De Libris: Prose and Verse
by
Austin Dobson
Part 1 out of 3
Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Sjaani and the Online Distributed Proofreaders
DE LIBRIS PROSE & VERSE
BY AUSTIN DOBSON
Vt Mel Os, sic Cor Melos afficit, & reficit. _Deuteromelia_.
A mixture of a _Song_ doth ever adde Pleasure. BACON (_adapted_).
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1908
_Copyright 1908 by The Macmillan Company_
_PROLOGUE_
_LECTOR BENEVOLE!_--FOR SO
THEY USED TO CALL YOU, YEARS AGO,--
I CAN'T PRETEND TO MAKE YOU READ
THE PAGES THAT TO THIS SUCCEED;
NOR COULD I--IF I WOULD--EXCUSE
THE WAYWARD PROMPTINGS OF THE MUSE
AT WHOSE COMMAND I WROTE THEM DOWN.
I HAVE NO HOPE TO "PLEASE THE TOWN."
I DID BUT THINK SOME FRIENDLY SOUL
(NOT ILL-ADVISED, UPON THE WHOLE!)
MIGHT LIKE THEM; AND "TO INTERPOSE
A LITTLE EASE," BETWEEN THE PROSE,
SLIPPED IN THE SCRAPS OF VERSE, THAT THUS
THINGS MIGHT BE LESS MONOTONOUS.
THEN, _LECTOR,_ BE _BENEVOLUS!_
[_The Author desires to express his thanks to Lord Northcliffe, Messrs.
Macmillan and Co., Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., Mr. William Heinemann,
and Messrs. Virtue and Co., for kind permission to reprint those pieces
in this volume concerning which no specific arrangements were made on
their first appearance in type._]
CONTENTS
Prologue
On Some Books And Their Associations
An Epistle To An Editor
Bramston's "Man Of Taste"
The Passionate Printer To His Love
M. Rouquet On The Arts
The Friend Of Humanity And The Rhymer
The Parent's Assistant
A Pleasant Invective Against Printing
Two Modern Book Illustrators--I. Kate Greenaway
A Song Of The Greenaway Child
Two Modern Book Illustrators--Ii. Mr. Hugh Thomson
Horatian Ode On The Tercentenary Of "Don Quixote"
The Books Of Samuel Rogers
Pepys' "Diary"
A French Critic On Bath
A Welcome From The "Johnson Club"
Thackeray's "Esmond"
A Miltonic Exercise
Fresh Facts About Fielding
The Happy Printer
Cross Readings--And Caleb Whitefoord
The Last Proof
General Index
_ILLUSTRATIONS_
* THE OTTER HUNT IN THE "COMPLEAT ANGLER." From an unpublished
pen-drawing by Mr. Hugh Thomson _Frontispiece_
*GROUP OF CHILDREN. From the original pen-drawing by Kate Greenaway for
_The Library,_ 1881
*PENCIL-SKETCHES, by the same (No. 1)
*PENCIL-SKETCH, by the same (No. 2)
*PENCIL-SKETCHES, by the same (No. 3)
*PENCIL-SKETCH, by the same (No. 4)
THE BROWN BOOK-PLATE. From the original design by Mr. Hugh Thomson in
the possession of Mr. Ernest Brown
*SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY AT THE ASSIZES. From a first rough pencil-sketch,
by the same, for _Days with Sir Roger de Coverley,_ 1886
PEN-SKETCHES, by the same, on the Half-Title of the _Ballad of Beau
Brocade,_ 1892. From the originals in the possession of Mr. A.
T.A. Dobson
*PEN-SKETCH (TRIPLET), by the same, on a Flyleaf of _Peg Woffington,_
1899
EVELINA AND THE BRANGHTONS, by the same. From the Cranford _Evelina,_
1903
LADY CASTLEWOOD AND HER SON, by the same. From the Cranford _Esmond_,
1905
MERCERY LANE, CANTERBURY, by the same. From the original pencil-drawing
for _Highways and Byways in Kent_, 1907
_The originals of the illustrations preceded by an asterisk are in the
possession of the Author._
ON SOME BOOKS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS
New books can have few associations. They may reach us on the best
deckle-edged Whatman paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with
backs of embossed vellum, with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be
no more to us than the constrained and uneasy acquaintances of
yesterday. Friends they may become to-morrow, the day after,--perhaps
"hunc in annum et plures" But for the time being they have neither part
nor lot in our past of retrospect and suggestion. Of what we were, of
what we like or liked, they know nothing; and we--if that be
possible--know even less of them. Whether familiarity will breed
contempt, or whether they will come home to our business and
bosom,--these are things that lie on the lap of the Fates.
But it is to be observed that the associations of old books, as of new
books, are not always exclusively connected with their text or
format,--are sometimes, as a matter of fact, independent of both. Often
they are memorable to us by length of tenure, by propinquity,--even by
their patience under neglect. We may never read them; and yet by reason
of some wholly external and accidental characteristic, it would be a
wrench to part with them if the moment of separation--the inevitable
hour--should arrive at last. Here, to give an instance in point, is a
stained and battered French folio, with patched corners,--Mons. N.
Renouard's translation of the _Metamorphoses d'Ovide_, 1637, "_enrichies
de figures à chacune Fable_" (very odd figures some of them are!) and to
be bought "_chez Pierre Billaine, ruë Sainct Iacques, à la Bonne-Foy,
deuant S. Yues_." It has held no honoured place upon the shelves; it has
even resided au rez-de-chaussée,--that is to say, upon the floor; but it
is not less dear,-- not less desirable. For at the back of the
"Dedication to the King" (Lewis XIII. to wit), is scrawled in a
slanting, irregular hand: "_Pour mademoiselle de mons Son tres humble et
tres obeissant Serviteur St. André._" Between the fourth and fifth word,
some one, in a smaller writing of later date, has added "_par_" and
after "St. André," the signature "_Vandeuvre_." In these irrelevant (and
unsolicited) interpolations, I take no interest. But who was Mlle. de
Mons? As Frederick Locker sings:
Did She live yesterday or ages back?
What colour were the eyes when bright and waking?
And were your ringlets fair, or brown, or black,
Poor little Head! that long has done with aching![1]
"Ages back" she certainly did _not_ live, for the book is dated "1637,"
and "yesterday" is absurd. But that her eyes were bright,--nay, that
they were particularly lively and vivacious, even as they are in the
sanguine sketches of Antoine Watteau a hundred years afterwards, I am
"confidous"--as Mrs. Slipslop would say. For my theory (in reality a
foregone conclusion which I shrink from dispersing by any practical
resolvent) is, that Mile. de Mons was some delightful
seventeenth--century French child, to whom the big volume had been
presented as a picture-book. I can imagine the alert, strait-corseted
little figure, with ribboned hair, eagerly craning across the tall
folio; and following curiously with her finger the legends under the
copper "figures,"--"Narcisse en fleur," "Ascalaphe en hibou," "Jason
endormant le dragon,"--and so forth, with much the same wonder that the
Sinne-Beelden of Jacob Cats must have stirred in the little Dutchwomen
of Middelburg. There can be no Mlle. de Mons but this,--and for me she
can never grow old!
Note:
[1] This quatrain has the distinction of having been touched upon by
Thackeray. When Mr. Locker's manuscript went to the Cornhill Magazine
in 1860, it ran thus:
Did she live yesterday, or ages sped?
What colour were the eyes when bright and waking?
And were your ringlets fair? Poor little head!
--Poor little heart! that long has done with aching.
Sometimes it comes to pass that the association is of a more far-fetched
and fanciful kind. In the great Ovid it lies in an inscription: in my
next case it is "another-guess" matter. The folio this time is the
_Sylva Sylvarum_ of the "Right Hon. Francis Lo. Verulam. Viscount St.
Alban," of whom some people still prefer to speak as Lord Bacon. 'Tis
only the "sixt Edition"; but it was to be bought at the Great Turk's
Head, "next to the Mytre Tauerne" (not the modern pretender, be it
observed!), which is in itself a feature of interest. A former
possessor, from his notes, appears to have been largely preoccupied with
that ignoble clinging to life which so exercised Matthew Arnold, for
they relate chiefly to laxative simples for medicine; and he comforts
himself, in April, 1695, by transcribing Bacon's reflection that "a Life
led in _Religion_ and in _Holy Exercises_" conduces to longevity,--an
aphorism which, however useful as an argument for length of days, is a
rather remote reason for religion. But what to me is always most
seductive in the book is, that to this edition (not copy, of course) of
1651 Master Izaak Walton, when he came, in his _Compleat Angler_ of
1653, to discuss such abstract questions as the transmission of sound
under water, and the ages of carp and pike, must probably have referred.
He often mentions "Sir Francis Bacon's" _History of Life and Death_,
which is included in the volume. No doubt it would be more reasonable
and more "congruous" that Bacon's book should suggest Bacon. But there
it is. That illogical "succession of ideas" which puzzled my Uncle Toby,
invariably recalls to me, not the imposing folio to be purchased "next
to the Mytre Tauerne" in Fleet Street, but the unpretentious
eighteenpenny octavo which, two years later, was on sale at Richard
Marriot's in St. Dunstan's churchyard hard by, and did no more than
borrow its erudition from the riches of the Baconian storehouse.
Life, and its prolongation, is again the theme of the next book (also
mentioned, by the way, in Walton) which I take up, though unhappily it
has no inscription. It is a little old calf-clad copy of Lewis Cornaro's
_Sure and Certain Methods of attaining a Long and Healthful Life_, 4th
ed., 24mo, 1727; and was bought at the Bewick sale of February, 1884, as
having once belonged to Robert Elliot Bewick, only son of the famous old
Newcastle wood-engraver. As will be shown later, it is easy to be misled
in these matters, but I cannot help believing that this volume, which
looks as if it had been re-bound, is the one Thomas Bewick mentions in
his _Memoir_ as having been his companion in those speculative
wanderings over the Town Moor or the Elswick Fields, when, as an
apprentice, he planned his future _à la_ Franklin, and devised schemes
for his conduct in life. In attaining Cornaro's tale of years he did not
succeed; though he seems to have faithfully practised the periods of
abstinence enjoined (but probably not observed) by another of the "noble
Venetian's" professed admirers, Mr. Addison of the _Spectator_.
If I have admitted a momentary misgiving as to the authenticity of the
foregoing relic of the "father of white line," there can be none about
the next item to which I now come. Once, on a Westminster bookstall,
long since disappeared, I found a copy of a seventh edition of the
_Pursuits of Literature_ of T.J. Mathias, Queen Charlotte's Treasurer's
Clerk. Brutally cut down by the binder, that _durus arator_ had
unexpectedly spared a solitary page for its manuscript comment, which
was thoughtfully turned up and folded in. It was a note to this couplet
in Mathias, his Dialogue II.:--
From Bewick's magick wood throw borrow'd rays
O'er many a page in gorgeous Bulmer's blaze,--
"gorgeous Bulmer" (the epithet is over-coloured!) being the William
Bulmer who, in 1795, issued the _Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell_. "I"
(says the writer of the note) "was chiefly instrumental to this
ingenious artist's [Bewick's] excellence in this art. I first initiated
his master, Mr. Ra. Beilby (of Newcastle) into the art, and his first
essay was the execution of the cuts in my Treatise on Mensuration,
printed in 4to, 1770. Soon after I recommended the same artist to
execute the cuts to Dr. Horsley's edition of the works of Newton.
Accordingly Mr. B. had the job, who put them into the hands of his
assistant, Mr. Bewick, who executed them as his first work in wood, and
that in a most elegant manner, tho' spoiled in the printing by John
Nichols, the Black-letter printer. C.H. 1798."
"C.H." is Dr. Charles Hutton, the Woolwich mathematician. His note is a
little in the vaunting vein of that "founder of fortun's," the excellent
Uncle Pumblechook of _Great Expectations_, for his services scarcely
amounted to "initiating" Bewick or his master into the art of engraving
on wood. Moreover, his memory must have failed him, for Bewick, and not
Beilby, did the majority of the cuts to the _Mensuration_, including a
much-praised diagram of the tower of St. Nicholas Church at Newcastle,
afterwards a familiar object in the younger man's designs and
tail-pieces. Be this as it may, Dr. Hutton's note was surely worth
rescuing from the ruthless binder's plough.
Between the work of Thomas Bewick and the work of Samuel Pepys, it is
idle to attempt any ingenious connecting link, save the fact that they
both wrote autobiographically. The "Pepys" in question here, however, is
not the famous _Diary_, but the Secretary to the Admiralty's "only other
acknowledged work," namely, the privately printed _Memoires Relating to
the State of the Royal Navy of England, for Ten Years, 1690_; and this
copy may undoubtedly lay claim to exceptional interest. For not only
does it comprise those manuscript corrections in the author's
handwriting, which Dr. Tanner reproduced in his excellent Clarendon
Press reprint of last year, but it includes the two portrait plates by
Robert White after Kneller. The larger is bound in as a frontispiece;
the smaller (the ex-libris) is inserted at the beginning. The main
attraction of the book to me, however, is its previous owners--one
especially. My immediate predecessor was a well-known collector,
Professor Edward Solly, at whose sale in 1886 I bought it; and he in his
turn had acquired it in 1877, at Dr. Rimbault's sale. Probably what drew
us all to the little volume was not so much its disclosure of the
lamentable state of the Caroline navy, and of the monstrous toadstools
that flourished so freely in the ill-ventilated holds of His Majesty's
ships-of-war, as the fact that it had once belonged to that brave old
philanthropist, Captain Thomas Coram of the Foundling Hospital. To him
it was presented in March, 1724, by one C. Jackson; and he afterwards
handed it on to a Mr. Mills. Pasted at the end is Coram's autograph
letter, dated "June 10th, 1746." "To Mr. Mills These. Worthy Sir I
happend to find among my few Books, Mr. Pepys his memoires, w'ch I
thought might be acceptable to you & therefore pray you to accept of it.
I am w'th much Respect Sir your most humble Ser't. THOMAS CORAM."
At the Foundling Hospital is a magnificent full-length of Coram, with
curling white locks and kindly, weather-beaten face, from the brush of
his friend and admirer, William Hogarth. It is to Hogarth and his
fellow-Governor at the Foundling, John Wilkes, that my next jotting
relates. These strange colleagues in charity afterwards--as is well
known--quarrelled bitterly over politics. Hogarth caricatured Wilkes in
the _Times_: Wilkes replied by a _North Briton_ article (No. 17) so
scurrilous and malignant that Hogarth was stung into rejoining with that
famous squint-eyed semblance of his former crony, which has handed him
down to posterity more securely than the portraits of Zoffany and
Earlom. Wilkes's action upon this was to reprint his article with the
addition of a bulbous-nosed woodcut of Hogarth "from the Life." These
facts lent interest to an entry which for years had been familiar to me
in the Sale Catalogue of Mr. H.P. Standly, and which ran thus: "The
NORTH BRITON, No. 17, with a PORTRAIT of HOGARTH in WOOD; _and a severe
critique on some of his works: in Ireland's handwriting_ is the
following--'_This paper was given to me by Mrs. Hogarth, Aug. 1782, and
is the identical North Briton purchased by Hogarth, and carried in his
pocket many days to show his friends_.'" The Ireland referred to (as
will presently appear) was Samuel Ireland of the _Graphic
Illustrations_. When, in 1892, dispersed items of the famous Joly
collection began to appear sporadically in the second-hand catalogues, I
found in that of a well-known London bookseller an entry plainly
describing this one, and proclaiming that it came "from the celebrated
collection of Mr. Standly, of St. Neots." Unfortunately, the scrap of
paper connecting it with Mrs. Hogarth's present to Ireland had been
destroyed. Nevertheless, I secured my prize, had it fittingly bound up
with the original number which accompanied it; and here and there, in
writing about Hogarth, bragged consequentially about my fortunate
acquisition. Then came a day--a day to be marked with a black
stone!--when in the British Museum Print Room, and looking through the
"--Collection," for the moment deposited there, I came upon _another_
copy of the _North Briton_, bearing in Samuel Ireland's writing a
notification to the effect that it was the Identical No. 17, etc., etc.
Now which is the right one? Is either the right one? I inspect mine
distrustfully. It is soiled, and has evidently been folded; it is
scribbled with calculations; it has all the aspect of a _vénérable
vétusté_. That it came from the Standly collection, I am convinced. But
that other pretender in the (now dispersed) "--Collection"? And was
not Samuel Ireland (_nomen invisum_!) the, if not fraudulent, at least
too-credulous father of one William Henry Ireland, who, at eighteen,
wrote _Vortigern and Rowena_, and palmed it off as genuine Shakespeare?
I fear me--I much fear me--that, in the words of the American showman,
I have been "weeping over the wrong grave."
To prolong these vagrant adversaria would not be difficult. Here, for
example, dated 1779, are the _Coplas_ of the poet Don Jorge Manrique,
which, having no Spanish, I am constrained to study in the renderings of
Longfellow. Don Jorge was a Spaniard of the Spaniards, Commendador of
Montizon, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Captain of a company in the
Guards of Castile, and withal a valiant _soldado_, who died of a wound
received in battle. But the attraction of my volume is, that, at the
foot of the title-page, in beautiful neat script, appear the words,
"Robert Southey. Paris. 17 May 1817,"--being the year in which Southey
stayed at Como with Walter Savage Landor. Here are the _Works_ of
mock-heroic John Philips, 1720, whose _Blenheim_ the Tories pitted
against Addison's _Campaign_, and whose _Splendid Shilling_ still shines
lucidly among eighteenth-century parodies. This copy bears--also on the
title-page--the autograph of James Thomson, not yet the author of _The
Seasons_; and includes the book-plate of Lord Prestongrange,--that
"Lord Advocate Grant" of whom you may read in the _Kidnapped_ of
"R.L.S." Here again is an edition (the first) of Hazlitt's _Lectures on
the English Comic Writers_, annotated copiously in MS. by a contemporary
reader who was certainly not an admirer; and upon whom W.H.'s
cockneyisms, Gallicisms, egotisms, and "_ille_-isms" generally, seem to
have had the effect of a red rag upon an inveterately insular bull. "A
very ingenious but pert, dogmatical, and Prejudiced Writer" is his
uncomplimentary addition to the author's name. Then here is Cunningham's
_Goldsmith_ of 1854, vol. i., castigated with equal energy by that
Alaric Alexander Watts,[2] of whose egregious strictures upon Wordsworth
we read not long since in the _Cornhill Magazine_, and who will not
allow Goldsmith to say, in the _Haunch of Venison_, "the porter and
eatables followed behind." "They could scarcely have followed
before,"--he objects, in the very accents of Boeotia. Nor will he pass
"the hollow-sounding bittern" of the _Deserted Village_. A barrel may
sound hollow, but not a bird--this wiseacre acquaints us.
Note:
[2] So he was christened. But Lockhart chose to insist that his
second pre-name should properly be "Attila," and thenceforth he was
spoken of in this way.
Had the gifted author of _Lyrics of the Heart_ never heard of rhetorical
figures? But he is not Goldsmith's only hyper-critic. Charles Fox, who
admired _The Traveller_, thought Olivia's famous song in the _Vicar_
"foolish," and added that "folly" was a bad rhyme to "melancholy."[3] He
must have forgotten Milton's:--
Bird that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musicall, most melancholy!
Or he might have gone to the other camp, and remembered Pope on Mrs.
Howard:--
Not warp'd by Passion, aw'd by Rumour,
Not grave thro' Pride,, or gay thro' Folly,
An equal Mixture of good Humour,
And sensible soft Melancholy.
Note:
[3] _Recollections_, by Samuel Rogers, 2nd ed., 1859, 43.
AN EPISTLE TO AN EDITOR
"Jamais les arbres verts n'ont essayé d'être bleus."--
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
"A new Review!" You make me tremble
(Though as to that, I can dissemble
Till I hear more). But is it "new"?
And will it be a _real_ Review?--
I mean, a Court wherein the scales
Weigh equally both him that fails,
And him that hits the mark?--a place
Where the accus'd can plead his case,
If wrong'd? All this I need to know
Before I (arrogant!) say "Go."
"We, that are very old" (the phrase
Is STEELE'S, not mine!), in former days,
Have seen so many "new Reviews"
Arise, arraign, absolve, abuse;--
Proclaim their mission to the top
(Where there's still room!), then slowly drop,
Shrink down, fade out, and _sans_ preferment,
Depart to their obscure interment;--
We should be pardon'd if we doubt
That a new venture _can_ hold out.
It _will_, you say. Then don't be "new";
Be "old." The Old is still the True.
Nature (said GAUTIER) never tries
To alter her accustom'd dyes;
And all your novelties at best
Are ancient puppets, newly drest.
What you must do, is not to shrink
From speaking out the thing you think;
And blaming where 'tis right to blame,
Despite tradition and a Name.
Yet don't expand a trifling blot,
Or ban the book for what it's not
(That is the poor device of those
Who cavil where they can't oppose!);
Moreover (this is _very_ old!),
Be courteous--even when you scold!
Blame I put first, but not at heart.
You must give Praise the foremost part;--
Praise that to those who write is breath
Of Life, if just; if unjust, Death.
Praise then the things that men revere;
Praise what they love, not what they fear;
Praise too the young; praise those who try;
Praise those who fail, but by and by
May do good work. Those who succeed,
You'll praise perforce,--so there's no need
To speak of that. And as to each,
See you keep measure in your speech;--
See that your praise be so exprest
That the best man shall get the best;
Nor fail of the fit word you meant
Because your epithets are spent.
Remember that our language gives
No limitless superlatives;
And SHAKESPEARE, HOMER, _should_ have more
Than the last knocker at the door!
"We, that are very old!"--May this
Excuse the hint you find amiss.
My thoughts, I feel, are what to-day
Men call _vieux jeu_. Well!--"let them say."
The Old, at least, we know: the New
(A changing Shape that all pursue!)
Has been,--may be, a fraud.
--But there!
Wind to your sail! _Vogue la galère!_
BRAMSTON'S "MAN OF TASTE"
Were you to inquire respectfully of the infallible critic (if such
indeed there be!) for the source of the aphorism, "Music has charms to
soothe a savage beast," he would probably "down" you contemptuously in
the Johnsonian fashion by replying that you had "just enough of learning
to misquote";--that the last word was notoriously "breast" and not
"beast";--and that the line, as Macaulay's, and every Board School-boy
besides must be abundantly aware, is to be found in Congreve's tragedy
of _The Mourning Bride_. But he would be wrong; and, in fact, would only
be confirming the real author's contention that "Sure, of all
blockheads, _Scholars_ are the worst." For, whether connected with
Congreve or not, the words are correctly given; and they occur in the
Rev. James Bramston's satire, _The Man of Taste_, 1733, running in a
couplet as follows:--
Musick has charms to sooth a savage beast,
And therefore proper at a Sheriff's feast.
Moreover, according to the handbooks, this is not the only passage from
a rather obscure original which has held its own. "Without
black-velvet-britches, what is man?"--is another (a speculation which
might have commended itself to Don Quixote);[4] while _The Art of
Politicks_, also by Bramston, contains a third:--
What's not destroy'd by Time's devouring Hand?
Where's _Troy_, and where's the _May-Pole_ in the _Strand_?
Polonius would perhaps object against a "devouring hand." But the
survival of--at least--three fairly current citations from a practically
forgotten minor Georgian satirist would certainly seem to warrant a few
words upon the writer himself, and his chief performance in verse.
The Rev. James Bramston was born in 1694 or 1695 at Skreens, near
Chelmsford, in Essex, his father, Francis Bramston, being the fourth son
of Sir Moundeford Bramston, Master in Chancery, whose father again was
Sir John Bramston, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, generally
known as "the elder."[5]James Bramston was admitted to Westminster
School in 1708. In 1713 he became a scholar at Christ Church, Oxford,
proceeding B.A. in 1717, and M.A. in 1720. In 1723 he was made Vicar of
Lurgashall, and in 1725 of Harting, both of which Sussex livings he held
until his death in March 1744, ten weeks before the death of Pope. His
first published verses (1715) were on Dr. Radcliffe. In 1729 he printed
_The Art of Politicks_, one of the many contemporary imitations of the
_Ars Poetica_; and in 1733 _The Man of Taste_. He also wrote a mediocre
variation on the _Splendid Shilling_ of John Philips, entitled _The
Crooked Sixpence_, 1743. Beyond a statement in Dallaway's _Sussex_ that
"he [Bramston] was a man of original humour, the fame and proofs of
whose colloquial wit are still remembered"; and the supplementary
information that, as incumbent of Lurgashall, he received an annual
_modus_ of a fat buck and doe from the neighbouring Park of Petworth,
nothing more seems to have been recorded of him.
Notes:
[4] Whose _grand tenue_ or holiday wear--Cervantes tells us--was "a
doublet of fine cloth and _velvet breeches_ and shoes to match." (ch. 1).
[5] Sir John Bramston, the younger, was the author of the "watery
incoherent _Autobiography_"--as Carlyle calls it--published by the Camden
Society in 1845.
_The Crooked Sixpence_ is, at best, an imitation of an imitation; and as
a Miltonic _pastiche_ does not excel that of Philips, or rival the more
serious _Lewesdon Hill_ of Crowe. _The Art of Politicks_, in its turn,
would need a fairly long commentary to make what is only moderately
interesting moderately intelligible, while eighteenth-century copies of
Horace's letter to the Pisos are "plentiful as blackberries." But _The
Man of Taste_, based, as it is, on the presentment of a never extinct
type, the connoisseur against nature, is still worthy of passing notice.
In the sub-title of the poem, it is declared to be "Occasion'd by an
Epistle of Mr. Pope's on that Subject" [i.e. "Taste"]. This was what is
now known as No. 4 of the _Moral Essays_, "On the Use of Riches." But
its first title In 1731 was "Of Taste"; and this was subsequently
altered to "Of False Taste." It was addressed to Pope's friend, Richard
Boyle, Earl of Burlington; and, under the style of "Timon's Villa,"
employed, for its chief illustration of wasteful and vacuous
magnificence, the ostentatious seat which James Brydges, first Duke of
Chandos, had erected at Canons, near Edgware. The story of Pope's
epistle does not belong to this place. But in the print of _The Man of
Taste_, William Hogarth, gratifying concurrently a personal antipathy,
promptly attacked Pope, Burlington, and his own _bête noire_,
Burlington's architect, William Kent. Pope, to whom Burlington acts as
hodman, is depicted whitewashing Burlington Gate, Piccadilly, which is
labelled "Taste," and over which rises Kent's statue, subserviently
supported at the angles of the pediment by Raphael and Michelangelo. In
his task, the poet, a deformed figure in a tye-wig, bountifully
bespatters the passers-by, particularly the chariot of the Duke of
Chandos. The satire was not very brilliant or ingenious; but its meaning
was clear. Pope was prudent enough to make no reply; though, as Mr. G.S.
Layard shows in his _Suppressed Plates_, it seems that the print was, or
was sought to be, called in by those concerned. Bramston's poem, which
succeeded in 1733, does not enter into the quarrel, it may be because of
the anger aroused by the pictorial reply. But if--as announced on its
title-page,--it was suggested by Pope's epistle, it would also seem to
have borrowed its name from Hogarth's caricature.
It was first issued in folio by Pope's publisher, Lawton Gilliver of
Fleet Street, and has a frontispiece engraved by Gerard Vandergucht.
This depicts a wide-skirted, effeminate-looking personage, carrying a
long cane with a head fantastically carved, and surrounded by various
objects of art. In the background rises what is apparently intended for
the temple of a formal garden; and behind this again, a winged ass
capers skittishly upon the summit of Mount Helicon. As might be
anticipated, the poem is in the heroic measure of Pope. But though many
of its couplets are compact and pointed, Bramston has not yet learned
from his model the art of varying his pausation, and the period closes
his second line with the monotony of a minute gun. Another defect,
noticed by Warton, is that the speaker throughout is made to profess the
errors satirised, and to be the unabashed mouthpiece of his own fatuity,
"Mine," say the concluding lines,--
Mine are the gallant Schemes of Politesse,
For books, and buildings, politicks, and dress.
This is _True Taste_, and whoso likes it not,
Is blockhead, coxcomb, puppy, fool, and sot.
One is insensibly reminded of a quotation from P.L. Courier, made in the
_Cornhill_ many years since by the once famous "Jacob Omnium" when
replying controversially to the author of _Ionica_, "_Je vois_"--says
Courier, after recapitulating a string of abusive epithets hurled at him
by his opponent--"_je vois ce qu'il veut dire: il entend que lui et moi
sont d'avis different; et c'est là sa manière de s'exprimer_." It was
also the manner of our Man of Taste.
The second line of the above quotation from Bramston gives us four of
the things upon which his hero lays down the law. Let us see what he
says about literature. As a professing critic he prefers books
with notes:--
Tho' _Blackmore's_ works my soul with raptures fill,
With notes by _Bently_ they'd be better still.
Swift he detests--not of course for detestable qualities, but because he
is so universally admired. In poetry he holds by rhyme as opposed to
blank verse:--
Verse without rhyme I never could endure,
Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure.
To him as Nature, when he ceas'd to see,
_Milton's_ an _universal Blank_ to me ...
_Thompson _[_sic_] write blank, but know that for that reason
These lines shall live, when thine are out of season.
Rhyme binds and beautifies the Poet's lays
As _London_ Ladies owe their shape to stays.
In this the Man of Taste is obviously following the reigning fashion.
But if we may assume Bramston himself to approve what his hero condemns,
he must have been in advance of his age, for blank verse had but sparse
advocates at this time, or for some time to come. Neither Gray, nor
Johnson, nor Goldsmith were ever reconciled to what the last of them
styles "this unharmonious measure." Goldsmith, in particular, would
probably have been in exact agreement with the couplet as to the
controlling powers of rhyme. "If rhymes, therefore," he writes, in the
_Enquiry into Polite Learning_,[6] "be more difficult [than blank
verse], for that very reason, I would have our poets write in rhyme.
Such a restriction upon the thought of a good poet, often lifts and
encreases the vehemence of every sentiment; for fancy, like a fountain,
plays highest by diminishing the aperture."[7]
Notes:
[6] Ed. 1759, p. 151.
[7] Montaigne has a somewhat similar illustration: "As _Cleanthes_ The
Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is said, that as the voice
being forciblie pent in the narrow gullet of a trumpet, at last issueth
forth more strong and shriller, so me seemes, that a sentence cunningly
and closely couched in measure-keeping Posie, darts it selfe forth more
furiously, and wounds me even to the quicke".
(_Essayes_, bk. i. ch. xxv. (Florio's translation).
The Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is Colley Cibber, who,
however, deserves the laurel he wears, not for _The Careless Husband_,
his best comedy, but for his Epilogues and other Plays.
It pleases me, that _Pope_ unlaurell'd goes,
While _Cibber_ wears the Bays for Play-house Prose,
So _Britain's_ Monarch once uncover'd sate,
While _Bradshaw_ bully'd in a broad-brimmed hat,--
a reminiscence of King Charles's trial which might have been added to
Bramston stock quotations. The productions of "Curll's chaste press" are
also this connoisseur's favourite reading,--the lives of players in
particular, probably on the now obsolete grounds set forth in Carlyie's
essay on Scott.[8] Among these the memoirs of Cibber's "Lady Betty
Modish," Mrs. Oldfield, then lately dead, and buried in Westminster
Abbey, are not obscurely indicated.
Note:
[8] "It has been said. 'There are no English lives worth reading except
those of Players, who by the nature of the case have bidden Respectability
good-day.'"
In morals our friend--as might be expected _circa_ l730--is a
Freethinker and Deist. Tindal is his text-book: his breviary the _Fable
of the Bees_;--
T' Improve In Morals _Mandevil_ I read,
And _Tyndal's_ Scruples are my settled Creed.
I travell'd early, and I soon saw through
Religion all, e'er I was twenty-two.
Shame, Pain, or Poverty shall I endure,
When ropes or opium can my ease procure?
When money's gone, and I no debts can pay,
Self-murder is an honourable way.
As _Pasaran_ directs I'd end my life,
And kill myself, my daughter, and my wife.
He would, of course, have done nothing of the kind; nor, for the matter
of that, did his Piedmontese preceptor.[9]
Note:
[9] Count Passeran was a freethinking nobleman who wrote _A
Philosophical Discourse on Death_, in which he defended suicide, though
he refrained from resorting to it himself. Pope refers to him in the
_Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue i. 124:--
If Blount despatch'd himself, he play'd the man,
And so may'st thou, illustrious Passeran!
_Nil admirari_ is the motto of the Man of Taste in Building, where he is
naturally at home. He can see no symmetry in the Banqueting House, or in
St. Paul's Covent Garden, or even in St. Paul's itself.
Sure wretched _Wren_ was taught by bungling _Jones_,
To murder mortar, and disfigure stones!
"Substantial" Vanbrugh he likes-=chiefly because his work would make
"such noble ruins." Cost is his sole criterion, and here he, too, seems
to glance obliquely at Canons:--
_Dorick, Ionick,_ shall not there be found,
But it shall cost me threescore thousand pound.
But this was moderate, as the Edgware "folly" reached £250,000. In
Gardening he follows the latest whim for landscape. Here is his
burlesque of the principles of Bridgeman and Batty Langley:--
Does it not merit the beholder's praise,
What's high to sink? and what is low to raise?
Slopes shall ascend where once a green-house stood,
And in my horse-pond I will plant a wood.
Let misers dread the hoarded gold to waste,
Expence and alteration show a _Taste_.
As a connoisseur of Painting this enlightened virtuoso is given over to
Hogarth's hated dealers in the Black Masters:--
In curious paintings I'm exceeding nice,
And know their several beauties by their _Price_.
_Auctions_ and _Sales_ I constantly attend,
But chuse my pictures by a _skilful Friend_,
Originals and copies much the same,
The picture's value is the _painter's name_.[10]
Of Sculpture he says--
In spite of _Addison_ and ancient _Rome_,
Sir _Cloudesly Shovel's_ is my fav'rite tomb.[11]
How oft have I with admiration stood,
To view some City-magistrate in wood?
I gaze with pleasure on a Lord May'r's head
Cast with propriety in gilded lead,--
the allusion being obviously to Cheere's manufactory of such popular
garden decorations at Hyde Park Corner.
Notes:
[10]: See _post_, "M. Ronquet on the Arts," p. 51.
[11]: "Sir _Cloudesly Shovel's_ Monument has very often given me great
Offence: Instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the
distinguishing Character of that plain, gallant Man, he is represented
on his Tomb [in Westminster Abbey] by the Figure of a Beau, dressed in a
long Perriwig, and reposing himself upon Velvet Cushions under a Canopy
of State" (_Spectator_, March 30, 1711).
In Coins and Medals, true to his instinct for liking the worst the best,
he prefers the modern to the antique. In Music, with Hogarth's Rake two
years later, he is all for that "Dagon of the nobility and gentry,"
imported song:--
Without _Italian_, or without an ear,
To _Bononcini's_ musick I adhere;--
though he confesses to a partiality for the bagpipe on the ground that
your true Briton "loves a grumbling noise," and he favours organs and
the popular oratorios. But his "top talent is a bill of fare":--
Sir Loins and rumps of beef offend my eyes,[12]
Pleas'd with frogs fricass[e]ed, and coxcomb-pies.
Dishes I chuse though little, yet genteel,
_Snails_[13] the first course, and _Peepers_[14] crown the meal.
Pigs heads with hair on, much my fancy please,
I love young colly-flowers if stew'd in cheese,
And give ten guineas for a pint of peas!
No tatling servants to my table come,
My Grace is _Silence_, and my waiter _Dumb_.
He is not without his aspirations.
Could I the _priviledge_ of _Peer_ procure,
The rich I'd bully, and oppress the poor.
To _give_ is wrong, but it is wronger still,
On any terms to _pay_ a tradesman's bill.
I'd make the insolent Mechanicks stay,
And keep my ready-money all for _play_.
I'd try if any pleasure could be found
In _tossing-up_ for twenty thousand pound.
Had I whole Counties, I to _White's_ would go,
And set lands, woods, and rivers at a throw.
But should I meet with an unlucky run,
And at a throw be gloriously undone;
My _debts of honour_ I'd discharge the first,
Let all my _lawful creditors_ be curst.
Notes:
[12] As they did those of Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs." "I hate your
immense loads of meat ... extreme disgusting to those who are in the
least acquainted with high life" (_Citizen of the World_, 1762, i.
241).
[13]: The edible or Roman snail (_Helix pomatia_) is still
known to continental cuisines--and gipsy camps. It was introduced into
England as an epicure's dish in the seventeenth century.
[14]: Young chickens.
Here he perfectly exemplifies that connexion between connoisseurship and
play which Fielding discovers in Book xiii. of _Tom Jones_.[15] An
anecdote of C.J. Fox aptly exhibits the final couplet in action, and
proves that fifty years later, at least, the same convenient code was in
operation. Fox once won about eight thousand pounds at cards. Thereupon
an eager creditor promptly presented himself, and pressed for payment.
"Impossible, Sir," replied Fox," I must first discharge my debts of
honour." The creditor expostulated. "Well, Sir, give me your bond." The
bond was delivered to Fox, who tore it up and flung the pieces into the
fire. "Now, Sir," said he, "my debt to you is a debt of honour," and
immediately paid him.[16]
Notes:
[15] "But the science of gaming is that which above all others
employs their thoughts [i.e. the thoughts of the 'young gentlemen of our
times']. These are the studies of their graver hours, while for their
amusements they have the vast circle of connoisseurship, painting,
music, statuary, and natural philosophy, or rather _unnatural_, which
deals in the wonderful, and knows nothing of nature, except her monsters
and imperfections" (ch. v.).
[16] _Table Talk of Samuel Rogers_ [by Dyce], 1856, p. 73.
But we must abridge our levies on Pope's imitator. In Dress the Man of
Taste's aim seems to have been to emulate his own footman, and at this
point comes in the already quoted reference to velvet
"inexpressibles"--(a word which, the reader may be interested to learn,
is as old as 1793). His "pleasures," as might be expected, like those of
Goldsmith's Switzers, "are but low"--
To boon companions I my time would give,
With players, pimps, and parasites I'd live.
I would with _Jockeys_ from _Newmarket_ dine,
And to _Rough-riders_ give my choicest wine ...
My ev'nings all I would with _sharpers_ spend,
And make the _Thief-catcher_ my bosom friend.
In _Fig_, the Prize-fighter, by day delight,
And sup with _Colly Cibber_ ev'ry night.
At which point--and probably in his cups--we leave our misguided fine
gentleman of 1733, doubtless a fair sample of many of his class under
the second George, and not wholly unknown under that monarch's
successors--even to this hour. _Le jour va passer; mais la folie ne
passera pas!_
A parting quotation may serve to illustrate one of those changes of
pronunciation which have taken place in so many English words. Speaking
of his villa, or country-box, the Man of Taste says--
Pots o'er the door I'll place like Cits balconies,
Which _Bently_ calls the _Gardens of Adonis_.
To make this a peg for a dissertation on the jars of lettuce and fennel
grown by the Greeks for the annual Adonis festivals, is needless. But it
may be noted that Bramston, with those of his day,--Swift
excepted,--scans the "o" in balcony long, a practice which continued far
into the nineteenth century. "Cóntemplate," said Rogers, "is bad enough;
but balcony makes me sick."[17] And even in 1857, two years after
Rogers's death, the late Frederick Locker, writing of _Piccadilly_,
speaks of "Old Q's" well-known window in that thoroughfare as
"Primrose balcony."
Note:
[17:]_Table Talk_, 1856, p. 248.
THE PASSIONATE PRINTER TO HIS LOVE
(_Whose name is Amanda._)
With Apologies to the Shade of Christopher Marlowe.
Come live with me and be my Dear;
And till that happy bond shall lapse,
I'll set your Poutings in _Brevier_,[l8]
Your Praises in the largest CAPS.
There's _Diamond_--'tis for your Eyes;
There's _Ruby_--that will match your Lips;
_Pearl_, for your Teeth; and _Minion_-size.
To suit your dainty Finger-tips.
In _Nonpareil_ I'll put your Face;
In _Rubric_ shall your Blushes rise;
There is no _Bourgeois_ in _your_ Case;
Your _Form_ can never need "_Revise_."
Your Cheek seems "_Ready for the Press_";
Your Laugh as _Clarendon_ is clear;
There's more distinction in your Dress
Than in the oldest _Elzevir_.
So with me live, and with me die;
And may no "FINIS" e'er intrude
To break into mere "_Printers' Pie_"
The Type of our Beatitude!
(ERRATUM.--If my suit you flout,
And choose some happier Youth to wed,
'Tis but to cross AMANDA out,
And read another name instead.)
Note:
[18] "Pronounced Bre-veer" (Printers' Vocabulary).
M. ROUQUET ON THE ARTS
M. Rouquet's book is a rare duodecimo of some two hundred pages, bound
in sheep, which, in the copy before us, has reached that particular
stage of disintegration when the scarfskin, without much persuasion,
peels away in long strips. Its title is--_L'État des Arts, en
Angleterre. Par M. Rouquet, de l'Académie Royale de Peinture & de
Sculpture_; and it is "_imprime à Paris_" though it was to be obtained
from John Nourse, "_Libraire dans le_ Strand, _proche_ Temple-barr"--a
well-known importer of foreign books, and one of Henry Fielding's
publishers. The date is 1755, being the twenty-eighth year of the reign
of His Majesty King George the Second--a reign not generally regarded as
favourable to art of any kind. In what month of 1755 the little volume
was first put forth does not appear; but it must have been before
October, when Nourse issued an English version. There is a dedication,
in the approved French fashion, to the Marquis de Marigny, "_Directeur &
Ordonnateur Général de ses Bâtimens, Jardins, Arts, Académies &
Manufactures_" to Lewis the Fifteenth, above which is a delicate
headpiece by M. Charles-Nicolas Cochin (the greatest of the family),
where a couple of that artist's well-nourished _amorini_, insecurely
attached to festoons, distribute palms and laurels in vacuity under a
coroneted oval displaying fishes. For Monsieur Abel-François Poisson,
Marquis de Marigny et de Ménars, was the younger brother of
Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the celebrated Marquise de Pompadour.
Cochin's etching is dated "1754"; and the "Approbation" at the end of
the volume bears his signature in his capacity of _Censeur_.
Of the "M. Rouquet" of the title-page biography tells us little; but it
may be well, before speaking of his book, to bring that little together.
He was a Swiss Protestant of French extraction, born at Geneva in 1702.
His Christian names were Jean-André; and he had come to England from his
native land towards the close of the reign of George the First. Many of
his restless compatriots also sought these favoured shores. Labelye, who
rose from a barber's shop to be the architect of London Bridge; Liotard,
once regarded as a rival of Reynolds; Michael Moser, eventually Keeper
of the Royal Academy, had all migrated from the "stormy mansions" where,
in the words of Goldsmith's philosophic Wanderer--
Winter ling'ring chills the lap of May.
Like Moser, Rouquet was a chaser and an enameller. He lodged on the
south side of Leicester Fields, in a house afterwards the residence of
another Switzer of the same craft, that miserable Theodore Gardelle, who
in 1761 murdered his landlady, Mrs. King. Of Rouquet's activities as an
artist in England there are scant particulars. The ordinary authorities
affirm that he imitated and rivalled the popular miniaturist and
enameller, Christian Zincke, who retired from practice in 1746; and he
is loosely described as "the companion of Hogarth, Garrick, Foote, and
the wits of the day." Of his relations with Foote and Garrick there is
scant record; but with Hogarth, his near neighbour in the Fields, he was
certainly well acquainted, since in 1746 he prepared explanations in
French for a number of Hogarth's prints. These took the form of letters
to a friend at Paris, and are supposed to have been, if not actually
inspired, at least approved by the painter. They usually accompanied all
the sets of Hogarth's engravings which went abroad; and, according to
George Steevens, it was Hogarth's intention ultimately to have them
translated and enlarged. Rouquet followed these a little later by a
separate description of "The March to Finchley," designed specially for
the edification of Marshal Foucquet de Belle-Isle, who, when the former
letters had been written, was a prisoner of war at Windsor. In a brief
introduction to this last, the author, hitherto unnamed, is spoken of as
"_Mr. Rouquet, connu par ses Outrages d'Émail_."
After thirty years' sojourn in this country, Rouquet transferred himself
to Paris. At what precise date he did this is not stated, but by a
letter to Hogarth from the French capital, printed by John Ireland, the
original of which is in the British Museum, he was there, and had been
there several months, in March 1753. The letter gives a highly
favourable account of its writer's fortunes. Business is "coming in very
smartly," he says. He has been excellently received, and is "perpetualy
imploy'd." There is far more encouragement for modern enterprise in
Paris than there is in London; and some of his utterances must have
rejoiced the soul of his correspondent. As this, for instance--"The
humbug _virtu_ is much more out of fashon here than in England, free
thinking upon that & other topicks is more common here than amongst you
if possible, old pictures & old stories fare's alike, a dark picture is
become a damn'd picture." On this account, he inquires anxiously as to
the publication of his friend's forthcoming _Analysis_; he has been
raising expectations about it, and he wishes to be the first to
introduce it into France. From other sources we learn that (perhaps
owing to his relations with Belle-Isle, who had been released in 1745)
he had been taken up by Marigny, and also by Cochin, then keeper of the
King's Drawings, and soon to be Secretary to the Academy, of which
Rouquet himself, by express order of Lewis the Fifteenth, was made a
member. Finally, as in the case of Cochin, apartments were assigned to
him in the Louvre. Whether he ever returned to this country is doubtful;
but, as we have seen, the _État des Arts_ was printed at Paris in 1755.
That it was suggested--or "commanded"--by Mme. de Pompadour's
connoisseur brother, to whom it was inscribed, is a not unreasonable
supposition.
In any case, M. Rouquet's definition of the "Arts" is a generous one,
almost as wide as Marigny's powers, already sufficiently set forth at
the outset of this paper. For not only--as in duty bound--does he treat
of Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Engraving, but he also has
chapters on Printing, Porcelain, Gold-and Silver-smiths' Work, Jewelry,
Music, Declamation, Auctions, Shop-fronts, Cooking, and even on Medicine
and Surgery. Oddly enough, he says nothing of one notable art with which
Marigny was especially identified, that "art of creating landscape"--as
Walpole happily calls Gardening--which, in this not very "shining
period," entered upon a fresh development under Bridgeman and William
Kent. Although primarily a Londoner, one would think that M. Rouquet
must certainly have had some experience, if not of the efforts of the
innovators, at least of the very Batavian performances of Messrs. London
and Wise of Brompton; or that he should have found at Nonsuch or
Theobalds--at Moor Park or Hampton Court--the pretext for some of his
pages--if only to ridicule those "verdant sculptures" at which Pope, who
played no small part in the new movement, had laughed in the _Guardian_;
or those fantastic "coats of arms and mottoes in yew, box and holly"
over which Walpole also made merry long after in the famous essay so
neatly done into French by his friend the Duc de Nivernais. M. Rouquet's
curious reticence in this matter cannot have been owing to any
consideration for Hogarth's old enemy, William Kent, for Kent had been
dead seven years when the _État des Arts_ made its appearance.
If, for lack of space, we elect to pass by certain preliminary
reflections which the _Monthly Review_ rather unkindly dismisses as a
"tedious jumble," M. Rouquet's first subject is History Painting, a
branch of the art which, under George the Second, attained to no great
excellence. For this M. Rouquet gives three main reasons, the first
being that afterwards advanced by Hogarth and Reynolds, namely,--the
practical exclusion, in Protestant countries, of pictures from churches.
A second cause was the restriction of chamber decorations to portraits
and engravings; and a third, the craze of the connoisseur for Hogarth's
hated "Black Masters," the productions of defunct foreigners. And this
naturally brings about the following digression, quite in Hogarth's own
way, against that contemporary charlatan, the picture-dealer:--"English
painters have an obstacle to overcome, which equally impedes the
progress of their talents and of their fortune. They have to contend
with a class of men whose business it is to sell pictures; and as, for
these persons, traffic in the works of living, and above all of native
artists, would be impossible, they make a point of decrying them, and,
as far as they can, of confirming amateurs with whom they have to deal
in the ridiculous idea that the older a picture is the more valuable it
becomes. See, say they (speaking of some modern effort), it still shines
with that ignoble freshness which is to be found in nature; Time will
have to indue it with his learned smoke--with that sacred cloud which
must some day hide it from the profane eyes of the vulgar in order to
reveal to the initiated alone the mysterious beauties of a venerable
antiquity."
These words are quite in the spirit of Hogarth's later "Time smoking a
Picture." As a matter of fact, they are reproduced almost textually from
the writer's letter of five years earlier on the "March to Finchley." To
return, however, to History Painting. According to Rouquet, its leading
exponent[19] under George the Second was Francis Hayman of the "large
noses and shambling legs," now known chiefly as a crony of Hogarth, and
a facile but ineffectual illustrator of Shakespeare and Cervantes. In
1754, however, his pictures of _See-Saw, Hot Cockles, Blind Man's Buff_,
and the like, for the supper-boxes at Vauxhall Gardens, with Sayer's
prints therefrom, had made his name familiar, although he had not yet
painted those more elaborate compositions in the large room next the
rotunda, over which Fanny Burney's "Holborn Beau," Mr, Smith, comes to
such terrible grief in ch. xlvi. of _Evelina_. But he had contributed a
"Finding of Moses" to the New Foundling Hospital, which is still to be
seen in the Court Room there, in company with three other pictures
executed concurrently for the remaining compartments, Joseph Highmore's
"Hagar and Ishmael," James Wills's "Suffer little Children," and
Hogarth's "Moses brought to Pharaoh's Daughter"--the best of the four,
as well as the most successful of Hogarth's historical pieces. All
these, then recently installed, are mentioned by Rouquet.
Note:
[19] This is confirmed by Arthur Murphy: "Every Thing is put out
of Hand by this excellent Artist with the utmost Grace and Delicacy, and
his History-Pieces have, besides their beautiful Colouring, the most
lively Expression of Character" (_Gray's Inn Journal, February
9, 1754_).
It will be observed that he says nothing about Hogarth's earlier and
more ambitious efforts in the "Grand Style," the "Pool of Bethesda" and
the "Good Samaritan" at St. Bartholomew's, nor of the "Paul before
Felix," also lately added to Lincoln's Inn Hall--omissions which must
have sadly exercised the "author" of those monumental works when he came
to read his Swiss friend's little treatise. Nor, for the matter of that,
does M. Rouquet, when he treats of portrait, refer to Hogarth's
masterpiece in this kind, the full-length of Captain Coram at the
Foundling. On the other hand, he says a great deal about Hogarth which
has no very obvious connection with History Painting. He discusses the
_Analysis_ and the serpentine Line of Beauty with far more insight than
many of its author's contemporaries; refers feelingly to the Act by
which in 1735 the painter had so effectively cornered the pirates; and
finally defines his satirical pictures succinctly as follows:--"M.
Hogarth has given to England a new class of pictures. They contain a
great number of figures, usually seven or eight inches high. These
remarkable performances are, strictly speaking, the history of certain
vices, to a foreign eye often a little overcharged, but always full of
wit and novelty. He understands in his compositions how to make pleasant
pretext for satirising the ridiculous and the vicious, by firm and
significant strokes, all of which are prompted by a lively, fertile and
judicious imagination."
From History Painting to Portrait in Oil, the title given by M. Rouquet
to his next chapter, transition is easy. Some of the artists mentioned
above were also portrait painters. Besides Captain Coram, for example,
Hogarth had already executed that admirable likeness of himself which is
now at Trafalgar Square, and which Rouquet must often have seen in its
home at Leicester Fields. Highmore too had certainly at this date
painted more than one successful portrait of Samuel Richardson, the
novelist; and even Hayman had made essay in this direction with the
picture of Lord Orford, now in the National Portrait Gallery. A good
many of the painters of the last reign must also, during Rouquet's
residence in England, have been alive and active, _e.g._ Jervas, Dahl,
Aikman, Thornhill and Richardson. But M. Rouquet devotes most of his
pages in this respect to Kneller, whose not altogether beneficent
influence long survived him. Strangely enough, Rouquet does not mention
that egregious and fashionable face-painter, Sir Joshua's master, Thomas
Hudson, whose "fair tied-wigs, blue velvet coats, and white satin
waistcoats" (all executed by his assistants) reigned undisputed until he
was eclipsed by his greater pupil. The two artists in portraiture
selected by Rouquet for special notice are Allan Ramsay and the younger
Vanloo (Jean Baptiste). Both were no doubt far above their predecessors;
but Ramsay would specially appeal to Rouquet by his continental
training, and Vanloo by his French manner and the superior variety of
his attitudes.[20] The only other name Rouquet recalls is that of the
drapery-painter Joseph Vanhaken; and we suspect it is to Rouquet that we
owe the pleasant anecdote of the two painters who, for the sum of £800 a
year, pre-empted his exclusive and inestimable services, to the
wholesale discomfiture of their brethren of the brush. The rest shall be
told in Rouquet's words:--"The best [artists] were no longer able to
paint a hand, a coat, a background; they were forced to learn, which
meant additional labour--what a misfortune! Henceforth there arrived no
more to Vanhaken from different quarters of London, nor by coach from
the most remote towns of England, canvases of all sizes, where one or
more heads were painted, under which the painter who forwarded them had
been careful to add, pleasantly enough, the description of the figures,
stout or slim, great or small, which were to be appended. Nothing could
be more absurd than this arrangement; but it would exist still--if
Vanhaken existed."[21]
Note:
[20] Another French writer, the Abbé le Blanc, gives a depressing account
of English portraits before Vanloo came to England: "At some distance one
might easily mistake a dozen of them for twelve copies of the same original.
Some have the head turned to the left, others to the right; and this is the
most sensible difference to be observed between them. Moreover, excepting
the face, you find in all the same neck, the same arms, the same flesh, the
same attitude; and to say all, you observe no more life than design in
those pretended portraits. Properly speaking, they [the artists] are not
painters, they know how to lay colours on the canvas; but they know not how
to animate it" (_Letters on the English and French Nations, 1747_, i. 160).
[21] He died in 1749.]
_"La peinture à l'huile, C'est bien difficile; Mais c'est beaucoup plus
beau Que la peinture à l'eau."_ About _la peinture à l'eau_, M. Rouquet
says very little, in all probability because the English Water Colour
School, which, with the advance of topographic art, grew so rapidly in
the second half of the century, was yet to come. He refers, however,
with approval to the _gouaches_ of Joseph Goupy, Lady Burlington's
drawing-master, perhaps better known to posterity by his (or her
ladyship's) caricature of Handel as the "Charming Brute." (Caricature,
by the way, is a branch of Georgian Art which M. Rouquet neglects.) As
regards landscape and animal painting, he "abides in generalities"; but
he must have been acquainted with the sea pieces of Monamy, and
Hogarth's and Walpole's friend Samuel Scott; and should, one would
think, have known of the horses and dogs of Wootton and Seymour. Upon
Enamel he might be expected to enlarge, although he mentions but one
master, his own model, Zincke, who carried the art of portrait in this
way much farther than any predecessor. Moreover, like Petitot, he made
discoveries which he was wise enough to keep to himself.
"It is most humiliating," says Rouquet, "for the genius of painting that
it can sometimes exist alone. M. Zincke left no pupil." Seeing that
Rouquet is also accused of jealously guarding his own contributions to
the perfection of his art, the words are--as Diderot says--remarkable.
With Sculpture, chiefly employed at this date for mortuary purposes, he
has less opportunity of being indefinite, since there were but three
notabilities, Scheemakers, Rysbrack, and Roubillac,--all foreigners. Of
these Scheemakers, whom Chesterfield regarded as a mere stone-cutter,
and who did the Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey, is certainly the least
considerable. Next come Rysbrack, whom Walpole and Rouquet would put
highest, the latter apparently because Rysbrack had been spoken of
contemptuously by the Abbé le Blanc. But the first is assuredly
Roubillac, whose monument to Mrs. Nightingale, however, belongs to a
later date than the _État des Arts_, though he had already achieved the
masterly figure of Eloquence on the Argyll monument. The only other
sculptor referred to by Rouquet is Gabriel Cibber, whose statues of
Madness and Melancholy, long at Bedlam, and now at South Kensington,
certainly deserve his praise. But Cibber died in 1700, and belongs to
the Caroline epoch. He no doubt owes his place in the _État des Arts_ to
the fact that he had been abused in the already-mentioned _Letters on
the English and French Nations_.
At this point we may turn M. Rouquet's pages more rapidly. It is not
necessary to linger over his account of Silk Stuffs, more excellent in
his opinion by their material than their make up. Under Medallists he
commends the clever medals of great men by his compatriot, Anthony
Dassier; under Printing he refers to that liberty of the Press which, in
England, amounted to impunity. "A few too thinly disguised blasphemies;
a few too rash reflections upon the Government, a few defamatory
libels--are the sole things which, at the present time, are not
allowed." And this brings about the following lively and very accurate
description of the eighteenth-century newspaper:--"One of the most
notable peculiarities which liberty of the Press produces in England, is
the swarm of fugitive sheets and half-sheets which one sees break forth
every morning, except Sunday, covering all the coffee-house tables.
Twenty of these different papers, under different titles, appear each
day; some contain a moral or philosophical discourse; the majority of
the rest offer political, and frequently seditious, comments on some
party question. In them is to be found the news of Europe, England,
London, and the day before. Their authors profess to be familiar with
the most secret deliberations of the Cabinet, which they make public. If
a fire occurs in a chimney or elsewhere; if a theft or a murder has
taken place; if any one commits suicide from _ennui_ or despair, the
public is informed thereof on the morning after with the utmost amount
of detail. After these articles come advertisements of all sorts, and in
very great numbers. In addition to those of different things which it is
desired to let, sell or purchase, there are some that are amusing. If a
man's wife runs away he declares that he will not be liable for any
debts she may contract; and as a matter of fact, this precaution,
according to the custom of the country, is essential if he desires to
secure himself from doing so. He threatens with all the rigour of the
law those who dare to give his wife an asylum. Another publishes the
particulars of his fortune, his age and his position, and adds that he
is prepared to unite himself to any woman whose circumstances are such
as he requires and describes; he further gives the address where
communications must be sent for the negotiation and conclusion of the
business. There are other notices which describe a woman who has been
seen at the play or elsewhere, and announces that some one has
determined to marry her. If any one has a dream which seems to him to
predict that a certain number will be lucky in the lottery, he proclaims
that fact, and offers a consideration to the possessor of the number if
he cares to dispose of it."
After these come the advertisements of the Quack Doctors. Of the account
of belles-lettres in 1754, two years after _Amelia_ and in the actual
year of _Sir Charles Grandison_, M. Rouquet's report is not
flattering:--"The presses of England, made celebrated by so many
masterpieces of wit and science, now scarcely print anything but
miserable and insipid romances, repulsive volumes, frigid and tedious
letters, where the most tasteless puerility passes for wit and genius,
and an inflamed imagination exerts itself under the pretext of forming
manners." It is possible that the last lines are aimed at Richardson;
certainly they describe the post-Richardsonian novel. But that the
passage does not in any part refer to Fielding is clear from the fact
that the writer presently praises _Joseph Andrews_, coupling it with
_Gil Blas_.
Mezzotint, Gem-cutting, Chasing (which serves to bring in M. Rouquet's
countryman, Moser), Jewelry, China, (_i.e._ Chelsea ware) are all
successfully treated with more or less minuteness, while, under
Architecture, are described the eighteenth-century house, and the new
bridge at Westminster of another Swiss, Labelye, who is not named: "The
architect is a foreigner," says Rouquet, who considered he had been
inadequately rewarded. "It must be confessed (he adds drily) that in
England this is a lifelong disqualification." From Architecture the
writer passes to the oratory of the Senate, the Pulpit and the Stage. In
the last case exception is made for "_le célébre M. Garic_," whose only
teacher is declared to be Nature. As regards the rest, M. Rouquet thus
describes the prevailing style:--"The declamation of the English stage
is turgid, full of affectation, and perpetually pompous. Among other
peculiarities, it frequently admits a sort of dolorous exclamation,--a
certain long-drawn tone of voice, so woeful and so lugubrious that it is
impossible not to be depressed by it." This reads like a recollection of
Quin in the Horatio of Rowe's _Fair Penitent_.
Upon Cookery M. Rouquet is edifying; and concerning the
eighteenth-century physician, with his tye-wig and gilt-head cane,
sprightly and not unmalicious. But we must now confine ourselves to
quoting a few detached passages from this discursive chronicle. The
description of Ranelagh (in the chapter on Music) is too lengthy to
reproduce. Here is that of the older Vauxhall:--"The Vauxhall concert
takes place in a garden singularly decorated. The Director of Amusements
in this garden [Jonathan Tyers] gains and spends successively
considerable annual sums. He was born for such enterprises. At once
spirited and tasteful, he shrinks from no expense where the amusement of
the public is concerned, and the public, in its turn, repays him
liberally. Every year he adds some fresh decoration, some new and
exceptional scene. Sculpture, Painting, Music, bestir themselves
periodically to render this resort more agreeable by the variety of
their different productions: in this way opportunities of relaxation are
infinite in England, above all at London; and thus Music plays a
prominent part. The English take their pleasure without amusing
themselves, or amuse themselves without enjoyment, except at table, and
there only up to the point when sleep supervenes to the fumes of wine
and tobacco."
Elsewhere M. Rouquet, like M. le Blanc before him, is loud in his
denunciation of the pitiful practices of Vails-giving, which blocks the
vestibule of every English house with an army of servants "ranged in
line, according to their rank," and ready "to receive, or rather exact,
the contribution of every guest." The excellent Jonas Hanway wrote a
pamphlet reprehending this objectionable custom. Hogarth steadily set
his face against it; but Reynolds is reported to have given his man £100
a year for the door. Here, from another place, is a description of one
of those popular auctions, at which, in the _Marriage À-la-Mode_, my
Lady Squanderfieid purchases the _bric-à-brac_ of Sir Timothy Babyhouse,
The scene is probably Cock's in the Piazza at Covent Garden:--"Nothing
is so diverting as this kind of sale--the number of those assembled, the
diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer
himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the
spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what
he openly depreciates; or--to spread a dangerous snare--pretending to
secure with avidity a picture which already belongs to him. There, some
are tempted to buy; and some repent of having bought. There, out of
pique and bravado, another shall pay fifty louis for an article which he
would not have thought worth five and twenty, had he not been ashamed to
draw back when the eyes of a crowded company were upon him. There, you
may see a woman of condition turn pale at the mere thought of losing a
paltry pagoda which she does not want, and, in any other circumstances,
would never have desired."
A closing word as to M. Rouquet himself. The _État des Arts_ was duly
noticed by the critics--contemptuously by the _Monthly Review_, and
sympathetically by the _Gentleman's_ and the _Scots Magazine_. In 1755,
the year to which it belongs, its author put forth another work--_L'Art
Nouveau de la Peinture en Fromage ou en Ramequin_ [toasted cheese],
_inventé pour suivre le louable projet de trouver graduellement des
facons de peindre inférieures à celles qui existent_. This, as its title
imports, is a skit, levelled at the recent _Histoire et Secret de la
Peinture en Cire_ of Diderot, who nevertheless refers to Rouquet under
_Émail_, in the _Dictionnaire Encyclapédique_, as "_un homme habile_."
He seems, however (like "_la_ _peinture à l'huile_)," to have been
somewhat "_difficile_"; and as we have said, his discoveries (for he had
that useful element in enamel-work, considerable chemical knowledge),
like Zincke's, perished with him. Several of his portraits, notably
those of Cochin and Marigny, were exhibited at the Paris Salons. Whether
he was overparted, or overworked, in the Pompadour atmosphere; or
whether he succumbed to the "continual headache" of which he speaks in
his letter to Hogarth, his health gradually declined. In the last year
of his life, his reason gave way; and when he died in 1759, it was as an
inmate of Charenton.
THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE RHYMER
"Emam tua carmína sanus?"--MARTIAL.
F. OF H. I want a verse. It gives you little pains;--
You just sit down, and draw upon your brains.
Come, now, be amiable.
R. To hear you talk,
You'd make it easier to fly than walk.
You seem to think that rhyming is a thing
You can produce if you but touch a spring;
That fancy, fervour, passion--and what not,
Are just a case of "penny in the slot."
You should reflect that no evasive bird
Is half so shy as is your fittest word;
And even similes, however wrought,
Like hares, before you cook them, must be caught;--
Impromptus, too, require elaboration,
And (unlike eggs) grow fresh by incubation;
Then,--as to epigrams,..
F. of H. Nay, nay, I've done.
I did but make petition. You make fun.
R. Stay. I am grave. Forgive me if I ramble:
But, then, a negative needs some preamble
To break the blow. I feel with you, in truth,
These complex miseries of Age and Youth;
I feel with you--and none can feel it more
Than I--this burning Problem of the Poor;
The Want that grinds, the Mystery of Pain,
The Hearts that sink, and never rise again;--
How shall I set this to some careless screed,
Or jigging stave, when Help is what you need,
Help, Help,--more Help?
F. of H. I fancied that with ease
You'd scribble off some verses that might please,
And so give help to us.
R. Why then--TAKE THESE!
THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT
One of the things that perplexes the dreamer--for, in spite of the
realists, there are dreamers still--is the almost complete extinction of
the early editions of certain popular works. The pompous, respectable,
full-wigged folios, with their long lists of subscribers, and their
magniloquent dedications, find their permanent abiding-places in
noblemen's collections, where, unless--with the _Chrysostom_ in Pope's
verses--they are used for the smoothing of bands or the pressing of
flowers, no one ever disturbs their drowsy diuturnity. Their bulk makes
them sacred: like the regimental big drum, they are too large to be
mislaid. But where are all the first copies of that little octavo of 246
pages, price eighteenpence, "Printed by T. Maxey for Rich. Marriot, in
S. Dunstans Church-yard, Fleetstreet" in 1653, which constitutes the
_editio princeps_ of Walton's _Angler_. Probably they were worn out in
the pockets of Honest Izaak's "brothers of the Angle," or left to bake
and cockle in the sunny corners of wasp-haunted alehouse windows, or
dropped in the deep grass by some casual owner, more careful for flies
and caddis-worms, or possibly for the contents of a leathern bottle,
than all the "choicely-good" madrigals of Maudlin the milkmaid. In any
case, there are very few of the little tomes, with their quaint
"coppers" of fishes, in existence now, nor is it silver that pays for
them. And that other eighteenpenny book, put forth by "_Nath. Ponder_ at
the _Peacock_ in the _Poultrey_ near _Cornhil_" five and twenty years
later,--_The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That which is to
come_,--why is it that there are only five known copies, none quite
perfect, now extant, of which the best sold not long since for more than
£1400? Of these five, the first that came to light had been preserved
owing to its having taken sanctuary, almost upon publication, in a great
library, where it was forgotten. But the others that passed over Mr.
Ponder's counter in the Poultry,--were they all lost, thumbed and
dog's-eared out of being? They are gone,--that is all you can say; and
gone apparently beyond reach of recovery.
These remarks,--which scarcely rise to the dignity of reflections--have
been suggested by the difficulty which the writer has experienced in
obtaining particulars as to the earliest form of the _Parent's
Assistant_. As a matter of course, children's books are more liable to
disappear than any others. They are sooner torn, soiled, dismembered,
disintegratedsooner find their way to that mysterious unlocated limbo of
lost things, which engulfs so much. Yet one scarcely expected that even
the British Museum would not have possessed a copy of the first issue of
Miss Edgeworth's book. Such, however, seems to be the case. According to
the catalogue, there is nothing earlier at Bloomsbury than a portion of
the second edition; and from the inexplicit and conjectural manner in
which most of the author's biographers speak of the work, it can
scarcely--outside private collections--be very easily accessible.
Fortunately the old _Monthly Review_ for September, 1796, with most
exemplary forethought for posterity, gives, as a heading to its notice,
a precise and very categorical account of the first impression. _The
Parent's Assistant; or, Stories for Children_ was, it appears, published
in two parts, making three small duodecimo volumes. The price, bound,
was six shillings. There was no author's name; but it was said to be "by
E.M." (i.e. Edgeworth, Maria), and the publisher was Cowper's Dissenter
publisher, Joseph Johnson of No. 72, St. Paul's Churchyard. Part I.
contained "The Little Dog Trusty; or, The Liar and the Boy of Truth";
"The Orange Man; or, the Honest Boy and the Thief"; "Lazy Lawrence";
"Tarleton"; and "The False Key"; Part II., "The Purple Jar," "The
Bracelets," "Mademoiselle Panache," "The Birthday Present," "Old Poz,"
and "The Mimic." In the same year, 1796, a second edition appeared,
apparently with, some supplementary stories, e.g.: "Barring Out," and in
1800 came a third edition in six volumes. In this the text was increased
by "Simple Susan," "The Little Merchants," "The Basket Woman," "The
White Pigeon," "The Orphans," "Waste Not, Want Not," "Forgive and
Forget," and "Eton Montem." One story, "The Purple Jar" at the beginning
of Part II. of the first edition, was withdrawn, and afterwards included
in another series, while the stories entitled respectively "Little Dog
Trusty" and "The Orange Man" have disappeared from the collection,
probably for the reason given in one of the first prefaces, namely, that
they "were written for a much earlier age than any of the others, and
with such a perfect simplicity of expression as, to many, may appear
insipid and ridiculous." The six volumes of the third edition came out
successively on the first day of the first six months of 1800. The
Monthly Reviewer of the first edition, it may be added, was highly
laudatory; and his commendations show that the early critics of the
author were fully alive to her distinctive qualities, "The moral and
prudential lessons of these volumes," says the writer, "are judiciously
chosen; and the stories are invented with great ingenuity, and are
happily contrived to excite curiosity and awaken feeling without the aid
of improbable fiction or extravagant adventure. The language is varied
in its degree of simplicity, to suit the pieces to different ages, but
is throughout neat and correct; and, without the least approach towards
vulgarity or meanness, it is adapted with peculiar felicity to the
understandings of children. The author's taste, in this class of
writing, appears to have been formed on the best models; and the work
will not discredit a place on the same shelf with Berquin's _Child's
Friend_, Mrs. Barbauld's _Lessons for Children_, and Dr. Aikin's
_Evenings at Home_. The story of 'Lazy Lawrence'"--the notice goes
on--"is one of the best lectures on industry which we have ever read.
"The _Critical Review_, which also gave a short account of the _Parent's
Assistant_ in its number for January 1797, does not rehearse the
contents. But it confirms the title, etc., adding that the price, in
boards, was 4s. 6d.; and its praise, though brief, is very much to the
point. "The present production is particularly sensible and judicious;
the stories are well written, simple, and affecting; calculated, not
only for moral improvement, but to exercise the best affections of the
human heart."
With one of the books mentioned by the _Monthly Review_--_Evenings at
Home_--Miss Edgeworth was fully prepared, at all events as regards
format, to associate herself. "The stories," she says in a letter to her
cousin, Miss Sophy Ruxton, "are printed and bound the same size as
_Evenings at Home_, and I am afraid you will dislike the title." Her
father had sent the book to press as the _Parent's Friend_, a name no
doubt suggested by the _Ami des Enfants_ of Berquin; but "Mr. Johnson
[the publisher]," continues Miss Edgeworth, "has degraded it into _The
Parent's Assistant_, which I dislike particularly, from association with
an old book of arithmetic called The _Tutor's Assistant_." The ground of
objection is not very formidable; but the _Parent's Assistant_ is
certainly an infelicitous name. From some other of the author's letters
we are able to trace the gradual growth of the work. Mr. Edgeworth, her
father, an utilitarian of much restless energy, and many projects, was
greatly interested in education,--or, as he would have termed it,
practical education,--and long before this date, as early, indeed, as
May 1780, he had desired his daughter, while she was still a girl at a
London school, to write him a tale about the length of a _Spectator_;
upon the topic of "Generosity," to be taken from history or romance.
This was her first essay in fiction; and it was pronounced by the judge
to whom it was submitted,--in competition with a rival production by a
young gentleman from Oxford,--to be an excellent story, and extremely
well written, although with this commendation was coupled the somewhat
damaging inquiry,--"But where's the Generosity?" The question cannot be
answered now, as the manuscript has not been preserved, though the
inconvenient query, we are told, became a kind of personal proverb with
the young author, who was wont to add that this first effort contained
"a sentence of inextricable confusion between a saddle, a man, and his
horse." This was a defect from which she must have speedily freed
herself, since her style, as her first reviewer allowed, is
conspicuously direct and clear. Accuracy in speaking and writing had,
indeed, been early impressed upon her. Her father's doctrinaire ally and
co-disciplinarian, Mr. Thomas Day, later the author of _Sandford and
Merton_, and apparently the first person of whom it is affirmed that "he
talked like a book," had been indefatigable in bringing this home to his
young friend, when she visited him in her London school-days. Not
content alone to dose her copiously with Bishop Berkeley's Tar
Water--the chosen beverage of Young and Richardson--he was unwearied in
ministering to her understanding. "His severe reasoning and
uncompromising love of truth awakened her powers, and the questions he
put to her, the necessity of perfect accuracy in her answers, suited the
bent of her mind. Though such strictness was not always agreeable, she
even then perceived its advantages, and in after life was deeply
grateful to Mr. Day."[22]
Note:
[22] _Maria Edgeworth_, by Helen Zimmern, 1888, p. 13.
The training she underwent from the inexorable Mr, Day was continued by
her father when she quitted school, and moved with her family to the
parental seat at Edgeworthstown in Ireland. Mr. Edgeworth, whose
principles were as rigorous as those of his friend, devoted himself
early to initiating her into business habits. He taught her to copy
letters, to keep accounts, to receive rents, and, in short, to act as
his agent and factotum. She frequently accompanied him in the many
disputes and difficulties which arose with his Irish tenantry; and,
apart from the insight which this must have afforded her into the
character and idiosyncrasies of the people, she no doubt very early
acquired that exact knowledge of leases and legacies and dishonest
factors which is a noticeable feature even of her children's books.[23]
It is some time, however, before we hear of any successor to
"Generosity"; but, in 1782, her father, with a view to provide her with
an occupation for her leisure, proposed to her to prepare a translation
of the _Adèle et Théodore_ of Madame de Genlis, those letters upon
education by which that gentle and multifarious moralist acquired--to
use her own words--at once "the suffrages of the public, and the
irreconcilable hatred of all the so-called philosophers and their
partisans." At first there had been no definite thought of print in Mr,
Edgeworth's mind. But as the work progressed, the idea gathered
strength; and he began to prepare his daughter's manuscript for the
press. Then, unhappily, when the first volume was finished, Holcroft's
complete translation appeared, and made the labour needless. Yet it was
not without profit. It had been excellent practice in aiding Miss
Edgeworth's faculty of expression, and increasing her vocabulary--to say
nothing of the influence which the portraiture of individuals and the
satire of reigning follies which are the secondary characteristics of
Madame de Genlis's most well-known work, may have had on her own
subsequent efforts as a novelist. Meanwhile her mentor, Mr. Day, was
delighted at the interruption of her task. He possessed, to the full,
that rooted antipathy to feminine authorship of which we find so many
traces in Miss Burney's novels and elsewhere; and he wrote to
congratulate Mr. Edgeworth on having escaped the disgrace of having a
translating daughter. At this time, as already stated, he himself had
not become the author of _Sandford and Merton_, which, as a matter of
fact, owed its inception to the Edgeworths, being at first simply
intended as a short story to be inserted in the _Harry and Lucy_ Mr.
Edgeworth wrote in conjunction with his second wife, Honora Sneyd. As
regards the question of publication, both Maria and her father, although
sensible of Mr. Day's prejudices, appear to have deferred to his
arguments. Nor were these even lost to the public, for we are informed
that, in Miss Edgeworth's first book, ten years later, the _Letters to
Literary Ladies,_ she employed and embodied much that he had advanced.
But for the present, she continued to write--though solely for her
private amusement--essays, little stories, and dramatic sketches. One of
these last must have been "Old Poz," a pleasant study of a country
justice and a _gazza ladra_, which appeared in Part II. of the first
issue of the _Parent's Assistant_, and which, we are told, was acted by
the Edgeworth children in a little theatre erected in the dining-room
for the purpose. According to her sisters, it was Miss Edgeworth's
practice first to write her stories on a slate, and then to read them
out. If they were approved, she transcribed them fairly. "Her writing
for children"--says one of her biographers--"was a natural outgrowth of
a practical study of their wants and fancies; and her constant care of
the younger children gave her exactly the opportunity required to
observe the development of mind incident to the age and capacity of
several little brothers and sisters." According to her own account, her
first critic was her father. "Whenever I thought of writing anything, I
always told him [my father] my first rough plans; and always, with the
instinct of a good critic, he used to fix immediately upon that which
would best answer the purpose.--'_Sketch that, and shew it to
me._'--These words, from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to
inspire me with hope of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I
was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate on it in the sketch; but
to this he always objected--'I don't want any of your painting--none of
your drapery!--I can imagine all that--let me see the bare skeleton.'"
Note:
[23] Cf. "Attorney Case" in the story of "Simple Susan."
Of the first issue of the _Parent's Assistant_ in 1796, a sufficient
account has already been given. In the "Preface" the practical intention
of several of the stories is explicitly set forth. "Lazy Lawrence," we
are told, illustrates the advantages of industry, and demonstrates that
people feel cheerful and happy whilst they are employed; while
"Tarleton" represents "the danger and the folly of that weakness of
mind, and that easiness to be led, which too often pass for good
nature"; "The False Key" points out some of the evils to which a
well-educated boy, on first going to service, is exposed from the
profligacy of his fellow-servants; "The Mimic," the drawback of vulgar
acquaintances; "Barring Out," the errors to which a high spirit and the
love of party are apt to lead, and so forth. In the final paragraph
stress is laid upon what every fresh reader must at once recognise as
the supreme merit of the stories, namely, their dramatic faculty, or (in
the actual words of the "Preface"), their art of "keeping alive hope and
fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy."[24] The plausibility
of invention, the amount of ingenious contrivance and of clever
expedient in these professedly nursery stories, is indeed extraordinary;
and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which--to use Dr. Johnson's
words concerning _She Stoops to Conquer_--"the incidents are so prepared
as not to seem improbable." There is no better example of this than the
admirable tale of "The Mimic," in which the most unlooked-for
occurrences succeed each other in the most natural way, while the
disappearance at the end of the little sweep, who has levanted up the
chimney in Frederick's new blue coat and buff waistcoat, is a
master-stroke. Everybody has forgotten everything about him until the
precise moment when he is needed to supply the fitting surprise of the
finish,--a surprise which is only to be compared to that other
revelation in _The Rose and the Ring_ of Thackeray, where the long-lost
and obnoxious porter at Valoroso's palace, having been turned by the
Fairy Blackstick into a door knocker for his insolence, is restored to
the sorrowing Servants' Hall exactly when his services are again
required in the capacity of Mrs. Gruffanuffs husband. But in Miss
Edgeworth's little fable there is no fairy agency. "Fairies were not
much in her line," says Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, "but
philanthropic manufacturers, liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in
travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to
distribute rewards or to point a moral."
Note:
[24] The "Preface to Parents"--Miss Emily Lawless suggests to me--was
probably by Mr. Edgeworth.
Although, by their sub-title, these stories are avowedly composed for
children, they are almost as attractive to grown-up readers. This is
partly owing to their narrative skill, partly also to the clear
characterisation, which already betrays the coming author of _Castle
Rackrent_ and _Belinda_ and _Patronage_--the last, under its first name
of _The Freeman Family_, being already partly written, although many
years were still to pass before it saw the light in 1814. Readers, wise
after the event, might fairly claim to have foreseen from some of the
personages in the _Parent's Assistant_ that the author, however sedulous
to describe "such situations only ... as children can easily imagine,"
was not able entirely to resist tempting specimens of human nature like
the bibulous Mr. Corkscrew, the burglar butler in "The False Key," or
Mrs. Pomfret, the housekeeper of the same story, whose prejudices
against the _Villaintropic_ Society, and its unholy dealing with the
"_drugs and refuges_" of humanity, are quite in the style of the Mrs.
Slipslop of a great artist whose works one would scarcely have expected
to encounter among the paper-backed and grey-boarded volumes which lined
the shelves at Edgeworthstown. Mrs. Theresa Tattle, again, in "The
Mimic," is a type which requires but little to fit it for a subordinate
part in a novel, as is also Lady Diana Sweepstakes in "Waste not, Want
not." In more than one case, we seem to detect an actual portrait. Mr.
Somerville of Somerville ("The White Pigeon"), to whom that "little
town" belonged,--who had done so much "to inspire his tenantry with a
taste for order and domestic happiness, and took every means in his
power to encourage industrious, well-behaved people to settle in his
neighbourhood,"--can certainly be none other than the father of the
writer of the _Parent's Assistant_, the busy and beneficent, but surely
eccentric, Mr. Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown.
When, in 1849, the first two volumes of Macaulay's _History_ were
issued, Miss Edgeworth, then in her eighty-third winter, was greatly
delighted to find her name, coupled with a compliment to one of her
characters, enshrined in a note to chap. vi. But her gratification was
qualified by the fact that she could discover no similar reference to
her friend, Sir Walter Scott. The generous "twinge of pain," to which
she confesses, was intelligible. Scott had always admired her genius,
and she admired his. In the "General Preface" to the _Waverley Novels_,
twenty years before, he had gone so far as to say that, without hoping
to emulate "the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact" of
Miss Edgeworth, he had attempted to do for his own country what she had
done for hers; and it is clear, from other sources, that this was no
mere form of words. And he never wavered in his admiration. In his last
years, not many months before his death, when he had almost forgotten
her name, he was still talking kindly of her work. Speaking to Mrs. John
Davy of Miss Austen and Miss Ferrier, he said: "And there's that Irish
lady, too--but I forget everybody's name now" ... "she's _very_ clever,
and best in the little touches too. I'm sure in that children's story,
where the little girl parts with her lamb, and the little boy brings it
back to her again, there's nothing for it but just to put down the book
and cry."[25] The reference is to "Simple Susan," the longest and
prettiest tale in the _Parent's Assistant_.
Note:
[25] Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, ch. lxxxi. _ad finem_.
Another anecdote pleasantly connects the same book with a popular work
of a later writer. Readers of _Cranford_ will recall the feud between
the Johnson-loving Miss Jenkyns of that story and its _Pickwick_-loving
Captain Brown. The Captain--as is well-known--met his death by a railway
accident, just after he had been studying the last monthly "green
covers" of Dickens. Years later, the assumed narrator of _Cranford_
visits Miss Jenkyns, then faliing into senility. She still vaunts _The
Rambler_; still maunders vaguely of the "strange old book, with the
queer name, poor Captain Brown was killed for reading-that book by Mr.
Boz, you know--_Old Poz_; when I was a girl--but that's a long time
ago--I acted Lucy in _Old Poz_." There can be no mistake. Lucy is the
justice's daughter in Miss Edgeworth's little chamber-drama.
A PLEASANT INVECTIVE AGAINST PRINTING
"Flee fro the PREES, and dwelle with sothfastnesse."--CHAUCER, _Balade
de Bon Conseil_.
The Press is too much with us, small and great:
We are undone of chatter and _on dit_,
Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee,
Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date,
Babble of booklets, bicker of debate,
Aspect of A., and attitude of B.--
A waste of words that drive us like a sea,
Mere derelict of Ourselves, and helpless freight!
"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!"
Some region unapproachable of Print,
Where never cablegram could gain access,
And telephones were not, nor any hint
Of tidings new or old, but Man might pipe
His soul to Nature,--careless of the Type!
TWO MODERN BOOK ILLUSTRATORS
I. KATE GREENAWAY
In the world of pictorial recollection there are many territories, the
natives of which you may recognise by their characteristics as surely as
Ophelia recognises her true-love by his cockle-hat and sandal shoon.
There is the land of grave gestures and courteous inclinations, of
dignified leave-takings and decorous greetings; where the ladies (like
Richardson's Pamela) don the most charming round-eared caps and frilled
_négligés_; where the gentlemen sport ruffles and bag-wigs and spotless
silk stockings, and invariably exhibit shapely calves above their silver
shoe-buckles; where you may come in St. James's Park upon a portly
personage with a star, taking an alfresco pinch of snuff after that
leisurely style in which a pinch of snuff should be taken, so as not to
endanger a lace cravat or a canary-coloured vest; where you may seat
yourself on a bench by Rosamond's Pond in company with a tremulous mask
who is evidently expecting the arrival of a "pretty fellow"; or happen
suddenly, in a secluded side-walk, upon a damsel in muslin and a dark
hat, who is hurriedly scrawling a _poulet_, not without obvious signs of
perturbation. But whatever the denizens of this country are doing, they
are always elegant and always graceful, always appropriately grouped
against their fitting background of high-ceiled rooms and striped
hangings, or among the urns and fish-tanks of their sombre-shrubbed
gardens. This is the land of STOTHARD.
In the adjoining country there is a larger sense of colour--a fuller
pulse of life. This is the region of delightful dogs and horses and
domestic animals of all sorts; of crimson-faced hosts and buxom
ale-wives; of the most winsome and black-eyed milkmaids and the most
devoted lovers and their lasses; of the most headlong and horn-blowing
huntsmen--a land where Madam Blaize forgathers with the impeccable
worthy who caused the death of the Mad Dog; where John Gilpin takes the
Babes in the Wood _en croupe_; and the bewitchingest Queen of Hearts
coquets the Great Panjandrum himself "with the little round button at
top"--a land, in short, of the most kindly and light-hearted fancies, of
the freshest and breeziest and healthiest types--which is the land of
CALDECOTT.
Finally, there is a third country, a country inhabited almost
exclusively by the sweetest little child-figures that have ever been
invented, in the quaintest and prettiest costumes, always happy, always
gravely playful,--and nearly always playing; always set in the most
attractive framework of flower-knots, or blossoming orchards, or
red-roofed cottages with dormer windows. Everywhere there are green
fields, and daisies, and daffodils, and pearly skies of spring, in which
a kite is often flying. No children are quite like the dwellers in this
land; they are so gentle, so unaffected in their affectation, so easily
pleased, so trustful and so confiding. And this is GREENAWAY-land.
It is sixty years since Thomas Stothard died, and only fifteen since
Randolph Caldecott closed his too brief career.[26] And now Kate
Greenaway, who loved the art of both, and in her own gentle way
possessed something of the qualities of each, has herself passed away.
It will rest with other pens to record her personal characteristics, and
to relate the story of her life. I who write this was privileged to know
her a little, and to receive from her frequent presents of her books;
but I should shrink from anything approaching a description of the
quiet, unpretentious, almost homely little lady, whom it was always a
pleasure to meet and to talk with. If I here permit myself to recall one
or two incidents of our intercourse, it is solely because they bear
either upon her amiable disposition or her art. I remember that once,
during a country walk in Sussex, she gave me a long account of her
childhood, which I wish I could repeat in detail. But I know that she
told me that she had been brought up in just such a neighbourhood of
thatched roofs and "grey old gardens" as she depicts in her drawings;
and that in some of the houses, it was her particular and unfailing
delight to turn over ancient chests and wardrobes filled with the
flowered frocks and capes of the Jane Austen period. As is well known,
she corresponded frequently with Ruskin, and possessed numbers of his
letters. In his latter years, it had been her practice to write to him
periodically--I believe she said once a week. He had long ceased,
probably from ill-health, to answer her letters; but she continued to
write punctually lest he should miss the little budget of chit-chat to
which he had grown accustomed. At another time--in a pleasant
country-house which contained many examples of her art--and where she
was putting the last touches to a delicately tinted child-angel in the
margin of a Bible--I ventured to say, "Why do your children always ...?"
But it is needless to complete the query; the answer alone is important.
She looked at me reflectively, and said, after a pause, "Because I
see it so."
Note:
[26] This was written in 1902.
Answers not dissimilar have been given before by other artists in like
case. But it was this rigid fidelity to her individual vision and
personal conviction which constituted her strength. There are always
stupid, well-meaning busybodies in the world, who go about making
question of the sonneteer why he does not attempt something epic and
homicidal, or worrying the carver of cherry-stones to try his hand at a
Colossus; but though they disturb and discompose, they luckily do no
material harm. They did no material harm to Kate Greenaway. She yielded,
no doubt, to pressure put upon her to try figures on a larger scale; to
illustrate books, which was not her strong point, as it only put fetters
upon her fancy; but, in the main, she courageously preserved the even
tenor of her way, which was to people the artistic demesne she
administered with the tiny figures which no one else could make more
captivating, or clothe more adroitly. It may be doubted whether the
collector will set much store by Bret Harte's _Queen of the Pirate Isle_
or the _Pied Piper of Hamelin_, suitable at first sight as is the
latter, with its child-element, to her inventive idiosyncrasy. But he
will revel in the dainty scenes of "Almanacks" (1883 to 1895, and 1897);
in the charming Birthday Book of 1880; in _Mother Goose, A Day in a
Child's Life, Little Ann, Marigold Garden_ and the rest, of which the
grace is perennial, though the popularity for the moment may have waned.
I have an idea that _Mother Goose; or, the Old Nursery Rhymes_, 1881,
was one of Miss Greenaway's favourites, although it may have been
displaced in her own mind by subsequent successes. Nothing can certainly
be more deftly-tinted than the design of the "old woman who lived under
a hill," and peeled apples; nothing more seductive, in infantile
attitude, than the little boy and girl, who, with their arms around each
other, stand watching the black-cat in the plum-tree. Then there is
Daffy-down-dilly, who has come up to town, with "a yellow petticoat and
a green gown," in which attire, aided by a straw hat tied under her
chin, she manages to look exceedingly attractive, as she passes in front
of the white house with the pink roof and the red shutters and the green
palings. One of the most beautiful pictures in this gallery is the dear
little "Ten-o'-clock Scholar" in his worked smock, as, trailing his
blue-and-white school-bag behind him, he creeps unwillingly to his
lessons at the most picturesque timbered cottage you can imagine.
Another absolutely delightful portrait is that of "Little Tom Tucker,"
in sky-blue suit and frilled collar, singing, with his hands behind him,
as if he never could grow old. And there is not one of these little
compositions that is without its charm of colour and accessory--blue
plates on the dresser in the background, the parterres of a formal
garden with old-fashioned flowers, quaint dwellings with their gates and
grass-work, odd corners of countryside and village street, and all,
generally, in the clear air or sunlight. For in this favoured
Greenaway-realm, as in the island-valley of Avilion there
falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns.
To _Mother Goose_ followed _A Day in a Child's Life_, also 1881, and
_Little Ann_, 1883. The former of these contained various songs set to
music by Mr. Myles B. Foster, the organist of the Foundling Hospital,
and accompanied by designs on rather a larger scale than those in
_Mother Goose_. It also included a larger proportion of the floral
decorations which were among the artist's chief gifts. Foxgloves and
buttercups, tulips and roses, are flung about the pages of the book; and
there are many pictures, notably one of a little green-coated figure
perched upon a five-barred gate, which repeat the triumphs of its
predecessor. In _Little Ann and other Poems_, which is dedicated to the
four children of the artist's friend, the late Frederick Locker-Lampson,
she illustrated a selection from the verses for "Infant Minds" of Jane
and Ann Taylor, daughters of that Isaac Taylor of Ongar, who was first a
line engraver and afterwards an Independent Minister.[27] The
dedication contains a charming row of tiny portraits of the
Locker-Lampson family. These illustrations may seem to contradict what
has been said as to Miss Greenaway's ability to interpret the
conceptions of others. But this particular task left her perfectly free
to "go her own gait," and to embroider the text which, in this case, was
little more than a pretext for her pencil.
Note:
[27] Since this paper was written, the _Original Poems and Others_, of Ann
and Jane Taylor, with illustrations by F.D. Bedford, and a most interesting
"Introduction" by Mr. E.V. Lucas, have been issued by Messrs. Wells,
Gardner, Darton and Co.
In _Marigold Garden_, 1885, Miss Greenaway became her own poet; and next
to _Mother Goose_, this is probably her most important effort. The
flowers are as entrancing as ever; and the verse makes one wish that the
writer had written more. The "Genteel Family" and "Little Phillis" are
excellent nursery pieces; and there is almost a Blake-like note about
"The Sun Door."
They saw it rise in the morning,
They saw it set at night,
And they longed to go and see it,
Ah! if they only might.
The little soft white clouds heard them,
And stepped from out of the blue;
And each laid a little child softly
Upon its bosom of dew.
And they carried them higher and higher,
And they nothing knew any more,
Until they were standing waiting,
In front of the round gold door.
And they knocked, and called, and entreated
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