A happy half-century, and other essays (2024)

COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY AGNES REPPLIER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published September 1908

TO
J. WILLIAM WHITE

The half-century, whose more familiar aspectsthis little book is designed to illustrate, hasspread its boundary lines. Nothing is so hardto deal with as a period. Nothing is so unmanageableas a date. People will be born afew years too early; they will live a few yearstoo long. Events will happen out of time. Theclosely linked decades refuse to be separated,and my half-century, that I thought so compact,widened imperceptibly while I wrote.

I have filled my canvas with trivial things,with intimate details, with what now seem theinsignificant aspects of life. But the insignificantaspects of life concern us mightily whilewe live; and it is by their help that we understandthe insignificant people who are sometimesreckoned of importance. A hundredyears ago many men and women were reckonedof importance, at whose claims their successorsto-day smile scornfully. Yet they and their[viii]work were woven into the tissue of things, intothe warp and woof of social conditions, intothe literary history of England. An hour isnot too precious to waste upon them, howeverfeeble their pretensions. Perhaps some idlereader in the future will do as much by us.

A. R.

“A Happy Half-Century,” “The Perils of Immortality,” and “TheCorrespondent” appeared first in Harper’s Magazine, “Our AccomplishedGreat-Grandmother” in Harper’s Bazar, and “On the Slopesof Parnassus” in the Atlantic Monthly; they are here reprinted bypermission of the publishers of those magazines.

This damn’d unmasculine canting age!

Charles Lamb.

There are few of us who do not occasionallywish we had been born in other days, in daysfor which we have some secret affinity, andwhich shine for us with a mellow light in thedeceitful pages of history. Mr. Austin Dobson,for example, must have sighed more than onceto see Queen Anne on Queen Victoria’s throne;and the Rt. Hon. Cecil Rhodes must have realizedthat the reign of Elizabeth was the reignfor him. There is a great deal lost in beingborn out of date. What freak of fortune thrustGalileo into the world three centuries too soon,and held back Richard Burton’s restless souluntil he was three centuries too late?

For myself, I confess that the last twenty-fiveyears of the eighteenth century and thefirst twenty-five years of the nineteenth makeup my chosen period, and that my motive forso choosing is contemptible. It was not a[2]time distinguished—in England at least—forwit or wisdom, for public virtues or forprivate charm; but it was a time when literaryreputations were so cheaply gained that nobodyneeded to despair of one. A taste for platitudes,a tinge of Pharisaism, an appreciation of thecommonplace,—and the thing was done. Itwas in the latter half of this blissful periodthat we find that enthusiastic chronicler, Mrs.Cowley, writing in “Public Characters” of“the proud preëminence which, in all the varietiesof excellence produced by the pen, thepencil, or the lyre, the ladies of Great Britainhave attained over contemporaries in everyother country in Europe.”

When we search for proofs of this proudpreëminence, what do we find? Roughly speaking,the period begins with Miss Burney, andcloses with Miss Terrier and Miss Jane Porter.It includes—besides Miss Burney—onestar of the first magnitude, Miss Austen(whose light never dazzled Mrs. Cowley’s eyes),and one mild but steadfast planet, Miss Edgeworth.The rest of Great Britain’s literaryladies were enjoying a degree of fame and fortune[3]so utterly disproportionate to their meritsthat their toiling successors to-day may be pardonedfor wishing themselves part of thathappy sisterhood. Think of being able to finda market for an interminable essay entitled“Against Inconsistency in our Expectations”!There lingers in all our hearts a desire to uttermoral platitudes, to dwell lingeringly and lovinglyupon the obvious; but alas! we are notMrs. Barbaulds, and this is not the year 1780.Foolish and inconsequent we are permitted tobe, but tedious, never! And think of hearingone’s own brother burst into song, that hemight fondly eulogize our

There are few things more difficult to conceivethan an enthusiastic brother tunefully entreatinghis sister to go on enrapturing the worldwith her pen. Oh, thrice-favoured Anna LetitiaBarbauld, who could warm even the calmfraternal heart into a glow of sensibility.

The publication of “Evelina” was the firstnotable event in our happy half-century. Itsfreshness and vivacity charmed all London;[4]and Miss Burney, like Sheridan, had her applause“dashed in her face, sounded in herears,” for the rest of a long and meritoriouslife. Her second novel, “Cecilia,” was receivedwith such universal transport, that in a verymoral epilogue of a rather immoral play wefind it seriously commended to the public asan antidote to vice:—

Miss Burney, blushing in the royal box, hadthe satisfaction of hearing this stately advertisem*ntof her wares. Virtue was not left tobe its own reward in those fruitful and generousyears.

Indeed, the most comfortable characteristicof the period, and the one which incites ourdeepest envy, is the universal willingness toaccept a good purpose as a substitute for goodwork. Even Madame d’Arblay, shrewd, caustic,and quick-witted, forbears from unkindcriticism of the well-intentioned. She has nothingbut praise for Mrs. Barbauld’s poems, becauseof “the piety and worth they exhibit”;and she rises to absolute enthusiasm over the[5]anti-slavery epistle, declaring that its energy“springs from the real spirit of virtue.” Yetto us the picture of the depraved and luxuriousWest Indian ladies—about whom it issafe to say good Mrs. Barbauld knew verylittle—seems one of the most unconsciouslyhumorous things in English verse.

There are moments when Mrs. Barbauld soarsto the inimitable, when she reaches the highestand happiest effect that absurdity is able toproduce.

is one of these inspirations; and another is thispregnant sentence, which occurs in a chapterof advice to young girls: “An ass is muchbetter adapted than a horse to show off alady.”

To point to Hannah More as a brilliant andbewildering example of sustained success is togive the most convincing proof that it was a[6]good thing to be born in the year 1745. MissMore’s reputation was already established atthe dawning of my cherished half-century, and,for the whole fifty years, her life was a seriesof social, literary, and religious triumphs. Inher youth, she was mistaken for a wit. In herold age, she was revered as a saint. In heryouth, Garrick called her “Nine,”—gracefullyintimating that she embodied the attributes ofall the Muses. In her old age, an acquaintancewrote to her: “You who are secure of theapprobation of angels may well hold humanapplause to be of small consequence.” In heryouth, she wrote a play that everybody wentto see. In her old age, she wrote tracts thateverybody bought and distributed. Prelatescomposed Latin verses in her honour; andwhen her “Estimate of the Religion of theFashionable World” was published anonymously,the Bishop of London exclaimed ina kind of pious transport, “Aut Morus, autAngelus!” Her tragedy, “Percy,” melted theheart of London. Men “shed tears in abundance,”and women were “choked with emotion”over the “affecting circ*mstances of the Piece.”[7]Sir William Pepys confessed that “Percy”“broke his heart”; and that he thought it “akind of profanation” to wipe his eyes, and gofrom the theatre to Lady Harcourt’s assembly.Four thousand copies of the play were sold ina fortnight; and the Duke of Northumberlandsent a special messenger to Miss More tothank her for the honour she had done hishistoric name.

As a novelist, Hannah was equally successful.Twenty thousand copies of “Cœlebs inSearch of a Wife” were sold in England, andthirty thousand in America. “The Americansare a very approving people,” acknowledgedthe gratified authoress. In Iceland “Cœlebs”was read—so Miss More says—“with greatapparent profit”; while certain very populartracts, like “Charles the Footman” and “TheShepherd of Salisbury Plain,” made their edifyingway to Moscow, and were found by themissionary Gericke in the library of the Rajahof Tanjore. “All this and Heaven, too!” as areward for being born in 1745. The injusticeof the thing stings us to the soul. Yet it wasthe unhesitating assumption of Heaven’s co-partnership[8]which gave to Hannah More thebest part of her earthly prestige, and made herverdicts a little like Protestant Bulls. Whenshe objected to “Marmion” and “The Ladyof the Lake” for their lack of “practical precept,”these sinless poems were withdrawn fromEvangelical book-shelves. Her biographer, Mr.Thompson, thought it necessary to apologizefor her correspondence with that agreeableworldling, Horace Walpole, and to assure usthat “the fascinations of Walpole’s false witmust have retired before the bright ascendantof her pure and prevailing superiority.” Asshe waxed old, and affluent, and disputatious,it was deemed well to encourage a timid publicwith the reminder that her genius, though“great and commanding,” was still “lovely andkind.” And when she died, it was recordedthat “a cultivated taste for moral scenery wasone of her distinctions”;—as though Natureherself attended a class of ethics before venturingto allure too freely the mistress of BarleyWood.

It is in the contemplation of such sunlightmediocrity that the hardship of being born too[9]late is felt with crushing force. Why cannotwe write “Letters on the Improvement of theMind,” and be held, like Mrs. Chapone, to bean authority on education all the rest of ourlives; and have people entreating us, as theyentreated her, to undertake, at any cost, theintellectual guidance of their daughters? Whenwe consider all that a modern educator isexpected to know—from bird-calls to metricmeasures—we sigh over the days which demandednothing more difficult than the politeexpression of truisms.

“Our feelings are not given us for our ornament,but to spur us on to right action. Compassion,for instance, is not impressed upon thehuman heart, only to adorn the fair face withtears, and to give an agreeable languor to theeyes. It is designed to excite our utmost endeavourto relieve the sufferer.”

Was it really worth while to say this evenin 1775? Is it possible that young ladies werethen in danger of thinking that the office ofcompassion was to “adorn a face with tears”?and did they try to be sorry for the poor andsick, only that their bright eyes might be softened[10]into languor? Yet we know that Mrs.Chapone’s little volume was held to have renderedsignal service to society. It has the honourto be one of the books which Miss LydiaLanguish lays out ostentatiously on her table—incompany with Fordyce’s sermons—whenshe anticipates a visit from Mrs. Malapropand Sir Anthony. Some halting verses of theperiod exalt it as the beacon light of youth;and Mrs. Delany, writing to her six-year-oldniece, counsels the little girl to read the“Letters” once a year until she is grown up.“They speak to the heart as well as to thehead,” she assures the poor infant; “and Iknow no book (next to the Bible) more entertainingand edifying.”

Mrs. Montagu gave dinners. The real andvery solid foundation of her reputation was theadmirable manner in which she fed her lions.A mysterious halo of intellectuality surroundedthis excellent hostess. “The female Mæcenasof Hill Street,” Hannah More elegantly termedher, adding,—to prove that she herself wasnot unduly influenced by gross food and drink,—“Butwhat are baubles, when speaking of[11]a Montagu!” Dr. Johnson praised her conversation,—especiallywhen he wanted to teasejealous Mrs. Thrale,—but sternly discountenancedher attempts at authorship. When SirJoshua Reynolds observed that the “Essay onthe Writings and Genius of Shakespeare” didits authoress honour, Dr. Johnson retortedcontemptuously: “It does her honour, but itwould do honour to nobody else,”—whichstrikes me as a singularly unpleasant thing tohear said about one’s literary masterpiece.Like the fabled Caliph who stood by the Sultan’sthrone, translating the flowers of Persianspeech into comprehensible and unflatteringtruths, so Dr. Johnson stands undeceivedin this pleasant half-century of pretence, translatingits ornate nonsense into language wecan too readily understand.

But how comfortable and how comfortingthe pretence must have been, and how kindlytolerant all the pretenders were to one another!If, in those happy days, you wrote an essay on“The Harmony of Numbers and Versification,”you unhesitatingly asked your friends tocome and have it read aloud to them; and your[12]friends—instead of leaving town next day—came,and listened, and called it a “Miltonicevening.” If, like Mrs. Montagu, you had ataste for letter-writing, you filled up innumerablesheets with such breathless egotisms asthis:—

“I come, a happy guest, to the general feastNature spreads for all her children, my spiritsdance in the sunbeams, or take a sweet reposein the shade. I rejoice in the grand chorus ofthe day, and feel content in the silent sereneof night, while I listen to the morning hymnof the whole animal creation, I recollect howbeautiful it is, sum’d up in the works of ourgreat poet, Milton, every rivulet murmurs inpoetical cadence, and to the melody of thenightingale I add the harmonious verses shehas inspired in many languages.”

So highly were these rhapsodies appreciated,and so far were correspondents from demandingeither coherence or punctuation, that fourvolumes of Mrs. Montagu’s letters were publishedafter her death; and we find Miss Morepraising Mrs. Boscawen because she approachedthis standard of excellence: “Mrs. Palk tells[13]me her letters are hardly inferior to Mrs. Montagu’s.”

Those were the days to live in, and sensiblepeople made haste to be born in time. Theclose of the eighteenth century saw quietcountry families tearing the freshly published“Mysteries of Udolpho” into a dozen parts,because no one could wait his turn to read thebook. All England held its breath while Emilyexplored the haunted chambers of her prison-house.The beginning of the nineteenth centuryfound Mrs. Opie enthroned as a peerlessnovel-writer, and the “Edinburgh Review”praising “Adeline Mowbray, or Mother andDaughter,” as the most pathetic story in theEnglish language. Indeed, one sensitive gentlemanwrote to its authoress that he had lainawake all night, bathed in tears, after readingit. About this time, too, we begin to hear “themellow tones of Felicia Hemans,” whom ChristopherNorth reverently admired; and who, weare assured, found her way to all hearts thatwere open to “the holy sympathies of religionand virtue.” Murray’s heart was so open thathe paid two hundred guineas for the “Vespers[14]of Palermo”; and Miss Edgeworth consideredthat the “Siege of Valencia” contained themost beautiful poetry she had read for years.Finally Miss Jane Porter looms darkly on thehorizon, with novels five volumes long. Allthe Porters worked on a heroic scale. AnnaMaria’s stories were more interminable thanJane’s; and their brother Robert painted on asingle canvas, “The Storming of Seringapatam,”seven hundred life-sized figures.

“Thaddeus of Warsaw” and “The ScottishChiefs” were books familiar to our infancy.They stretched vastly and vaguely over manytender years,—stories after the order of Melchisedec,without beginning and without end.But when our grandmothers were young, andmy chosen period had still years to run, theywere read on two continents, and in manytongues. The King of Würtemberg was sopleased with “Thaddeus” that he made MissPorter a “lady of the Chapter of St. Joachim,”—whichsounds both imposing and mysterious.The badge of the order was a gold cross; andthis unusual decoration, coupled with the lady’shabit of draping herself in flowing veils like[15]one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroines, so confusedan honest British public that it was deemednecessary to explain to agitated Protestantsthat Miss Porter had no Popish proclivities,and must not be mistaken for a nun. In ourown country her novels were exceedingly popular,and her American admirers sent her a rose-woodarmchair in token of appreciation andesteem. It is possible she would have preferreda royalty on her books; but the armchair wasgraciously accepted, and a pen-and-ink sketchin an album of celebrities represents Miss Porterseated majestically on its cushions, “in thequiet and ladylike occupation of taking a cupof coffee.”

And so my happy half-century draws to itsappointed end. A new era, cold, critical, contentious,deprecated the old genial absurdities,chilled the old sentimental outpourings, questionedthe old profitable pietism. Unfortunates,born a hundred years too late, look back withwistful eyes upon the golden age which theyfeel themselves qualified to adorn.

Peu de génie, point de grâce.

There is no harder fate than to be immortalizedas a fool; to have one’s name—which meritsnothing sterner than obliteration—handeddown to generations as an example of silliness,or stupidity, or presumption; to be enshrinedpitilessly in the amber of the “Dunciad”; to belaughed at forever because of Charles Lamb’simpatient and inextinguishable raillery. Whenan industrious young authoress named ElizabethOgilvy Benger—a model of painstaking insignificance—invitedCharles and Mary Lamb todrink tea with her one cold December night, shelittle dreamed she was achieving a deathless andunenviable fame; and that, when her half dozenbooks should have lapsed into comfortable oblivion,she herself should never be fortunate enoughto be forgotten. It is a cruel chance which crystallizesthe folly of an hour, and makes it outliveour most serious endeavours. Perhaps weshould do well to consider this painful possibility[17]before hazarding an acquaintance withthe Immortals.

Miss Benger did more than hazard. Shepursued the Immortals with insensate zeal. Shebribed Mrs. Inchbald’s servant-maid into lendingher cap, and apron, and tea-tray; and, soequipped, penetrated into the inmost sanctuaryof that literary lady, who seems to have takenthe intrusion in good part. She was equallyadroit in seducing Mary Lamb—as the Serpentseduced Eve—when Charles Lamb was theultimate object of her designs. Coming hometo dinner one day, “hungry as a hunter,” hefound to his dismay the two women closetedtogether, and trusted he was in time to preventtheir exchanging vows of eternal friendship,though not—as he discovered later—in timeto save himself from an engagement to drinktea with the stranger (“I had never seen herbefore, and could not tell who the devil it wasthat was so familiar”), the following night.

What happened is told in a letter to Coleridge;one of the best-known and one of the longestletters Lamb ever wrote,—he is so brimfulof his grievance. Miss Benger’s lodgings were[18]up two flights of stairs in East Street. She entertainedher guests with tea, coffee, macaroons,and “much love.” She talked to them, or ratherat them, upon purely literary topics,—as, forexample, Miss Hannah More’s “Strictures onFemale Education,” which they had never read.She addressed Mary Lamb in French,—“possiblyhaving heard that neither Mary nor Iunderstood French,”—and she favoured themwith Miss Seward’s opinion of Pope. Sheasked Lamb, who was growing more miserableevery minute, if he agreed with D’Israeli as to theinfluence of organism upon intellect; and whenhe tried to parry the question with a pun uponorgan—“which went off very flat”—she despisedhim for his feeble flippancy. She advisedMary to carry home two translations of “Pizarro,”so that she might compare them verbatim(an offer hastily declined), and she madethem both promise to return the following week—whichthey never did—to meet Miss JanePorter and her sister, “who, it seems, haveheard much of Mr. Coleridge, and wish to meetus because we are his friends.” It is a comédielarmoyante. We sympathize hotly with Lamb[19]when we read his letter; but there is somethingpiteous in the thought of the poor little hostessgoing complacently to bed that night, and neverrealizing that she had made her one unhappyflight to fame.

There were people, strange as it may seem,who liked Miss Benger’s evenings. Miss Aikinassures us that “her circle of acquaintancesextended with her reputation, and with theknowledge of her excellent qualities, and shewas often enabled to assemble as guests at herhumble tea-table names whose celebrity wouldhave insured attention in the proudest salonsof the metropolis.” Crabb Robinson, who wasa frequent visitor, used to encounter largeparties of sentimental ladies; among them, MissPorter, Miss Landon, and the “eccentric butamiable” Miss Wesley,—John Wesley’s niece,—whoprided herself upon being broad-mindedenough to have friends of varying religions,and who, having written two unread novels, remarkedcomplacently to Miss Edgeworth: “Wesisters of the quill ought to know one another.”

The formidable Lady de Crespigny of CampionLodge was also Miss Benger’s condescending[20]friend and patroness, and this august matron—ofinsipid mind and imperious temper—washeld to sanctify in some mysterious mannerall whom she honoured with her notice.The praises lavished upon Lady de Crespignyby her contemporaries would have made Hypatiablush, and Sappho hang her head. LikeMrs. Jarley, she was the delight of the nobilityand gentry. She corresponded, so we are told,with the literati of England; she published,like a British Cornelia, her letters of counselto her son; she was “courted by the gay andadmired by the clever”; and she mingled atCampion Lodge “the festivity of fashionableparties with the pleasures of intellectual society,and the comforts of domestic peace.”

To this array of feminine virtue and feminineauthorship, Lamb was singularly unresponsive.He was not one of the literati honouredby Lady de Crespigny’s correspondence.He eluded the society of Miss Porter, thoughshe was held to be handsome,—for a novelist.(“The only literary lady I ever knew,” writesMiss Mitford, “who didn’t look like a scarecrowto keep birds from cherries.”) He said[21]unkindly of Miss Landon that, if she belongedto him, he would lock her up and feed her onbread and water until she left off writing poetry.And for Miss Wesley he entertained acordial animosity, only one degree less livelythan his sentiments towards Miss Benger.Miss Wesley had a lamentable habit of sendingher effusions to be read by reluctant menof letters. She asked Lamb for Coleridge’s address,which he, to divert the evil from his ownhead, cheerfully gave. Coleridge, very angry,reproached his friend for this disloyal baseness;but Lamb, with the desperate instinct ofself-preservation, refused all promise of amendment.“You encouraged that mopsey, MissWesley, to dance after you,” he wrote tartly,“in the hope of having her nonsense put intoa nonsensical Anthology. We have pretty wellshaken her off by that simple expedient ofreferring her to you; but there are more bursin the wind.”... “Of all God’s creatures,”he cries again, in an excess of ill-humour, “Idetest letters-affecting, authors-hunting ladies.”Alas for Miss Benger when she hunted hard,and the quarry turned at bay!

[22]An atmosphere of inexpressible drearinesshangs over the little coterie of respectable, unilluminatedwriters, who, to use Lamb’s pricelessphrase, encouraged one another in mediocrity.A vapid propriety, a mawkish sensibilitywere their substitutes for real distinction ofcharacter or mind. They read Mary Wollstonecraft’sbooks, but would not know the author;and when, years later, Mrs. Gaskell presentedthe widowed Mrs. Shelley to Miss Lucy Aikin,that outraged spinster turned her back uponthe erring one, to the profound embarrassmentof her hostess. Of Mrs. Inchbald, we read in“Public Characters” for 1811: “Her moralqualities constitute her principal excellence;and though useful talents and personal accomplishments,of themselves, form materials foran agreeable picture, moral character gives thepolish which fascinates the heart.” The conceptionof goodness then in vogue is pleasinglyillustrated by a passage from one of MissElizabeth Hamilton’s books, which Miss Bengerin her biography of that lady (now lost tofame) quotes appreciatively:—

“It was past twelve o’clock. Already had[23]the active and judicious Harriet performedevery domestic task; and, having completelyregulated the family economy for the day, wasquietly seated at work with her aunt and sister,listening to Hume’s ‘History of England,’ asit was read to her by some orphan girl whomshe had herself instructed.”

So truly ladylike had the feminine mindgrown by this time, that the very language itused was refined to the point of ambiguity.Mrs. Barbauld writes genteelly of the behaviourof young girls “to the other half of theirspecies,” as though she could not bear to say,simply and coarsely, men. So full of contentwere the little circles who listened to the “elegantlyric poetess,” Mrs. Hemans, or to “thefemale Shakespeare of her age,” Miss JoannaBaillie (we owe both these phrases to the poetCampbell), that when Crabb Robinson wasasked by Miss Wakefield whether he wouldlike to know Mrs. Barbauld, he cried enthusiastically:“You might as well ask me whetherI should like to know the Angel Gabriel!”

In the midst of these sentimentalities and raptures,we catch now and then forlorn glimpses[24]of the Immortals,—of Wordsworth at a literaryentertainment in the house of Mr. Hoareof Hampstead, sitting mute and miserable allevening in a corner,—which, as Miss Aikintruly remarked, was “disappointing and provoking;”of Lamb carried by the indefatigableCrabb Robinson to call on Mrs. Barbauld.This visit appears to have been a distinct failure.Lamb’s one recorded observation was thatGilbert Wakefield had a peevish face,—anawkward remark, as Wakefield’s daughter satclose at hand and listening. “Lamb,” writesMr. Robinson, “was vexed, but got out of thescrape tolerably well,”—having had, indeed,plenty of former experiences to help him onthe way.

There is a delightful passage in Miss JanePorter’s diary which describes at length anevening spent at the house of Mrs. Fenwick,“the amiable authoress of ‘Secrecy.’” (Everybodywas the amiable authoress of something.It was a day, like our own, given over to theworship of ink.) The company consisted ofMiss Porter and her sister Maria, Miss Bengerand her brother, the poet Campbell, and his[25]nephew, a young man barely twenty years ofa*ge. The lion of the little party was of coursethe poet, who endeared himself to Mrs. Fenwick’sheart by his attentions to her son, “abeautiful boy of six.”

“This child’s innocence and caresses,” writesMiss Porter gushingly, “seemed to unbend thelovely feelings of Campbell’s heart. Every restraintbut those which the guardian angels oftender infancy acknowledge was thrown aside.I never saw Man in a more interesting pointof view. I felt how much I esteemed the authorof the ‘Pleasures of Hope.’ When we returnedhome, we walked. It was a charming summernight. The moon shone brightly. Maria leanedon Campbell’s arm. I did the same by Benger’s.Campbell made some observations on pedanticwomen. I did not like it, being anxious forthe respect of this man. I was jealous abouthow nearly he might think we resembled thatcharacter. When the Bengers parted from us,Campbell observed my abstraction, and withsincerity I confessed the cause. I know notwhat were his replies; but they were so gratifying,so endearing, so marked with truth, that[26]when we arrived at the door, and he shook usby the hand, as a sign of adieu immediatelyprior to his next day’s journey to Scotland,we parted with evident marks of being all intears.”

It is rather disappointing, after this outburstof emotion, to find Campbell, in a letter tohis sister, describing Miss Porter in languageof chilling moderation: “Among the companywas Miss Jane Porter, whose talents my nephewadores. She is a pleasing woman, and madequite a conquest of him.”

Miss Benger was only one of the manyaspirants to literary honours whose futile endeavoursvexed and affronted Charles Lamb.In reality she burdened him far less thanothers who, like Miss Betham and Miss Stoddart,succeeded in sending him their verses forcriticism, or who begged him to forward theeffusions to Southey,—an office he gladly fulfilled.Perhaps Miss Benger’s vivacity jarredupon his taste. He was fastidious about thegayety of women. Madame de Staël consideredher one of the most interesting persons shehad met in England; but the approval of this[27]“impudent clever” Frenchwoman would havebeen the least possible recommendation toLamb. If he had known how hard had beenMiss Benger’s struggles, and how scanty herrewards, he might have forgiven her that sadperversity which kept her toiling in the fieldof letters. She had had the misfortune to be aprecocious child, and had written at the ageof thirteen a poem called “The Female Geniad,”which was dedicated to Lady de Crespigny,and published under the patronage ofthat honoured dame. Youthful prodigies werethen much in favour. Miss Mitford commentsvery sensibly upon them, being filled with pityfor one Mary Anne Browne, “a fine tall girlof fourteen, and a full-fledged authoress,” whowas extravagantly courted and caressed oneseason, and cruelly ignored the next. The“Female Geniad” sealed Miss Benger’s fate.When one has written a poem at thirteen,and that poem has been printed and praised,there is nothing for it but to keep on writinguntil Death mercifully removes the obligation.

It is needless to say that the drama—which[28]then, as now, was the goal of every author’sambition—first fired Miss Benger’s zeal.When we think of Miss Hannah More as asuccessful playwright, it is hard to understandhow any one could fail; yet fail Miss Bengerdid, although we are assured by her biographerthat “her genius appeared in many ways welladapted to the stage.” She next wrote a mercilesslylong poem upon the abolition of the slave-trade(which was read only by anti-slavery agitators),and two novels,—“Marian,” and“Valsinore: or, the Heart and the Fancy.”Of these we are told that “their excellenceswere such as genius only can reach”; and ifthey also missed their mark, it must have beenbecause—as Miss Aikin delicately insinuates—“nojudicious reader could fail to perceivethat the artist was superior to the work.” Thisis always unfortunate. It is the work, and notthe artist, which is offered for sale in the market-place.Miss Benger’s work is not much worsethan a great deal which did sell, and she possessedat least the grace of an unflinching andcourageous perseverance. Deliberately, andwithout aptitude or training, she began to write[29]history, and in this most difficult of all fieldswon for herself a hearing. Her “Life of AnneBoleyn,” and her “Memoirs of Mary, Queenof Scots,” were read in many an English schoolroom;their propriety and Protestantism makingthem acceptable to the anxious parental mind.A single sentence from “Anne Boleyn” willsuffice to show the ease of Miss Benger’s mentalattitude, and the comfortable nature of herviews:—

“It would be ungrateful to forget that themother of Queen Elizabeth was the early andzealous advocate of the Reformation, and that,by her efforts to dispel the gloom of ignoranceand superstition, she conferred on the Englishpeople a benefit of which, in the present advancedstate of knowledge and civilization, itwould be difficult to conceive or to appreciatethe real value and importance.”

The “active and judicious Harriet” wouldhave listened to this with as much complacenceas to Hume.

In “La Belle Assemblée” for April, 1823,there is an engraving of Miss Smirke’s portraitof Miss Benger. She is painted in an imposing[30]turban, with tight little curls, and anair of formidable sprightliness. It was thissprightliness which was so much admired.“Wound up by a cup of coffee,” she wouldtalk for hours, and her friends really seem tohave liked it. “Her lively imagination,” writesMiss Aikin, “and the flow of eloquence it inspired,aided by one of the most melodious ofvoices, lent an inexpressible charm to her conversation,which was heightened by an intuitivediscernment of character, rare in itself, andstill more so in combination with such fertilityof fancy and ardency of feeling.”

This leaves little to be desired. It is not atall like the Miss Benger of Lamb’s letter, withher vapid pretensions and her stupid insolence.Unhappily, we see through Lamb’s eyes, andwe cannot see through Miss Aikin’s. Of onething only I feel sure. Had Miss Benger,instead of airing her trivial acquirements, toldLamb that when she was a little girl, booklessand penniless, at Chatham, she used to readthe open volumes in the booksellers’ windows,and go back again and again, hoping that theleaves might be turned, she would have touched[31]a responsive chord in his heart. Who does notremember his exquisite sympathy for “street-readers,”and his unlikely story of MartinB——, who “got through two volumes of‘Clarissa,’” in this desultory fashion. Had hebut known of the shabby, eager child, staringwistfully at the coveted books, he would neverhave written the most amusing of his letters,and Miss Benger’s name would be to-day unknown.

“Stick to the East,” wrote Byron to Moore, in1813. “The oracle, Staël, told me it was theonly poetic policy. The North, South, and Westhave all been exhausted; but from the East wehave nothing but Southey’s unsaleables, andthese he has contrived to spoil by adopting onlytheir most outrageous fictions. His personagesdon’t interest us, and yours will. You will haveno competitors; and, if you had, you ought tobe glad of it. The little I have done in thatway is merely a ‘voice in the wilderness’ foryou; and if it has had any success, that also willprove that the public are orientalizing, and pavethe way for you.”

There is something admirably business-likein this advice. Byron, who four months beforehad sold the “Giaour” and the “Bride of Abydos”to Murray for a thousand guineas, wasbeginning to realize the commercial value of[33]poetry; and, like a true man of affairs, knewwhat it meant to corner a poetic market. Hewas generous enough to give Moore the tip,and to hold out a helping hand as well; for hesent him six volumes of Castellan’s “Mœursdes Ottomans,” and three volumes of Toderini’s“De la Littérature des Turcs.” The orientalismafforded by text-books was the kind thatEngland loved.

From the publication of “Lalla Rookh” in1817 to the publication of Thackeray’s “OurStreet” in 1847, Byron’s far-sighted policy continuedto bear golden fruit. For thirty yearsCaliphs and Deevs, Brahmins and Circassians,rioted through English verse; mosques andseraglios were the stage properties of Englishfiction; the bowers of Rochnabed, the Lake ofCashmere, became as familiar as Richmond andthe Thames to English readers. Some feeblewashings of this great tidal wave crossed theestranging sea, to tint the pages of the NewYork “Mirror,” and kindred journals in theUnited States. Harems and slave-markets, withbeautiful Georgians and sad, slender Arab girls,thrilled our grandmothers’ kind hearts. Tales[34]of Moorish Lochinvars, who snatch away thefair daughters—or perhaps the fair wives—ofpowerful rajahs, captivated their imaginations.Gazelles trot like poodles through thesestories, and lend colour to their robust Saxonatmosphere. In one, a neglected “favourite”wins back her lord’s affection by the help of aslave-girl’s amulet; and the inconstant Moslem,entering the harem, exclaims, “Beshrew methat I ever thought another fair!”—whichsounds like a penitent Tudor.

and our oriental literature was compounded ofthe same simple ingredients. When the NewYork “Mirror,” under the guidance of the versatileMr. Willis, tried to be impassioned andsensuous, it dropped into such wanton lines asthese to a “Sultana”:—

And for this must Lord Byron stand responsible.

[35]The happy experiment of grafting Turkishroses upon English boxwood led up to some curiouscomplications, not the least of which wasthe necessity of stiffening the moral fibre of theOrient—which was esteemed to be but lax—untilit could bear itself in seemly fashion beforeEnglish eyes. The England of 1817 wasnot, like the England of 1908, prepared to givecritical attention to the decadent. It presenteda solid front of denial to habits and ideas whichhad not received the sanction of British custom;which had not, through national adoption,become part of the established order of the universe.The line of demarcation between Providenceand the constitution was lightly drawn.Jeffrey, a self-constituted arbiter of tastes andmorals, assured his nervous countrymen that,although Moore’s verse was glowing, his principleswere sound.

“The characters and sentiments of ‘LallaRookh’ belong to the poetry of rational, honourable,considerate, and humane Europe; andnot to the childishness, cruelty, and profligacyof Asia. So far as we have yet seen, there isno sound sense, firmness of purpose, or principled[36]goodness, except among the natives ofEurope and their genuine descendants.”

Starting with this magnificent assumption,it became a delicate and a difficult task to unitethe customs of the East with the “principledgoodness” of the West; the “sound sense” ofthe Briton with the fervour and fanaticism ofthe Turk. Jeffrey held that Moore had effectedthis alliance in the most tactful manner, andhad thereby “redeemed the character of orientalpoetry”; just as Mr. Thomas HaynesBayly, ten years later, “reclaimed festive songfrom vulgarity.” More carping critics, however,worried their readers a good deal on thispoint; and the nonconformist conscience cherisheduneasy doubts as to Hafed’s irregularcourtship and Nourmahal’s marriage lines.From across the sea came the accusing voice ofyoung Mr. Channing in the “North American,”proclaiming that “harlotry has found in Moorea bard to smooth her coarseness and veil hereffrontery, to give her languor for modesty,and affectation for virtue.” The English“Monthly Review,” less open to alarm, confessedwith a sigh “a depressing regret that,[37]with the exception of ‘Paradise and the Peri,’no great moral effect is either attained or attemptedby ‘Lalla Rookh.’ To what purposeall this sweetness and delicacy of thought andlanguage, all this labour and profusion ofOriental learning? What head is set rightin one erroneous notion, what heart is softenedin one obdurate feeling, by this luxuriousquarto?”

It is a lamentable truth that Anacreon exhibitsnone of Dante’s spiritual depth, and thatla reine Margot fell short of Queen Victoria’sfireside qualities. Nothing could make a moralistof Moore. The light-hearted creature was amodel of kindness, of courage, of conjugal fidelity;but—reversing the common rule of life—hepreached none of the virtues that he practised.His pathetic attempts to adjust his talesto the established conventions of society failedsignally of their purpose. Even Byron wrotehim that little Allegra (as yet unfamiliar withher alphabet) should not be permitted to read“Lalla Rookh”; partly because it wasn’t proper,and partly—which was prettily said—lestshe should discover “that there was a[38]better poet than Papa.” It was reserved forMoore’s followers to present their verses andstories in the chastened form acceptable toEnglish drawing-rooms, and permitted to Englishyouth. “La Belle Assemblée” published in1819 an Eastern tale called “Jahia and Meimoune,”in which the lovers converse like thevirtuous characters in “Camilla.” Jahia becomesthe guest of an infamous sheik, who intoxicateshim with a sherbet composed of “sugar,musk, and amber,” and presents him with fivethousand sequins and a beautiful Circassianslave. When he is left alone with this damsel,she addresses him thus: “I feel interested inyou, and present circ*mstances will save mefrom the charge of immodesty, when I saythat I also love you. This love inspires mewith fresh horror at the crimes that are herecommitted.”

Jahia protests that he respectfully returnsher passion, and that his intentions are of anhonourable character, whereupon the circ*mspectmaiden rejoins: “Since such are yoursentiments, I will perish with you if I fail indelivering you”; and conducts him, through a[39]tangle of adventures, to safety. Jahia thenplaces Meimoune under the chaperonage ofhis mother until their wedding day; afterwhich we are happy to know that “they passedtheir lives in the enjoyment of every comfortattending on domestic felicity. If their lot wasnot splendid or magnificent, they were rich inmutual affection; and they experienced thatfortunate medium which, far removed fromindigence, aspires not to the accumulation ofimmense wealth, and laughs at the unenviedload of pomp and splendour, which it neitherseeks, nor desires to obtain.”

It is to be hoped that many obdurate heartswere softened, and many erroneous notionswere set right by the influence of a story likethis. In the “Monthly Museum” an endlessnarrative poem, “Abdallah,” stretched its slowlength along from number to number, bloomingwith fresh moral sentiments on every page;while from an arid wilderness of Moorishlove songs, and Persian love songs, and Circassianlove songs, and Hindu love songs, Iquote this “Arabian” love song, peerless amidits peers:—

[40]

The truth and accuracy of this last observationshould commend the poem to all lovers ofnature.

It is the custom in these days of morbid accuracyto laugh at the second-hand knowledgewhich Moore so proudly and so innocently displayed.Even Mr. Saintsbury says some unkindthings about the notes to “Lalla Rookh,”—scrapsof twentieth-hand knowledge, he callsthem,—while pleasantly recording his affectionfor the poem itself, an affection based upon thereasonable ground of childish recollections. Inthe well-ordered home of his infancy, none but“Sunday books” might be read on Sundaysin nursery or schoolroom. “But this severity[41]was tempered by one of those easem*nts oftenoccurring in a world, which, if not the best, iscertainly not the worst of all possible worlds.For the convenience of servants, or for someother reason, the children were much morein the drawing-room on Sundays than on anyother day; and it was an unwritten rule thatany book that lived in the drawing-room wasfit Sunday reading. The consequence was thatfrom the time I could read until childish thingswere put away, I used to spend a considerablepart of the first day of the week in reading andre-reading a collection of books, four of whichwere Scott’s poems, ‘Lalla Rookh,’ ‘The Essaysof Elia,’ and Southey’s ‘Doctor.’ Thereforeit may be that I rank ‘Lalla Rookh’ toohigh.”

Blessed memories, and thrice blessed influencesof childhood! But if “Lalla Rookh,”like “Vathek,” was written to be the joy ofimaginative little boys and girls (alas for thosewho now replace it with “Allan in Alaska,”and “Little Cora on the Continent”), the notesto “Lalla Rookh” were, to my infant mind,even more enthralling than the poem. There[42]was a sketchiness about them, a detachmentfrom time and circ*mstance—I always hatedbeing told the whole of everything—whichled me day after day into fresh fields of conjecture.The nymph who was encircled by arainbow, and bore a radiant son; the scimitarsthat were so dazzling they made the warriorswink; the sacred well which reflected the moonat midday; and the great embassy that wassent “from some port of the Indies”—a welcomevagueness of geography—to recover amonkey’s tooth, snatched away by some equallynameless conqueror;—what child could fail tolove such floating stars of erudition?

Our great-grandfathers were profoundlyimpressed by Moore’s text-book acquirements.The “Monthly Review” quoted a solid pageof the notes to dazzle British readers, who confessedthemselves amazed to find a fellow countrymanso much “at home” in Persia andArabia. Blackwood authoritatively announcedthat Moore was familiar, not only “with thegrandest regions of the human soul,”—whichis expected of a poet,—but also with theremotest boundaries of the East; and that in[43]every tone and hue and form he was “purelyand intensely Asiatic.” “The carping criticismof paltry tastes and limited understandingsfaded before that burst of admiration withwhich all enlightened spirits hailed the beautyand magnificence of ‘Lalla Rookh.’”

Few people care to confess to “paltry tastes”and “limited understandings.” They wouldrather join in any general acclamation. “Browning’spoetry obscure!” I once heard a lecturersay with scorn. “Let us ask ourselves, ‘Obscureto whom?’ No doubt a great many things areobscure to long-tailed Brazilian apes.” Afterwhich his audience, with one accord, admittedthat it understood “Sordello.” So when Jeffrey—greatumpire of games whose rules he neverknew—informed the British public that therewas not in “Lalla Rookh” “a simile, a description,a name, a trait of history, or allusion ofromance that does not indicate entire familiaritywith the life, nature, and learning of theEast,” the public contentedly took his wordfor it. When he remarked that “the dazzlingsplendours, the breathing odours” of Arabywere without doubt Moore’s “native element,”[44]the public, whose native element was neithersplendid nor sweet-smelling, envied the Irishmanhis softer joys. “Lalla Rookh” might be“voluptuous” (a word we find in every reviewof the period), but its orientalism was beyonddispute. Did not Mrs. Skinner tell Moore thatshe had, when in India, translated the proseinterludes into Bengali, for the benefit of hermoonshee, and that the man was amazed at theaccuracy of the costumes? Did not the nephewof the Persian ambassador in Paris tell Mr.Stretch, who told Moore, that “Lalla Rookh”had been translated into Persian; that thesongs—particularly “Bendemeer’s Stream”—weresung “everywhere”; and that thehappy natives could hardly believe the wholework had not been taken originally from aPersian manuscript?

And not of Ispahan only; for in the winterof 1821 the Berlin court presented “LallaRookh” with such splendour, such wealth of[45]detail, and such titled actors, that Moore’sheart was melted and his head was turned (asany other heart would have been melted, andany other head would have been turned) bythe reports thereof. A Grand duch*ess of Russiatook the part of Lalla Rookh; the Duke ofCumberland was Aurungzebe; and a beautifulyoung sister of Prince Radzivil enchanted allbeholders as the Peri. “Nothing else wastalked about in Berlin” (it must have been alimited conversation); the King of Prussia hada set of engravings made of the noble actors intheir costumes; and the Crown Prince sentword to Moore that he slept always with a copyof “Lalla Rookh” under his pillow, which wasfoolish, but flattering. Hardly had the echoesof this royal fête died away, when Spontinibrought out in Berlin his opera “The Feastof Roses,” and Moore’s triumph in Prussiawas complete. Byron, infinitely amused at thesuccess of his own good advice, wrote to thehappy poet: “Your Berlin drama is an honourunknown since the days of Elkanah Settle,whose ‘Empress of Morocco’ was presentedby the court ladies, which was, as Johnson remarks,[46]‘the last blast of inflammation to poorDryden.’”

Who shall say that this comparison is withoutit* dash of malice? There is a natural limitto the success we wish our friends, even whenwe have spurred them on their way.

If the English court did not lend itself withmuch gayety or grace to dramatic entertainments,English society was quick to respond tothe delights of a modified orientalism. That isto say, it sang melting songs about bulbuls andShiraz wine; wore ravishing Turkish costumeswhenever it had a chance (like the beautifulMrs. Winkworth in the charades at GauntHouse); and covered its locks—if they werefeminine locks—with turbans of portentoussize and splendour. When Mrs. Fitzherbert,aged seventy-three, gave a fancy dress ball, somany of her guests appeared as Turks, andGeorgians, and sultanas, that it was hard tobelieve that Brighton, and not Stamboul, wasthe scene of the festivity. At an earlier entertainment,“a rural breakfast and promenade,”given by Mrs. Hobart at her villa near Fulham,and “graced by the presence of royalty,” the[47]leading attraction was Mrs. Bristow, who representedQueen Nourjahad in the “Gardenof Roses.” “Draped in all the magnificence ofEastern grandeur, Mrs. Bristow was seated inthe larger drawing-room (which was very beautifullyfitted up with cushions in the Indianstyle), smoking her hookah amidst all sorts ofthe choicest perfumes. Mrs. Bristow was veryprofuse with otto of roses, drops of which werethrown about the ladies’ dresses. The wholehouse was scented with the delicious fragrance.”

The “European Magazine,” the “MonthlyMuseum,” all the dim old periodicals publishedin the early part of the last century for femininereaders, teem with such “society notes.”From them, too, we learn that by 1823 turbansof “rainbow striped gauze frosted with gold”were in universal demand; while “black velvetturbans, enormously large, and worn very muchon one side,” must have given a rakish appearanceto stout British matrons. “La Belle Assemblée”describes for us with tender enthusiasma ravishing turban, “in the Turkish style,”worn in the winter of 1823 at the theatre andat evening parties. This masterpiece was of[48]“pink oriental crêpe, beautifully folded infront, and richly ornamented with pearls. Thefolds are fastened on the left side, just abovethe ear, with a Turkish scimitar of pearls; andon the right side are tassels of pearls, surmountedby a crescent and a star.”

Here we have Lady Jane or Lady Ameliatransformed at once into young Nourmahal;and, to aid the illusion, a “Circassian corset”was devised, free from encroaching steel orwhalebone, and warranted to give its Englishwearers the “flowing and luxurious lines” admiredin the overfed inmates of the harem.When the passion for orientalism began to subsidein London, remote rural districts caughtand prolonged the infection. I have sympathizedall my life with the innocent ambitionof Miss Matty Jenkyns to possess a sea-greenturban, like the one worn by Queen Adelaide;and have never been able to forgive that ruthlesslysensible Mary Smith—the chronicler ofCranford—for taking her a “neat middle-agedcap” instead. “I was most particularly anxiousto prevent her from disfiguring her small gentlemousy face with a great Saracen’s head turban,”[49]says the judicious Miss Smith witha smirk of self-commendation; and poor MissMatty—the cap being bought—has to bowto this arbiter of fate. How much we all sufferin life from the discretion of our families andfriends!

Thackeray laughed the dim ghost of “LallaRookh” out of England. He mocked at theturbans, and at the old ladies who wore them;at the vapid love songs, and at the young ladieswho sang them.

I am a little brown bulbul. Come and listen in the moonlight.Praise be to Allah! I am a merry bard.

He derided the “breathing odours of Araby,”and the Eastern travellers who imported thisexotic atmosphere into Grosvenor Square.Yonng Bedwin Sands, who has “lived undertents,” who has published a quarto, ornamentedwith his own portrait in various oriental costumes,and who goes about accompanied by ablack servant of most unprepossessing appearance,“just like another Brian de Bois Guilbert,”is only a degree less ridiculous thanClarence Bulbul, who gives Miss Tokely a pieceof the sack in which an indiscreet Zuleika was[50]drowned, and whose servant says to callers:“Mon maître est au divan,” or “Monsieur trouveraMonsieur dans son sérail.... He hascoffee and pipes for everybody. I should likeyou to have seen the face of old Bowly, hiscollege tutor, called upon to sit cross-leggedon a divan, a little cup of bitter black mochaput into his hand, and a large amber-muzzledpipe stuck into his mouth before he could sayit was a fine day. Bowly almost thought he hadcompromised his principles by consenting so farto this Turkish manner.” Bulbul’s sure andsimple method of commending himself to youngladies is by telling them they remind him of agirl he knew in Circassia,—Ameena, the sisterof Schamyle Bey. “Do you know, Miss Pim,”he thoughtfully observes, “that you would fetchtwenty thousand piastres in the market at Constantinople?”Whereupon Miss Pim is filledwith embarrassed elation. An English girl, consciousof being in no great demand at home, wasnaturally flattered as well as fluttered by thethought of having market value elsewhere. Andperhaps this feminine instinct was at the root of“Lalla Rookh’s” long popularity in England.

Correspondences are like small-clothes before the inventionof suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.—SydneySmith to Mrs. Crowe.

In this lamentable admission, in this blunt andrevolutionary sentiment, we hear the first clearstriking of a modern note, the first gasping protestagainst the limitless demands of letter-writing.When Sydney Smith was a little boy, itwas not impossible to keep a correspondenceup; it was impossible to let it go. He was tenyears old when Sir William Pepys copied outlong portions of Mrs. Montagu’s letters, andleft them as a legacy to his heirs. He wastwelve years old when Miss Anna Seward—the“Swan of Lichfield”—copied thirteenpages of description which the Rev. ThomasSedgwick Whalley had written her from Switzerland,and sent them to her friend, Mr. WilliamHayley. She called this “snatching himto the Continent by Whalleyan magic.” WhatMr. Hayley called it we do not know; but he[52]had his revenge, for the impartial “Swan”copied eight verses of an “impromptu” whichMr. Hayley had written upon her, and sentthem in turn to Mr. Whalley;—thus makingeach friend a scourge to the other, and wideningthe network of correspondence which hadenmeshed the world.

It is impossible not to feel a trifle envious ofMr. Whalley, who looms before us as the mostpetted and accomplished of clerical bores, of“literary and chess-playing divines.” He wasbut twenty-six when the kind-hearted Bishopof Ely presented him with the living of Hagworthingham,stipulating that he should nottake up his residence there,—the neighbourhoodof the Lincolnshire fens being consideredan unhealthy one. Mr. Whalley cheerfully compliedwith this condition; and for fifty yearsthe duties were discharged by curates, whocould not afford good health; while the rectorspent his winters in Europe, and his summersat Mendip Lodge. He was of an amorous disposition,—“sentimentallypathetic,” Miss Burneycalls him,—and married three times, twoof his wives being women of fortune. He lived[53]in good society, and beyond his means, like agentleman; was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds(who has very delicately and maliciouslyaccentuated his resemblance to the tiny spanielhe holds in his arms); and died of old age, inthe comfortable assurance that he had lostnothing the world could give. A voluminouscorrespondence—afterwards published in twovolumes—afforded scope for that clerical diffusenesswhich should have found its legitimateoutlet in the Hagworthingham pulpit.

The Rev. Augustus Jessup has recorded apassionate admiration for Cicero’s letters, onthe ground that they never describe scenery;but Mr. Whalley’s letters seldom do anythingelse. He wrote to Miss Sophia Weston a descriptionof Vaucluse, which fills three closelyprinted pages. Miss Weston copied every word,and sent it to Miss Seward, who copied everyword of her copy, and sent it to the long-sufferingMr. Hayley, with the remark that Mr.Whalley and Petrarch were “kindred spirits.”Later on this kinship was made pleasantly manifestby the publication of “Edwy and Edilda,”which is described as a “domestic epic,” and[54]which Mr. Whalley’s friends considered to bea moral bulwark as well as an epoch-makingpoem. Indeed, we find Miss Seward imploringhim to republish it, on the extraordinary groundthat it will add to his happiness in heaven toknow that the fruits of his industry “continueto inspire virtuous pleasure through passinggenerations.” It is animating to contemplatethe celestial choirs congratulating the angelWhalley at intervals on the “virtuous pleasure”inspired by “Edwy and Edilda.” “This,” saysMr. Kenwigs, “is an ewent at which Evin itselflooks down.”

There was no escape from the letter-writerwho, a hundred or a hundred and twenty-fiveyears ago, captured a coveted correspondent.It would have been as easy to shake off an octopusor a boa-constrictor. Miss Seward openedher attack upon Sir Walter Scott, whom shehad never seen, with a long and passionate letter,lamenting the death of a friend whom Scotthad never seen. She conjured him not to answerthis letter, because she was “dead to theworld.” Scott gladly obeyed, content that thelady should be at least dead to him, which was[55]the last possibility she contemplated. Beforetwelve months were out they were in brisk correspondence,an acquaintance was established,and when she died in earnest, some years later,he found himself one of her literary executors,and twelve quarto manuscript volumes of herletters waiting to be published. These Scottwisely refused to touch; but he edited herpoems,—a task he much disliked,—wrote theepitaph on her monument in Lichfield Cathedral,and kindly maintained that, although hersentimentality appalled him, and her enthusiasmchilled his soul, she was a talented andpleasing person.

The most formidable thing about the lettersof this period—apart from their length—istheir eloquence. It bubbles and seethes overevery page. Miss Seward, writing to Mrs.Knowles in 1789 upon the dawning of theFrench Revolution, of which she understood nomore than a canary, pipes an ecstatic trill. “SoFrance has dipped her lilies in the living streamof American freedom, and bids her sons beslaves no longer. In such a contest the vitalsluices must be wastefully opened; but few English[56]hearts I hope there are that do not wishvictory may sit upon the swords that freedomhas unsheathed.” It sounds so exactly like theAmericans in “Martin Chuzzlewit” that onedoubts whether Mr. Jefferson Brick or theHonourable Elijah Pogram really uttered thesentiment; while surely to Mrs. Hominy, andnot to the Lichfield Swan, must be creditedthis beautiful passage about a middle-aged butnewly married couple: “The berries of holly,with which Hymen formed that garland, blushthrough the snows of time, and dispute the prizeof happiness with the roses of youth;—andthey are certainly less subject to the blights ofexpectation and palling fancy.”

It is hard to conceive of a time when letterslike these were sacredly treasured by the recipients(our best friend, the waste-paper basket,seems to have been then unknown); whenthe writers thereof bequeathed them as a legacyto the world; and when the public—beingunder no compulsion—bought six volumes ofthem as a contribution to English literature.It is hard to think of a girl of twenty-one writingto an intimate friend as Elizabeth Robinson,[57]afterwards the “great” Mrs. Montagu, wroteto the young duch*ess of Portland, who appearsto have ventured upon a hope that they werehaving a mild winter in Kent.

“I am obliged to your Grace for your goodwishes of fair weather; sunshine gilds everyobject, but, alas! December is but cloudy weather,how few seasons boast many days of calm!April, which is the blooming youth of the year,is as famous for hasty showers as for gentle sunshine.May, June, and July have too much heatand violence, the Autumn withers the Summer’sgayety, and in the Winter the hopeful blossomsof Spring and fair fruits of Summer are decayed,and storms and clouds arise.”

After these obvious truths, for which thealmanac stands responsible, Miss Robinson proceedsto compare human life to the changingyear, winding up at the close of a dozen pages:“Happy and worthy are those few whose youthis not impetuous, nor their age sullen; theyindeed should be esteemed, and their happyinfluence courted.”

Twenty-one, and ripe for moral platitudes!What wonder that we find the same lady, when[58]crowned with years and honours, writing to theson of her friend, Lord Lyttelton, a remorselesslylong letter of precept and good counsel,which that young gentleman (being afterwardsknown as the wicked Lord Lyttelton) seemsnever to have taken to heart.

“The morning of life, like the morning ofthe day, should be dedicated to business. Give ittherefore, dear Mr. Lyttelton, to strenuous exertionand labour of mind, before the indolenceof the meridian hour, or the unabated fervourof the exhausted day, renders you unfit forsevere application.”

“Unabated fervour of the exhausted day”is a phrase to be commended. We rememberwith awe that Mrs. Montagu was the brighteststar in the chaste firmament of female intellect;—“thefirst woman for literary knowledgein England,” wrote Mrs. Thrale; “and, if inEngland, I hope I may say in the world.” Wehope so, indeed. None but a libertine woulddoubt it. And no one less contumelious thanDr. Johnson ever questioned Mrs. Montagu’ssupremacy. She was, according to her great-grandniece,Miss Climenson, “adored by men,”[59]while “purest of the pure”; which was equallypleasant for herself and for Mr. Montagu.She wrote more letters, with fewer punctuationmarks, than any Englishwoman of herday; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby,nearly blinded himself in deciphering the twovolumes of undated correspondence which wereprinted in 1810. Two more followed in 1813,after which the gallant Baron either died at hispost or was smitten with despair; for sixty-eightcases of letters lay undisturbed for thebest part of a century, when they passed intoMiss Climenson’s hands. This intrepid ladyreceived them—so she says—with “unboundedjoy”; and has already published twofat volumes, with the promise of several othersin the near future. “Les morts n’écriventpoint,” said Madame de Maintenon hopefully;but of what benefit is this inactivity,when we still continue to receive their letters?

Miss Elizabeth Carter, called by courtesyMrs. Carter, was the most vigorous of Mrs.Montagu’s correspondents. Although a ladyof learning, who read Greek and had dippedinto Hebrew, she was far too “humble and[60]unambitious” to claim an acquaintance withthe exalted mistress of Montagu House; butthat patroness of literature treated her withsuch true condescension that they were soonon the happiest terms. When Mrs. Montaguwrites to Miss Carter that she has seen thesplendid coronation of George III, Miss Carterhastens to remind her that such splendour isfor majesty alone.

“High rank and power require every externalaid of pomp and éclat that may awe andastonish spectators by the ideas of the magnificentand sublime; while the ornaments ofmore equal conditions should be adapted to thequiet tenour of general life, and be content tocharm and engage by the gentler graces of thebeautiful and pleasing.”

Mrs. Montagu was fond of display. All herfriends admitted, and some deplored the fact.But surely there was no likelihood of her appropriatingthe coronation services as a featurefor the entertainments at Portman Square.

Advice, however, was the order of the day.As the excellent Mrs. Chapone wrote to SirWilliam Pepys: “It is a dangerous commerce[61]for friends to praise each other’s Virtues, insteadof reminding each other of duties andof failings.” Yet a too robust candour carriedperils of its own, for Miss Seward havingwritten to her “beloved Sophia Weston” with“an ingenuousness which I thought necessaryfor her welfare, but which her high spiritswould not brook,” Sophia was so unaffectedlyangry that twelve years of soothing silencefollowed.

Another wonderful thing about the letter-writers,especially the female letter-writers, ofthis engaging period is the wealth of hyperbolein which they rioted. Nothing is told in plainterms. Tropes, metaphors, and similes adornevery page; and the supreme elegance of thelanguage is rivalled only by the elusiveness ofthe idea, which is lost in an eddy of words.Marriage is always alluded to as the “hymenealtorch,” or the “hymeneal chain,” or “hymenealemancipation from parental care.” Birdsare “feathered muses,” and a heart is a “vitalurn.” When Mrs. Montagu writes to Mr. GilbertWest, that “miracle of the Moral World,”to condole with him on his gout, she laments[62]that his “writing hand, first dedicated to theMuses, then with maturer judgment consecratedto the Nymphs of Solyma, should beled captive by the cruel foe.” If Mr. Westchanced not to know who or what the Nymphsof Solyma were, he had the intelligent pleasureof finding out. Miss Seward describes Mrs.Tighe’s sprightly charms as “Aonian inspirationadded to the cestus of Venus”; and speaksof the elderly “ladies of Llangollen” as, “inall but the voluptuous sense, Armidas of itsbowers.” Duelling is to her “the murderouspunctilio of Luciferian honour.” A Scotchgentleman who writes verse is “a CambrianOrpheus”; a Lichfield gentleman who sketchesis “our Lichfield Claude”; and a buddingclerical writer is “our young sacerdotal Marcellus.”When the “Swan” wished to appriseScott of Dr. Darwin’s death, it never occurredto her to write, as we in this dull age shoulddo: “Dr. Darwin died last night,” or, “PoorDr. Darwin died last night.” She wrote: “Abright luminary in this neighbourhood recentlyshot from his sphere with awful and deplorablesuddenness”;—thus pricking Sir Walter’s[63]imagination to the wonder point beforedescending to facts. Even the rain and snowwere never spoken of in the plain languageof the Weather Bureau; and the elements hada set of allegories all their own. Miss Carterwould have scorned to take a walk by the sea.She “chased the ebbing Neptune.” Mrs. Chaponewas not blown by the wind. She was“buffeted by Eolus and his sons.” Miss Sewarddoes not hope that Mr. Whalley’s rheumatismis better; but that he has overcome “the malinfluenceof marine damps, and the monotonousmurmuring of boundless waters.” Perhapsthe most triumphant instance on record of sustainedmetaphor is Madame d’Arblay’s accountof Mrs. Montagu’s yearly dinner to the Londonchimney-sweeps, in which the word sweep isnever once used, so that the editor was actuallycompelled to add a footnote to explain whatthe lady meant. The boys are “jetty objects,”“degraded outcasts from society,” and “sootylittle agents of our most blessed luxury.” Theyare “hapless artificers who perform the mostabject offices of any authorized calling”; theyare “active guardians of our blazing hearth”;[64]but plain chimney-sweeps, never! Madamed’Arblay would have perished at the stakebefore using so vulgar and obvious a term.

How was this mass of correspondence preserved?How did it happen that the letterswere never torn up, or made into spills,—thecommon fate of all such missives when I was alittle girl. Granted that Miss Carter treasuredMrs. Montagu’s letters (she declared fervidlyshe could never be so barbarous as to destroyone), and that Mrs. Montagu treasured MissCarter’s. Granted that Miss Weston treasuredMr. Whalley’s, and that Mr. Whalley treasuredMiss Weston’s. Granted that Miss Sewardprovided against all contingencies by copyingher own letters into fat blank books beforethey were mailed, elaborating her spinelesssentences, and omitting everything she deemedtoo trivial or too domestic for the public ear.But is it likely that young Lyttelton at Oxfordlaid sacredly away Mrs. Montagu’s pagesof good counsel, or that young Franks at Cambridgepreserved the ponderous dissertations ofSir William Pepys? Sir William was a Baronet,a Master in Chancery, and—unlike his[65]famous ancestor—a most respectable and exemplarygentleman. His innocent ambition wasto be on terms of intimacy with the literarylights of his day. He knew and ardently admiredDr. Johnson, who in return detested himcordially. He knew and revered, “in unisonwith the rest of the world,” Miss Hannah More.He corresponded at great length with lesserlights,—with Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs. Hartley,and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall. He wroteendless commentaries on Homer and Virgil toyoung Franks, and reams of good advice to hislittle son at Eton. There is something patheticin his regret that the limitations of life will notpermit him to be as verbose as he would like.“I could write for an hour,” he assures poorFranks, “upon that most delightful of all passages,the Lion deprived of its Young; but thefew minutes one can catch amidst the Noise,hurry and confusion of an Assize town will notadmit of any Classical discussions. But was Iin the calm retirement of your Study at Acton,I have much to say to you, to which I can onlyallude.”

The publication of scores and scores of such[66]letters, all written to one unresponsive youngman at Cambridge (who is repeatedly reproachedfor not answering them), makes us wonderafresh who kept the correspondence; and theproblem is deepened by the appearance of SirWilliam’s letters to his son. This is the waythe first one begins:—

“My dear Boy,—I cannot let a Post escapeme without giving you the Pleasure ofknowing how much you have gladdened theHearts of two as affectionate Parents as everlived; when you tell us that the Principles ofReligion begin already to exert their efficacyin making you look down with contempt on thewretched grovelling Vices with which you aresurrounded, you make the most delightful Returnyou can ever make for our Parental Careand Affection; you make Us at Peace withOurselves; and enable us to hope that ourdear Boy will Persevere in that Path which willensure the greatest Share of Comfort here, anda certainty of everlasting Happiness hereafter.”

I am disposed to think that Sir Williammade a fair copy of this letter and of others[67]like it, and laid them aside as models of parentalexhortation. Whether young Pepys wasa little prig, or a particularly accomplished littlescamp (and both possibilities are open to consideration),it seems equally unlikely that an Etonboy’s desk would have proved a safe repositoryfor such ample and admirable discourses.

The publication of Cowper’s letters in 1803and 1804 struck a chill into the hearts of accomplishedand erudite correspondents. PoorMiss Seward never rallied from the shock oftheir “commonness,” and of their popularity.Here was a man who wrote about beggars andpostmen, about cats and kittens, about butteredtoast and the kitchen table. Here was a manwho actually looked at things before he describedthem (which was a startling innovation);who called the wind the wind, and buttercupsbuttercups, and a hedgehog a hedgehog.Miss Seward honestly despised Cowper’s letters.She said they were without “imagination oreloquence,” without “discriminative criticism,”without “characteristic investigation.” Investigatingthe relations between the family cat andan intrusive viper was, from her point of view,[68]unworthy the dignity of an author. Cowper’slove of detail, his terrestrial turn of mind, hishumour, and his veracity were disconcertingin an artificial age. When Miss Carter took acountry walk, she did not stoop to observe thetrivial things she saw. Apparently she neversaw anything. What she described were thesentiments and emotions awakened in her by afeatureless principle called Nature. Even theocean—which is too big to be overlooked—startedher on a train of moral reflections, inwhich she passed easily from the grandeur of theelements to the brevity of life, and the paltrinessof earthly ambitions. “How vast are thecapacities of the soul, and how little and contemptibleits aims and pursuits.” With thisoriginal remark, the editor of the letters (anephew and a clergyman) was so delighted thathe added a pious comment of his own.

“If such be the case, how strong and conclusiveis the argument deduced from it, that thesoul must be destined to another state moresuitable to its views and powers. It is much tobe lamented that Mrs. Carter did not pursuethis line of thought any further.”

[69]People who bought nine volumes of a correspondencelike this were expected, as the editorwarns them, to derive from it “moral, literary,and religious improvement.” It was in everyway worthy of a lady who had translated Epictetus,and who had the “great” Mrs. Montagufor a friend. But, as Miss Seward patheticallyremarked, “any well-educated person, withtalents not above the common level, producesevery day letters as well worth attention asmost of Cowper’s, especially as to diction.”The perverseness of the public in buying, inreading, in praising these letters, filled her withpained bewilderment. Not even the writer’ssincere and sad piety, his tendency to moralize,and the transparent innocence of his life couldreconcile her to plain transcripts from nature,or to such an unaffecting incident as this:—

“A neighbour of mine in Silver End keepsan ass; the ass lives on the other side of thegarden wall, and I am writing in the greenhouse.It happens that he is this morning mostmusically disposed; either cheered by the fineweather, or by some new tune which he hasjust acquired, or by finding his voice more harmonious[70]than usual. It would be cruel to mortifyso fine a singer, therefore I do not tell himthat he interrupts and hinders me; but I ventureto tell you so, and to plead his performancein excuse of my abrupt conclusion.”

Here is not only the “common” dictionwhich Miss Seward condemned, but a very commoncasualty, which she would have naturallydeemed beneath notice. Cowper wrote a greatdeal about animals, and always with fine andhumorous appreciation. He sought relief fromthe hidden torment of his soul in the contemplationof creatures who fill their place in lifewithout morals, and without misgivings. Weknow what safe companions they were for himwhen we read his account of his hares, of hiskitten dancing on her hind legs,—“an exercisewhich she performs with all the graceimaginable,”—and of his goldfinches amorouslykissing each other between the cage wires.When Miss Seward bent her mind to “thelower orders of creation,” she did not describethem at all; she gave them the benefit of that“discriminative criticism” which she felt thatCowper lacked. Here, for example, is her[71]thoughtful analysis of man’s loyal servitor, thedog:—

“That a dog is a noble, grateful, faithfulanimal we must all be conscious, and deservesa portion of man’s tenderness and care;—yet,from its utter incapacity of more than glimpsesof rationality, there is a degree of insanity, aswell as of impoliteness to his acquaintance, andof unkindness to his friends, in lavishing somuch more of his attention in the first instance,and of affection in the latter, upon it thanupon them.”

It sounds like a parody on a great livingmaster of complex prose. By its side, Cowper’sdescription of Beau is certainly open to thereproach of plainness.

“My dog is a spaniel. Till Miss Gunningbegged him, he was the property of a farmer,and had been accustomed to lie in the chimneycorner among the embers till the hair wassinged from his back, and nothing was left ofhis tail but the gristle. Allowing for thesedisadvantages, he is really handsome; andwhen nature shall have furnished him witha new coat, a gift which, in consideration of[72]the ragged condition of his old one, it is hopedshe will not long delay, he will then be unrivalledin personal endowments by any dog inthis country.”

No wonder the Lichfield Swan was dauntedby the inconceivable popularity of such letters.No wonder Miss Hannah More preferred Akensideto Cowper. What had these eloquentladies to do with quiet observation, with soberfelicity of phrase, with “the style of honestmen”!

Readers of Miss Burney’s Diary will rememberher maidenly confusion when Colonel Fairly(the Honourable Stephen Digby) recommendsto her a novel called “Original Love-Lettersbetween a Lady of Quality and a Person of InferiorStation.” The authoress of “Evelina”and “Cecilia”—then thirty-six years of age—isembarrassed by the glaring impropriety ofthis title. In vain Colonel Fairly assures herthat the book contains “nothing but good sense,moral reflections, and refined ideas, clothed inthe most expressive and elegant language.”Fanny, though longing to read a work of suchestimable character, cannot consent to borrow,or even discuss, anything so compromising aslove-letters; and, with her customary coyness,murmurs a few words of denial. Colonel Fairly,however, is not easily daunted. Three days later[74]he actually brings the volume to that virginalbower, and asks permission to read portions ofit aloud, excusing his audacity with the solemnassurance that there was no person, not evenhis own daughter, in whose hands he wouldhesitate to place it. “It was now impossible toavoid saying that I should like to hear it,”confesses Miss Burney. “I should seem else todoubt either his taste or his delicacy, while Ihave the highest opinion of both.” So the bookis produced, and the fair listener, bending overher needlework to hide her blushes, acknowledgesit to be “moral, elegant, feeling, andrational,” while lamenting that the unhappynature of its title makes its presence a sourceof embarrassment.

This edifying little anecdote sheds light upona palmy period of propriety. Miss Burney’sself-consciousness, her superhuman diffidence,and the “delicious confusion” which overwhelmedher upon the most insignificant occasions,were beacon lights to her “sisters of Parnassus,”to the less distinguished women whofollowed her brilliant lead. The passion fornovel-reading was asserting itself for the first[75]time in the history of the world as a dominantnote of femininity. The sentimentalities of fictionexpanded to meet the woman’s standard, tosatisfy her irrational demands. “If the story-tellerhad always had mere men for an audience,”says an acute English critic, “therewould have been no romance; nothing but theimproving fable, or the indecent anecdote.” Itwas the woman who, as Miss Seward sorrowfullyobserved, sucked the “sweet poison”which the novelist administered; it was thewoman who stooped conspicuously to the “reigningfolly” of the day.

The particular occasion of this outbreak onMiss Seward’s part was the extraordinary successof a novel, now long forgotten by theworld, but which in its time rivalled in popularity“Evelina,” and the well-loved “Mysteriesof Udolpho.” Its plaintive name is “Emmeline;or the Orphan of the Castle,” and its authoress,Charlotte Smith, was a woman of courage,character, and good ability; also of a cheerfultemperament, which we should never have surmisedfrom her works. It is said that her sonowed his advancement in the East India Company[76]solely to the admiration felt for “Emmeline,”which was being read as assiduously inBengal as in London. Sir Walter Scott, alwaysthe gentlest of critics, held that it belonged tothe “highest branch of fictitious narrative.”The Queen, who considered it a masterpiece,lent it to Miss Burney, who in turn gave it toColonel Fairly, who ventured to observe that itwas not “piquant,” and asked for a “Rambler”instead.

“Emmeline” is not piquant. Its heroinehas more tears than Niobe. “Formed of thesoftest elements, and with a mind calculated forselect friendship and domestic happiness,” it isher misfortune to be loved by all the men shemeets. The “interesting languor” of a countenancehabitually “wet with tears” provestheir undoing. Her “deep convulsive sobs”charm them more than the laughter of othermaidens. When the orphan leaves the castlefor the first time, she weeps bitterly for anhour; when she converses with her uncle, shecan “no longer command her tears, sobsobliged her to cease speaking”; and when heurges upon her the advantages of a worldly[77]marriage, she—as if that were possible—“weptmore than before.” When Delamere,maddened by rejection, carries her off in a post-chaise(a delightful frontispiece illustrates thisepisode), “a shower of tears fell from her eyes”;and even a rescue fails to raise her spirits.Her response to Godolphin’s tenderest approachesis to “wipe away the involuntary betrayersof her emotion”; and when he exclaimsin a transport: “Enchanting softness! Is thenthe safety of Godolphin so dear to that angelicbosom?” she answers him with “audible sobs.”

The other characters in the book are nearlyas tearful. When Delamere is not striking hisforehead with his clenched fist, he is weepingat Emmeline’s feet. The repentant Fitz-Edwardlays his head on a chair, and weeps “likea woman.” Lady Adelina, who has stooped tofolly, naturally sheds many tears, and writes an“Ode to Despair”; while Emmeline from timeto time gives “vent to a full heart” by weepingover Lady Adelina’s infant. Godolphin sobsloudly when he sees his frail sister; and whenhe meets Lord Westhaven after an absence offour years, “the manly eyes of both brothers[78]were filled with tears.” We wonder how Scott,whose heroines cry so little and whose heroesnever cry at all, stood all this weeping; and,when we remember the perfunctory nature ofSir Walter’s love scenes,—wedged in anyway among more important matters,—we wonderstill more how he endured the ravings ofDelamere, or the melancholy verses with whichGodolphin from time to time soothes his despondentsoul.

It was not, however, the mournfulness of“Emmeline” which displeased Miss Seward,but rather the occasional intrusion of “lowcharacters”; of those underbred and unimpassionedpersons who—as in Miss Burney’s andMiss Ferrier’s novels—are naturally and almostcheerfully vulgar. That Mr. WilliamHayley, author of “The Triumphs of Temper,”and her own most ardent admirer, should tunehis inconstant lyre in praise of Mrs. Smith wasmore than Miss Seward could bear. “My very[79]foes acquit me of harbouring one grain of envyin my bosom,” she writes him feelingly; “yetit is surely by no means inconsistent with thatexemption to feel a little indignant, and toenter one’s protest, when compositions of meremediocrity are extolled far above those of realgenius.” She then proceeds to point out the“indelicacy” of Lady Adelina’s fall from grace,and the use of “kitchen phrases,” such as “shegrew white at the intelligence.” “White insteadof pale,” comments Miss Seward severely,“I have often heard servants say, but never agentleman or a gentlewoman.” If Mr. Hayleydesires to read novels, she urges upon him thecharms of another popular heroine, Caroline deLichtfield, in whom he will find “simplicity,wit, pathos, and the most exalted generosity”;and the history of whose adventures “makescuriosity gasp, admiration kindle, and pity dissolve.”

Caroline, “the gay child of Artless Nonchalance,”is at least a more cheerful youngperson than the Orphan. Her story, translatedfrom the French of Madame de Montolieu,was widely read in England and on the[80]Continent; and Miss Seward tells us that itsauthor was indebted “to the merits and gracesof these volumes for a transition from incompetenceto the comforts of wealth; from theunprotected dependence of waning virginity tothe social pleasures of wedded friendship.” Inplain words, we are given to understand thata rich and elderly German widower read thebook, sought an acquaintance with the writer,and married her. “Hymen,” exclaims MissSeward, “passed by the fane of Cytherea andthe shrine of Plutus, to light his torch at thealtar of genius”;—which beautiful burst ofeloquence makes it painful to add the chillingtruth, and say that “Caroline de Lichtfield”was written six years after its author’s marriagewith M. de Montolieu, who was a Swiss, and hersecond husband. She espoused her first, M. deCrousaz, when she was eighteen, and still comfortablyremote from the terrors of waningvirginity. Accurate information was not, however,a distinguishing characteristic of the day.Sir Walter Scott, writing some years later ofMadame de Montolieu, ignores both marriagesaltogether, and calls her Mademoiselle.

[81]No rich reward lay in wait for poor CharlotteSmith, whose husband was systematicallyimpecunious, and whose large family of childrenwere supported wholly by her pen. “Emmeline,or the Orphan of the Castle” was followedby “Ethelinda, or the Recluse of the Lake,” andthat by “The Old Manor House,” which wasesteemed her masterpiece. Its heroine bears theinteresting name of Monimia; and when shemarries her Orlando, “every subsequent hourof their lives was marked by some act ofbenevolence,”—a breathless and philanthropiccareer. By this time the false-hearted Hayleyhad so far transferred to Mrs. Smith the homagedue to Miss Seward that he was rewardedwith the painful privilege of reading “TheOld Manor House” in manuscript,—a privilegereserved in those days for tried and patientfriends. The poet had himself dallied a littlewith fiction, having written, “solely to promotethe interests of religion,” a novel called “TheYoung Widow,” which no one appears to haveread, except perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury,to whom its author sent a copy.

In purity of motive Mr. Hayley was rivalled[82]only by Mrs. Brunton, whose two novels, “Self-Control”and “Discipline,” were designed “toprocure admission for the religion of a soundmind and of the Bible where it cannot find accessin any other form.” Mrs. Brunton was perhapsthe most commended novelist of her time.The inexorable titles of her stories secured forthem a place upon the guarded book-shelves ofthe young. Many a demure English girl musthave blessed these deluding titles, just as, fortyyears later, many an English boy blessed theinspiration which had impelled George Borrowto misname his immortal book “The Bible inSpain.” When the wife of a clergyman undertookto write a novel in the interests of religionand the Scriptures; when she called it“Discipline,” and drew up a stately apologyfor employing fiction as a medium for the lessonsshe meant to convey, what parent couldrefuse to be beguiled? There is nothing trivialin Mrs. Brunton’s conception of a good novel,in the standard she proposes to the world.

“Let the admirable construction of fable in‘Tom Jones’ be employed to unfold characterslike Miss Edgeworth’s; let it lead to a moral[83]like Richardson’s; let it be told with the eleganceof Rousseau, and with the simplicity ofGoldsmith; let it be all this, and Milton neednot have been ashamed of the work.”

How far “Discipline” and “Self-Control”approach this composite standard of perfectionit would be invidious to ask; but they accomplisheda miracle of their own in being bothpopular and permitted, in pleasing the frivolous,and edifying the devout. Dedicated toMiss Joanna Baillie, sanctioned by Miss HannahMore, they stood above reproach, thoughnot without a flavour of depravity. Mrs. Brunton’soutlook upon life was singularly uncomplicated.All her women of fashion are heartlessand inane. All her men of fashion cherishdishonourable designs upon female youth andinnocence. Indeed the strenuous efforts ofLaura, in “Self-Control,” to preserve her virginitymay be thought a trifle explicit for veryyouthful readers. We find her in the firstchapter—she is seventeen—fainting at thefeet of her lover, who has just revealed the unworthynature of his intentions; and we followher through a series of swoons to the last pages,[84]where she “sinks senseless” into—of all vessels!—acanoe; and is carried many miles downa Canadian river in a state of nicely balancedunconsciousness. Her self-control (the crowningvirtue which gives its title to the book) isso marked that when she dismisses Hargraveon probation, and then meets him accidentallyin a London print-shop after a four months’absence, she “neither screamed nor fainted”;only “trembled violently, and leant against thecounter to recover strength and composure.”It is not until he turns, and, “regardless of theinquisitive looks of the spectators, clasped herto his breast,” that “her head sunk upon hisshoulder, and she lost all consciousness.” Asfor her heroic behaviour when the same Hargrave(having lapsed from grace) shoots thevirtuous De Courcy in Lady Pelham’s summer-house,it must be described in the author’s ownwords. No others could do it justice.

“To the plants which their beauty had recommendedto Lady Pelham, Laura had added afew of which the usefulness was known to her.Agaric of the oak was of the number; and shehad often applied it where many a hand less[85]fair would have shrunk from the task. Nor didshe hesitate now. The ball had entered nearthe neck; and the feminine, the delicate Lauraherself disengaged the wound from its covering;the feeling, the tender Laura herself performedan office from which false sensibility would haverecoiled in horror.”

Is it possible that anybody except Miss Burneycould have shrunk modestly from the sightof a lover’s neck, especially when it had a bulletin it? Could a sense of decorum be more overwhelminglyexpressed? Yet the same novelwhich held up to our youthful great-grandmothersthis unapproachable standard of proprietypresented to their consideration the mostintimate details of libertinism. There was then,as now, no escape from the moralist’s devastatingdisclosures.

One characteristic is common to all thesefaded romances, which in their time were readwith far more fervour and sympathy than aretheir successors to-day. This is the undying andundeviating nature of their heroes’ affections.Written by ladies who took no count of man’sproverbial inconstancy, they express a touching[86]belief in the supremacy of feminine charms. Aheroine of seventeen (she is seldom older), withringlets, and a “faltering timidity,” inflamesboth the virtuous and the profligate with suchimperishable passions, that when triumphantmorality leads her to the altar, defeated vicecannot survive her loss. Her suitors, reversingthe enviable experience of Ben Bolt,—

They grow faint with rapture when they enterher presence, and, when she repels their advances,they signify their disappointment bygnashing their teeth, and beating their headsagainst the wall. Rejection cannot alienate theirfaithful hearts; years and absence cannot chilltheir fervour. They belong to a race of menwho, if they ever existed at all, are now asextinct as the mastodon.

It was Miss Jane Porter who successfullytransferred to a conquering hero that exquisitesensibility of soul which had erstwhile belongedto the conquering heroine,—to the Emmelinesand Adelinas of fiction. Dipping her pen “inthe tears of Poland,” she conveyed the glittering[87]drops to the eyes of “Thaddeus of Warsaw,”whence they gush in rills,—like those ofthe Prisoner of Chillon’s brother. Thaddeus is ofsuch exalted virtue that strangers in London addresshim as “excellent young gentleman,” andhis friends speak of him as “incomparable youngman.” He rescues children from horses’ hoofsand from burning buildings. He nurses themthrough small-pox, and leaves their bedsidesin the most casual manner, to mingle in crowdsand go to the play. He saves women from insulton the streets. He is kind even to “thatpoor slandered and abused animal, the cat,”—whichis certainly to his credit. Wrapped in asable cloak, wearing “hearse-like plumes” onhis hat, a star upon his breast, and a sabre byhis side, he moves with Hamlet’s melancholygrace through the five hundred pages of thestory. “His unrestrained and elegant conversationacquired new pathos from the anguish thatwas driven back to his heart: like the beds ofrivers which infuse their own nature with thecurrent, his hidden grief imparted an indescribableinterest and charm to all his sentimentsand actions.”

[88]What wonder that such a youth is passionatelyloved by all the women who cross his path,but whom he regards for the most part with“that lofty tranquillity which is inseparablefrom high rank when it is accompanied by virtue.”In vain Miss Euphemia Dundas writeshim amorous notes, and entraps him into embarrassingsituations. In vain Lady Sara Roos—married,I regret to say—pursues him tohis lodgings, and wrings “her snowy arms”while she confesses the hopeless nature of herinfatuation. The irreproachable Thaddeus replacesher tenderly but firmly on a sofa, andas soon as possible sends her home in a cab. Itis only when the “orphan heiress,” Miss Beaufort,makes her appearance on the scene, “alarge Turkish shawl enveloping her fine form,a modest grace observable in every limb,” thatthe exile’s haughty soul succumbs to love. MissBeaufort has been admirably brought up by heraunt, Lady Somerset, who is a person of greatdistinction, and who gives “conversaziones,”as famous in their way as Mrs. Proudie’s.—“Therethe young Mary Beaufort listened topious divines of every Christian persuasion.[89]There she gathered wisdom from real philosophers;and, in the society of our best livingpoets, cherished an enthusiasm for all that isgreat and good. On these evenings, Sir RobertSomerset’s house reminded the visitor ofwhat he had read or imagined of the School ofAthens.”

Never do hero and heroine approach eachother with such spasms of modesty as Thaddeusand Miss Beaufort. Their hearts expand withemotion, but their mutual sense of proprietykeeps them remote from all vulgar understandings.In vain “Mary’s rosy lips seemed tobreathe balm while she spoke.” In vain “herbeautiful eyes shone with benevolence.” Theexile, standing proudly aloof, watches with bittercomposure the attentions of more frivoloussuitors. “His arms were folded, his hat pulledover his forehead; and his long dark eye-lashesshading his downcast eyes imparted a dejectionto his whole air, which wrapped her weepingheart round and round with regretful pangs.”What with his lashes, and his hidden griefs,the majesty of his mournful moods, and thepleasing pensiveness of his lighter ones, Thaddeus[90]so far eclipses his English rivals that theymay be pardoned for wishing he had kept hischarms in Poland. Who that has read thematchless paragraph which describes the firstunveiling of the hero’s symmetrical leg can forgetthe sensation it produces?

“Owing to the warmth of the weather, Thaddeuscame out this morning without boots; andit being the first time the exquisite proportionof his limb had been seen by any of the presentcompany excepting Euphemia” (why had Euphemiabeen so favoured?), “Lascelles, burstingwith an emotion which he would not callenvy, measured the count’s fine leg with hisscornful eye.”

When Thaddeus at last expresses his attachmentfor Miss Beaufort, he does so kneeling respectfullyin her uncle’s presence, and in thesewell-chosen words: “Dearest Miss Beaufort,may I indulge myself in the idea that I amblessed with your esteem?” Whereupon Marywhispers to Sir Robert: “Pray, Sir, desirehim to rise. I am already sufficiently overwhelmed!”and the solemn deed is done.

“Thaddeus of Warsaw” may be called the[91]“Last of the Heroes,” and take rank with the“Last of the Mohicans,” the “Last of theBarons,” the “Last of the Cavaliers,” and allthe finalities of fiction. With him died thatnoble race who expressed our great-grandmothers’artless ideals of perfection. Seventyyears later, D’Israeli made a desperate effortto revive a pale phantom of departed gloryin “Lothair,” that nursling of the gods, whois emphatically a hero, and nothing more.“London,” we are gravely told, “was at Lothair’sfeet.” He is at once the hope of UnitedItaly, and the bulwark of the English Establishment.He is—at twenty-two—the pivotof fashionable, political, and clerical diplomacy.He is beloved by the female aristocracyof Great Britain; and mysterious ladies, whoselofty souls stoop to no conventionalities, diehappy with his kisses on their lips. Five hundredmounted gentlemen compose his simplecountry escort, and the coat of his groom ofthe chambers is made in Saville Row. Whatmore could a hero want? What more could belavished upon him by the most indulgent ofauthors? Yet who shall compare Lothair to[92]the noble Thaddeus nodding his hearse-likeplumes,—Thaddeus dedicated to the “urbanityof the brave,” and embalmed in the tears ofPoland? The inscrutable creator of Lothairpresented his puppet to a mocking world; butall England and much of the Continent dilatedwith correct emotions when Thaddeus, “unitingto the courage of a man the sensibility of awoman, and the exalted goodness of an angel”(I quote from an appreciative critic), knelt atMiss Beaufort’s feet.

Ten years later “Pride and Prejudice” madeits unobtrusive appearance, and was read bythat “saving remnant” to whom is confidedthe intellectual welfare of their land. Mrs. Elwood,the biographer of England’s “LiteraryLadies,” tells us, in the few careless pageswhich she deems sufficient for Miss Austen’snovels, that there are people who think thesestories “worthy of ranking with those of Madamed’Arblay and Miss Edgeworth”; but thatin their author’s estimation (and, by inference,in her own), “they took up a much more humblestation.” Yet, tolerant even of such inferiority,Mrs. Elwood bids us remember that although[93]“the character of Emma is perhaps toomanœuvring and too plotting to be perfectlyamiable,” that of Catherine Morland “will notsuffer greatly even from a comparison withMiss Burney’s interesting Evelina”; and that“although one is occasionally annoyed by theunderbred personages of Miss Austen’s novels,the annoyance is only such as we should feel ifwe were actually in their company.”

It was thus that our genteel great-grandmothers,enamoured of lofty merit and of refinedsensibility, regarded Elizabeth Bennet’srelations.

Perhaps no man ever thought a line superfluous whenhe wrote it. We are seldom tiresome to ourselves.—Dr.Johnson.

It is commonly believed that the extinction ofverse—of verse in the bulk, which is the wayin which our great-grandfathers consumed it—isdue to the vitality of the novel. People,we are told, read rhyme and metre with docility,only because they wanted to hear a story,only because there was no other way in whichthey could get plenty of sentiment and romance.As soon as the novel supplied themwith all the sentiment they wanted, as soon asit told them the story in plain prose, theyturned their backs upon poetry forever.

There is a transparent inadequacy in thissolution of a problem which still confronts thepatient reader of buried masterpieces. Novelswere plenty when Mr. William Hayley’s“Triumphs of Temper” went through twelveeditions, and when Dr. Darwin’s “BotanicGarden” was received with deferential delight.[95]But could any dearth of fiction persuadeus now to read the “Botanic Garden”?Were we shipwrecked in company with the“Triumphs of Temper,” would we ever finishthe first canto? Novels stood on every Englishbook-shelf when Fox read “Madoc” aloud atnight to his friends, and they stayed up, so hesays, an hour after their bedtime to hear it.Could that miracle be worked to-day? SirWalter Scott, with indestructible amiability,reread “Madoc” to please Miss Seward, who,having “steeped” her own eyes “in transportsof tears and sympathy,” wrote to him that itcarried “a master-key to every bosom whichcommon good sense and anything resemblinga human heart inhabit.” Scott, unwilling toresign all pretensions to a human heart, triedhard to share the Swan’s emotions, and failed.“I cannot feel quite the interest I would liketo do,” he patiently confessed.

If Southey’s poems were not read as Scott’sand Moore’s and Byron’s were read (give usanother Byron, and we will read him with fortythousand novels knocking at our doors!); ifthey were not paid for out of the miraculous[96]depths of Murray’s Fortunatus’s purse, theynevertheless enjoyed a solid reputation of theirown. They are mentioned in all the letters ofthe period (save and except Lord Byron’sribald pages) with carefully measured praise,and they enabled their author to accept thelaureateship on self-respecting terms. They areat least, as Sir Leslie Stephen reminds us, morereadable than Glover’s “Leonidas,” or Wilkie’s“Epigoniad,” and they are shorter, too. Yetthe “Leonidas,” an epic in nine books, wentthrough four editions; whereupon its elateauthor expanded it into twelve books; and thepublic, undaunted, kept on buying it for years.The “Epigoniad” is also in nine books. It ison record that Hume, who seldom dallied withthe poets, read all nine, and praised themwarmly. Mr. Wilkie was christened the “ScottishHomer,” and he bore that modest titleuntil his death. It was the golden age of epics.The ultimatum of the modern publisher, “Nopoet need apply!” had not yet blighted thehopes and dimmed the lustre of genius. “Everybodythinks he can write verse,” observed SirWalter mournfully, when called upon for the[97]hundredth time to help a budding aspirant tofame.

With so many competitors in the field, itwas uncommonly astute in Mr. Hayley toaddress himself exclusively to that sex whichpoets and orators call “fair.” There is aformal playfulness, a ponderous vivacity aboutthe “Triumphs of Temper,” which made itespecially welcome to women. In the prefaceof the first edition the author gallantly laidhis laurels at their feet, observing modestlythat it was his desire, however “ineffectual,”“to unite the sportive wildness of Ariosto andthe more serious sublime painting of Dantewith some portion of the enchanting elegance,the refined imagination, and the moral gracesof Pope; and to do this, if possible, withoutviolating those rules of propriety which Mr.Cambridge has illustrated, by example as wellas by precept, in the ‘Scribleriad,’ and in hissensible preface to that elegant and learnedpoem.”

Accustomed as we are to the confusions ofliterary perspective, this grouping of Dante,Ariosto, and Mr. Cambridge does seem a trifle[98]foreshortened. But our ancestors had noneof that sensitive shrinking from comparisonswhich is so characteristic of our timid andthin-skinned generation. They did not edgeoff from the immortals, afraid to breathe theirnames lest it be held lèse-majesté; they usedthem as the common currency of criticism.Why should not Mr. Hayley have challengeda contrast with Dante and Ariosto, when MissSeward assured her little world—which wasalso Mr. Hayley’s world—that he had the“wit and ease” of Prior, a “more varied versification”than Pope, and “the fire and theinvention of Dryden, without any of Dryden’sabsurdity”? Why should he have questionedher judgment, when she wrote to him thatCowper’s “Task” would “please and instructthe race of common readers,” who could notrise to the beauties of Akenside, or Mason, orMilton, or of his (Mr. Hayley’s) “exquisite‘Triumphs of Temper’”? There was a time,indeed, when she sorrowed lest his “inventive,classical, and elegant muse” should be “deplorablyinfected” by the growing influenceof Wordsworth; but, that peril past, he rose[99]again, the bright particular star of a widefeminine horizon.

Mr. Hayley’s didacticism is admirablyadapted to his readers. The men of theeighteenth century were not expected to keeptheir tempers; it was the sweet prerogative ofwives and daughters to smooth the roughenedcurrent of family life. Accordingly the heroineof the “Triumphs,” being bullied by her father,a fine old gentleman of the Squire Western type,maintains a superhuman cheerfulness, givesup the ball for which she is already dressed,wreathes her countenance in smiles, and

The men of the eighteenth century were allhard drinkers. Therefore Mr. Hayley conjuresthe “gentle fair” to avoid even the mild debaucheryof siruped fruits,—

All this combustle, to use Gray’s favourite word,about a brandy peach! But women have everloved to hear their little errors magnified. Inthe matter of poets, preachers and confessors,they are sure to choose the denunciatory.

Dr. Darwin, as became a scientist and asceptic, addressed his ponderous “BotanicGarden” to male readers. It is true that heoffers much good advice to women, urgingupon them especially those duties and devotionsfrom which he, as a man, was exempt.It is true also that when he first contemplatedwriting his epic, he asked Miss Seward—so,at least, she said—to be his collaborator; anhonour which she modestly declined, as not“strictly proper for a female pen.” But thepeculiar solidity, the encyclopædic qualities ofthis masterpiece, fitted it for such grave studentsas Mr. Edgeworth, who loved to beamply instructed. It is a poem replete withinformation, and information of that disconnected[101]order in which the Edgeworthian soultook true delight. We are told, not only aboutflowers and vegetables, but about electric fishes,and the salt mines of Poland; about Dr. Franklin’slightning rod, and Mrs. Damer’s bust ofthe duch*ess of Devonshire; about the treatmentof paralytics, and the mechanism of thecommon pump. We pass from the death ofGeneral Wolfe at Quebec to the equally lamenteddemise of a lady botanist at Derby.We turn from the contemplation of Hannibalcrossing the Alps to consider the charities ofa benevolent young woman named Jones.

Pagan divinities disport themselves on one page,and Christian saints on another. St. Anthonypreaches, not to the little fishes of the brooksand streams, but to the monsters of the deep,—sharks,porpoises, whales, seals and dolphins,that assemble in a sort of aquatic camp-meetingon the shores of the Adriatic, and “getreligion” in the true revivalist spirit.

[102]

For a freethinker, Dr. Darwin is curiouslyliteral in his treatment of hagiology and theScriptures. His Nebuchadnezzar (introduced asan illustration of the “Loves of the Plants”)is not a bestialized mortal, but a veritable beast,like one of Circe’s swine, only less easily classifiedin natural history.

The picture of the embarrassed courtiers promenadingslowly after this royal phenomenon,and of the lovely inconsiderates proffering theirvain allurements, is so ludicrous as to be painful.Even Miss Seward, who held that the[103]“Botanic Garden” combined “the sublimity ofMichael Angelo, the correctness and eleganceof Raphael, with the glow of Titian,” wasshocked by Nebuchadnezzar’s pendant ears, andadmitted that the passage was likely to provokeinconsiderate laughter.

The first part of Dr. Darwin’s poem, “TheEconomy of Vegetation,” was warmly praisedby critics and reviewers. Its name alone securedfor it esteem. A few steadfast souls, likeMrs. Schimmelpenninck, refused to accept evenvegetation from a sceptic’s hands; but it wasgenerally conceded that the poet had “entwinedthe Parnassian laurel with the balm of Pharmacy”in a very creditable manner. The lastfour cantos, however,—indiscreetly entitled“The Loves of the Plants,”—awakened graveconcern. They were held unfit for female youth,which, being then taught driblets of science ina guarded and muffled fashion, was not supposedto know that flowers had any sex, muchless that they practised polygamy. The glaringindiscretion of their behaviour in the “BotanicGarden,” their seraglios, their amorousembraces and involuntary libertinism, offended[104]British decorum, and, what was worse, exposedthe poem to Canning’s pungent ridicule. Whenthe “Loves of the Triangles” appeared in the“Anti-Jacobin,” all England—except Whigsand patriots who never laughed at Canning’sjokes—was moved to inextinguishable mirth.The mock seriousness of the introduction andargument, the “horrid industry” of the notes,the contrast between the pensiveness of the Cycloidand the innocent playfulness of the Pendulum,the solemn headshake over the licentiousdisposition of Optics, and the descriptionof the three Curves that requite the passion ofthe Rectangle, all burlesque with unfeelingdelight Dr. Darwin’s ornate pedantry.

The indignant poet, frigidly vain, and immaculatelyfree from any taint of humour, wasas much scandalized as hurt by this light-heartedmockery. Being a dictator in his own littlecircle at Derby, he was naturally disposed toconsider the “Anti-Jacobin” a menace to genius[105]and to patriotism. His criticisms and his prescriptionshad hitherto been received with equalsubmission. When he told his friends thatAkenside was a better poet than Milton,—“morepolished, pure, and dignified,” they listenedwith respect. When he told his patientsto eat acid fruits with plenty of sugar andcream, they obeyed with alacrity. He had ataste for inventions, and first made Mr. Edgeworth’sacquaintance by showing him an ingeniouscarriage of his own contrivance, whichwas designed to facilitate the movements of thehorse, and enable it to turn with ease. Thefact that Dr. Darwin was three times thrownfrom this vehicle, and that the third accidentlamed him for life, in no way disconcerted theinventor or his friends, who loved mechanismfor its own sake, and apart from any given results.Dr. Darwin defined a fool as one whonever in his life tried an experiment. So didMr. Day, of “Sandford and Merton” fame,who experimented in the training of animals,and was killed by an active young colt that hadfailed to grasp the system.

The “Botanic Garden” was translated into[106]French, Italian, and Portuguese, to the greatrelief of Miss Seward, who hated to think thatthe immortality of such a work depended uponthe preservation of a single tongue. “Shouldthat tongue perish,” she wrote proudly, “translationswould at least retain all the host ofbeauties which do not depend upon felicitiesof verbal expression.”

If the interminable epics which were sopopular in these halcyon days had condescendedto the telling of stories, we might believe thatthey were read, or at least occasionally read, asa substitute for prose fiction. But the truth isthat most of them are solid treatises on morality,or agriculture, or therapeutics, cast intothe blankest of blank verse, and valued, presumably,for the sake of the information theyconveyed. Their very titles savour of statementrather than of inspiration. Nobody in searchof romance would take up Dr. Grainger’s“Sugar Cane,” or Dyer’s “Fleece,” or theRev. Richard Polwhele’s “English Orator.”Nobody desiring to be idly amused would readthe “Vales of Weaver,” or a long didacticpoem on “The Influence of Local Attachment.”[107]It was not because he felt himself tobe a poet that Dr. Grainger wrote the “SugarCane” in verse, but because that was the formmost acceptable to the public. The ever famousline,

which made merry Sir Joshua Reynolds andhis friends, is indicative of the good doctor’sstruggles to employ an uncongenial medium.He wanted to tell his readers how to farm successfullyin the West Indies; how to keep wellin a treacherous climate; what food to eat, whatdrugs to take, how to look after the physicalcondition of negro servants, and guard themfrom prevalent maladies. These were matterson which the author was qualified to speak, andon which he does speak with all a physician’sfrankness; but they do not lend themselves tolofty strains. Whole pages of the “SugarCane” read like prescriptions and dietariesdone into verse. It is as difficult to singwith dignity about a disordered stomach asabout rats and co*ckroaches; and Dr. Grainger’sdetermination to leave nothing untoldleads him to dwell with much feeling, but[108]little grace, on all the disadvantages of thetropics.

The truthfulness and sobriety of this last linedeserve commendation. co*ckroaches in theopen are displeasing to sensitive souls; and afootnote, half a page long, tells us everythingwe could possibly desire—or fear—to knowabout these insects. As an example of Dr.Grainger’s thoroughness in the treatment ofsuch themes, I quote with delight his approvedmethod of poisoning alligators.

Then follow some very sensible remarks aboutthe unwholesomeness of the water in which thedead alligators are decomposing,—remarks[109]which Mr. Kipling has unconsciously parodied:—

The wonderful thing about the “Sugar Cane”is that it was read;—nay, more, thatit was read aloud at the house of Sir JoshuaReynolds, and though the audience laughed, itlistened. Dodsley published the poem in handsomestyle; a second edition was called for; itwas reprinted in Jamaica, and pirated (whatwere the pirates thinking about!) in 1766.Even Dr. Johnson wrote a friendly notice inthe London “Chronicle,” though he alwaysmaintained that the poet might just as wellhave sung the beauties of a parsley-bed or of acabbage garden. He took the same high groundwhen Boswell called his attention to Dyer’s“Fleece.”—“The subject, Sir, cannot bemade poetical. How can a man write poeticallyof serges and druggets?”

It was not for the sake of sentiment or storythat the English public read “The Fleece.”Nor could it have been for practical guidance;for farmers, even in 1757, must have had some[110]musty almanacs, some plain prose manuals toadvise them. They could never have waited tolearn from an epic poem that

or that

or that

Did the British woolen-drapers of the periodrequire to be told in verse about

Surely they knew more about their own dry-goodsthan did Mr. Dyer. Is it possible thatBritish parsons read Mr. Polwhele’s “EnglishOrator” for the sake of his somewhat confusedadvice to preachers?—

It was Miss Seward’s opinion that the neglectof Mr. Polwhele’s “poetic writings” wasa disgrace to literary England, from which weconclude that the reverend author outwore thepatience of his readers. “Mature in dulnessfrom his earliest years,” he had wisely adopteda profession which gave his qualities room forexpansion. What his congregation must havesuffered when he addressed it with “condescendinggentleness,” we hardly like to think;but free-born Englishmen, who were so fortunateas not to hear him, refused to make goodtheir loss by reading the “English Orator,”even after it had been revised by a bishop.Miss Seward praised it highly; in return forwhich devotion she was hailed as a “Parnassiansister” in six benedictory stanzas.

The Swan, indeed, was never without admirers.[112]Her “Louisa; a Poetical Novel in fourEpistles,” was favourably noticed; Dr. Johnsonpraised her ode on the death of CaptainCook; and no contributor to the Bath Eastonvase received more myrtle wreaths than shedid. “Warble” was the word commonly usedby partial critics in extolling her verse. “Longmay she continue to warble as heretofore, insuch numbers as few even of our favouritebards would be shy to own.” Scott sorrowfullyadmitted to Miss Baillie that he found thesewarblings—of which he was the reluctant editor—“execrable”;and that the despair whichfilled his soul on receiving Miss Seward’s lettersgave him a lifelong horror of sentiment;but for once it is impossible to sympathizewith Sir Walter’s sufferings. If he had neverpraised the verses, he would never have beencalled upon to edit them; and James Ballantynewould have been saved the printing of anunsalable book. There is no lie so little worththe telling as that which is spoken in purekindness to spare a wholesome pang.

It was, however, the pleasant custom of thetime to commend and encourage female poets, as[113]we commend and encourage a child’s unsteadyfootsteps. The generous Hayley welcomed withopen arms these fair competitors for fame.

He ardently flattered Miss Seward, and forMiss Hannah More his enthusiasm knew nobounds.

“Spirit-moving” seems the last epithet in theworld to apply to Miss More’s strains; butthere is no doubt that the public believed herto be as good a poet as a preacher, and that itsupported her high estimate of her own powers.After a visit to another lambent flame, Mrs.Barbauld, she writes with irresistible gravity:

“Mrs. B. and I have found out that we feelas little envy and malice towards each other,as though we had neither of us attempted to‘build the lofty rhyme’; although she saysthis is what the envious and the malicious cannever be brought to believe.”

[114]Think of the author of “The Search afterHappiness” and the author of “A PoeticalEpistle to Mr. Wilberforce” loudly refusing toenvy each other’s eminence! There is nothinglike it in the strife-laden annals of fame.

Finally there stepped into the arena thatcharming embodiment of the female muse, Mrs.Hemans; and the manly heart of ProtestantEngland warmed into homage at her shrine.From the days she “first carolled forth herpoetic talents under the animating influenceof an affectionate and admiring circle,” to thedays when she faded gracefully out of life, her“half-etherealized spirit” rousing itself to dictatea last “Sabbath Sonnet,” she was crownedand garlanded with bays. In the first place, shewas fair to see,—Fletcher’s bust shows realloveliness; and it was Christopher North’sopinion that “no really ugly woman ever wrotea truly beautiful poem the length of her littlefinger.” In the second place, she was sincerelypious; and the Ettrick Shepherd reflected theopinion of his day when he said that “withoutreligion, a woman’s just an even-down deevil.”The appealing helplessness of Mrs. Hemans’s[115]gentle and affectionate nature, the narrownessof her sympathies, and the limitations of herart were all equally acceptable to critics likeGifford and Jeffrey, who held strict views asto the rounding of a woman’s circle. EvenByron heartily approved of a pious and prettywoman writing pious and pretty poems. EvenWordsworth flung her lordly words of praise.Even Shelley wrote her letters so eager andardent that her very sensible mamma, Mrs.Browne, requested him to cease. And as forScott, though he confessed she was too poeticalfor his taste, he gave her always the honestfriendship she deserved. It was to her he said,when some tourists left them hurriedly at NewarkTower: “Ah, Mrs. Hemans, they littleknow what two lions they are running awayfrom.” It was to her he said, when she wasleaving Abbotsford: “There are some whomwe meet, and should like ever after to claim askith and kin; and you are of this number.”

Who would not gladly have written “TheSiege of Valencia” and “The Vespers of Palermo,”to have heard Sir Walter say thesewords?

Out-pensioners of Parnassus.—Horace Walpole.

In this overrated century of progress, whenwomen have few favours shown them, but areasked to do their work or acknowledge theirdeficiencies, the thoughtful mind turns disconsolatelyback to those urbane days when everytottering step they took was patronized andpraised. It must have been very pleasant to beable to publish “Paraphrases and Imitationsof Horace,” without knowing a word of Latin.Latin is a difficult language to study, and muchuseful time may be wasted in acquiring it; thereforeMiss Anna Seward eschewed the tediousprocess which most translators deem essential.Yet her paraphrases were held to have caughtthe true Horatian spirit; and critics praisedthem all the more indulgently because of theirauthor’s feminine attitude to the classics.“Over the lyre of Horace,” she wrote elegantlyto Mr. Repton, “I throw an unfettered hand.”

It may be said that critics were invariably[117]indulgent to female writers (listen to ChristopherNorth purring over Mrs. Hemans!) untilthey stepped, like Charlotte Brontë, from theirappointed spheres, and hotly challenged thecompetition of the world. This was a disagreeableand a disconcerting thing for them to do.Nobody could patronize “Jane Eyre,” and noneof the pleasant things which were habituallymurmured about “female excellence and talent”seemed to fit this firebrand of a book. HadCharlotte Brontë taken to heart Mrs. King’s“justly approved work” on “The BeneficialEffects of the Christian Temper upon DomesticHappiness,” she would not have shocked andpained the sensitive reviewer of the “Quarterly.”

It was in imitation of that beacon light, MissHannah More, that Mrs. King wrote herfamous treatise. It was in imitation of MissHannah More that Mrs. Trimmer (abhorred byLamb) wrote “The Servant’s Friend,” “Helpto the Unlearned,” and the “Charity SchoolSpelling Book,”—works which have passed outof the hands of men, but whose titles survive tofill us with wonder and admiration. Was there[118]ever a time when the unlearned frankly recognizedtheir ignorance, and when a mistressventured to give her housemaids a “Servant’sFriend”? Was spelling in the charity schoolsdifferent from spelling elsewhere, or werecharity-school children taught a limited vocabulary,from which all words of rank had beeneliminated? Those were days when the upperclasses were affable and condescending, whenthe rural poor—if not intoxicated—curtsiedand invoked blessings on their benefactors allday long, and when benevolent ladies told thevillage politicians what it was well for them toknow. But even at this restful period, a“Charity School Spelling Book” seems ill calculatedto inspire the youthful student withenthusiasm.

Mrs. Trimmer’s attitude to the public wasmarked by that refined diffidence which wasconsidered becoming in a female. Her biographerassures us that she never coveted literarydistinction, although her name was celebrated“wherever Christianity was established, and theEnglish language was spoken.” Royalty tookher by the hand, and bishops expressed their[119]overwhelming sense of obligation. We sigh tothink how many ladies became famous againsttheir wills a hundred and fifty years ago, andhow hard it is now to raise our aspiring heads.There was Miss —— or, as she preferred to becalled, Mrs. —— Carter, who read Greek, andtranslated Epictetus, who was admired by “thegreat, the gay, the good, and the learned”; yetwho could with difficulty be persuaded to bearthe burden of her own eminence. It was theopinion of her friends that Miss Carter hadconferred a good deal of distinction upon Epictetusby her translation,—by setting, as Dr.Young elegantly phrased it, this Pagan jewelin gold. We find Mrs. Montagu writing to thiseffect, and expressing in round terms her senseof the philosopher’s obligation. “Might notsuch an honour from a fair hand make even anEpictetus proud, without being censured for it?Nor let Mrs. Carter’s amiable modesty becomeblameable by taking offence at the truth, butstand the shock of applause which she hasbrought upon her own head.”

It was very comforting to receive letters likethis, to be called upon to brace one’s self against[120]the shock of applause, instead of against thechilly douche of disparagement. Miss Carterretorted, as in duty bound, by imploring herfriend to employ her splendid abilities uponsome epoch-making work,—some work which,while it entertained the world, “would be applaudedby angels, and registered in Heaven.”Perhaps the uncertainty of angelic readersdaunted even Mrs. Montagu, for she never respondedto this and many similar appeals; butsuffered her literary reputation to rest secureon her defence of Shakespeare, and three paperscontributed to Lord Lyttelton’s “Dialogues ofthe Dead.” Why, indeed, should she have labouredfurther, when, to the end of her long andhonoured life, men spoke of her “transcendenttalents,” her “magnificent attainments”?Had she written a history of the world, shecould not have been more reverently praised.Lord Lyttelton, transported with pride at havingso distinguished a collaborator, wrote to herthat the French translation of the “Dialogues”was as well done as “the poverty of the Frenchtongue would permit”; and added unctuously,“but such eloquence as yours must lose by[121]being translated into any other language. Yourform and manner would seduce Apollo himselfon his throne of criticism on Parnassus.”

Lord Lyttelton was perhaps more remarkablefor amiability than for judgment; but SirNathaniel Wraxall, who wrote good letters himself,ardently admired Mrs. Montagu’s, andpronounced her “the Madame du Deffand ofthe English capital.” Cowper meekly admittedthat she stood at the head “of all that is calledlearned,” and that every critic “veiled his bonnetbefore her superior judgment.” Even Dr.Johnson, though he despised the “Dialogues,”and protested to the end of his life that Shakespearestood in no need of Mrs. Montagu’schampionship, acknowledged that the lady waswell informed and intelligent. “Conversingwith her,” he said, “you may find variety inone”; and this charming phrase stands now asthe most generous interpretation of her fame.It is something we can credit amid the bewilderingnonsense which was talked and writtenabout a woman whose hospitality dazzledsociety, and whose assertiveness dominated herfriends.

[122]There were other literary ladies belonging tothis charmed circle whose reputations restedon frailer foundations. Mrs. Montagu didwrite the essay on Shakespeare and the threedialogues. Miss Carter did translate Epictetus.Mrs. Chapone did write “Letters on theImprovement of the Mind,” which so gratifiedGeorge the Third and Queen Charlotte thatthey entreated her to compose a second volume;and she did dally a little with verse, for one ofher odes was prefixed—Heaven knows why!—toMiss Carter’s “Epictetus”; and thePrince of Wales, the Duke of York, even littlePrince William, were all familiar with thismasterpiece. There never was a lady morepopular with a reigning house, and, when wedip into her pages, we know the reason why.A firm insistence upon admitted truths, a lovingpresentation of the obvious, a generouschampionship of those sweet commonplaces weall deem dignified and safe, made her especiallypleasing to good King George and his consort.Even her letters are models of sapiency. “Tho’I meet with no absolutely perfect character,”she writes to Sir William Pepys, “yet where[123]I find a good disposition, improved by goodprinciples and virtuous habits, I feel a moralassurance that I shall not find any flagrantvices in the same person, and that I shall neversee him fall into any very criminal action.”

The breadth and tolerance of this admissionmust have startled her correspondent, seasonedthough he was to intellectual audacity. Norwas Mrs. Chapone lacking in the gentle art ofself-advancement; for, when about to publish avolume of “Miscellanies,” she requested SirWilliam to write an essay on “Affection andSimplicity,” or “Enthusiasm and Indifference,”and permit her to print it as her own.“If your ideas suit my way of thinking,” shetells him encouragingly, “I can cool themdown to my manner of writing, for we mustnot have a hotchpotch of Styles; and if, forany reason, I should not be able to make useof them, you will still have had the benefit ofhaving written them, and may peaceably possessyour own property.”

There are many ways of asking a favour; butto assume that you are granting the favourthat you ask shows spirit and invention. Had[124]Mrs. Chapone written nothing but this modelof all begging letters, she would be worthy totake high rank among the literary ladies ofGreat Britain.

It is more difficult to establish the claim ofMrs. Boscawen, who looms nebulously on thehorizon as the wife of an admiral, and thefriend of Miss Hannah More, from whom shereceived flowing compliments in the “BasBleu.”

We are told that this lady was “distinguishedby the strength of her understanding, thepoignancy of her humour, and the brilliancy ofher wit”; but there does not survive the mildestjoke, the smallest word of wisdom to illustratethese qualities. Then there was Mrs. Schimmelpenninck,whose name alone was a guaranteeof immortality; and the “sprightly and pleasingMrs. Ironmonger”; and Miss Lee, whocould repeat the whole of Miss Burney’s “Cecilia”(a shocking accomplishment); and thevivacious Miss Monckton, whom Johnson calleda dunce; and Miss Elizabeth Hamilton, a useful[125]person, “equally competent to form theminds and manners of the daughters of a nobleman,and to reform the simple but idlehabits of the peasantry”; and Mrs. Bennet,whose letters—so Miss Seward tells us—“breathedCiceronean spirit and eloquence,”and whose poems revealed “the terse neatness,humour, and gayety of Swift,” which makesit doubly distressful that neither letters norpoems have survived. Above all, there was themysterious “Sylph,” who glides—sylphlike—througha misty atmosphere of conjecture andadulation; and about whom we feel some of thefond solicitude expressed over and over againby the letter-writers of this engaging period.

Translated into prose, the Sylph becomesMrs. Agmondesham Vesey,—

a fatuous deaf lady, with a taste for literarysociety, and a talent for arranging chairs. Sheit was who first gathered the “Blues” together,placing them in little groups—generallyback to back—and flitting so rapidlyfrom one group to another, her ear-trumpethung around her neck, that she never heard[126]more than a few broken sentences of conversation.She had what Miss Hannah Moreamiably called “plastic genius,” which meantthat she fidgeted perpetually; and what MissCarter termed “a delightful spirit of innocentirregularity,” which meant that she was inconsequentto the danger point. “She united,” saidMadame d’Arblay, “the unguardedness of childhoodto a Hibernian bewilderment of ideaswhich cast her incessantly into some burlesquesituation.” But her kind-heartedness (she proposedhaving her drawing-room gravelled, sothat a lame friend could walk on it withoutslipping) made even her absurdities lovable,and her most fantastic behaviour was toleratedas proof of her aerial essence. “There is nothingof mere vulgar mortality about ourSylph,” wrote Miss Carter proudly.

It was in accordance with this pleasing illusionthat, when Mrs. Vesey took a sea voyage,her friends spoke of her as though she were amermaid, disporting herself in, instead of on,the ocean. They not only held “the uproar ofa stormy sea to be as well adapted to the sublimeof her imagination as the soft murmur of[127]a gliding stream to the gentleness of her temper”(so much might at a pinch be said aboutany of us); but we find Miss Carter writingto Mrs. Montagu in this perplexing strain:—

“I fancy our Sylph has not yet left thecoral groves and submarine palaces in whichshe would meet with so many of her fellownymphs on her way to England. I think if shehad landed, we should have had some informationabout it, either from herself or from somebodyelse who knows her consequence to us.”

The poor Sylph seems to have had rather ahard time of it after the death of the HonourableAgmondesham, who relished his wife’svagaries so little, or feared them so much, thathe left the bulk of his estate to his nephew, arespectable young man with no unearthly qualities.The heir, however, behaved generouslyto his widowed aunt, giving her an incomelarge enough to permit her to live with comfort,and to keep her coach. Miss Carter wasdecidedly of the opinion that Mr. Vesey madesuch a “detestable” will because he was lackingin sound religious principles, and she expressedin plain terms her displeasure with[128]her friend for mourning persistently over theloss of one who “so little deserved her tears.”But the Sylph, lonely, middle-aged, and deaf,realized perhaps that her little day was over.Mrs. Montagu’s profuse hospitality had supplanted“the biscuit’s ample sacrifice.” Peopleno longer cared to sit back to back, talkingplatitudes through long and hungry evenings.The “innocent irregularity” deepened intomelancholy, into madness; and the Sylph, apiteous mockery of her old sweet foolish self,faded away, dissolving like Niobe in tears.

It may be noted that the mission of theliterary lady throughout all these happy yearswas to elevate and refine. Her attitude towardsmatters of the intellect was one of obtrusivehumility. It is recorded that “an accomplishedand elegant female writer” (the name, alas!withheld) requested Sir William Pepys tomark all the passages in Madame de Staël’sworks which he considered “above her comprehension.”Sir William “with ready wit”declined this invidious task; but agreed tomark all he deemed “worthy of her attention.”We hardly know what to admire the most in[129]a story like this;—the lady’s modesty, SirWilliam’s tact, or the revelation it affords of infiniteleisure. When we remember the relentlesscopiousness of Madame de Staël’s books,we wonder if the amiable annotator lived longenough to finish his task.

In matters of morality, however, the femalepen was held to be a bulwark of Great Britain.The ambition to prove that—albeit a woman—onemay be on terms of literary intimacywith the seven deadly sins (“Je ne suis qu’unpauvre diable de perruquier, mais je ne croispas en Dieu plus que les autres”) had not yetdawned upon the feminine horizon. The literarylady accepted with enthusiasm the limitationsof her sex, and turned them to practicalaccount; she laid with them the foundations ofher fame. Mrs. Montagu, an astute woman ofthe world, recognized in what we should nowcall an enfeebling propriety her most valuableasset. It sanctified her attack upon Voltaire,it enabled her to snub Dr. Johnson, and itmade her, in the opinion of her friends, thenatural and worthy opponent of Lord Chesterfield.She was entreated to come to the rescue[130]of British morality by denouncing that nobleman’s“profligate” letters; and we find the Rev.Montagu Pennington lamenting years afterwardsher refusal “to apply her wit and geniusto counteract the mischief which Lord Chesterfield’svolumes had done.”

Miss Hannah More’s dazzling renown restedon the same solid support. She was so strongmorally that to have cavilled at her intellectualfeebleness would have been deemed profane.Her advice (she spent the best part of eighty-eightyears in offering it) was so estimable thatit* general inadequacy was never ascertained.Rich people begged her to advise the poor.Great people begged her to advise the humble.Satisfied people begged her to advise the discontented.Sir William Pepys wrote to her in1792, imploring her to avert from England thethreatened dangers of radicalism and a divisionof land by writing a dialogue “between twopersons of the lowest order,” in which shouldbe set forth the discomforts of land ownership,and the advantages of labouring for smallwages at trades. This simple and childlikescheme would, in Sir William’s opinion, go far[131]towards making English workmen contentedwith their lot, and might eventually save thecountry from the terrible bloodshed of France.Was ever higher tribute paid to sustained andtriumphant propriety? Look at Mary Wollstonecraftvindicating the rights of woman insordid poverty, in tears and shame; and lookat Hannah More, an object of pious pilgrimageat Cowslip Green. Her sisters were awestruckat finding themselves the guardians of such preëminence.Miss Seward eloquently addressedthem as

and, being the humblest sisters ever known,they seemed to have liked the appellation.They guarded their luminary from commoncontact with mankind; they spoke of her as“she” (like Mr. Rider Haggard’s heroine),and they explained to visitors how good andgreat she was, and what a condescension itwould be on her part to see them, when twopeeresses and a bishop had been turned awaythe day before. “It is an exquisite pleasure,”wrote Miss Carter enthusiastically, “to find[132]distinguished talents and sublime virtue placedin such an advantageous situation”; and themodern reader is reminded against his will ofthe lively old actress who sighed out to thepainter Mulready her unavailing regrets overa misspent life. “Ah, Mulready, if I had onlybeen virtuous, it would have been pounds andpounds in my pocket.”

“Harmonious virgins,” sneered Horace Walpole,“whose thoughts and phrases are like theirgowns, old remnants cut and turned”; and it ispainful to know that in these ribald words heis alluding to the Swan of Lichfield, and to the“glowing daughter of Apollo,” Miss HelenMaria Williams. The Swan probably neverdid have her gowns cut and turned, for shewas a well-to-do lady with an income of fourhundred pounds; and she lived very grandlyin the bishop’s palace at Lichfield, where herfather (“an angel, but an ass,” according toColeridge) had been for many years a canon.But Apollo having, after the fashion of gods,bequeathed nothing to his glowing daughterbut the gift of song, Miss Williams might occasionallyhave been glad of a gown to turn.[133]Her juvenile poem “Edwin and Eltruda” enrichedher in fame only; but “Peru,” beingpublished by subscription (blessed days whenfriends could be turned into subscribers!),must have been fairly remunerative; and wehear of its author in London giving “literarybreakfasts,” a popular but depressing form ofentertainment. If ever literature be “alien tothe natural man,” it is at the breakfast hour.Miss Williams subsequently went to Paris, andbecame an ardent revolutionist, greatly to thedistress of poor Miss Seward, whose enthusiasmfor the cause of freedom had suffered a decline,and who kept imploring her friend to comehome. “Fly, my dear Helen, that land of carnage!”she wrote beseechingly. But Helencouldn’t fly, being then imprisoned by the ungratefulrevolutionists, who seemed unable, orunwilling, to distinguish friends from foes. Shehad moreover by that time allied herself to Mr.John Hurford Stone, a gentleman of the strictestreligious views, but without moral prejudices,who abandoned his lawful wife for Apollo’soffspring, and who, as a consequence, preferredliving on the Continent. Therefore Miss[134]Williams fell forever from the bright circle ofliterary stars; and Lady Morgan, who met heryears afterwards in Paris, had nothing moreinteresting to record than that she had grown“immensely fat,”—an unpoetic and unworthything to do. “For when corpulence, which is agift of evil, cometh upon age, then are vanishedthe days of romance and of stirring deeds.”

Yet sentiment, if not romance, clung illusivelyto the literary lady, even when shesurrendered nothing to persuasion. Strangeshadowy stories of courtship are told with patheticsimplicity. Miss Carter, “when she hadnearly attained the mature age of thirty,” waswooed by a nameless gentleman of unexceptionablecharacter, whom “she was inducedeventually to refuse, in consequence of hishaving written some verses, of the nature ofwhich she disapproved.” Whether these verseswere improper (perish the thought!) or merelyill-advised, we shall never know; but as the rejectedsuitor “expressed ever after a strong senseof Miss Carter’s handsome behaviour to him,”there seems to have been on his part somethingperilously akin to acquiescence. “I wonder,”[135]says the wise Elizabeth Bennet, “who first discoveredthe efficacy of poetry in driving awaylove.” It is a pleasure to turn from such uncertaintiesto the firm outlines and providentialissues of Miss Hannah More’s early attachment.When the wealthy Mr. Turner, who hadwooed and won the lady, manifested an unworthyreluctance to marry her, she consentedto receive, in lieu of his heart and hand, an incomeof two hundred pounds a year, whichenabled her to give up teaching, and commenceauthor at the age of twenty-two. Thewedding day had been fixed, the wedding dresswas made, but the wedding bells were neverrung, and the couple—like the lovers in thestory-books—lived happily ever after. The onlymeasure of retaliation which Miss More permittedherself was to send Mr. Turner a copyof every book and of every tract she wrote;while that gentleman was often heard to say,when the tracts came thick and fast, that Providencehad overruled his desire to make so admirablea lady his wife, because she was destinedfor higher things.

It was reserved for the Lichfield Swan to[136]work the miracle of miracles, and rob love ofinconstancy. She was but eighteen when sheinspired a passion “as fervent as it was lasting”in the breast of Colonel Taylor, mentionedby discreet biographers as Colonel T.The young man being without income, Mr.Seward, who was not altogether an ass, declinedthe alliance; and when, four years later,a timely inheritance permitted a renewal of thesuit, Miss Seward had wearied of her lover.Colonel Taylor accordingly married anotheryoung woman; but the remembrance of theSwan, and an unfortunate habit he had acquiredof openly bewailing her loss, “cloudedwith gloom the first years of their marriedlife.” The patient Mrs. Taylor became in timeso deeply interested in the object of her husband’sdevotion that she opened a correspondencewith Miss Seward,—who was the championletter-writer of England,—repeatedlysought to make her acquaintance, and “withmelancholy enthusiasm was induced to investher with all the charms imagination could devise,or which had been lavished upon her bydescription.”

[137]This state of affairs lasted thirty years, atthe end of which time Colonel Taylor formedthe desperate resolution of going to Lichfield,and seeing his beloved one again. He went,he handed the parlour-maid a prosaic card; andwhile Miss Seward—a stoutish, middle-aged,lame lady—was adjusting her cap and kerchief,he strode into the hall, cast one impassionedglance up the stairway, and rapidly leftthe house. When asked by his wife why hehad not stayed, he answered solemnly: “Thegratification must have been followed by painand regret that would have punished the temerityof the attempt. I had no sooner enteredthe house than I became sensible of the perilousstate of my feelings, and fled with precipitation.”

And the Swan was fifty-two! Well may wesigh over the days when the Literary Ladynot only was petted and praised, not only wasthe bulwark of Church and State; but whenshe accomplished the impossible, and kindledin man’s inconstant heart an inextinguishableflame.

I was not initiated into any rudiments ’till near four yearsof age.—John Evelyn.

The courage of mothers is proverbial. Thereis no danger which they will not brave in behalfof their offspring. But I have alwaysthought that, for sheer foolhardiness, no oneever approached the English lady who askedDr. Johnson to read her young daughter’stranslation from Horace. He did read it, becausethe gods provided no escape; and he toldhis experience to Miss Reynolds, who saidsoothingly, “And how was it, Sir?” “Why,very well for a young Miss’s verses,” was thecontemptuous reply. “That is to say, as comparedwith excellence, nothing; but very wellfor the person who wrote them. I am vexed atbeing shown verses in that manner.”

The fashion of focussing attention uponchildren had not in Dr. Johnson’s day assumedthe fell proportions which, a few years later,practically extinguished childhood. It is truethat he objected to Mr. Bennet Langton’s connubial[139]felicity, because the children were “toomuch about”; and that he betrayed an unworthyimpatience when the ten little Langtonsrecited fables, or said their alphabets in Hebrewfor his delectation. It is true also that he answeredwith pardonable rudeness when askedwhat was the best way to begin a little boy’seducation. He said it mattered no more howit was begun, that is, what the child wastaught first, than it mattered which of his littlelegs he first thrust into his breeches,—a callousspeech, painful to parents’ ears. Dr.Johnson had been dead four years when Mrs.Hartley, daughter of Dr. David Hartley ofBath, wrote to Sir William Pepys:—

“Education is the rage of the times. Everybodytries to make their children more wonderfulthan any children of their acquaintance.The poor little things are so crammed withknowledge that there is scant time for them toobtain by exercise, and play, and vacancy ofmind, that strength of body which is muchmore necessary in childhood than learning.”

I am glad this letter went to Sir William,who was himself determined that his children[140]should not, at any rate, be less wonderful thanother people’s bantlings. When his eldest sonhad reached the mature age of six, we find himwriting to Miss Hannah More and Mrs. Chapone,asking what books he shall give the poorinfant to read, and explaining to these augustladies his own theories of education. Mrs.Chapone, with an enthusiasm worthy of Mrs.Blimber, replies that she sympathizes with therare delight it must be to him to teach littleWilliam Latin; and that she feels jealous forthe younger children, who, being yet in thenursery, are denied their brother’s privileges.When the boy is ten, Sir William reads to him“The Faerie Queene,” and finds that he grasps“the beauty of the description and the forceof the allegory.” At eleven he has “an animatedrelish for Ovid and Virgil.” And themore the happy father has to tell about theprecocity of his child, the more Mrs. Chaponestimulates and confounds him with tales ofother children’s prowess. When she hears thatthe “sweet Boy” is to be introduced, at five,to the English classics, she writes at once abouta little girl, who, when “rather younger than[141]he is” (the bitterness of that!), “had severalparts of Milton by heart.” These “she understoodso well as to apply to her Mother thespeech of the Elder Brother in ‘Comus,’ whenshe saw her uneasy for want of a letter fromthe Dean; and began of her own accord with

advice which would have exasperated a normalparent to the boxing point.

There were few normal parents left, however,at this period, to stem the tide of infantileprecocity. Child-study was dawning as a newand fascinating pursuit upon the English world;and the babes of Britain responded nobly tothe demands made upon their incapacity. MissAnna Seward lisped Milton at three, “recitedpoetical passages, with eyes brimming with delight,”at five, and versified her favourite psalmsat nine. Her father, who viewed these alarmingsymptoms with delight, was so ill-advised as tooffer her, when she was ten, a whole half-crown,if she would write a poem on Spring; whereuponshe “swiftly penned” twenty-five lines, whichhave been preserved to an ungrateful world,[142]and which shadow forth the painful prolixity offuture days. At four years of age, little HannahMore was already composing verses with ominousease. At five, she “struck mute” therespected clergyman of the parish by her exhaustiveknowledge of the catechism. At eight,we are told her talents “were of such a manifestlysuperior order that her father did notscruple to combine with the study of Latinsome elementary instruction in mathematics;a fact which her readers might very naturallyinfer from the clear and logical cast of herargumentative writings.”

It is not altogether easy to trace the connectionbetween Miss More’s early sums and herargumentative writings; but, as an illustrationof her logical mind, I may venture to quote a“characteristic” anecdote, reverently told byher biographer, Mr. Thompson. A young lady,whose sketches showed an unusual degree oftalent, was visiting in Bristol; and her workwas warmly admired by Miss Mary, Miss Sally,Miss Elizabeth, and Miss Patty More. Hannahalone withheld all word of commendation, sittingin stony silence whenever the drawings[143]were produced; until one day she found theartist hard at work, putting a new binding ona petticoat. Then, “fixing her brilliant eyeswith an expression of entire approbation uponthe girl, she said: ‘Now, my dear, that I find youcan employ yourself usefully, I will no longerforbear to express my admiration of your drawings.’”

Only an early familiarity with the multiplicationtable could have made so ruthless alogician.

If Dr. Johnson, being childless, found otherpeople’s children in his way, how fared thebachelors and spinsters who, as time went on,were confronted by a host of infant prodigies;who heard little Anna Letitia Aikin—afterwardsMrs. Barbauld—read “as well as mostwomen” at two and a half years of age; andlittle Anna Maria Porter declaim Shakespeare“with precision of emphasis and firmness ofvoice” at five; and little Alphonso Hayley recitea Greek ode at six. We wonder if anybodyever went twice to homes that harboured childhood;and we sympathize with Miss Ferrier’sbitterness of soul, when she describes a family[144]dinner at which Eliza’s sampler and Alexander’scopy-book are handed round to theguests, and Anthony stands up and repeats“My name is Norval” from beginning to end,and William Pitt is prevailed upon to sing thewhole of “God save the King.” It was also apleasant fashion of the time to write eulogieson one’s kith and kin. Sisters celebrated theirbrothers’ talents in affectionate verse, and fathersconfided to the world what marvellouschildren they had. Even Dr. Burney, a manof sense, poetizes thus on his daughter Susan:—

This was fortunate for Susan, as most youngpeople of the period were compelled to labourhard. There was a ghastly pretence on the partof parents that children loved their tasks, andthat to keep them employed was to keep themhappy. Sir William Pepys persuaded himselfwithout much difficulty that little William, whohad weak eyes and nervous headaches, relishedOvid and Virgil. A wonderful and terrible[145]letter written in 1786 by the Baroness de Bode,an Englishwoman married to a German andliving at Deux-Ponts, lays bare the process bywhich ordinary children were converted intothe required miracles of precocity. Her eldestboys, aged eight and nine, appear to have beenthe principal victims. The business of theirtutor was to see that they were “fully employed,”and this is an account of their day.

“In their walks he [the tutor] teaches themnatural history and botany, not dryly as a task,but practically, which amuses them very much.In their hours of study come drawing, writing,reading, and summing. Their lesson in writingconsists of a theme which they are to translateinto three languages, and sometimes intoLatin, for they learn that a little also. Theboys learn Latin as a recreation, and not as atask, as is the custom in England. Perhaps oneor two hours a day is at most all that is givento that study. ’Tis certainly not so dry a study,when learnt like modern languages. We havebought them the whole of the Classical Authors,so that they can instruct themselves if theywill; between ninety and a hundred volumes[146]in large octavo. You would be surprised,—evenCharles Auguste, who is only five, readsGerman well, and French tolerably. They allwrite very good hands, both in Roman andGerman texts. Clem and Harry shall write youa letter in English, and send you a specimenof their drawing. Harry (the second) writesmusick, too. He is a charming boy, improvesvery much in all his studies, plays very prettilyindeed upon the harpsichord, and plays, too, alltunes by ear. Clem will, I think, play well on theviolin; but ’tis more difficult in the beginningthan the harpsichord. He is at this momenttaking his lesson, the master accompanying himon the pianoforte; and when Henry plays that,the master accompanies on the violin, whichforms them both, and pleases them at the sametime. In the evening their tutor generally recountsto them very minutely some anecdotefrom history, which imprints it on the memory,amuses them, and hurts no eyes.”

There is nothing like it on record except therule of life which Frederick William the Firstdrew up for little Prince Fritz, when that unfortunatechild was nine years old, and which[147]disposed of his day, hour by hour, and minuteby minute. But then Frederick William—atruth-teller if a tyrant—made no idle pretenceof pleasing and amusing his son. The unpardonablething about the Baroness de Bode is hersmiling assurance that one or two hours ofLatin a day afforded a pleasant pastime forchildren of eight and nine.

This was, however, the accepted theory ofeducation. It is faithfully reflected in all theletters and literature of the time. When MissMore’s redoubtable “Cœlebs” asks LucillaStanley’s little sister why she is crowned withwoodbine, the child replies: “Oh, sir, it is becauseit is my birthday. I am eight years oldto-day. I gave up all my gilt books with picturesthis day twelvemonth; and to-day I giveup all my story-books, and I am now goingto read such books as men and women read.”Whereupon the little girl’s father—that modelfather whose wisdom flowers into many chaptersof counsel—explains that he makes therenouncing of baby books a kind of epoch inhis daughters’ lives; and that by thus distinctlymarking the period, he wards off any return to[148]the immature pleasures of childhood. “We havein our domestic plan several of these artificialdivisions of life. These little celebrations areeras that we use as marking-posts from whichwe set out on some new course.”

Yet the “gilt books,” so ruthlessly discardedat eight years of age, were not all of an infantilecharacter. For half a century these famouslittle volumes, bound in Dutch gilt paper—whencetheir name—found their way intoevery English nursery, and provided amusem*ntand instruction for every English child.They varied from the “histories” of GoodyTwo-Shoes and Miss Sally Spellwell to the“histories” of Tom Jones and Clarissa Harlowe,“abridged for the amusem*nt of youth”;and from “The Seven Champions of Christendom”to “The First Principles of Religion,and the Existence of a Deity; Explained in aSeries of Conversations, Adapted to the Capacityof the Infant Mind.” The capacity of theinfant mind at the close of the eighteenth centurymust have been something very differentfrom the capacity of the infant mind to-day.In a gilt-book dialogue (1792) I find a father[149]asking his tiny son: “Dick, have you got tenlines of Ovid by heart?”

“Yes, Papa, and I’ve wrote my exercise.”

“Very well, then, you shall ride with me.The boy who does a little at seven years old,will do a great deal when he is fourteen.”

This was poor encouragement for Dick, whohad already tasted the sweets of application. Itwas better worth while for Miss Sally Spellwellto reach the perfection which her nameimplies, for she was adopted by a rich old ladywith a marriageable son,—“a young Gentlemanof such purity of Morals and good Understandingas is not everywhere to be found.” Inthe breast of this paragon “strange emotionsarise” at sight of the well-informed orphan;his mother, who sets a proper value on orthography,gives her full consent to their union;and we are swept from the contemplation ofsamplers and hornbooks to the triumphant conclusion:“Miss Sally Spellwell now rides in hercoach and six.” Then follows the unmistakablemoral:—

[150]an anticipation which must have spurred manya female child to diligence. There was no ill-advisedquestioning of values in our great-grandmothers’day to disturb this point of view.As the excellent Mrs. West observed in her“Letters to a young Lady,” a book sanctionedby bishops, and dedicated to the Queen: “Weunquestionably were created to be the weddedmates of man. Nature intended that manshould sue, and woman coyly yield.”

The most appalling thing about the precociousyoung people of this period was the easewith which they slipped into print. Publisherswere not then the adamantine race whose provinceit is now to blight the hopes of youth.They beamed with benevolence when the firstfruits of genius were confided to their hands.Bishop Thirlwall’s first fruits, his “Primitiæ,”were published when he was eleven years old,with a preface telling the public what a wonderfulboy little Connop was;—how he studiedLatin at three, and read Greek with ease andfluency at four, and wrote with distinction atseven. It is true that the parent Thirlwall appearsto have paid the costs, to have launched[151]his son’s “slender bark” upon seas whichproved to be stormless. It is true also that thebishop suffered acutely in later years from thisyouthful production, and destroyed every copyhe could find. But there was no proud andwealthy father to back young Richard Polwhele,who managed, when he was a schoolboyin Cornwall, to get his first volume of versepublished anonymously. It was called “TheFate of Llewellyn,” and was consistently bad,though no worse, on the whole, than his maturerefforts. The title-page stated modestlythat the writer was “a young gentleman ofTruro School”; whereupon an ill-disposedcritic in the “Monthly Review” intimated thatthe master of Truro School would do well tokeep his young gentlemen out of print. Dr.Cardew, the said master, retorted hotly thatthe book had been published without his knowledge,and evinced a lack of appreciation, whichmakes us fear that his talented pupil had a badhalf-hour at his hands.

Miss Anna Maria Porter—she who delighted“critical audiences” by reciting Shakespeareat five—published her “Artless Tales”[152]at fifteen; and Mrs. Hemans was younger stillwhen her “Blossoms of Spring” bloomedsweetly upon English soil. Some of the “Blossoms”had been written before she was ten.The volume was a “fashionable quarto,” wasdedicated to that hardy annual, the PrinceRegent, and appears to have been read byadults. It is recorded that an unkind noticesent the little girl crying to bed; but as her“England and Spain; or Valour and Patriotism”was published nine months later, andas at eighteen she “beamed forth with astrength and brilliancy that must have shamedher reviewer,” we cannot feel that her poeticdevelopment was very seriously retarded.

And what of the marvellous children whosesubsequent histories have been lost to theworld? What of the two young prodigies ofLichfield, “Aonian flowers of early beauty andintelligence,” who startled Miss Seward andher friends by their “shining poetic talents,”and then lapsed into restful obscurity? Whatof the wonderful little girl (ten years old)whom Miss Burney saw at Tunbridge Wells;who sang “like an angel,” conversed like “an[153]informed, cultivated, and sagacious woman,”played, danced, acted with all the grace of acomédienne, wept tears of emotion withoutdisfiguring her pretty face, and, when askedif she read the novels of the day (what a question!),replied with a sigh: “But too often!I wish I did not.” Miss Burney and Mrs.Thrale were so impressed—as well they mightbe—by this little Selina Birch, that theyspeculated long and fondly upon the destinyreserved for one who so easily eclipsed theother miraculous children of this highlymiraculous age.

“Doubtful as it is whether we shall ever seethe sweet Syren again,” writes Miss Burney,“nothing, as Mrs. Thrale said to her” (this,too, was well advised), “can be more certainthan that we shall hear of her again, let her gowhither she will. Charmed as we all were, weagreed that to have the care of her would bedistraction. ‘She seems the girl in the world,’Mrs. Thrale wisely said, ‘to attain the highestreach of human perfection as a man’s mistress.As such she would be a second Cleopatra, andhave the world at her command.’

[154]“Poor thing! I hope to Heaven she willescape such sovereignty and such honours!”

She did escape scot-free. Whoever married—letus hope he married—Miss Birch, wasno Mark Antony to draw fame to her feet.His very name is unknown to the world. Perhaps,as “Mrs.—Something—Rogers,” sheillustrated in her respectable middle age thatbeneficent process by which Nature frustratesthe educator, and converts the infant Cleopatraor the infant Hypatia into the rotund matron,of whom she stands permanently in need.

The Schoolmaster is abroad.—Lord Brougham.

It is recorded that Boswell once said to Dr.Johnson, “If you had had children, would youhave taught them anything?” and that Dr.Johnson, out of the fulness of his wisdom, madereply: “I hope that I should have willinglylived on bread and water to obtain instructionfor them; but I would not have set theirfuture friendship to hazard for the sake ofthrusting into their heads knowledge of thingsfor which they might have neither taste nornecessity. You teach your daughters the diametersof the planets, and wonder, when youhave done it, that they do not delight in yourcompany.”

It is the irony of circ*mstance that Dr.Johnson and Charles Lamb should have beenchildless, for they were the two eminent Englishmenwho, for the best part of a century,respected the independence of childhood. Theywere the two eminent Englishmen who could[156]have been trusted to let their children alone.Lamb was nine years old when Dr. Johnsondied. He was twenty-seven when he hurled hisimpotent anathemas at the heads of “the cursedBarbauld crew,” “blights and blasts of all thatis human in man and child.” By that time theeducator’s hand lay heavy on schoolroom andnursery. In France, Rousseau and Mme. deGenlis had succeeded in interesting parents soprofoundly in their children that French babiesled a vie de parade. Their toilets and theirmeals were as open to the public as were thetoilets and the meals of royalty. Their bassinettesappeared in salons, and in private boxesat the playhouse; and it was an inspiring sightto behold a French mother fulfilling her sacredoffice while she enjoyed the spectacle on thestage. In England, the Edgeworths and Mr.Day had projected a system of education whichisolated children from common currents of life,placed them at variance with the acceptedusages of society, and denied them that wholesomeneglect which is an important factor inself-development. The Edgeworthian child becamethe pivot of the household, which revolved[157]warily around him, instructing him wheneverit had the ghost of a chance, and guarding himfrom the four winds of heaven. He was notpermitted to remain ignorant upon any subject,however remote from his requirements; but allinformation came filtered through the parentalmind, so that the one thing he never knew wasthe world of childish beliefs and happenings.Intercourse with servants was prohibited; andit is pleasant to record that Miss Edgeworthfound even Mrs. Barbauld a dangerous guide,because little Charles of the “Early Lessons”asks his nurse to dress him in the mornings.Such a personal appeal, showing that Charleswas on speaking terms with the domestics, wassomething which, in Miss Edgeworth’s opinion,no child should ever read; and she praises thesolicitude of a mother who blotted out this, andall similar passages, before confiding the bookto her infant son. He might—who knows?—havebeen so far corrupted as to ask his ownnurse to button him up the next day.

Another parent, still more highly commended,found something to erase in all her children’sbooks; and Miss Edgeworth describes with[158]grave complacency this pathetic little library,scored, blotted, and mutilated, before beingplaced on the nursery shelves. The volumeswere, she admits, hopelessly disfigured; “butshall the education of a family be sacrificed tothe beauty of a page? Few books can safelybe given to children without the previous useof the pen, the pencil, and the scissors. These,in their corrected state, have sometimes a fewwords erased, sometimes half a page. Sometimesmany pages are cut out.”

Even now one feels a pang of pity for thelittle children who, more than a hundred yearsago, were stopped midway in a story by theabsence of half a dozen pages. Even now onewonders how much furtive curiosity was awakenedby this process of elimination. To hoverperpetually on the brink of the concealed andthe forbidden does not seem a wholesome situation;and a careful perusal of that condemnedclassic, “Bluebeard,” might have awakenedthis excellent mother to the risks she ran.There can be no heavier handicap to any childthan a superhumanly wise and watchful custodian,whether the custody be parental, or[159]relegated to some phœnix of a tutor like Mr.Barlow, or that co*ck-sure experimentalist whom*ounts guard over “Émile,” teaching him withelaborate artifice the simplest things of life.We know how Tommy Merton fell from gracewhen separated from Mr. Barlow; but whatwould have become of Émile if “Jean Jacques”had providentially broken his neck? Whatwould have become of little Caroline and Maryin Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Original Stories,”if Mrs. Mason—who is Mr. Barlow in petticoats—hadceased for a short time “regulatingthe affections and forming the minds” ofher helpless charges? All these young peopleare so scrutinized, directed, and controlled,that their personal responsibility has beenminimized to the danger point. In the nameof nature, in the name of democracy, in thename of morality, they are pushed aside fromthe blessed fellowship of childhood, and fromthe beaten paths of life.

That Mary Wollstonecraft should have writtenthe most priggish little book of her day isone of those pleasant ironies which relieves thetenseness of our pity for her fate. Its publication[160]is the only incident of her life whichpermits the shadow of a smile; and evenhere our amusem*nt is tempered by sympathyfor the poor innocents who were compelledto read the “Original Stories,” and to whomeven Blake’s charming illustrations must havebrought scant relief. The plan of the work isone common to most juvenile fiction of theperiod. Caroline and Mary, being motherless,are placed under the care of Mrs. Mason, alady of obtrusive wisdom and goodness, whoshadows their infant lives, moralizes over everyinsignificant episode, and praises herself withhonest assiduity. If Caroline is afraid of thunderstorms,Mrs. Mason explains that she fearsno tempest, because “a mind is never trulygreat until the love of virtue overcomes thefear of death.” If Mary behaves rudely to avisitor, Mrs. Mason contrasts her pupil’s conductwith her own. “I have accustomed myselfto think of others, and what they willsuffer on all occasions,” she observes; “andthis loathness to offend, or even to hurt thefeelings of another, is an instantaneous springwhich actuates my conduct, and makes me[161]kindly affected to everything that breathes....Perhaps the greatest pleasure I have everreceived has arisen from the habitual exerciseof charity in its various branches.”

The stories with which this monitress illustratesher precepts are drawn from the edifyingannals of the neighbourhood, which is richin examples of vice and virtue. On the onehand we have the pious Mrs. Trueman, thecurate’s wife, who lives in a rose-covered cottage,furnished with books and musical instruments;and on the other, we have “the profligateLord Sly,” and Miss Jane Fretful, whobegins by kicking the furniture when she is ina temper, and ends by alienating all her friends(including her doctor), and dying unloved andunlamented. How far her mother should beheld responsible for this excess of peevishness,when she rashly married a gentleman namedFretful, is not made clear; but all the charactersin the book live nobly, or ignobly, upto their patronymics. When Mary neglects towash her face—apparently that was all sheever washed—or brush her teeth in the mornings,Mrs. Mason for some time only hints her[162]displeasure, “not wishing to burden her withprecepts”; and waits for a “glaring example”to show the little girl the unloveliness of permanentdirt. This example is soon affordedby Mrs. Dowdy, who comes opportunely tovisit them, and whose reluctance to performeven the simple ablutions common to the periodis as resolute as Slovenly Peter’s.

In the matter of tuition, Mrs. Mason iscomparatively lenient. Caroline and Mary,though warned that “idleness must always beintolerable, because it is only an irksome consciousnessof existence” (words which happilyhave no meaning for childhood), are, on thewhole, less saturated with knowledge thanMiss Edgeworth’s Harry and Lucy; andHarry and Lucy lead rollicking lives by contrastwith “Edwin and Henry,” or “Annaand Louisa,” or any other little pair of heroesand heroines. Edwin and Henry are particularlyill used, for they are supposed to be enjoyinga holiday with their father, “the worthyMr. Friendly,” who makes “every domesticincident, the vegetable world, sickness anddeath, a real source of instruction to his beloved[163]offspring.” How glad those boys musthave been to get back to school! Yet theycourt disaster by asking so many questions.All the children in our great-grandmothers’story-books ask questions. All lay themselvesopen to attack. If they drink a cup of chocolate,they want to know what it is made of,and where cocoanuts grow. If they have a puddingfor dinner, they are far more eager tolearn about sago and the East Indies than toeat it. They put intelligent queries concerningthe slave-trade, and make remarks that mightbe quoted in Parliament; yet they are as ignorantof the common things of life as thoughnew-born into the world. In a book called“Summer Rambles, or Conversations Instructiveand Amusing, for the Use of Children,”published in 1801, a little girl says to hermother: “Vegetables? I do not know whatthey are. Will you tell me?” And the mothergraciously responds: “Yes, with a great dealof pleasure. Peas, beans, potatoes, carrots, turnips,and cabbages are vegetables.”

At least the good lady’s information wascorrect as far as it went, which was not always[164]the case. The talented governess in “LittleTruths” warns her pupils not to swallowyoung frogs out of bravado, lest perchancethey should mistake and swallow a toad, whichwould poison them; and in a “History ofBirds and Beasts,” intended for very youngchildren, we find, underneath a woodcut of aporcupine, this unwarranted and irrelevant assertion:—

It was thus that natural history was taught inthe year 1767.

The publication in 1798 of Mr. Edgeworth’s“Practical Education” (Miss Edgeworth wasresponsible for some of the chapters) gave aprofound impetus to child-study. Little boysand girls were dragged from the obscure havenof the nursery, from their hornbooks, and thecasual slappings of nursery-maids, to be taughtand tested in the light of day. The process appearsto have been deeply engrossing. Irregularinstruction, object lessons, and experimental[165]play afforded scant respite to parent or to child.“Square and circular bits of wood, balls, cubes,and triangles” were Mr. Edgeworth’s firstsubstitutes for toys; to be followed by “card,pasteboard, substantial but not sharp-pointedscissors, wire, gum, and wax.” It took anactive mother to superintend this home kindergarten,to see that the baby did not poke thetriangle into its eye, and to relieve Tommy atintervals from his coating of gum and wax.When we read further that “children are veryfond of attempting experiments in dyeing, andare very curious about vegetable dyes,” wegain a fearful insight into parental pleasuresand responsibilities a hundred years ago.

Text-book knowledge was frowned upon bythe Edgeworths. We know how the “goodFrench governess” laughs at her clever pupilwho has studied the “Tablet of Memory,” andwho can say when potatoes were first broughtinto England, and when hair powder was firstused, and when the first white paper was made.The new theory of education banished the“Tablet of Memory,” and made it incumbentupon parent or teacher to impart in conversation[166]such facts concerning potatoes, powder,and paper as she desired her pupils to know.If books were used, they were of the deceptiveorder, which purposed to be friendly and entertaining.A London bookseller actually proposedto Godwin “a delightful work forchildren,” which was to be called “A Tourthrough Papa’s House.” The object of thisprecious volume was to explain casually howand where Papa’s furniture was made, his carpetswere woven, his curtains dyed, his kitchenpots and pans called into existence. Even Godwin,who was not a bubbling fountain of humour,saw the absurdity of such a book; andrecommended in its place “Robinson Crusoe,”“if weeded of its Methodism” (alas! poorRobinson!), “The Seven Champions of Christendom,”and “The Arabian Nights.”

The one great obstacle in the educator’spath (it has not yet been wholly levelled) wasthe proper apportioning of knowledge betweenboys and girls. It was hard to speed the malechild up the stony heights of erudition; but itwas harder still to check the female child atthe crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously[167]behind her brother. In 1774 a few rashinnovators conceived the project of an advancedschool for girls; one that should approach fromafar a college standard, and teach with thoroughnesswhat it taught at all; one that mightbe trusted to broaden the intelligence ofwomen, without lessening their much-prizedfemininity. It was even proposed that Mrs.Barbauld, who was esteemed a very learnedlady, should take charge of such an establishment;but the plan met with no approbationat her hands. In the first place she held thatfifteen was not an age for school-life and study,because then “the empire of the passions iscoming on”; and in the second place there wasnothing she so strongly discountenanced asthoroughness in a girl’s education. On thispoint she had no doubts, and no reserves.“Young ladies,” she wrote, “ought to haveonly such a general tincture of knowledge asto make them agreeable companions to a manof sense, and to enable them to find rationalentertainment for a solitary hour. They shouldgain these accomplishments in a quiet and unobservedmanner. The thefts of knowledge in[168]our sex are connived at, only while carefullyconcealed; and, if displayed, are punished withdisgrace. The best way for women to acquireknowledge is from conversation with a father,a brother, or a friend; and by such a course ofreading as they may recommend.”

There was no danger that an education conductedon these lines would result in an unduedevelopment of intelligence, would lift theyoung lady above “her own mild and chastenedsphere.” In justice to Mrs. Barbauld wemust admit that she but echoed the sentimentsof her day. “Girls,” said Miss Hannah More,“should be led to distrust their own judgments.”They should be taught to give up theiropinions, and to avoid disputes, “even if theyknow they are right.” The one fact impressedupon the female child was her secondary placein the scheme of creation; the one virtue shewas taught to affect was delicacy; the one vicepermitted to her weakness was dissimulation.Even her play was not like her brother’s play,—areckless abandonment to high spirits; itwas play within the conscious limits of propriety.In one of Mrs. Trimmer’s books, a[169]model mother hesitates to allow her eleven-year-olddaughter to climb three rounds of aladder, and look into a robin’s nest, four feetfrom the ground. It was not a genteel thingfor a little girl to do. Even her schoolbookswere not like her brother’s schoolbooks. Theywere carefully adapted to her limitations. Mr.Thomas Gisborne, who wrote a much-admiredwork entitled “An Enquiry into the Duties ofthe Female Sex,” was of the opinion that geographymight be taught to girls without reserve;but that they should learn only “selectparts” of natural history, and, in the way ofscience, only a few “popular and amusingfacts.” A “Young Lady’s Guide to Astronomy”was something vastly different from thecomprehensive system imparted to her brother.

In a very able and subtle little book called“A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters,” by Dr.John Gregory of Edinburgh,—

—we find much earnest counsel on this subject.Dr. Gregory was an affectionate parent. He[170]grudged his daughters no material and no intellectualadvantage; but he was well awarethat by too great liberality he imperilled theirworldly prospects. Therefore, although he desiredthem to be well read and well informed,he bade them never to betray their knowledgeto the world. Therefore, although he desiredthem to be strong and vigorous,—to walk, toride, to live much in the open air,—he badethem never to make a boast of their endurance.Rude health, no less than scholarship,was the exclusive prerogative of men. Hisdeliberate purpose was to make them rationalcreatures, taking clear and temperate views oflife; but he warned them all the more earnestlyagainst the dangerous indulgence ofseeming wiser than their neighbours. “Beeven cautious in displaying your good sense,”writes this astute and anxious father. “It willbe thought you assume a superiority over therest of your company. But if you happen tohave any learning, keep it a profound secret,especially from men, who are apt to look witha jealous and malignant eye on a woman ofgreat parts and cultivated understanding.”

[171]This is plain speaking. And it must be rememberedthat “learning” was not in 1774,nor for many years afterwards, the comprehensiveword it is to-day. A young lady whocould translate a page of Cicero was held tobe learned to the point of pedantry. Whatreader of “Cœlebs”—if “Cœlebs” still boastsa reader—can forget that agitating momentwhen, through the inadvertence of a child, itis revealed to the breakfast table that LucillaStanley studies Latin every morning with herfather. Overpowered by the intelligence, Cœlebscasts “a timid eye” upon his mistress, who iscovered with confusion. She puts the sugarinto the cream jug, and the tea into the sugarbasin; and finally, unable to bear the mingledawe and admiration awakened by this disclosureof her scholarship, she slips out of theroom, followed by her younger sister, and commiseratedby her father, who knows what ashock her native delicacy has received. Hadthe fair Lucilla admitted herself to be an experttight-rope dancer, she could hardly havecreated more consternation.

No wonder Dr. Gregory counselled his daughters[172]to silence. Lovers less generous thanCœlebs might well have been alienated by suchdisqualifications. “Oh, how lovely is a maid’signorance!” sighs Rousseau, contemplatingwith rapture the many things that Sophie doesnot know. “Happy the man who is destinedto teach her. She will never aspire to be thetutor of her husband, but will be content toremain his pupil. She will not endeavour tomould his tastes, but will relinquish her own.She will be more estimable to him than if shewere learned. It will be his pleasure to enlightenher.”

This was a well-established point of view,and English Sophies were trained to meet itwith becoming deference. They heard no idleprating about an equality which has neverexisted, and which never can exist. “Had athird order been necessary,” said an eighteenth-centuryschoolmistress to her pupils, “doubtlessone would have been created, a midwaykind of being.” In default of such a connectinglink, any impious attempt to bridge thechasm between the sexes met with the failureit deserved. When Mrs. Knowles, a Quaker[173]lady, not destitute of self-esteem, observed toBoswell that she hoped men and women wouldbe equal in another world, that gentleman repliedwith spirit: “Madam, you are too ambitious.We might as well desire to be equalwith the angels.”

The dissimulation which Dr. Gregory urgedupon his daughters, and which is the safeguardof all misplaced intelligence, extended tomatters more vital than Latin and astronomy.He warned them, as they valued their earthlyhappiness, never to make a confidante of amarried woman, “especially if she lives happilywith her husband”; and never to reveal totheir own husbands the excess of their wifelyaffection. “Do not discover to any man thefull extent of your love, no, not although youmarry him. That sufficiently shows your preference,which is all he is entitled to know. Ifhe has delicacy, he will ask for no strongerproof of your affection, for your sake; if hehas sense, he will not ask it, for his own. Violentlove cannot subsist, at least cannot beexpressed, for any time together on both sides.Nature in this case has laid the reserve on[174]you.” In the passivity of women, no less thanin their refined duplicity, did this acute observerrecognize the secret strength of sex.

A vastly different counsellor of youth wasMrs. West, who wrote a volume of “Lettersto a Young Lady” (the young lady was MissMaunsell, and she died after reading them),which were held to embody the soundest moralityof the day. Mrs. West is as dull as Dr.Gregory is penetrating, as verbose as he islaconic, as obvious as he is individual. Shedevotes many agitated pages to theology, andmany more to irrefutable, though one hopesunnecessary, arguments in behalf of femalevirtue. But she also advises a careful submission,a belittling insincerity, as woman’s bestsafeguards in life. It is not only a wife’s dutyto tolerate her husband’s follies, but it is thepart of wisdom to conceal from him any knowledgeof his derelictions. Bad he may be; butit is necessary to his comfort to believe thathis wife thinks him good. “The lordly natureof man so strongly revolts from the suspicionof inferiority,” explains this excellent monitress,“that a susceptible husband can never feel[175]easy in the society of his wife when he knowsthat she is acquainted with his vices, thoughhe is well assured that her prudence, generosity,and affection will prevent her from beinga severe accuser.” One is reminded of theold French gentleman who said he was awarethat he cheated at cards, but he disliked anyallusion to the subject.

To be “easy” in a wife’s society, to relaxspiritually as well as mentally, and to be immunefrom criticism;—these were the privilegeswhich men demanded, and which well-trainedwomen were ready to accord. In 1808the “Belle Assemblée” printed a model letter,which purported to come from a young wifewhose husband had deserted her and her childfor the more lively society of his mistress. Itexpressed in pathetic language the sentimentsthen deemed correct,—sentiments which embodiedthe patience of Griselda, without heracquiescence in fate. The wife tells her husbandthat she has retired to the country for economy,and to avoid scandalous gossip; that by carefulmanagement she is able to live on the pittancehe has given her; that “little Emily” is[176]working a pair of ruffles for him; that hispresence would make their poor cottage seema palace. “Pardon my interrupting you,” shewinds up with ostentatious meekness. “I meanto give you satisfaction. Though I am deeplywronged by your error, I am not resentful. Iwish you all the happiness of which you arecapable, and am your once loved and stillaffectionate, Emilia.”

That last sentence is not without dignity,and certainly not without its sting. One doubtswhether Emilia’s husband, for all her promisesand protestations, could ever again have feltperfectly “easy” in his wife’s society. Heprobably therefore stayed away, and soothedhis soul elsewhere. “We can with tranquillityforgive in ourselves the sins of which no oneaccuses us.”

They go the fairest way to Heaven that would serve Godwithout a Hell.—Religio Medici.

“How cutting it is to be the means of bringingchildren into the world to be the subjects ofthe Kingdom of Darkness, to dwell with Divilsand Damned Spirits.”

In this temper of pardonable regret themother of William Godwin wrote to her erringson; and while the maternal point of viewdeserves consideration (no parent could beexpected to relish such a prospect), the letteris noteworthy as being one of the few writtento Godwin, or about Godwin, which forces us tosympathize with the philosopher. The boy whowas reproved for picking up the family cat onSunday—“demeaning myself with such profanenesson the Lord’s day”—was little likelyto find his religion “all pure profit.” His accountof the books he read as a child, and ofhis precocious and unctuous piety, is probablyover-emphasized for the sake of colour; but the[178]Evangelical literature of his day, whether designedfor young people or for adults, was ofa melancholy and discouraging character. The“Pious Deaths of Many Godly Children” (sadmonitor of the Godwin nursery) appears tohave been read off the face of the earth; butthere have descended to us sundry volumes ofa like character, which even now stab us withpity for the little readers long since laid intheir graves. The most frivolous occupation ofthe good boy in these old story-books is searchingthe Bible, “with mamma’s permission,” fortexts in which David “praises God for theweather.” More serious-minded children weepfloods of tears because they are “lost sinners.”In a book of “Sermons for the Very Young,”published by the Vicar of Walthamstow in thebeginning of the last century, we find the fallof Sodom and Gomorrah selected as an appropriatetheme for infancy, and its lessons drivenhome with all the force of a direct personalapplication. “Think, little child, of the fearfulstory. The wrath of God is upon them. Dothey now repent of their sins? It is all toolate. Do they cry for mercy? There is none to[179]hear them.... Your heart, little child, is fullof sin. You think of what is not right, andthen you wish it, and that is sin.... Ah,what shall sinners do when the last day comesupon them? What will they think when Godshall punish them forever?”

Children brought up on these lines passedswiftly from one form of hysteria to another,from self-exaltation and the assurance of graceto fears which had no easem*nt. There is nothingmore terrible in literature than Borrow’saccount of the Welsh preacher who believedthat when he was a child of seven he had committedthe unpardonable sin, and whose wholelife was shadowed by fear. At the same timethat little William Godwin was composingbeautiful death-bed speeches for the possibleedification of his parents and neighbours, wefind Miss Elizabeth Carter writing to Mrs.Montagu about her own nephew, who realized,at seven years of age, how much he and allcreatures stood in need of pardon; and who,being ill, pitifully entreated his father to praythat his sins might be forgiven. Commentingupon which incident, the reverent Montagu[180]Pennington, who edited Miss Carter’s letters,bids us remember that it reflects more crediton the parents who brought their child up withso just a sense of religion than it does on thepoor infant himself. “Innocence,” says the inflexibleMr. Stanley, in “Cœlebs in Search ofa Wife,” “can never be pleaded as a ground ofacceptance, because the thing does not exist.”

With the dawning of the nineteenth centurycame the controversial novel; and to understandits popularity we have but to glance atthe books which preceded it, and compared towhich it presented an animated and contentiousaspect. One must needs have read “Elementsof Morality” at ten, and “Strictures on FemaleEducation” at fifteen, to be able to relish“Father Clement” at twenty. Sedate youngwomen, whose lightest available literature was“Cœlebs,” or “Hints towards forming theCharacter of a Princess,” and who had beenpresented on successive birthdays with Mrs.Chapone’s “Letters on the Improvement of theMind,” and Mrs. West’s “Letters to a YoungLady,” and Miss Hamilton’s “Letters to theDaughter of a Nobleman,” found a natural relief[181]in studying the dangers of dissent, or thesecret machinations of the Jesuits. Many a dullhour was quickened into pleasurable apprehensionof Jesuitical intrigues, from the days whenSarah, duch*ess of Marlborough, stoutly refusedto take cinchona—a form of quinine—becauseit was then known as Jesuit’s bark, andmight be trusted to poison a British constitution,to the days when Sir William Pepys wrotein all seriousness to Hannah More: “You surpriseme by saying that your good Archbishophas been in danger from the Jesuits; but I believethey are concealed in places where theyare less likely to be found than in Ireland.”

Just what they were going to do to the goodArchbishop does not appear, for Sir Williamat this point abruptly abandons the prelate totell the story of a Norwich butcher, who forsome mysterious and unexplained reason washiding from the inquisitors of Lisbon. No dignitarywas too high, no orphan child too low tobe the objects of a Popish plot. Miss Carterwrites to Mrs. Montagu, in 1775, about a littlefoundling whom Mrs. Chapone had placed atservice with some country neighbours.

[182]“She behaves very prettily, and with greataffection to the people with whom she is living,”says Miss Carter. “One of the reasons sheassigns for her fondness is that they give herenough food, which she represents as a deficientarticle in the workhouse; and says that on Fridaysparticularly she never had any dinner.Surely the parish officers have not made aPapist the mistress! If this is not the case,the loss of one dinner in a week is of no greatconsequence.”

To the poor hungry child it was probably ofmuch greater consequence than the theologicalbias of the matron. Nor does a dinnerless Fridayappear the surest way to win youthful convertsto the fold. But devout ladies who had readCanon Seward’s celebrated tract on the “Comparisonbetween Paganism and Popery” (inwhich he found little to choose between them)were well on their guard against the insidiousadvances of Rome. “When I had no religionat all,” confesses Cowper to Lady Hesketh, “Ihad yet a terrible dread of the Pope.” Theworst to be apprehended from Methodists wastheir lamentable tendency to enthusiasm, and[183]their ill-advised meddling with the poor. It istrue that a farmer of Cheddar told Miss PattyMore that a Methodist minister had oncepreached under his mother’s best apple tree, andthat the sensitive tree had never borne anotherapple; but this was an extreme case. The Cheddarvestry resolved to protect their orchardsfrom blight by stoning the next preacher whoinvaded the parish, and their example was followedwith more or less fervour throughoutEngland. In a quiet letter written from Margate(1768), by the Rev. John Lyon, we find thiscasual allusion to the process:—

“We had a Methodist preacher hold forthlast night. I came home just as he had finished.I believe the poor man fared badly, for I saw,as I passed, eggs, stones, etc., fly pretty thick.”

It was all in the day’s work. The Rev. Lyon,who was a scholar and an antiquarian, and whowrote an exhaustive history of Dover, had nofurther interest in matters obviously aloof fromhis consideration.

This simple and robust treatment, so quietingto the nerves of the practitioners, was unserviceablefor Papists, who did not preach in[184]the open; and a great deal of suppressed irritationfound no better outlet than print. Itappears to have been a difficult matter in thosedays to write upon any subject without revertingsooner or later to the misdeeds of Rome.Miss Seward pauses in her praise of Blair’ssermons to lament the “boastful egotism” ofSt. Gregory of Nazianzus, who seems tolerablyremote; and Mr. John Dyer, when wrappedin peaceful contemplation of the British wool-market,suddenly and fervently denounces the“black clouds” of bigotry, and the “fiery boltsof superstition,” which lay desolate “Papalrealms.” In vain Mr. Edgeworth, stooping fromhis high estate, counselled serenity of mind, andthat calm tolerance born of a godlike certitude;in vain he urged the benignant attitude of infallibility.“The absurdities of Popery are somanifest,” he wrote, “that to be hated theyneed but to be seen. But for the peace andprosperity of this country, the misguided Catholicshould not be rendered odious; he shouldrather be pointed out as an object of compassion.His ignorance should not be imputed tohim as a crime; nor should it be presupposed[185]that his life cannot be right, whose tenets areerroneous. Thank God that I am a Protestant!should be a mental thanksgiving, not a publictaunt.”

Mr. Edgeworth was nearly seventy whenthe famous “Protestant’s Manual; or, PapacyUnveiled” (endeared forever to our hearts byits association with Mrs. Varden and Miggs),bowled over these pleasant and peaceful arguments.There was no mawkish charity aboutthe “Manual,” which made its way into everycorner of England, stood for twenty years onthousands of British book-shelves, and wasgiven as a reward to children so unfortunateas to be meritorious. It sold for a shilling (nineshillings a dozen when purchased for distribution),so Mrs. Varden’s two post-octavo volumesmust have been a special edition. Reviewersrecommended it earnestly to parents and teachers;and it was deemed indispensable to allwho desired “to preserve the rising generationfrom the wiles of Papacy and the snares ofpriestcraft. They will be rendered sensible ofthe evils and probable consequences of Catholicemancipation; and be confirmed in those opinions,[186]civil, political, and religious, which havehitherto constituted the happiness and formedthe strength of their native country.”

This was a strong appeal. A universal uneasinessprevailed, manifesting itself in hostilityto innovations, however innocent and orthodox.Miss Hannah More’s Sunday Schools werestoutly opposed, as savouring of Methodism (areligion she disliked), and of radicalism, forwhich she had all the natural horror of a well-to-do,middle-class Christian. Even Mrs. West,an oppressively pious writer, misdoubted theinfluence of Sunday Schools, for the simplereason that it was difficult to keep the lowerorders from learning more than was good forthem. “Hard toil and humble diligence areindispensably needful to the community,” saidthis excellent lady. “Writing and accountsappear superfluous instructions in the humblestwalks of life; and, when imparted to servants,have the general effect of making them ambitious,and disgusted with the servile officeswhich they are required to perform.”

Humility was a virtue consecrated to thepoor, to the rural poor especially; and what[187]with Methodism on the one hand, and the jarringechoes of the French Revolution on theother, the British ploughman was obviouslygrowing less humble every day. Crabbe, whocherished no illusions, painted him in coloursgrim enough to fill the reader with despair;but Miss More entertained a feminine convictionthat Bibles and flannel waistcoats fulfilledhis earthly needs. In all her stories and tractsthe villagers are as artificial as the happy peasantryof an old-fashioned opera. They groupthemselves deferentially around the squire andthe rector; they wear costumes of uncompromisingrusticity; and they sing a chorus ofpraise to the kind young ladies who havebrought them a bowl of soup. It is curious toturn from this atmosphere of abasem*nt, fromperpetual curtsies and the lowliest of lowlyvirtues, to the journal of the painter Haydon,who was a sincerely pious man, yet who cannotrestrain his wonder and admiration at seeingthe Duke of Wellington behave respectfullyin church. That a person so august shouldstand when the congregation stood, and kneelwhen the congregation knelt, seemed to Haydon[188]an immense condescension. “Here was thegreatest hero in the world,” he writes ecstatically,“who had conquered the greatest genius,prostrating his heart and being before his Godin his venerable age, and praying for Hismercy.”

It is the most naïve impression on record.That the Duke and the Duke’s scullion mightperchance stand equidistant from the Almightywas an idea which failed to present itself toHaydon’s ardent mind.

The pious fiction put forward in the interestof dissent was more impressive, more emotional,more belligerent, and, in some odd way, morehuman than “Cœlebs,” or “The Shepherd ofSalisbury Plain.” Miss Grace Kennedy’s storiesare as absurd as Miss More’s, and—thoughthe thing may sound incredible—much duller;but they give one an impression of painfulearnestness, and of that heavy atmosphere engenderedby too close a contemplation of Hell.A pious Christian lady, with local standards, anarrow intelligence, and a comprehensive ignoranceof life, is not by election a novelist. Neitherdo polemics lend themselves with elasticity[189]to the varying demands of fiction. There are,in fact, few things less calculated to instructthe intellect or to enlarge the heart than theperusal of controversial novels.

But Miss Kennedy had at least the strikingquality of temerity. She was not afraid of beingridiculous. She was undaunted in her ignorance.And she was on fire with all the bitterardour of the separatist. Miss More, on thecontrary, entertained a judicial mistrust forfervour, fanaticism, the rush of ardent hopesand fears and transports, for all those vehementemotions which are apt to be disconcertingto ladies of settled views and incomes.Her model Christian, Candidus, “avoids enthusiasmas naturally as a wise man avoidsfolly, or as a sober man shuns extravagance.He laments when he encounters a real enthusiast,because he knows that, even if honest, heis pernicious.” In the same guarded spirit,Mrs. Montagu praises the benevolence of LadyBab Montagu and Mrs. Scott, who had thevillage girls taught plain sewing and the catechism.“These good works are often performedby the Methodist ladies in the heat of enthusiasm;[190]but, thank God! my sister’s is a calmand rational piety.” “Surtout point de zèle,”was the dignified motto of the day.

There is none of this chill sobriety aboutMiss Kennedy’s Bible Christians, who, a hundredyears ago, preached to a listening world.They are aflame with a zeal which knows nodoubts and recognizes no forbearance. Theirmethods are akin to those of the irrepressibleMiss J——, who undertook, Bible in hand,the conversion of that pious gentleman, theDuke of Wellington; or of Miss Lewis, whowent to Constantinople to convert that equallypious gentleman, the Sultan. Miss Kennedy’sheroes and heroines stand ready to convert theworld. They would delight in expounding theScriptures to the Pope and the Patriarch ofConstantinople. Controversy affords their onlyconversation. Dogma of the most unrelentingkind is their only food for thought. Piety providestheir only avenue for emotions. Elderlybankers weep profusely over their beloved pastor’seloquence, and fashionable ladies melt intotears at the inspiring sight of a village SundaySchool. Young gentlemen, when off on a holiday,[191]take with them “no companion but aBible”; and the lowest reach of worldliness islaid bare when an unconverted mother asksher daughter if she can sing something morecheerful than a hymn. Conformity to theChurch of England is denounced with unsparingwarmth; and the Church of Rome is honouredby having a whole novel, the once famous“Father Clement,” devoted to its permanentdownfall.

Dr. Greenhill, who has written a sympatheticnotice of Miss Kennedy in the “Dictionaryof National Biography,” considers that“Father Clement” was composed “with anevident wish to state fairly the doctrines andpractices of the Roman Catholic Church, evenwhile the authoress strongly disapproves ofthem”;—a point of view which compels usto believe that the biographer spared himself(and who shall blame him?) the reading of thismelancholy tale. That George Eliot, who sparedherself nothing, was well acquainted with itscontext, is evidenced by the conversation ofthe ladies who, in “Janet’s Repentance,” meetto cover and label the books of the Paddiford[192]Lending Library. Miss Pratt, the autocrat ofthe circle, observes that the story of “FatherClement” is, in itself, a library on the errorsof Romanism, whereupon old Mrs. Linnet verysensibly replies: “One ’ud think there didn’twant much to drive people away from a religionas makes ’em walk barefoot over stonefloors, like that girl in ‘Father Clement,’ sendingthe blood up to the head frightful. Anybodymight see that was an unnat’ral creed.”

So they might; and a more unnatural creedthan Father Clement’s Catholicism was neverdevised for the extinction of man’s flickeringreason. Only the mental debility of the Clarenhamfamily can account for their holding suchviews long enough to admit of their being convertedfrom them by the Montagus. Only themilitant spirit of the Clarenham chaplain andthe Montagu chaplain makes possible severalhundred pages of polemics. Montagu Biblesrun the blockade, are discovered in the handsof truth-seeking Clarenhams, and are hurledback upon the spiritual assailants. The determinationof Father Dennis that the Scripturesshall be quoted in Latin only (a practice which[193]is scholarly but inconvenient), and the determinationof Edward Montagu “not to speakLatin in the presence of ladies,” embarrasssocial intercourse. Catherine Clarenham, theyoung person who walks barefooted over stonefloors, has been so blighted by this pious exercisethat she cannot, at twenty, translate thePater Noster or Ave Maria into English, andremains a melancholy illustration of Latinity.When young Basil Clarenham shows symptomsof yielding to Montagu arguments, and beginsto want a Bible of his own, he is spirited awayto Rome, and confined in a monastery of theInquisition, where he spends his time reading“books forbidden by the Inquisitors,” and especially“a New Testament with the prohibitorymark of the Holy Office upon it,” which theweak-minded monks have amiably placed at hisdisposal. Indeed, the monastery library, to whichthe captive is made kindly welcome, seems tohave been well stocked with interdicted literature;and, after browsing in these pastures forseveral tranquil months, Basil tells his astonishedhosts that their books have taught himthat “the Romish Church is the most corrupt[194]of all churches professing Christianity.” Havingaccomplished this unexpected but happyresult, the Inquisition exacts from him a solemnvow that he will never reveal its secrets,and sends him back to England, where he losesno time in becoming an excellent Protestant.His sister Maria follows his example (her virtueshave pointed steadfastly to this conclusion);but Catherine enters a convent, full ofstone floors and idolatrous images, where shebecomes a “tool” of the Jesuits, and says herprayers in Latin until she dies.

No wonder “Father Clement” went throughtwelve editions, and made its authoress as famousin her day as the authoress of “ElsieDinsmore” is in ours. No wonder the PaddifordLending Library revered its sterling worth.And no wonder it provoked from Catholics reprisalswhich Dr. Greenhill stigmatizes as “flippant.”To-day it lives by virtue of half a dozenmocking lines in George Eliot’s least-read story:but for a hundred years its progeny has infestedthe earth,—a crooked progeny, like Peer Gynt’s,which can never be straightened into sincerity,or softened into good-will. “For first the Church[195]of Rome condemneth us, we likewise them,” observesSir Thomas Browne with equanimity;“and thus we go to Heaven against each others’wills, conceits, and opinions.”

Why, by dabbling in those accursed Annuals, I have becomea by-word of infamy all over the kingdom.—CharlesLamb.

The great dividing line between books thatare made to be read and books that are madeto be bought is not the purely modern thing itseems. We can trace it, if we try, back to thefirst printing-presses, which catered indulgentlyto hungry scholars and to noble patrons; andwe can see it in another generation separating“Waverley” and “The Corsair,” which everybodyknew by heart, from the gorgeous “Annual”(bound in Lord Palmerston’s cast-offwaistcoats, hinted Thackeray), which formed adecorative feature of well-appointed Englishdrawing-rooms. The perfectly natural thing todo with an unreadable book is to give it away;and the publication, for more than a quarter ofa century, of volumes which fulfilled this onepurpose and no other is a pleasant proof, ifproof were needed, of the business principles[197]which underlay the enlightened activity ofpublishers.

The wave of sentimentality which submergedEngland when the clear-headed, hard-heartedeighteenth century had done its appointed work,and lay a-dying, the prodigious advance in gentilityfrom the days of Lady Mary WortleyMontagu to the days of the Countess of Blessington,found their natural expression in letters.It was a period of emotions which were not toodeep for words, and of decorum which measuredgoodness by conventionalities. Turnwhere we will, we see a tear in every eye, or asimper of self-complacency on every lip. Moorewept when he beheld a balloon ascension atTivoli, because he had not seen a balloon sincehe was a little boy. The excellent Mr. Hallexplained in his “Memories of a Long Life”that, owing to Lady Blessington’s anomalousposition with Count D’Orsay, “Mrs. Hall neveraccompanied me to her evenings, though shewas a frequent day caller.” Criticism was controlledby politics, and sweetened by gallantry.The Whig and Tory reviewers supported theirrespective candidates to fame, and softened[198]their masculine sternness to affability whenMrs. Hemans or Miss Landon, “the Sapphoof the age,” contributed their glowing numbersto the world. Miss Landon having breathed apoetic sigh in the “Amulet” for 1832, a reviewerin “Fraser’s” magnanimously observed:“This gentle and fair young lady, so undeservedlyneglected by critics, we mean to takeunder our special protection.” Could it everhave lain within the power of any woman, evena poetess, to merit such condescension as this?

Of a society so organized, the Christmas annualwas an appropriate and ornamental feature.It was costly,—a guinea or a guineaand a half being the usual subscription. Itwas richly bound in crimson silk or pea-greenlevant; Solomon in all his glory was less magnificent.It was as free from stimulus as eausucrée. It was always genteel, and not infrequentlyaristocratic,—having been known torise in happy years to the schoolboy verses ofa royal duke. It was made, like Peter Pindar’srazors, to sell, and it was bought to be givenaway; at which point its career of usefulnesswas closed. Its languishing steel engravings of[199]Corfu, Ayesha, The Suliote Mother, and TheWounded Brigand, may have beguiled a fewheavy moments after dinner; and perhaps littlechildren in frilled pantalets and laced slipperspeeped between the gorgeous covers, to marvelat the Sultana’s pearls, or ask in innocence whowas the dying Haidee. Death, we may remark,was always a prominent feature of annuals.Their artists and poets vied with one anotherin the selection of mortuary subjects. CharlesLamb was first “hooked into the ‘Gem’” withsome lines on the editor’s dead infant. From apartial list, extending over a dozen years, Icull this funeral wreath:—

The Dying Child. Poem.
The Orphans. Steel engraving.
The Orphan’s Tears. Poem.
The Gypsy’s Grave. Steel engraving.
The Lonely Grave. Poem.
On a Child’s Grave. Poem.
The Dying Mother to her Infant. Poem.

Blithesome reading for the Christmas-tide!

The annual was as orthodox as it was aristocratic.“The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain”was not more edifying. “The Washerwoman[200]of Finchley Common” was less conspicuouslyvirtuous. Here in “The Winter’s Wreath” isa long poem in blank verse, by a namelessclergyman, on “The Efficacy of Religion.”Here in the “Amulet,” Mrs. Hemans, “leadingthe way as she deserves to do” (I quotefrom the “Monthly Review”), “clothes in herown pure and fascinating language the invitationswhich angels whisper into mortal ears.”And here in the “Forget-Me-Not,” Leontinehurls mild defiance at the spirit of doubt:—

—an argument which would have carried convictionto Huxley’s soul, had he been morethan eight years old when it was written. PoorColeridge, always in need of a guinea or two,was bidden to write some descriptive lines forthe “Keepsake,” on an engraving by Parrisof the Garden of Boccaccio; a delightful pictureof nine ladies and three gentlemen picnickingin a park, with arcades as tall as aqueducts,a fountain as vast as Niagara, and[201]butterflies twice the size of the rabbits. Coleridge,exempt by nature from an unserviceablesense of humour, executed this commission inthree pages of painstaking verse, and wasseverely censured for mentioning “in termsnot sufficiently guarded, one of the most impureand mischievous books that could find itsway into the hands of an innocent female.”

The system of first securing an illustration,and then ordering a poem to match it, seemedright and reasonable to the editor of the annual,who paid a great deal for his engravings,and little or nothing for his poetry. Sometimesthe poet was not even granted a sight of thepicture he was expected to describe. We findLady Blessington writing to Dr. WilliamBeattie,—the best-natured man of his day,—requesting“three or four stanzas” for an annualcalled “Buds and Blossoms,” which wasto contain portraits of the children of noblefamilies. The particular “buds” whose unfoldinghe was asked to immortalize were the threesons of the Duke of Buccleuch; and it was gentlyhinted that “an allusion to the family wouldadd interest to the subject”;—in plain words,[202]that a little well-timed flattery might be trustedto expand the sales. Another year the sameunblushing petitioner was even more hardy inher demand.

“Will you write me a page of verse for theportrait of Miss Forester? The young lady isseated with a little dog on her lap, which shelooks at rather pensively. She is fair, withlight hair, and is in mourning.”

Here is an inspiration for a poet. A picture,which he has not seen, of a young lady inmourning looking pensively at a little dog!And poor Beattie was never paid a cent forthese effusions. His sole rewards were a fewwords of thanks, and Lady Blessington’s cardsfor parties he was too ill to attend.

More business-like poets made a specialty offitting pictures with verses, as a tailor fits customerswith coats. A certain Mr. Harvey,otherwise lost to fame, was held to be unrivalledin this art. For many years his “chasteand classic pen” supplied the annuals withflowing stanzas, equally adapted to the timoroustaste of editors, and to the limitations ofthe “innocent females” for whom the volumes[203]were predestined. “Mr. Harvey embodies intwo or three lines the expression of a wholepicture,” says an enthusiastic reviewer, “and atthe same time turns his inscription into a littlegem of poetry.” As a specimen gem, I quoteone of four verses accompanying an engravingcalled Morning Dreams,—a young womanreclining on a couch, and simpering vapidly atthe curtains:—

This is a fair sample of the verse supplied forChristmas annuals, which, however “chasteand classic,” was surely never intended to beread. It is only right, however, to rememberthat Thackeray’s “Piscator and Piscatrix”was written at Lady Blessington’s behest, toaccompany Wattier’s engraving of The HappyAnglers; and that Thackeray told Locker hewas so much pleased with this picture, and soengrossed with his own poem, that he forgot toshave for the two whole days he was workingat it. To write “good occasional verse,” by[204]which he meant verse begged or ordered forsome such desperate emergency as Lady Blessington’s,was, in his eyes, an intellectual feat.It represented difficulties overcome, like thosewonderful old Italian frescoes fitted so harmoniouslyinto unaccommodating spaces. Nothingcan be more charming than “Piscator and Piscatrix,”and nothing can be more insipid thanthe engraving which inspired the lively rhymes:

The verses may be read in any edition ofThackeray’s ballads; but when we have hunted[205]up the “pictured page” in a mouldy old “Keepsake,”and see an expressionless girl, a featurelessboy, an indistinguishable castle, and novillage, we are tempted to agree with CharlesLamb, who swore that he liked poems to explainpictures, and not pictures to illustratepoems. “Your woodcut is a rueful lignummortis.”

There was a not unnatural ambition on thepart of publishers and editors to secure fortheir annuals one or two names of repute, withwhich to leaven the mass of mediocrity. Itmattered little if the distinguished writer conscientiouslycontributed the feeblest offspringof his pen; that was a reasonable reckoning,—distinguishedwriters do the same to-day; butit mattered a great deal if, as too often happened,he broke his word, and failed to contributeanything. Then the unhappy editorwas compelled to publish some such apologeticnote as this, from the “Amulet” of 1833. “Thefirst sheet of the ‘Amulet’ was reserved for myfriend Mr. Bulwer, who had kindly tenderedme his assistance; but, in consequence of variousunavoidable circ*mstances” (a pleasure[206]trip on the Rhine), “he has been compelled topostpone his aid until next year.” On suchoccasions, the “reserved” pages were filled bysome veteran annualist, like Mr. Alaric AttilaWatts, editor of the “Literary Souvenir”;or perhaps Mr. Thomas Haynes Bailey, he whowrote “I’d be a Butterfly,” and “Gaily theTroubadour,” was persuaded to warble somesuch appropriate sentiment as this in the“Forget-Me-Not”:—

which was a true word spoken in rhyme. Nothingrecalls that faded past, with its simperingsentimentality, its reposeful ethics, its shut-instandards, and its differentiation of the masculineand feminine intellects, like the yellowpages of an annual.

Tom Moore, favourite of gods and men, wassingled out by publishers as the lode-star oftheir destinies, as the poet who could be besttrusted to impart to the “Amethyst” or the“Talisman” (how like Pullman cars they[207]sound!) that “elegant lightness” which befittedits mission in life. His accounts of therepeated attacks made on his virtue, and therepeated repulses he administered, fill by nomeans the least amusing pages of his journal.The first attempt was made by Orne, who, in1826, proposed that Moore should edit a newannual on the plan of the “Souvenir”; andwho assured the poet—always as deep in difficultiesas Micawber—that, if the enterpriseproved successful, it would yield him from fivehundred to a thousand pounds a year. Moore,dazzled but not duped, declined the task; andthe following summer, the engraver Heathmade him a similar proposition, but on moreassured terms. Heath was then preparing tolaunch upon the world of fashion his gorgeous“Keepsake”—“the toy-shop of literature,”Lockhart called it; and he offered Moore, firstfive hundred, and then seven hundred pounds ayear, if he would accept the editorship. Sevenhundred pounds loomed large in the poet’sfancy, but pride forbade the bargain. Theauthor of “Lalla Rookh” could not consent tobow his laurelled head, and pilot the feeble[208]Fatimas and Zelicas, the noble infants in coralnecklets, and the still nobler ladies with pearlpendants on their brows, into the safe harbourof boudoir and drawing-room. He made thisclear to Heath, who, nothing daunted, set offat once for Abbotsford, and laid his proposalsat the feet of Sir Walter Scott, adding to hisbribe another hundred pounds.

Scott, the last man in Christendom to haveundertaken such an office, or to have succeededin it, softened his refusal with a good-naturedpromise to contribute to the “Keepsake” whenit was launched. He was not nervous about hisliterary standing, and he had no sensitive fearof lowering it by journeyman’s work. “I haveneither the right nor the wish,” he wrote onceto Murray, “to be considered above a commonlabourer in the trenches.” Moore, however, wasfar from sharing this modest unconcern. WhenReynolds, on whom the editorship of the“Keepsake” finally devolved, asked him forsome verses, he peremptorily declined. Thenbegan a system of pursuit and escape, of assaultand repulse, which casts the temptationsof St. Anthony into the shade. “By day and[209]night,” so Moore declares, Reynolds was “after”him, always increasing the magnitude of hisbribe. At last he forced a check for a hundredpounds into the poet’s empty pocket (for allthe world like a scene in Caran d’Ache’s “Histoired’un Chèque”), imploring in return a hundredlines of verse. But Moore’s virtue—orhis vanity—was impregnable. “The task wasbut light, and the money would have been convenient,”he confesses; “but I forced it backon him again. The fact is, it is my namebrings these offers, and my name would sufferby accepting them.”

One might suppose that the baffled tempterwould now have permanently withdrawn, savethat the strength of tempters lies in theirnever knowing when they are beaten. Threeyears later, Heath renewed the attack, proposingthat Moore should furnish all the letter-press,prose and verse, of the “Keepsake” for1832, receiving in payment the generous sumof one thousand pounds. Strange to say, Mooretook rather kindly to this appalling suggestion,admitted he liked it better than its predecessors,and consented to think the matter over[210]for a fortnight. In the end, however, he adheredto his original determination to hold himselfvirgin of annuals; and refused the thousandpounds, which would have paid all his debts,only to fall, as fall men must, a victim to femaleblandishments. He was cajoled into writingsome lines for the “Casket,” edited by Mrs.Blencoe; and had afterwards the pleasure ofdiscovering that the astute lady had addedto her list of attractions another old poemof his, which, to avoid sameness, she obliginglycredited to Lord Byron;—enough tomake that ill-used poet turn uneasily in hisgrave.

Charles Lamb’s detestation of annuals datesnaturally enough from the hour he was firstseduced into becoming a contributor; and everytime he lapsed from virtue, his rage blazed outafresh. When his ill-timed sympathy for abereaved parent—and that parent an editor—landedhim in the pages of the “Gem,”he wrote to Barton in an access of ill-humourwhich could find no phrases sharp enough tofeed it.

“I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the[211]dandy plates, the names of contributors pokedup into your eyes in the first page, and whistledthrough all the covers of magazines, the bare-facedsort of emulation, the immodest candidateship,brought into so little space; in shortI detest to appear in an annual.... Don’tthink I set up for being proud on this point; Ilike a bit of flattery tickling my vanity as wellas any one. But these pompous masqueradeswithout masks (naked names or faces) I hate.So there’s a bit of my mind.”

“Frippery,” “frumpery,” “show and emptiness,”are the mildest epithets at Lamb’s command,as often as he laments his repeated fallsfrom grace; and a few years before his death,when that “dumb soporifical good-for-nothingness”(curse of the Enfield lanes) weighted hispen, and dulled the lively processes of his brain,he writes with poignant melancholy:—

“I cannot scribble a long letter. I am, whennot on foot, very desolate, and take no interestin anything, scarce hate anything but annuals.”It is the last expression of a just antipathy, aninstinctive clinging to something which can bereasonably hated to the end.

[212]The most pretentious and the most aristocraticof the annuals was the ever famous “Bookof Beauty,” edited for many years by the Countessof Blessington. Resting on a solid foundationof personal vanity (a superstructure neverknown to fail), it reached a heroic measure ofsuccess, and yielded an income which permittedthe charming woman who conducted it to liveas far beyond her means as any leader of thefashionable world in London. It was estimatedthat Lady Blessington earned by the “gorgeousinanities” she edited, and by the vapid talesshe wrote, an income of from two thousand tothree thousand pounds; but she would neverhave been paid so well for her work had shenot supported her social position by an expenditureof twice that sum. Charles Greville, whospares no scorn he can heap upon her editorialmethods, declares that she attained her ends“by puffing and stuffing, and untiring industry,by practising on the vanity of some andthe good-nature of others. And though I nevermet with any one who had read her books,except the ‘Conversations with Byron,’ whichare too good to be hers, they are unquestionably[213]a source of considerable profit, and shetakes her place confidently and complacentlyas one of the literary celebrities of her day.”

Greville’s instinctive unkindness leaves himoften wide of the mark, but on this occasionwe can only say that he might have spoken histruths more humanely. If Lady Blessingtonhelped to create the demand which she supplied,if she turned her friendships to account,and made of hospitality a means to an end (aline of conduct not unknown to-day), she workedwith unsparing diligence, and with a sort ofdesperate courage for over twenty years. RivalBooks of Beauty were launched upon a surfeitedmarket, but she maintained her precedence.For ten years she edited the “Keepsake,”and made it a source of revenue, untilthe unhappy bankruptcy and death of Heath.In her annuals we breathe the pure air of ducalhouseholds, and consort with the peeresses ofEngland, turning condescendingly now and thento contemplate a rusticity so obviously artificial,it can be trusted never to offend. That herstandard of art (she had no standard of letters)was acceptable to the British public is proved[214]by the rapturous praise of critics and reviewers.Thackeray, indeed, professed to think thesumptuous ladies, who loll and languish in thepages of the year-book, underclad and indecorous;but this was in the spirit of hypercriticism.Hear rather how a writer in “Fraser’sMagazine” describes in a voice trembling withemotion the opulent charms of one of theCountess of Blessington’s “Beauties”:—

“There leans the tall and imperial form ofthe enchantress, with raven tresses surmountedby the cachemire of sparkling red; while herringlets flow in exuberant waves over the full-formedneck; and barbaric pearls, each oneworth a king’s ransom, rest in marvellous contrastwith her dark and mysterious loveliness.”

“Here’s richness!” to quote our friend Mr.Squeers. Here’s something of which it is hardto think a public could ever tire. Yet sixteenyears later, when the Countess of Blessingtondied in poverty and exile, but full of courageto the end, the “Examiner” tepidly observedthat the probable extinction of the year-book“would be the least of the sad regrets attendingher loss.”

[215]For between 1823 and 1850 three hundredannuals had been published in England, andthe end was very near. Exhausted nature wascrying for release. It is terrible to find an ableand honest writer like Miss Mitford editing apreposterous volume called the “Iris,” of inhumanbulk and superhuman inanity; a bookwhich she well knew could never, under anypress of circ*mstances, be read by mortal manor woman. There were annuals to meet everydemand, and to please every class of purchaser.Comic annuals for those who hoped to laugh;a “Botanic Annual” for girls who took countrywalks with their governess; an “OrientalAnnual” for readers of Byron and Moore; a“Landscape Annual” for lovers of nature;“The Christian Keepsake” for ladies of seriousminds; and “The Protestant Annual” forthose who feared that Christianity might possiblyembrace the Romish Church. There werefive annuals for English children; from one ofwhich, “The Juvenile Keepsake,” I quote theselines, so admirably adapted to the childishmind. Newton is supposed to speak them inhis study:—

[216]

There are three pages of this poem, all inthe same simple language, from which it is fairto infer that the child’s annual, like its grown-upneighbour, was made to be bought, not read.

Next to mere idleness, I think knotting is to be reckonedin the scale of insignificance.—Dr. Johnson.

Readers of Dickens (which ought to mean allmen and women who have mastered the Englishalphabet) will remember how that estimableschoolmistress, Miss Monflathers, elucidatedDr. Watts’s masterpiece, which had beenquoted somewhat rashly by a teacher. “‘Thelittle busy bee,’” said Miss Monflathers, drawingherself up, “is applicable only to genteelchildren.

is quite right as far as they are concerned;and the work means painting on velvet, fancyneedlework, or embroidery.”

It also meant, in the good Miss Monflathers’sday, making filigree baskets that wouldnot hold anything, Ionic temples of Bristol-board,shell flowers, and paper landscapes. Itmeant pricking pictures with pins, taking “impressions”[218]of butterflies’ wings on sheets ofgummed paper, and messing with strange, mysteriouscompounds called diaphanie and potichomanie,by means of which a harmless glasstumbler or a respectable window-pane could beturned into an object of desolation. Indeed,when the genteel young ladies of this periodwere not reading “Merit opposed to Fascination;exemplified in the story of Eugenio,” or“An Essay on the Refined Felicity which mayarise from the Marriage Contract,” they werecultivating what were then called “ornamentalarts,” but which later on became known as“accomplishments.” “It is amazing to me,”says that most amiable of sub-heroes, Mr. Bingley,“how young ladies can have patience tobe so very accomplished as they all are. Theypaint tables, cover screens, and net purses. Iscarcely know any one who cannot do all this;and I am sure I never heard a young ladyspoken of for the first time, without being informedthat she was very accomplished.”

We leave the unamiable Mr. Darcy snortingat his friend’s remark, to consider thepaucity of Mr. Bingley’s list. Tables, screens,[219]and purses represent but the first beginningsof that misdirected energy which for the bestpart of a century embellished English homes.The truly accomplished young lady in MissMore’s “Cœlebs” paints flowers and shells,draws ruins, gilds and varnishes wood, is anadept in Japan work, and stands ready tobegin modelling, etching, and engraving. Thegreat principle of ornamental art was the reproductionof an object—of any object—in analien material. The less adapted this materialwas to its purpose, the greater the difficultiesit presented to the artist, the more preciousbecame the monstrous masterpiece. To take aplain sheet of paper and draw a design upon itwas ignominious in its simplicity; but to constructthe same design out of paper spirals,rolling up some five hundred slips with uniformtightness, setting them on end, side by side,and painting or gilding the tops,—that was afeat of which any young lady might be proud.It was so uncommonly hard to do, it ought tohave been impossible. Cutting paper with finesharp scissors and a knife was taught in schools(probably in Miss Monflathers’s school, though[220]Dickens does not mention it) as a fashionablepastime. The “white design”—animals, landscape,or marine—was printed on a blackbackground, which was cut away with greatdexterity, the spaces being small and intricate.When all the black paper had been removed,the flimsy tracery was pasted on a piece ofcoloured paper, thus presenting—after hoursof patient labour—much the same appearancethat it had in the beginning. It was thenglassed, framed, and presented to appreciativeparents, as a proof of their daughter’s industryand taste.

The most famous work of art ever made outof paper was probably the celebrated “herbal”of Mrs. Delany,—Mrs. Delany whom Burkepronounced “the model of an accomplishedgentlewoman.” She acquired her accomplishmentsat an age when most people seek to relinquishtheirs,—having learned to draw whenshe was thirty, to paint when she was forty,and to write verse when she was eighty-two.She also “excelled in embroidery and shell-work”;and when Miss Burney made her firstvisit to St. James’s Place, she found Mrs. Delany’s[221]walls covered with “ornaments of herown execution of striking elegance, in cuttingsand variegated stained papers.” The herbal,however, was the crowning achievement of herlife. It contained nearly a thousand plants,made of thin strips of coloured paper, pastedlayer over layer with the utmost nicety upona black background, and producing an effect“richer than painting.”

The flowers were copied accurately from nature,and florists all over the kingdom vied with oneanother in sending Mrs. Delany rare and beautifulspecimens. The Queen ardently admiredthis herbal, and the King, who regarded it withveneration not untinged by awe, expressedhis feelings by giving its creator a house atWindsor, and settling upon her an annuity ofthree hundred pounds. Yet Miss Seward complainedthat although England “teemed withgenius,” George III was “no Cæsar Augustus,”to encourage and patronize the arts. To[222]the best of his ability, he did. His conceptionof genius and art may not have tallied withthat of Augustus; but when an old lady madepaper flowers to perfection, he gave her a royalreward.

Mrs. Delany’s example was followed in courtcircles, and in the humbler walks of life. Shell-work,which was one of her accomplishments,became the rage. Her illustrious friend, theduch*ess of Portland, “made shell frames andfeather designs, adorned grottoes, and collectedendless objects in the animal and vegetablekingdom.” Young ladies of taste made flowersout of shells, dyeing the white ones with Brazilwood, and varnishing them with gum arabic. Arose of red shells, with a heart of knotted yellowsilk, was almost as much admired as apicture of birds with their feathers pasted onthe paper. This last triumph of realism presenteda host of difficulties to the perpetrator.When the bill and legs of the bird had beenpainted in water colours on heavy Bristol-board,the space for its body was covered witha paste of gum arabic as thick as a shilling.This paste was kept “tacky or clammy” to[223]hold the feathers, which were stripped off thepoor little dead bird, and stuck on the preparedsurface, the quills being cut down witha knife. Weights were used to keep the feathersin place, the result being that most of themadhered to the lead instead of to the Bristol-board,and came off discouragingly when thework was nearly done. As a combination ofart and nature, the bird picture had no rivalexcept the butterfly picture, where the clippedwings of butterflies were laid between twosheets of gummed paper, and the “impressions”thus taken, reinforced with a little gilding,were attached to a painted body. It maybe observed that the quality of mercy was thena good deal strained. Mrs. Montagu’s famous“feather-room,” in her house on PortmanSquare, was ornamented with hangings madeby herself from the plumage of hundreds ofbirds, every attainable variety being represented;yet no one of her friends, not eventhe sainted Hannah More, ever breathed asigh of regret over the merry little lives thatwere wasted for its meretricious decorations.

Much time and ingenuity were devoted by[224]industrious young people to the making ofbaskets, and no material, however unexpected,came amiss to their patient hands. Allspiceberries, steeped in brandy to soften them andstrung on wire, were very popular; and rice basketshad a chaste simplicity of their own. Theselast were made of pasteboard, lined with silkor paper, the grains of rice being gummed onin solid diamond-shaped designs. If the decorationappeared a trifle monotonous, as well itmight, it was diversified with coloured glassbeads. Indeed, we are assured that “basketsof this description may be very elegantly ornamentedwith groups of small shells, little artificialbouquets, crystals, and the fine feathersfrom the heads of birds of beautiful plumage”;—withanything, in short, that could be pastedon and persuaded to stick. When the supply ofglue gave out, wafer baskets—wafers requiredonly moistening—or alum baskets (made ofwire wrapped round with worsted, and steepedin a solution of alum, which was coloured yellowwith saffron or purple with logwood) were heldin the highest estimation. The modern mind,with its puny resources, is bewildered by the[225]multiplicity of materials which seem to havelain scattered around the domestic hearth a hundredyears ago. There is a famous old receiptfor “silvering paper without silver,” a processdesigned to be economical, but which requiresso many messy and alien ingredients,like “Indian glue,” and “Muscovy talc,” and“Venice turpentine,” and “Japan size,” and“Chinese varnish,” that mere silver seems bycomparison a cheap and common thing. Youngladies whose thrift equalled their ingenuitymade their own varnish by boiling isinglass ina quart of brandy,—a lamentable waste ofsupplies.

Genteel parcels were always wrapped insilver paper. We remember how Miss Edgeworth’sRosamond tries in vain to make onesheet cover the famous “filigree basket,” whichwas her birthday present to her Cousin Bell,and which pointed its own moral by falling topieces before it was presented. Rosamond’sfather derides this basket because he is implorednot to grasp it by its myrtle-wreathedhandle. “But what is the use of the handle,”he asks, in the conclusive, irritating fashion of[226]the Edgeworthian parent, “if we are not totake hold of it? And pray is this the thingyou have been about all week? I have seenyou dabbling with paste and rags, and couldnot conceive what you were doing.”

Rosamond’s half-guinea—her godmother’sgift—is spent buying filigree paper, and medallions,and a “frost ground” for this basket,and she is ruthlessly shamed by its unstablecharacter; whereas Laura, who gives her moneysecretly to a little lace-maker, has her generosityrevealed at exactly the proper moment,and is admired and praised by all the company.Apart from Miss Edgeworth’s conception oflife, as made up of well-adjusted punishmentsand rewards, a half-guinea does seem a gooddeal to spend on filigree paper; but then a singlesheet of gold paper cost six shillings, unlessgilded at home, after the following process,which was highly commended for economy:—

“Take yellow ochre, grind it with rain-water,and lay a ground with it all over the paper,which should be fine wove. When dry, takethe white of an egg and about a quarter of anounce of sugar candy, and beat them together[227]until the sugar candy is dissolved. Then strikeit all over the ground with a varnish brush, andimmediately lay on the gold leaf, pressing itdown with a piece of fine cotton. When dry,polish it with a dog’s tooth or agate. A sheetof this paper may be prepared for eighteenpence.”

No wonder little Rosamond was unequal tosuch labour, and her half-guinea was squanderedin extravagant purchases. Miss Edgeworth,trained in her father’s theory that childrenshould be always occupied, was a good dealdistressed by the fruits of their industry. The“chatting girls cutting up silk and gold paper,”whom Miss Austen watched with unconcern,would have fretted Miss Edgeworth’s soul, unlessshe knew that sensible needle-cases, pin-cushions,and work-bags were in process of construction.Yet the celebrated “rational toy-shop,”with its hand-looms instead of dolls, andits machines for drawing in perspective insteadof tin soldiers and Noah’s arks, stood responsiblefor the inutilities she scorned. And whatof the charitable lady in “Lazy Lawrence,”who is “making a grotto,” and buying shells[228]and fossils for its decoration? Even a filigreebasket, which had at least the grace of impermanence,seems desirable by comparison witha grotto. It will be remembered also thatMadame de Rosier, the “Good French Governess,”traces her lost son, that “promisingyoung man of fourteen,” by means of a boxhe has made out of refuse bits of shell thrownaside in a London restaurant; while the sonin turn discovers a faithful family servantthrough the medium of a painted pasteboard dog,which the equally ingenious domestic has exposedfor sale in a shop. It was a good thing in MissEdgeworth’s day to cultivate the “ornamentalarts,” were it only for the reunion of families.

Pasteboard, a most ungrateful and unyieldingmaterial, was the basis of so many householddecorations that a little volume, publishedin the beginning of the last century, is devotedexclusively to its possibilities. This book, whichwent through repeated editions, is called “TheArt of Working in Pasteboard upon ScientificPrinciples”; and it gives minute directions formaking boxes, baskets, tea-trays, caddies,—evencandlesticks, and “an inkstand in the[229]shape of a castle with a tower,”—a bafflingarchitectural design. What patience and ingenuitymust have been expended upon this pasteboardcastle, which had a wing for the inkwell, a wing for the sand box, five circularsteps leading up to the principal entrance, aterrace which was a drawer, a balcony surroundedby a “crenelled screen,” a tower tohold the quills, a vaulted cupola which liftedlike a lid, and a lantern with a “quadrilateralpyramid” for its roof, surmounted by a realpea or a glass bead as the final bit of decoration.There is a drawing of this edifice, whichis as imposing as its dimensions will permit;and there are four pages of mysterious instructionswhich make the reader feel as though hewere studying architecture by correspondence.

Far more difficult of accomplishment, andfar more useless when accomplished,—for theycould not even hold pens and ink,—were theGrecian temples and Gothic towers, made ofpasteboard covered with marbled paper, anddesigned as “elegant ornaments for the mantelpiece.”A small Ionic temple requires ten pagesof directions. It is built of “the best Bristol-board,[230]except the shafts of the pillars and someof the decorations, which are made of royaldrawing-paper”; and its manufacturers areimplored not to spare time, trouble, or material,if they would attain to anything so classic.“The art of working in pasteboard,” says thepreface of this engaging little book, “may becarried to a high degree of usefulness and perfection,and may eventually be productive ofsubstantial benefits to young persons of bothsexes, who wisely devote their leisure hours topleasing, quiet, and useful recreations, preferablyto frivolous, noisy, and expensive amusem*nts.”

A pleasing, quiet, and useful recreationwhich wasted nothing but eyesight,—and thatnobody valued,—was pricking pictures withpins. The broad lines and heavy shadows werepricked with stout pins, the fine lines andhigh lights with little ones, while a toothedwheel, sharply pointed, was used for largespaces and simple decorative designs. This wasan ambitious field of art, much of the workbeing of a microscopic delicacy. The folds of alady’s dress could be pricked in such film-like[231]waves that only close scrutiny revealed thethousand tiny holes of which its billowy softnesswas composed. The cleanness and drynessof pins commend them to our taste after along contemplation of varnish and glue pots;of “poonah work,” which was a sticky sort ofstencilling; of “Japan work,” in which embossedfigures were made of “gum-water, thickenedto a proper consistence with equal partsof bole ammoniac and whiting”; of “Chineseenamel,” which was a base imitation of ebonyinlaid with ivory; and of “potichomanie,”which converted a piece of English glass intosomething that “not one in a hundred couldtell from French china.” We sympathize withthe refined editor of the “Monthly Museum,”who recommends knotting to his female readers,not only because it had the sanction of a queen,

but because of its “pure nature” and “innocentsimplicity.” “I cannot but think,” saysthis true friend of my sex, “that shirts andsmocks are unfit for any lady of delicacy tohandle; but the shuttle is an easy flowing[232]object, to which the eye may remove with proprietyand grace.”

Grace was never overlooked in our great-grandmother’sday, but took rank as an importantfactor in education. A London schoolmistress,offering in 1815 some advice as tothe music “best fitted for ladies,” confessesthat it is hard to decide between the “widerange” of the pianoforte and the harp-player’s“elegance of position,” which gives to her instrument“no small powers of rivalry.” Sentimentwas interwoven with every accomplishment.Tender mottoes, like those which MissEuphemia Dundas entreats Thaddeus of Warsawto design for her, were painted upon boxesand hand-screens. Who can forget the whiteleather “souvenir,” adorned with the words“Toujours cher,” which Miss Euphemia pressesupon Thaddeus, and which that attractive butvirtuous exile is modestly reluctant to accept.A velvet bracelet embroidered with forget-me-notssymbolized friendship. A handkerchief,designed as a gift from a young girl to herbetrothed, had a celestial sphere worked in onecorner, to indicate the purity of their flame;[233]a bouquet of buds and blossoms in another, tomark the pleasures and the brevity of life;and, in a third, Cupid playing with a spaniel,“as an emblem of the most passionate fidelity.”Even samplers, which represented the first stepin the pursuit of accomplishments, had theiremblematic designs no less than their moralaxioms. The village schoolmistress, whom MissMitford knew and loved, complained that allher pupils wanted to work samplers instead oflearning to sew; and that all their mothersvalued these works of art more than they didthe neatest of caps and aprons. The samplerstood for gentility as well as industry. It reflectedcredit on the family as well as on thechild. At the bottom of a faded canvas, workedmore than a hundred years ago, and now hangingin a great museum of art, is this inspiringverse:—

If the little girl who embodied her highhopes in the painful precision of cross-stitchcould but know of their splendid fulfilment!

Modern authors who object to being askedfor their autographs, and who complain piteouslyof the persecutions they endure in thisregard, would do well to consider what theyhave gained by being born in an age whencommercialism has supplanted compliment.Had they been their own great-grandfathers,they would have been expected to present totheir female friends the verses they now sellto magazines. They would have written a fewplayful and affectionate lines every time theydined out, and have paid for a week’s hospitalitywith sentimental tributes to their hostess.And not their hostess only. Her buddingdaughters would have looked for some recognitionof their charms, and her infant sonwould have presented a theme too obvious for[235]disregard. It is recorded that when Campbellspent two days at the country seat of Mr.James Craig, the Misses Craig kept him busymost of that time composing verses for theiralbums,—a pleasant way of entertaining apoet guest. On another occasion he writes toMrs. Arkwright, lamenting, though with muchgood-humour, the importunities of mothers.“Mrs. Grahame has a plot upon me that Ishould write a poem upon her boy, three yearsold. Oh, such a boy! But in the way of writinglines on lovely children, I am engagedthree deep, and dare not promise.”

It seems that parents not only petitioned forthese poetic windfalls, but pressed their claimshard. Campbell, one of the most amiable ofmen, yielded in time to this demand, as he hadyielded to many others, and sent to little MasterGrahame some verses of singular ineptitude.

There are many more stanzas, but these areenough to make us wonder why parents did notlet the poet alone. Perhaps, if they had, hewould have volunteered his services. We knowthat when young Fanny Kemble showed himher nosegay at a ball, and asked how she shouldkeep the flowers from fading, he answeredhardily: “Give them to me, and I will immortalizethem,”—an enviable assurance of renown.

Album verses date from the old easy days,when rhyming was regarded as a gentlemanlyaccomplishment rather than as a means of livelihood.Titled authors, poets wealthy and well-born—forthere were always such—naturallyaddressed themselves to the ladies of their acquaintance.They could say with Lord Chesterfieldthat they thanked Heaven they did nothave to live by their brains. It was a theory,long and fondly cherished, that poetry was notcommon merchandise, to be bought and soldlike meal and malt; that it was, as Burnsadmirably said, either above price or worth[237]nothing at all. Later on, when poets becameexcellent men of business, when Byron hadbeen seduced by Murray’s generosity, whenMoore drove his wonderful bargains, and poeticnarrative was the best-selling commodity in themarket, we hear a rising murmur of protestagainst the uncommercial exactions of the album.Sonneteers who could sell their waresfor hard cash no longer felt repaid by a wordof flattery. Even the myrtle wreaths whichcrowned the victors of the Bath Easton contestsappeared but slender compensation, savein Miss Seward’s eyes, or in Mrs. Hayley’s.When Mrs. Hayley went to Bath in 1781, andwitnessed the solemn ceremonies inauguratedby Lady Miller; when she saw the laurels, andmyrtles, and fluttering ribbons, her soul wasfired with longing, and she set to work to persuadeher husband that the Bath Easton prizewas not wholly beneath his notice. The authorof “The Triumphs of Temper” was naturallyfearful of lowering his dignity by sporting withminor poets; and there was much wifely artificein her assumption that such playfulnesson his part would be recognized as true condescension.[238]“If you should feel disposed tohonour this slight amusem*nt with a light composition,I am persuaded you will oblige veryhighly.” The responsive Hayley was not unwillingto oblige, provided no one would suspecthim of being in earnest. He “scribbled”the desired lines “in the most rapid manner,”“literally in a morning and a half” (Byrondid not take much longer to write “The Corsair”),and sent them off to Bath, where theywere “admired beyond description,” and wonthe prize, so that the gratified Mrs. Hayleyappeared that night with the myrtle wreathwoven in her hair. The one famous contributorto the Bath Easton vase who did not wina prize was Sheridan. He, being entreated towrite for it some verses on “Charity,” compliedin these heartless lines:—

THE VASE SPEAKS

Complimentary addresses—those flowerytributes which seem so ardent and so facile—werebeginning to drag a little, even in Walpole’s[239]day. He himself was an adept in the artof polite adulation, and wrote without a blushthe obliging comparison between the PrincessAmelia and Venus (greatly to the disparagementof Venus), which the flattered lady foundin the hand of the marble Apollo at Stowe.“All women like all or any praise,” said LordByron, who had reason to know the sex. ThePrincess Amelia, stout, sixty, and “strong asa Brunswick lion,” was pleased to be designatedas a “Nymph,” and to be told she hadrouted Venus from the field. Walpole alsopresented to Madame de Boufflers a “petitegentillesse,” when she visited Strawberry Hill;and it became the painful duty of the Duc deNivernois to translate these lines into French,on the occasion of Miss Pelham’s grand fête atEsher Place. The task kept him absorbed andpreoccupied most of the day, “lagging behind”while the others made a cheerful tour of thefarms, or listened to the French horns andhautboys on the lawn. Finally, when all theguests were drinking tea and coffee in the Belvidere,poor Nivernois was delivered of hisverselets, which were received with a polite[240]semblance of gratification, and for the remaininghours his spirit was at peace. But it doesseem a hard return to exact for hospitality, andmust often have suggested to men of lettersthe felicity of staying at home.

Miss Seward made it her happy boast thatthe number and the warmth of Mr. Hayley’stributes—inserted duly in her album—raisedher to a rivalry with Swift’s Stella, or Prior’sChloe. “Our four years’ correspondence hasbeen enriched with a galaxy of little poeticgems of the first water.” Nor was the lady backwardin returning compliment for compliment.That barter of praise, that exchange of felicitation,which is both so polite and so profitable,was as well understood by our sentimental ancestorsas it is in this hard-headed age. Indeed,I am not sure that the Muse did not sometimescalculate more closely then than she venturesto do to-day. We know that Canon Sewardwrote an elegiac poem on a young noblemanwho was held to be dying, but who—perverselyenough—recovered; whereupon thereverend eulogist changed the name, and transferredhis heartfelt lamentations to another[241]youth whose death was fully assured. In thesame business-like spirit Miss Seward paid backMr. Hayley flattery for flattery, until eventhe slow-witted satirists of the period mademerry over this commerce of applause.

Moore, as became a poet of ardent temperament,wrote the most gallant album verses ofhis day; for which reason, and because his starof fame rode high, he endured sharp persecutionat the hands of admiring but covetousfriends. Young ladies asked him in the mostoffhand manner to “address a poem” tothem; and women of rank smiled on him inballrooms, and confided to him that they werekeeping their albums virgin of verse until“an introduction to Mr. Moore” should enablethem to request him to write on the openingpage. “I fight this off as well as I can,” he[242]tells Lord Byron, who knew both the relentlessnessof such demands and the compliantnature of his friend. On one occasion LadyHolland showed Moore some stanzas whichLord Holland had written in Latin and inEnglish, on the subject of a snuff-box given herby Napoleon; bidding him imperiously “dosomething of the kind,” and adding that shegreatly desired a corresponding tribute fromLord Byron. Moore wisely declined to makeany promises for Byron (one doubts whetherthe four lines which that nobleman eventuallycontributed afforded her ladyship muchpleasure), but wrote his own verses beforehe was out of bed the next morning, andcarried them to Holland House, expecting tobreakfast with its mistress. He found her,however, in such a captious mood, so out oftemper with all her little world, that, althoughhe sat down to the table, he did not venture tohint his hunger; and as no one asked him toeat or drink, he slipped off in half an hour,and sought (his poem still in his pocket) themore genial hospitality of Rosset’s restaurant.Had all this happened twenty years earlier,[243]Moore’s self-esteem would have been deeplywounded; but the poet was by now a man ofmark, and could afford to laugh at his owndiscomfiture.

Moore’s album verses may be said to makeup in warmth what they lack in address. Minorpoets—minims like William Robert Spencer—surpassedhim easily in adroitness; andsometimes won for themselves slender butabiding reputations by expressing with consummateease sentiments they did not feel.Spencer’s pretty lines beginning,—

—lines which all our grandmothers had byheart—may still be found in compilations ofEnglish verse. Their dexterous allusions tothe diamond sparks in Time’s hour-glass, andto the bird-of-paradise plumage in his greywings, their veiled and graceful flattery, contrastpleasantly with Moore’s Hibernian boldness,with his offhand demand to be paid inkisses for his songs—

[244]

A discreet young woman might have hesitatedto show this album page to friends.

Byron’s “tributes,” when he paid them, weresingularly chill. He may have buried his heartat Mrs. Spencer Smith’s feet; but the lines inher album which record this interment areeloquent of a speedy resurrection. When LadyBlessington demanded some verses, he wrotethem; but he explained with almost insultinglucidity that his heart was as grey as his head(he was thirty-one), and that he had nothingwarmer than friendship to offer in place of extinguishedaffections. Moore must have weariedpainfully of albums and of their rapacious demands;yet to the end of his life he could beharassed into feigning a poetic passion; butByron stood at bay. He was a hunted creature,and the instinct of self-preservation taught himsavage methods of escape.

There are people who, from some delicacy ofmental fibre, find it exceedingly difficult to be[245]rude; and there are people who—like CharlesLamb—have a curious habit of doing whatthey do not want to do, and what they know isnot worth doing, for the sake of giving pleasureto some utterly insignificant acquaintance. Thefirst class lacks a valuable weapon in life’s warfare.The second class is so small, and themotives which govern it are so inscrutable, thatwe are apt to be exasperated by its amiability.It is easy to sympathize with Thackeray, who,being badgered to write in an album alreadygraced by the signatures of several distinguishedmusicians, said curtly: “What! among all thosefiddlers!” This hardy British superciliousnesscommends itself to our sense of humour, noless than to our sense of self-protection. A greatdeal has been said, especially by Frenchmen,about the wisdom of polite denials; but a roughword, spoken in time, is seldom without weightin England.

Yet, for a friend, Thackeray found no labourhard. The genial tolerance of “The Pen and theAlbum” suggests something akin to affectionfor these pillaging little books when the rightpeople owned them,—when they belonged to[246]“Chesham Place.” Locker tells a pleasant storyof meeting Thackeray in Pall Mall, on his wayto Kensington, and offering to join him in hiswalk. This offer was declined, Thackeray explainingthat he had some rhymes trottingthrough his head, and that he was trying topolish them off in the course of a solitary stroll.A few days later they met again, and Thackeraysaid, “I finished those verses, and they arevery nearly being very good. I call them ‘Mrs.Katherine’s Lantern.’ I did them for Dickens’sdaughter.”

“Very nearly being very good!” This is anauthor’s modest estimate. Readers there arewho have found them so absolutely good thatthey leaven the whole heavy mass of albumverse. Shall not a century of extortion on theone side and debility on the other be forgiven,because upon one blank page, the property ofone thrice fortunate young woman, were writtenthese lines, fragrant with imperishable sentiment:—

[247]But when we turn to Lamb, and find himdriving his pen along its unwilling way, andadmitting ruefully that the road was hard, wesee the reverse of the medal, and we resentthat inexplicable sweetness of temper whichleft him defenceless before marauders.

Why should Frances Westwood have commandedhis services? Why should FrancesBrown, “engaged to a Mr. White,” have wrungfrom him a dozen lines of what we should nowcall “copy”? She had no recognizable right tothat copy; but Lamb confided to Mrs. Moxonthat he had sent it to her at twenty-four hours’notice, because she was going to be married andstart with her husband for India. Also that hehad forgotten what he had written, save onlytwo lines:—

of which conceit he was innocently proud.

Mrs. Moxon (Emma Isola) was herself anold and hardened offender. Her album, enriched[248]with the spoils of a predatory warfare, travelledfar afield, extorting its tribute of verse. Wefind Lamb first paying, as was natural, hisown tithes, and then actually aiding and abettinginjustice by sending the book to Mr. Procter(Barry Cornwall), with an irresistibleappeal for support.

“I have another favour to beg, which is thebeggarliest of beggings; a few lines of versefor a young friend’s album (six will be enough).M. Burney will tell you who I want ’em for.A girl of gold. Six lines—make ’em eight—signedBarry C——. They need not be verygood, as I chiefly want ’em as a foil to mine.But I shall be seriously obliged by any refusescraps. We are in the last ages of the world,when St. Paul prophesied that women shouldbe ‘headstrong lovers of their own wills, havingalbums.’ I fled hither to escape the albumeanpersecution, and had not been in my new housetwenty-four hours when a daughter of the nexthouse came in with a friend’s album, to beg acontribution, and, the following day, intimatedshe had one of her own. Two more have sprungup since. ‘If I take the wings of the morning,[249]and fly unto the uttermost parts of the earth,there will albums be.’ New Holland has albums.The age is to be complied with.”

“Ask for this little book a token of remembrancefrom friends, and from fellow students,and from wayfarers whom you may never seeagain. He who gives you his name and a fewkind words, gives you a treasure which shallkeep his memory green.”

So wrote Goethe—out of the abyss of Germansentimentality—in his son’s album; andthe words have a pleasant ring of good fellowshipand unforced fraternity. They are akin tothose gracious phrases with which the Frenchmonarchy—“despotism tempered by epigram”—waswont to designate the taxes that devouredthe land. There was a charming politenessin the assumption that taxes were freegifts, gladly given; but those who gave themknew.

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Beattie’s Minstrel.