CHAPTER VII.THE QUEEN AND LITERATURE.

Queen Carolineis distinguished from the other Queens-Consort of England as the one who took a genuine interest in literature; in this respect she surpassed all our Queens-Regnant as well, though Elizabeth, and in a far lesser sense Anne, showed an appreciation of letters. The age of Elizabeth has been called the golden age of English literature: the reign of Anne the Augustan period. There can be no doubt as to the correctness of the first of these designations; the second is open to cavil. But though the English writers who flourished during the early part of the eighteenth century could not compare in loftiness or genius to the writers of the reign of Elizabeth, yet they formed a galaxy of talent—talent amounting in some instances to positive genius—which England has never witnessed since. This galaxy shone throughout the reigns of Anne and George the First, but soon after Caroline came to the throne its brilliance began to wane. Some of the greatest writers were dead, and others had already given their best work to the world.

It must be admitted that Queen Caroline’sjudgment in literature was not always as sound as her interest was genuine—in English literature at least. Her imperfect knowledge of the English language had something to do with this; one can hardly master the literature of a country if one does not begin to speak its language until middle life. In French and German literature she was far better equipped. She had read much and widely of them both, and of her favourite studies of metaphysics, philosophy and theology had perhaps taken in more than she could assimilate. Her correspondence with learned and scientific men kept her abreast of the best thought of the time, and no work of conspicuous merit made its appearance in Europe without Caroline’s coming, directly or indirectly, in touch with its author. When Voltaire, for instance, visited England he received ready help and generous appreciation at Caroline’s hands.

Voltaire came to England in 1726, after his quarrel with the Duke de Sully. Some months’ detention in the Bastille, followed by an order to quit Paris, had driven him into exile. In the warmth of his welcome to England he found a balm for his wounded feelings, and he stayed in this country more than two years. He found in England many congenial spirits, and delighted in the freedom of discussion and latitude of opinion everywhere prevalent, from the Court downwards, especially in the brilliant literary circle where he foregathered. He warmly admired the religious and civil liberty of England, and testified his admirationin hisLettres Philosophiques, also calledLettres sur les Anglais. He wrote in England hisTragedy of Brutus, and here also he brought out, in 1728, the first edition of his poemLa Henriade. To Caroline, who often received him at Leicester House as Princess of Wales, and who welcomed him with equal cordiality at court when she became Queen, he dedicated this edition ofLa Henriade. The dedication, in English, ran asfollows:—

“To the Queen.“Madam—It was the fate of Henry the Fourth to be protected by an English Queen. He was assisted by the great Elizabeth, who was in her age the glory of her sex. By whom can his memory be so well protected as by her who resembles so much Elizabeth in her personal virtues?“Your Majesty will find in this book bold, impartial truths; morality unstained with superstition; a spirit of liberty, equally abhorrent of rebellion and of tyranny; the rights of kings always asserted, and those of mankind never laid aside.“The same spirit in which it is written gave me the confidence to offer it to the virtuous Consort of a King who, among so many crowned heads, enjoys almost alone the inestimable honour of ruling a free nation; a King who makes his power consist in being beloved, and his glory in being just.“Our Descartes, who was the greatest philosopher in Europe before Sir Isaac Newton appeared, dedicated thePrinciplesto the celebratedPrincess Palatine Elizabeth; not, said he, because she was a princess (for true philosophers respect princes, and never flatter them); but because of all his readers she understood him the best, and loved truth the most.“I beg leave, Madam (without comparing myself to Descartes), to dedicateLa Henriadeto your Majesty upon the like account, and not only as the protectress of all arts and sciences, but as the best judge of them.“I am, with that profound respect which is due to the greatest virtue as well as the highest rank, may it please your Majesty, your Majesty’s most humble, most dutiful, and most obliged servant,“Voltaire.”

“To the Queen.

“Madam—It was the fate of Henry the Fourth to be protected by an English Queen. He was assisted by the great Elizabeth, who was in her age the glory of her sex. By whom can his memory be so well protected as by her who resembles so much Elizabeth in her personal virtues?

“Your Majesty will find in this book bold, impartial truths; morality unstained with superstition; a spirit of liberty, equally abhorrent of rebellion and of tyranny; the rights of kings always asserted, and those of mankind never laid aside.

“The same spirit in which it is written gave me the confidence to offer it to the virtuous Consort of a King who, among so many crowned heads, enjoys almost alone the inestimable honour of ruling a free nation; a King who makes his power consist in being beloved, and his glory in being just.

“Our Descartes, who was the greatest philosopher in Europe before Sir Isaac Newton appeared, dedicated thePrinciplesto the celebratedPrincess Palatine Elizabeth; not, said he, because she was a princess (for true philosophers respect princes, and never flatter them); but because of all his readers she understood him the best, and loved truth the most.

“I beg leave, Madam (without comparing myself to Descartes), to dedicateLa Henriadeto your Majesty upon the like account, and not only as the protectress of all arts and sciences, but as the best judge of them.

“I am, with that profound respect which is due to the greatest virtue as well as the highest rank, may it please your Majesty, your Majesty’s most humble, most dutiful, and most obliged servant,

“Voltaire.”

Even if we allow for flattery, and Voltaire was not given to flattering princes, this dedication is a remarkable tribute to Caroline’s mental powers and her interest in the arts. Voltaire must have known of her friendship with Sir Isaac Newton; he had probably heard of her admiration for Queen Elizabeth; and he skilfully wove allusions to both in his dedication.

The first edition ofLa Henriadewas sold to subscribers at one guinea a copy, and had a great success. The Queen herself solicited subscriptions for it among her friends, and the edition was soon exhausted. Nor did her interest stop here. She persuaded the King to give Voltaire a present of two thousand crowns, equal to £500, and she addedto this a further present of £200 from her privy purse, and sent Voltaire her portrait.

English men of letters were not so fortunate as Voltaire in winning the favour of the court. When she was Princess of Wales Caroline made welcome any literary man of eminence to Leicester House whatever his creed or party, Papist or Arian, Jacobite, Whig or Tory. George the First’s contempt for literature made her graciousness the more marked, and perhaps it was her affability and eagerness to please that gave rise to expectations which were later unfulfilled. For it is certain that many eminent writers of prose and verse expected great things when Caroline became Queen; and it is equally certain that they were grievously disappointed. Whether with all the goodwill in the world, and all the power, the Queen could have satisfied every one of them may be doubted, for the literary mind is not prone to underrate its merits. As events turned out she could do little or nothing for any man of letters, unless he were eligible for preferment in the Church. She found herself as Queen in a position of less freedom and greater responsibility. She was as anxious as ever to befriend literary men, but in this respect she found herself thwarted by the King and opposed by Walpole; her difficulties too were increased by the fact that nearly every writer of talent was either openly or secretly hostile to the Government.

For this hostility Walpole was to blame; he had inaugurated a new policy. During the reignof William and Anne, and even in the reign of George the First while Townshend and Stanhope were Prime Ministers, literary men were courted and caressed by those in authority. In short it has been well said that “though the Sovereign was never an Augustus every minister was a Mæcenas”. Lucrative places were found for many writers in departments of the civil service, and others were aided to enter Parliament or diplomacy.

But when Walpole became Prime Minister in 1721 he changed all this, and set his face like a flint against employing literary men in the public service in any capacity whatsoever. In this he was supported by George the First, and his successor George the Second, who both despised literature and never opened a book. The number of readers was far more limited then than now (though perhaps they were more discriminating), and writing books was consequently less lucrative. When men of talent and genius saw the avenues of patronage and of usefulness in the State suddenly closed to them by the Prime Minister, it is no wonder that they placed their pens at the service of the Opposition, led as it was by two men so appreciative of the claims of literature as Bolingbroke and Pulteney. But Walpole did not heed, and for twenty years followed the same policy. “No writer need apply” was written over every door that led to preferment in the State. But in the long run the writers had their revenge, and his neglect of the pamphleteers was one of the chief causes that led to Walpole’s fall.

Queen Caroline had promised so fair when Princess of Wales, and her influence over her husband was known to be so great, that many literary men looked forward to her coming to the throne as likely to bring about a revival of the Augustan age of Queen Anne. They were bitterly disappointed when they found her in close accord with the Minister who had slammed the door of patronage in their faces, and many considered that she had betrayed them. They forgot that in an alliance like that between the Queen and Walpole each had to yield something, and the Queen yielded some of her interest in letters for the larger interests she had at stake. It was a pity that with so real a desire to help literature Caroline was able to do so little. It was a still greater pity that after she became Queen her relations with some of the greatest English men of letters, like Swift, Gay and Pope, were strained to breaking point. The fault was not all on her side, and in some cases the breach was inevitable, but it was none the less unfortunate.

MRS. CLAYTON (VISCOUNTESS SUNDON).

Swift, who had fallen with Bolingbroke in 1714, visited England in 1726, for the first time since the death of Queen Anne, probably with the object of effecting a reconciliation with the reigning dynasty. He made the acquaintance of Mrs. Howard through his friends Pope and Gay, and was introduced by her to Caroline, then Princess of Wales. Writing years later to the Duchess of Queensberry, who hated Caroline, Swift declared that “a nameless person”(the Queen) “sent me eleven messages before I would yield her a visit”. This was surely an exaggeration, and it was written at a time when Swift, having lost all hope of preferment from the Queen, was paying his court to the duchess. Swift no doubt was quite as ready to have an audience as Caroline was to grant him one. He began the conversation by saying that he knew the Princess loved to see odd persons, and having seen a wild boy from Germany, he supposed she now had a curiosity to see a wild dean from Ireland. Caroline laughed, and found in his genius an excuse for the lack of courtly manners. He came several times to Leicester House.

Swift returned to Ireland well pleased with his reception, though no definite promise of what he desired, English preferment, had been given him. He came again to England early the following year, 1727, as it proved for the last time. His coming was heralded by the publication of his famous satire,Gulliver’s Travels. Caroline read the book with delight, and when the author presented himself at Leicester House welcomed him most graciously. She accepted from him a present of Irish poplins, and promised him a medallion of herself in return. Swift was also a constant and welcome guest in the apartments of Mrs. Howard, and met there, besides many men of letters, politicians of the stamp of Townshend and Compton. He was in England at the time of George the First’s death, and kissed the hands of the new King and Queen. For a time he was full of hope, but his expectationsreceived a shock when he found Walpole, “Bob the poet’s foe,” confirmed in power. He went back to Ireland, cast down but not dismayed, and waited there for the summons that never came.

For some time the dean placed faith in Mrs. Howard, and more especially in the Queen’s graciousness. He knew also the Queen’s views on Church matters, and his unorthodoxy, which had hindered Anne from making him a bishop, would, he thought, be a point in his favour with Caroline. His commanding literary abilities ought certainly to have given him a strong claim upon her consideration. But Swift, the friend of Bolingbroke, was disliked by Walpole, and Caroline distrusted every one who was intimate with Bolingbroke. Moreover Swift thought, like so many others, that the way to the King’s favour lay through his mistress rather than his wife, and on both his visits to England he paid great court to Mrs. Howard, visiting her frequently, flattering her, telling her some of his best stories, and writing her some of his wittiest letters. Caroline, who knew of this friendship, resented it, and though she gave the great dean audience, and was affable to him as she was to every one, she made a mental note against his name, and never helped him to realise his wish of obtaining English preferment. She had never promised to give it to him, but she had promised to send him her medallion. Swift, who for some time after his return to Ireland, kept up a correspondence with Mrs. Howard, wrote to her recalling the Queen’s promise.

“First, therefore,” he writes, “I call you to witness that I did not attend on the Queen until I had received her repeated messages, which, of course, occasioned my being introduced to you. I never asked anything till, upon leaving England for the first time, I desired from you a present worth a guinea, and from her Majesty one worth ten pounds, by way of a memorial. Yours I received, and the Queen, upon taking my leave of her, made an excuse that she had intended a medal for me, which not being ready, she would send it me the Christmas following: yet this was never done, nor at all remembered when I went back to England the next year, and attended her as I had done before. I must now tell you, madam, that I will receive no medal from her Majesty, nor anything less than her picture at half-length, drawn by Jervas; and if he takes it from another original, the Queen shall at least sit twice for him to touch it up. I desire you will let her Majesty know this in plain words, although I have heard I am under her displeasure....

“AgainstyouI have but one reproach, that when I was last in England, and just after the present King’s accession, I resolved to pass that summer in France, for which I had then a most lucky opportunity, from which those who seemed to love me well, dissuaded me by your advice. And when I sent you a note, conjuring you to lay aside the character of a courtier and a favourite upon that occasion, your answer positively directed me not togo at that juncture; and you said the same thing to my friends who seemed to have power of giving me hints, that I might reasonably have expected a settlement78in England, which, God knows, is no great ambition considering the station I should leave here, of greater dignity, which might easily have been managed to be disposed of as the Crown pleased....

“I wish her Majesty would a little remember what I largely said to her about Ireland, when before a witness she gave me leave, and commanded me to tell here what she spoke to me upon that subject, and ordered me, if I lived to see her in her present station, to send her our grievances, promising to read my letter, and do all good offices in her power for this most miserable and most loyal kingdom, now at the brink of ruin, and never so near as now.

“As to myself, I repeat again that I have asked nothing more than a trifle as a memorial of some distinction, which her Majesty graciously seemed to make between me and every common clergyman; that trifle was forgot according to the usual method of princes, although I was taught to think myself upon a footing of obtaining some little exception.”79

Whether Mrs. Howard laid this letter before the Queen, as the dean evidently intended her to do, orspoke to the Queen on the subject, is not known; in any case Swift would have done better to have written directly to the Queen herself, or if that were impossible, to have chosen some more congenial channel of communication than Mrs. Howard. The Queen was jealous of her influence, and Mrs. Clayton, who disliked Swift, had been taught to think that ecclesiastical recommendations were especially within her province. For Mrs. Howard to have asked the Queen for the meanest curacy for one of her favourites would have been resented. So it came about that after Swift had waited a few years longer, heart-sick with deferred hope, he turned on Mrs. Howard as well as her mistress, though in the former case he was not only ungrateful but unjust, for the poor lady had not the power, though she had the will, to help him. But Swift in his Irish exile could not be expected to know the true inwardness of affairs at Court. “As for Mrs. Howard and her mistress,” he wrote, “I have nothing to say but that they have neither memory nor manners, else I should have had some mark of the former from the latter, which I was promised about two years ago; but since I made them a present it would be mean to remind them.” He was extremely sensitive to slights, and he resented the Queen’s forgetfulness about the medal almost as much as the fact that she omitted him from her list of preferments. Years after, in a poem which he wrote on his own death, the old grievance of the medals crops upagain:—

From Dublin soon to London spread,’Tis told at Court “the Dean is dead,”And Lady Suffolk in the spleenRuns laughing up to tell the Queen.The Queen, so gracious, mild and good,Cries: “Is he gone? ’tis time he should.He’s dead, you say—then let him rot;I am glad the medals were forgot.I promised him, I own; but when?I only was the princess then;And now the consort of a King,You know, ’tis quite another thing.”

From Dublin soon to London spread,

’Tis told at Court “the Dean is dead,”

And Lady Suffolk in the spleen

Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.

The Queen, so gracious, mild and good,

Cries: “Is he gone? ’tis time he should.

He’s dead, you say—then let him rot;

I am glad the medals were forgot.

I promised him, I own; but when?

I only was the princess then;

And now the consort of a King,

You know, ’tis quite another thing.”

Swift never forgave the Queen’s neglect, and for years, until her death, Caroline was the subject of his sharpest satirical attacks. But his satire failed to move her, any more than his presents and compliments had done. The great dean was left to drag out the remainder of his days in Ireland, embittered by disappointment and darkened by despair. Probably Walpole interposed his veto also. It was felt that such a firebrand was safer in Ireland, and his presence in England might seriously embarrass the Government. No doubt there was something to be said from that point of view. But the way in which those in authority neglected this great genius, until baffled ambition drove him to drink and madness, will ever remain one of the most tragic pages in the history of literature.

Gay, like Swift, also had a grievance against the Queen, though if Swift had any reason on his side, Gay certainly had none. Caroline had frequently showed him kindness when Princess of Wales, and had promised to help him when it was in her power. This promise she redeemed within a few weeksof the King’s accession. She laughingly told Mrs. Howard that she would now take up the “Hare with many friends”—an allusion to one of Gay’s fables—and she offered him the post of gentleman usher to the little Princess Louisa, a sinecure with a salary of £200 a year, which would be equivalent to £400 in the present day. There was little else that the Queen could offer him: the public service was now closed to writers, and as Gay was not in holy orders, he could not be provided for in the Church. This appointment, she thought, would secure him from want, and give him leisure for his pen. But Gay, whose head was quite turned by the adulation of foolish women, not only refused the Queen’s offer, but resented it as an insult. Soon after he was taken up by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, who were among his kindest friends.

The Duchess of Queensberry was one of the most beautiful and graceful women of her day; she was a daughter of Lord Clarendon, and therefore cousin of the late Queen Anne. She was of a haughty disposition, and considered herself quite equal, if not superior, to the princes of the House of Hanover. The fact that Gay had been slighted (as he considered) by Queen Caroline was enough to make her champion his cause more warmly. Gay soon declared war against the court and the Government in his famousBeggars’ Opera, which teemed with topical allusions and covert political satire. The character of “Bob Booty,” for instance, was understood to be Sir Robert Walpole, and was especiallya butt for ridicule.The Beggars’ Operatook the town by storm; it enjoyed not only an unprecedented run in London, but was played in all the great towns of England, Ireland and Scotland. It became a fashionable craze; ladies sang the favourite songs and carried about fans depicting incidents and characters in the piece; pictures of the actress, Miss Fenton, who played the leading part, were sold by the thousand, and songs and verses were composed in her honour; she became a popular toast and a reigning beauty, and finally married the Duke of Bolton, who ran away with her. But the Queen and Walpole resented the covert sarcasm in the play, and when Gay, encouraged by the success ofThe Beggars’ Opera, wrote a sequel calledPolly, and had it ready for rehearsal, the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain, acting under the orders of the King, who was instigated by the Queen, refused to license the performance. It was said that Walpole was satirized inPollyunder a thin disguise as a highwayman, but whatever the reason, the prohibition of the play only made it more popular. If it could not be played it could be read, and every one who had a grudge against Walpole, or the court, bought it when it came out in book form. The Duchess of Marlborough gave £100 for a single copy, and the Duchess of Queensberry solicited subscriptions for it within the very precincts of St. James’s, and at a drawing-room went round the room and asked even the officers of the King’s household to buy copies of the play whichthe King had forbidden to be played. The King caught her in the act, and asked what she was doing? She replied: “What must be agreeable, I am sure, to one so humane as your Majesty, for I am busy with an act of charity, and a charity to which I do not despair of bringing your Majesty to contribute”. The King guessed what the charity was, and talked the incident over with the Queen, who so resented the duchess’s action, which she rightly guessed was aimed more particularly at herself, that the King’s vice-chamberlain was sent to request her not to appear at court again. The vice-chamberlain’s message was verbal; but the duchess immediately wrote a spiritedreply:—

“The Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and well pleased that the King hath given her so agreeable a command as to stay from Court, where she never came for diversion, but to bestow a great civility on the King and Queen; she hopes that by such an unprecedented order as this is, that the King will see as few as he wishes at his Court, particularly such as dare to think or speak truth. I dare not do otherwise, and ought not, nor could have imagined that it would not have been the very highest compliment that I could possibly pay the King to endeavour to support truth and innocence in his house, particularly when the King and Queen both told me that they had not read Mr. Gay’s play. I have certainly done right, then, to stand by my own words rather than his Grace of Grafton’s, who hath neither made use of truth, judgment, nor honour,through this whole affair, either for himself or his friends.”

The duchess told the vice-chamberlain to take the letter to the King at once; the vice-chamberlain read it, and thought it so disrespectful that he begged her to reconsider the matter. Thereupon she sat down and wrote a second letter which was even worse, so he took the first after all. The King was beside himself with passion when he received it, and uttered the most appalling threats. But the duchess went about unharmed, and laughed him to scorn. She was glad to have this opportunity of showing her contempt for the “German Court,” as she called it, and her husband supported her action by resigning his office of Vice-Admiral of Scotland. Poor Mrs. Howard was the only sufferer, for Gay and the duchess were both her friends, and she therefore got the full brunt of the King’s ill temper. Most people took the duchess’s part, thinking that the court had been impolitic in noticing her action on behalf of Gay, who became for the moment a popular martyr. “He has got several turned out of their places,” wrote Arbuthnot to Swift, “the greatest ornament of the Court banished from it for his sake, and another great lady (Mrs. Howard) in danger of beingchasséelikewise, about seven or eight duchesses pushing forward like the ancient circumcelliones in the church to see who shall suffer martyrdom on his account first; he is the darling of the city.”80

Gay certainly did not suffer from the LordChamberlain’s action, for the subscriptions toPollybrought him in £1,200, whereas byThe Beggars’ Opera, with all its success, he had only gained £400. Therefore, as Dr. Johnson says, “What he called oppression ended in profit”.

The Queen’s difference with Pope arose out of the political exigencies of the hour. Unlike Swift and Gay he expected nothing from her, and had therefore no disappointment. As a Roman Catholic he was debarred from all places of honour and emolument, though in the reign of George the First Secretary Craggs offered him a pension of £300 a year, to be paid from the secret service money. Pope had been a familiar figure at Leicester House and Richmond Lodge. He was a great friend of Mrs. Howard, and a favourite with the maids of honour. Caroline, as Princess of Wales, had shown him many courtesies, and recognised his genius and admired his work. But Pope’s friendship with Bolingbroke and hatred of Walpole necessarily led to a breach between him and the Queen. As Mrs. Howard’s influence waned and Walpole’s became greater, Pope came no more to court, and had nothing for the Queen but sneers and ridicule.

His famous quarrel with Lord Hervey also did much to widen the breach, for the Queen naturally took her favourite’s side. A friend of Lord Hervey’s in the House of Commons spoke of Pope as “a lampooner who scattered his ink without fear or decency”. This was true of both combatants, who showed in a most unamiable light in this sordidquarrel. The origin of the feud is involved in obscurity, but Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was undoubtedly in part responsible for it.

Lady Mary, since her return from Constantinople in 1718, had occupied a unique position in society. She was a chartered libertine, her conversation grew broader with advancing years, and her wit had more licence. Between her and Lord Hervey there existed one of those curious friendships which may sometimes be witnessed between an effeminate man and a masculine woman, and there seems no doubt that it was of the kind which is known as “Platonic,” for, after Lord Hervey’s death, when his eldest son sealed up and sent Lady Mary the letters she had written to his father, assuring her that he had not looked at them, she wrote to say that she almost regretted he had not, as it would have proved to him what most young men disbelieved, “the possibility of a long and steady friendship subsisting between two persons of different sexes without the least mixture of love”.

Lady Mary took a house at Twickenham not far from Pope’s beautiful villa, and, though she was warned not to have anything to do with “the wicked wasp of Twickenham,” she renewed her friendship with the poet, and became as intimate with him as before. “Leave him as soon as you can” wrote Addison to her, “he will certainly play you some devilish trick else.” But Lady Mary took no heed, perhaps the danger of the experiment tempted her, and she fooled the little poet to the top of his bent.Pope, with all his genius, had an undue reverence for rank; he was flattered by the notice which this clever woman extended to him, and he genuinely admired her wit and vivacity. Lady Mary’s house was the rendezvous of many of the courtiers and wits of the day, and here Pope often met Lord Hervey. Lady Mary delighted in the homage the poet gave to her ungrudgingly; it flattered her vanity that such a genius should be at her feet. She wrote to him effusive letters, and in one of them declared that he had discovered the philosopher’s stone, “since by making theIliadpass through your poetical grasp into an English form, without losing aught of its original beauty, you have drawn the golden current from Patoclus to Twickenham”. Pope also wrote her the most extravagant epistles. In one, referring to her portrait, which had been painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, he says: “This picture dwells really at my heart, and I made a perfect passion of preferring your present face to your past”. Again he tells her, “I write as if I were drunk; the pleasure I take in thinking of your return transports me beyond the bounds of common decency”.

After a time Lady Mary began to grow rather weary of her poet, but he, on the contrary, became even more arduous, and was at last led into making her a passionate declaration of love. She received it by laughing in his face. Pope was keenly sensitive to ridicule, his deformity made him more so than most men; he was of a highly strung disposition, and Lady Mary’s outburst of hilarity was a thinghe could neither forget nor forgive. He withdrew deeply mortified and offended. His vanity could not understand how the beautiful Lady Mary could reject him with such disdain if another had not stolen her from him. He formed the idea that Lord Hervey was his rival, and against him therefore directed all his malice, spleen and hatred. A scurrilous paper war began. Lord Hervey dabbled in poetry, not of great merit, and Pope savagely attacked it. Speaking of one of his own satires, against which he pretended a charge of weakness had been brought, hesays:—

The lines are weak, another’s pleased to say,Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day.

The lines are weak, another’s pleased to say,

Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day.

Andagain:—

Like gentle Fanny’s was my flow’ry themeA painted mistress, or a purling stream.

Like gentle Fanny’s was my flow’ry theme

A painted mistress, or a purling stream.

Hervey, who thought his namby-pamby verses really poetry, was stung to the quick by this contemptuous allusion, and, smarting under the satire, was foolish enough to retaliate upon Pope in a poor effusion addressed “To the Imitator of the Satires of the Second Book of Horace”. Itruns:—

Thus, whilst with coward hand you stab a name,And try at least t’ assassinate our fame;Like the first bold assassin’s be thy lot;And ne’er be thy guilt forgiven, or forgot;But as thou hat’st, be hated by mankind,And with the emblem of thy crooked mindMarked on thy back, like Cain, by God’s own hand,Wander, like him accursed, through the land.

Thus, whilst with coward hand you stab a name,

And try at least t’ assassinate our fame;

Like the first bold assassin’s be thy lot;

And ne’er be thy guilt forgiven, or forgot;

But as thou hat’st, be hated by mankind,

And with the emblem of thy crooked mind

Marked on thy back, like Cain, by God’s own hand,

Wander, like him accursed, through the land.

In the same poem Pope wastold:—

None thy crabbed numbers can endureHard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure.

None thy crabbed numbers can endure

Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure.

This brutal allusion to Pope’s physical infirmities and his birth stung the most sensitive of poets to the quick. In this duel of wits, Hervey had chosen verse as his weapon, forgetting that in this line his adversary had no equal, and Pope seized the advantage. Hervey had set him an unworthy example, which he did not hesitate to follow, and he raked up everything which approached physical hideousness, weakness, or deformity in the person and mind of his adversary. According to Lord Hailes, “Lord Hervey, having felt some attacks of epilepsy, entered upon and persisted in a very strict regimen, and thus stopped the progress and prevented the effects of that dreadful disease. His daily food was a small quantity of ass’s milk and a flour biscuit. Once a week he indulged himself with eating an apple; he used emetics daily. Lord Hervey used paint to soften his ghastly appearance.” All these weaknesses were seized upon by Pope, and put into a poem wherein Lord Hervey was satirized as “Sporus”.

Let Sporus tremble! what! that thing of silk!Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk!Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys:So well-bred spaniels civilly delightIn mumbling of the game they dare not bite.Eternal smiles his emptiness betrayAs shallow streams run dimpling all the wayWhether in florid impotence he speaksAnd, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;Or, at the ear of Eve, familiar toadHalf froth half venom, spits himself abroad:In puns or politics, in tales or liesOr spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies;His wit all see-saw between that and this,Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,And he himself one vile antithesis.Amphibious thing! that acting either part,The trifling head, or the corrupted heart;Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the Board,Now trips a lady and now struts a lord.Eve’s tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed,A cherub’s face and reptile all the rest;Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Let Sporus tremble! what! that thing of silk!

Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk!

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;

Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,

Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys:

So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.

Eternal smiles his emptiness betray

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way

Whether in florid impotence he speaks

And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;

Or, at the ear of Eve, familiar toad

Half froth half venom, spits himself abroad:

In puns or politics, in tales or lies

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies;

His wit all see-saw between that and this,

Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,

And he himself one vile antithesis.

Amphibious thing! that acting either part,

The trifling head, or the corrupted heart;

Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the Board,

Now trips a lady and now struts a lord.

Eve’s tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed,

A cherub’s face and reptile all the rest;

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,

Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Coxe, alluding to the portrait of Sporus, writes: “I never could read this passage without disgust and horror, disgust at the indelicacy of the allusions, horror at the malignity of the poet in laying the foundation of his abuse on the lowest species of satire, personal invective, and what is still worse, sickness and debility”. This condemnation is true of Pope’s verses on Hervey, but it is equally true of Hervey’s verses on Pope—and it was Hervey who began the personal abuse.

Lady Mary did not escape either. Pope depicted her as a wanton, scoffed at her eccentricities, and hinted that she conferred her favours on “a black man,” the Sultan Ahmed of Turkey.

JOHN, LORD HERVEY.

Pope also addressed a prose letter to Lord Hervey, which was, if possible, more bitter and vindictive than his character of “Sporus”. He thought very highly of his letter, which Wharton styles “a masterpiece of invective”. To one ofhis friends Pope wrote: “There is woman’s war declared against me by a certain lord; his weapons are the same which women and children use—a pin to scratch, and a squirt to bespatter. I writ a sort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lists with him, and after showing it some people, suppressed it; otherwise it was such as was worthy of him and worthy of me.” The reason Pope gives for suppressing this letter, which was not published until after his death, though privately shown to many, was not the true one. Queen Caroline got hold of a copy of the epistle, and it was at her express desire that Pope withheld it. She feared lest it should render her favourite contemptible in the eyes of the world, and though she was greatly incensed against Pope, she dissembled her anger, and used her influence to end this wordy war, in which there could be no doubt that Pope was the victor.81

But though Caroline was unfortunate in her relations with Swift, Gay and Pope, men whose writings shed a lustre on her era, she was the means of helping other writers who were eminent in a different way. Butler, the author of theAnalogy, and Berkeley, who wroteThe Minute Philosopher, she preferred to high office in the Church. For other writers who were not in holy orders she did what she could. She befriended Steele at a time when, to use his own words, he was “bereft both of limbs andspeech”.82She had often befriended him before in the course of his chequered career. She reprieved Savage, the natural son of that unnatural mother the Countess of Macclesfield, when he lay under sentence of death. And after his wonderful poem,The Bastard, was written, she helped him again with a pension of £50 from her privy purse. She patronised Somerville, author ofThe Chase, no mean poet in the opinion of Dr. Johnson; and she sought to support that luckless playwright William Duncombe. It was one of her sayings that “genius was superior to the patronage of princes,” but she had a great sympathy for literary endeavour, however humble. But her patronage of minor writers was more often dictated by the kindness of her heart than by the soundness of her judgment. An instance of this was afforded by her patronage of Stephen Duck, whose fate has been not inaptly compared to that of Burns—without the genius.

Stephen Duck was the son of a peasant in Wiltshire, and worked as a day labourer and thresher on a farm at Charlton. He must have had some ability and a good deal of application, for when his day’s work was done, he taught himself the rudiments of grammar and a smattering of history and science. These labours bore fruit in poetry; but the poems remained unpublished until Duck reached the age of thirty, when he had the good fortune to attract the notice of a country clergyman named Spence, who not only lent him books, but foundthe means for him to print some of his poems in pamphlet form, includingThe Thresher’s Labour, a poem descriptive of his own life, andThe Shunamite. These poems found their way into the hands of Lord Tankerville and Dr. Alured Clarke, Prebendary of Winchester, who thought so highly of their merits that they got up a subscription to aid the author. Dr. Alured Clarke did more; he wrote to his friend Mrs. Clayton telling her the story of Duck’s life, and begging her to bring his poems before the notice of the Queen. By this time Duck had quite a little coterie of admirers in his own county, who, as Dr. Alured Clarke wrote, thought “the thresher, with all his defects, a superior genius to Mr. Pope”.83

Caroline was much interested in the fact that these poems were written by a poor thresher, and when the court was at Windsor she commanded that Duck should be brought there. She was so pleased with his manner and address that she settled a small annual pension on him, and in 1733 made him one of the yeomen of the guard. Dr. Alured Clarke, by this time one of the royal chaplains, and Mrs. Clayton acted as the sponsors of the poet, whose work now became well-known. The most extravagant ideas were formed concerning it, some consideringThe Thresher’s Laboursuperior to Thomson’sSeasons, and others declaring that the author ofThe Shunamitewas the greatest poet ofthe age. Thus encouraged, Duck wrote more poems, and the Queen’s patronage secured for them a large sale. Naturally many were in praise of his generous benefactress. Duck in due time took holy orders, to which he had always a leaning—he was ordained, as a literate, by the Bishop of Salisbury. Shortly after his ordination, the Queen appointed him keeper of Merlin’s Cave, a fanciful building she had erected at Richmond. Both Merlin’s Cave and Duck came in for a great deal of satire from “the epigrammatic Mæcenases,” as Dr. Alured Clarke calls them, who regarded both the cave and the patronage of the poet as proofs of the Queen’s folly rather than her wisdom. Popewrote:—

Lord! how we strut through Merlin’s Cave, to seeNo poets there, but Stephen, you and me.

Lord! how we strut through Merlin’s Cave, to see

No poets there, but Stephen, you and me.

Swift, writhing under neglect, penned a very causticepigram:—

The thresher Duck could o’er the Queen prevail:The proverb says, “No fence against a flail,”From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brainsFor which her Majesty allows him grains,Though ’tis confessed that those who ever sawHis poems, think them all not worth a straw.Thrice happy Duck! employed in threshing stubbleThy toils were lessen’d and thy profits doubled.

The thresher Duck could o’er the Queen prevail:

The proverb says, “No fence against a flail,”

From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains

For which her Majesty allows him grains,

Though ’tis confessed that those who ever saw

His poems, think them all not worth a straw.

Thrice happy Duck! employed in threshing stubble

Thy toils were lessen’d and thy profits doubled.

Close by Merlin’s Cave the Queen raised another quaint conceit known as the “Hermitage,” in which she placed busts of Adam Clarke, Newton, Locke and other dead philosophers. These busts excited the ire of living worthies. Swift in hisElegant Extractswrote:—

Lewis, the living genius fedAnd rais’d the scientific head:Our Queen, more frugal of her meat,Raises those heads that cannot eat.

Lewis, the living genius fed

And rais’d the scientific head:

Our Queen, more frugal of her meat,

Raises those heads that cannot eat.

This drew forth the following repartee, addressed toSwift:—

Since Anna, whom bounty thy merits had fed,Ere her own was laid low, had exalted your head,And since our good Queen to the wise is so just,To raise heads from such as are humbled in dust,I wonder, good man, that you are not envaulted;Pr’y thee, go and be dead, and be doubly exalted.

Since Anna, whom bounty thy merits had fed,

Ere her own was laid low, had exalted your head,

And since our good Queen to the wise is so just,

To raise heads from such as are humbled in dust,

I wonder, good man, that you are not envaulted;

Pr’y thee, go and be dead, and be doubly exalted.

Whereto the dean wittilyreplied:—

Her Majesty never shall be my exalter;And yet she would raise me I know, by—a halter.

Her Majesty never shall be my exalter;

And yet she would raise me I know, by—a halter.

Stephen Duck’s poetry was popular in its day, but it owed its popularity to the favour of the Queen rather than to its intrinsic merit. His talent was not sufficient to overcome the defects of his early education. Duck realised this far more than his friends, and he was keenly sensitive to the satire which great writers like Swift and Pope thought it worth their while to pour upon him. The Queen remained his constant friend, and preferred him successively to a chaplaincy at Kew and the rectory of Byfleet in Surrey. But Duck was not a happy man; his education began too late in life, and he could never accommodate himself to his altered circumstances. He ended his career by committing suicide, a few years after the death of his royal patroness.

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