very peremptorily gave laws, whose business it was, at first, only to transcribe them. Hence arose an obvious, and, perhaps, an unavoidable error: For these critics being men of shallow capacities, very easily mistook mere form for substance. They acted as a judge would, who should adhere to the lifeless letter of law and reject the spirit. Little circumstances which were, perhaps, accidental in a great author, were, by these critics, considered to constitute his chief merit, and transmitted as essentials to be observed by all his successors. To these encroachments, time and ignorance, the two great supporters of imposture, gave authority; and thus, many rules for good writing have been established, which have not the least foundation in truth or nature, and which commonly serve for no other purpose than to curb and restrain genius, in the same manner as it would have restrained the dancing-master, had the many excellent treatises on that art laid it down as an essential rule, that every man must dance in chains. To avoid, therefore, all imputation of laying down a rule for posterity, founded only on the authority of ipse dixit, for which, to say the truth, we have not the profoundest veneration : we shall here waive the privi lege above contended for, and proceed to lay before the reader, the reasons which have induced us to intersperse these several digressive essays in the course of this work. And here we shall of necessity be led to open a new vein of knowledge, which, if it hath been discovered, hath not, to our remembrance, been wrought on by any ancient or modern writer. This vein is no other than that of contrast, which runs through all the works of the creation, and may, probably, have a large share in constituting in us the idea of all beauty, as well natural as artificial; for what demonstrates the beauty and excellence of anything but its reverse? Thus the beauty of day and that of summer, is set off by the horrors of night and winter. And I believe, if it was possible for a man to have seen only the two former, he would have a very imperfect idea of their beauty. But to avoid too serious an air. Can it be doubted, but that the finest woman in the world would lose all benefit of her charms in the eye of a man who had never seen one of another cast? The ladies themselves seem so sensible of this, that they are all industrious to procure foils, nay, they will become foils to themselves; for I have observed (at Bath particularly) that they endeavour to appear as ugly as possible in the morning, in order to set off that beauty which they intend to show you in the evening. Most artists have this secret in practice, though some, perhaps, have not much studied the theory. The jeweller knows that the finest brilliant requires a foil, and the painter, by the contrast of his figures, often acquires great applause. A great genius among us will illustrate this matter fully. I cannot, indeed, range him under any general head of common artists, as he hath a title to be placed among those Inventas, qui vitam excoluere per artes.' I mean here the inventor of that most exquisite entertainment called the English pantomime. This entertainment consisted of two parts, which the inventor distinguished by the names of the serious and the comic. The serious exhibited a certain number of heathen gods and heroes, who were certainly the worst and dullest company into which an audience was ever introduced; and (which was a secret known to few) were actually intended so to be, in order to contrast the com.. part of the entertainment, and to display the tricks of harlequin to the better advantage. This was, perhaps, no very civil use of such personages; but the contrivance was, nevertheless, ingenious enough, and had its effect. And this will now plainly appear, if instead of serious and comic, we supply the words duller and dullest; for the comic was certainly duller than anything before shown on the stage, and could only be set off by that superlative degree of dalness, which composed the serious. So intolerably serious, indeed, were these gods and heroes, that harlequin (though the English gentleman of that name is not at all related to the French family, for he is of a much more serious disposition) was always welcome on the stage, as he relieved the audience from worse company. Judicious writers have always practised this art of contrast, with great success. I have been surprised that Horace should cavil at this art in Homer; but indeed he contradicts himself in the very next line. Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus, Verum operi longo fas est obripere somnum.' 'I grieve if e'er great Homer chance to sleep, Yet slumbers on long works have right to creep.' For we are not here to understand, as, perhaps, some have, that an author actually falls asleep while he is writing. It is true that readers are too apt to be so overtaken; but if the work was as long as any of Oldmixon, the author himself is too well entertained to be subject to the least drowsiness. He is, as Mr Pope observes, 'Sleepless himself, to give his readers sleep.' To say the truth, these soporific parts are so many scenes of serious artfully interwoven, in order to contrast and set off the rest; and this is the true meaning of a late facetious writer, who told the public, that whenever he was dull, they might be assured there was a design in it. In this light then, or rather in this darkness, I would have the reader to consider these initial essays. And after this warning, if he shall be of opinion that he can find enough of serious in other parts of this history, he may pass over these, in which we profess to be labouriously dull, and begin the following books at the second chapter. (From Tom Jones, Book v. Chap. 1.) Partridge on Courage. At length Jones, being weary of soliloquy, addressed himself to his companion, and blamed him for his taci turnity; for which the poor man very honestly accounted, from his fear of giving offence. And now, this fear being pretty well removed by the most absolute promises of indemnity, Partridge again took the bridle from his tongue; which perhaps rejoiced no less at regaining its liberty, than a young colt, when the bridle is slipt from his neck, and he is turned loose into the pastures. As Partridge was inhibited from that topic which would have first suggested itself, he fell upon that which was next uppermost in his mind, namely, the Man of the Hill. 'Certainly, sir,' says he, 'that could never be a man, who dresses himself, and lives after such a strange manner, and so unlike other folks. Besides, his diet, as the old woman told me, is chiefly upon herbs, which is a fitter food for a horse than a Christian: nay, landlord at Upton says, that the neighbours thereabouts have very fearful notions about him. It runs strangely in my head, that it must have been some spirit, who perhaps might be sent to forewarn us; and who knows but all that matter which he told us, of his going to fight, and of his being taken prisoner, and of the great danger he was in of being hanged, might be intended as a warning to us, considering what we are going about: besides, I dreamt of nothing all last night, but of fighting: and methought the blood ran out of my nose as liquor out of a tap. dolorem. Indeed, sir, infandum, regina, jubes renovare 'Thy story, Partridge,' answered Jones, is almost as ill applied as thy Latin. Nothing can be more likely to happen than death to men who go into battle. Perhaps we shall both fall in it,-and what then?' 'What then!' replied Partridge: Why then there is an end of us, is there not? when I am gone, all is over with me. What matters the cause to me, or who gets the victory, if I am killed? I shall never enjoy any advantage from it. What are all the ringing of bells, and bonfires, to one that is six foot under ground? there will be an end of poor Partridge.' 'And an end of poor Partridge,' cries Jones, 'there must be one time or other. If you love Latin, I will repeat you some fine lines out of Horace, which would inspire courage into a coward. "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Poplitibus, timidoque tergo." 'I wish you would construe them,' cries Partridge; 'for Horace is a hard author, and I cannot understand as you repeat them.' 'I will repeat you a bad imitation or rather paraphrase of my own,' said Jones: for I am but an indifferent poet. "Who would not die in his dear country's cause! Since, if base fear his dastard step withdraws, From death he cannot fly.-One common grave Receives, at last, the coward and the brave."' 'That's very certain,' cries Partridge. 'Ay, sure, Mors omnibus communis: but there is a great difference between dying in one's bed a great many years hence, like a good Christian, with all our friends crying about us, and being shot to-day or to-morrow, like a mad dog; or perhaps hacked in twenty pieces with a sword, and that too before we have repented of all our sins. O Lord, have mercy upon us! to be sure the soldiers are a wicked kind of people. I never loved to have any thing to do with them. I could hardly bring myself ever to look upon them as Christians. There is nothing but cursing and swearing among them. I wish your honour would repent: I heartily wish you would repent, before it is too late, and not think of going among them. -Evil communication corrupts good manners. That is my principal reason. For, as for that matter, I am no more afraid than another man, not I; as to matter of that, I know all human flesh must die, but yet a man may live many years for all that. Why, I am a middle aged man now, and yet I may live a great number of I have read of several who have lived to be above a hundred, and some a great deal above a hundred. Not that I hope, I mean that I promise myself, to live to any such age as that neither.-But, if it be only to eighty or ninety, Heaven be praised, that is a great way off yet; years. and I am not afraid of dying then, no more than another man but surely to attempt death before a man's time is come, seems to be downright wickedness and presumption. Besides, if it was to do any good indeed; but let the cause be what it will, what mighty matter of good can two people do? and for my part, I understand nothing of it. I never fired off a gun above ten times in my life; and then it was not charged with bullets. And for the sword, I never learned to fence, and know nothing of the matter. And then there are those cannons, which certainly it must be thought the highest presumption to go in the way of, and nobody but a madman-I ask pardon; upon my soul I meant no harm; I beg I may not throw your honour into another passion.' 'Be under no apprehension, Partridge,' cries Jones; 'I am now so well convinced of thy cowardice, that thou couldst not provoke me on any account.' 'Your honour,' answered he, may call me a coward, or any thing else you please. If loving to sleep in a whole Not a skin makes a man a coward, non immunes ab illis malis sumus. I never read in my grammar, that a man can't be a good man without fighting. Vir bonus est quis? Qui consulta patrum, qui leges juraque servat. word of fighting; and I am sure the scripture is so much against it, that a man shall never persuade me he is a good Christian, while he sheds Christian blood.' (From Tom Jones, Book xii. Chap. 3.) Opening of 'The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.' Wednesday, June 26, 1754.-On this day, the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose, and found me awake at my house at Fordhook. By the light of this sun I was, in my own opinion, last to behold and take leave of some of those creatures on whom I doted with a mother-like fondness, guided by nature and passion, and uncured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philosophical school where I had learned to bear pains and to despise death. : In this situation, as I could not conquer nature, I submitted entirely to her, and she made as great fool of me as she had ever done of any woman whatsoever under pretence of giving me leave to enjoy, she drew me into suffer the company of my little ones, during eight hours; and I doubt whether in that time I did not undergo more than in all my distemper. At twelve precisely my coach was at the door, which was no sooner told me, than I kissed my children round, and went into it with some little resolution. My wife, who behaved more like a heroine and philosopher, though at the same time the tenderest mother in the world, and my eldest daughter, followed me; some friends went with us, and others here took their leave; and I heard my behaviour applauded, with many murmurs and praises to which I well knew I had no title; as all other such philosophers may, if they have any modesty, confess on the like occasions. The connection of the Denbighs and the Hapsburgs is discussed by Mr J. H. Round at pp. 216-49 of his Studies in Peerage and Family History (1901); and his conclusions have been adopted by Burke. It has been suggested (Thomson's Richardson, 1900, p. 38) that the Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews (1741) should be added to the works of Fielding. Richardson believed Fielding to be the author (Corr. 1804, iv. 286); and there is some internal evidence-notably, the fact that, both in Shamela and Joseph Andrews, the Mr B.' of Pamela is converted into 'Mr Booby-which supports this belief. But hitherto the book has not been claimed for Fielding by Fielding's biographers. Fielding's 'Works' were first published in 1762 in 4to and 8vo by Andrew Millar, with an Essay on his Life and Genius by Arthur Murphy. In 1821 the novels appeared in Ballantyne's Novelist's Library, with a biographical sketch by Sir Walter Scott. In 1882 an édition de luxe in ten volumes was published by Messrs Smith and Elder, with a prefatory study by Mr Leslie Stephen; in 1893 Messrs Dent issued an edition in twelve volumes edited by Professor Saintsbury; and in 1898 Messrs Archibald Constable & Co. issued a further edition with a preliminary Essay by Mr Edmund Gosse. An annotated edition of the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon was published by the Chiswick Press in 1892. There are Lives of Fielding by Watson (1807), Lawrence (1855), and in the Men of Letters' series by the present writer (1883, 1889, and revised American edition, 1900). Among separate articles may be noted Revue des Deux Mondes (Gustave Planche), 1832; Fraser's Magazine (Keightley), January and February 1858; Athenæum, 2nd June 1883; Thackeray's English Humourists (1858), pp. 266-85; Lang's Letters on Literature (1889), pp. 29–42; Traill's New Lucian (1900), pp. 268-86. A bust of Fielding by Miss Margaret Thomas was unveiled at the Shire Hall, Taunton, 4th September 1883, by James Russell Lowell, whose address on that occasion is reproduced in Democracy (1887), pp. 67-88. Fielding's will was printed in the Athenæum, 1st February 1890. The assignment of Joseph Andrews to Millar for £183, 118. is in the Forster Collection at South Kensington; the receipt and agreement for Tom Jones are in the Huth Collection. AUSTIN DOBSON. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1709–59) enjoyed great popularity as satirical poet, courtier, and diplomatist during the latter part of the reign of George II. Lord Hervey, Lord Chesterfield, Pulteney, and others threw off political squibs and light satires; but Williams eclipsed them all in liveliness and pungency. On the death of his father, Mr Hanbury, he took the name of Williams in respect of an estate in Monmouthshire left to him by a godfather, and in 1733 entered Parliament by Walpole's favour and as his supporter. Croker says that after lampooning Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, with her second | husband, Mr Hussey, he ‘retreated, with too little spirit, from the storm that threatened him into Wales, whence he was afterwards glad to accept missions to the courts of Dresden, Berlin, and Russia.' One verse of this truculent satire runs : But careful Heaven reserved her Grace For one of the Milesian race On stronger parts depending; When Pulteney, in 1741, had succeeded in pro- Proclaim him as rich as a Jew, Yet attempt not to reckon his bounties; Yet speak not a word of the countess. Say he made a great monarch change hands; In another poem Williams rails at Sandys (or How Sands, in sense and person queer, No mortal yet knows why; How Pulteney trucked the fairest fame To call his vixen by. His pasquinades are at least as personal and virulent as the political poetry of the Rolliad or the Anti-Jacobin. The following is a specimen of Williams's more careful character-painting-part of a sketch of General Churchill, in several points suggesting Thackeray's Major Pendennis: None led through youth a gayer life than he, In 1822 the fugitive poetry of Williams was collected and published in three volumes; but some at least of the grossest pieces were probably not written by him. George, Lord Lyttelton (1709-73), was the son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton of Hagley in Worcestershire; and after distinguishing himself at Eton and Oxford, he passed some time in France and Italy. On his return he obtained a seat in Parliament, and opposed the measures of Sir Robert Walpole. As secretary to the Prince of Wales, he was able to secure favours for his literary friends, Thomson and Mallet. Pope admired his talents and opinions, commemorated him in his verse, and remembered him in his will; and his poetry gained him a place in Johnson's collection and his Lives of the Poets. From 1735 he took a conspicuous part in the House of Commons. When Walpole and the Whigs were vanquished, Lyttelton was successively one of the Lords of the Treasury, a Privy-Councillor, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, finally, a peer. He was a good, kindly, absent-minded, awkward, and pious man, Whene'er she speaks my ravished ear Two and returning always to the same query; and the other beginning : The heavy hours are almost past My longing eyes may hope at last The 'Advice to a Lady' is too fairly representative of most of his work. Gray praised his 'Monody' on his wife's death, which remains a truly touching elegy; the Prologue to Thomson's Coriolanus was then accepted as his best poetic effort, and certainly contains felicitous lines and couplets. Before this play could be brought out Thomson was dead. The tragedy was acted for the benefit of the poet's relations, and when Quin spoke Lyttelton's prologue many of the audience wept. From the 'Monody.' In vain I look around O'er all the well-known ground, My Lucy's wonted footsteps to descry; Where oft in tender talk We saw the summer sun go down the sky; Nor by yon fountain's side, Along the valley, can she now be found: In all the wide-stretched prospect's ample bound, No more my mournful eye Can aught of her espy, But the sad sacred earth where her dear relics lie. . Sweet babes, who, like the little playful fawns, Were wont to trip along these verdant lawns, By your delighted mother's side: Who now your infant steps shall guide? Ah! where is now the hand whose tender care To every virtue would have formed your youth, And strewed with flowers the thorny ways of truth? O loss beyond repair! O wretched father, left alone To weep their dire misfortune and thy own! Now she, alas! is gone, From folly and from vice their helpless age to save! From Advice to a Lady.' The councils of a friend, Belinda, hear, Such truths as women seldom learn from men. Of those who claim it more than half have none; And half of those who have it are undone. Be still superior to your sex's arts, Be good yourself, nor think another's shame The honour of a prude is rage and storm, Prologue to the Tragedy of Coriolanus. No sect-alike it flowed to all mankind. He loved his friends with such a warmth of heart, To the Castle of Indolence Lyttelton contributed the stanza with the famous portrait of Thomson, whose 'ditties sweet,' however, Lyttelton did not hesitate to alter and curtail in editions of Thomson's works published in 1750 and 1752; but the liberties thus taken with the poet's text disappeared from later editions. The friendly and playful penportrait of a friend runs thus: A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems, He loathed much to write, ne cared to repeat. An edition of Lyttelton's collected works in prose and verse appeared in 1774, and was reissued in 1775 and 1776; and in 1845 Sir R. Phillimore published his Memoirs and Correspondence. John Armstrong (1709?-79), the friend of Thomson, of Mallet, Wilkes, and other public and literary characters of that period, is now only known as the author of an unread didactic poem, the Art of Preserving Health. A son of the minister of Castleton, a pastoral parish in Liddesdale, he studied medicine in Edinburgh, and took his M.D in 1732. Three years later he was practising in London, and became known by the publication of several fugitive pieces and medical essays. A nauseous anonymous poem, the Economy of Love (1736), gave promise of poetical powers, but marred his practice as a physician. In 1744 appeared his Art of Preserving Health, which was followed by two other poems, Benevolence (1751) and Taste (1753), and a pseudonymous volume of Sketches or Essays (1758). In 1760 he was appointed physician to the forces in Germany; and on the peace in 1763 he returned to London, where he practised, but with little success, till his death, 7th September 1779. Armstrong seems to have been an indolent and splenetic but kind-hearted man-shrewd, caustic, and careful: he left £3000, saved out of a small income. His portrait in the Castle of Indolence is in Thomson's happiest manner : With him was sometimes joined in silent walk Nor ever uttered word, save when first shone The glittering star of eve-Thank Heaven, the day is done." Warton praised the Art of Preserving Health for its classical correctness and closeness of style, and its numberless poetical images. In general, however, it is stiff and laboured, with occasional passages of tumid extravagance; and the similes are not infrequently echoes of those of Thomson and other poets. Of these two extracts from the Art of Preserving Health (from the close of the second and third books respectively), the second, the most energetic passage in the whole poem and not least characteristic of its medical author, describes the 'sweating sickness' which appeared in London in September 1485, after the victorious entry of the troops of Henry VII. who had a week or two before fought at Bosworth field. Wrecks and Mutations of Time. |