the Queen Anne wits, and the warm friend of Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose, in 1667. He studied medicine at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's degree at St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen, to seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published an Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, and having won high reputation as a man of science, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years later he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne; and it was not long before he had as high a repute among men of letters as with men of science. He suffered frequently from illness; but no pain, it has been said, could extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had sent Gay there on one occasion, and thither in 1734 he went himself, so ill that he 'could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the comfort, but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'

There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more enviable position than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect and readiness of wit Swift only was his equal, and in classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like Othello, Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends clung to him with an affection that was almost womanly. He had the fine impulses of Goldsmith combined with the manliness and practical sagacity of Dr. Johnson, and Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a kindred spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man among the wits of the age. He was the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.' His genius and generous qualities were amply acknowledged by his contemporaries, Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift said he had every virtue which could make a man amiable; Berkeley wrote of him as a great philosopher who was reckoned the first mathematician of the age and had the character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and Chesterfield, who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible imagination' were at every one's service, added that 'charity, benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared unaffectedly in all he said and did.'

Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is to be gleaned from the correspondence of his friends, and it is only of late years that an attempt has been made to write the doctor's biography, and to collect his works.[48] To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult and a doubtful task—several of Arbuthnot's writings having been produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay. So indifferent was he to literary fame, that his children are said to have made kites of papers in which he had jotted down hints that would have furnished good matter for folios. His most famous work is The History of John Bull (1713), which Macaulay considered the most humorous political satire in the language. It was designed to help the Tory party at the expense of the Duke of Marlborough, whose genius as a military leader was probably equal to that of Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke' in the virtues which form a noble character. The irony and dry humour of the satire remind one of Swift, and, like Arbuthnot's Art of Political Lying, is so much in Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be excused for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St. Patrick's.

The History of John Bull is not fitted to attain lasting popularity. It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen excitement, the amusement, and the irritation caused by a brilliant satire of living men and passing events can be but vaguely imagined by readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat, and to promote the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced his satire, all the town laughed at the representation of Marlborough as an old smooth-tongued attorney who loved money, and was said by his neighbours to be hen-pecked, 'which was impossible by such a mild-spirited woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by such wily men of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and Lord Strutt of Spain, and also that other tradesmen should be willing to join John and Nic Frog, the linen-draper of Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and Frog, or Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was scarce possible so effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's splendid achievements as by parodying them under the history of a suit conducted by a wily attorney who made every advantage gained over the defendant a reason for protracting law procedure, and enhancing the expense of his client.' In this long lawsuit everybody is represented as gaining something except John Bull, whose ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of John Bull originated with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him is not known.

Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club, and wrote the larger portion of the Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus (1741), the design of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule false tastes in learning, in the character of a man 'that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he is right; but the Memoirs contain some humorous points which, if they do not create merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the language, that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as iota.' He also taught him as a diversion 'an odd and secret manner of stealing, according to the custom of the Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so well that he practised it till the day of his death.' Martin studies logic, philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the soul is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides in the stomach of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in the fingers of fiddlers, and in the toes of rope-dancers. His discoveries, it may be added, are made 'without the trivial help of experiments or observations.'

FOOTNOTES:

[43] Life of Jonathan Swift, by John Forster, vol. i., pp. 164-174. Mr. Forster did not live to produce more than one volume of a work to which for many years he had given 'much labour and time.'

[44] English Men of Letters—Jonathan Swift, by Leslie Stephen, p. 43.

[45] Mrs. Pendarves writes (1733) 'The day before we came out of town we dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company. The Dean of St. Patrick's was there in very good humour, he calls himself "my master," and corrects me when I speak bad English or do not pronounce my words distinctly. I wish he lived in England, I should not only have a great deal of entertainment from him, but improvement.'—Life and Correspondence of Mrs Delany, vol. i., p. 407.

[46] Life of Swift, p. 299.

[47] Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study, by J. Churton Collins, p. 267.

[48] See The Life and Works of Dr. Arbuthnot, by George A. Aitken. Oxford, Clarendon Press.



CHAPTER VI.

DANIEL DEFOE—JOHN DENNIS—COLLEY CIBBER—LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU—EARL OF CHESTERFIELD—LORD LYTTELTON—JOSEPH SPENCE.

[Sidenote: Daniel Defoe (1661-1731).]

The most voluminous writer of his century is popularly remembered as the author of one book, published in old age. Everybody has read Robinson Crusoe, and knows the name of its author; but few readers outside the narrow circle of literary students are aware of Defoe's exhaustless labours as a politician, social reformer, projector, pamphleteer, and novelist.

It would be well for the author's reputation if we knew less about him than we do. There was a time when he was regarded as a noble sufferer in the cause of civil and religious liberty. His faults were credited to his age while his virtues were supposed to place him on an eminence far above the time-servers who despised him. He has been praised as a man courageously living for great aims, who was maligned by the malice of party, and to whose memory scant justice has been done. 'No one,' says Henry Kingsley, 'could come up to the standard of his absolute precision,' and his 'inexorable honesty alienated everyone.' These words were written in 1868. Four years previously, however, the discovery of six letters in the State Paper Office, in Defoe's own hand, had entirely destroyed his character for inexorable honesty, and the researches of his latest and most exhaustive biographer,[49] who regards his hero's vices as virtues, do but serve to give greater prominence to the baseness of his conduct. Defoe, by his own confession, was for many years in the pay of the Government for secret services, taking shares in Tory papers and supervising them as editor, in order to defeat the aims of the party to which he professed to be allied, and of the proprietors with whom he was in partnership. Thus in 1718, he writes as a plea that his labours should be remembered: 'I am, Sir, for this service, posted among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged High Tories—a generation who I profess my very soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions and outrageous words against his majesty's person and government, and his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if I approved it; I am obliged to take all the scandalous and indeed villainous papers that come, and keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them to put them into the News; nay, I often venture to let things pass which are a little shocking that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow in the House of Rimmon, and must humbly recommend myself to his lordship's protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how much the more faithfully I execute the commands I am under.' It would not be fair to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our own day, but the part he played as a servant and spy of the government would have been an act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to have been conscious.

Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De, for no assignable reason, was the son of a butcher and Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who had the youth educated for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a more exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition of the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that peril he began business as a hose factor in Cornhill, and carried it on until he failed about the year 1692. Already he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet secured for him a public appointment which lasted for some years. He was also connected with a brick manufactory at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote for the press, and showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine style, which could be 'understanded of the people.'

In 1698 Defoe published his Essay on Projects, 'which perhaps,' Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life.'

One of the most interesting projects in the book is the proposal to form an Academy on the French model. In 1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only piece he published with his name) entitled A proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English tongue, in which he suggests the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the Queen and her ministers. The idea it will be seen had been anticipated fifteen years before.

'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe writes, 'has been to refine and correct their own language, which they have done to that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all the courts of Christendom as the language allowed to be most universal. I had the honour once to be a member of a small society who seemed to offer at this noble design in England; but the greatness of the work and the modesty of the gentlemen concerned prevailed with them to desist from an enterprise which appeared too great for private hands to undertake. We want indeed a Richelieu to commence such a work, for I am persuaded were there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there would not want capacities who could carry on the work to a glory equal to all that has gone before them. The English tongue is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of such a society than the French, and capable of a much greater perfection. The learned among the French will own that the comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in which the English tongue not only equals, but excels its neighbours.... It is a great pity that a subject so noble should not have some as noble to attempt it; and for a method what greater can be set before us than the Academy of Paris, which, to give the French their due, stands foremost among all the great attempts in the learned part of the world.'

Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an academy for women which should have only one entrance and a large moat round it. With these precautions, spies, he observes, would be unnecessary, since, in his opinion, 'there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to keep the men effectually away.' He had the Eastern notion of guarding women from danger by preventing the access to it, yet he could write:

'A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate part of God's creation; the glory of her Maker, and the great instance of His singular regard to man, His darling creature, to whom He gave the best gift either God could bestow or man receive. And it is the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude in the world to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their minds. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of sublime enjoyments; her person is angelic and her conversation heavenly.... She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to do but to rejoice in her and be thankful.'

In verse Defoe published the True Born Englishman (1701), in defence of King William and his Dutch followers:

'William's the name that's spoke by every tongue, William's the darling subject of my song; Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound, And in eternal dances hand it round. Your early offerings to this altar bring, Make him at once a lover and a king.'

The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For William every tender vow is to be made, he is to be the first thought in the morning, and his name will act as a charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding from the terror of the night.

The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that had he been able to enjoy the profit of his own labour he would have gained above L1,000. He printed nine editions at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile twelve surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few pence, a fraud for which he says he had no remedy but patience. Throughout his busy life of authorship he was indeed continually victimized by pirates.

While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he were a demi-god, he did William good service by his pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted into his confidence.

Up to the king's death in 1702 his course appears to have been straightforward; after the accession of Anne he acted a less honourable part. No fault can be found with his design that year in writing The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that age until the publication of Swift's Modest Proposal, twenty-seven years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious argument. The Dissenters were alarmed, and the most bigoted of High Churchmen delighted. Then, Defoe's aim being discovered, both parties joined in the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers. 'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He was unabashed, but he was not earless.

In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released by Harley. In prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial account of the great storm commemorated in Addison's Campaign. How much of Defoe's narrative is truth and how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that he solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines one to believe that they are not to be trusted, for this was always Defoe's role as a writer of fiction. His first and most deliberate effort is to impose upon his readers, and in this art he is without a rival.

While in Newgate he began his Review, a political journal of great ability. The first number was published in February, 1704, and it existed, though not in its original form, for more than nine years.

'When it is remembered that no other pen was ever employed than that of Defoe, upon a work appearing at such frequent intervals, extending over more than nine years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge, the achievement must be pronounced a great one, even if he had written nothing else. If we add that between the dates of the first and last numbers of the Review he wrote and published no less than eighty other distinct works, containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known, the fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as the greatness of his capacity for labour.'[50]

Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition that he should act in the secret service of the Government, and his work was that of an hireling writer unburdened by principle. When Harley was ejected he made himself useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he went back to Harley, and 'the spirit of the Review changed abruptly.' A more useful man for the work he had undertaken could not be found. His dexterity, his boldness, his knowledge of men and of affairs, his readiness as a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness, fitted him admirably for services which had to be done in secret.

Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise. He was tolerant in an intolerant age, he did his best to forward the Union of England and Scotland, his patriotic spirit was not feigned, his words are often weighty with wisdom, and it has been truly said, that 'his powerful advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable scheme of social improvement that came to the front in his time.'[51]

With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was 'a wonderful mixture of knave and patriot.' The knavery is seen to some extent in his method of workmanship as a man of letters. In A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal[52] the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705 (1706) Defoe's art of mystification is skilfully practised.

'This relation,' he says in the Preface, 'is matter of fact, and attended with such circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace at Maidstone, in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London as it is here worded; which discourse is here attested by a very sober and understanding gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and who positively assured him that the whole matter as it is related and laid down is really true, and what she herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's own mouth.'

In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable appearance of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact that she wore a scoured silk gown, newly made up, which, as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she felt and commended. 'Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "you have seen her indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was scoured."' The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of recommending Drelincourt's volume, A Christian's Defence Against the Fear of Death, then in its third edition. The fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave's story. 'I am unable to say,' Mr. Lee writes, 'when Defoe's "Apparition" became a necessary appendage to the book; but think, that since the eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt has never been published without it.'

When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his first and greatest work of fiction, Robinson Crusoe, he aimed by the constant reiteration of commonplace details to give a matter-of-fact aspect to the narrative, and in most of his later novels, with the exception of Colonel Jack (1722), which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,' Defoe boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect true to biography and to history. To make this more probable he overloads his pages with a number of business-like statements, and with affairs so insignificant and sordid that only his genius can save the narrative from being wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers into the worst dens of vice—his heroes being pickpockets, pirates, and convicts, and his heroines depraved women of the lowest order. The interest felt in Captain Singleton (1720), in Moll Flanders (1722), in Colonel Jack (1722), and in Roxana (1724), is to be found in the minute record of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices. When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone. The atmosphere the reader is forced to breathe in these tales is indeed so oppressive that he will be glad to escape from it into the pure and exhilarating air of a Shakespeare or a Scott.

A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative these tales are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with this judgment. The highest imaginative art is not deceptive art. The fact that Lord Chatham thought the Memoirs of a Cavalier[53] (1720) a true history, is not to the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said, might you claim the highest genius for the painter, whose fruit and flowers were so deceptively painted as to tempt birds to peck at the canvas.

Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary novels,' of which Roxana is the most powerful, is due to scenes which disgust as much as they impress. The vividness with which they are depicted is undeniable, but one does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope. Happily Robinson Crusoe, on which the author's fame rests, is a thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the best, or one of the best, volumes ever written for boys. There is genius as well as extraordinary skill in the way this admirable story is told, but it is not among the fictions which are read with as much pleasure in old age as in youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate for the want of a creative and elevating imagination.

The History of the Plague in London (1722) stands next to Robinson Crusoe in literary merit. Had Defoe been a witness, as he pretends to have been, of the scenes which he describes, the record could not be more vivid. It professes to have been 'written by a citizen who continued all the while in London,' and 'lived without Aldgate Church and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street.' In this case, as in others, the circumstantial character of the narrative led readers to regard it as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his Discourse on the Plague (1744), quotes the book as an authority.

Highly characteristic of Defoe's style, and of his art as a moralist is the Religious Courtship, also published in 1722. It is the fictitious history of a family told partly in dialogue, and so written as to attract the reader in spite of repetitions and of reflections as praiseworthy as they are commonplace. It appeals to a class whose attention would not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in vain, for the book, after passing through a large number of editions, has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work is unobjectionable, though not a little narrow, and it is strange that it should have appeared about the same time as a story so offensively coarse as Moll Flanders.

The most veracious book written by Defoe is A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman, 1724, in three volumes. The full title of the work is too long to quote, but it may be observed that the promises it holds out under five headings are satisfactorily fulfilled. The Tour bears the marks of having been written with great care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe states that before publishing the book he had made seventeen large circuits or separate journeys, and three general tours through the whole island. It contains curious information as to the state of England and Scotland one hundred and seventy years ago, and readers interested in our social progress and the industrial life of the country will find much to interest them in the traveller's shrewd observations and careful details. The love of mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than forty years later was a passion unknown to Defoe and to most of his contemporaries. In the Tour Westmoreland is described as the wildest, most barbarous and frightful country of any which the author had passed over. He observes that it is 'of no advantage to represent horror,' and the impassable hills with their snow-covered tops 'seemed,' he says, 'to tell us all the pleasant part of England was at an end.' The Tour exhibits Defoe's literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the clearest language. A homely style which fulfils its purpose has a merit deserving of recognition. For steady work upon the road the sober hackney is of more service than the race-horse.

Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs, yet, like his own Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731, owing to some strange circumstance of which there is no record, died a lonely death at a lodging-house at Moorfields. He has been called the father of the English novel, and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale Steele and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a novelist he is without refinement, without ideality, without passion; he looks at life from a low level, but in the narrow territory of which he is master—the art of realistic invention—his power of insight is incontestible. Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy Nature debase her. For Nature must be interpreted by Art, since only thus can we obtain a likeness that shall be both beautiful and true. Defoe, nevertheless, has contributed one book of lasting value to the literature of his country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.

[Sidenote: John Dennis (1657-1733-4).]

John Dennis was born in London and educated at Harrow and Caius College, Cambridge. His relations with Pope give him a more prominent position among men of letters than he would otherwise deserve, and mark with unpleasing distinctness the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted in Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his Essay on Criticism. Dennis had written a tragedy called Appius and Virginia, and Pope, who had a grudge against him for not admiring his Pastorals, showed his spite in the following lines:

'But Appius reddens at each word you speak, And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye, Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'

It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects of an antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in return as a 'young, squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals, and the very bow of the god of Love.' 'He has reason,' he adds, 'to thank the good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute disposal of him, his life had been no longer than one of his poems—the life of half a day.'

Dennis's pamphlet on the Essay caused Pope some pain when he heard of it, 'But it was quite over,' he told Spence, 'as soon as I came to look into his book and found he was in such a passion.'

The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope's flesh for many a year, and the poet showed his irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse. Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the poet's blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made several shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.

Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic poem in blank verse called The Monument, sacred to the immortal memory of 'the good, the great, the god-like, William III.'; a poem, also in blank verse, and still more 'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the Battle of Blenheim, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach—and a poem equally laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704) that 'poetry unless it pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in the world.' This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize that his own verse was contemptible. In this essay, which contains many sound critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt at that time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration of the sublime, a passage from his own paraphrase of the Te Deum:

'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies, Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze; Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light At once in broad dimensions strike our sight; Millions behind, in the remoter skies, Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes; And when our wearied eyes want farther strength To pierce the void's immeasurable length Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly, And still remoter flaming worlds descry; But even an Angel's comprehensive thought Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought; Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought, Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'

It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse that these inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages contained in Paradise Lost. Milton describes the moon unveiling her peerless light; and the poet-critic exhibits in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering thoughts' about the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is unfortunate.

His tragedies, Iphigenia (1704), Liberty Asserted (1704), Appius and Virginia (1709), and a comedy called A Plot and No Plot (1697) were brought upon the stage. Liberty Asserted, which was received with applause due to the violence of its attacks upon the French, although called a tragedy, does not end tragically. The heroine's patriotism is so fervid that she professes herself willing, while loving one man, to marry another whom she does not love, if her country deems him the more worthy.

Among other poetical attempts, Dennis addressed a Pindaric Ode to Dryden, and the great poet, with the flattery which he was always ready to lavish on his well-wishers, called him 'one of the greatest masters' in that kind of verse. 'You have the sublimity of sense as well as sound,' he wrote, 'and know how far the boldness of a poet may lawfully extend.'

It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully opposed one of the ablest controversialists of the age. In The Absolute Unlawfulness of Stage Entertainments fully demonstrated, William Law attacked dramatic representations, not on account of the evils at that time associated with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.' 'To suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing innocent lust, sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and throughout the pamphlet this strain of fierce hostility is maintained.

'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with some of the very ablest men of his day, with men like Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal and Wesley; and it may safely be said that he never came forth from the contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is perfectly true that what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry, he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian dramatic poet, and on others Aratus and Epimenides. He was educated in all the learning of the Grecians, and could not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so far from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them for the instruction and conversion of mankind."'

Dennis's pamphlet, The Stage defended from Scripture, Reason, Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years, was published in 1726. In his latter days he suffered from two grievous calamities, poverty and blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, The Provoked Husband, was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous than the kindness. There is a story, to which allusion is made in the Dunciad, that Dennis had invented some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being once present at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his art had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is my thunder.' The critic was also known to have an intense hatred of the French and of the Pope, and these peculiarities are not forgotten in the prologue.

After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and weakness, his doubtful friend adds:

'How changed from him who made the boxes groan, And shook the stage with thunders all his own! Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope, Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope! If there's a Briton then, true bred and born, Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn; If there's a critic of distinguished rage; If there's a senior who contemns this age; Let him to-night his just assistance lend, And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'

Dennis got L100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer remembered,

'The rising ages shall redeem his name, And nations read him into lasting fame.'

It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him from 'glorious John' alone.

[Sidenote: Colley Cibber (1671-1757).]

Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the mercurial 'King Colley' was not.

Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, Love's Last Shift (1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play, The Careless Husband (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he was also successful, and played for L50 a night, the highest sum ever given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in 1741, 'and all the world will be there.'

It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write poetry, that Cibber displayed his inferiority. The honour was conferred in 1730, two years after Gay had produced the Beggar's Opera, when Pope was in the height of his fame, when Thomson had published his Seasons and Young The Universal Passion. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was out of the running, but there were poets living who would have saved the office from the disgrace brought upon it by Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope, 'if I had any inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's gift; but who makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.' The sole result of the appointment that deserves to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as just as it is severe:

'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain, And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign; Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing, For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'

Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works; there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment of The Careless Husband,[54] which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his infidelities:

'Sir Charles. Come, I will not shock your softness by any untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come. Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot, shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered heart.

'Lady Easy. Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward of long-desiring love—thus, thus to have you mine is something more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding joy....

'Sir Charles. Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me; but remember, I insist upon it—let thy woman be discharged this minute.'

It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid moralist. Moreover his comedy, like that of the dramatists of the Restoration, is of a wholly artificial type. Human nature has comparatively little place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the fops and fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a world which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.

His one work which is still read by all students of the drama, and by many who are not students, is the Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740), which Dr. Johnson, who sneered at actors, allowed to be very entertaining. It is that, and something more, for it contains much just and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter of about thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not spare Shakespeare.

[Sidenote: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).]

Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied epistle, written with a view to publication, may have its value, but it cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to write badly, and to make a display of knowledge is to reveal an ignorance of the art.

For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale, and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and Cowper.

In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in interest. To this Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister, Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be as good as Madame de Sevigne's forty years hence;' and they are, perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of their value, which Madame de Sevigne's were not. Lady Mary, who may be said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty, but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty she translated the Encheiridion of Epictetus. She was a great reader and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her Life and Letters. She is a prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is perhaps the best known.

Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her future husband, whom she requests to settle an annuity upon her in order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father] whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'

This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they lived apart.

Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been more successfully reproduced in prose.'[55]

'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'

Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.

[Sidenote: Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).]

Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and during his brief administration did all that man could do for the benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.

On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue, practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had been with all the princes in Europe.'

As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in the World (1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary reputation is based upon the Letters (1774)[56] to his illegitimate son written for the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The Letters, which Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours, abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said of them from a moral point of view is that they show the extremely low standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting his son and advancing his interest in life, and so far as morality will do this it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the elegant pleasure of a rational being.'

Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is told that the art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession than perhaps in any other. 'Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions to such men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion and in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of them behind their backs, in companies who you have reason to believe will tell them again.'

The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined by his father was not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So effectually did he conceal his marriage that the Earl was not aware of it until after his son's death.

[Sidenote: George Lyttelton (1708-1773).]

George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place among the poets in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Some of his best verses were written when a school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever school-boy. The Monody on his wife's death has the merit of sincere feeling, expressed in one or two passages poetically. In 1747 he published his Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul, 'a treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself conspicuous in parliament as an opponent of Walpole, and after the fall of that minister was appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published his Dialogues of the Dead, a volume for which he owes much to Fenelon. This was followed a few years later by a History of Henry II. in three volumes, upon which great labour was expended. He is said to have had the whole history printed twice over, and many sheets four or five times, an amusement which cost him L1,000. The work is praised by Mr. J. R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the time.'

Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley, Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his friends.

[Sidenote: Joseph Spence (1698-1768).]

Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope in the poet's later life, had the happy peculiarity of keeping free from the party animosities of the time. His course throughout was that of a gentleman, and to him we owe the little volume of Anecdotes which every student of Pope has learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity and hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character in his pages, nor any trace of the dramatic skill which makes Boswell's narrative so delightful. At the same time there is every indication that he strove to give the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own words. Johnson and Warton saw the Anecdotes in manuscript, but strange to say, the collection was not published until 1820, when two separate editions appeared simultaneously. The publication by Spence in 1727 of An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey led to an acquaintance which soon became intimate between the poet and his critic. Apart from literature, they had more than one point of interest in common. Like Pope, Spence was devoted to his mother, and like Pope he had a passion for landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging disposition are said to be portrayed in the Tales of the Genii, under the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves. In 1747 he published his Polymetis, an Enquiry into the agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists. Under the nom de plume of Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of Moralities or Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations (1753), and in the following year an account of the blind poet Blacklock. For a learned tailor, Thomas Hill by name, he also performed a similarly kind office, comparing him in A Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch with the famous linguist Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1728, and held the post for ten years. His end was a sad one. He was accidentally drowned in a canal in the garden which he had loved so well.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings, extending from 1716 to 1729. By William Lee. 3 vols.

[50] Lee's Defoe, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity for work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous catalogue of his publications—254 in number—contains many which are ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as internal evidence.

[51] English Men of Letters—Daniel Defoe. By William Minto. P. 170.

[52] See note on page 248.

[53] There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments, that the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel. That it may be based upon some authentic document is highly probable, although it is not necessary to agree with his biographer, that 'to claim for Defoe the authorship of the Cavalier, as a work of pure fiction, would be equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman genius.'

[54] Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. ii., p. 597.

[55] Four Centuries of English Letters, edited and arranged by W. Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.

[56] These Letters were not published until after the earl's death, but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The first letter of the series was written in 1738.



CHAPTER VII.

FRANCIS ATTERBURY—LORD SHAFTESBURY—BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE—LORD BOLINGBROKE—BISHOP BERKELEY—WILLIAM LAW—BISHOP BUTLER—BISHOP WARBURTON.

[Sidenote: Francis Atterbury (1662-1732).]

During the first half of the eighteenth century the position held by Bishop Atterbury was one of high eminence. Addison ranked him with the most illustrious geniuses of his age; Pope said he was one of the greatest men in polite learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge called him the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for style his sermons are among the best.

Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory, lack the merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous for eloquence than for weightiness of matter, although extremely popular at the time, have long ceased to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne wits,—and he was admired by them all,—is a sufficient reason for saying a few words about him in these pages.

He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster under the famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a good reputation. He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C. Boyle, a young man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity to enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship. For this rash deed Atterbury must be held responsible. Sir William Temple had published a foolish but eloquently written essay in defence of the ancient writers in comparison with the modern. In this essay he praises warmly the Letters of Phalaris. Of these letters Boyle, with the help of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church, published a new edition to satisfy the demand caused by Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply by a remark of Boyle in his preface, proved that the Letters were not only spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury replied to Bentley's Dissertations, and to the discussion, as the reader will remember, Swift added wit if not argument.

For the moment Boyle's, or rather Atterbury's success, was great, for wit and rhetoric are powerful persuasives. The authors, too, had the Christ Church men to back them, the arch-critic having treated them with contempt. Atterbury's share in the work, as he tells Boyle, "consisted in writing more than half the book, in reviewing a great part of the rest, and in transcribing the whole." His Examination of Dr. Bentley's Dissertations (1698) is a brilliant piece of work, and 'deserves the praise,' says Macaulay, 'whatever that praise may be worth, of being the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he was profoundly ignorant.' Having taken holy orders, Atterbury became a court preacher, and ample clerical honours fell to his share. In 1700 he published a book entitled, The Rights, Powers, and Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated, which was warmly applauded by High Churchmen. In 1701 he was appointed Archdeacon of Totness, and afterwards Prebend of Exeter. He became the favourite chaplain of Queen Anne, and when Prince George died proved the power of his eloquence by representing 'his unassuming virtues in such high relief that his widow could not help feeling her irreparable loss.'