FOOTNOTES:

'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'

Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works; there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment ofThe Careless Husband,[54]which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his infidelities:

'Sir Charles.Come, I will not shock your softness by any untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come. Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot, shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered heart.'Lady Easy.Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear rewardof long-desiring love—thus, thus to have you mine is something more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding joy....'Sir Charles.Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me; but remember, I insist upon it—let thy woman be discharged this minute.'

'Lady Easy.Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear rewardof long-desiring love—thus, thus to have you mine is something more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding joy....

'Sir Charles.Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me; but remember, I insist upon it—let thy woman be discharged this minute.'

It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid moralist. Moreover his comedy, like that of the dramatists of the Restoration, is of a wholly artificial type. Human nature has comparatively little place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the fops and fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a world which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.

His one work which is still read by all students of the drama, and by many who are not students, is theApology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber(1740), which Dr. Johnson, who sneered at actors, allowed to be very entertaining. It is that, and something more, for it contains much just and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter of about thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not spare Shakespeare.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).

Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied epistle, writtenwith a view to publication, may have its value, but it cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to write badly, and to make a display of knowledge is to reveal an ignorance of the art.

For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale, and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and Cowper.

In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in interest. To thisLady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister, Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be as good as Madame de Sévigné's forty years hence;' and they are, perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of their value, which Madame de Sévigné's were not. Lady Mary, who may be said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty, but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty she translated theEncheiridionof Epictetus. She was a great reader and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of herLife and Letters. She is a prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is perhaps the best known.

Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her future husband, whom she requests tosettle an annuity upon her in order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father] whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'

This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they lived apart.

Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been more successfully reproduced in prose.'[55]

'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'

Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.

Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).

Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and during his brief administration did all that man could do for the benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has thereputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.

On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue, practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had been with all the princes in Europe.'

As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in theWorld(1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary reputation is based upon theLetters(1774)[56]to his illegitimate son written forthe purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. TheLetters, which Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours, abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said of them from a moral point of view is that they show the extremely low standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting his son and advancing his interest in life, and so far as morality will do this it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the elegant pleasure of a rational being.'

Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is told that the art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession than perhaps in any other. 'Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions to such men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion and in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of them behind their backs, in companies who you have reason to believe will tell them again.'

The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined by his father was not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So effectually did he conceal his marriage that the Earl was not aware of it until after his son's death.

George Lyttelton (1708-1773).

George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place among the poets in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Some of his best verses were written when a school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever school-boy.TheMonodyon his wife's death has the merit of sincere feeling, expressed in one or two passages poetically. In 1747 he published hisDissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul, 'a treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself conspicuous in parliament as an opponent of Walpole, and after the fall of that minister was appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published hisDialogues of the Dead, a volume for which he owes much to Fénelon. This was followed a few years later by a History of Henry II. in three volumes, upon which great labour was expended. He is said to have had the whole history printed twice over, and many sheets four or five times, an amusement which cost him £1,000. The work is praised by Mr. J. R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the time.'

Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley, Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his friends.

Joseph Spence (1698-1768).

Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope in the poet's later life, had the happy peculiarity of keeping free from the party animosities of the time. His course throughout was that of a gentleman, and to him we owe the little volume ofAnecdoteswhich every student of Pope has learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity and hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character in his pages, nor any trace of the dramatic skill which makes Boswell's narrative so delightful. At thesame time there is every indication that he strove to give the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own words. Johnson and Warton saw theAnecdotesin manuscript, but strange to say, the collection was not published until 1820, when two separate editions appeared simultaneously. The publication by Spence in 1727 ofAn Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odysseyled to an acquaintance which soon became intimate between the poet and his critic. Apart from literature, they had more than one point of interest in common. Like Pope, Spence was devoted to his mother, and like Pope he had a passion for landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging disposition are said to be portrayed in theTales of the Genii, under the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves. In 1747 he published hisPolymetis, an Enquiry into the agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists. Under thenom de plumeof Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume ofMoralities or Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations(1753), and in the following year an account of the blind poet Blacklock. For a learned tailor, Thomas Hill by name, he also performed a similarly kind office, comparing him inA Parallel in the Manner of Plutarchwith the famous linguist Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1728, and held the post for ten years. His end was a sad one. He was accidentally drowned in a canal in the garden which he had loved so well.

FOOTNOTES:[49]Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings, extending from 1716 to 1729.By William Lee. 3 vols.[50]Lee'sDefoe, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity for work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous catalogue of his publications—254 in number—contains many which are ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as internal evidence.[51]English Men of Letters—Daniel Defoe.By William Minto. P. 170.[52]See note on page 248.[53]There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments, that the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel. That it may be based upon some authentic document is highly probable, although it is not necessary to agree with his biographer, that 'to claim for Defoe the authorship of theCavalier, as a work of pure fiction, would be equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman genius.'[54]Ward'sHistory of English Dramatic Literature, vol. ii., p. 597.[55]Four Centuries of English Letters, edited and arranged by W. Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.[56]TheseLetterswere not published until after the earl's death, but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The first letter of the series was written in 1738.

[49]Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings, extending from 1716 to 1729.By William Lee. 3 vols.

[50]Lee'sDefoe, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity for work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous catalogue of his publications—254 in number—contains many which are ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as internal evidence.

[51]English Men of Letters—Daniel Defoe.By William Minto. P. 170.

[52]See note on page 248.

[53]There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments, that the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel. That it may be based upon some authentic document is highly probable, although it is not necessary to agree with his biographer, that 'to claim for Defoe the authorship of theCavalier, as a work of pure fiction, would be equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman genius.'

[54]Ward'sHistory of English Dramatic Literature, vol. ii., p. 597.

[55]Four Centuries of English Letters, edited and arranged by W. Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.

[56]TheseLetterswere not published until after the earl's death, but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The first letter of the series was written in 1738.

Francis Atterbury (1662-1732).

During the first half of the eighteenth century the position held by Bishop Atterbury was one of high eminence. Addison ranked him with the most illustrious geniuses of his age; Pope said he was one of the greatest men in polite learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge called him the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for style his sermons are among the best.

Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory, lack the merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous for eloquence than for weightiness of matter, although extremely popular at the time, have long ceased to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne wits,—and he was admired by them all,—is a sufficient reason for saying a few words about him in these pages.

He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster under the famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a good reputation. He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C. Boyle, a young man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity to enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship.For this rash deed Atterbury must be held responsible. Sir William Temple had published a foolish but eloquently written essay in defence of the ancient writers in comparison with the modern. In this essay he praises warmly theLetters of Phalaris. Of these letters Boyle, with the help of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church, published a new edition to satisfy the demand caused by Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply by a remark of Boyle in his preface, proved that theLetterswere not only spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury replied to Bentley'sDissertations, and to the discussion, as the reader will remember, Swift added wit if not argument.

For the moment Boyle's, or rather Atterbury's success, was great, for wit and rhetoric are powerful persuasives. The authors, too, had the Christ Church men to back them, the arch-critic having treated them with contempt. Atterbury's share in the work, as he tells Boyle, "consisted in writing more than half the book, in reviewing a great part of the rest, and in transcribing the whole." HisExamination of Dr. Bentley's Dissertations(1698) is a brilliant piece of work, and 'deserves the praise,' says Macaulay, 'whatever that praise may be worth, of being the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he was profoundly ignorant.' Having taken holy orders, Atterbury became a court preacher, and ample clerical honours fell to his share. In 1700 he published a book entitled,The Rights, Powers, and Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated, which was warmly applauded by High Churchmen. In 1701 he was appointed Archdeacon of Totness, and afterwards Prebend of Exeter. He became the favourite chaplain of Queen Anne, and when Prince George died proved the power of his eloquence by representing 'his unassuming virtues insuch high relief that his widow could not help feeling her irreparable loss.'

Atterbury was made successively Dean of Carlisle and of Christ Church, and in 1713 succeeded Sprat as Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Rochester. Before making Swift's acquaintance he recommended his friend Trelawney, Bishop of Exeter, to read theTale of a Tub, a book which is to be valued, 'in spite of its profaneness,' as 'an original in its kind, full of wit, humour, good sense, and learning.' Atterbury's taste for literature was not always so discriminative. He advised Pope, as has been already stated, to 'polish'Samson Agonistes, declared that all verses should have instruction at the bottom of them, and told the poet, as though he had discovered a merit, that his poetry was 'all over morality from the beginning to the end of it.' He ventured occasionally into the verse-making field himself, and wrote a song to Silvia, in which, after admitting that he had loved before as men worship strange deities, he adds:

'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,Like bees on gaudy flowers,And many a thousand loves has changed,Till it was fixed on yours.'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,'Twas soon determined there;Stars might as well forsake the skies,And vanish into air.'When I from this great rule do err,New beauties to adore,May I again turn wanderer,And never settle more.'

'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,Like bees on gaudy flowers,And many a thousand loves has changed,Till it was fixed on yours.

'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,'Twas soon determined there;Stars might as well forsake the skies,And vanish into air.

'When I from this great rule do err,New beauties to adore,May I again turn wanderer,And never settle more.'

The close friendship between Atterbury and Pope did honour to both men, and when Pope went to London he would 'lie at the deanery.' There, unknown to his friend,the bishop carried on his Jacobite intrigues, and there may still be seen, in a residence made famous by more than one great name, a secret room in which Atterbury concealed his treasonable correspondence. The poet did not believe that his friend was guilty, but it has been well known since the publication of the Stuart papers, more than forty years ago, that the splendid defence made by Atterbury at his trial in the House of Lords was based upon a falsehood. For years the bishop appears to have corresponded, under feigned names and by the help of ciphers, with 'the king over the water;' but the plot which led to his imprisonment and ultimate exile was not discovered until 1722, when he was arrested for high treason. At his trial he called God to witness his innocence; and when Pope took leave of him in the Tower he told the poet he would allow him to call his sentence a just one if he should ever find that he had dealings with the Pretender in his exile. Pope gave evidence at his trial, and, as he told Spence, lost his self-possession and made two or three blunders.

Atterbury was exiled in June, 1723. On reaching Calais he heard that Bolingbroke had just arrived there on his way to England, having had a royal pardon. 'Then I am exchanged,' he said.

The pathetic story of his banishment, and of his devoted daughter's illness and voyage to the south of France, where after a union of a few hours, she died in her father's arms, is full of the most touching details, and may be read in Atterbury's correspondence. 'She is gone,' the bishop wrote, 'and I must follow her. When I do, may my latter end be like hers! It was my business to have taught her to die; instead of it, she has taught me.' Like Fielding's account of hisVoyage to Lisbon, the letters give a picture of the time, and of travelling discomforts anddifficulties of which we, in these more fortunate days, know nothing. The bishop, who did not long survive his daughter, died in 1732, but before the end came he defended himself admirably from the accusation of Oldmixon, a libeller who stands in the pillory of theDunciad, that he had helped to garble Clarendon'sHistory. The body was carried to England and privately buried by the side of his daughter in Westminster Abbey. The eloquence of Atterbury's sermons—there are four volumes of them in print—has not secured to them a lasting place in literature, but they are distinguished by purity of style, and have enough ofunctionto make them highly effective as pulpit discourses. In book form, too, they were for a long time popular, and reached an eighth edition about thirty years after the bishop's death. The eloquent sermon on the death of Lady Cutts endows the lady with such an array of virtues, that one is inclined to wonder how so many rare qualities could have been exhibited in so brief a life:

'She excelled in all the characters that belonged to her, and was in a great measure equal to all the obligations that she lay under. She was devout without superstition; strict, without ill humour; good-natured, without weakness; cheerful, without levity; regular, without affectation. She was to her husband the best of wives, the most agreeable of companions, and most faithful of friends; to her servants the best of mistresses; to her relations extremely respectful; to her inferiors very obliging; and by all that knew her, either nearly or at a distance, she was reckoned and confessed to be one of the best of women. And yet all this goodness and all this excellence was bounded within the compass of eighteen years and as many days; for no longer was she allowed to live among us. She was snatched out of the world as soon almost as she had made her appearance in it, like a jewel of high price just shown a little, and then put up again, and we were deprived of her by that time we had learnt to value her. But circles maybe complete though small; the perfection of life doth not consist in the length of it.'

As a friend of literature and of men of letters, Atterbury claims the student's recognition, and the five volumes of his correspondence deserve to be consulted.

Anthony, third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713).

'I will tell you,' writes the poet Gray, 'how Lord Shaftesbury came to be a philosopher in vogue: first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to believe what they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe anything at all provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly, they love to take a new road, even when that road leads nowhere; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said. Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm.'

One hundred and thirty-five years have gone by since Gray wrote his estimate of Lord Shaftesbury, whoseCharacteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times(1711) passed through several editions in the last century. The first volume consists of:A Letter concerning Enthusiasm,An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and HumourandAdvice to an Author; Vol. ii. containsAn Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit(1699), andThe Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody(1709), and Vol. iii. containsMiscellaneous Reflectionsand theJudgments of Hercules.

Shaftesbury was a Deist, and while professing to honour the Christian faith, which he terms 'our holy religion,' exercises his wit and casuistry and command of English to undermine it. Pope, who shows in theEssay on Manthat he had read theCharacteristics, said that to his knowledge 'the work had done more harm to revealed religion in England than all the works of infidelity,' a judgmentwhich may seem extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too vague and rhetorical greatly to influence thoughtful readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his own words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the work passed, as we have said, through several editions, shows that the author had a considerable public to whom he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear that what Mr. Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was not deemed so inconsiderable then as it now appears, or Berkeley would not have deemed it necessary to controvert his arguments in the third Dialogue of hisAlciphron. Like Berkeley, Shaftesbury occasionally makes use of the dialogue very effectively, but he has not the bishop's incisiveness. His style, though often faulty, and giving one the impression that the author is affected, and wishes to say fine things, is at its best fresh and lucid. The reader will observe that whatever be the topic Shaftesbury professes to discuss, his one aim is to assert his principles as a free-thinking and free-speaking philosopher. His inferences, his illustrations, his criticisms, and exaltation of the 'moral sense,' are all so many underhanded blows at the faith which he never openly opposes.

Thus his essay on theFreedom of Wit and Humouris chiefly written in defence of raillery in the discussion of serious subjects, when managed 'with good breeding,' and for 'a liberty in decent language to question everything' amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as the antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and perfection of nature, and considers that evil only exists in our ignorance. Mr. Leslie Stephen, whose impartiality in estimating an author like Shaftesbury will not be questioned, calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer, whose rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality which redeems him from contempt.'

Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place in the history of literature and of philosophy is an important one. Seed springs up quickly when the soil is prepared for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief in the perfectibility of human nature through the aid of culture, appealed, as Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury men have a natural instinct for virtue, and the sense of what is beautiful enables the virtuoso to reject what is evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a man once see that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or the hope of reward. He found salvation for the world in a cultivated taste, but had no gospel for the men whose tastes were not cultivated.

Voltaire sneered at the optimism of theEssay on Manand of theCharacteristics. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who made the fable fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke a prey to vexation and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known; mis-shapen in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always a burden to himself, and harassed by a hundred enemies to his very last moment.'

Bernard de Mandeville (1670?-1733).

Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by hisFable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits(1723). The book opens with a poem in doggrel verse calledThe Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest, the purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous, they ceased to be successful. He closes with the moral that

'To enjoy the world's conveniences,Be famed in war, yet live in ease,Without great vices is a vainUtopia, seated in the brain.Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live,While we the benefits receive.'

In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at least claim the credit of being outspoken, and he does not scruple to say that modesty is a sham and that what seems like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I often,' he says, 'compare the virtues of good men to your large china jars; they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them, and you will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'

While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he regards it as essential to the well-being of society. The degradation of the race excites his amusement, and the fact that he cannot see a way of escape from it, causes no regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of a man who believed neither in present nor future good 'Two systems,' he says, 'cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and mine. His notions, I confess, are generous and refined. They are a high compliment to human kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the dignity of our exalted nature. What pity it is that they are not true.'

The author of theFable of the Beeswrites coarsely for coarse readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory merit the infamy generally awarded to them.[57]The book was attacked by Warburton and Law, and with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the secondDialogue ofAlciphron. But the bishop, to use a homely phrase, does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of arguing that virtue and goodness are realities, while evil, being unreal and antagonistic to man's nature, is an enemy to be fought against and conquered, Berkeley takes a lower ground, and is content to show in his reply to Mandeville that virtue is more profitable to a state than vice. He annihilates many of Mandeville's arguments in a masterly style, but it was left to the author of theSerious Callto strike at the root of Mandeville's fallacy, and to show how the seat of virtue, if I may apply Hooker's noble words with regard to law, 'is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.'

Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751).

The life of Henry St. John was a mass of contradictions. He was a brilliant politician who affected to be a wise statesman, a traitor to his country while pretending to be a patriot, an orator whose lips distilled honied phrases which his actions belied, a man of insatiable ambition who masked as a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a faithless friend, and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature and a large faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the meanest vices. A Secretary of State at thirty-two, no man probably ever entered upon public life with brighter prospects, and the secret of all his failures was due to the want of character. 'Few people,' says Lord Hervey, 'ever believed him without being deceived or trusted him without being betrayed; he was one to whom prosperity was no advantage, and adversity no instruction.'

It is said that his genius as an orator was of a high order and this we can believe the more readily since the style ofhis works is distinctly oratorical. In speech so much depends upon voice and manner that it is possible for a shallow thinker to be an extremely attractive speaker; Bolingbroke's speeches have not been preserved, and we may therefore continue, if we please, to hold with Pitt, that they are the most desirable of all the lost fragments of literature; his writings, far more showy than solid, do not convey a lofty impression of intellectual power. Obvious truths and well-worn truisms are uttered in high-sounding words, but in no department of thought can it be said that Bolingbroke breaks new ground. Much that he wrote was for the day and died with it, and if his more ambitious efforts, written with an eye to posterity, cannot justly be described as unreadable, they contain comparatively little which makes them worthy to be read.

His defence of his conduct inA Letter to Sir William Windham, written in 1717, but not published until after the author's death, though worthless as a defence, is a fine piece of special pleading in Bolingbroke's best style. It could deceive no one acquainted with the part played by the author before the death of Queen Anne, and afterwards in exile, but it afforded him an opportunity for attacking his former colleague, Oxford, with all the weapons available by an unscrupulous and powerful assailant. He declares in this letter that he preferred exile rather than to make common cause with the man whom he abhorred. Writing of Oxford as a colleague in the government of the country he observes in a skilfully turned passage:

'The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government; and the pilot and the minister are in similar circumstances. It seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course, and they both arrive at their port by means which frequently seem to carry them from it. But as the work advances the conduct of him who leads it onwith real abilities clears up, the appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and when it is once consummated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he could have done the same. But on the other hand the man who proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by both, who begins every day something new, and carries nothing on to perfection, may impose awhile on the world: but a little sooner or a little later the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther than living from day to day. Which of these pictures resembles Oxford most you will determine.'

It has been said with somewhat daring exaggeration, that Burke never produced anything nobler than this passage, and the writer regards the whole composition of theLetter to Windhamas almost faultless.[58]

That it is Bolingbroke's masterpiece may be readily admitted, but in thisLetter, as elsewhere, the merits of Bolingbroke's style are those of the popular orator who conceals repetitions, contradictory statements, and emptiness of thought under a dazzling display of rhetoric. That he had splendid gifts and exhibited an extraordinary ingenuity of resource was acknowledged by friend and foe. At one time taking a distinguished part in European affairs, at another artfully intriguing, sometimes posing as a moralist and philosopher while a slave to debauchery, and at other times affecting a love of retirement while a slave to ambition—Bolingbroke acted a part which made him one of the most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew how to fascinate men of greater genius than he possessed,and how to guide men intellectually his superiors. The witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke is now comparatively despised, as a man of letters he is generally regarded as a brilliant pretender, and if his name survives in the history of literature it is chiefly due to the friendship of Pope. Unfortunately the memory of this celebrated friendship is associated with one of the most ignoble acts of Bolingbroke's life. When Pope lay dying, Bolingbroke wept over his friend exclaiming, 'O great God, what is man!' and Spence relates that upon telling his lordship how Pope whenever he was sensible said something kindly of his friends as if his humanity outlasted his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, '"It has so! I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than"—sinking his head and losing himself in tears.' His sorrow was speedily changed to anger. Pope, no doubt in admiration of his friend's genius, had privately printed 1,500 copies of hisPatriot King, one of Bolingbroke's ablest but most sophistical works. The philosopher had only allowed a few copies to be printed for his friends, and the discovery of Pope's conduct roused his indignation. In 1749 he put a corrected copy of the work into Mallet's hands for publication with an advertisement in which Pope is treated with contempt. He had not the courage to assail the memory of his friend openly, and hired an unprincipled man to do it. The poet had acted trickily, after his wonted habit, though in all likelihood with the design of doing Bolingbroke a service. It was a fault to be forgiven by a friend, but Bolingbroke, after nursing his anger for five years, gave vent to it in this contemptible and underhand way. He died two yearsafterwards, and in 1754 the posthumous publication of Bolingbroke'sPhilosophical Writingsby Mallet, aroused a storm of indignation in the country, which his debauchery and political immorality had failed to excite. Johnson's saying on the occasion is well-known:

'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.'

The most noteworthy estimate of Bolingbroke's character made in our day comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,[59]who describes as follows his position as a man of letters. 'He handled the great and difficult instrument of written language with such freedom and copiousness, such vivacity and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and falsetto, he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only below the three or four highest masters of English prose. Yet of all the characters in our history Bolingbroke must be pronounced to be most of a charlatan; of all the writing in our literature, his is the hollowest, the flashiest, the most insincere.' This is true. By his 'execution,' consummate though it be, he is unable to conceal his insincerity and shallowness. 'Bolingbroke,' said Lord Shelburne, was 'all surface,' and in that sentence his character is written.

'People seem to think,' said Carlyle, 'that a style can be put off or put on, not like a skin, but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it,—exact type of the nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death?'

Two years after the publication of thePhilosophical Writings, Edmund Burke, then a young man of twenty-four, publishedA Vindication of Natural Society, in aLetter to Lord——. By a late noble writer, in which Lord Bolingbroke's style is imitated, and his arguments against revealed religion applied to exhibit 'the miseries and evils arising to mankind from every species of Artificial Society.' So close is the imitation of Bolingbroke's style and mode of argument in this piece of irony, that it was for a time believed to be a genuine production, and Mallet found it necessary to disavow it publicly.

Of Bolingbroke's Works, theDissertation on Partiesappeared in 1735.Letters on Patriotism, andIdea of a Patriot King, in 1749;Letters on the Study of History, in 1752;Letter to Sir W. Windham, 1753, and thePhilosophical Writings, as already stated, in 1754. Chronologically, therefore, he would belong to the Handbook which deals with the latter half of the century, were it not that his most important works were posthumous, and that Bolingbroke's intimate relations with Pope place him among the most conspicuous figures belonging to Pope's age.

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