English Lands Letters and Kings

ntley;[1] then came that more saintly Doctor-Isaac Watts, whose Doxologies will long waken the echoes in country churches; we had a glimpse of the gloomy and l

for her vivacity of mind, for her boldness, for her contempt of the convenances of so

astic as his body was weak and shaky; and who, of all the poets we have encountered since Elizabe

2] overreached the reign of Queen Anne, and dropped off-some in the time of George I., s

art to B

r. He had favorers about the Court of Anne; and if the Queen had lingered somewhat longer, or if the Jacobite or Tory political machine had been a little better oiled and in better play, this Pretender might have come to the throne instead of Hanover George. Poet and Amb

o Scott's story of Rob Roy. The Pretender escaped with difficulty to France, made no succeeding attempt, lived in comparative obscurity, and died in Rome fifty years later. He was, according to best accounts, a poor, weak creature, of dissipated habits-of melancholy aspect-dub

ndsome, gentlemanly, and amiable man-known as the Young Pretender-did, by favor of French aid, and stimulated by larger French promises, make a landing in Scotland in 1745

tive. Thenceforward he appears no more in English history. We know only that this bright, clever, brave Chevalier, who bewitched many a Highland

ntury-the last of his family. There is in St. Peter's Church at Rome, in the Chapel of the Presentation, a great tomb, showy with the sculptures of Canova, which co

question: How and why did the Georges

he hill above Heidelberg. You will remember my mention of that extravagant ambition which brought her husband to grief and to an early death. Well, she had many children; and among them one named Sophia, who married, in 1658, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick and-afterward-Elector of Hanover. She was a good woman, a fairly pronounced Protestant-un

arning to speak it; had been a good soldier and fought hard in his day, but did not care for more fighting, or fatigue of any sort; had little culture, and minded the welcoming odes which English poets sang to him less than he would mi

man how Anne was dead and he was king; if Addison had made his letter as noble

ay from that Hanover home-had plotted it all, and the night came, when suddenly her lover and the would-be attendant of her flight was savagely slain; and she, separated from her two children and speaking no word more to

rty at the time of his father's coming to England, and not getting on over-well with the

e, as good a fighter as the father, swore easily and often; had a good, honest wife though, who clung to him through all his badnesses. He had a city home in Leicester Square and

ing) that a messenger came galloping in jack-boots one evening, thirteen years after George I. had come to the throne, to tell the

wear at something or somebody. But having rubbed his eyes and considered the matter, he began then and there those thirty-three years of reign, which, w

years-thus bringing us down to 1760. I have dwelt upon the personalities of these two monarchs, not because they are worthy of special regard, but rather that they may

Richa

ch good in it as in twenty sermons: yet I do not think he meant to compliment it-or the sermons. Neither did Bookseller Richardson know people in high position, except Hon. Mr. Onslow the Speaker, who gave him some of the public printing to do and put him in way of business by which he grew rich for these times and had a fine large house out by Hammersmith, where he kept a little court of his own in summer weather; the courtiers being worthy women, to whom he would read his books, or correspondence relating to them, by the hour. Possibly you have not read his novels; but I am sure your grandmothers or great-grandmothers have read some of them, and wept over them. He was not learned; was the son of a country carpenter, and in his early days was known for an easy letter-writing faculty he

orals, which in his view were closely joined. The stories were published by himself-volume by volume, so that his correspondents had good chance to fire upon him-on the wing as it were: "Poor Clarissa," they say; "my heart bleeds for her, and what, pray, is to become of her; and why don't you reform Lovelace, and sha'n't he marry Clarissa? And I do not believe there was ever such a

ig, lightish cloth coat, all black besides; one hand generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat ... looking directly fore-right as passers-by would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either

Westbrook-an adopted da

rs-I am accused for playing off a sheet-full of witticisms, which you, poor girl, can't tell what to do with. Witticism! Miss W. Very well

arrelful in his books: and so he did, and made Europe weep. Rousseau and Diderot from over in Fr

e he was, in a sense, the father of the modern novel; coming before Fielding; in fact, spurring the latter, by Pamela, to his great, coarse, and more wonderful accomplishment. And although what I have said of Richardson may give the impressio

Fiel

may compass it about. I have no argument here with the artists who, for art's sake, want to strip away all the protective kirtles which the Greek Dianas wore: but when it comes to the bare bestialities of such tavern-bagnios as poor Fielding knew too well,[9] there seems room for reasonable objection, and for a strewing of some of the fig-leaves of decency. And yet this stalwart West-of-England man, "raised" in the fat meadows of Somersetshire, a

ngland; but the romance of Tom Jones-that exquisite picture of humor and mann

s fellow of Lord Lyttleton, who befriended him later, and of William Pitt (the elder), and of Fox-the rattle-brain father of Charles James. Then came two or more years of stay at the University of Leyden, from which he laid his course straight for the dramatic world of London; for his father, Gen

nherited from his mother, set up as country gentleman, on the north border of Dorsetshire, determined to cut a new and larger figure in life-free from the mephitic airs of Drury Lane. There were stories-very likely apocryphal-that he ordered extravagant liveries; it is more certain that he gave himself freely, for a time, to hounds, h

; a year later, his wife dies in his arms; Lady Wortley Montagu (who was a cousin) tells us this; and tells us how other cousins were scandalized because, a few years afterward, the novelist, with an effusive generosity that was characteristic of him, married his maid, who had lamented her mistress so sincerely, and was tenderly attached to his children. At about the same period he accepted office as Justice of the Peace-there

oner told than I kissed my children all around, and went into it with some little resolution." There needed resolution; for he was an utterly broken-down ma

ll visitors who love the triumphs of English letters go to see his tomb, among the myrtles and the geraniums. If he had only lived to plu

f the

e. This was the poet of The Seasons,[12] whose boyhood had been passed and enriched in that bight of the beautiful Tweed valley which lies between Coldstream and the tall mass of Kelso's ruin,-with Melrose and Smailhome Tower and Ettrickdale not far away, and the Lammermuir hills glowering in the north. He had studied theology in Edinboro', till some iris-hued version of a psalm (whi

s lacking, and so was the master's arrant polish

rst poem of his which he brought in his

air the whitenin

wavering, till a

wide and fast,

ontinual

the

heads; and ere

west emits hi

sal face, deep

de dazzli

wls of

cruel season,

nowing

al

sacred to the

dful of the

ds and thorny t

iverin

raid, h

dow beats; then

rth; then hoppi

e smiling f

tarts, and wonde

some; but you will catch good honest glimpses of the country in his verse without going there-not true to our American seasons in detail, but always true to Nature. The sun never rises in the west in his poems; the jonquils and the daisies ar

first draught of some of his poems; and that you may see together t

speaking of a

Beauty, she wa

g the woods;

faith; and thus s

ecessity, w

look as Patien

Palemon's

ay in which Pope

Beauty, she wa

the close em

llow breast

helter of enc

ses far fro

s balmy fragran

blooming, and

nia; till at l

cessity's su

atience in her

Palemon's

Pope is the master, yet mastered by rules;

ous poem (1734-1736) entitled Liberty-never a favorite. He had made friends, however, about the Court; and he pleasantly contrived to possess himself of some of those pensioned places, which fed unduly his natural

terance, from the lips of the venerable John Quincy Adams, after he had bid adieu (as he though

Fortune, what

b me of free

hut the wind

rora shows her b

r my constant

awns by living

nerves and fin

s to the great

, virtue, nought

nd set all the leaves astir over your head, his muse-if you have made her acquaintance-will coo to you from among the branches: but you will never and nowhere find in him the precision, the v

as G

Eton College; at least you know its terminal

gnorance

lly to

choly music gets somehow stamped on the brain of nearly all of us, and lends a poet

of some haberdashery traffic which she set up in Cornhill, sent her boy to Eton and to Cambridge. At Eton he came to know Horace Walpole, travelled with him over Europe, after leaving Cambrid

tting fairly into harness before the gout laid hold of him and killed him. Probably no man in English literature has so large a reputation for so little work. Gibbon regretted that he should not have completed his philosophic poem on

n the way of large accomplishment. He was content to do nothing, except he did something

t of practical jokers at his college. Some lovers of fun there sounded an alarm of fire for the sake of seeing the elegant Mr. Gray (not then grown famous, to be sure) slipping down a rope-ladder in undress, out of his window; which he did do, but presently changed his col

you would make Dodsley print it immediately, without my name, but on his best paper and typ

e. I have heard of over-elegant people in our day with the same affe

h the Elegy grew. And if you ever have a half day to spare in London, it is worth your while to go out to Slough (twenty miles by the Great Western road), and thence, two miles of delicious walk among shady lanes and wanton

lls the knell

d winds slowly

homeward plods

world to dark

our

awberry Hill; which by his vagaries in architecture and his enormous collection of bric-à-brac, he made the show place of all that region. He established a private press at this country home, and printed, among a multitude of other books, a catalogue of royal and noble authors-not reckoning others so worthy of his regard; indeed, he had a well-bred contempt for ordinary literary avocations; but he wrote and published (privately at first) a romance called The Castle of Otranto.[16] It was "a slight thing," he told his friends, which he had dashed off in an idle hour, and which

is not touched upon in them; if he is robbed, you hear how a voice out of the night said "stop"-how he slipped his watch under his waistband-how he gave up his purse with nine guineas in it-how Lady Browne was frightened and gave up her watch; if the king has gout in his toe you hear of that; if he goes to the palace he tells you who was in the ante-room and how two fellows were sweeping the floor, dancing about in sabots; how the Duc of Richelieu was pale except his nose, "which is red and wrinkled." Great hoops with brocade dresses come sa

understand how his correspondents all relished immensely his letters whenever they came. There is humor and sparkle, and there are delicate

dy Suffolk with talk of dress and of the last great Paris ball, and the poet Mason with bookish platitudes, and Conway with the leakings of political talk, and Cole with twaddle on art or science. You want to turn your back on him again and again for his arra

fterward (he lived almost into this century), when gout seizes him, I seem to see still-as once before[19]-the fastidious old man shuffling up and down from drawing-room to library-stopping here and there to admire some newly arrived bit of pottery-pulling out his golden snuff-box and whisking a d

Mr. Jo

ind the boy who afterward became the great lexicographer[20] and the great talker. The house in which he was born is there upon a corner of the great broadened street, opposite St. Mary's Church. We

erses, and tastes ranging above bookstalls, he entered at Oxford when nineteen; but the stings of poverty smote him there early; and after three years of irregular attendance, he left-only to find his father lapsing into bankruptcy and a fatal illness. On the settlement of the old bookseller's estate, ￡20 only was the portion of the son. Then follow some dreary years; he is hypochondriac and fears madness; he is under-teacher in a schoo

Lord Macaulay[21] uses a very rampant rhetoric in his encyclop?dic mention of the paint she put upon her cheeks. With the aid of her ￡800, Johnson determined to set up

urgical cut; one eye involved and drooping, and a twitchy St. Vitus's dance making all uglier. What boy would not dread a possible whipping from such a master, and what mamma would not tremb

knocked about those London streets-translating a little, jobbing at books a little, starving and scrimping a great deal. He fell in early with a certain Richard Savage,[22] a wild, clever, disorderly poet, as hard pinched as Johnson. According to his story, he was the son of the Countess Macclesfield, but disowned by her-he only coming to knowledge of his parentage through accident, when he was grown to manhood. Johnson tells the pathetic tale of how Sa

so; but he escapes, largely through the influence of that Queen Caroline, to whom Jeanie Deans makes her eloquent plea in Scott's ever-

the Poets, but first published in 1744, about seven years after his coming to London. The book appeared anonymously; but its qualities gave

24] would go to show that the Savage friend of Johnson's early days in London was the most arrant of impostors; and that of all the shame that rests upon him, he can only justly be relieved of that which counts him a child of such a woman as the Countess of Macclesfield. I

hich provoked Pope's praises) the same righteous indignation, and the stings-prickin

re from shame

e safe, but h

is, the rigid

s, provokes th

rader at a t

dream, and la

ir the silken

aried taunt a

Vanity of Human Wishes) in which

n dignity see

ce, and fortun

ey's story to the poet's coupleted se

r good the supp

aven the measur

ower whose ey

bush of a spe

id, in his de

r he gives, he

*

fervors for a

ions, and a w

*

t, panting for

nd nature's sig

the theatre came first under control of his old friend, Garrick. Never had

o more the fol

m their tools

night, to bid t

ature and re

arms of Sound,

Mirth and s

irtue form t

se her radiance

ve a great success either then or thereafter. The Dictionary, for which proposals had already been issued, promised better things. That Dictionary did ultimately give him a great lift-as it has to a good many, since. The ponderous volume furnished very many New England households seventy years ago; and I can remember sitting upon it, in my child-days, to bring my head properly above the level of

complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor.... The notice which you have been pleased to take of my

ff which went to the makin

master; and his prejudices as arrant Churchman and sturdy Tory do indeed break through its piled-up pages; but never insidiously: he so

son to utter them. They belong to him; they match with their wordy convolutions his great billowy make of mind; and sho

ht, and then to tell it, in the clearest possible way, is the best law I know for a good style; and a proper following of it will give to every mind that has any color of its own a style of its own. To putt

tin derivation will hit the very shade of your thinking more aptly, do not affect to scorn the Latin. Even if a French word-provided always it be

his career; a stalwart man, still in the full prime of his years; and I see grouping about him at the Turk's Head many another whom we wish to follow; a Boswell and a Burke; Reynolds and B

his reach, his pertinacity, and his capacity for striking sha

l., in preceding volume of Lands, Let

ear to the church of the SS. Apostoli, in Rome; h

ers: "From Elizabe

Letters: "Eliz

ke himself ready, the Duchess was sent in advance. She arrived at Kew (where the Prince was staying) just as that Prince had gone to bed, as was his wont, after dinner. The Princess undertook the announcement-though demurring at the duty, an

s. Known quite generally to buyers of cheap books in our day b

thur Murphy, William Roscoe, and Leslie Stephen; (10 vols., 1882-1883.) Life by Si

Fielding (much as they are to be condemned) would provoke prurie

ennis, Household Ed.

lding's plays that British censorship was established in 1737

editions of his poems; a very elegant one, ill

e New York Historical Society, April 30, 1839, and repeated shortly after in

or critical as well as sympathetic account of his life and writing

ooks, pamphlets, and of titles relating thereto fill a dozen co

translation from the Ita

, 1857-1859. See also Horace Walpole

sh Garden, published at intervals (its successive books) betwe

ys at Edgew

n it, indeed, some of the "Croker" notes, which made such inviting quarry for the sharp huntsmanship of Macaulay. But the editing is do

ritannica; A

itings published in 1775. His largest claim to distinction is due to

a, also Strahan's Biographical Dictionar

Queries, November

hnson said they taught "the morals of a courtesan, and the manners of a dancing-master." This was perhaps over-severe. People who do no