HANNAH MORE.

‘Prune thou thy words, the thoughts controlThat o’er thee swell and throng;They will condense within thy soul,And change to purpose strong.’

‘Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control

That o’er thee swell and throng;

They will condense within thy soul,

And change to purpose strong.’

The lines have a literary as well as a moral value.

But though paradox may cease to charm, and a tutored intellect seem to sober age a better guide than a lawless fancy, and a chastened style a more comfortable thing than impassioned prose and pages ofbravura, still, after all, ‘the days of our youth are the days of our glory,’ and for a reader who is both young and eagerthe Selections Grave and Gay of Thomas de Quincey will always be above criticism, and belong to the realm of rapture.

An ingenious friend of mine, who has collected a library in which every book is either a masterpiece of wit or a miracle of rarity, found great fault with me the other day for adding to my motley heap the writings of Mrs. Hannah More. In vain I pleaded I had given but eight shillings and sixpence for the nineteen volumes, neatly bound and lettered on the back. He was not thinking, so he protested, of my purse, but of my taste, and he went away, spurning the gravel under his feet, irritated that there should be such men as I.

I, however, am prepared to brazenit out. I freely admit that the celebrated Mrs. Hannah More is one of the most detestable writers that ever held a pen. She flounders like a huge conger-eel in an ocean of dingy morality. She may have been a wit in her youth, though I am not aware of any evidence of it—certainly her poem, ‘Bas Bleu,’ is none—but for all the rest of her days, and they were many, she was an encyclopædia of all literary vices. You may search her nineteen volumes through without lighting upon one original thought, one happy phrase. Her religion lacks reality. Not a single expression of genuine piety, of heart-felt emotion, ever escapes her lips. She is never pathetic, never terrible. Her creed is powerless either to attract the well-disposed or make the guilty tremble. No naughty child ever read ‘The Fairchild Family’ or ‘Stories from the ChurchCatechism’ without quaking and quivering like a short-haired puppy after a ducking; but, then, Mrs. Sherwood was a woman of genius, whilst Mrs. Hannah More was a pompous failure.

Still, she has a merit of her own, just enough to enable a middle-aged man to chew the cud of reflection as he hastily turns her endless pages. She is an explanatory author, helping you to understand how sundry people who were old when you were young came to be the folk they were, and to have the books upon their shelves they had.

Hannah More was the first, and I trust the worst, of a large class—‘the ugliest of her daughters Hannah,’ if I may parody a poet she affected to admire. This class may be imperfectly described as ‘the well-to-do Christian.’ It inhabited snug places in the country, and kept an excellent, if not dainty, table.The money it saved in a ball-room it spent upon a greenhouse. Its horses were fat, and its coachman invariably present at family prayers. Its pet virtue was Church twice on Sunday, and its peculiar horrors theatrical entertainments, dancing, and threepenny points. Outside its garden wall lived the poor who, if virtuous, were for ever curtsying to the ground or wearing neat uniforms, except when expiring upon truckle-beds beseeching God to bless the young ladies of The Grange or the Manor House, as the case might be.

As a book ‘Cœlebs in Search of a Wife’ is as odious as it is absurd—yet for the reason already assigned it may be read with a certain curiosity—but as it would be cruelty to attempt to make good my point by quotation, I must leave it as it is.

It is characteristic of the unreality of Hannah More that she prefersAkenside to Cowper, despite the latter’s superior piety. Cowper’s sincerity and pungent satire frightened her; the verbosity of Akenside was much to her mind:

‘Sir John is a passionate lover of poetry, in which he has a fine taste. He read it [a passage from Akenside’s “Pleasures of Imagination”] with much spirit and feeling, especially these truly classical lines:

‘“Mind—mindalone; bear witness, earth and heaven,The living fountains in itself containsOf Beauteous and Sublime; here hand in handSit paramount the graces; here enthronedCelestial Venus, with divinest airs,Invites the soul to never-fading joy.”

‘“Mind—mindalone; bear witness, earth and heaven,

The living fountains in itself contains

Of Beauteous and Sublime; here hand in hand

Sit paramount the graces; here enthroned

Celestial Venus, with divinest airs,

Invites the soul to never-fading joy.”

‘“The reputation of this exquisite passage,” said he, laying down the book, “is established by the consenting suffrage of all men of taste, though, by the critical countenance you are beginning to put on you look as if you had a mind to attack it.”

‘“So far from it,” said I [Cœlebs], “that I know nothing more splendid in the whole mass of our poetry.”’

Miss More had an odd life before she underwent what she calls a ‘revolution in her sentiments,’ a revolution, however, which I fear left her heart of hearts unchanged. She consorted with wits, though always, be it fairly admitted, on terms of decorum. She wrote three tragedies, which were not rejected as they deserved to be, but duly appeared on the boards of London and Bath with prologues and epilogues by Garrick and by Sheridan. She dined and supped and made merry. She had a prodigious flirtation with Dr. Johnson, who called her a saucy girl, albeit she was thirty-seven; and once, for there was no end to his waggery, lamented she had not married Chatterton, ‘that posterity might have seen a propagation ofpoets.’ The good doctor, however, sickened of her flattery, and one of the rudest speeches even he ever made was addressed to her.

After Johnson’s death Hannah met Boswell, full of his intended book which she did her best to spoil with her oily fatuity. Said she to Boswell, ‘I beseech your tenderness for our virtuous and most revered departed friend; I beg you will mitigate some of his asperities,’ to which diabolical counsel the Inimitable replied roughly, ‘He would not cut off his claws nor make a tiger a cat to please anybody.’

The most moving incident in Hannah More’s life occurred near its close, and when she was a lone, lorn woman—her sisters Mary, Betty, Sally, and Patty having all predeceased her. She and they had long lived in a nice house or ‘place’ called Barley Wood, in theneighbourhood of Bristol, and here her sisters one after another died, leaving poor Hannah in solitary grandeur to the tender mercies of Mrs. Susan, the housekeeper; Miss Teddy, the lady’s-maid; Mrs. Rebecca, the housemaid; Mrs. Jane, the cook; Miss Sally, the scullion; Mr. Timothy, the coachman; Mr. John, the gardener; and Mr. Tom, the gardener’s man. Eight servants and one aged pilgrim—of such was the household of Barley Wood!

Outwardly decorum reigned. Poor Miss More fondly imagined her domestics doted on her, and that they joyfully obeyed her laws. It was the practice at family prayer for each of the servants to repeat a text. Visitors were much impressed, and went away delighted. But like so many other things on this round world, it was all hollow. These menials were not what they seemed.

After Miss More had heard them say their texts and had gone to bed, their day began. They gave parties to the servants and tradespeople of the vicinity (pleasing word), and at last, in mere superfluity of naughtiness, hired a large room a mile off and issued invitations to a great ball. This undid them. There happened to be at Barley Wood on the very night of the dance a vigilant visitor who had her suspicions, and who accordingly kept watch and ward. She heard the texts, but she did not go to bed, and from her window she saw the whole household, under cover of night, steal off to their promiscuous friskings, leaving behind them poor Miss Sally only, whose sad duty it was to let them in the next morning, which she duly performed.

Friends were called in, and grave consultations held, and in the endMiss More was told how she had been wounded in her own household. It was sore news; she bore it well, wisely determined to quit Barley Wood once and for ever, and live, as a decent old lady should, in a terrace in Clifton. The wicked servants were not told of this resolve until the actual moment of departure had arrived, when they were summoned into the drawing-room, where they found their mistress, and a company of friends. In feeling tones Miss Hannah More upbraided them for their unfaithfulness. ‘You have driven me,’ said she, ‘from my own home, and forced me to seek a refuge among strangers.’ So saying, she stepped into her carriage and was driven away. There is surely something Miltonic about this scene, which is, at all events, better than anything in Akenside’s ‘Pleasures of Imagination.’

The old lady was of course much happier at No. 4, Windsor Terrace, Clifton, than she had been at Barley Wood. She was eighty-three years of age when she took up house there, and eighty-nine when she died, which she did on the 1st of September, 1833. I am indebted for these melancholy—and, I believe, veracious—particulars to that amusing book of Joseph Cottle’s called ‘Early Recollections, chiefly relating to the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge during his long residence in Bristol.’

I still maintain that Hannah More’s works in nineteen volumes are worth eight shillings and sixpence.

Miss Mathilde Blind, in the introduction to her animated and admirable translation of the now notorious ‘Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff,’ asks an exceedingly relevant question—namely, ‘Is it well or is it ill done to make the world our father confessor?’ Miss Blind does not answer her own question, but passes on her way content with the observation that, be it well or ill done, it is supremely interesting. Translators have, indeed, no occasion to worry about such inquiries. It is hard enough for them to make their author speak another language than his own, without stopping to askwhether he ought to have spoken at all. Their business is to make their author known. As for the author himself, he, of course, has a responsibility; but, as a rule, he is only thinking of himself, and only anxious to excite interest in that subject. If he succeeds in doing this, he is indifferent to everything else. And in this he is encouraged by the world.

Burns, in his exuberant generosity, was sure that it could afford small pleasure

‘Even to a deilTo skelp and scaud poor dogs like me,And hear us squeal;’

‘Even to a deil

To skelp and scaud poor dogs like me,

And hear us squeal;’

but whatever may be the devil’s taste, there is nothing the reading public like better than to hear the squeal of some self-torturing atom of humanity. And, as the atoms have found this out, a good deal of squealing may be confidently anticipated.

The eclipse of faith has not provedfatal by any means to the instinct of confession. There is a noticeable desire to make humanity or the reading public our residuary legatee, to endow it with our experiences, to enrich it with our egotisms, to strip ourselves bare in the market-place—if not for the edification, at all events for the amusement, of man. All this is accomplished by autobiography. We then become interesting, probably for the first time, as, to employ Mlle. Bashkirtseff’s language, ‘documents of human nature.’

The metaphor carries us far. To falsify documents by addition, or to garble them by omission, is an offence of grave character, though of frequent occurrence. Is there, then, to be no reticence in autobiography? Are the documents of human nature to be printed at length?

These are questions which each autobiographer must settle forhimself. If what is published is interesting for any reason whatsoever, be it the work of pious sincerity or diseased self-consciousness, the world will read it, and either applaud the piety or ridicule the absurdity of the author. If it is not interesting it will not be read.

Therefore, to consider the ethics of autobiography is to condemn yourself to the academy. ‘Rousseau’s Confessions’ ought never to have been written; but written they were, and read they will ever be. But as a pastime moralizing has a rare charm. We cannot always be reading immoral masterpieces. A time comes when inaction is pleasant, and when it is soothing to hear mild accents murmuring ‘Thou shalt not.’ For a moment, then, let the point remain under consideration.

The ethics of autobiography are, in my judgment, admirably summedup by George Eliot, in a passage in ‘Theophrastus Such,’ a book which, we were once assured, well-nigh destroyed the reputation of its author, but which would certainly have established that of most living writers upon a surer foundation than they at present occupy. George Eliot says:

‘In all autobiography there is, nay, ought to be, an incompleteness which may have the effect of falsity. We are each of us bound to reticence by the piety we owe to those who have been nearest to us, and have had a mingled influence over our lives—by the fellow-feeling which should restrain us from turning our volunteered and picked confessions into an act of accusation against others who have no chance of vindicating themselves, and, most of all, by that reverence for the higher efforts of our common nature which commands us to buryits lowest faculties, its invincible remnants of the brute, its most agonizing struggle with temptation, in unbroken silence.’

All this is surely sound morality and good manners, but it is not the morality or the manners of Mlle. Marie Bashkirtseff, who was always ready to barter everything for something she called Fame.

‘If I don’t win fame,’ says she over and over again, ‘I will kill myself.’

Miss Blind is, no doubt, correct in her assertion that, as a painter, Mlle. Bashkirtseff’s strong point was expression. Certainly, she had a great gift that way with her pen. Amidst a mass of greedy utterances, esurient longings, commonplace ejaculations, and unlovely revelations, passages occur in this journal which bid us hold. For all her boastings, hersincerity is not always obvious, but it speaks plainly through each one of the following words:

‘What is there in us, that, in spite of plausible arguments—in spite of the consciousness that all leads tonothing—we should still grumble? I know that, like everyone else, I am going on towards death and nothingness. I weigh the circumstances of life, and, whatever they may be, they appear to me miserably vain, and, for all that, I cannot resign myself. Then, it must be a force; it must be asomething—not merely “a passage,” a certain period of time, which matters little whether it is spent in a palace or in a cellar; there is, then, something stronger, truer, than our foolish phrases about it all. It is life, in short; not merely a passage—an unprofitable misery—but life, all thatwe hold most dear, all that we call ours, in short.‘People say it is nothing, because we do not possess eternity. Ah! the fools. Life is ourselves, it is ours, it is all that we possess; how, then, is it possible to say that it isnothing? If this isnothing, show mesomething.’

‘People say it is nothing, because we do not possess eternity. Ah! the fools. Life is ourselves, it is ours, it is all that we possess; how, then, is it possible to say that it isnothing? If this isnothing, show mesomething.’

To deride life is indeed foolish. Prosperous people are apt to do so, whether their prosperity be of this world or anticipated in the next. The rich man bids the poor man lead an abstemious life in his youth, and scorn delights, in order that he may have the wherewithal to spend a dull old age; but the poor man replies:

‘Your arrangements have left me nothing but my youth. I will enjoy that, andyoushall support me in a dull old age.’

To deride life, I repeat, is foolish; but to pity yourself for having to die is to carry egotism rather too far. This is what Mlle. Bashkirtseff does.

‘I am touched myself when I think of my end. No, it seems impossible! Nice, fifteen years, the three Graces, Rome, the follies of Naples, painting, ambition, unheard-of hopes—to end in a coffin, without having had anything, not even love.’

Impossible, indeed! There is not much use for that word in the human comedy.

Never, surely, before was there a lady so penetrated with her own personality as the writer of these journals. Her arms and legs, hips and shoulders, hopes and fears, pictures and future glory, are all alike scanned, admired, stroked, and pondered over. She reduces everything to one vast commondenominator—herself. She gives two francs to a starving family.

‘It was a sight to see the joy, the surprise of these poor creatures. I hid myself behind the trees. Heaven has never treated me so well; heaven has never had any of these beneficent fancies.’

Heaven had, at all events, never heard the like of this before. Here is a human creature brought up in what is called the lap of luxury, wearing purple and fine linen, and fur cloaks worth 2,000 francs, eating and drinking to repletion, and indulging herself in every fancy; she divides a handful of coppers amongst five starving persons, and then retires behind a tree, and calls God to witness that no such kindness had ever been extended to her.

When Mlle. Elsnitz, her long-suffering companion—‘young, only nineteen, unfortunate, in a strangehouse without a friend’—at last, after suffering many things, leaves the service, it is recorded:

‘I could not speak for fear of crying, and I affected a careless look, but I hope she may have seen.’

Seen what? Why, that the carelessness was unreal. A quite sufficient reparation for months of insolence, in the opinion of Miss Marie.

It is said that Mlle. Bashkirtseff had a great faculty of enjoyment. If so, except in the case of books, she hardly makes it felt. Reading evidently gave her great pleasure; but, though there is a good deal of rapture about Nature in her journals, it is of an uneasy character.

‘The silence that is in the starry sky,The sleep that is amongst the lonely hills,’

‘The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is amongst the lonely hills,’

do not pass into the souls of those whose ambition it is to be greeted with loud cheers by the whole wide world.

Whoever is deeply interested in himself always invents a God whom he can apostrophize on suitable occasions. The existence of this deity feeds his creator’s vanity. When the world turns a deaf ear to his broken cries he besieges heaven. The Almighty, so he flatters himself, cannot escape him. When there is no one else to have recourse to, when all other means fail, there still remains—God. When your father, and your mother, and your aunt, and your companion, and your maid, are all wearied to death by your exhaustless vanity, you have still another string to your bow. Sometimes, indeed, the strings may get entangled.

‘Just now, I spoke harshly to my aunt, but I could not help it. She came in just when I was weeping with my hands over my face, and was summoning God to attend to me a little.’

A book like this makes one wonder what power, human or divine, can exorcise such a demon of vanity as that which possessed the soul of this most unhappy girl. Carlyle strove with great energy in ‘Sartor Resartus’ to compose a spell which should cleave this devil in three. For a time it worked well and did some mischief, but now the magician’s wand seems broken. Religion, indeed, can still show her conquests, and, when we are considering a question like this, seems a fresher thing than it does when we are reading ‘Lux Mundi.’

‘Do you want,’ wrote General Gordon in his journal, ‘to be loved, respected, and trusted? Then ignore the likes and dislikes of man in regard to your actions; leave their love for God’s, taking Him only. You will find that as you do so men will like you; they may despise some things in you, but they will lean on you, andtrust you, and He will give you the spirit of comforting them. But try to please men and ignore God, and you will fail miserably and get nothing but disappointment.’

All those who have not yet read these journals, and prefer doing so in English, should get Miss Blind’s volumes. There they will find this ‘human document’ most vigorously translated into their native tongue. It, perhaps, sounds better in French.

One remembers George Eliot’s tale of the lady who tried to repeat in English the pathetic story of a French mendicant—‘J’ai vu le sang de mon père’—but failed to excite sympathy, owing to the hopeless realism of Saxon speech. But though better in French, the journal is interesting in English. Whether, like the dreadful Dean, you regard man as an odious race of vermin, or agree with an erecter spirit that he is a being ofinfinite capacity, you will find food for your philosophy, and texts for your sermons, in the ‘Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff.’

Jeremy Collier begins his famous and witty, though dreadfully overdone, ‘Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage’ with the following spirited words:

‘The business of Plays is to recommend Virtue and discountenance Vice; to show the Uncertainty of Human Greatness, the sudden turns of Fate, and the unhappy conclusions of Violence and Injustice; ’tis to expose the singularities of Pride and Fancy, to make Folly and Falsehood contemptible, and to bring everything that is ill under Infamy and Neglect.’

He then adds: ‘This design hasbeen oddly pursued by the English Stage;’ and so he launches his case.

Sir John Vanbrugh, who fared very badly at the doctor’s hands, replied—and, on the whole, with great spirit and considerable success—in a pamphlet entitled ‘A Short Vindication of “The Relapse” and “The Provok’d Wife” from Immorality and Profaneness.’ In this reply he strikes out this bold apophthegm:

‘The business of Comedy is to show people what they should do, by representing them upon the stage, doing what they should not.’

He continues with much good sense:

‘Nor is there any necessity a philosopher should stand by, like an interpreter at a puppet-show, to explain the moral to the audience. The mystery is seldom so deep but thepit and boxes can dive into it, and ’tis their example out of the playhouse that chiefly influences the galleries. The stage is a glass for the world to view itself in; people ought, therefore, to see themselves as they are; if it makes their faces too fair, they won’t know they are dirty, and, by consequence, will neglect to wash them. If, therefore, I have showed “Constant” upon the stage what generally the thing called a fine gentleman is off it, I think I have done what I should do. I have laid open his vices as well as his virtues; ’tis the business of the audience to observe where his flaws lessen his value, and, by considering the deformity of his blemishes, become sensible how much a finer thing he would be without them.’

It is impossible to improve upon these instructions; they areadmirable. The only pity is that, as, naturally enough, Sir John wrote his plays first, and defended them afterwards, he had not bestowed a thought upon the subject until the angry parson gave him check. Vanbrugh, like most dramatists of his calibre, wrote to please the town, without any thought of doing good or harm. The two things he wanted were money and a reputation for wit. To lecture and scold him as if he had degraded some high and holy office was ridiculous. Collier had an excellent case, for there can be no doubt that the dramatists he squinted at were worse than they had any need to be. But it is impossible to read Collier’s two small books without a good many pishes and pshaws! He was a clericalist of an aggressive type. You cannot withhold your sympathy from Vanbrugh’s remark:

‘The reader may here be pleasedto take notice what this gentleman would construe profaneness if he were once in the saddle with a good pair of spurs upon his heels.’

Now that Evangelicalism has gone out of fashion, we no longer hear denunciations of stage-plays. High Church parsons crowd the Lyceum, and lead the laughter in less dignified if more amusing resorts. But, for all that, there is a case to be made against the cheerful playhouse, but not by me.

As for Sir John Vanbrugh, his two well-known plays, ‘The Relapse’ and ‘The Provok’d Wife,’ are most excellent reading, Jeremy Collier notwithstanding. They must be read with the easy tolerance, the amused benignity, the scornful philosophy of a Christian of the Dr. Johnson type. You must not probe your laughter deep; you must forget for awhile your probationary state, andremember that, after all, the thing is but a play. Sir John has a great deal of wit of that genuine kind which is free from modishness. He reads freshly. He also has ideas. In ‘The Provok’d Wife,’ which was acted for the first time in the early part of 1697, there appears the Philosophy of Clothes (thus forestalling Swift), and also an early conception of Carlyle’s stupendous image of a naked House of Lords. This occurs in a conversation between Heartfree and Constant, which concludes thus:

Heartfree.Then for her outside—I consider it merely as an outside—she has a thin, tiffany covering over just such stuff as you and I are made on. As for her motion, her mien, her air, and all those tricks, I know they affect you mightily. If you should see your mistress at a coronation, dragging her peacock’s train,with all her state and insolence, about her, ’twould strike you with all the awful thoughts that heaven itself could pretend to from you; whereas, I turn the whole matter into a jest, and suppose her strutting in the selfsame stately manner, with nothing on but her stays and her under, scanty-quilted petticoat.Constant.Hold thy profane tongue! for I’ll hear no more.

Constant.Hold thy profane tongue! for I’ll hear no more.

‘The Relapse’ must, I think, be pronounced Vanbrugh’s best comedy. Lord Foppington is a humorous conception, and the whole dialogue is animated and to the point. One sees where Sheridan got his style. There are more brains, if less sparkle, in Vanbrugh’s repartees than in Sheridan’s.

Berenthia.I have had so much discourse with her, that I believe,were she once cured of her fondness to her husband, the fortress of her virtue would not be so impregnable as she fancies.Worthy.What! she runs, I’ll warrant you, into that common mistake of fond wives, who conclude themselves virtuous because they can refuse a man they don’t like when they have got one they do.Berenthia.True; and, therefore, I think ’tis a presumptuous thing in a woman to assume the name of virtuous till she has heartily hated her husband and been soundly in love with somebody else.

Berenthia.I have had so much discourse with her, that I believe,were she once cured of her fondness to her husband, the fortress of her virtue would not be so impregnable as she fancies.

Worthy.What! she runs, I’ll warrant you, into that common mistake of fond wives, who conclude themselves virtuous because they can refuse a man they don’t like when they have got one they do.

Berenthia.True; and, therefore, I think ’tis a presumptuous thing in a woman to assume the name of virtuous till she has heartily hated her husband and been soundly in love with somebody else.

A handsome edition of Vanbrugh’s Plays has recently appeared, edited by Mr. W. C. Ward (Lawrence and Bullen), who has prepared an excellent Life of his author.

Vanbrugh was, as all the world knows, the architect of BlenheimPalace, as he also was of Castle Howard. He became Comptroller of Works in the reign of Queen Anne, and was appointed by King George Surveyor of the Works at Greenwich Hospital, in the neighbourhood of which he had property of his own. His name is still familiar in the ears of the respectable inhabitants of Blackheath. But what is mysterious is how and where he acquired such skill as he possessed in his profession. His father, Giles Vanbrugh, had nineteen children, of whom thirteen appear to have lived for some length of time, and of John’s education nothing precise is known. When nineteen he went into France, where he remained some years.

During this period, observes Mr. Ward, ‘it may be presumed he laid the foundation of that skill in architecture he afterwards so eminently displayed; at least, there is nosubsequent period of his life to which we can, with equal probability, ascribe his studies in that art.’

Later on, Mr. Ward says:

‘The year 1702 presents our author in a new character. Of his architectural studies we know absolutely nothing, unless we may accept Swift’s account, who pretends that Vanbrugh acquired the rudiments of the art by watching children building houses of cards or clay. But this was probably ironical. However he came by his skill, in 1702 he stepped into sudden fame as the architect of Castle Howard.’

It is indeed extraordinary that a man should have undertaken such big jobs as Castle Howard and Blenheim without leaving any trace whatever of the means by which he became credited with the power to execute them. Mr. Pecksniff got anoccasional pupil and premium, but, so far as I know, he never designed so much as a parish pump. Blenheim is exposed to a good deal of criticism, but nobody can afford to despise either it or Castle Howard, and it seems certain that the original plans and elevations of both structures were prepared by the author of ‘The Relapse’ and ‘The Provok’d Wife’ himself. Of course, there may have been a ghost, but if there had been, the Duchess of Marlborough, who was soon at loggerheads with her architect, would probably have dragged it into the light of day.

The wits made great fun of their distinguished colleague’s feats in brick and mortar. It was not usually permissible for a literary gentleman to be anything else, unless, indeed, a divine like Dr. Swift, whose satirical verses on the small house Vanbrugh built for himself in Whitehall arewell known. They led to a coolness, and no one need wonder. After the architect’s death the divine apologized and expressed regret.

The well-known epigram—

‘Under this stone, reader, surveyDead Sir John Vanbrugh’s house of clayLie heavy on him, Earth, for heLaid many heavy loads on thee’—

‘Under this stone, reader, survey

Dead Sir John Vanbrugh’s house of clay

Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he

Laid many heavy loads on thee’—

is the composition of another doctor of divinity—Dr. Abel Evans—and was probably prompted by envy.

Amongst other things, Vanbrugh was a Herald, and in that capacity visited Hanover in 1706, and helped to invest the Electoral Prince, afterwards George II., with the Order of the Garter. Vanbrugh’s personality is not clearly revealed to us anywhere, but he appears to have been a pleasant companion and witty talker. He married late in life, and of three children only one survived, to be killed at Fontenoy. He himself diedin 1726, in his sixty-third year, of a quinsy. His widow survived him half a century, thus affording another proof, if proof be needed, that no man is indispensable.

The first half of the eighteenth century was in England the poet’s playground. These rhyming gentry had then a status, a claim upon private munificence and the public purse which has long since been hopelessly barred. A measure of wit, a tincture of taste, and a perseverance in demand would in those days secure for the puling Muse slices of solid pudding whilst in the flesh, and (frequently) sepulture in the Abbey when all was over.

What silk-mercer’s apprentice in these hard times, finding a place behind Messrs. Marshall and Snelgrove’s counter not jumping withhis genius, dare hope by the easy expedient of publishing a pamphlet on ‘The Present State of Wit’ to become domestic steward to a semi-royal Duchess, and the friend of Mr. Lewis Morris and Mr. Lecky, who are, I suppose, our nineteenth-century equivalents for Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift? Yet such was the happy fate of Gay, who, after an idle life of undeserved good-fortune and much unmanly repining, died of an inflammation, in spite of the skilled care of Arbuthnot and the unwearying solicitude of the Duchess of Queensberry, and was interred like a peer of the realm in Westminster Abbey, having for his pall-bearers the Earl of Chesterfield, Viscount Cornbury, the Hon. Mr. Berkeley, General Dormer, Mr. Gore, and Mr. Pope. Such a recognition of the author of ‘Fables’ and ‘The Beggars’ Opera’ must make Mr.Besant’s mouth water. Nor did Gay, despite heavy losses in the South Sea Company, die a pauper; he left £6,000 behind him, which, as he was wise enough to die intestate, was divided equally between his two surviving sisters.

Gay’s good luck has never forsaken him. He enjoys, if, indeed, the word be not the hollowest of mockeries, an eternity of fame. It is true he is not read much, but he is always read a little. He has been dead more than a century and a half, so it seems likely that a hundred and fifty years hence he will be read as much as he is now, and, like a cork, will be observed bobbing on the surface of men’s memories. Better men and better poets than he have been, and will be, entirely submerged; but he was happy in his hour, happy even in his name (which lent itself to rhyme), happy in his nature; and so(such at least is our prognostication) new editions of Gay’s slender remains will at long intervals continue to appear and to attract a moment’s attention, even as Mr. Underhill’s admirable edition of the poems has lately done; new anthologies will contain his name, the biographical dictionaries will never quite forget him, his tomb in the Abbey will be stared at by impressionable youngsters, Pope’s striking epitaph will invite the fault-finding of the critical, and his own jesting couplet incur the censure of the moralist, until the day dawns when men cease to forget themselves in trifles. As soon as they do this, Gay will be forgotten once and for ever.

Gay’s one real achievement was ‘The Beggars’ Opera,’ which sprang from a sprout of Swift’s great brain. A ‘Newgate pastoral might make an odd, pretty sort of thing,’ so theDean once remarked to Gay; and as Mr. Underhill, in his admirable Life of our poet, reminds us, Swift repeated the suggestion in a letter to Pope: ‘What think you of a Newgate pastoral among the whores and thieves there?’ But Swift’s ‘Beggars’ Opera’ would not have hit the public taste between wind and water as did Gay’s. It would have been much too tremendous a thing—its sincerity would have damned it past redemption. Even in Gay’s light hands the thing was risky—a speculation in the public fancy which could not but be dangerous. Gay knew this well enough, hence his quotation from Martial (afterwards adopted by the Tennysons as the motto for ‘Poems by Two Brothers’),Nos hæc novimus esse nihil. Congreve, resting on his laurels, declared it would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly. It took, and, indeed, we cannotwonder. There was a foretaste of Gilbert about it quite enough to make its fortune in any century. Furthermore, it drove out of England, so writes an early editor, ‘for that season, the Italian opera, which had carried all before it for several years.’ It was a triumph for the home-bred article, and therefore dear to the souls of all true patriots.

The piece, though as wholly without sincerity as a pastoral by Ambrose Philips, a thing merely of the footlights, entirely shorn of a single one of the rays which glorify lawlessness in Burns’s ‘Jolly Beggars,’ yet manages through the medium of the songs to convey a pleasing though absurd sentimentality; and there is, perhaps, noticeable throughout a slight—a very slight—flavour of what is cantingly but conveniently called ‘the Revolution,’ which imparts a slender interest.

‘The Beggars’ Opera’ startled the propriety of that strange institution, the Church of England—a seminary of true religion which had left the task of protesting against the foulness of Dryden and Wycherley and the unscrupulous wit of Congreve and Vanbrugh to the hands of non-jurors like Collier and Law, but which, speaking, we suppose, in the interests of property, raised a warning voice when a comic opera made fun, not of marriage vows, but of highway robbery. Dr. Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, plucked up courage to preach against ‘The Beggars’ Opera’ before the Court, but the Head of the Church paid no attention to the divine, and, with the Queen and all the princesses, attended the twenty-first representation. The piece brought good luck all round. ‘Everybody,’ so Mr. Underhill assures us, ‘connectedwith the theatre (Lincoln’s Inn Fields), from the principal performer down to the box-keepers, got a benefit,’ and Miss Lavinia Fenton, who played Polly Peachum, lived to become Duchess of Bolton; whilst Hogarth painted no less than three pictures of the celebrated scene, ‘How happy could I be with either—were t’other dear charmer away.’

Dr. Johnson, in his ‘Life of Gay,’ deals scornfully with the absurd notion that robbers were multiplied by the popularity of ‘The Beggars’ Opera.’ ‘It is not likely to do good,’ says the Doctor, ‘nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil.’ The Church of England might as well have held its tongue.

Gay, flushed with success, was not long in producing a sequel called ‘Polly,’ which, however, as itwas supposed to offend, not against morality, which it undoubtedly did, but against Sir Robert Walpole, was prohibited. ‘Polly’ was printed, and, being prohibited, had a great sale. It is an exceedingly nasty piece, not unworthy of one of the three authors who between them produced that stupidest of farces, ‘Three Hours after Marriage.’

Gay’s third opera, ‘Achilles,’ was produced at Covent Garden after his death. One does not need to be a classical purist to be offended at the sight of ‘Achilles’ upon a stage, singing doggerel verses to the tune of ‘Butter’d Pease,’ or at hearing Ajax exclaim:

‘Honour called me to the task,No matter for explaining,’Tis a fresh affront to askA man of honour’s meaning.’

‘Honour called me to the task,

No matter for explaining,

’Tis a fresh affront to ask

A man of honour’s meaning.’

This vulgar and idiotic stuff ran twenty nights.

Gay’s best-known poetical pieces are his ‘Fables,’ and his undoubtedly interesting, though intrinsically dull ‘Trivia; or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London,’ though for our own part we would as lief read his ‘Shepherds’ Week’ as anything else Gay has ever written.

The ‘Fables’ are light and lively, and might safely be recommended to all who are fond of an easy quotation. To lay them down is never difficult, and if, after having done so, Swift’s ‘Confession of the Beasts’ is taken up, how vast the difference! There are, we know, those in whose nature there is too much of the milk of human kindness to enable them to enjoy Swift when he shows his teeth; but however this may be, we confess, if we are to read at all, we must prefer Swift’s ‘Beasts’ Confession’ to all the sixty-five fables of Gay put together.

‘The Swine with contrite heart allow’dHis shape and beauty made him proudIn diet was perhaps too nice,But gluttony was ne’er his vice;In every turn of life contentAnd meekly took what fortune sent.Inquire through all the parish round,A better neighbour ne’er was found.His vigilance might some displease;’Tis true he hated sloth like pease.‘The Chaplain vows he cannot fawn,Though it would raise him to the lawn.He passed his hours among his books,You find it in his meagre looks.He might if he were worldly wisePreferment get and spare his eyes;But owns he has a stubborn spiritThat made him trust alone to merit;Would rise by merit to promotion.Alas! a mere chimeric notion.’

‘The Swine with contrite heart allow’d

His shape and beauty made him proud

In diet was perhaps too nice,

But gluttony was ne’er his vice;

In every turn of life content

And meekly took what fortune sent.

Inquire through all the parish round,

A better neighbour ne’er was found.

His vigilance might some displease;

’Tis true he hated sloth like pease.

‘The Chaplain vows he cannot fawn,Though it would raise him to the lawn.He passed his hours among his books,You find it in his meagre looks.He might if he were worldly wisePreferment get and spare his eyes;But owns he has a stubborn spiritThat made him trust alone to merit;Would rise by merit to promotion.Alas! a mere chimeric notion.’

‘The Chaplain vows he cannot fawn,

Though it would raise him to the lawn.

He passed his hours among his books,

You find it in his meagre looks.

He might if he were worldly wise

Preferment get and spare his eyes;

But owns he has a stubborn spirit

That made him trust alone to merit;

Would rise by merit to promotion.

Alas! a mere chimeric notion.’

Gay was found pleasing by his friends, and had, we must believe, a kind heart. Swift, who was a nice observer in such matters, in his famous poem on his own death, assigns Gay a week in which to grieve:

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