No More Learning

.
i Cf. ante, p. 72.
Bolingbroke and his Times (The Sequel), by Sichel, W. , 1902, pp. 248 ff. ; and
cf. post, chap. VIII.


## p. 133 (#157) ############################################

6
Position of Arbuthnot 133
Arbuthnot's wife died in 1730, and his own health was bad;
but Pope told Swift that he was unalterable in friendship and
quadrille. In February 1731, he published A Brief Account of
Mr John Ginglicutt's Treatise concerning the Altercation or
Scolding of the Ancients, and, later in the year, he printed a
valuable medical work called An Essay concerning the nature of
Aliments. This was followed, in 1733, by An Essay concerning
the effects of Air on Human Bodies, and by a poem called
Know Yourself (1734). His friends were now much troubled by
his ill-health, which caused him to move to Hampstead for the
sake of the air; but recovery was impossible. Pope visited his
friend, and we have touching letters between Arbuthnot and Pope
and Swift. In January 1735, Pope published his Epistle to
Dr Arbuthnot, to whom he referred as the friend who had
helped him through this long disease, my life. ' Arbuthnot
died on 27 February, in Cork street. Swift wrote that the
death of his friends, Gay and the Doctor, had been terrible
wounds near his heart. ' Afterwards, Lord Chesterfield wrote of
him as both his physician and his friend, entirely confided in by
him in both capacities? . Johnson said of him, 'I think Dr Arbuthnot
the first man among them. He was the most universal genius,
being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning and a
man of much humour. ' Thackeray called him 'one of the wisest,
wittiest, most accomplished, gentlest of mankind.
A collection entitled Miscellaneous Works of the late Dr
Arbuthnot, in two volumes, was published at Glasgow in 1750.
Arbuthnot's son, George, inserted an advertisement in the papers,
declaring that the contents are not the works of my late father,
Dr Arbuthnot, but an imposition on the public. ' Some of the
pieces are certainly not Arbuthnot's, and others are of doubtful
authenticity; but a considerable portion are genuine, and the
advertisement must be taken to mean only that the collection was
unauthorised and untrustworthy. Fortunately, there is no doubt
as to Arbuthnot's claim to the best of the work attributed to him,
and the remainder may very well be neglected.
The History of John Bull will probably be found, nowadays,
to be the most interesting of Arbuthnot's works. To enjoy it,
some knowledge of the history of the time is necessary; but the
allegory, as the brief sketch that follows will show, is, for the most
part, transparent, and the humour is well kept up. The book
begins with an account of the quarrels since the death of Charles II
1 Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield, 1845, vol. 11, p. 446.


## p. 134 (#158) ############################################

134 Arbuthnot and Lesser Prose Writers
of Spain (Lord Strutt), who settled his estate upon his cousin
Philip Baboon, to the great disappointment of his cousin Esquire
South (archduke Charles of Austria). John Bull and Nicholas
Frog (the Dutch) were afraid that Lord Strutt would give all his
custom to his grandfather Lewis Baboon, and they threatened
Lord Strutt that, if he continued to deal with his grandfather,
they would go to law with him; while there were other tradesmen
who were glad to join against Lewis Baboon if Bull and Frog
would bear the charges of the suit. The case was put into the
hands of Hocus, the attorney (the duke of Marlborough), and
the decision went in favour of John Bull and his friends; but
repeated promises that the next verdict would be the final deter-
mination were not fulfilled, and new trials and new difficulties
continued to present themselves. Hocus proved himself superior
to most of his profession:
He kept always good clerks, he loved money, was smooth tongued, gave good
words, and seldom lost his temper; he was not worse than an infidel, for he
provided plentifully for his family; but he loved himself better than them all.
The neighbours reported that he was henpecked, which was most impossible
with such a mild-spirited woman as his wife was.
John Bull was so pleased with his success that he thought of
leaving off his trade and turning lawyer. John, in the main,
was
an honest, plain dealing fellow, choleric, bold, and of a very inconstant
temper. . . . He was very apt to quarrel with his best friends, especially if they
pretended to govern him. If you flattered him you might lead him like a
child. John's temper depended very much upon the air; his spirits rose and
fell with the weather-glass. John was quick and understood his business
very well: but no man alive was more careless in looking into his accounts,
or more cheated by partners, apprentices and servants. This was occasioned
by his being a boon companion, loving his bottle and his diversion; for, to
say truth, no man kept a better house than John, nor spent his money more
generously.
His mania for the law was checked by his discovery of an
intrigue between Hocus and Mrs Bull, his first wife (the late whig
parliament). Violent scenes ensued and, at last, Mrs Bull was
maltreated and died, leaving three daughters, Polemia, Discordia
and Usuria. John at once married again (the new tory parlia-
ment). This wife was a sober country gentlewoman, who gave
him good advice, urging him to bring the litigation to an end.
When he looked through his attorney's bill, he was shocked at its
length, and discovered that he had been egregiously cheated, and
that the whole burden of the lawsuit had been thrown upon his


## p. 135 (#159) ############################################

John Bull
>
The History of John
135
shoulders. The other tradesmen abused Mrs Bull, and said that
their interests were sacrificed.
The second of the series of pamphlets begins with the discovery
of a paper by the first Mrs Bull containing a vindication of the
duty of unfaithfulness incumbent upon wives in cases of infidelity
of their husbands. This, of course, is a satire on the disloyalty
of whigs. Then, Diego (earl of Nottingham) had an interview
with the second Mrs Bull, in the hope of satisfying her that John
must not desert his friends; but she showed that Nick Frog had
been deceiving John and endeavouring to make a private
arrangement with Lewis Baboon. The guardians of Bull's three
daughters (the whig leaders) came to John and urged that the
lawsuit should be continued; but John told them that he knew
when he was ill-used; that he was aware how his family were
apt to throw away their money in their cups; but that it was an
unfair thing to take advantage of his weakness and make him
set his hand to papers when he could hardly hold his pen. .
The third pamphlet relates to John Bull's mother (the church
of England), and his sister Peg (the Scottish church) and her love
affair with Jack (presbyterianism). The mother was of a meek
spirit, and strictly virtuous. She always put the best construction
on the words and actions of her neighbours; she was neither a prude
nor a fantastic old belle. John's sister was a poor girl who had
been starved as nurse. John had all the good bits: his sister had
:
only a little oatmeal or a dry crust; he had lain in the best apart-
ments with his bedchamber towards the south; she had lodged in
a garret exposed to the north wind; but she had life and spirit
in abundance and knew when she was ill-used. The pamphlet
ends with a letter from Nick Frog to John Bull urging him to
mortgage his estate, and with an account of a conference between
Bull, Frog, South and Lewis Baboon at the Salutation tavern
(congress of Utrecht). The fourth part of John Bull is concerned,
to some extent, with Jack and the bill against occasional con-
formity; and the fifth and last part refers to the meetings at the
Salutation inn and the intrigues of the various tradesmen. John
had interviews with Nick Frog and Lewis Baboon about Ecclesdown
castle (Dunkirk) and other matters, and the lawsuit was brought
to an end with John in possession of Ecclesdown, to his great
satisfaction.
Arbuthnot’s masterpiece owed something to Swift's Tale of a
Tub, published eight years earlier; but the plot in Swift's book is
very slight, and there was nothing in the past history of satire to


## p. 136 (#160) ############################################

136 Arbuthnot and Lesser Prose Writers
correspond to the clearly drawn characters and the well developed
story designed to promote certain views on public policy in the
minds of the people, which are to be found in John Bull.
The Art of Political Lying is a delightful skit, like those
pamphlets called “The Works of the Learned. ” Political lying is
the art of convincing the people of salutary falsehoods, for some
good end. ' A lie, it is suggested, is best contradicted by another
lie; if it be said that a great person is dying, the answer should
be, not that he is in perfect health, but that he is slowly recovering.
One chapter of the promised treatise was to be an enquiry, which
of the two parties are the greatest political liars. In both are to be
found great geniuses; but they are prone to glut the market with lies.
Heads of parties are warned against believing their own lies; all
parties have been subject to this misfortune, due to too great
a zeal in the practice of the art. There are many forms of political
lies: the additory, the detractory, the translatory, which transfers
the merit of a man's good action, or the demerit of a man's bad
action, to another.
When one ascribes anything to a person which does not belong to him, the
lie ought to be calculated not quite contradictory to his known quality. For
example, one would not make the French king present at a Protestant con-
venticle, nor the Dutch paying more than their quota.
The wit of this jeu d'esprit is worthy of Swift at his best, and the
method of gravely asserting impossible things and arguing from
those assertions is often to be found in Swift's work. The style,
too, bas the vigorous and idiomatic character of Swift's, and there
is abundance of humour.
The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, of which we have only
the first book, is a curious collection of satires on the learned;
it contains much wit, but a good deal of the satire cannot be
understood without considerable knowledge of metaphysics and
medicine. The earlier part of the work, which relates to the
parentage and bringing-up of Scriblerus, gave many hints to
Sterne for his account of Tristram Shandy and his father. Martin
was born at Münster, the son of a learned gentleman, Cornelius,
by profession an antiquary. When the child was born, his father
remembered that the cradle of Hercules was a shield, and, finding
an antique buckler, he determined that the child should be laid
on it and brought into the study and shown to learned men; but
the maid-servant, having regard to her reputation for cleanliness,
scoured the shield and, in so doing, showed that a certain promi-
nency, on which the antiquaries had speculated, was nothing but


## p. 137 (#161) ############################################

Memoirs of Scriblerus
137
the head of a nail. The nurse was indignant at the father's
views about the proper food for the infant and about its early
education. He found an assistant in a boy called Crambe, who
had a great store of words and composed a treatise on syllogisms.
Martin had the Greek alphabet stamped on his gingerbread,
played games after the manner of the ancients and wore a
geographical suit of clothes. Afterwards, he became a critic,
practised medicine, studied the diseases of the mind, and en-
deavoured to find out the seat of the soul. Then, he went on
his travels, and visited the countries mentioned in Gulliver's
Travels.
The Memoirs of Scriblerus were printed in the second volume
of Pope's prose works (1741), with a note from the booksellers to
the reader which stated that the Memoirs, and all the tracts in the
same name, were written by Pope and Arbuthnot, 'except the
Essay on the Origin of Sciences, in which Parnell had some hand,
as had Gay in the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk, while the rest were
Pope's. ' There cannot, however, be any doubt that the Memoirs
are wholly, or almost wholly, by Arbuthnot, though suggestions
were probably made by his friends; Pope's earlier editors admitted
that the knowledge of medicine and philosophy displayed marked
many of the chapters as the work of the Doctor. ' "To talk of
Martin,' wrote Swift to Arbuthnot, “in any hands but yours is folly.
For you every day give us better hints than all of us together
could do in a twelvemonth. '
The Memoirs abound in wit, and are written with delightful
gravity; but some modern readers will find an element of truth in
Johnson's judgment that the absence of more of the Memoirs need
not be lamented, for the follies ridiculed were hardly practised :
'It has been little read, or when read has been forgotten, as
no man could be wiser, better or merrier by remembering it. '
Arbuthnot's work was at its best when (as in John Bull) he was
dealing with matters of the world of action. In the Memoirs of
Scriblerus, he attacked follies which, for the most part, though not
wholly, were obsolete ; and, though this criticism applies, also, to
some of the matter in Sterne's Tristram Shandy, yet the later
humorist dealt with a wider field, which embraced much besides
Mr Shandy's peculiarities, and he had a love for his characters
which makes them live, and prevented him from allowing them to
become grotesque.
Of the minor pieces connected with the Scriblerus scheme, the
chief is An Essay concerning the Origin of Sciences (1732), in which
6


## p. 138 (#162) ############################################

138 Arbuthnot and Lesser Prose Writers
Pope claimed some share. In this humorous piece, the inhabitants
of India, Greece and Italy are said to have derived their know-
ledge from men-monkeys, the descendants of the original
Ethiopians, with whom the gods conversed. The design, wrote
Pope, was 'to ridicule such as build general assertions upon two
or three loose quotations from the ancients. ' Virgilius Restaura-
tus contains some amusing emendations in ridicule of Bentley,
probably contributed by various members of the club, but chiefly
by Arbuthnot. A Brief Account of Mr John Ginglicutt's Treatise
concerning the Altercation or Scolding of the Ancients (1731), as
Pope said, is of little value ; its object was to satirise the practice
of political opponents in applying to each other the language of
Billingsgate, by showing that this sort of altercation is ancient and
classical, while what is commonly considered polite is barbarous.
Arbuthnot's principal medical works are An Essay concerning
the nature of Aliments (1731) and An Essay concerning the effect
of Air on Human Bodies (1733). In the first of these books, both
of which may be read with interest by laymen, he argued that all
that is done by medicine might be done equally well by diet.
Sir Benjamin Richardson, who has called the second work ‘one of
the most remarkable books in the literature of medicine,' says
that Arbuthnot was far in advance of his age in medical
science, and made some remarkable discoveries. An Essay on
the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning (1701) is an admirable
and well reasoned paper, with some good suggestions respecting
the study of mathematics.
Two other serious writings may be mentioned briefly. A Sermon
preached to the People at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh (1706) was
in defence of the union with England, then under discussion. The
text was 'Better is he that laboureth and aboundeth in all things,
than he that boasteth himself and wanteth bread. ' Arbuthnot's
countrymen were urged, in this wise and moderate paper, to
pocket their pride, and take the benefits that the union offered
to them. 'I have set before you to-day, on one hand, industry and
riches ; on the other, pride and poverty'; it was the interest of
all classes in Scotland to accept the offer of a partnership in
the great blessings which England could bestow. The other
piece, INNOI £E'ATTON Know Yourself (1734), is Arbuthnot's
sole poem. In this earnest study, probably his last work, he
described the principles of his own life. Divine truth made
clear his way, encouraging him with the revelation of his high
descent.


## p. 139 (#163) ############################################

William King
139
In vain thou hop'st for bliss on this poor clod,
Return, and seek thy father, and thy God:
Yet think not to regain thy native sky,
Borne on the wings of vain philosophy;
Mysterious passage! hid from human eyes;
Soaring you'll sink, and sinking you will rise;
Let humble thoughts thy wary footsteps guide,
Regain by meekness what you lost by pride.
There seems to be no evidence that Arbuthnot knew William
King; but King was a tory, used his wit in the interests of the
party and was acquainted with Swift and Gay. If Arbuthnot and
King met, they must have had a good deal in common, besides
easy-going temperaments. King was born in 1663, and was
educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took
his degree of D. C. L. in 1692. (He should not be confused either
with Dr William King, archbishop of Dublin, or with Dr William
King, of St Mary hall, Oxford, who wrote The Toast. ) His first
noticeable piece was an amusing Dialogue showing the way to
Modern Preferment (1690). He became an advocate at Doctor's
Commons and secretary to princess Anne, and joined Charles
Boyle in the campaign against Bentley, in the very clever
Dialogues of the Dead, and other pieces. Other amusing works
were A Journey to London in the year 1698, in which King
burlesqued a book on Paris written by Martin Lister, and The
Transactioner, with some of his philosophical Fancies (1700), in
which he ridiculed Sir Hans Sloane, editor of the Transactions
of the Royal Society. King was given several posts in Ireland,
where he wrote a poem, Molly of Mountown, on a cow whose
milk he used ; but he returned to England about 1707, with
straitened means. He had already issued a volume of Mis-
cellanies in Prose and Verse, dedicated to the members of the
Beef-Steak club, which contains much of his best work. A clever
poem was published, in 1708, under the title The Art of Cookery,
in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry, and, in 1709, he printed
three parts of Useful Transactions in Philosophy and other sorts
of Learning, a skit on the Philosophical Transactions and on
Sloane, which may have furnished hints to Arbuthnot when writing
the Memoirs of Scriblerus.
King wrote on the side of the high church party in the
Sacheverell controversy, and attacked Marlborough in Rufinus
(1712). He seems to have been an inmate of the Fleet prison ;
but Swift obtained for the 'poor starving wit' the post of
gazetteer, an office which he resigned in six months because,


## p. 140 (#164) ############################################

140 Arbuthnot and Lesser Prose Writers
apparently, it required too much work, and regular hours. His
last piece of importance was Useful Miscellanies, Part the First
(1712), a curious but amusing compilation. A few months later, he
died. His writings, which were edited by the indefatigable John
Nichols in 1776, deserve to be better known than they now are.
Literary criticism at the end of the seventeenth century owed
much to Boileau and Rapin, who pleaded for 'good sense' and
urged the wisdom of following classical models. Thomas Rymer,
born in 1641, the son of a Yorkshire roundhead, published, in
1674, a translation of Rapin's Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise
of Poesie, and wrote a play, Edgar, or the English Monarch
(1678), in accordance with classical laws. But his principal
literary work was The Tragedies of the Last Age considered
and examined by the Practice of the Ancients, and by the
Common Sense of all Ages (1678), in which he examined three
of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, and Paradise Lost. These
pieces he found to be 'as rude as our architecture. ' Both the
poetry and Gothic architecture were condemned because they
were not based on classical models. Rime he defended against
the slender sophistry’ in Paradise Lost, 'which some are pleased
to call a poem. ' Dryden, in the preface to All for Love (1678),
said that he had here endeavoured to follow the practice of the
ancients, 'who, as Mr Rymer has judiciously observed, are, and
ought to be, our masters. ' In order, however, to imitate Shake-
speare in his style, he disencumbered himself of rime: "Not that
I condemn my former way, but that this is more proper to my
present purpose. ' In 1692, Rymer published (with the date 1693
on the title-page), A short View of Tragedy: Its original
excellency and corruption, with some reflections on Shakespeare
and other practitioners for the stage ; in which he proved his
incompetence as a critic by expressing contempt for Shakespeare's
tragedies. Dryden's criticism, said Johnson, ‘has the majesty of a
queen ; Rymer's has the ferocity of a tyrant. ' In a letter to
Dennis', Dryden said that our comedy was far beyond anything of
the ancients;
and notwithstanding our irregularities, so is our Tragedy. Shakespeare had
a genius for it; and we know (in spite of Mr Rymer) that genius alone is a
greater virtue (if I may so call it) than all other qualifications put together.
. . . Who will read Mr Rymer, or not read Shakespeare ? For my own part,
I reverence Mr Rymer's learning, but I detest his ill-nature and his arro-
gance.
1 Select Works of Mr John Dennis, 1718, vol. 11, p. 504.


## p. 141 (#165) ############################################

6
Rymer. Langbaine. Gildon 141
But the preaching of common sense' and of the need of laws in
writing was a useful work, and, if Rymer is full of extravagances,
he was at least qualified by his learning to discuss the practice of
the ancients. Spence says that Pope thought him generally right,
though unduly severe on some of the plays he criticised? Rymer
devoted the later years of his life to historical work, and we
owe him a great debt for Foedera, fifteen volumes of which
appeared before his death in 1713.
Gerard Langbaine, son of the provost of Queen's college,
Oxford, of the same name, is known chiefly by his Account
of the English Dramatic Poets, 1691. Langbaine frequented
,
the theatre and collected plays, and had already published,
in 1687—8, catalogues of plays, with notes concerning the
sources of the plots. His passion for discovering plagiarisms
annoyed Dryden and others, but his work was scholarly and is
still sometimes useful. A new edition of his book was brought
out by Charles Gildon in 1699, under the title The Lives and
Characters of the English Dramatic Poets. The name Gildon,
a hack writer on the whig side, is familiar to posterity because
Pope wrote of his 'venal quill. ' He is described by a con-
temporary as of 'great literature and mean genius. ' Neither his
critical nor his dramatic work is of value; but he wrote an
entertaining book, A Comparison between the Two Stages (1702),
in which, in dialogue forms, he discussed the plays and players of
the day. Some interesting critical views are expressed in a letter
to Prior (1721) on one of his tragedies, in which Gildon says that
to move the passions is the chief excellence in that way of writing,
and so allowed to be by all ages but the present, when critics had
arisen who made diction or language the chief mark of a good
or bad tragedy, and such a diction as, though correct, was
scarcely tolerable in this way of writing ; ‘for tragedy, consisting
of the representation of different passions, must, of necessity, vary
its style according to the nature of each passion which it brings
on the stage? ' Gildon's Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures
of Mr D- De F-, of London, Hosier, who has lived above
fifty years by himself, in the kingdoms of North and South
Britain' (1719) is an interesting pamphlet on the new romance
of Robinson Crusoe, which shows that the authorship of that
1 Cf. , as to Rymer, ante, vol. VIII, p. 195, and, as to him and Jeremy Collier, see
ibid. pp. 163—4.
? Calendar of Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath, Hist. MSS Comm. , 1908,
vol. in, p. 496.


## p. 142 (#166) ############################################

142 Arbuthnot and Lesser Prose Writers
work was no secret to some, at least, of Defoe's contemporaries.
Gildon's charges of inconsistencies in Robinson Crusoe are some-
times without foundation.
One of the best known critics of his time was the redoubtable
John Dennis. Dennis had the advantage of an education at
Harrow and Cambridge, of early travel in France and Italy and
of the company, in his earlier days, of many men of culture. His
plays are noticed elsewhere, and it is not necessary to give details
of his quarrels with Pope, Steele, Addison and others. His later
criticisms are marred by pedantry and abuse, but there is often
real merit in his work? He answered Collier's attack on the stage
with two pamphlets, intended to be 'a vindication of the stage,
and not of the corruptions or the abuses of it,' and, in 1701,
published The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry:
a Critical Discourse, which was followed, in 1704, by The Grounds
of Criticism in Poetry. An Essay on the Operas after the Italian
Manner (1706), was directed against the growth of effeminacy.
An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare (1712),
contains some excellent passages, but, for the most part, shows
the writer's inability to understand or appreciate his subject.
Shakespeare, he says, had great qualities by nature, but he made
gross mistakes : 'If he had had the advantage of art and learning,
he would have surpassed the very best and strongest of the
Ancients. The poetical justice of which he was so fond he often
missed in Shakespeare, and he regretted that the crowd in Julius
Caesar showed 'want of art. His favourite views are indicated
'
on the title-page of The Advancement and Reformation of
Modern Poetry (1701), which is in two parts,
the first, showing that the principal reason why the Ancients excelled the
Moderns in the greater poetry, was because they mixed religion with poetry.
The second, proving that by joining poetry with the religion revealed to us in
Sacred Writ, the modern poets might come to equal the Ancients.
The answer to the question why he preferred Oedipus to Julius
Caesar, is, says Dennis, 'first, the Oedipus is exactly just
and regular, and the Julius Caesar is very extravagant and
irregular: secondly, the Oedipus is very religious, and the Julius
Caesar is irreligious.
'
‘Every tragedy,' he adds, ought to be a very solemn lecture, inculcating
a particular Providence, and showing it plainly protecting the good, and
1 Ante, vol. VIII, pp. 193—4.
2 See John Dennis. His Life and Criticism, by Paul, H. G. , New York, 1911.


## p. 143 (#167) ############################################

Dennis. Cibber. Hughes 143
chastizing the bad, or at least the violent. . . . If it is otherwise, it is either an
empty amusement, or a scandalous and pernicious libel upon the
government
of the worldi!
The same views are repeated in The Grounds of Criticism in
Poetry. Poetry, he says, had fallen to a low level, because of
ignorance of the rules by which poets ought to proceed.
If the end of poetry be to instruct and reform the world, that is, to bring
mankind from irregularity, extravagance and confusion, to rule and order,
how this should be done by a thing that is in itself irregular and extravagant
is difficult to be conceived 2.
One of the most entertaining as well as useful books of the
first half of the eighteenth century is An Apology for the Life of
Mr Colley Cibber, Comedian, 1740; but of this mention has
already been made in a previous chapter, in connection with
Cibber's earlier plays. In 1730, Cibber was made poet laureate,
an appointment which furnished material for the wits who
attacked him. From the time that Pope substituted Cibber for
Theobald as hero of the Dunciad, Cibber has been constantly
misrepresented as being a dunce, whereas his plays are amusing,
and he is an admirable dramatic critic. His worst fault was
inordinate vanity; but this, to some extent, was carried off by the
liveliness of his disposition. Johnson was not friendly to Cibber,
but he admitted that An Apology was 'very well done, and
Horace Walpole calls it 'inimitable. The book is admirable as
an autobiography, because it displays the whole character of the
writer; the criticism is intelligent and well informed; and the
style is bright and amusing.
John Hughes, born in 1677, collected materials for the first
two volumes of a History of England (1706), which is generally
known as White Kennett's, who wrote the third volume. He
translated Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead and wrote an
opera ; and, in 1715, he published The Works of Mr Edmund
Spenser . . . with a glossary explaining the old and obscure words.
This, the first attempt at a critical edition of Spenser, appeared at
a time when there was some wish in the air for relief from the
rimed couplet. Prior, in the preface to Solomon, said, 'He that
writes in rhymes, dances in fetters'; and he had real respect for
Spenser, though he considered the verse of the older writers 'too
dissolute and wild. ' But, to Spenser's first editor, his stanza
See 'Epistle dedicatory' to The Advancement, etc.
? As to Dennis's own plays, see ante, vol. VIII, pp. 193—4.
: See ibid. pp. 176—7.
6


## p. 144 (#168) ############################################

144 Arbuthnot and Lesser Prose Writers
seemed 'defective' and his general composition ‘monstrous. '
'
Hughes's own verse is of no importance ; reference has been
already made to his one tragedy, The Siege of Damascus (1720),
which has some merit, and was very successful"; but the author
died on the night of its production. Johnson says that Hughes
was 'not only an honest but a pious man. ' Swift and Pope agreed
that he was among the mediocrities in prose as well as verse, and
that he was too grave for them. Hughes had written for The
Tatler and The Spectator, and Steele, in The Theatre, said that
his pen was always engaged in raising the mind to what was noble
and virtuous.
A word must be added here as to several other editors of
English classics, to some of whom reference is made also in
other chapters of this work. Nicholas Rowe has been previously
treated, both as a dramatista and as the producer, in 1709, of the
first edition of Shakespeare that can in any way be called critical 3.
His chief service in the latter capacity lay in his preserving, in the
'Life' which he prefixed to the plays, information, derived largely
from Betterton, which might otherwise have been forgotten. To
subsequent editions of Shakespeare belonging to this period, it is
unnecessary again to refer4
To Warburton's edition (1747), Thomas Edwards, a barrister
who devoted most of his time to literature, published a Supple-
ment, which, in the third edition (1748), was called The Canons of
Criticism, and a Glossary, ‘being a supplement to Mr Warburton's
edition of Shakespeare, collected from the notes in that celebrated
work, and proper to be bound up with it. ' The Canons are
satirical, with illustrations from Edwards's victim; e. g. , a critic 'has
a right to alter any passage which he does not understand'; 'He
may explain a difficult passage by words absolutely unintelligible. '
Johnson compared Edwards's attack to a fly stinging a stately
horse; but, as Warton says, the attack was allowed by all
impartial critics to have been decisive and judicious. ' Warburton
retorted in notes to The Dunciad. Edwards died in 1757, at
Samuel Richardson's house. His Canons of Criticism went
through many editions.
Benjamin Heath, a town clerk of Exeter, with literary tastes,
published notes on the Greek dramatists, and, in 1765, A Revisal
of Shakespeare's Text, 'wherein the alterations introduced into it
by the more modern editors and critics are particularly considered. '
1 See ante, vol. VIII, p. 194.
2 See ibid. pp. 195—7.
3 See ante, vol. v, pp. 267–8.
• See ibid. pp. 268 ff.


## p. 145 (#169) ############################################

Shakespearean Critics
145
Heath attacked Pope, Hanmer and Warburton, but agreed that
the public was under real obligations to Theobald. He himself
was not so fortunate as to be furnished with the Shakespeare
folios, still less the quartos ; but he concluded that all readings
deserving of attention were given by Pope or Theobald. Some of
his annotations were included in a collection published in 1819.
Among the manuscripts which he left unpublished on his death,
in 1766, were notes (used by Dyce) on Beaumont and Fletcher's
plays.
John Upton, rector of Great Rissington and prebendary of
Rochester, edited Epictetus and Spenser's Faerie Queene (1758),
and published Critical Observations on Shakespeare (1746). In
the Spenser, old spelling was preserved, and the notes were
numerous and learned. There had been a preliminary Letter
concerning a new edition of Spenser's Faerie Queene (1751), in
which Upton spoke contemptuously of Hughes and Pope as
editors, and said that his edition of Spenser had been undertaken
at Gilbert West's advice. In a preface to the second edition of
Critical Observations on Shakespeare, Upton replied to and
attacked Warburton.
Another clergyman of literary tastes, Zachary Grey, rector
of Houghton Conquest, Bedfordshire, wrote much on church
questions, but is mentioned here because of his edition of
Hudibras, with large annotations and a preface,' which appeared
in 1744, with illustrations by Hogarth. The text was explained
by plentiful quotations from puritan and other contemporaries.
Warburton rendered some help, which he apparently thought was
not sufficiently acknowledged; for, in his Shakespeare, he said
that he doubted whether (so execrable a heap of nonsense had
ever appeared in any learned language as Grey's commentaries on
Hudibras. A Supplement to Grey's valuable work, with further
notes, appeared in 1752. Grey attacked Warburton in several
pamphlets, and charged his antagonist with passing off Hanmer's
work as his own. In 1754, Grey published Critical, Historical
and Explanatory Notes on Shakespeare. He died in 1766.
The notice of the criticisms which followed on the work of the
first editors of Shakespeare has taken us rather far into the
eighteenth century; and later critics must be left to another
volume.
E. L. IX.
CH. V.
10


## p. 146 (#170) ############################################

CHAPTER VI
LESSER VERSE WRITERS
I
Johnson, who seems to have disliked Prior for more reasons
than one, spoke of his 'obscure original. The poet's father,
George Prior, was a joiner at Eastbrook in Wimborne, Dorset,
where Matthew was born on 21 July 1664. His parents were
presbyterians who, in 1662, became nonconformists. Wimborne
is famed for its collection of chained books, and one of these,
Ralegh's History of the World, has a circular hole burned with
a heated skewer through a hundred pages or so. Some local
worthy invented the incredible tale that the damage was caused
by a spark from a taper used by young Matthew while diligently
reading this monumental work. The elder Prior came to London
when his son was a boy, attracted by the prosperity of his brother
Samuel, host first of the Rhenish tavern, Channel row, and after-
wards (by 1688 at latest), of the Rummer tavern in Charing Cross.
Another kinsman, Arthur Prior, who died in 1687, and left the poet
£100, seems also to have been a vintner and may have succeeded
Samuel at the Rhenish tavern. At one of these houses of resort,
Matthew appears to have been apprentice, probably at the last
mentioned. There, he was by chance found reading Horace by
the earl of Dorset, of whom he always retained the most grateful
remembrance? . His skill in verse rendering attracted the attention
of the Dorset circle. At the earl's suggestion, he was sent to West-
minster in 1680; next year, he became a king's scholar, and passed
under the immediate care of Busby, who, his little birch’in hand,
had fostered the juvenile talent of Dryden and Locke, as well as of
i Prior's Dedication of his Poems (1718) to Dorset's son and successor contains a
character of the father which, though written in a panegyrical strain, may be described
as one of the happiest tributes of the kind extant.


## p. 147 (#171) ############################################

>
The Country and the City Mouse 147
South, Atterbury and a score of other bishops. At Westminster,
his chief friends were Charles Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax,
and his brother, James Montague; objecting to be separated from
these confederates, Prior incurred the disapproval of his patron by
refusing to go to Christ Church and entering, instead, as a scholar
at St John's college, Cambridge, in April 1683. To his school and
college, and to his university, he always remained conspicuously
loyal? . In 1686, he took his bachelor's degree, and in the following
year joined with Charles Montague in writing The Hind and the
Panther Transvers'd to the Story of the Country and the City
Mouse? The form of this slight piece is copied from Bucking-
ham’s Rehearsal, which contains the originals of the poet Bayes
and those languishing gentlemen' Smith and Johnson. In The
Rehearsal, Bayes takes them to the repetition of his latest rimed
tragedy. Here, he makes them listen to as much as they can bear
of his new poem in defence of the church of Rome. Some of the
incongruities in Dryden's fable, and one or two incidental mis-
takes, are effectively twitted, and Dryden's method of argument
(which abhors 'knotty reasonings' as 'too barbarous for my stile')
is rather happily hit off. But the point of the jest—that Dryden's
moral change will not always keep pace with his formal conversion-
Such was I-such, by nature still I am--
is but a sorry kind of personality. Prior seems to have indulged a
pique against Dryden, which does not sit well on the lesser poet3.
While Dryden left this attack without any effective retort, Pope
avenged his injured fellow Catholics on Montague in his Epistle
to Arbuthnot (where Montague figures as Bufo).
In 1688, Prior was chosen a fellow of St John's, and blossomed
forth in An Ode, written as a college exercise' on the text 'I am
that I am. The poem, which, in accordance with custom, was sent
to the earl of Exeter, in acknowledgment of a benefaction bestowed
upon the college by one of his ancestors, seems to have recom-
mended Prior to the notice of the family, as his verses in the
Strephon vein To the Countess of Exeter, Playing on the Lute,
1 His poems contain more than one recognition of the fact that
St John's was founded in a Woman's Name.
Cf. , especially, vol. ii of Waller's edition of The Writings of Matthew Prior (Cambridge
English Classics, 1905—7). For Prior's active interest in the university and its press,
when he was in the midst of public affairs, see The History of His Own Time, p. 167
et al. As to Westminster school, cf. Longleat Papers.
9 Cf, ante, vol. VIII, p. 48.
: Cf. A Satire on the Modern Translators (pp. 48–9) and A Session of the Poets
p. 299), in vol. 11 of Waller's edn. p. 278.
10_2


## p. 148 (#172) ############################################

148
Lesser Verse Writers
and his lines Picture (at Burleigh House) of Seneca dying in a
Bath, indicate.
Some recently discovered verses by Prior show that, in the
reign of James II, he adhered to the side of the court, without
suggesting that there was much depth in his loyaltyd. At the
revolution, he was thrown upon his own resources, and, not
unnaturally, appealed to his earliest patron, Dorset, by sending
An Epistle to Fleetwood Shephard, the fidus Achates of that
nobleman. His reputation as a satirist would appear to have
served him in good stead, for, although the other mouse was
advanced first, Prior had not to wait long. During the winter
,
of 1690–91, he obtained an appointment in the English embassy
at the Hague, the meeting place of the coalition against Louis XIV
organised by William of Orange. Prior was secretary to Lord
Dursley, envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary (in whose wife's
copy of Milton he inscribed an extravagant compliment, repeated
from one which he had previously paid to Lady Dorset); and the
envoy's gout gave the young attaché many opportunities of personal
converse with William. His readiness caused the king to bestow
on him, besides the half-serious nickname ‘Secrétaire du Roy,'
the appointment of gentleman of the king's bedchamber. He
began to send contributions to Dryden's Miscellanies, taking care
to publish loyal poems both in pindaric style and in a lighter vein.
In 1693, he prepared, for the music of Purcell and the delectation
of their majesties, a new year's Hymn to the Sun, and, in 1695, he
was persuaded to take a conspicuous place in the group of bards
who, in a black-framed folio, mourned ‘Dread Maria's Universal
Fall. His diplomatic Ode Presented to the King on his Majesty's
Arrival in Holland after The Queen's death is in ballad-metre
of eight and eight. In the same metre, he cast, also in 1695, An
English Ballad On the Taking of Namur By the King of Great
Britain, a sufficient taking off and down of the Ode sur la Prise De
Namur by the Boileau gloriosus of 1692. A solemn congratulation
in heroic couplets To the King, at his Arrival in Holland, after
the Discovery of the Conspiracy, followed in 1696. On the other
hand, in The Secretary, written at the Hague in the same year,
we get the first real touch of the true quality of Prior's muse,
describing, in the anapaestic metre which he may be said to have
1 See Advice to the Painter, upon the defeat of the Rebels in the West, etc. , and To
the Bishop of Rochester (Sprat) upon his Account of the Rye-house Plot (Waller, vol. 11,
pp. 289—93). The queer stanzas Orange (ibid. 310—11) illustrate his transition.
9 Waller, vol. 1, pp. 15—16.


## p. 149 (#173) ############################################

>
Prior's Early Official Life and Verse 149
perfected, the jocund progress of the 'Englischen Heer Secretaris'
to a week-end holiday :
In a little Dutch-chaise on a Saturday night,
On my left hand my Horace, a Nymph on my right. . .
For her, neither visits, nor parties of tea,
Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee.
In 1697, came peace with the treaty of Ryswyk. Prior acted
as secretary during the negotiations, and, for a long time, in
consequence of intervals between the plenipotentiaryships of
Portland, Jersey and Manchester, was virtually in charge. Sir
William Trumbull complimented him on his happy blend of
poetry and business ; but he was not compensated by this for
his lack of pay and definite prospect. He felt aggrieved that he
was not sent envoy to Nancy on the occasion of the duke of
Lorraine's marriage, and would have now been glad to get back to
London ; but he was kept until November, 1699, at Paris, where
he did useful service and whence he wrote highly diverting letters,
mixing persiflage with politics -
In 1699, Prior was made an under-secretary of state, and,
during the latter part of this year, carried on an arduous series
of services, including journeys to and from Paris, in connection
with the second partition treaty. In December? , he produced his
most elaborate 'pindaric' ode, Carmen Seculare for the year 1700,
"To the King,' eulogising William III through forty-two wearisome
stanzas, and comparing him to the sun whose sacred light the
poet contrasts with the arbitrary blaze of comets and meteors.
Honours accumulated upon the poetic official. The university
1 The Hague congress of 1690 is the actual starting-point of a volume published in
1740 by Prior's former secretary and executor Adrian Drift, under the title The History
of His Own Time by Matthew Prior, and professing to be compiled from his own
manuscripts. It is a piece of book-making extraordinary, containing, with a few
original letters to and from Prior (which become rather more numerous in the last
part of the book), a few state-papers that may, at the time, have been otherwise inacces-
sible, and more that were already public property. Prior's Journal at the Court of
France from 31 August to 23 October 1714 is a mere official diary kept by Drift for his
chief; on the other hand, the Account of (Prior's) Examination before the Committee of
Council (1713) is graphic and clear, and full of lively personal touches, illustrating the
foolish and passionate behaviour of some members of the committee (including Lord
Coningsby), who were angered by Prior's mingled freedom and reticence, and the
annoyance of Walpole and Stanhope, conveyed by telegraphic frowns. Prior's Answer
to the Report of the Committee of Secresy, appointed by Order of the House of Commons
contains an important argument in support of the conduct of the first stage of the
peace negotiations without the cognisance of the allies ; but is a fragment only. Some
of the early events of the war are narrated at length by Drift, on the plea that Prior
wrote poems about them. The whole compilation has small historical or biographical,
and less literary, value.
2 Cf. Drift, u. s. p. 144.


## p. 150 (#174) ############################################

150
Lesser Verse Writers
of Cambridge made him an honorary M. A. , and he succeeded
Locke as a commissioner of trade and plantations. Later in this
year, the earl of Manchester was transferred from Venice to
Paris, and Prior returned home with Jersey (who had been
named one of the secretaries of state and whose protégé Prior
now was), to serve under him. In the earlier part of 1701,
before Louis XIV irritated the national pride by his recognition
of James III and alarmed the city by his plain bid for Spanish
trade, a parliamentary storm burst over the partition treaties and
culminated in the impeachment of the whig lords, Portland and
Oxford, Somers and Halifax, who had been in power during the
negotiations. Prior, who was now, for a brief space (February to
June 1701), member for East Grinstead, voted for the impeachment.
Naturally enough, he was accused of treachery; but he was already
showing himself a prerogative and high church man; and, under
Anne, he gradually detached himself from his old whig allies in
order to act with the tory chiefs Harley and St John. During
the early part of Anne's reign, we hear little of him save
occasional poems and celebrations of English victories and an
appeal to Godolphin to settle his debts (£500) and procure him
employment abroad. But, meanwhile, he was cultivating his gift
of trifling in verse, and producing, among short fabliaux, epigrams
and multifarious matter, such little gems as the stanzas, Sir Walter
Scott's favourite, Written in the Beginning of Mezeray's History
of France:
Yet for the fame of all these Deeds,
What Beggar in the Invalides,
With Lameness broke, with Blindness smitten,
Wished ever decently to die,
To have been either Mezeray,
Or any Monarch He has written?
He writes formal odes to the queen, twits, not very worthily,
his fellow panegyrist Boileau with the victory of Blenheim-
Since, hird for Life, Thy servile Muse must sing
Successive conquests, and a glorious King-
and gains increasing mastery over the heroic couplet, as may be
seen by An Ode Inscribed to the Memory of the Honourable
Colonel George Villiers, accidentally drowned in a river near
Friuli in 1703—which contains some of his finest lines, beginning :
Some from the stranded Vessel force their Way:
Fearful of Fate, they meet it in the Sea:
Some who escape the Fury of the Wave,
Sicken on Earth, and sink into a Grave.


## p. 151 (#175) ############################################

Prior under Queen Anne
151
After Blenheim came Ramillies, to which, in An Ode Humbly
Subscrib'd to the Queen, Prior, as he says, went out of his way to
pay the tribute of some—not very successful—Spenserian stanzas.
But, in 1707, he was compelled by the whig leaders to give up his
public employment, and was imperfectly consoled by a secretary-
ship to the bishop of Winchester. In 1709, he published a first
collection of his verse writings, which he describes as the product
of his leisure hours, as he was only a poet by accident. Next
year, upon the fall of the whigs, he joined Swift, Freind and
others, under the aegis of St John, in setting up The Examiner,
in which he wrote an early paper! His Fable from Phaedrus
also appeared here. He soon came into frequent contact with
Swift, of not a few of whose lampoons he had the first credit
among their friends. Prior, who had been expelled from the
Kitcat club in 1707, was now hailed as one of the seventeen
'brothers, who formed an intimate tory club under that name.
A more substantial recognition soon followed, when, his unusual
proficiency in languages having been noted by St John, he was
made a commissioner of customs.