Life of Edmond Malone/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
1799–1805.
While writing notes to a new edition of Boswell, the subject of this memoir wished to describe the interior of Thrale’s house, so immortalized by its many frequenters, and applied to Dr. Burney for his recollections. This information the reader will find below from a note written in December 1798. It is worth its space. Few suburban mansions have acquired so much celebrity. Its site perhaps is too low, but Tooting Common opens pleasantly in front; and often while resident for several years in the vicinity, have I lingered around it for hours as venerated ground.[1]
Close application to a new work, added to the illness of Lord Charlemont, probably interfered with the correspondence of this old friend. He died in August, 1799, in the heat of the contest about the Union. His biographer (Hardy) applied to Malone in May, 1804, for such notices or materials as might be interesting to blend with the narrative. These however for some reason now unknown, appear not to have been supplied. Had he any intention of undertaking the work himself? With his large stores of information, such a design may have been formed, though interrupted soon afterward by illness. Hardy alludes to him as a correspondent of his lordship, but says nothing of refusal of assistance.
In the spring of 1800 came out in four volumes, The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden; with an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author.
The praise of research always unwearied, as much as possible exact, and industrious almost to a fault, were given him without hesitation. His aim, he tells us, was to delineate the man, not the poet. The latter had been inimitably accomplished by the greatest critic of the age, or perhaps of any age. Nothing, in the estimate of his powers, could be added to the pages of Dr. Johnson; but there was much to fill up and rearrange in those incidents of life and character common to us all, about which the mass of readers are often as anxious as upon ordinary points of criticism. There were also the order and dates of his works; his letters; his friends; his literary adversaries; and their contests, to ascertain in a long and distinguished, though unhappily for his comfort, a contentious career.
The notes to the Prose Works, in addition to those of the Life, tells us all of him of any importance that we are likely to know. No source of information was left untried. When unsuccessful himself on particular points, he has given some clue for others to follow. But when we consider how much on all subjects remains buried in family archives; how difficult it is to get them examined or suffered to be examined, by their owners; and how often it is that what are discoveries in literary eyes are not deemed so by the uninitiated, we must not be surprised at the slow pace at which they emerge into light from old boxes and closets. We must be thankful for what has been done. All literary men agree that none but Malone could have accomplished so much. To his pages all must turn who want accurate information upon the life and works of Dryden.
Merits such as these might be supposed to pass with general applause; but there is a large class of persons who feel disposed to decry what they have not virtue to imitate; and on this occasion the ridicule which had been so largely directed against the poet himself during life, took aim in another way at his biographer. He was, in fact, deemed to be too particular. Yet on such a subject we want facts whenever they can be fathomed—not romance or conjecture. Truth is always worth some trouble in the pursuit. So thought Dr. Johnson. He praises the judge I have just quoted (Lord Hailes) “as a man of worth, a scholar, and wit, whose exactness excites my wonder . . . whose book (Annals of Scotland) has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and such a punctuality of citation,” &c. These are precisely the merits of Malone. They will be the merits of every one who has courage to quit the hard-trodden path of commonplace book makers and will plunge for knowledge into an exploratory track of his own.
Qualities which had drawn the commendation of Johnson, were not permitted by one of the supposed “wits” of the age, Mr. George Hardinge, to pass muster in the Life of Dryden. Wits are seldom noted for being exact or particular in anything. Precision with them is akin to offence. So on the present occasion the censor made minute detail the subject of ridicule in a bulky pamphlet, The Essence of Malone. This was followed by another; and again by a similar piece levelled at Shakspeare.
A jest at an antiquary may occasionally run happily enough; but expanded to two or three hundred pages becomes the butt of the ridicule it is meant to convey. Jests of such length are found to be no jests at all; on the contrary, they are serious taxes on patience. He that reads them will suspect spleen, cavilling, envy, captiousness to be the basis of the performance—especially when, as in this instance, the page is studded with such a crop of notes of admiration and interrogation, as if much of the wit or wisdom lay in these silent symbols of immature genius!
In such imitations there is no novelty, and very little wit. Many of our most distinguished writers—Dr. Johnson among others—have furnished occasional amusement to such as felt disposed to exercise their ingenuity as literary caricaturists. Even the straightforward style of Boswell has found an imitator in Mr. Alexander Chalmers. But such things must be taken for what they are really worth; and no one whose productions are not in themselves ridiculous, need fear their effect. The smile they occasionally excite forms but a polite and speedy dismissal to oblivion.
No reply came from Malone. He had at first intended it, as I find by a letter from the Rev. Mr. Blakeway, who supposed him (January, 1801) occupied with—“Your proposed and well-deserved castigation of Mr. George Hardinge, which I have been expecting with some impatience to see announced in the papers.” The Bishop of Dromore also writes—“I read with pleasure the article signed ‘W.’ which I conclude was intended to have had the signature of Sciolus. Can you guess who was your maligner? He took great pains to gratify his ill-humour, for which I neither envy him his success nor his motives.” A genius of superior order has however estimated his labours as they deserve. Sir Walter Scott found it vain to delve in a mine where Malone had been a workman with the hope of finding anything new. He accepts his facts; and interweaves his own narrative with such notices and criticisms of the poets and dramatists of that and the previous age as their contentions and rivalries drew forth.
“In the biographical memoir,” he says, “it would have been hard to exact that the editor should rival the criticism of Johnson, or produce facts which had escaped the accuracy of Malone . . . whose industry has removed the clouds which so long hung over the events of Dryden’s life.” Such is and has been the general opinion. The laugh, if any arose, soon ceased. The book remains a standard of authority of the times and matters of which it treats. And there are few who profess attachment to letters or to knowledge of many of the writers or writings of that day, but confess their obligations to the Life of Dryden.
To a second edition of this work, improved by new materials, he looked forward with interest. One of these acquisitions[2] was a letter of Dryden sent by correspondents named Smith, which he traced as having been addressed to the second Earl of Derwentwater, on a question of poetical translation. In return, wishing to be grateful, he transmits an autograph of Pope; laments he has not a line of Shakspeare to bestow ; but sends a fac-simile of his name to his will and to a law-deed, March 1612–13; and adds in allusion to piracies: —
“The printed copy (of the letter) is very inaccurate, deviating in several minute particulars from its archetype. I hope some time or other to publish a second and improved edition of my Life of Dryden, and of his letters and prose works. To the collection of letters which I had infinite trouble in making, and which has since been made so free with, I have several others to add that have never appeared; and I will take care that they shall not be used in the same manner the former were.”
His own copy of the work, largely annotated, is now in the Bodleian. One of the additions is a notice of Dryden’s sister, second wife of Dr. Lawton, who died in December 1710. She had previously buried her only son. Dryden gave him an epitaph in Catworth Church characteristic of her extreme grief; and which not being included in his works, may find place here—
She always weeps who laid him here;
And will do till her race is run:
His father’s fifth, her only son.”[3]
Pope formed the next name on his list for a similar tribute of respect. Both, as we have said, were commenced about the same time, but the vein of information chanced to run deeper in one than the other. Probably also Dr. Joseph Warton informed him early of being engaged on that edition of the younger poet which came out in 1797, in nine volumes. To this, I have no doubt he contributed aid.
It is certain that the fragment of an unpublished poem of Pope, copied by Malone among his anecdotes some years before, appears in that work. I have consequently omitted it in this volume. A few other memoranda of the poet, in verse, not quoted by Warton, are retained as specimens of his first thoughts. Both came from an early friend of Malone, Dr. Wilson,[4] of Trinity College, Dublin, who thus writes:—“This poem I transcribed from a rough draft in Pope’s own hand. He left many blanks for fear of the Argus eyes of those who if they may not find, can fabricate, treason. . . . It was lent me by a grandson of Lord Chetwynd, an intimate friend of the famous Lord Bolingbroke, who gratified his curiosity by a boxful of the rubbish and sweepings of Pope’s study.”
Popiana, the name given to his own collection of fragments, were embodied in two memorandum books. To these were added various loose papers, anecdotes, and straggling notes jotted down as communicated, some of which may still emerge into life from the stores of the curious. He had likewise collected three volumes of tracts, twenty-one in number, connected with the same poet, said to have contained much curious matter, and which passed into the possession of a new owner at his sale in 1818. Fresh from his own hand, cohering and shaped into form, with life breathed into them by his own kindly spirit, we should have perused the details with more satisfaction.
Delayed for a time by the attack of Hardinge, many literary and private friends were gratified by his visit to Ireland the following year. He looked fondly to her improvement—to her advances, notwithstanding recent misbehaviour, to a higher grade of civilization in industry and commerce. Discontent and rebellion had been actively at work since he had last crossed the Channel, and left their usual fruits behind—the country and social organization at a standstill—latent and not always veiled hatreds between classes of society—a subdued but not quiet populace—and the probability, soon proved by the event, of these starting once more into active hostility.
Poor Ireland had not yet recovered her sanity. The maddest of all projects—that of casting of alliance with England to become if successful inevitably the slave of France and more especially of Rome—still lingered among her bolder but unwise spirits. The meteor of a republic gleamed in the horizon; the emblems of power danced before the deluded eye of men of ambition, who fancied themselves patriots without the elements of common capacity for such affairs; nor could they be convinced of inherent weakness and unfitness for self-government till rebellion proved it impossible. In one class, the mistake might be accounted for by the unquestionable supremacy which success must have given to the Roman Catholic body. But that Protestant gentlemen should be so blinded to the results—their own certain persecution and degradation—made them the laughing-stock of Europe—the greatest of simpletons, or the maddest of maniacs.
Among his Dublin friends was Mr. Andrew Calwell, a lawyer, although not actively taxing the law for a maintenance. His father, in that usually well-paid profession, had performed the duty before him: and although likewise called to the bar himself, he thought it more satisfactory to sit down to the enjoyment of the paternal inheritance rather than aim to increase the store. His tastes, like those of Malone, were literary. He acquired a good library; frequented booksellers’ shops; read much; and selected companions of similar pursuits, who in his retreat in Cavendish Row, often found a social dinner set off with considerable learning, friendly disposition, and gentlemanlike manners. Where seed is thus plentifully sown, we expect in time to see a crop. But it was not so with Caldwell. He produced only one or two trifles; one of which, an account of Athenian Stuart’s escape from some intended Turkish murderers, was corrected by Malone.
He annually visited London, sought out that friend as his guide in literary purchases, and enjoyed such social dinners as he himself bestowed.
“I dined,” he says to Bishop Percy on one occasion, “with Malone on Sunday, téte-à-téte . . . . I had just begun his Life of Dryden; but got only through a few pages when obliged to come away. No writer, I think, ever took more pains to establish facts and detect errors. When he offers himself to the public it seems to be his aim to employ the utmost diligence of research to be useful and to merit favour. He tells me he does not escape; and has already been attacked for the very circumstance that does him honour.” In a few months he again says to the Bishop, “I have been much gratified with Malone’s curious Life of Dryden. It is a most remarkable instance of diligence and accuracy. The numerous anecdotes, and the accounts of noted persons and families interspersed, are highly interesting.”
When the scene changed, and Malone sought Dublin, Caldwell faithfully attended his book-shop explorations.
In 1801, he tells Bishop Percy of one of these—“Mr. Malone was in town for two days on his way to London. I accompanied him one entire morning in researches in which we were not very successful.” In June, another well-known topic is mentioned in their correspondence—“I have had a long agreeable letter from Mr. Malone. He mentions a curious sale of the farrago of the famous Samuel Ireland, the Shakspeare Papers, in three immense volumes bound in Russia, green boxes without end, old leases, deeds, seals, and playhouse accounts, to take in the hunters of curiosities.”
On another occasion, they had an elaborate though vain examination together of the royal library for a scarce author. But a previous mischance in such researches acting upon impaired habit of body from over-study, created among the friends of our subject, for a time, serious fears of the consequences. Archdeacon Nares writes to Bishop Percy—“Malone has been nearly destroyed by an accident apparently insignificant, that of breaking his shin in getting out of a coach at the Museum. It has been very unwilling to heal, and sometimes has shown a threatening tendency.”
In Ireland he saw little to allure those of studious habits to a long stay. No retreat for a quiet man was there. All were politicians. Some of small talent and without an atom of experience could even believe themselves statesmen; happy only when indulged with a fling at that Union which was to extinguish for ever their small importance. To his friend Mr. Philip Metcalfe hints were dropped toward the end of the year that things were not as he wished, who replies—
“Your picture of that country removes my apprehensions of your leaving us for any length of time; for its reform of manners must be too slow for our time of life to hope to see accomplished.”
In 1802, paragraphs in the newspapers intimated that two letters of Shakspeare, written in 1606 and 1607, had been found in the Dorset papers, addressed to the Lord Treasurer Buckhurst, Earl of Dorset. Mr. (afterwards Sir Nathaniel) Wraxall had been it appeared in possession of these papers; and to him Malone applied, but found the newspaper statement erroneous. He mentioned however that in the Middlesex papers which formed part of the Dorset collection, he found a petition from Sarah Shakspeare to the Lord Treasurer Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, but whether she were a relative of the poet did not appear. The duke, he said, entrusted him with the papers in 1797 for the selection and publication of such as were of public interest. His grace died in 1800, and in December following the whole of them had been withdrawn from him by the duchess. Previous to that event he had, in company with her grace and Mrs. Wraxall, opened a large chest or coffer at the top of the house (Knowle) filled with old letters and papers, of which he drew out a few, but whether anything of Shakspeare mingled with them he had never since been permitted to ascertain.
A second letter from Malone produced another from the same gentleman with slight additions to his previous report. The petition alluded to consisted of about twenty lines requesting succour for her necessities; no note is made, as on several others, whether relief was rendered; no intimation supplied whether spinster or widow; but highly probable that she was widow or wife of Gilbert Shakspeare; date of the petition he thinks 1623.
A zealous antiquary is not easily baulked on a favourite topic. Animated by hopes from the “coffer” in question, Malone induced Mr. Windham to write to Lord Whitworth, then in Paris, for information whether anything of Shakspeare had been found among its contents. The reply (March 1803) was a negative. They had withdrawn the papers he said “from the plagiaristick hands of Mr. Wraxall,” and believed they contained nothing of public interest. “For my own part I will confess to you that, from what I have seen of it, this may be comprised in a very small compass.” Wraxall, with whom some quarrel had evidently taken place, and who tells Malone that if annoyed by newspaper paragraphs from that family, he will publish the whole of the circumstances, thinks differently. He tells Malone that there is much curious and interesting matter in the collection. But the critic, to his great regret, received no invitation, then or afterward, from the owner of Knowle, to examine either letters or papers.[5]
A whim seized him about this time (1802) to change his diet. Severe dyspepsia, which so often haunts the steps and dashes the triumphs of genius and study, induced him to forsake solids for soups, broths, gruel, and similar fare. The success of the scheme, as may be supposed, was not great; but the economy, had that been an object, considerable. “I” have been living,” he writes to his sister, Jan. 1803, “upon nothing for a good while past. My butcher’s bill for this whole year comes to but thirty-three pounds, and of that only seven guineas have been spent since July.”
Soon afterward he unexpectedly failed in securing a public appointment, without disturbance of his usual constitutional equanimity. The office had become vacant by death; his succession to it was promised and said to be certain; till just on the point of being inducted, it was discovered to be not in the gift of the nobleman who claimed the patronage, but in that of Lord Hawkesbury. "Lord Pelham,” he writes to his sister, “would unquestionably have had the disposal of it had not his predecessor, the Duke of Portland, granted the reversion of the first clerkship of the Signet that should fall, which took place on Fraser’s death, and this passed for the turn of the Secretary (of State), and of course of Lord Pelham, who stood in his shoes . . . . I state all this because you and dear Hetty wish to know the particulars, and not because it makes any impression on my mind. I am sure that W. [Windham] whenever he comes into power, will make me compensation for the disappointment. Besides, I shall have a rise of between one and two hundred a year on the Cavan estate; so I consider that a place, and shall think no more of the other.”
Criticism on certain passages in Shakspeare came opportunely to divert attention from this disappointment. The writer was an old and eminent friend, Dr. Michael Kearney, of Trinity College, Dublin, who had retired from his duties to those of a country pastor, where his leisure was employed in reading books—neglecting, as is too frequently the case with members of Trinity, to write them, as they are well fitted to do, for the instruction of others. Distinguished for classical learning and talent, he was not less conversant with our great dramatic poet. On this occasion he notices an anachronism in King John. Louis VIII. of France, who succeeded to the crown in 1223, is called Dauphin; whereas Dauphiny, whence the name is derived, was not resigned to France till 1349. This, he observes, may suit the commentators; but signifies little to that great genius whose powers rose above all time and place. He controverts Dr. Johnson’s criticism on Dover Cliff in an ingenious and philosophical passage; and concludes with queries on some expressions in the first part of Henry IV.
An acquaintance soon afterwards commenced with Mr. William Gifford, the sharpest critic of his day, who from satire and censure in the Anti-Jacobin, had tamed down his hand to the calmer employment of editing Massinger. He was well fitted for the work, as his edition sufficiently evinces. But he saw in Malone a superior in research, added to the possession of materials conducive to his own success. They were previously unacquainted; but both being strongly tinctured by similar political sentiments, a letter of inquiry answered the purpose of more formal introduction. The immediate subject was an imperfect drama of Massinger in manuscript, to which the possessor replied in February, 1803:—
“Mr. Malone presents his compliments to Mr. Gifford. He has sent the Parliament of Love by his servant for Mr. Gifford’s inspection and transcription, if he should think it worth that trouble. This piece is however in such a mutilated state, wanting the whole of the first act and part of the second—to say nothing of other defects from damp and time—that it is feared it can be of little use.”
Gifford put his ingenuity to work, and in six weeks returned a fair copy to the owner with the following:—
March 18, 1803—James Street.
Sir,—It is so long since I received your very obliging letter that I am almost ashamed to recur to it; but in truth, I was desirous of returning the MS., which I cannot sufficiently thank you for; at the same time, the transcription of it took up so much more time than I was aware of, and drew me on so from day to day, that I fear you have thought me either very negligent or very ungrateful. I now, sir, return the Parliament of Love. It has never been out of my hands, and I have copied it all myself. You will be pleased to know that less of it is lost than you imagine, as there are still four pages of the first act remaining. I hope I have made it out pretty well. Indeed, with the exception of the six last broken lines of the first page—which better eyes than mine may still read perhaps—and a contraction in the twenty-fourth line of the last page but one, which my little acquaintance with old MSS. disable me from reading, I flatter myself that all has been copied. I was desirous of sending you a fair copy, but I have been disappointed by the person to whom I intrusted my manuscript. The instant it is brought me, I will take the liberty of enclosing it to Queen Ann Street.
I am infinitely obliged to you, sir, for the two volumes which accompanied your letter. The notices they contain are very precious to me, as well as those you have kindly set down in your last favour. The two volumes, with your permission, I will yet withhold, as they contain three plays of the first editions which I was not before possessed of. I will take all imaginable care of them.
Many years ago, when I first read your History of the English Stage, I was so convinced of the truth of what you urged respecting what we now call scenery, that I wondered how Mr. Steevens, a man of infinite sagacity, could attempt to controvert it. Since I have looked into the early editions of Massinger I have been frequently reminded of it. The marginal hints, scattered up and down for the use of the property man, furnish the most ridiculous proofs of the poverty of the ancient stage.
With every good wish, and every feeling of respect, I remain, sir, your truly obliged and obedient servant,
Wm. Gifford.
The English critic has recorded some further acknowledgments to his industrious brother of Ireland. “And Mr. Malone, with a liberality that I shall ever remember with gratitude and delight, furnished me unsolicited with his valuable collection, among which I found all the first editions.” In another place we find—“From Mr. Malone, from whose historical account of the English stage—one of the most instructive essays that ever appeared on the subject—many of these notices are taken.”
In this year (1803) he appears to have found constant accumulations from book-marts to be either inconvenient to his shelves, or unnecessary for such purposes as he had in view. From a purchaser, therefore, he became a seller. In one of Thorpe’s trading announcements (1841), there is the following insertion:—“Catalogue of a collection of English poetry, &c., part of the library of Edmond Malone; sold by Mr. King; h. b. neat, scarce, 5s. 1803.” Many of the articles were, no doubt, duplicates; or portions of the refuse with which literary, like other diamonds, are often intermixed.
Particulars of the insurrection in Ireland in July created momentary apprehensions for the safety of his family. But these were soon dispelled by correspondents in Dublin. Never did discontent take the field with less of wisdom than in this wrong-headed and wicked affair. The intellect of Ireland most assuredly lies not among her rebellious sons; for not one of the number has shown himself of the slightest capacity as a leader; and happily for her that it is so, and that it may never be otherwise.
In 1804 his sister Catherine, after a visit to Queen Anne Street, proceeded on an excursion to Scotland in search of an imprudent lady-friend who had failed to manage her own affairs in the most prudent way. Kind advice and active assistance appear in the proceedings of brother and sister. Money is transmitted by both; and as a small mark of delicate attention to the wants of a lady, he sallied forth himself in search of the most expensive tea and coffee to be found in London to forward to the same quarter.
During her absence (July) he made a journey to Cambridge, in pursuit of old books and papers—dined out four days in the week—was busied in daily researches from nine till four o’clock—is on the whole pretty well satisfied though certain papers evaded his vigilance—and means to visit Mr. Bindley to talk over his discoveries. Has had a dinner-party or two—dines with the Windhams; with Lord Cowper<!— Peter Leopold Louis Francis Nassau Clavering-Cowper, 5th Earl Cowper -->, though unwell; with Sir W. Scott; and from the former, “went in the evening with Mrs. Crewe to Holland House—a fine piece of antiquity in its way, but much in want of the expenditure of five or six thousand pounds to make it a really handsome antique.”
In August he writes again, but with an eye to business. Thanks “Kate” for a promised letter of Congreve, and desires her to ask Lady Clark for copies of others in possession of the Duchess of Buccleugh. “They will add to my literary stores, and I may extract some good out of them.”
“Yesterday,” he adds—and even in the anecdote we see Shakspeare and the drama prominent in thought, while that of Mr. Windham is no less strongly characteristic—“I dined with the Windhams at Mr. Woodford’s, at Vauxhall. There was a rowing-match on the Thames for a prize left by Dogget, the player. Windham, being bred at Eton, is a great swimmer and rower, and necessarily much interested in the contest. We sat for an hour in a boat under one of the arches of Westminster Bridge awaiting the contending parties, who no sooner appeared than he dashed in among a hundred boats, shouting, splashing, and pulling about to keep pace for a moment with the rivals. Afterwards, while crossing to Vauxhall, we found one of the defeated men, overcome by the event, sitting with his head upon his knees in an agony of tears. He was from Bankside, where Shakspeare’s plays used to be acted, and his name was Still, the same as that of the author of the first English comedy ever written—so was doubly interesting to me. We gave him half-crowns—all the comfort we could. It was delightful to see what interest W(indham) took in the sport, to prevent obstruction or interference with the boats engaged, totally regardless of the safety of his own.”
Toward the end of the year he again became affected with intense burning pain in the nerves of the arm, shoulder, and side. His eyes were giving way to labours upon old and minute penmanship; and sleep had nearly deserted him. These ills he believed were caught in work; that is, in profuse perspirations caused by long walks to Stationers’ Hall to copy their books in rooms not often aired or tenanted. But he made light of all personal ills, as usual, to his sister. Convalescence came in about two or three months; and then he tells of his visitors, Lord Cowper, Luttrell, Metcalf, Windham, Dr. Burney and his son Charles, Bindley, Caldwell, and others, either dining with them or they with him. Their talk even alleviated twinges which Drs. Heberden, Blane, and Sir James Earle assailed in vain.
His sisters, however, had become uneasy. His health continued indifferent, his spirits depressed, and the constant presence of a friend, in whom they could all place implicit confidence, seemed the only mode of allaying their apprehensions. With this view, a protege of the family, the Rev. J. Jephson, was summoned from Westmeath to London, who sketches for his wife a few notices of the scene.
I intended you (May 3) a long letter to-day, but Lord Sunderlin and Luttrell both called, and occupied me some hours; and then Mr. M. (Malone) and I sat down to books, papers, and criticism, which we have barely left within half an hour of the post going out.
He then mentions, as indicative of their studies, having solved a passage in Valerius Maximus which had defeated Malone, Windham, Luttrell,[6] and others.
The Malones urge my stay—but listen to my reasons for not protracting it as much as they wish. I dine to-day with Lord Sunderlin. The ladies put me down at night on their way to Lady Clonmell’s.
It was my intention (May 6) to write daily to you, but was prevented by a visitor, who occupied the only time I had left. I dined yesterday at Lord Sunderlin’s; Luttrell and Courtenay were of the party—but the irreconcileable differences between their notions on politics, morals, taste, &c, and those of Mr. M., rather dullified the day, though not altogether.
In the midst of much discomfort, he gained patience to endure it by contrasting with his own the afflictions of his friend Mr. R. M. Jephson, settled at Gibraltar, from whom accounts were at this time received. His situation was indeed deplorable. Pestilence in the form of fever had visited that fortress and made hideous ravages in every class of the population. His wife, child, brother, and many intimate associates perished in what he calls “this charnell house.” Even a dear friend (chief medical officer of the navy), in whose house he and his family took refuge when driven by despair and death from their own, shared the general fate. No scene could be more terrible. So indeed the medical records of that time amply testify. “He even asks for death at the hand of Providence; he has no other refuge; is alone in the world; cares not for society; children—boys, young men—unfit to soothe grief.” Women alone fit for comforters and companions on such occasions.” Four letters of this description within a month, filled with wailings, disease, and death, give a melancholy picture of deep suffering, little short of the extremity of despair.
Letters and literature, as usual, deadened the sense of his own personal afflictions. Two of the former came from Gifford, in his blandest mood, apologizing for the author—infirmity of retaining borrowed volumes too long; and for the delays of those incurable clogs upon their labours, unpunctual printers. The first of these (May 1805) may be given:—
I am extremely sorry I was not at home when you did me the honour to call—more especially as I was anxious to make my best apologies to you for the unconscionable time I have detained your valuable volumes. One plea I may now offer, which is, that I was desirous of bringing you a set of Massinger, at the same time that I waited upon you with my best thanks. This I hoped to have done long since; but you who have had somewhat more experience than I have, need not be told that no set of men can vie with printers in deranging the most confident calculations—and I have been led on from month to month, and from week to week.
To-day, however, puts a termination to the business; and as soon as a set can be made up, I shall have the pleasure of waiting on you with it and of returning your little collections, which I may truly say have been to me invaluable.—I remain, dear sir, with the sincerest esteem, your ever obliged and obedient friend and servant.”
A month afterward, the same critic thanks his brother labourer for friendly emendations:—“You could not have given me a more sincere or a more pleasing proof of your kindness than the corrections and additions which you transmitted in your last favour; and of all which I shall be most anxious to avail myself. . . . .“Is there anything peculiar implied in the last part of the following passage? “It (Malkin’s Almahide and Hamet) is in my possession, and very much at your service; indeed, I would send it to you, but I am without a servant—
Most incident to what shall I say’—”
The Bishop of Dromore, Dr. French Laurence, Mr. Sayers, author of the Life of Mortimer (who writes through Mr. Amyot), Mr. Caldwell, and Dr. Mansell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop of Bristol, plied him variously with literary inquiries, or answers, as the case might be. To the latter he had complained of some accuser as to an alleged slip of the pen, and receives from that classical church dignitary a handsome testimony to the general merits of his style.[7]
- ↑ “I would not,” says Burney, “take my corporal of it; but, as far as I can remember, Johnson’s account of the prints in the Thrales’ drawing-room was accurate. The family lived in the library which used to be the parlour. There they breakfasted, &c. Over the bookcases were hung Sir Joshua’s portraits of Mr. Thrale’s friends, of whom Boswell, I believe, has given a lift. From these portraits the room has by painters been called the Thrale Gallery. “The drawing-room, if memory does not deceive me, was hung with plain bright sky-blue paper, ornamented with a very gay border, somewhat tawdry; and the room in which dinner was served when large parties were invited which, I believe, Johnson means, was I believe, hung with prints. Family dinners without company were served in a more small and plain room. I forget now what I said, and of course thought, concerning the French Horn. But that and anything else which I scribbled down during my last perusal of Boswell’s life of our friend, were given more as queries than positive assertions . . . . It (a cold) prevents me from calling on you to talk over Johnsonian matters.”
- ↑ Now in the possession of R. Monckton Milnes, Esq.
- ↑ Some additions to the facts of the life have been made by the diligence of Mr. Robert Bell, in his annotated edition of the British Poets, which supplies one of the wants of the age. These are chiefly from the family of the poet—letters from Honor and Ann Dryden; copy of his marriage licence at St. Swithin’s Church; letter of William Walsh on his poems; and besides others, an Exchequer warrant by which 100l. per annum was added to his salary as poet laureate in May 1684. This grant coming from Charles II., relieves him from the charge of changing his religion for a pension under his successor—the latter being, in fact, simply a confirmation of the previous gift. It is pleasant thus to be enabled to exonerate genius from imputed unworthy motives. Lord Macaulay, not always accurate, will therefore, no doubt, from this discovery of Mr. Bell, withdraw the charge against him of corrupt motives, however lightly he may otherwise think of the “renegade.” While this is passing through the press, his lordship’s death is announced.
- ↑ This gentleman I have mentioned in a previous page; also in the Life of Goldsmith, vol. i. p. 63: Murray, 1837.
- ↑ A hint in the letter to Mr. Windham from Paris plainly shows that his lordship was not easy in his communications with Napoleon—“and the sooner I am relieved from this place the better.”
- ↑ Of this gentleman, once well known in the higher circles of London life, little has been made public. But an eminent literary friend favours me with the following notice:—
“Luttrell I knew well. He was the natural son of a nobleman, Lord C; sat in the Irish Parliament when a young man; and subsequently was sent to the West Indies by his father, to manage estates there. He soon found himself fit for a larger sphere. On returning to England, he found an introduction to the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire—was constantly at her parties, and at all other fashionable assemblies of those days, was admired as a lively and intelligent, if not brilliant talker. Nor was he less a favourite with those of the next generation. Indeed, he continued to visit in, and be admired by, the very highest society in London till illness compelled him to stay at home. He died, if I mistake not, about a year before Rogers. He was twice married; by the first wife he had a son; the second wife, more advanced in life, proved an excellent nurse in his last illness. Though he published two poems of considerable merit—Letters to Julia and Crockford House,—he was, and I believe wished to be thought, a man of fashion, of attractive conversational powers, rather than a literary man. Moore consulted him about destroying Byron’s autobiography. . . . . I may mention that he had a bad temper: so had Rogers; and they were ever and anon falling out. On one occasion I was the innocent cause of a dreadful quarrel, during which they used such language to each other as none could have expected from the lips of two men who had associated not only with the highest nobility, but with kings and queens.”
In Rogers’ Table Talk, Mr. Dyce quotes the old poet on the literary qualifications of this gentleman. “What a pity it is,” said he, “that Luttrell gives up nearly his whole time to persons of mere fashion! Everything that he has written is very clever. Are you acquainted with his epigram on Miss Tree (Mrs. Bradshaw)? It is quite a little fairy tale:—
“‘On this Tree when a Nightingale settles and sings,
The Tree will return her as good as she brings.’Luttrell is indeed a most pleasant companion. None of the talkers whom I meet in London society can slide in a brilliant thing with such readiness as he does.”—p. 280, third edition.
- ↑ “Whether you wrote cingulus or cingulum, I really do not recollect. But this I do know, that if to be master at will of every classical image and sentiment—if to write simply, purely, and with the very properest words in their places—stamps the best acquaintance with all that is best and worthy in what is called classical, then I think you have very little occasion to trouble yourself about fifty or five hundred lapsus calami, of which no man is more guilty than myself, and unhappily without such sets-off. . . . . I congratulate you much upon the acquisition of the first edition of the Venus and Adonis, and agree with you that no one of this land could ever think of giving such a turn to their story.”