No More Learning

Of this indecent arrogance, the
following quotation, from his preface to the treatise on the smallpox,
will afford a specimen; in which, when the reader finds, what I fear is
true, that, when he was censuring Hippocrates, he did not know the
difference between aphorism and apophthegm, he will not pay much regard
to his determinations concerning ancient learning.

"As for this book of aphorisms, it is like my lord Bacon's of the same
title, a book of jests, or a grave collection of trite and trifling
observations; of which though many are true and certain, yet they
signify nothing, and may afford diversion, but no instruction; most of
them being much inferior to the sayings of the wise men of Greece, which
yet are so low and mean, that we are entertained every day with more
valuable sentiments at the table-conversation of ingenious and learned
men. "

I am unwilling, however, to leave him in total disgrace, and will,
therefore, quote, from another preface, a passage less reprehensible.

"Some gentlemen have been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting and
forcing my meaning in the preface to another book, as if I condemned and
exposed all learning, though they knew I declared that I greatly
honoured and esteemed all men of superiour literature and erudition; and
that I only undervalued false or superficial learning, that signifies
nothing for the service of mankind; and that, as to physick, I expressly
affirmed that learning must be joined with native genius, to make a
physician of the first rank; but if those talents are separated, I
asserted, and do still insist, that a man of native sagacity and
diligence will prove a more able and useful practiser, than a heavy
notional scholar, encumbered with a heap of confused ideas. "

He was not only a poet and a physician, but produced, likewise, a work
of a different kind; a true and impartial History of the Conspiracy
against King William, of glorious memory, in the year 1695. This I have
never seen, but suppose it, at least, compiled with integrity. He
engaged, likewise, in theological controversy, and wrote two books
against the Arians; Just Prejudices against the Arian Hypothesis; and
Modern Arians unmasked. Another of his works is Natural Theology, or
Moral Duties considered apart from Positive; with some observations on
the Desirableness and Necessity of a supernatural Revelation. This was
the last book that he published. He left behind him the Accomplished
Preacher, or an Essay upon Divine Eloquence; which was printed, after
his death, by Mr. White, of Nayland, in Essex, the minister who attended
his deathbed, and testified the fervent piety of his last hours. He
died on the eighth of October, 1729.

Blackmore, by the unremitted enmity of the wits, whom he provoked more
by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse treatment than
he deserved. His name was so long used to point every epigram upon dull
writers, that it became, at last, a by-word of contempt; but it deserves
observation, that malignity takes hold only of his writings, and that
his life passed without reproach, even when his boldness of reprehension
naturally turned upon him many eyes desirous to espy faults, which many
tongues would have made haste to publish. But those who could not
blame, could, at least, forbear to praise, and, therefore, of his
private life and domestick character there are no memorials.

As an author he may justly claim the honours of magnanimity. The
incessant attacks of his enemies, whether serious or merry, are never
discovered to have disturbed his quiet, or to have lessened his
confidence in himself; they neither awed him to silence nor to caution;
they neither provoked him to petulance, nor depressed him to complaint.
While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate
and degrade him, he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had
written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility, or
repress them by confutation.

He depended with great security on his own powers, and perhaps was, for
that reason, less diligent in perusing books. His literature was, I
think, but small. What he knew of antiquity, I suspect him to have
gathered from modern compilers; but, though he could not boast of much
critical knowledge, his mind was stored with general principles, and he
left minute researches to those whom he considered as little minds.

With this disposition he wrote most of his poems. Having formed a
magnificent design, he was careless of particular and subordinate
elegancies; he studied no niceties of versification; he waited for no
felicities of fancy; but caught his first thoughts in the first words in
which they were presented: nor does it appear that he saw beyond his own
performances, or had ever elevated his views to that ideal perfection,
which every genius, born to excel, is condemned always to pursue, and
never overtake. In the first suggestions of his imagination he
acquiesced; he thought them good, and did not seek for better. His works
may be read a long time without the occurrence of a single line that
stands prominent from the rest.

The poem on Creation has, however, the appearance of more
circumspection; it wants neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of
thought, nor elegance of diction: it has either been written with great
care, or, what cannot be imagined of so long a work, with such felicity
as made care less necessary.

Its two constituent parts are ratiocination and description. To reason
in verse, is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in
verse, but very often reasons poetically; and finds the art of uniting
ornament with strength, and ease with closeness. This is a skill which
Pope might have condescended to learn from him, when he needed it so
much in his Moral Essays.

In his descriptions, both of life and nature, the poet and the
philosopher happily coöperate; truth is recommended by elegance, and
elegance sustained by truth.

In the structure and order of the poem, not only the greater parts are
properly consecutive, but the didactick and illustrative paragraphs are
so happily mingled, that labour is relieved by pleasure, and the
attention is led on, through a long succession of varied excellence, to
the original position, the fundamental principle of wisdom and of
virtue.

* * * * *

As the heroick poems of Blackmore are now little read, it is thought
proper to insert, as a specimen from Prince Arthur, the song of Mopas,
mentioned by Molineux.

But that which Arthur with most pleasure heard,
Were noble strains, by Mopas sung, the bard
Who to his harp in lofty verse began,
And through the secret maze of nature ran.
He the great spirit sung, that all things fill'd,
That the tumultuous waves of chaos still'd:
Whose nod dispos'd the jarring seeds to peace,
And made the wars of hostile atoms cease.
All beings we in fruitful nature find,
Proceeded from the great eternal mind;
Streams of his unexhausted spring of power,
And cherish'd with his influence, endure.
He spread the pure cerulean fields on high,
And arch'd the chambers of the vaulted sky,
Which he, to suit their glory with their height,
Adorn'd with globes, that reel, as drunk with light.
His hand directed all the tuneful spheres,
He turn'd their orbs, and polish'd all the stars.
He fill'd the sun's vast lamp with golden light,
And bid the silver moon adorn the night.
He spread the airy ocean without shores,
Where birds are wafted with their feather'd oars.
Then sung the bard how the light vapours rise
From the warm earth, and cloud the smiling skies:
He sung how some, chill'd in their airy flight,
Fall scatter'd down in pearly dew by night;
How some, rais'd higher, sit in secret steams
On the reflected points of bounding beams,
Till, chill'd with cold, they shade th' ethereal plain,
Then on the thirsty earth descend in rain;
How some, whose parts a slight contexture show,
Sink hov'ring through the air, in fleecy snow;
How part is spun in silken threads, and clings
Entangled in the grass in gluey strings;
How others stamp to stones, with rushing sound
Fall from their crystal quarries to the ground;
How some are laid in trains, that kindled fly
In harmless fires by night, about the sky;
How some in winds blow with impetuous force,
And carry ruin where they bend their course,
While some conspire to form a gentle breeze,
To fan the air, and play among the trees;
How some, enrag'd, grow turbulent and loud,
Pent in the bowels of a frowning cloud,
That cracks, as if the axis of the world
Was broke, and heav'n's bright tow'rs were downwards
hurl'd.
He sung how earth's wide ball, at Jove's command,
Did in the midst on airy columns stand;
And how the soul of plants, in prison held,
And bound with sluggish fetters, lies conceal'd,
Till with the spring's warm beams, almost releas'd
From the dull weight, with which it lay opprest,
Its vigour spreads, and makes the teeming earth
Heave up, and labour with the sprouting birth:
The active spirit freedom seeks in vain,
It only works and twists a stronger chain;
Urging its prison's sides to break away,
It makes that wider, where 'tis forc'd to stay:
Till, having form'd its living house, it rears
Its head, and in a tender plant appears.
Hence springs the oak, the beauty of the grove,
Whose stately trunk fierce storms can scarcely move.
Hence grows the cedar, hence the swelling vine
Does round the elm its purple clusters twine.
Hence painted flowers the smiling gardens bless,
Both with their fragrant scent and gaudy dress.
Hence the white lily in full beauty grows.
Hence the blue violet, and blushing rose.
He sung how sunbeams brood upon the earth,
And in the glebe hatch such a num'rous birth;
Which way the genial warmth in summer storms
Turns putrid vapours to a bed of worms;
How rain, transform'd by this prolifick power,
Falls from the clouds an animated shower.
He sung the embryo's growth within the womb,
And how the parts their various shapes assume;
With what rare art the wondrous structure's wrought,
From one crude mass to such perfection brought;
That no part useless, none misplac'd we see,
None are forgot, and more would monstrous be.

-----

[Footnote 19: At Saddlers' hall. ]

[Footnote 20: The book he alludes to was Nova Hypothesis ad explicanda
febrium intermittentium symptomata, &c. Authore Gulielmo Cole, M. D.
1693. ]

[Footnote 21: "The Kit-cat Club," says Horace Walpole, "though generally
mentioned as a set of wits, were, in fact, the patriots who saved
Britain. " See, for the history of its origin and name, Addisoniana, i.
120; Ward's complete and humorous account of the remarkable Clubs and
Societies. ED. ]




FENTON.


The brevity with which I am to write the account of Elijah Fenton, is
not the effect of indifference or negligence. I have sought intelligence
among his relations in his native county, but have not obtained it.

He was born near Newcastle, in Staffordshire, of an ancient family[22]
whose state was very considerable; but he was the youngest of eleven
children, and being, therefore, necessarily destined to some lucrative
employment, was sent first to school, and afterwards to Cambridge[23],
but with many other wise and virtuous men, who, at that time of discord
and debate, consulted conscience, whether well or ill informed, more
than interest, he doubted the legality of the government, and, refusing
to qualify himself for publick employment by the oaths required, left
the university without a degree; but I never heard that, the enthusiasm
of opposition impelled him to separation from the church.

By this perverseness of integrity he was driven out a commoner of
nature, excluded from the regular modes of profit and prosperity, and
reduced to pick up a livelihood uncertain and fortuitous; but it must be
remembered that he kept his name unsullied, and never suffered himself
to be reduced, like too many of the same sect, to mean arts and
dishonourable shifts. Whoever mentioned Fenton, mentioned him with
honour.

The life that passes in penury must necessarily pass in obscurity. It is
impossible to trace Fenton from year to year, or to discover what means
he used for his support. He was awhile secretary to Charles, earl of
Orrery in Flanders, and tutor to his young son, who afterwards mentioned
him with great esteem and tenderness. He was, at one time, assistant in
the school of Mr. Bonwicke, in Surrey; and at another kept a school for
himself at Sevenoaks, in Kent, which he brought into reputation; but was
persuaded to leave it, 1710, by Mr. St. John, with promises of a more
honourable employment.

His opinions, as he was a nonjuror, seem not to have been remarkably
rigid. He wrote with great zeal and affection the praises of queen Anne,
and very willingly and liberally extolled the duke of Marlborough when
he was, 1707, at the height of his glory.

He expressed still more attention to Marlborough and his family by an
elegiack pastoral on the marquis of Blandford, which could be prompted
only by respect or kindness; for neither the duke nor dutchess desired
the praise, or liked the cost of patronage.

The elegance of his poetry entitled him to the company of the wits of
his time, and the amiableness of his manners made him loved wherever he
was known. Of his friendship to Southern and Pope there are lasting
monuments.

He published, in 1707[24] a collection of poems.

By Pope he was once placed in a station that might have been of great
advantage. Craggs, when he was advanced to be secretary of state, about
1720, feeling his own want of literature, desired Pope to procure him an
instructer, by whose help he might supply the deficiencies of his
education. Pope recommended Fenton, in whom Craggs found all that he was
seeking. There was now a prospect of ease and plenty, for Fenton had
merit, and Craggs had generosity; but the smallpox suddenly put an end
to the pleasing expectation.

When Pope, after the great success of his Iliad, undertook the Odyssey,
being, as it seems, weary of translating, he determined to engage
auxiliaries. Twelve books he took to himself, and twelve he distributed
between Broome and Fenton: the books allotted to Fenton were the first,
the fourth, the nineteenth, and the twentieth. It is observable, that he
did not take the eleventh, which he had before translated into blank
verse; neither did Pope claim it, but committed it to Broome. How the
two associates performed their parts is well known to the readers of
poetry, who have never been able to distinguish their books from those
of Pope.

In 1723 was performed his tragedy of Mariamne; to which Southern, at
whose house it was written, is said to have contributed such hints as
his theatrical experience supplied. When it was shown to Cibber, it was
rejected by him, with the additional insolence of advising Fenton to
engage himself in some employment of honest labour, by which he might
obtain that support which he could never hope from his poetry. The play
was acted at the other theatre; and the brutal petulance of Cibber was
confuted, though, perhaps, not shamed, by general applause. Fenton's
profits are said to have amounted to near a thousand pounds, with which
he discharged a debt contracted by his attendance at court.

Fenton seems to have had some peculiar system of versification.
Mariamne is written in lines of ten syllables, with few of those
redundant terminations which the drama not only admits, but requires, as
more nearly approaching to real dialogue. The tenour of his verse is so
uniform that it cannot be thought casual; and yet upon what principle he
so constructed it, is difficult to discover.

The mention of his play brings to my mind a very trifling occurrence.
Fenton was one day in the company of Broome, his associate, and Ford, a
clergyman[25], at that time too well known, whose abilities, instead of
furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and dissolute, might
have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise. They
determined all to see the Merry Wives of Windsor, which was acted that
night; and Fenton, as a dramatick poet, took them to the stage-door;
where the door-keeper, inquiring who they were, was told that they were
three very necessary men, Ford, Broome, and Fenton. The name in the
play, which Pope restored to Brook, was then Broome.

It was, perhaps, after his play that he undertook to revise the
punctuation of Milton's poems, which, as the author neither wrote the
original copy, nor corrected the press, was supposed capable of
amendment. To this edition he prefixed a short and elegant account of
Milton's life, written, at once, with tenderness and integrity.

He published, likewise, 1729, a very splendid edition of Waller, with
notes often useful, often entertaining, but too much extended by long
quotations from Clarendon. Illustrations drawn from a book so easily
consulted, should be made by reference rather than transcription.

The latter part of his life was calm and pleasant. The relict of sir
William Trumbull invited him, by Pope's recommendation, to educate her
son; whom he first instructed at home, and then attended to Cambridge.
The lady afterwards detained him with her as the auditor of her
accounts. He often wandered to London, and amused himself with the
conversation of his friends.

He died in 1730[26], at East Hampstead, in Berkshire, the seat of lady
Trumbal; and Pope, who had been always his friend, honoured him with an
epitaph, of which he borrowed the two first lines from Crashaw.

Fenton was tall and bulky, inclined to corpulence, which he did not
lessen by much exercise; for he was very sluggish and sedentary, rose
late, and when he had risen, sat down to his books or papers. A woman
that once waited on him in a lodging, told him, as she said, that he
would "lie a-bed, and be fed with a spoon. " This, however, was not the
worst that might have been prognosticated; for Pope says, in his
letters, that "he died of indolence;" but his immediate distemper was
the gout.

Of his morals and his conversation the account is uniform: he was never
named but with praise and fondness, as a man in the highest degree
amiable and excellent. Such was the character given him by the earl of
Orrery, his pupil; such is the testimony of Pope[27]; and such were the
suffrages of all who could boast of his acquaintance.

By a former writer of his life[28], a story is told, which ought not to
be forgotten. He used, in the latter part of his time, to pay his
relations in the country a yearly visit. At an entertainment made for
the family by his elder brother, he observed, that one of his sisters,
who had married unfortunately, was absent, and found, upon inquiry, that
distress had made her thought unworthy of invitation. As she was at no
great distance, he refused to sit at the table till she was called, and,
when she had taken her place, was careful to show her particular
attention.

His collection of poems is now to be considered. The ode to the Sun is
written upon a common plan, without uncommon sentiments; but its
greatest fault is its length.

No poem should be long of which the purpose is only to strike the
fancy, without enlightening the understanding by precept, ratiocination,
or narrative. A blaze first pleases, and then tires the sight.

Of Florelio it is sufficient to say, that it is an occasional pastoral,
which implies something neither natural nor artificial, neither comick
nor serious.

The next ode is irregular, and, therefore, defective. As the sentiments
are pious, they cannot easily be new; for what can be added to topicks
on which successive ages have been employed!

Of the Paraphrase on Isaiah nothing very favourable can be said. Sublime
and solemn prose gains little by a change to blank verse; and the
paraphrast has deserted his original, by admitting images not Asiatick,
at least not Judaical:

Returning peace,
Dove-ey'd, and rob'd in white.

Of his petty poems, some are very trifling, without any thing to be
praised, either in the thought or expression. He is unlucky in his
competitions; he tells the same idle tale with Congreve, and does not
tell it so well. He translates from Ovid the same epistle as Pope; but,
I am afraid, not with equal happiness.

To examine his performances, one by one, would be tedious. His
translation from Homer into blank verse will find few readers, while
another can be had in rhyme. The piece addressed to Lambarde is no
disagreeable specimen of epistolary poetry; and his ode to the lord
Gower was pronounced, by Pope, the next ode in the English language to
Dryden's Cecilia. Fenton may be justly styled an excellent versifier and
a good poet.

Whatever I have said of Fenton is confirmed by Pope in a letter, by
which he communicated to Broome an account of his death:

TO
The Rev'd. Mr. BROOME,
At PULHAM, near HARLESTONE NOR [By BECCLES Bag. ] SUFFOLKE

D'r SIR,

I intended to write to you on this melancholy subject, the death of Mr.
Fenton, before y'rs came; but stay'd to have inform'd myself & you of
y'e circumstances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a Gradual Decay,
tho' so early in Life, & was declining for 5 or 6 months. It was not, as
I apprehended, the Gout in his Stomach, but I believe rather a
Complication first of Gross Humours, as he was naturally corpulent, not
discharging themselves, as he used no sort of Exercise. No man better
bore y'e approaches of his Dissolution (as I am told) or with less
ostentation yielded up his Being. The great modesty w'ch you know was
natural to him, and y'e great Contempt he had for all Sorts of Vanity
and Parade, never appeared more than in his last moments: He had a
conscious Satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, in feeling himself
honest, true, & unpretending to more than was his own. So he dyed, as he
lived, with that secret, yet sufficient, Contentment.

As to any Papers left behind him, I dare say they can be but few; for
this reason: He never wrote out of Vanity, or thought much of the
Applause of Men. I know an Instance where he did his utmost to conceal
his own merit that way; and if we join to this his natural Love of Ease,
I fancy we must expect little of this sort: at least I hear of none
except some few further remarks on Waller (w'ch his cautious integrity
made him leave an order to be given to Mr. Tonson) and perhaps, tho'
'tis many years since I saw it, a Translation of ye first Book of
Oppian. He had begun a Tragedy of Dion, but made small progress in it.

As to his other affairs, he died poor, but honest, leaving no Debts, or
Legacies; except of a few p'ds to Mr. Trumbull and my Lady, in token of
respect, Gratefulness, and mutual Esteem.

I shall with pleasure take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet,
deserving, unpretending, Christian and Philosophical character, in his
Epitaph. There Truth may be spoken in a few words: as for Flourish, &
Oratory, & Poetry, I leave them to younger and more lively Writers, such
as love writing for writing sake, & w^d rather show their own Fine
Parts, y^n Report the valuable ones of any other man. So the Elegy I
renounce.

I condole with you from my heart, on the loss of so worthy a man, and a
Friend to us both. Now he is gone, I must tell you he has done you many
a good office, and set your character in y^e fairest light, to some who
either mistook you, or knew you not. I doubt not he has done the same
for me.

Adieu: Let us love his Memory, and profit by his example. I am very
sincerely

D^r SIR,
Your affectionate
& real Servant,
A. POPE.

Aug. 29th 1730.

-----

[Footnote 22: He was born at Shelton, near Newcastle, May 20, 1683; and
was the youngest of eleven children of John Fenton, an attorney-at-law,
and one of the coroners of the county of Stafford. His father died in
1694; and his grave, in the church-yard of Stoke upon Trent, is
distinguished by the following elegant Latin inscription from the pen of
his son:

H. S. E.
JOHANNES FENTON,
de Shelton
antiqua stirpe generosus:
juxta reliquias conjugis
CATHERINÆ
forma, moribus, pietate,
optimo viro dignissimæ:
Qui
intemerata in ecclesiam fide,
et virtutibus intaminatis enituit;
necnon ingenii lepore
bonis artibus expoliti,
ac animo erga omnes benevolo,
sibi suisque jucundus vixit.
Decem annos uxori dilectee superstes
magnum sui desiderium bonis
omnibus reliquit,
anno{salutis humanai 1694,
{ætatis suffi 56.
See Gent. Mag. 1791, vol. lxi. p. 703. N.
]

[Footnote 23: He was entered of Jesus college, and took a bachelor's
degree in 1704: but it appears, by the list of Cambridge graduates, that
he removed, in 1726, to Trinity hall. N. ]

[Footnote 24: 1717. M. ]

[Footnote 25: Ford was Johnson's relation, his mother's nephew, and is
said to have been the original of the parson in Hogarth's Modern
Midnight Conversation. See Boswell, i. and iii. ED. ]

[Footnote 26: July 16. ]

[Footnote 27: Spence. ]

[Footnote 28: Shiels, Dr. Johnson's amanuensis, who says, in Cibber's
Lives of the Poets, that he received this anecdote from a gentleman
resident in Staffordshire. M. ]




GAY.


John Gay, descended from an old family that had been long in possession
of the manor of[29] Goldworthy in Devonshire, was born in 1688, at or
near Barnstaple, where he was educated by Mr. Luck, who taught the
school of that town with good reputation, and, a little before he
retired from it, published a volume of Latin and English verses. Under
such a master he was likely to form a taste for poetry. Being born
without prospect of hereditary riches, he was sent to London in his
youth, and placed apprentice to a silkmercer.

How long he continued behind the counter, or with what degree of
softness and dexterity he received and accommodated the ladies, as he
probably took no delight in telling it, is not known. The report is,
that he was soon weary of either the restraint or servility of his
occupation, and easily persuaded his master to discharge him.

The dutchess of Monmouth, remarkable for inflexible perseverance in her
demand to be treated as a princess, in 1712 took Gay into her service as
secretary: by quitting a shop for such service, he might gain leisure,
but he certainly advanced little in the boast of independence. Of his
leisure he made so good use, that he published, next year, a poem on
Rural Sports, and inscribed it to Mr. Pope, who was then rising fast
into reputation. Pope was pleased with the honour; and when he became
acquainted with Gay, found such attractions in his manners and
conversation, that he seems to have received him into his inmost
confidence; and a friendship was formed between them which lasted to
their separation by death, without any known abatement on either part.
Gay was the general favourite of the whole association of wits; but they
regarded him as a playfellow rather than a partner, and treated him
with more fondness than respect.

Next year he published the Shepherd's Week, six English pastorals, in
which the images are drawn from real life, such as it appears among the
rusticks in parts of England remote from London. Steele, in some papers
of the Guardian had praised Ambrose Philips, as the pastoral writer that
yielded only to Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser. Pope, who had also
published pastorals, not pleased to be overlooked, drew up a comparison
of his own compositions with those of Philips, in which he covertly gave
himself the preference, while he seemed to disown it. Not content with
this, he is supposed to have incited Gay to write the Shepherd's Week,
to show, that if it be necessary to copy nature with minuteness, rural
life must be exhibited such as grossness and ignorance have made it. So
far the plan was reasonable; but the pastorals are introduced by a
Proem, written with such imitation as they could attain of obsolete
language, and, by consequence, in a style that was never spoken nor
written in any age, or in any place.

But the effect of reality and truth became conspicuous, even when the
intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.
These pastorals
became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of
rural manners and occupations, by those who had no interest in the
rivalry of the poets, nor knowledge of the critical dispute.

In 1713 he brought a comedy, called the Wife of Bath, upon the stage,
but it received no applause: he printed it, however, and seventeen years
after, having altered it, and, as he thought, adapted it more to the
publick taste, he offered it again to the town; but, though he was
flushed with the success of the Beggars' Opera, had the mortification to
see it again rejected.

In the last year of queen Anne's life, Gay was made secretary to the
earl of Clarendon, ambassador to the court of Hanover. This was a
station that naturally gave him hopes of kindness from every party; but
the queen's death put an end to her favours, and he had dedicated his
Shepherd's Week to Bolingbroke, which Swift considered as the crime that
obstructed all kindness from the house of Hanover.

He did not, however, omit to improve the right which his office had
given him to the notice of the royal family. On the arrival of the
princess of Wales, he wrote a poem, and obtained so much favour, that
both the prince and princess went to see his What d'ye call it, a kind
of mock tragedy, in which the images were comick, and the action grave;
so that, as Pope relates, Mr. Cromwell, who could not hear what was
said, was at a loss how to reconcile the laughter of the audience with
the solemnity of the scene.

Of this performance the value certainly is but little; but it was one of
the lucky trifles that give pleasure by novelty, and was so much
favoured by the audience, that envy appeared against it in the form of
criticism; and Griffin, a player, in conjunction with Mr. Theobald, a
man afterwards more remarkable, produced a pamphlet, called the Key to
the What d'ye call it; which, says Gay, "calls me a blockhead, and Mr.
Pope a knave. "

But fortune has always been inconstant. Not long afterwards, 1717, he
endeavoured to entertain the town with Three Hours after Marriage; a
comedy written, as there is sufficient reason for believing, by the
joint assistance of Pope and Arbuthnot. One purpose of it was to bring
into contempt Dr. Woodward, the fossilist, a man not really or justly
contemptible. It had the fate which such outrages deserve: the scene in
which Woodward was directly and apparently ridiculed, by the
introduction of a mummy and a crocodile, disgusted the audience, and the
performance was driven off the stage with general condemnation.

Gay is represented as a man easily incited to hope, and deeply depressed
when his hopes were disappointed. This is not the character of a hero;
but it may naturally imply something more generally welcome, a soft and
civil companion. Whoever is apt to hope good from others is diligent to
please them: but he that believes his powers strong enough to force
their own way, commonly tries only to please himself.

He had been simple enough to imagine that those who laughed at the What
d'ye call it, would raise the fortune of its author; and, finding
nothing done, sunk into dejection. His friends endeavoured to divert
him. The earl of Burlington sent him, 1716, into Devonshire; the year
after, Mr. Pulteney took him to Aix; and, in the following year, lord
Harcourt invited him to his seat, where, during his visit, the two rural
lovers were killed with lightning, as is particularly told in Pope's
letters.

Being now generally known, he published, 1720, his poems, by
subscription, with such success, that he raised a thousand pounds; and
called his friends to a consultation, what use might be best made of it.
Lewis, the steward of lord Oxford, advised him to intrust it to the
funds, and live upon the interest; Arbuthnot bade him intrust it to
providence, and live upon the principal; Pope directed him, and was
seconded by Swift, to purchase an annuity.

Gay, in that disastrous year[30], had a present from young Craggs of
some south-sea stock, and once supposed himself to be master of twenty
thousand pounds. His friends persuaded him to sell his share; but he
dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own
fortune. He was then importuned to sell as much as would purchase a
hundred a year for life, "which," says Fenton, "will make you sure of a
clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day. " This counsel was
rejected: the profit and principal were lost, and Gay sunk under the
calamity so low that his life became in danger.

By the care of his friends, among whom Pope appears to have shown
particular tenderness, his health was restored; and, returning to his
studies, he wrote a tragedy, called the Captives, which he was invited
to read before the princess of Wales. When the hour came, he saw the
princess and her ladies all in expectation, and advancing with
reverence, too great for any other attention, stumbled at a stool, and
falling forward threw down a weighty japan screen. The princess started,
the ladies screamed, and poor Gay, after all the disturbance, was still
to read his play[31].

The fate of the Captives, which was acted at Drury-lane in 1723-4, I know
not[32]; but he now thought himself in favour, and undertook, 1726, to
write a volume of fables for the improvement of the young duke of
Cumberland. For this he is said to have been promised a reward, which he
had, doubtless, magnified with all the wild expectations of indigence
and vanity.

Next year the prince and princess became king and queen, and Gay was to
be great and happy; but, upon the settlement of the household, he found
himself appointed gentleman usher to the princess Louisa. By this offer
he thought himself insulted, and sent a message to the queen, that he
was too old for the place. There seem to have been many machinations
employed afterwards in his favour; and diligent court was paid to Mrs.
Howard, afterwards countess of Suffolk, who was much beloved by the king
and queen, to engage her interest for his promotion; but solicitations,
verses, and flatteries, were thrown away; the lady heard them, and did
nothing.

All the pain which he suffered from the neglect, or, as he, perhaps,
termed it, the ingratitude of the court, may be supposed to have been
driven away by the unexampled success of the Beggars' Opera. This play,
written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was first offered to
Cibber and his brethren at Drury-lane, and rejected; it being then
carried to Rich, had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay
_rich_, and Rich _gay_.

Of this lucky piece, as the reader cannot but wish to know the original
and progress, I have inserted the relation which Spence has given in
Pope's words.

"Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort
of a thing a Newgate pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at
such a thing, for some time; but afterwards thought it would be better
to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the
Beggars' Opera. He began on it; and when first he mentioned it to Swift,
the doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed
what he wrote to both of us, and we now and then gave a correction, or a
word or two of advice; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was
done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve;
who, after reading it over, said, it would either take greatly, or be
damned confoundedly. We were all, at the first night of it, in great
uncertainty of the event; till we were very much encouraged by
overhearing the duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, 'It
will do--it must do! I see it in the eyes of them. ' This was a good
while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon; for that
duke, besides his own good taste, has a particular knack, as any one now
living, in discovering the taste of the publick. He was quite right in
this, as usual; the good-nature of the audience appeared stronger and
stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause. "

Its reception is thus recorded in the notes to the Dunciad.

"This piece was received with greater applause than was ever known.
Besides being acted in London sixty-three days, without interruption,
and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread into all the
great towns of England; was played in many places to the thirtieth and
fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol fifty, &c. It made its progress into
Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed twenty-four days
successively. The ladies carried about with them the favourite songs of
it in fans, and houses were furnished with it in screens. The fame of
it was not confined to the author only. The person who acted Polly, till
then obscure, became, all at once, the favourite of the town; her
pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers; her life written,
books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of
her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England, for that
season, the Italian opera, which had carried all before it for ten
years. "

Of this performance, when it was printed, the reception was different,
according to the different opinion of its readers. Swift commended it
for the excellence of its morality, as a piece that "placed all kinds of
vice in the strongest and most odious light;" but others, and among them
Dr. Herring, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, censured it, as giving
encouragement not only to vice, but to crimes, by making a highwayman
the hero, and dismissing him, at last, unpunished. It has been even
said, that, after the exhibition of the Beggars' Opera, the gangs of
robbers were evidently multiplied.

Both these decisions are surely exaggerated. The play, like many others,
was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is,
therefore, not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more
speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil.
Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in
any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he
may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.

This objection, however, or some other, rather political than moral,
obtained such prevalence, that when Gay produced a second part, under
the name of Polly, it was prohibited by the lord chamberlain; and he was
forced to recompense his repulse by a subscription, which is said to
have been so liberally bestowed, that what he called oppression ended in
profit. The publication was so much favoured, that though the first
part gained him four hundred pounds, near thrice as much was the profit
of the second[33].

He received yet another recompense for this supposed hardship in the
affectionate attention of the duke and dutchess of Queensberry, into
whose house he was taken, and with whom he passed the remaining part of
his life. The duke, considering his want of economy, undertook the
management of his money, and gave it to him as he wanted it[34]. But it
is supposed that the discountenance of the court sunk deep into his
heart, and gave him more discontent than the applauses or tenderness of
his friends could overpower. He soon fell into his old distemper, an
habitual colick, and languished, though with many intervals of ease and
cheerfulness, till a violent fit, at last, seized him, and hurried him
to the grave, as Arbuthnot reported, with more precipitance than he had
ever known. He died on the fourth of December, 1732, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey. The letter, which brought an account of his death to
Swift, was laid by, for some days, unopened, because, when he received
it, he was impressed with the preconception of some misfortune.

After his death, was published a second volume of fables, more political
than the former. His opera of Achilles was acted, and the profits were
given to two widow sisters, who inherited what he left, as his lawful
heirs; for he died without a will, though he had gathered three thousand
pounds[35]. There have appeared, likewise, under his name, a comedy,
called the Distrest Wife, and the Rehearsal at Gotham, a piece of
humour.

The character given him by Pope is this, that "he was a natural man,
without design, who spoke what he thought, and just as he thought it;"
and that "he was of a timid temper, and fearful of giving offence to the
great;" "which caution, however," says Pope, "was of no avail[36]. "

* * * * *

As a poet, he cannot be rated very high. He was, as I once heard a
female critick remark, "of a lower order. " He had not in any great
degree the "mens divinior," the dignity of genius. Much, however, must
be allowed to the author of a new species of composition, though it be
not of the highest kind. We owe to Gay the ballad opera; a mode of
comedy which, at first, was supposed to delight only by its novelty, but
has now, by the experience of half a century, been found so well
accommodated to the disposition of a popular audience, that it is likely
to keep long possession of the stage. Whether this new drama was the
product of judgment or of luck, the praise of it must be given to the
inventor; and there are many writers read with more reverence, to whom
such merit of originality cannot be attributed.

His first performance, the Rural Sports, is such as was easily planned
and executed; it is never contemptible, nor ever excellent. The Fan is
one of those mythological fictions which antiquity delivers ready to the
hand, but which, like other things that lie open to every one's use, are
of little value. The attention naturally retires from a new tale of
Venus, Diana, and Minerva.

His fables seem to have been a favourite work; for, having published one
volume, he left another behind him. Of this kind of fables, the authors
do not appear to have formed any distinct or settled notion. Phædrus
evidently confounds them with tales; and Gay, both with tales and
allegorical prosopopoeias. A fable, or apologue, such as is now under
consideration, seems to be, in its genuine state, a narrative in which
beings irrational, and, sometimes, inanimate, "arbores loquuntur, non
tantum feræ," are, for the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act
and speak with human interests and passions. To this description the
compositions of Gay do not always conform. For a fable, he gives, now
and then, a tale, or an abstracted allegory; and, from some, by whatever
name they may be called, it will be difficult to extract any moral
principle. They are, however, told with liveliness; the versification is
smooth; and the diction, though, now and then, a little constrained by
the measure or the rhyme, is generally happy.

To Trivia may be allowed all that it claims; it is sprightly, various,
and pleasant. The subject is of that kind which Gay was, by nature,
qualified to adorn; yet some of his decorations may be justly wished
away. An honest blacksmith might have done for Patty what is performed
by Vulcan. The appearance of Cloacina is nauseous and superfluous; a
shoe boy could have been produced by the casual cohabitation of mere
mortals. Horace's rule is broken in both cases; there is no "dignus
vindice nodus," no difficulty that required any supernatural
interposition. A patten may be made by the hammer of a mortal; and a
bastard may be dropped by a human strumpet. On great occasions, and on
small, the mind is repelled by useless and apparent falsehood.

Of his little poems the publick judgment seems to be right; they are
neither much esteemed, nor totally despised. The story of the Apparition
is borrowed from one of the tales of Poggio. Those that please least are
the pieces to which Gulliver gave occasion; for who can much delight in
the echo of an unnatural fiction?

Dione is a counterpart to Aminta, and Pastor Fido, and other trifles of
the same kind, easily imitated, and unworthy of imitation. What the
Italians call comedies, from a happy conclusion, Gay calls a tragedy,
from a mournful event; but the style of the Italians and of Gay is
equally tragical. There is something in the poetical Arcadia so remote
from known reality and speculative possibility, that we can never
support its representation through a long work. A pastoral of a hundred
lines may be endured; but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle
bowers, and purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please
barbarians in the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life;
but will be, for the most part, thrown away, as men grow wise, and
nations grow learned.

-----

[Footnote 29: Goldworthy does not appear in the Villare. Dr.
J. --Holdsworthy is probably meant. ]

[Footnote 30: Spence. ]

[Footnote 31: This mishap of Gay's is said to have suggested the story
of the scholar's bashfulness in the 157th Rambler; and to similar
stories in the Adventurer and Repton's Variety. Ed. ]

[Footnote 32: It was acted seven nights. The author's third night was by
command of their royal highnesses. R. ]

[Footnote 33: Spence. ]

[Footnote 34: Ibid. ]

[Footnote 35: Ibid. ]

[Footnote 36: Ibid. ]




GRANVILLE.


Of George Granville, or, as others write, Greenville, or Grenville,
afterwards lord Lansdowne, of Bideford, in the county of Devon, less is
known than his name and high rank might give reason to expect. He was
born about 1667, the son of Bernard Greenville, who was entrusted, by
Monk, with the most private transactions of the restoration, and the
grandson of sir Bevil Greenville, who died, in the king's cause, at the
battle of Lansdowne.

His early education was superintended by sir William Ellis; and his
progress was such, that, before the age of twelve, he was sent to
Cambridge[37], where he pronounced a copy of his own verses to the
princess Mary d'Este, of Modena, then dutchess of York, when she visited
the university.

At the accession of king James, being now at eighteen, he again exerted
his poetical powers, and addressed the new monarch in three short
pieces, of which the first is profane, and the two others such as a boy
might be expected to produce; but he was commended by old Waller, who,
perhaps, was pleased to find himself imitated, in six lines, which
though they begin with nonsense and end with dulness, excited in the
young author a rapture of acknowledgment.

In numbers such as Waller's self might use.

It was probably about this time that he wrote the poem to the earl of
Peterborough, upon his accomplishment of the duke of York's marriage
with the princess of Modena, whose charms appear to have gained a strong
prevalence over his imagination, and upon whom nothing ever has been
charged but imprudent piety, an intemperate and misguided zeal for the
propagation of popery.

However faithful Granville might have been to the king, or however
enamoured of the queen, he has left no reason for supposing that he
approved either the artifices or the violence with which the king's
religion was insinuated or obtruded. He endeavoured to be true, at once,
to the king and to the church.

Of this regulated loyalty he has transmitted to posterity a sufficient
proof, in the letter which he wrote to his father, about a month before
the prince of Orange landed.

"Mar, near Doncaster, Oct. 6, 1688.

"To the honourable Mr. Barnard Granville, at the earl of Bathe's,
St. James's.

"SIR,

"Your having no prospect of obtaining a commission for me, can no
way alter or cool my desire at this important juncture to venture
my life, in some manner or other, for my king and my country.

"I cannot bear living under the reproach of lying obscure and idle
in a country retirement, when every man who has the least sense of
honour should be preparing for the field.

"You may remember, sir, with what reluctance I submitted to your
commands upon Monmouth's rebellion, when no importunity could
prevail with you to permit me to leave the academy: I was too young
to be hazarded; but, give me leave to say, it is glorious at any
age to die for one's country; and the sooner, the nobler the
sacrifice.

"I am now older by three years. My uncle Bathe was not so old when
he was left among the slain at the battle of Newbury; nor you
yourself, sir, when you made your escape from your tutors, to join
your brother at the defence of Scilly.

"The same cause is now come round about again. The king has been
misled; let those who have misled him be answerable for it. Nobody
can deny but he is sacred in his own person; and it is every honest
man's duty to defend it.

"You are pleased to say, it is yet doubtful if the Hollanders are
rash enough to make such an attempt; but, be that as it will, I beg
leave to insist upon it, that I may be presented to his majesty, as
one whose utmost ambition it is to devote his life to his service,
and my country's, after the example of all my ancestors.

"The gentry assembled at York, to agree upon the choice of
representatives for the county, have prepared an address, to assure
his majesty they are ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes
for him upon this and all other occasions; but, at the same time,
they humbly beseech him to give them such magistrates as may be
agreeable to the laws of the land; for, at present, there is no
authority to which they can legally submit.

"They have been beating up for volunteers at York, and the towns
adjacent, to supply the regiments at Hull; but nobody will list.

"By what I can hear, every body wishes well to the king; but they
would be glad his ministers were hanged.

"The winds continue so contrary, that no landing can be so soon as
was apprehended; therefore I may hope, with your leave and
assistance, to be in readiness before any action can begin. I
beseech you, sir, most humbly and most earnestly, to add this one
act of indulgence more to so many other testimonies which I have
constantly received of your goodness; and be pleased to believe me
always, with the utmost duty and submission, sir,

"Your most dutiful son,
"and most obedient servant,
"Geo. Granville. "

Through the whole reign of king William he is supposed to have lived in
literary retirement, and indeed had, for some time, few other pleasures
but those, of study in his power. He was, as the biographers observe,
the younger son of a younger brother; a denomination by which our
ancestors proverbially expressed the lowest state of penury and
dependence. He is said, however, to have preserved himself at this time
from disgrace and difficulties by economy, which he forgot or neglected
in life more advanced, and in better fortune.

About this time he became enamoured of the countess of Newburgh, whom he
has celebrated with so much ardour by the name of Mira. He wrote verses
to her, before he was three-and-twenty, and may be forgiven if he
regarded the face more than the mind. Poets are sometimes in too much
haste to praise.

In the time of his retirement it is probable that he composed his
dramatick pieces, the She-Gallants, acted 1696, which he revised, and
called Once a Lover and always a Lover; the Jew of Venice, altered from
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1698; Heroick Love, a tragedy, 1701;
the British Enchanters, 1706, a dramatick poem; and Peleus and Thetis, a
mask, written to accompany the Jew of Venice.

The comedies, which he has not printed in his own edition of his works,
I never saw; Once a Lover and always a Lover, is said to be, in a great
degree, indecent and gross. Granville could not admire without bigotry;
he copied the wrong, as well as the right, from his masters, and may be
supposed to have learned obscenity from Wycherley, as he learned
mythology from Waller.

In his Jew of Venice, as Rowe remarks, the character of Shylock is made
comick, and we are prompted to laughter, instead of detestation.

It is evident that Heroick Love was written, and presented on the stage,
before the death of Dryden. It is a mythological tragedy, upon the love
of Agamemnon and Chryseis, and, therefore, easily sunk into neglect,
though praised in verse by Dryden, and in prose by Pope.

It is concluded by the wise Ulysses with this speech:

Fate holds the strings, and men like children move
But as they're led; success is from above.

At the accession of queen Anne, having his fortune improved by bequests
from his father, and his uncle the earl of Bath, he was chosen into
parliament for Fowey. He soon after engaged in a joint translation of
the Invectives against Philip, with a design, surely weak and puerile,
of turning the thunder of Demosthenes upon the head of Lewis.

He afterwards, in 1706, had his estate again augmented by an inheritance
from his elder brother, sir Bevil Granville, who, as he returned from
the government of Barbadoes, died at sea. He continued to serve in
parliament; and, in the ninth year of queen Anne, was chosen knight of
the shire for Cornwall.

At the memorable change of the ministry, 1710, he was made secretary at
war, in the place of Mr. Robert Walpole.

Next year, when the violence of party made twelve peers in a day, Mr.
Granville became lord Lansdowne baron Bideford, by a promotion justly
remarked to be not invidious, because he was the heir of a family in
which two peerages, that of the earl of Bath, and lord Granville of
Potheridge, had lately become extinct. Being now high in the queen's
favour, he, 1712, was appointed comptroller of the household, and a
privy counsellor; and to his other honours was added the dedication of
Pope's Windsor Forest. He was advanced, next year, to be treasurer of
the household.

Of these favours he soon lost all but his title; for, at the accession
of king George, his place was given to the earl Cholmondeley, and he was
persecuted with the rest of his party. Having protested against the bill
for attainting Ormond and Bolingbroke, he was, after the insurrection in
Scotland, seized, Sept. 26, 1715, as a suspected man, and confined in
the Tower, till Feb. 8, 1717, when he was at last released, and restored
to his seat in parliament; where, 1719, he made a very ardent and
animated speech against the repeal of the bill to prevent occasional
conformity, which, however, though it was then printed, he has not
inserted into his works.

Some time afterwards, about 1722, being, perhaps, embarrassed by his
profusion, he went into foreign countries, with the usual pretence of
recovering his health. In this state of leisure and retirement, he
received the first volume of Burnet's History, of which he cannot be
supposed to have approved the general tendency, and where he thought
himself able to detect some particular falsehoods. He, therefore,
undertook the vindication of general Monk from some calumnies of Dr.
Burnet, and some misrepresentations of Mr. Echard. This was answered
civilly by Mr. Thomas Burnet, and Oldmixon; and more roughly by Dr.
Colbatch.

His other historical performance is a defence of his relation, sir
Richard Greenville, whom lord Clarendon has shown in a form very
unamiable. So much is urged in this apology to justify many actions that
have been represented as culpable, and to palliate the rest, that the
reader is reconciled for the greater part; and it is made very probable
that Clarendon was by personal enmity disposed to think the worst of
Greenville, as Greenville was also very willing to think the worst of
Clarendon. These pieces were published at his return to England.

Being now desirous to conclude his labours, and enjoy his reputation, he
published, 1732, a very beautiful and splendid edition of his works, in
which he omitted what he disapproved, and enlarged what seemed
deficient.

He now went to court, and was kindly received by queen Caroline; to whom
and to the princess Anne, he presented his works, with verses on the
blank leaves, with which he concluded his poetical labours.

He died in Hanover-square, Jan. 30, 1735, having a few days before
buried his wife, the lady Anne Villiers, widow to Mr. Thynne, by whom he
had four daughters, but no son.

Writers commonly derive their reputation from their works; but there are
works which owe their reputation to the character of the writer. The
publick sometimes has its favourites, whom it rewards for one species of
excellence with the honours due to another. From him whom we reverence
for his beneficence we do not willingly withhold the praise of genius; a
man of exalted merit becomes, at once, an accomplished writer, as a
beauty finds no great difficulty in passing for a wit.