Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2
by
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Part 15 out of 16
genius. He was indeed the reverse of a great dramatist, the very
antithesis to a great dramatist. All his characters, Harold
looking on the sky, from which his country and the sun are
disappearing together, the Giaour standing apart in the gloom of
the side aisle, and casting a haggard scowl from under his long
hood at the crucifix and the censer, Conrad leaning on his sword
by the watch-tower, Lara smiling on the dancers, Alp gazing
steadily on the fatal cloud as it passes before the moon, Manfred
wandering among the precipices of Berne, Azzo on the judgment-
seat, Ugo at the bar, Lambro frowning on the siesta of his
daughter and Juan, Cain presenting his unacceptable offering, are
essentially the same. The varieties are varieties merely of age,
situation, and outward show. If ever Lord Byron attempted to
exhibit men of a different kind, he always made them either
insipid or unnatural. Selim is nothing. Bonnivart is nothing. Don
Juan, in the first and best cantos, is a feeble copy of the Page
in the Marriage of Figaro. Johnson, the man whom Juan meets in
the slave-market, is a most striking failure. How differently
would Sir Walter Scott have drawn a bluff, fearless Englishman,
in such a situation! The portrait would have seemed to walk out
of the canvas.
Sardanapalus is more closely drawn than any dramatic personage
that we can remember. His heroism and his effeminacy, his
contempt of death and his dread of a weighty helmet, his kingly
resolution to be seen in the foremost ranks, and the anxiety with
which he calls for a looking-glass that he may be seen to
advantage, are contrasted, it is true, with all the point of
Juvenal. Indeed the hint of the character seems to have been
taken from what Juvenal says of Otho:
"Speculum civilis sarcina belli.
Nimirum summi ducis est occidere Galbam,
Et curare cutem summi constantia civis,
Bedriaci in campo spolium affectare Palati
Et pressum in faciem digitis extendere panem."
These are excellent lines in a satire. But it is not the business
of the dramatist to exhibit characters in this sharp antithetical
way. It is not thus that Shakspeare makes Prince Hal rise from
the rake of Eastcheap into the hero of Shrewsbury, and sink again
into the rake of Eastcheap. It is not thus that Shakspeare has
exhibited the union of effeminacy and valour in Antony. A
dramatist cannot commit a greater error than that of following
those pointed descriptions of character in which satirists and
historians indulge so much. It is by rejecting what is natural
that satirists and historians produce these striking characters.
Their great object generally is to ascribe to every man as many
contradictory qualities as possible: and this is an object easily
attained. By judicious selection and judicious exaggeration, the
intellect and the disposition of any human being might be
described as being made up of nothing but startling contrasts. If
the dramatist attempts to create a being answering to one of
these descriptions, he fails, because he reverses an imperfect
analytical process. He produces, not a man, but a personified
epigram. Very eminent writers have fallen into this snare. Ben
Jonson has given us a Hermogenes, taken from the lively lines of
Horace; but the inconsistency which is so amusing in the satire
appears unnatural and disgusts us in the play. Sir Walter Scott
has committed a far more glaring error of the same kind in the
novel of Peveril. Admiring, as every judicious reader must
admire, the keen and vigorous lines in which Dryden satirised the
Duke of Buckingham, Sir Walter attempted to make a Duke of
Buckingham to suit them, a real living Zimri; and he made, not a
man, but the most grotesque of all monsters. A writer who should
attempt to introduce into a play or a novel such a Wharton as the
Wharton of Pope, or a Lord Hervey answering to Sporus, would fail
in the same manner.
But to return to Lord Byron; his women, like his men, are all of
one breed. Haidee is a half-savage and girlish Julia; Julia is a
civilised and matronly Haidee. Leila is a wedded Zuleika, Zuleika
a virgin Leila. Gulnare and Medora appear to have been
intentionally opposed to each other. Yet the difference is a
difference of situation only. A slight change of circumstances
would, it should seem, have sent Gulnare to the lute of Medora,
and armed Medora with the dagger of Gulnare.
It is hardly too much to say, that Lord Byron could exhibit only
one man and only one woman, a man, proud, moody, cynical, with
defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his
kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong
affection: a woman all softness and gentleness, loving to caress
and to be caressed, but capable of being transformed by passion
into a tigress.
Even these two characters, his only two characters, he could not
exhibit dramatically. He exhibited them in the manner, not of
Shakspeare, but of Clarendon. He analysed them; he made them
analyse themselves; but he did not make them show themselves. We
are told, for example, in many lines of great force and spirit,
that the speech of Lara was bitterly sarcastic, that he talked
little of his travels, that if he was much questioned about them,
his answers became short, and his brow gloomy. But we have none
of Lara's sarcastic speeches or short answers. It is not thus
that the great masters of human nature have portrayed human
beings. Homer never tells us that Nestor loved to relate long
stories about his youth. Shakspeare never tells us that in the
mind of Iago everything that is beautiful and endearing was
associated with some filthy and debasing idea.
It is curious to observe the tendency which the dialogue of Lord
Byron always has to lose its character of a dialogue, and to
become soliloquy. The scenes between Manfred and the Chamois-
hunter, between Manfred and the Witch of the Alps, between
Manfred and the Abbot, are instances of this tendency. Manfred,
after a few unimportant speeches, has all the talk to himself.
The other interlocutors are nothing more than good listeners.
They drop an occasional question or ejaculation which sets
Manfred off again on the inexhaustible topic of his personal
feelings. If we examine the fine passages in Lord Byron's dramas,
the description of Rome, for example, in Manfred, the description
of a Venetian revel in Marino Faliero, the concluding invective
which the old doge pronounces against Venice, we shall find that
there is nothing dramatic in these speeches, that they derive
none of their effect from the character or situation of the
speaker, and that they would have been as fine, or finer, if they
had been published as fragments of blank verse by Lord Byron.
There is scarcely a speech in Shakspeare of which the same could
be said. No skilful reader of the plays of Shakspeare can endure
to see what are called the fine things taken out, under the name
of "Beauties," or of "Elegant Extracts," or to hear any
single passage, "To be or not to be," for example, quoted as a
sample of the great poet. "To be or not to be" has merit
undoubtedly as a composition. It would have merit if put into the
mouth of a chorus. But its merit as a composition vanishes when
compared with its merit as belonging to Hamlet. It is not too
much to say that the great plays of Shakspeare would lose less by
being deprived of all the passages which are commonly called the
fine passages, than those passages lose by being read separately
from the play. This is perhaps the highest praise which can be
given to a dramatist.
On the other hand, it may be doubted whether there is, in all
Lord Byron's plays, a single remarkable passage which owes any
portion of its interest or effect to its connection with the
characters or the action. He has written only one scene, as far
as we can recollect, which is dramatic even in manner--the scene
between Lucifer and Cain. The conference is animated, and each of
the interlocutors has a fair share of it. But this scene, when
examined, will be found to be a confirmation of our remarks. It
is a dialogue only in form. It is a soliloquy in essence. It is
in reality a debate carried on within one single unquiet and
sceptical mind. The questions and the answers, the objections and
the solutions, all belong to the same character.
A writer who showed so little dramatic skill in works professedly
dramatic, was not likely to write narrative with dramatic effect.
Nothing could indeed be more rude and careless than the structure
of his narrative poems. He seems to have thought, with the hero
of the Rehearsal, that the plot was good for nothing but to bring
in fine things. His two longest works, Childe Harold and Don
Juan, have no plan whatever. Either of them might have been
extended to any length, or cut short at any point. The state in
which the Giaour appears illustrates the manner in which all
Byron's poems were constructed. They are all, like the Giaour,
collections of fragments; and, though there may be no empty
spaces marked by asterisks, it is still easy to perceive, by the
clumsiness of the joining, where the parts for the sake of which
the whole was composed end and begin.
It was in description and meditation that Byron excelled.
"Description," as he said in Don Juan, "was his forte." His
manner is indeed peculiar, and is almost unequalled; rapid,
sketchy, full of vigour; the selection happy, the strokes few and
bold. In spite of the reverence which we feel for the genius of
Mr. Wordsworth we cannot but think that the minuteness of his
descriptions often diminishes their effect. He has accustomed
himself to gaze on nature with the eye of a lover, to dwell on
every feature, and to mark every change of aspect. Those beauties
which strike the most negligent observer, and those which only a
close attention discovers, are equally familiar to him and are
equally prominent in his poetry. The proverb of old Hesiod, that
half is often more than the whole, is eminently applicable to
description. The policy of the Dutch, who cut down most of the
precious trees in the Spice Islands, in order to raise the value
of what remained, was a policy which poets would do well to
imitate. It was a policy which no poet understood better than
Lord Byron. Whatever his faults might be, he was never, while his
mind retained its vigour, accused of prolixity.
His descriptions, great as was their intrinsic merit, derived.
their principal interest from the feeling which always mingled
with them. He was himself the beginning, the middle, and the end,
of all his own poetry, the hero of every tale, the chief object
in every landscape. Harold, Lara, Manfred, and a crowd of other
characters, were universally considered merely as loose
incognitos of Byron; and there is every reason to believe that he
meant them to be so considered. The wonders of the outer world,
the Tagus, with the mighty fleets of England riding on its bosom,
the towers of Cintra overhanging the shaggy forest of cork-trees
and willows, the glaring marble of Pentelicus, the banks of the
Rhine, the glaciers of Clarens, the sweet Lake of Leman, the dell
of Egeria with its summer-birds and rustling lizards, the
shapeless ruins of Rome overgrown with ivy and wall-flowers, the,
stars, the sea, the mountains, all were mere accessories, the
background to one dark and melancholy figure.
Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole eloquence of
scorn, misanthropy, and despair. That Marah was never dry. No art
could sweeten, no draughts could exhaust, its perennial waters of
bitterness. Never was there such variety in monotony as that of
Byron. From maniac laughter to piercing lamentation, there was
not a single note of human anguish of which he was not master.
Year after year, and month after month, he continued to repeat
that to be wretched is the destiny of all; that to be eminently
wretched is the destiny of the eminent; that all the desires by
which we are cursed lead alike to misery, if they are not
gratified, to the misery of disappointment; if they are
gratified, to the misery of satiety. His heroes are men who have
arrived by different roads at the same goal of despair, who are
sick of life, who are at war with society, who are supported in
their anguish only by an unconquerable pride resembling that of
Prometheus on the rock or of Satan in the burning marl, who can
master their agonies by the force of their will, and who to the
last defy the whole power of earth and heaven. He always
described himself as a man of the same kind with his favourite
creations, as a man whose heart had been withered, whose capacity
for happiness was gone and could not be restored, but whose
invincible spirit dared the worst that could befall him here or
hereafter.
How much of this morbid feeling sprang from an original disease
of the mind, how much from real misfortune, how much from the
nervousness of dissipation, how much was fanciful, how much was
merely affected, it is impossible for us, and would probably have
been impossible for the most intimate friends of Lord Byron, to
decide. Whether there ever existed, or can ever exist, a person
answering to the description which he gave of himself may be
doubted; but that he was not such a person is beyond all doubt.
It is ridiculous to imagine that a man whose mind was really
imbued with scorn of his fellow-creatures would have published
three or four books every year in order to tell them so; or that
a man who could say with truth that he neither sought sympathy
nor needed it would have admitted all Europe to hear his farewell
to his wife, and his blessings on his child. In the second canto
of Childe Harold, he tells us that he is insensible to fame and
obloquy:
"Ill may such contest now the spirit move,
Which heeds nor keen reproof nor partial praise."
Yet we know on the best evidence that, a day or two before he
published these lines, he was greatly, indeed childishly, elated
by the compliments paid to his maiden speech in the House of
Lords.
We are far, however, from thinking that his sadness was
altogether feigned. He was naturally a man of great sensibility;
he had been ill-educated; his feelings had been early exposed to
sharp trials; he had been crossed in his boyish love; he had been
mortified by the failure of his first literary efforts; he was
straitened in pecuniary circumstances; he was unfortunate in his
domestic relations; the public treated him with cruel injustice;
his health and spirits suffered from his dissipated habits of
life; he was, on the whole, an unhappy man. He early discovered
that, by parading his unhappiness before the multitude, he
produced an immense sensation. The world gave him every
encouragement to talk about his mental sufferings. The interest
which his first confessions excited induced him to affect much
that he did not feel; and the affectation probably reacted on his
feelings. How far the character in which he exhibited himself was
genuine, and how far theatrical, it would probably have puzzled
himself to say.
There can be no doubt that this remarkable man owed the vast
influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as
much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry. We
never could very clearly understand how it is that egotism, so
unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing; or
how it is that men who affect in their compositions qualities and
feelings which they have not, impose so much more easily on their
contemporaries than on posterity. The interest which the loves of
Petrarch excited in his own time, and the pitying fondness with
which half Europe looked upon Rousseau, are well known. To
readers of our age, the love of Petrarch seems to have been love
of that kind which breaks no hearts, and the sufferings of
Rousseau to have deserved laughter rather than pity, to have been
partly counterfeited, and partly the consequences of his own
perverseness and vanity.
What our grandchildren may think of the character of Lord Byron,
as exhibited in his poetry, we will not pretend to guess. It is
certain, that the interest which he excited during his life is
without a parallel in literary history. The feeling with which
young readers of poetry regarded him can be conceived only by
those who have experienced it. To people who are unacquainted
with real calamity, "nothing is so dainty sweet as lovely
melancholy." This faint image of sorrow has in all ages been
considered by young gentlemen as an agreeable excitement. Old
gentlemen and middle-aged gentlemen have so many real causes of
sadness that they are rarely inclined "to be as sad as night only
for wantonness." Indeed they want the power almost as much as the
inclination. We know very few persons engaged in active life,
who, even if they were to procure stools to be melancholy upon,
and were to sit down with all the premeditation of Master
Stephen, would be able to enjoy much of what somebody calls the
"ecstasy of woe."
Among that large class of young persons whose reading is almost
entirely confined to works of imagination, the popularity of Lord
Byron was unbounded. They bought pictures of him; they treasured
up the smallest relics of him; they learned his poems by heart,
and did their best to write like him, and to look like him. Many
of them practised at the glass in the hope of catching the curl
of the upper lip, and the scowl of the brow, which appear in some
of his portraits. A few discarded their neck-cloths in imitation
of their great leader. For some years the Minerva press sent
forth no novel without a mysterious, unhappy, Lara-like peer. The
number of hopeful undergraduates and medical students who became
things of dark imaginings, on whom the freshness of the heart
ceased to fall like dew, whose passions had consumed themselves
to dust, and to whom the relief of tears was denied, passes all
calculation. This was not the worst. There was created in the
minds of many of these enthusiasts a pernicious and absurd
association between intellectual power and moral depravity. From
the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, compounded
of misanthropy and voluptuousness, a system in which the two
great commandments were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your
neighbour's wife.
This affectation has passed away; and a few more years will
destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once
belonged to the name of Byron. To us he is still a man, young,
noble, and unhappy. To our children he will be merely a writer;
and their impartial judgment will appoint his place among
writers; without regard to his rank or to his private history.
That his poetry will undergo a severe sifting, that much of what
has been admired by his contemporaries will be rejected as
worthless, we have little doubt. But we have as little doubt
that, after the closest scrutiny, there will still remain much
that can only perish with the English language.
MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY
(April 1830)
1. The Omnipresence of the Deity: a Poem By ROBERT MONTGOMERY.
Eleventh Edition. London. 1830.
2. Satan: a Poem By ROBERT MONTGOMERY. Second Edition. London:
1830.
THE wise men of antiquity loved to convey instruction under the
covering of apologue; and though this practice is generally
thought childish, we shall make no apology for adopting it on the
present occasion. A generation which has bought eleven editions
of a poem by Mr. Robert Montgomery may well condescend to listen
to a fable of Pilpay.
A pious Brahmin, it is written, made a vow that on a certain day
he would sacrifice a sheep, and on the appointed morning he went
forth to buy one. There lived in his neighbourhood three rogues
who knew of his vow, and laid a scheme for profiting by it. The
first met him and said, "Oh Brahmin, wilt thou buy a sheep? I
have one fit for sacrifice." "It is for that very purpose," said
the holy man, "that I came forth this day." Then the impostor
opened a bag, and brought out of it an unclean beast, an ugly
dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried out, "Wretch, who
touchest things impure, and utterest things untrue; callest thou
that cur a sheep?" "Truly," answered the other, "it is a sheep of
the finest fleece, and of the sweetest flesh. Oh Brahmin, it will
be an offering most acceptable to the gods." "Friend," said the
Brahmin, either thou or I must be blind."
Just then one of the accomplices came up. "Praised be the gods,"
said the second rogue, "that I have been saved the trouble of
going to the market for a sheep! This is such a sheep as I
wanted. For how much wilt thou sell it?" When the Brahmin heard
this, his mind waved to and fro, like one swinging in the air at
a holy festival. "Sir," said he to the new comer, "take heed what
thou dost; this is no sheep, but an unclean cur." "Oh Brahmin,"
said the new corner, "thou art drunk or mad!"
At this time the third confederate drew near. "Let us ask this
man," said the Brahmin, "what the creature is, and I will stand
by what he shall say." To this the others agreed; and the Brahmin
called out, "Oh stranger, what dost thou call this beast?"
"Surely, oh Brahmin," said the knave, "it is a fine sheep." Then
the Brahmin said, "Surely the gods have taken away my senses";
and he asked pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it for
a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the
gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with
a sore disease in all his joints.
Thus, or nearly thus, if we remember rightly, runs the story of
the Sanscrit Aesop. The moral, like the moral of every fable that
is worth the telling, lies on the surface. The writer evidently
means to caution us against the practices of puffers, a class of
people who have more than once talked the public into the most
absurd errors, but who surely never played a more curious or a
more difficult trick than when they passed Mr. Robert Montgomery
off upon the world as a great poet.
In an age in which there are so few readers that a writer cannot
subsist on the sum arising from the sale of his works, no man who
has not an independent fortune can devote himself to literary
pursuits, unless he is assisted by patronage. In such an age,
accordingly, men of letters too often pass their lives in
dangling at the heels of the wealthy and powerful; and all the
faults which dependence tends to produce, pass into their
character. They become the parasites and slaves of the great. It
is melancholy to think how many of the highest and most
exquisitely formed of human intellects have been condemned to the
ignominious labour of disposing the commonplaces of adulation in
new forms and brightening them into new splendour. Horace
invoking Augustus in the most enthusiastic language of religious
veneration; Statius flattering a tyrant, and the minion of a
tyrant, for a morsel of bread; Ariosto versifying the whole
genealogy of a niggardly patron; Tasso extolling the heroic
virtues of the wretched creature who locked him up in a madhouse:
these are but a few of the instances which might easily be given
of the degradation to which those must submit who, not possessing
a competent fortune, are resolved to write when there are
scarcely any who read.
This evil the progress of the human mind tends to remove. As a
taste for books becomes more and more common, the patronage of
individuals becomes less and less necessary. In the middle of the
last century a marked change took place. The tone of literary
men, both in this country and in France, became higher and more
independent. Pope boasted that he was the "one poet" who had
"pleased by manly ways"; he derided the soft dedications with
which Halifax had been fed, asserted his own superiority over the
pensioned Boileau, and gloried in being not the follower, but the
friend, of nobles and princes. The explanation of all this is
very simple. Pope was the first Englishman who, by the mere sale
of his writings, realised a sum which enabled him to live in
comfort and in perfect independence. Johnson extols him for the
magnanimity which he showed in inscribing his Iliad, not to a
minister or a peer, but to Congreve. In our time this would
scarcely be a subject for praise. Nobody is astonished when Mr.
Moore pays a compliment of this kind to Sir Walter Scott, or Sir
Walter Scott to Mr. Moore. The idea of either of those gentlemen
looking out for some lord who would be likely to give him a few
guineas in return for a fulsome dedication seems laughably
incongruous. Yet this is exactly what Dryden or Otway would have
done; and it would be hard to blame them for it. Otway is said to
have been choked with a piece of bread which he devoured in the
rage of hunger; and, whether this story be true or false, he was
beyond all question miserably poor. Dryden, at near seventy, when
at the head of the literary men of England, without equal or
second, received three hundred pounds for his Fables, a
collection of ten thousand verses, and of such verses as no man
then living, except himself, could have produced, Pope, at
thirty, had laid up between six and seven thousand pounds, the
fruits of his poetry. It was not, we suspect, because he had a
higher spirit or a more scrupulous conscience than his
predecessors, but because he had a larger income, that he kept up
the dignity of the literary character so much better than they
had done.
From the time of Pope to the present day the readers have been
constantly becoming more and more numerous, and the writers,
consequently, more and more independent. It is assuredly a great
evil that men, fitted by their talents and acquirements to
enlighten and charm the world, should be reduced to the necessity
of flattering wicked and foolish patrons in return for the
sustenance of life. But, though we heartily rejoice that this
evil is removed, we cannot but see with concern that another evil
has succeeded to it. The public is now the patron, and a most
liberal patron. All that the rich and powerful bestowed on
authors from the time of Maecenas to that of Harley would not, we
apprehend, make up a sum equal to that which has been paid by
English booksellers to authors during the last fifty years. Men
of letters have accordingly ceased to court individuals, and have
begun to court the public. They formerly used flattery. They now
use puffing.
Whether the old or the new vice be the worse, whether those who
formerly lavished insincere praise on others, or those who now
contrive by every art of beggary and bribery to stun the public
with praises of themselves, disgrace their vocation the more
deeply, we shall not attempt to decide. But of this we are sure,
that it is high time to make a stand against the new trickery.
The puffing of books is now so shamefully and so successfully
carried on that it is the duty of all who are anxious for the
purity of the national taste, or for the honour of the literary
character, to join in discountenancing the practice. All the pens
that ever were employed in magnifying Bish's lucky office,
Romanis's fleecy hosiery, Packwood's razor strops, and Rowland's
Kalydor, all the placard-bearers of Dr. Eady, all the wall-
chalkers of Day and Martin, seem to have taken service with the
poets and novelists of this generation. Devices which in the
lowest trades are considered as disreputable are adopted without
scruple, and improved upon with a despicable ingenuity, by people
engaged in a pursuit which never was and never will be considered
as a mere trade by any man of honour and virtue. A butcher of the
higher class disdains to ticket his meat. A mercer of the higher
class would be ashamed to hang up papers in his window inviting
the passers-by to look at the stock of a bankrupt, all of the
first quality, and going for half the value. We expect some
reserve, some decent pride, in our hatter and our bootmaker. But
no artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too
abject for a man of letters.
It is amusing to think over the history of most of the
publications which have had a run during the last few years. The
publisher is often the publisher of some periodical work. In this
periodical work the first flourish of trumpets is sounded. The
peal is then echoed and re-echoed by all the other periodical
works over which the publisher, or the author, or the author's
coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers are for a
fortnight filled with puffs of all the various kinds which
Sheridan enumerated, direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes
the praise is laid on thick for simple-minded people. "Pathetic,"
"sublime," "splendid," "graceful," "brilliant wit," "exquisite
humour," and other phrases equally flattering, fall in a shower
as thick and as sweet as the sugarplums at a Roman carnival.
Sometimes greater art is used. A sinecure has been offered to the
writer if he would suppress his work, or if he would even soften
down a few of his incomparable portraits. A distinguished
military and political character has challenged the inimitable
satirist of the vices of the great; and the puffer is glad to
learn that the parties have been bound over to keep the peace.
Sometimes it is thought expedient that the puffer should put on a
grave face, and utter his panegyric in the form of admonition.
"Such attacks on private character cannot be too much condemned.
Even the exuberant wit of our author, and the irresistible power
of his withering sarcasm, are no excuses for that utter disregard
which he manifests for the feelings of others. We cannot but
wonder that a writer of such transcendent talents, a writer who
is evidently no stranger to the kindly charities and
sensibilities of our nature, should show so little tenderness to
the foibles of noble and distinguished individuals, with whom it
is clear, from every page of his work, that he must have been
constantly mingling in society." These are but tame and feeble
imitations of the paragraphs with which the daily papers are
filled whenever an attorney's clerk or an apothecary's assistant
undertakes to tell the public in bad English and worse French,
how people tie their neckcloths and eat their dinners in
Grosvenor Square. The editors of the higher and more respectable
newspapers usually prefix the words "Advertisement," or "From a
Correspondent," to such paragraphs. But this makes little
difference. The panegyric is extracted, and the significant
heading omitted. The fulsome eulogy makes its appearance on the
covers of all the Reviews and Magazines, with Times or Globe
affixed, though the editors of the Times and the Globe have no
more to do with it than with Mr. Goss's way of making old rakes
young again.
That people who live by personal slander should practise these
arts is not surprising. Those who stoop to write calumnious books
may well stoop to puff them; and that the basest of all trades
should be carried on in the basest of all manners is quite proper
and as it should be. But how any man who has the least self-
respect, the least regard for his own personal dignity, can
condescend to persecute the public with this Ragfair importunity,
we do not understand. Extreme poverty may, indeed, in some
degree, be an excuse for employing these shifts, as it may be an
excuse for stealing a leg of mutton. But we really think that a
man of spirit and delicacy would quite as soon satisfy his wants
in the one way as in the other.
It is no excuse for an author that the praises of journalists are
procured by the money or influence of his publishers, and not by
his own. It is his business to take such precautions as may
prevent others from doing what must degrade him. It is for his
honour as a gentleman, and, if he is really a man of talents, it
will eventually be for his honour and interest as a writer, that
his works should come before the public recommended by their own
merits alone, and should be discussed with perfect freedom. If
his objects be really such as he may own without shame, he will
find that they will, in the long-run, be better attained by
suffering the voice of criticism to be fairly heard. At present,
we too often see a writer attempting to obtain literary fame as
Shakspeare's usurper obtains sovereignty. The publisher plays
Buckingham to the author's Richard. Some few creatures of the
conspiracy are dexterously disposed here and there in the crowd.
It is the business of these hirelings to throw up their caps, and
clap their hands, and utter their vivas. The rabble at first
stare and wonder, and at last join in shouting for shouting's
sake; and thus a crown is placed on a head which has no right to
it, by the huzzas of a few servile dependants.
The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very
materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those
who assume a right to criticise. Nor is the public altogether to
blame on this account. Most even of those who have really a great
enjoyment in reading are in the same state, with respect to a
book, in which a man who has never given particular attention to
the art of painting is with respect to a picture. Every man who
has the least sensibility or imagination derives a certain
pleasure from pictures. Yet a man of the highest and finest
intellect might, unless he had formed his taste by contemplating
the best pictures, be easily persuaded by a knot of connoisseurs
that the worst daub in Somerset House was a miracle of art. If he
deserves to be laughed at, it is not for his ignorance of
pictures, but for his ignorance of men. He knows that there is a
delicacy of taste in painting which he does not possess, that he
cannot distinguish hands, as practised judges distinguish them,
that he is not familiar with the finest models, that he has never
looked at them with close attention, and that, when the general
effect of a piece has pleased him or displeased him, he has never
troubled himself to ascertain why. When, therefore, people, whom
he thinks more competent to judge than himself, and of whose
sincerity he entertains no doubt, assure him that a particular
work is exquisitely beautiful, he takes it for granted that they
must be in the right. He returns to the examination, resolved to
find or imagine beauties; and, if he can work himself up into
something like admiration, he exults in his own proficiency.
Just such is the manner in which nine readers out of ten judge of
a book. They are ashamed to dislike what men who speak as having
authority declare to be good. At present, however contemptible a
poem or a novel may be, there is not the least difficulty in
procuring favourable notices of it from all sorts of
publications, daily, weekly, and monthly. In the meantime, little
or nothing is said on the other side. The author and the
publisher are interested in crying up the book. Nobody has any
very strong interest in crying it down. Those who are best fitted
to guide the public opinion think it beneath them to expose mere
nonsense, and comfort themselves by reflecting that such
popularity cannot last. This contemptuous lenity has been carried
too far. It is perfectly true that reputations which have been
forced into an unnatural bloom fade almost as soon as they have
expanded; nor have we any apprehensions that puffing will ever
raise any scribbler to the rank of a classic. It is indeed
amusing to turn over some late volumes of periodical works, and
to see how many immortal productions have, within a few months,
been gathered to the poems of Blackmore and the novels of Mrs.
Behn; how many "profound views of human nature," and "exquisite
delineations of fashionable manners," and "vernal, and sunny, and
refreshing thoughts," and "high imaginings," and "young
breathings," and "embodyings," and "pinings," and "minglings with
the beauty of the universe," and "harmonies which dissolve the
soul in a passionate sense of loveliness and divinity," the world
has contrived to forget. The names of the books and of the
writers are buried in as deep an oblivion as the name of the
builder of Stonehenge. Some of the well-puffed fashionable novels
of eighteen hundred and twenty-nine hold the pastry of eighteen
hundred and thirty; and others, which are now extolled in
language almost too high-flown for the merits of Don Quixote,
will, we have no doubt, line the trunks of eighteen hundred and
thirty-one. But, though we have no apprehensions that puffing
will ever confer permanent reputation on the undeserving, we
still think its influence most pernicious. Men of real merit
will, if they persevere, at last reach the station to which they
are entitled, and intruders will be ejected with contempt and
derision. But it is no small evil that the avenues to fame should
be blocked up by a swarm of noisy, pushing, elbowing pretenders,
who, though they will not ultimately be able to make good their
own entrance, hinder, in the mean time, those who have a right to
enter. All who will not disgrace themselves by joining in the
unseemly scuffle must expect to be at first hustled and
shouldered back. Some men of talents, accordingly, turn away in
dejection from pursuits in which success appears to bear no
proportion to desert. Others employ in self-defence the means by
which competitors, far inferior to themselves, appear for a time
to obtain a decided advantage. There are few who have sufficient
confidence in their own powers and sufficient elevation of mind,
to wait with secure and contemptuous patience, while dunce after
dunce presses before them. Those who will not stoop to the
baseness of the modern fashion are too often discouraged. Those
who do stoop to it are always degraded.
We have of late observed with great pleasure some symptoms which
lead us to hope that respectable literary men of all parties are
beginning to be impatient of this insufferable nuisance. And we
purpose to do what in us lies for the abating of it. We do not
think that we can more usefully assist in this good work than by
showing our honest countrymen what that sort of poetry is which
puffing can drive through eleven editions, and how easily any
bellman might, if a bellman would stoop to the necessary degree
of meanness, become a "master-spirit of the age." We have no
enmity to Mr. Robert Montgomery. We know nothing whatever about
him, except what we have learned from his books, and from the
portrait prefixed to one of them, in which he appears to be doing
his very best to look like a man of genius and sensibility,
though with less success than his strenuous exertions deserve. We
select him, because his works have received more enthusiastic
praise, and have deserved more unmixed contempt, than any which,
as far as our knowledge extends, have appeared within the last
three or four years. His writing bears the same relation to
poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are
colours in the Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be
made. There are words In Mr. Montgomery's writing which, when
disposed in certain orders and combinations, have made, and will
again make, good poetry. But, as they now stand, they seem to be
put together on principle in such a manner as to give no image of
anything "in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in
the waters under the earth."
The poem on the Omnipresence of the Deity commences with a
description of the creation, in which we can find only one
thought which has the least pretension to ingenuity, and that one
thought is stolen from Dryden, and marred in the stealing:
"Last, softly beautiful, as music's close,
Angelic woman into being rose."
The all-pervading influence of the Supreme Being is then
described in a few tolerable lines borrowed from Pope, and a
great many intolerable lines of Mr. Robert Montgomery's own. The
following may stand as a specimen:
"But who could trace Thine unrestricted course,
Though Fancy followed with immortal force?
There's not a blossom fondled by the breeze,
There's not a fruit that beautifies the trees,
There's not a particle in sea or air,
But nature owns thy plastic influence there!
With fearful gaze, still be it mine to see
How all is fill'd and vivified by Thee;
Upon thy mirror, earth's majestic view,
To paint Thy Presence, and to feel it too."
The last two lines contain an excellent specimen of Mr. Robert
Montgomery's Turkey carpet style of writing. The majestic view of
earth is the mirror of God's presence; and on this mirror Mr.
Robert Montgomery paints God's presence. The use of a mirror, we
submit, is not to be painted upon.
A few more lines, as bad as those which we have quoted, bring us
to one of the most amusing instances of literary pilfering which
we remember. It might be of use to plagiarists to know, as a
general rule, that what they steal is, to employ a phrase common
in advertisements, of no use to any but the right owner. We never
fell in, however, with any plunderer who so little understood how
to turn his booty to good account as Mr. Montgomery. Lord Byron,
in a passage which everybody knows by heart, has said, addressing
the sea,
"Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow."
Mr. Robert Montgomery very coolly appropriates the image and
reproduces the stolen goods in the following form:
"And thou vast Ocean, on whose awful face
Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace."
So may such ill-got gains ever prosper!
The effect which the Ocean produces on Atheists is then described
in the following lofty lines:
"Oh! never did the dark-soul'd ATHEIST stand,
And watch the breakers boiling on the strand,
And, while Creation stagger'd at his nod,
Mock the dread presence of the mighty God!
We hear Him in the wind-heaved ocean's roar,
Hurling her billowy crags upon the shore
We hear Him in the riot of the blast,
And shake, while rush the raving whirlwinds past!"
If Mr. Robert Montgomery's genius were not far too free and
aspiring to be shackled by the rules of syntax, we should suppose
that it is at the nod of the Atheist that creation staggers. But
Mr. Robert Montgomery's readers must take such grammar as they
can get, and be thankful.
A few more lines bring us to another instance of unprofitable
theft. Sir Walter Scott has these lines in the Lord of the Isles:
"The dew that on the violet lies,
Mocks the dark lustre of thine eyes."
This is pretty taken separately, and, as is always the case with
the good things of good writers, much prettier in its place than
can even be conceived by those who see it only detached from the
context. Now for Mr. Montgomery:
"And the bright dew-bead on the bramble lies,
Like liquid rapture upon beauty's eyes."
The comparison of a violet, bright with the dew, to a woman's
eyes, is as perfect as a comparison can be. Sir Walter's lines
are part of a song addressed to a woman at daybreak, when the
violets are bathed in dew; and the comparison is therefore
peculiarly natural and graceful. Dew on a bramble is no more like
a woman's eyes than dew anywhere else. There is a very pretty
Eastern tale of which the fate of plagiarists often reminds us.
The slave of a magician saw his master wave his wand, and heard
him give orders to the spirits who arose at the summons. The
slave stole the wand, and waved it himself in the air; but he had
not observed that his master used the left hand for that purpose.
The spirits thus irregularly summoned tore the thief to pieces
instead of obeying his orders. There are very few who can safely
venture to conjure with the rod of Sir Walter; and Mr. Robert
Montgomery is not one of them.
Mr. Campbell, in one of his most pleasing pieces, has this line,
"The sentinel stars set their watch in the sky."
The thought is good, and has a very striking propriety where Mr.
Campbell has placed it, in the mouth of a soldier telling his
dream. But, though Shakspeare assures us that "every true man's
apparel fits your thief," it is by no means the case, as we have
already seen, that every true poet's similitude fits your
plagiarist. Let us see how Mr. Robert Montgomery uses the image.
"Ye quenchless stars! so eloquently bright,
Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night,
While half the world is lapp'd in downy dreams,
And round the lattice creep your midnight beams,
How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes,
In lambent beauty looking from the skies."
Certainly the ideas of eloquence, of untroubled repose, of placid
eyes, of the lambent beauty on which it is sweet to gaze,
harmonise admirably with the idea of a sentry.
We would not be understood, however, to say, that Mr. Robert
Montgomery cannot make similitudes for himself. A very few lines
further on, we find one which has every mark of originality, and
on which, we will be bound, none of the poets whom he has
plundered will ever think of making reprisals
"The soul, aspiring, pants its source to mount,
As streams meander level with their fount."
We take this to be, on the whole, the worst similitude in the
world. In the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly
meander, level with its fount. In the next place, if streams did
meander level with their founts, no two motions can be less like
each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting
upwards.
We have then an apostrophe to the Deity, couched in terms which,
in any writer who dealt in meanings, we should call profane, but
to which we suppose Mr. Robert Montgomery attaches no idea
whatever:
"Yes I pause and think, within one fleeting hour,
How vast a universe obeys Thy power;
Unseen, but felt, Thine interfused control
Works in each atom, and pervades the whole;
Expands the blossom, and erects the tree,
Conducts each vapour, and commands each sea,
Beams in each ray, bids whirlwinds be unfurl'd,
Unrols the thunder, and upheaves a world!"
No field-preacher surely ever carried his irreverent familiarity
so far as to bid the Supreme Being stop and think on the
importance of the interests which are under His care. The
grotesque indecency of such an address throws into shade the
subordinate absurdities of the passage, the unfurling of
whirlwinds, the unrolling of thunder, and the upheaving of
worlds.
Then comes a curious specimen of our poet's English:
"Yet not alone created realms engage
Thy faultless wisdom, grand, primeval sage!
For all the thronging woes to life allied
Thy mercy tempers, and thy cares provide."
We should be glad to know what the word "For" means here. If it
is a preposition, it makes nonsense of the words, "Thy mercy
tempers." If it is an adverb, it makes nonsense of the words,
"Thy cares provide."
These beauties we have taken, almost at random, from the first
part of the poem. The second part is a series of descriptions of
various events, a battle, a murder, an execution, a marriage, a
funeral, and so forth. Mr. Robert Montgomery terminates each of
these descriptions by assuring us that the Deity was present at
the battle, murder, execution, marriage or funeral in question.
And this proposition which might be safely predicated of every
event that ever happened or ever will happen, forms the only link
which connects these descriptions with the subject or with each
other.
How the descriptions are executed our readers are probably by
this time able to conjecture. The battle is made up of the
battles of all ages and nations: "red-mouthed cannons, uproaring
to the clouds," and "hands grasping firm the glittering shield."
The only military operations of which this part of the poem
reminds us, are those which reduced the Abbey of Quedlinburgh to
submission, the Templar with his cross, the Austrian and Prussian
grenadiers in full uniform, and Curtius and Dentatus with their
battering-ram. We ought not to pass unnoticed the slain war-
horse, who will no more
"Roll his red eye, and rally for the fight";
or the slain warrior who, while "lying on his bleeding breast,"
contrives to "stare ghastly and grimly on the skies." As to this
last exploit, we can only say, as Dante did on a similar
occasion,
"Forse per forza gia di' parlasia
Si stravolse cosi alcun del tutto
Ma io nol vidi, ne credo che sia."
The tempest is thus described:
"But lo! around the marsh'lling clouds unite,
Like thick battalions halting for the fight;
The sun sinks back, the tempest spirits sweep
Fierce through the air and flutter on the deep.
Till from their caverns rush the maniac blasts,
Tear the loose sails, and split the creaking masts,
And the lash'd billows, rolling in a train,
Rear their white heads, and race along the main"
What, we should like to know, is the difference between the two
operations which Mr. Robert Montgomery so accurately
distinguishes from each other, the fierce sweeping of the
tempest-spirits through the air, and the rushing of the maniac
blasts from their caverns? And why does the former operation end
exactly when the latter commences?
We cannot stop over each of Mr. Robert Montgomery's descriptions.
We have a shipwrecked sailor, who "visions a viewless temple in
the air"; a murderer who stands on a heath, "with ashy lips, in
cold convulsion spread"; a pious man, to whom, as he lies in bed
at night,
"The panorama of past life appears,
Warms his pure mind, and melts it into tears":
a traveller, who loses his way, owing to the thickness of the
"cloud-battalion," and the want of "heaven-lamps, to beam their
holy light." We have a description of a convicted felon, stolen
from that incomparable passage in Crabbe's Borough, which has
made many a rough and cynical reader cry like a child. We can,
however, conscientiously declare that persons of the most
excitable sensibility may safely venture upon Mr, Robert
Montgomery's version. Then we have the "poor, mindless, pale-
faced maniac boy," who
"Rolls his vacant eye
To greet the glowing fancies of the sky."
What are the glowing fancies of the sky? And what is the meaning
of the two lines which almost immediately follow?
"A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods,
He loves to commune with the fields and floods."
How can a soulless thing be a spirit? Then comes a panegyric on
the Sunday. A baptism follows; after that a marriage: and we then
proceed, in due course, to the visitation of the sick, and the
burial of the dead.
Often as Death has been personified, Mr. Montgomery has found
something new to say about him:
"0 Death! thou dreadless vanquisher of earth,
The Elements shrank blasted at thy birth!
Careering round the world like tempest wind,
Martyrs before, and victims strew'd behind
Ages on ages cannot grapple thee,
Dragging the world into eternity!"
If there be any one line in this passage about which we are more
in the dark than about the rest, it is the fourth. What the
difference may be between the victims and the martyrs, and why
the martyrs are to lie before Death, and the victims behind him,
are to us great mysteries.
We now come to the third part, of which we may say with honest
Cassio, "Why, this is a more excellent song than the other." Mr.
Robert Montgomery is very severe on the infidels, and undertakes
to prove, that, as he elegantly expresses it,
"One great Enchanter helm'd the harmonious whole."
What an enchanter has to do with helming, or what a helm has to
do with harmony, he does not explain. He proceeds with his
argument thus:
"And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed
All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named
The spacious world, and all its wonders, born
Designless, self-created, and forlorn;
Like to the flashing bubbles on a stream,
Fire from the cloud, or phantom in a dream?"
We should be sorry to stake our faith in a higher Power on Mr.
Robert Montgomery's logic. He informs us that lightning is
designless and self-created. If he can believe this, we cannot
conceive why he may not believe that the whole universe is
designless and self-created. A few lines before, he tells us that
it is the Deity who bids "thunder rattle from the skiey deep."
His theory is therefore this, that God made the thunder, but that
the lightning made itself.
But Mr. Robert Montgomery's metaphysics are not at present our
game. He proceeds to set forth the fearful effects of Atheism
"Then, blood-stain`d Murder, bare thy hideous arm
And thou, Rebellion, welter in thy storm:
Awake, ye spirits of avenging crime;
Burst from your bonds, and battle with the time!"
Mr. Robert Montgomery is fond of personification, and belongs, we
need not say, to that school of poets who hold that nothing more
is necessary to a personification in poetry than to begin a word
with a capital letter. Murder may, without impropriety, bare her
arm, as she did long ago, in Mr. Campbell's Pleasures of Hope.
But what possible motive Rebellion can have for weltering in her
storm, what avenging crime may be, who its spirits may be, why
they should be burst from their bonds, what their bonds may be,
why they should battle with the time, what the time may be, and
what a battle between the time and the spirits of avenging crime
would resemble, we must confess ourselves quite unable to
understand.
"And here let Memory turn her tearful glance
On the dark horrors of tumultuous France,
When blood and blasphemy defiled her land,
And fierce Rebellion shook her savage hand."
Whether Rebellion shakes her own hand, shakes the hand of Memory,
or shakes the hand of France, or what any one of these three
metaphors would mean, we, know no more than we know what is the
sense of the following passage
"Let the foul orgies of infuriate crime
Picture the raging havoc of that time,
When leagued Rebellion march'd to kindle man,
Fright in her rear, and Murder in her van.
And thou, sweet flower of Austria, slaughter'd Queen,
Who dropp'd no tear upon the dreadful scene,
When gush'd the life-blood from thine angel form,
And martyr'd beauty perish'd in the storm,
Once worshipp'd paragon of all who saw,
Thy look obedience, and thy smile a law."
What is the distinction between the foul orgies and the raging
havoc which the foul orgies are to picture? Why does Fright go
behind Rebellion, and Murder before? Why should not Murder fall
behind Fright? Or why should not all the three walk abreast? We
have read of a hero who had
"Amazement in his van, with flight combined,
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind."
Gray, we suspect, could have given a reason for disposing the
allegorical attendants of Edward thus. But to proceed, "Flower of
Austria" is stolen from Byron. "Dropp'd" is false English.
"Perish'd in the storm" means nothing at all; and "thy look
obedience" means the very reverse of what Mr. Robert Montgomery
intends to say.
Our poet then proceeds to demonstrate the immortality of the
soul:
"And shall the soul, the fount of reason, die,
When dust and darkness round its temple lie?
Did God breathe in it no ethereal fire.
Dimless and quenchless, though the breath expire?"
The soul is a fountain; and therefore it is not to die, though
dust and darkness lie round its temple, because an ethereal fire
has been breathed into it, which cannot be quenched though its
breath expire. Is it the fountain, or the temple, that breathes,
and has fire breathed into it?
Mr. Montgomery apostrophises the
"Immortal beacons,--spirits of the just,"--
and describes their employments in another world, which are to
be, it seems, bathing in light, hearing fiery streams flow, and
riding on living cars of lightning. The deathbed of the sceptic
is described with what we suppose is meant for energy. We then
have the deathbed of a Christian made as ridiculous as false
imagery and false English can make it. But this is not enough.
The Day of Judgment is to be described, and a roaring cataract of
nonsense is poured forth upon this tremendous subject. Earth, we
are told, is dashed into Eternity. Furnace blazes wheel round the
horizon, and burst into bright wizard phantoms. Racing hurricanes
unroll and whirl quivering fire-clouds. The white waves gallop.
Shadowy worlds career around. The red and raging eye of
Imagination is then forbidden to pry further. But further Mr.
Robert Montgomery persists in prying. The stars bound through the
airy roar. The unbosomed deep yawns on the ruin. The billows of
Eternity then begin to advance. The world glares in fiery
slumber. A car comes forward driven by living thunder,
"Creation shudders with sublime dismay,
And in a blazing tempest whirls away."
And this is fine poetry! This is what ranks its writer with the
master-spirits of the age! This is what has been described, over
and over again, in terms which would require some qualification
if used respecting Paradise Lost! It is too much that this
patchwork, made by stitching together old odds and ends of what,
when new, was but tawdry frippery, is to be picked off the
dunghill on which it ought to rot, and to be held up to
admiration as an inestimable specimen of art. And what must we
think of a system by means of which verses like those which we
have quoted, verses fit only for the poet's corner of the Morning
Post, can produce emolument and fame? The circulation of this
writer's poetry has been greater than that of Southey's Roderick,
and beyond all comparison greater than that of Cary's Dante or of
the best works of Coleridge. Thus encouraged, Mr. Robert
Montgomery has favoured the public with volume after volume. We
have given so much space to the examination of his first and most
popular performance that we have none to spare for his Universal
Prayer, and his smaller poems, which, as the puffing journals
tell us, would alone constitute a sufficient title to literary
immortality. We shall pass at once to his last publication,
entitled Satan.
This poem was ushered into the world with the usual roar of
acclamation. But the thing was now past a joke. Pretensions so
unfounded, so impudent, and so successful, had aroused a spirit
of resistance. In several magazines and reviews, accordingly,
Satan has been handled somewhat roughly, and the arts of the
puffers have been exposed with good sense and spirit. We shall,
therefore, be very concise.
Of the two poems we rather prefer that on the Omnipresence of the
Deity, for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas More to rank
one bad book above another. "Marry, this is somewhat. This is
rhyme. But the other is neither rhyme nor reason." Satan is a
long soliloquy, which the Devil pronounces in five or six
thousand lines of bad blank verse, concerning geography,
politics, newspapers, fashionable society, theatrical amusements,
Sir Walter Scott's novels, Lord Byron's poetry, and Mr. Martin's
pictures. The new designs for Milton have, as was natural,
particularly attracted the attention of a personage who occupies
so conspicuous a place in them. Mr. Martin must be pleased to
learn that, whatever may be thought of those performances on
earth, they give full satisfaction in Pandaemonium, and that he
is there thought to have hit off the likenesses of the various
Thrones and Dominations very happily.
The motto to the poem of Satan is taken from the Book of Job:
"Whence comest thou? From going to and fro in the earth, and
walking up and down in it." And certainly Mr. Robert Montgomery
has not failed to make his hero go to and fro, and walk up and
down. With the exception, however, of this propensity to
locomotion, Satan has not one Satanic quality. Mad Tom had told
us that "the prince of darkness is a gentleman"; but we had yet
to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose
principal fault is that he is something of a twaddle and far too
liberal of his good advice. That happy change in his character
which Origen anticipated, and of which Tillotson did not despair,
seems to be rapidly taking place. Bad habits are not eradicated
in a moment. It is not strange, therefore, that so old an
offender should now and then relapse for a short time into wrong
dispositions. But to give him his due, as the proverb recommends,
we must say that he always returns, after two or three lines of
impiety, to his preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr.
Montgomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different
parts of this large volume, and to republish it under the name of
Gabriel. The reflections of which it consists would come less
absurdly, as far as there is a more and a less in extreme
absurdity, from a good than from a bad angel.
We can afford room only for a single quotation. We give one taken
at random, neither worse nor better, as far as we can perceive,
than any other equal number of lines in the book. The Devil goes
to the play, and moralises thereon as follows:
"Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed
Around me: beauties in their cloud-like robes
Shine forth,--a scenic paradise, it glares
Intoxication through the reeling sense
Of flush'd enjoyment. In the motley host
Three prime gradations may be rank'd: the first,
To mount upon the wings of Shakspeare's mind,
And win a flash of his Promethean thought,
To smile and weep, to shudder, and achieve
A round of passionate omnipotence,
Attend: the second, are a sensual tribe,
Convened to hear romantic harlots sing,
On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze,
While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes
Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire
The last, a throng most pitiful! who seem,
With their corroded figures, rayless glance,
And death-like struggle of decaying age,
Like painted skeletons in charnel pomp
Set forth to satirise the human kind!
How fine a prospect for demoniac view!
'Creatures whose souls outbalance worlds awake!'
Methinks I hear a pitying angel cry."
Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert
Montgomery, we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain to
individuals, literature must be purified from this taint. And, to
show that we are not actuated by any feeling of personal enmity
towards him, we hereby give notice that, as soon as any book
shall, by means of puffing, reach a second edition, our intention
is to do unto the writer of it as we have done unto Mr. Robert
Montgomery.
INDEX AND GLOSSARY OF ALLUSIONS
ABSOLUTE, Sir Anthony, a leading character in Sheridan's play of
The Rivals
A darker and fiercer spirit, Jonathan Swift, the great Tory
writer (1667-1745)
Agbarus or Abgarus, the alleged author of a spurious letter to
Jesus Christ. Edessa is in Mesopotamia.
Alboin, King of the Lombards, 561-573, he invaded Italy as far as
the Tiber
Alcina, the personification of carnal pleasure in the Orlando
Furioso
Aldus, the famous Venetian printer (1447-1515), who issued the
Aldine editions of the classics and invented italic type
Alfieri, Italian dramatist, and one of the pioneers of the revolt
against eighteenth-century literary and society models (1749-
1803)
Algarotti, Francesco, a litterateur, friend of Voltaire. Frederic
made him a count (1764)
Alnaschar, see "The History of the Barber's Fifth Brother,"
in
the Arabian Nights
Alva, Duke of, the infamous governor of the Netherlands (1508-
82)
Amadeus, Victor, "the faithless ruler of Savoy," who for a bribe
deserted Austria, whose troops he was commander-in chief of for
France, in 1692
Arbuthnot, Dr., author of the History of John Bull, friend of
Swift and Pope (1679-1735)
Arminius, a German who, as a hostage, entered the Roman army, but
afterwards revolted and led his countrymen against Rome (d. 23
A.D.)
Armorica, France between the Seine and the Loire, Brittany
Artevelde, Von., Jacob v. A. and Philip, his son, led the people
of Flanders in their revolt against Count Louis and his French
supporters (fourteenth century)
Ascham, Roger, and Aylmer, John, tutors of Queen Elizabeth and
Lady Jane Grey respectively
Athalie, Saul, Cinna, dramas by Racine Alfieri, and Corneille
respectively
Atticus, Sporus, i.e. Addison and Lord John Hervey, satirized in
Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
Attila, King of the Huns, the "Scourge of God" who overran the
Roman Empire but was finally beaten by the allied Goths and
Romans (d. 453)
Aubrey, John, an eminent antiquary who lost a number of inherited
estates by lawsuits and bad management (1624-97)
BADAJOZ and St. Sebastian, towns in Spain captured from the
French during the Peninsular War
Bastiani, was at first one of the big Potsdam grenadiers;
Frederic made him Abbot of Silesia
Bayes, Miss, with reference to the name used in The Rehearsal, by
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to satirize Dryden, the
poet-laureate
Bayle, Pierre, author of the famous Dictionnaire Historique et
Critique; professor of philosophy at Padua and at Rotterdam
(1647-1706)
Beauclerk, Topham, Johnson's friend, "the chivalrous T. B., with
his sharp wit and gallant, courtly ways" (Carlyle), (1739-80)
Beaumarchais, see Carlyle's French Revolution. As a comic
dramatist he ranks second only to Moliere. He supported the
Revolution with his money and his versatile powers of speech and
writing. He edited an edition de luxe of Voltaire's works (1732-
99)
Behn, Afra, the licentious novelist and mistress of Charles 11.
(1640-89), who, as a spy in Holland, discovered the Dutch plans
for burning the Thames shipping
Belle-Isle, French marshal; fought in the Austrian campaign of
1740 and repelled the Austrian invasion of 1744 (d. 1761)
Beloe William, a miscellaneous writer, whose version of
Herodotus, so far from being flat, is, while "infinitely below
the modern standard in point of accuracy, much above modern
performance in point of readableness" (Dr. Garnett), (1756-1817)
Bender, 80 miles N.W. from Odessa, in S. Russia
Bentley, Richard, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and an
eminent philologist (1662-1742)
Bettesworth, an Irishman, lampooned in Swift's Miscellanies
Betty Careless, one of Macaulay's inventions which sufficiently
explains itself
Betty, Master, a boy-actor, known as the Infant Roscius. Having
acquired a fortune he lived in retirement (1791-1874)
Black Frank, Johnson's negro servant, Frank Barber
Blackmore, Sir Richard, a wordy poetaster (d. 1729), who was the
butt of all contemporary wits
Blair, Dr. Hugh, Scotch divine an critic, encouraged Macpherson
to publish the Ossian poetry (1718-1800)
Blatant cast, the, does not really die. See the end of Faery
Queen vi.
Bobadil and Beseus, Pistol and Parolles, braggart characters in
Jonson's Every Man in His Humour, Beaumont and Fletcher's King
and no King, Shakespeare's Henry V., and All's Well that Ends
Well, respectively
Boileau, Nicholas, the great French critic, whose Art of Poetry
long constituted the canons of French and English literary art
(1636-1711)
Bolt Court, on the N. side of Fleet Street. Johnson lived at No.
8 from 1777 till his death in 1784
Borodino, 70 miles west from Moscow, where the Russians made a
stand against Napoleon, 1812
Boscan, a Spanish imitator of Petrarch Alva's tutor; served in
Italy (1485-1533)
Bourne, Vincent, an usher at Westminster School, mentioned early
in the "Essay on Warren Hastings,"
Boyle, Hon. Charles, edited the Letters of Phalaris which gave
rise to the famous controversy with Bentley, for which, see the
essay on Sir William Temple (vol. iii. of this edition)
Bradamante, in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, a Christian lady who
loves the Saracen knight, Ruggiero
Brothers, Richard, a fanatic who held that the English were the
lost ten tribes of Israel (1757-1824)
Brownrigg, Mrs., executed at Tyburn (1767) for abusing and
murdering her apprentices
Bruhl, Count, the favourite of Augustus III. of Saxony who
enriched himself at the risk of ruining his master and his
country.
Bucer, Martin, a German reformer who mediated between Luther and
Zwingli, and became Professor of Divinity at Cambridge
(1491~1551)
Buchanan, George, Scottish scholar and humanist; tutor to Mary
Queen of Scots and James VI. (1506-82)
Burn, Richard, an English vicar compiled several law digests
among them the Justice of the Peace, (1709-85)
Burnet, Gilbert, bishop of Salisbury, supported the claims of
William of Orange to the English throne, and wrote the History of
my Own Times (1643-1715)
Button's, on the south side of Russell Street, Covert Garden
succeeded Will's as the wits' resort
Butts, Dr. physician-in-ordinary to Henry VIII. (d. 1545) and one
of the characters in Shakespeare's Henry VIII.
CACUS, the mythological giant who stole the oxen of Hercules
Camaldoli, Order of, founded by St. Romauld, a Benedictine
(eleventh century) in the Vale of Camaldoli among the Tuscan
Apennines
Cambray, Confederates of, the pope, the emperor. France and Spain
who by the League of Cambray combined to attack Venice
Campbell, Dr. John, a miscellaneous political and historical
writer (1708~75)
Capreae, or Capri, a small island nineteen miles south from
Naples, the favourite residence of Augustus and Tiberius, and the
scene of the latter's licentious orgies
Capuchins, a branch of the monastic order of the Franciscans
Carlile, Richard, a disciple of Tom Paine's who was repeatedly
imprisoned for his radicalism. He worked especially for the
freedom of the Press (1790-1843)
Carter, Mrs., a distinguished linguist and translator of
Epictetus
Casaubon, Isaac, Professor of Greek at Geneva Curator of the
Royal Library at Paris, Prebendary of Canterbury: a famous
sixteenth-century scholar (1559-1614),
Catinat, French marshal in charge of the 1701 Italian campaign
against Marlborough's ally, Prince Eugene of Savoy
Cave, Edward, printer, editor, publisher, and proprietor of the
Gentleman's Magazine (1691-1754)
Chatelet, Madame du, Voltaire's mistress, c 1733-47 (d. 1749)
Chaulieu, Guillaume, a witty but negligent poetaster (1639-1720)
Chaumette, Pierre, a violent extremist in the French Revolution
who provoked even Robespierre's disgust; guillotined, 1794
Childs, the clergy coffee-house in St. Paul's. St. James's (ib.)
in the street of that name, was the resort of beaux and statesmen
and a notorious gambling house
Chillingworth, William, an able English controversial divine;
suffered at the hands of the Puritans as an adherent of Charles
I. (1602-43)
Churchill, Charles, a clergyman and satirical Poet who attacked
Johnson in The Ghost (1731-64)
Clootz, a French Revolutionary and one of the founders of the
"Worship of Reason:" guillotined 1794
Colburn, (Zerah), b. at Vermont, U.S.A., in 1804, and noted in
youth for his extraordinary powers of calculation (d. 1840)
Coligni, Gaspard de, French admiral and leader of the Huguenots;
massacred on St. Bartholomew's Eve, 1572
Colle, Charles, dramatist and song-writer (d. 1777); young
Crebillon (d. 1777) wrote fiction
Condorcet, a French Marquis (1743-94) of moderate Revolutionary
tendencies, who fell a victim to the Extremists He wrote
extensively and clearly, but without
genius
Constituent Assembly, the National Assembly of France from 1789
to 1792
Corderius, a famous sixteenth-century teacher--Calvin was a pupil
of his--in France and Switzerland (d. 1564) who published several
school-books
Cortes, conqueror of Mexico (1485-1547); the Spanish Parliament
Cotta, Caius, a famous Roman orator, partly contemporary with
Cicero, who mentions him with honour
Courland, a province on the Baltic once belonging to Poland
since 1795 to Russia
Coventry, Solicitor-General of England in 1616, Attorney-General
in 1620 and Lord Keeper in 1625
Cradock, Joseph, a versatile writer and actor whose rambling
Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs contain several anecdotes of
Johnson and his circle (1742-1826)
Curll and Osborne, two notorious booksellers who owe their
immortality to Pope's Dunciad
Curtius, the noble Roman youth who leaped into the chasm in the
Forum and so closed it by the sacrifice of Rome's most precious
possession--a good citizen
DACIER, Andrew, a French scholar who edited the "Delphin" edition
of the classics for the Dauphin, and translated many of them
(1651-1722)
Dangerfield, Thomas, Popish plot discoverer and false witness
(1650?-1685)
Davies, Tom, the actor-bookseller who wrote the Memoirs of David
Garrick, and was one of Johnson's circle (1712-85). "The famous
dogma of the old physiologists" is "corruptio unius generatio est
alterius" (Notes and Queries, Ser. 8, vol. ix., p. 56)
Davila, a famous French soldier and historian who served under
Henry of Navarre; wrote the famous History of the Civil War in
France (1576-1631)
Della Crusca, the signature of Robert Merry (1755-98), the leader
of a mutual-admiration band of poetasters, who had their head-
quarters at Florence, and hence called themselves the Della
Cruscans. Gifford (q.v.) pulverised them in his Baviad and
Merviad
Dentatus, the old-type Roman who, after many victories and taking
immense booty, retired to a small farm which he himself tilled
Desfontaines, a Jesuit who put out a pirated edition of
Voltaire's La Ligue
Dessaix, a distinguished, upright, and chivalrous French general
under Napoleon, who fell at Marengo (1800)
Diafoirus, the name of two pedantic characters in Moliere's
Malade Imaginaire
Diatessaron, a harmony of the gospels, the earliest example being
that compiled by Tatian c.170 A.D.
Digby, Lord, one of the Royalist leaders and a typical Cavalier
Diodorus author of a universal history of which fifteen books
still remain (50 B.C.-13 A.D.)
Distressed Mother, by Ambrose Phillipps, modelled on Racine's
Andromaque
Domdaniel, a hall under the roots of the ocean, where gnomes
magicians, and evil spirits hold council (see Southey's Thalaba)
Domenichino, a celebrated Italian painter of sacred subjects;
persecuted and possibly poisoned by his rivals (1581-1641)
Douw, Gerard, distinguished Dutch painter, one of Rembrandt's
pupils; his works are famed for their perfect finish and delicacy
(1613-75)
Dubois, Guillaume, cardinal and prime minister of France, noted
for his ability and his debauchery (1656-1723)
D'Urfey, Tom, a facetious comedian and song-writer, favoured by
Charles II. Known for his collection of sonnets, Pills to Purge
Melancholy (1628-1703)
ECLIPSE, a famous chestnut race-horse who between 3rd May, 1769
and 4th October, 1770, had a most successful record
Encyclopaedia, the famous work which, edited by D'Alembert and
Diderot, and contributed to by the most eminent savants of
France, was issued 1751-77, and contributed not a little to fan
the flame of Revolution. The Philosophical Dictionary was a
similar production
Essex, Queen Elizabeth's favourite courtier who took Cadiz in
1596
Euphelia and Rhodoclea...Comelia...Tranquilla, signatures to
letters in the Rambler (Nos. 42, 46; 62; 51; 10,119)
Exons, i. e. "Exempts of the Guards," "officers who commanded
when the lieutenant or ensign was absent, and who had charge of
the night watch,"
Eylau, 20 miles south from Konigsberg victory of Napoleon, 1807
FAIRFAX, Edward, one of the "improvers" of English versification.
Translated Tasso in the same stanzas as the original, and wrote
on Demonology (d. c. 1632)
Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma, Governor of the Netherlands
under Philip II. and the first commander of his age
Faunus, grandson of Saturn and god of fields and shepherds, later
identified with the Greek Pan
Faustina, Empress, (i) wife of Antoninus Pius; (ii) daughter of
(i)
and wife of Marcus Aurelius. Both were equally licentious
Favorinus, a rhetorician and sophist, who flourished in Gaul, c.
125 A.D.
Felton, John, who assassinated the Duke of Buckingham in 1628
Ferguson, Sir Adam, M.P. for Ayrshire, 1774-80
Filmer, Sir Robert, advocated the doctrine of absolute regal
power in his Patriarcha, 1680,
Flecknoe and Settle, synonyms for vileness in poetry (cp. Moevius
and Bairus among the Romans). Flecknoe was an Irish priest who
printed a host of worthless matter. Settle was a playwright, who
degenerated into a "city-poet and a puppet-show" keeper; both
were satirized by Dryden
Fleury, French cardinal and statesman, tutor and adviser of Louis
XV. (1653-1743)
Florimel. (see Spenser's Faery Queen, books iii. and iv.)
Fox, George, and Naylor, James, contemporaries of Bunyan, and
early leaders of the Society of Friends or "Quakers,"
Fracastorius, Italian philosopher, mathematician, and poet
ranked by Scaliger as next to Virgil
Fraguier, Pere, an eminent man of letters, sometime a Jesuit. An
elegant Latin versifier, especially on philosophical themes
(1666-1728)
Franc de Pompignan, Advocate-General of France, an Academician
and an opponent of Encyclopaedists, in consequence of which
Voltaire lampooned him (1709-84)
Franche Comte, that part of France which lies south of Lorraine
and west of Switzerland
Freron, took sides with the Church against the attacks of
Voltaire; had some reputation as a critic (d. 1776)
GALLIENUS and Honorius, late Roman emperors who suffered from
barbaric invasions
Galt, John Scotch custom-house officer and novelist, wrote The
Ayrshire Legatees, The Provost, Sir Andrew Wylie, etc.
Galway, Lord (Macaulay is not quite so severe on him in his
History of England)
Ganganelli, who as Clement XIV. held the papacy, 1769-74, and
suppressed the Jesuits
George of Trebizond, a celebrated humanist (1396-1486), professor
of Greek at Venice in 1428 and papal secretary at Rome, C. 1450
Gibby, Sir, Sir Gilbert Heathcote
Gifford, editor of the Anti-Jacobin and afterwards of the
Quarterly Review, in which he attacked Wordsworth, Shelley, and
Keats. His satires, the Baviad and the Maviad, had some
reputation
in their day (1757-1826)
Gilpin, Rev. Joshua G., rector of Wrockwardine, whose new and
corrected edition of the Pilgrim's Progress appeared in 1811
Godfrey of Bouillon, a leader of the First Crusade; he took
Jerusalem in 1099
Goldoni, "the founder of Italian Comedy" (1707-93), whose pieces
supplanted the older Italian farces and burlesques
Gondomar, Count of, the Spanish ambassador at the court of James
I. who ruined Raleigh, and negotiated the proposed marriage of
Charles I. with the Infanta
Gonsalvo de Cordova, the great captain who took Granada from the
Moors, Zante from the Turks, and Naples from the French (1443-
1515)
Grecian, the, the resort of the learned in Devereux Street
Strand
Grotius, a celebrated Dutch scholar, equally famed for his
knowledge of theology, history, and law (d. 1645)
Gwynn, Nell, an orange girl who became mistress of Charles II.
and the ancestress of the Dukes of St. Albans
HAILES, Lord, David Dalrymple, author of the Annals of Scotland
(1726-92)
Hale, Sir Matthew, Chief Justice of the King's Bench under
Charles II, and author of several religious and moral works
Halford, Sir Henry, one of the leading physicians in Macaulay's
day (1766-1844)
Hamilton, Gerard, M.P. for Petersfield, and of a somewhat
despicable character. The nickname was "Single-speech Hamilton,"
Harpagon, the miser in Moliere's L'Avare
Hawkins, Sir John. a club companion of Johnson's (d. 1780), whose
Life and Works of Johnson (II vols., 1787-89) was a careless
piece of work, soon superseded by Boswell's
Hayley, William, Cowper's friend and biographer (1745-1820).
Byron ridiculed his Triumphs of Temper and Triumphs of Music, and
Southey said everything was good about him except his poetry
Henriade, Voltaire's La Ligue, ou Henri le Grand
Hierocles, a neo-Platonic philosopher (c. 450 A.D.), who after
long labour collected a book of twenty-eight jests, a translation
of which (Gentleman's Magazine, 1741) has been attributed to
Johnson
Hill, Aaron, playwright, stage-manager, and projector of bubble
schemes (1685-1750). See Pope's Dunciad, ii. 295 ff.
Hippocrene, "the fountain of the Muses, formed by the hoof of
Pegasus"
Holbach, Baron, a French "philosophe" who entertained at his
hospitable board in Paris all the Encyclopaedia (q.v.) writers; a
materialist, but a philanthropist (1723-89)
Holofernes, the pedantic school-master in Love's Labour 's Last
Home, John, a minister of the Scottish Church (1724-1808), whose
tragedy of Douglas was produced in Edinburgh in 1756
Hoole, John, a clerk in the India House, who worked at
translations, e.g. of Tasso and Ariosto, and original literature
in his spare hours
Hotel of Rambouillet, the intellectual salon which centred round
the Italian Marquise de R.(1588-1665), and degenerated into the
pedantry which Moliere satirized in Les Preceiuses Ridicules
Hughes, John, a poet and essayist, who contributed frequently to
the Tatler, and Guardian (1677-1720)
Hume, Mr. Joseph, English politician, reformer, and
philanthropist (1777-1855)
Hurd, Richard, Bishop in succession of Lichfield, Coventry, and
Worcester; edited in 1798 with fulsome praise the works of his
fellow bishop Warburton of Gloucester
Hutchinson, Mrs., wife of Colonel Hutchinson, the governor of
Nottingham Castle in the Civil War, whose Memoirs (published
1806) she wrote
Hutten, Ulrich von, German humanist and reformer (1488-1523)
IMLAC (see Johnson's Rasselas, Ch. viii xii.)
Ireland's Vortigern, a play represented by W. H. Ireland as
Shakespeare's autograph; failed when Sheridan produced it in
1796, and afterwards admitted a forgery
Ivimey, Mr., Baptist divine and historian of the early nineteenth
century, who compiled a life of Bunyan
JANSENIAN CONTROVERSY, arose early in the seventeenth century
over the Augustinian principle of the sovereign and the
irresistible nature of divine grace, denied by the Jesuits. In
connection with this controversy Pascal wrote his Provincial
Letters
Jeanie Deans (see Scott's The Heart Of Midlothian)
Jedwood justice; the little town of Jedburgh was prominent in
border-warfare, and its justice was proverbially summary, the
execution of the accused usually preceding his trial
Jonathan's and Garraway's, Coffee-houses in Cornhill and Exchange
Alley respectively, specially resorted to by brokers and
merchants
Jortin, John, an eminent and scholarly divine, who wrote on the
Truth, Christian Religion and on History (1698-1770)
Julius, the second pope (1502-13) of that name, whose military
zeal outran his priestly inclination. He fought against the
Venetians, and the French
Justiza, M Mayor, "a magistrate appointed by King and the Cortes
who acted as mediator between the King and the people." Philip
II. abolished the office)
KENRICK, William, a hack writer, who in the Monthly Review in
1765, attacked Johnson's Shakespeare with "a certain coarse
smartness" (1725?-79)
Kitcat Club, founded c. 1700 by thirty-nine Hanoverian statesmen
and authors on the basis of an earlier society (see Spectator
No. 9)
LA BRUYERE, John de, tutor to the Duke of Burgundy and a member
of the Academy; author of Characters after the manner of
Theophrastus (1644~96)
La Clos, author of Liaisons Dangereuses, a masterpiece of
immorality (1741-1803)
Lambert, Daniel, weighed 739 lbs., and measured 3 yds. 4 ins.
round the waist (1770-1809)
Langton, Bennet, a classical scholar and contributor to The
Idler. Entered Johnson's circle in 1752 (1737-1801)
League of Cambray, the union in 1508 of Austria, France, Spain
and the Papacy against Venice
League of Pilnitz, between Austria, Prussia, and others (1791)
for the restoration of Louis XVI.
Lee, Nathaniel, a play-writer who helped Dryden in his Duke of
Guise (1655-92)
Leman Lake, Lake of Geneva
Lope de Vega, Spain's greatest, and the world's most prolific
dramatist. Secretary to the Inquisition (1562-1635)
Lunsford, a notorious bully and profligate; a specimen of the
worst type of the royalist captains
MACLEOD, Colonel (see Tour to the Hebrides, Sept. 23)
Mainwaring, Arthur, editor of the Medley, and Whig pamphleteer
(1668-1712)
Malbranche, Nicholas, tried to adopt and explain the philosophy
of Descartes in the interests of theology (d. 1715)
Mallet, David, a literary adventurer who collaborated with
Thomson in writing the masque Alfred in which the song "Rule
Britannia" was produced (1703-65)
Malone, Edmund, an eminent Shakesperian scholar, who also wrote a
Life of Reynolds and a Life of Dryden (1741-1812)
Manfred, King of the Two Sicilies who struggled for his
birthright against three popes, who excommunicated him and gave
his kingdom to Charles of Anjou, fighting against whom he fell in
1266
Manichees, the sect founded by Mani (who declared himself to be
the Paraclete) which held a blend of Magian, Buddhist, and
Christian principles
Manlius, the Roman hero who in B.C. 390 saved Rome from the
Gauls, and who was later put to death on a charge of treason
Marat, Jean Paul, a fanatical democrat whose one fixed idea was
wholesale slaughter of the aristocracy; assassinated by Charlotte
Corday (1743-93)
Markland, Jeremiah a famous classical scholar and critic (1693-
1776)
Marli, a royal (now presidential) country-house ten miles west
from Paris
Marsilio Ficino, an eminent Italian Platonist, noted for his
purity of life and for his aid to the Renaissance (1433-99)
Mason William, friend and biographer of Gray; wrote Caractacus
and some odes (1725-97)
Massillon, Jean Baptiste, famous French preacher, Bishop of
Clermont, a master of style and persuasive eloquence. (1663-
1742)
Master of the Sentences, Peter Lombard, a disciple of Abelard and
one of the most famous of the "Schoolmen" of the twelfth century
Maximin, surnamed Thrax--"the Tracian." Roman Emperor, 235-38.
His cruel tyranny led to a revolt in which he was murdered by his
own soldiers
Meillerie, on the Lake of Geneva, immortalised by J. J. Rousseau
Merovingians, a dynasty of Frankish kings in the sixth and
seventh centuries A.D.
Metastasio, Pietro Trapassi, an Italian poet (1698-1782)
Mina, a famous guerilla chief in the Peninsular war, and (in
1834) against Don Carlo (1781-1834). Empecinado (="covered with
pitch") a nick-name given to Juan Matin Diaz, an early comrade of
Mina
Mirabel and Millamont, the Benedick and Beatrice of Beaumont and
Fletcher's Wildgoose Chase
Mithridates, king of Pontus (B.C. 120-63), famous for his
struggle against Rome, and the general vigour and ability of his
intellect
Moliere's doctors (see L'Amour Medecin (II. iii.), Le Malade
Imaginaire, and Le Medicin malgre lui)
Mompesson, Sir Giles, one of the Commissioners for the granting
of monopoly licenses
Monks and Giants, "These stanzas are from a poem by Hookham
Frere, really entitled Prospectus and specimen of an inteneded
national Work . . . relating to King Arthur and his Round Table,"
Monmouth Street, now called Dudley Street
Morgante Maggiore, a serio-comic romance in verse, by Pulci of
Florence (1494)
Morone, an Italian cardinal and diplomatist (1509-80)
Murillo, Spain's greatest painter (1618-82)
Murphy, Arthur, an actor-author, who, besides writing some
plays, edited Fielding, and published an Essay on the Life and
Genius of Samuel Johnson (1727-1815)
Murray, Lindley, the Pennsylvania grammarian (1745-1826), who
settled near York, and there produced his Grammar of the English
Language
NARSES the Roman general (d. 573) who drove the Goths out of
Rome. In his youth he had been a slave
Nephelococcygia, i.e. "Cuckoo town in the cloud"--a fictitious
city referred to in the Birds of Aristophanes,
Newdigate and Seatonian poetry, verse written in competition for
prizes founded by Sir R..Newdigate and Rev. Thos. Seaton at
Oxford and Cambridge respectively, Dodsley (ib.) was an honest
publisher and author who brought out Poems by Several Hands in
1748,
Nugent, Dr., one of the original members and a regular attendant
at the meetings of the Literary Club
OCTOBER CLUB, a High Church Tory Club of Queen Anne's time, which
met at the Bell Tavern, Westminster
o Daphnis K. T. L., "Daphnis went into the waters; the eddies
swirled over the man whom the Muses loved and the nymphs held
dear" (Theocritus, Idylls, i.). An allusion to Shelley's death
Odoacer, a Hun, who became emperor, and was assassinated by his
colleague Theodoric the Ostrogoth in 493
Oldmixon, John, a dull and insipid historian (1673-1742), roughly
handled by Pope in the Dunciad (ii. 283)
Orlando Furioso, Ariosto's (1471-1533) great poem of chivalry
suggested by the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo (c. 1430-94).
Alcina is a kind of Circe in the Orlando Furioso
Ortiz, eighteenth-century historian, author of Compendio de la
Historia de Espana
Osborn, John, a notorious bookseller who "sweated" Pope and
Johnson among other authors (d. 1767)
Otho, Roman emperor (69 A.D.) The only brass coins bearing
his name were struck in the provinces, and are very rare
PADALON, the Hindu abode of departed Spirits
Paestum, ancient Posidonia, mod. Pesto, 22 miles S.E. from
Salerno, 471
Pantheon, a circular temple in Rome, erected by Agrippa, son-in-
law of Augustus, and dedicated to the gods in general: now a
church and place of burial for the illustrious Italian dead
Paoli, the Corsican general (1796-1807) who, failing against the
might of France, made his home in England, and was chaperoned by
Boswell
Parnell, Thomas, Archdeacon of Clogher, satirist and translator.
He was a sweet and easy poet with a high moral tone; friend of
Addison and Swift (1679-1718)
Parson Barnabas, Parson Trulliber (see Fielding's Joseph
Andrews)
Pasquin, Antony, a fifteenth-century Italian tailor, noted for
his caustic wit
Paulician Theology originated in Armenia, and flourished c.660-
970 A.D. Besides certain Manichee elements it denied the deity of
Jesus and abjured Mariolatry and the sacraments
Pescara, Marquis of, an Italian general who betrayed to the
emperor, Charles V., the plot of Francesco Sforza for driving the
Spaniards and Germans out of Italy
Peter Martyr, a name borne by three personages. The reference
here is to the Italian Protestant reformer who made his home
successively in Switzerland, England, Strasburg, and Zurich (d.
1562)
Phidias, Athens's greatest sculptor. A contemporary of Pericles
(d. 432 B. C.)
Philips, John, best remembered by The Splendid Shilling, a good
burlesque in imitation of Milton (1676-1708)
Pilpay, the Indian Aesop. For the pedigree of the Pilpay
literature, see Jacobs: Fables of Bidpai (1888), 641
Pisistratus and Gelon, two able Grecian tyrants who ruled
Back to Full Books
|