No More Learning

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.

Granville was a man illustrious by his birth, and, therefore, attracted
notice: since he is by Pope styled "the polite," he must be supposed
elegant in his manners, and generally loved: he was, in times of contest
and turbulence, steady to his party, and obtained that esteem which is
always conferred upon firmness and consistency. With those advantages
having learned the art of versifying, he declared himself a poet; and
his claim to the laurel was allowed.

But by a critick of a later generation, who takes up his book without
any favourable prejudices, the praise already received will be thought
sufficient; for his works do not show him to have had much comprehension
from nature, or illumination from learning. He seems to have had no
ambition above the imitation of Waller, of whom he has copied the
faults, and very little more. He is for ever amusing himself with the
puerilities of mythology; his king is Jupiter, who, if the queen brings
no children, has a barren Juno. The queen is compounded of Juno, Venus,
and Minerva. His poem on the dutchess of Grafton's lawsuit, after having
rattled awhile with Juno and Pallas, Mars and Alcides, Cassiope, Niobe,
and the Propetides, Hercules, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, at last concludes
its folly with profaneness.
His verses to Mira, which are most frequently mentioned, have little in
them of either art or nature, of the sentiments of a lover, or the
language of a poet: there may be found, now and then, a happier effort;
but they are commonly feeble and unaffecting, or forced and extravagant.

His little pieces are seldom either sprightly or elegant, either keen or
weighty. They are trifles written by idleness, and published by vanity.
But his prologues and epilogues have a just claim to praise.

The Progress of Beauty seems one of his most elaborate pieces, and is
not deficient in splendour and gaiety; but the merit of original thought
is wanting. Its highest praise is the spirit with which he celebrates
king James's consort, when she was a queen no longer.

The Essay on unnatural Flights in Poetry, is not inelegant nor
injudicious, and has something of vigour beyond most of his other
performances: his precepts are just, and his cautions proper; they are,
indeed, not new, but in a didactick poem novelty is to be expected only
in the ornaments and illustrations. His poetical precepts are
accompanied with agreeable and instructive notes.

The Mask of Peleus and Thetis has here and there a pretty line; but it
is not always melodious, and the conclusion is wretched.

In his British Enchanters he has bidden defiance to all chronology, by
confounding the inconsistent manners of different ages; but the dialogue
has often the air of Dryden's rhyming plays; and the songs are lively,
though not very correct. This is, I think, far the best of his works;
for, if it has many faults, it has, likewise, passages which are, at
least, pretty, though they do not rise to any high degree of excellence.

-----

[Footnote 37: To Trinity college. By the university register it appears,
that he was admitted to his master's degree in 1679; we must, therefore,
set the year of his birth some years back. H. ]




YALDEN.


Thomas Yalden, the sixth son of Mr. John Yalden, of Sussex, was born in
the city of Exeter, in 1671. Having been educated in the grammar-school
belonging to Magdalen college in Oxford, he was in 1690, at the age of
nineteen, admitted commoner of Magdalen hall, under the tuition of
Josiah Pullen[38], a man whose name is still remembered in the
university. He became, next year, one of the scholars of Magdalen
college, where he was distinguished by a lucky accident.

It was his turn, one day, to pronounce a declamation; and Dr. Hough, the
president, happening to attend, thought the composition too good to be
the speaker's. Some time after, the doctor finding him a little
irregularly busy in the library, set him an exercise for punishment;
and, that he might not be deceived by any artifice, locked the door.
Yalden, as it happened, had been lately reading on the subject given,
and produced, with little difficulty, a composition which so pleased the
president, that he told him his former suspicions, and promised to
favour him.

Among his contemporaries in the college were Addison and Sacheverell,
men who were in those times friends, and who both adopted Yalden to
their intimacy. Yalden continued, throughout his life, to think, as
probably he thought at first, yet did not forfeit the friendship of
Addison.

When Namur was taken by king William, Yalden made an ode. There was
never any reign more celebrated by the poets than that of William, who
had very little regard for song himself, but happened to employ
ministers who pleased themselves with the praise of patronage.

Of this ode mention is made in a humorous poem of that time, called the
Oxford Laureate; in which, after many claims had been made and rejected,
Yalden is represented as demanding the laurel, and as being called to
his trial, instead of receiving a reward:

His crime was for being a felon in verse,
And presenting his theft to the king;
The first was a trick not uncommon or scarce,
But the last was an impudent thing:
Yet what he had stol'n was so little worth stealing,
They forgave him the damage and cost;
Had he ta'en the whole ode, as he took it piece-mealing,
They had fined him but tenpence at most.

The poet whom he was charged with robbing was Congreve.

He wrote another poem on the death of the duke of Gloucester.

In 1700, he became fellow of the college; and next year, entering into
orders, was presented by the society with a living in Warwickshire[39],
consistent with the fellowship, and chosen lecturer of moral philosophy,
a very honourable office.

On the accession of queen Anne he wrote another poem; and is said, by
the author of the Biographia, to have declared himself of the party who
had the honourable distinction of high-churchmen.

In 1706, he was received into the family of the duke of Beaufort. Next
year he became doctor in divinity, and soon after resigned his
fellowship and lecture; and, as a token of his gratitude, gave the
college a picture of their founder.

He was made rector of Charlton and Cleanville[40], two adjoining towns
and benefices in Hertfordshire; and had the prebends, or sinecures, of
Deans, Hains, and Pendles, in Devonshire. He had before[41] been
chosen, in 1698, preacher of Bridewell Hospital, upon the resignation of
Dr. Atterbury[42].

From this time he seems to have led a quiet and inoffensive life, till
the clamour was raised about Atterbury's plot. Every loyal eye was on
the watch for abetters or partakers of the horrid conspiracy; and Dr.
Yalden, having some acquaintance with the bishop, and being familiarly
conversant with Kelly, his secretary, fell under suspicion, and was
taken into custody.

Upon his examination he was charged with a dangerous correspondence with
Kelly. The correspondence he acknowledged; but maintained that it had no
treasonable tendency. His papers were seized; but nothing was found that
could fix a crime upon him, except two words in his pocketbook,
"thorough-paced doctrine. " This expression the imagination of his
examiners had impregnated with treason, and the doctor was enjoined to
explain them. Thus pressed, he told them that the words had lain
unheeded in his pocketbook from the time of queen Anne, and that he was
ashamed to give an account of them; but the truth was, that he had
gratified his curiosity one day, by hearing Daniel Burgess in the
pulpit, and those words were a memorial hint of a remarkable sentence by
which he warned his congregation to "beware of thorough-paced doctrine,
that doctrine, which, coming in at one ear, passes through the head, and
goes out at the other. "

Nothing worse than this appearing in his papers, and no evidence arising
against him, he was set at liberty.

It will not be supposed that a man of this character attained high
dignities in the church; but he still retained the friendship, and
frequented the conversation, of a very numerous and splendid set of
acquaintance. He died July 16, 1736, in the 66th year of his age.

Of his poems, many are of that irregular kind, which, when he formed
his poetical character, was supposed to be Pindarick. Having fixed his
attention on Cowley as a model, he has attempted, in some sort, to rival
him, and has written a Hymn to Darkness, evidently as a counterpart to
Cowley's Hymn to Light.

This hymn seems to be his best performance, and is, for the most part,
imagined with great vigour, and expressed with great propriety. I will
not transcribe it. The seven first stanzas are good; but the third,
fourth, and seventh, are the best: the eighth seems to involve a
contradiction; the tenth is exquisitely beautiful; the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth, are partly mythological, and partly
religious, and, therefore, not suitable to each other: he might better
have made the whole merely philosophical.

There are two stanzas in this poem where Yalden may be suspected, though
hardly convicted, of having consulted the Hymnus ad Umbram of Wowerus,
in the sixth stanza, which answers, in some sort, to these lines:

Illa suo præest nocturnis numine sacris--
Perque vias errare novis dat spectra figuris,
Manesque excitos medios ululare per agros
Sub noctem, et questu notos complere penatcs.

And again, at the conclusion:

Illa suo senium secludit corpore toto
Haud numerans jugi fugientia secula lapsu.
Ergo ubi postremum mundi compage soluta
Hanc rerum molem suprema absumpserit hora
Ipsa leves cineres nube amplectetur opaca,
Et prisco imperio rursus dominabitur UMBRA.

His Hymn to Light is not equal to the other. He seems to think that
there is an East absolute and positive, where the morning rises.

In the last stanza, having mentioned the sudden eruption of new-created
light, he says,

Awhile th' Almighty wond'ring stood.

He ought to have remembered that infinite knowledge can never wonder.
All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance.

Of his other poems it is sufficient to say, that they deserve perusal,
though they are not always exactly polished, though the rhymes are
sometimes very ill sorted, and though his faults seem rather the
omissions of idleness than the negligences of enthusiasm.

-----

[Footnote 38: We need not remark to any of our readers, but to those who
are not Oxford men, that Pullen's name is now remembered in the
university, not as a tutor, but by the venerable elm tree which was the
term of his morning walks. "I have the honour to be well known to Mr.
Josiah Pullen, of our hall above-mentioned, (Magdalen hall,) and
attribute the florid old age I now enjoy to my constant morning walks up
Headington lull, in his cheerful company. " Guardian, No. 2. ED. ]

[Footnote 39: The vicarage of Willoughby, which he resigned in 1708. N. ]

[Footnote 40: This preferment was given him by the duke of Beaufort. N. ]

[Footnote 41: Not long after. ]

[Footnote 42: Dr. Atterbury retained the office of preacher at Bridewell
till his promotion to the bishoprick of Rochester. Dr. Yalden succeeded
him as preacher, in June, 1713. N. ]




TICKELL.


Thomas Tickell, the son of the reverend Richard Tickell, was born, in
1686, at Bridekirk, in Cumberland; and in April, 1701, became a member
of Queen's college, in Oxford; in 1708 he was made master of arts; and,
two years afterwards, was chosen fellow; for which, as he did not comply
with the statutes by taking orders, he obtained a dispensation from the
crown. He held his fellowship till 1726, and then vacated it, by
marrying, in that year, at Dublin.

Tickell was not one of those scholars who wear away their lives in
closets; he entered early into the world, and was long busy in publick
affairs; in which he was initiated under the patronage of Addison, whose
notice he is said to have gained by his verses in praise of Rosamond.

To those verses it would not have been just to deny regard; for they
contain some of the most elegant encomiastick strains; and, among the
innumerable poems of the same kind, it will be hard to find one with
which they need to fear a comparison. It may deserve observation, that
when Pope wrote, long afterwards, in praise of Addison, he has copied,
at least has resembled, Tickell.

Let joy salute fair Rosamonda's shade,
And wreaths of myrtle crown the lovely maid.
While now perhaps with Dido's ghost she roves,
And hears and tells the story of their loves,
Alike they mourn, alike they bless their fate,
Since love, which made them wretched, made them great.
Nor longer that relentless doom bemoan,
Which gain'd a Virgil and an Addison. TICKELL.

Then future ages with delight shall see
How Plato's, Bacon's, Newton's, looks agree;
Or in fair series laurell'd bards be shown,
A Virgil there, and here an Addison. POPE.

He produced another piece of the same kind at the appearance of Cato,
with equal skill, but not equal happiness.

When the ministers of queen Anne were negotiating with France, Tickell
published the Prospect of Peace, a poem, of which the tendency was to
reclaim the nation from the pride of conquest to the pleasures of
tranquillity. How far Tickell, whom Swift afterwards mentioned as
_whiggissimus_, had then connected himself with any party, I know not;
this poem certainly did not flatter the practices, or promote the
opinions, of the men by whom he was afterwards befriended.

Mr. Addison, however he hated the men then in power, suffered his
friendship to prevail over his publick spirit, and gave, in the
Spectator, such praises of Tickell's poem, that when, after having long
wished to peruse it, I laid hold on it at last, I thought it unequal to
the honours which it had received, and found it a piece to be approved
rather than admired. But the hope excited by a work of genius, being
general and indefinite, is rarely gratified. It was read at that time
with so much favour, that six editions were sold.

At the arrival of king George he sang the Royal Progress; which, being
inserted in the Spectator, is well known; and of which it is just to
say, that it is neither high nor low.

The poetical incident of most importance in Tickell's life was his
publication of the first book of the Iliad, as translated by himself, an
apparent opposition to Pope's Homer, of which the first part made its
entrance into the world at the same time.

Addison declared that the rival versions were both good; but that
Tickell's was the best that ever was made; and with Addison, the wits,
his adherents and followers, were certain to concur. Pope does not
appear to have been much dismayed; "for," says he, "I have the town,
that is, the mob, on my side. " But he remarks, "that it is common for
the smaller party to make up in diligence what they want in numbers; he
appeals to the people as his proper judges; and, if they are not
inclined to condemn him, he is in little care about the highflyers at
Button's. "

Pope did not long think Addison an impartial judge; for he considered
him as the writer of Tickell's version. The reasons for his suspicion I
will literally transcribe from Mr. Spence's collection.

"There had been a coldness (said Mr. Pope) between Mr. Addison and me
for some time; and we had not been in company together, for a good
while, any where but at Button's coffee-house, where I used to see him
almost every day. On his meeting me there, one day in particular, he
took me aside, and said he should be glad to dine with me, at such a
tavern, if I staid till those people were gone, (Budgell and Philips. )
We went accordingly; and, after dinner, Mr. Addison said, 'That he had
wanted for some time to talk with me; that his friend Tickell had
formerly, whilst at Oxford, translated the first book of the Iliad; that
he designed to print it, and had desired him to look it over; that he
must, therefore, beg that I would not desire him to look over my first
book, because, if he did, it would have the air of double-dealing. ' I
assured him that I did not at all take it ill of Mr. Tickell that he was
going to publish his translation; that he certainly had as much right to
translate any author as myself; and that publishing both was entering on
a fair stage. I then added, that I would not desire him to look over my
first book of the Iliad, because he had looked over Mr. Tickell's; but
could wish to have the benefit of his observations on my second, which I
had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon.
Accordingly I sent him the second book the next morning; and Mr.
Addison, a few days after, returned it, with very high commendations.
Soon after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the
first book of the Iliad, I met Dr. Young in the street; and, upon our
falling into that subject, the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise
at Tickell's having had such a translation so long by him. He said, that
it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the
matter; that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they
wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied
in so long a work there, without his knowing something of the matter;
and that he had never heard a single word of it till on this occasion.
The surprise of Dr. Young, together with what Steele has said against
Tickell in relation to this affair, make it highly probable that there
was some underhand dealing in that business; and indeed Tickell himself,
who is a very fair worthy man, has since, in a manner, as good as owned
it to me. [When it was introduced into a conversation between Mr.
Tickell and Mr. Pope, by a third person, Tickell did not deny it; which,
considering his honour, and zeal for his departed friend, was the same
as owning it. "]

Upon these suspicions, with which Dr. Warburton hints that other
circumstances concurred, Pope always, in his Art of Sinking, quotes this
book as the work of Addison.

To compare the two translations would be tedious; the palm is now given
universally to Pope; but I think the first lines of Tickell's were
rather to be preferred; and Pope seems to have since borrowed something
from them, in the correction of his own.

When the Hanover succession was disputed, Tickell gave what assistance
his pen would supply. His Letter to Avignon stands high among
party-poems; it expresses contempt without coarseness, and superiority
without insolence. It had the success which it deserved, being five
times printed.

He was now intimately united to Mr. Addison, who, when he went into
Ireland as secretary to the lord Sunderland, took him thither, and
employed him in publick business; and when, 1717, afterwards he rose to
be secretary of state, made him under-secretary. Their friendship seems
to have continued without abatement; for, when Addison died, he left him
the charge of publishing his works, with a solemn recommendation to the
patronage of Craggs.

To these works he prefixed an elegy on the author, which could owe none
of its beauties to the assistance, which might be suspected to have
strengthened or embellished his earlier compositions; but neither he nor
Addison ever produced nobler lines than are contained in the third and
fourth paragraphs; nor is a more sublime or more elegant funeral-poem to
be found in the whole compass of English literature.

He was afterwards, about 1725, made secretary to the lords justices of
Ireland, a place of great honour; in which he continued till 1740, when
he died on the twenty-third of April, at Bath.

Of the poems yet unmentioned, the longest is Kensington Gardens, of
which the versification is smooth and elegant, but the fiction
unskilfully compounded of Grecian deities and Gothick fairies. Neither
species of those exploded beings could have done much; and when they are
brought together, they only make each other contemptible. To Tickell,
however, cannot be refused a high place among the minor poets; nor
should it be forgotten that he was one of the contributors to the
Spectator. With respect to his personal character, he is said to have
been a man of gay conversation, at least a temperate lover of wine and
company, and in his domestick relations without censure.




HAMMOND.


Of Mr. Hammond, though he be well remembered as a man esteemed and
caressed by the elegant and great, I was at first able to obtain no
other memorials than such as are supplied by a book called Cibber's
Lives of the Poets; of which I take this opportunity to testify that it
was not written, nor, I believe, ever seen by either of the Cibbers; but
was the work of Robert Shiels, a native of Scotland, a man of very acute
understanding, though with little scholastick education, who, not long
after the publication of his work, died in London of a consumption. His
life was virtuous, and his end was pious. Theophilus Cibber, then a
prisoner for debt, imparted, as I was told, his name for ten guineas.
The manuscript of Shiels is now in my possession.

I have since found that Mr. Shiels, though he was no negligent inquirer,
has been misled by false accounts; for he relates that James Hammond,
the author of the elegies, was the son of a Turkey merchant, and had
some office at the prince of Wales's court, till love of a lady, whose
name was Dashwood, for a time disordered his understanding. He was
unextinguishably amorous, and his mistress inexorably cruel.

Of this narrative, part is true, and part false. He was the second son
of Anthony Hammond, a man of note among the wits, poets, and
parliamentary orators, in the beginning of this century, who was allied
to sir Robert Walpole by marrying his sister[43]. He was born about
1710, and educated at Westminster-school; but it does not appear that he
was of any university[44]. He was equerry to the prince of Wales, and
seems to have come very early into publick notice, and to have been
distinguished by those whose friendship prejudiced mankind at that time
in favour of the man on whom they were bestowed; for he was the
companion of Cobham, Lyttelton, and Chesterfield. He is said to have
divided his life between pleasure and books; in his retirement
forgetting the town, and in his gaiety losing the student. Of his
literary hours all the effects are here exhibited, of which the elegies
were written very early, and the prologue not long before his death.

In 1741, he was chosen into parliament for Truro, in Cornwall, probably
one of those who were elected by the prince's influence; and died next
year in June, at Stowe, the famous seat of lord Cobham. His mistress
long outlived him, and, in 1779, died unmarried. The character which her
lover bequeathed her was, indeed, not likely to attract courtship.

The elegies were published after his death; and while the writer's name
was remembered with fondness, they were read with a resolution to admire
them.

The recommendatory preface of the editor, who was then believed, and is
now affirmed by Dr. Maty, to be the earl of Chesterfield, raised strong
prejudices in their favour.

But of the prefacer, whoever he was, it may be reasonably suspected that
he never read the poems; for he professes to value them for a very high
species of excellence, and recommends them as the genuine effusions of
the mind, which expresses a real passion in the language of nature. But
the truth is, these elegies have neither passion, nature, nor manners.
Where there is fiction, there is no passion: he that describes himself
as a shepherd, and his Neæra or Delia as a shepherdess, and talks of
goats and lambs, feels no passion. He that courts his mistress with
Roman imagery deserves to lose her; for she may, with good reason,
suspect his sincerity. Hammond has few sentiments drawn from nature, and
few images from modern life. He produces nothing but frigid pedantry. It
would be hard to find in all his productions three stanzas that deserve
to be remembered.

Like other lovers, he threatens the lady with dying; and what then shall
follow?

Wilt thou in tears thy lover's corse attend;
With eyes averted light the solemn pyre,
Till all around the doleful flames ascend,
Then, slowly sinking, by degrees expire?

To sooth the hov'ring soul be thine the care,
With plaintive cries to lead the mournful band;
In sable weeds the golden vase to bear,
And cull my ashes with thy trembling hand:

Panchaia's odours be their costly feast,
And all the pride of Asia's fragrant year,
Give them the treasures of the farthest East,
And, what is still more precious, give thy tear.

Surely no blame can fall upon the nymph who rejected a swain of so
little meaning.

His verses are not rugged, but they have no sweetness; they never glide
in a stream of melody. Why Hammond or other writers have thought the
quatrain of ten syllables elegiack, it is difficult to tell. The
character of the elegy is gentleness and tenuity; but this stanza has
been pronounced by Dryden, whose knowledge of English metre was not
inconsiderable, to be the most magnificent of all the measures which our
language affords.

-----

[Footnote 43: This account is still erroneous. James Hammond, our
author, was of a different family, the second son of Anthony Hammond, of
Somersham-place, in the county of Huntingdon, esq. See Gent. Mag. vol.
lvii. p. 780. R. ]

[Footnote 44: Mr. Cole gives him to Cambridge. MSS. Athenae Cantab, in
Mus. Brit. ]




SOMERVILE.


Of Mr. [45] Somervile's life I am not able to say any thing that can
satisfy curiosity.

He was a gentleman whose estate was in Warwickshire: his house, where he
was born, in 1692, is called Edston, a seat inherited from a long line
of ancestors; for he was said to be of the first family in his county.
He tells of himself that he was born near the Avon's banks. He was bred
at Winchester-school, and was elected fellow of New college. It does not
appear that in the places of his education he exhibited any uncommon
proofs of genius or literature. His powers were first displayed in the
country, where he was distinguished as a poet, a gentleman, and a
skilful and useful justice of the peace.

Of the close of his life, those whom his poems have delighted will read
with pain the following account, copied from the letters of his friend
Shenstone, by whom he was too much resembled.

"--Our old friend Somervile is dead!