Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges Part 48

No man bore poverty and narrow fortune with a more lofty cheerfulness. His letters to his friends at this period of his life, when he had lost his Government pension and given up his college chances, are full of courage and a gay confidence and philosophy: and they are none the worse in my eyes, and I hope not in those of his last and greatest biographer (though Mr. Macaulay is bound to own and lament a certain weakness for wine, which the great and good Joseph Addison notoriously possessed, in common with countless gentlemen of his time), because some of the letters are written when his honest hand was shaking a little in the morning after libations to purple Lyaeus overnight. He was fond of drinking the healths of his friends: he writes to Wyche,(83) of Hamburgh, gratefully remembering Wyche's "hoc". "I have been drinking your health to-day with Sir Richard s.h.i.+rley," he writes to Bathurst. "I have lately had the honour to meet my Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, where we have drunk Mr. Wood's health a hundred times in excellent champagne," he writes again. Swift(84) describes him over his cups, when Joseph yielded to a temptation which Jonathan resisted. Joseph was of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the fire of wine to warm his blood. If he was a parson, he wore a tye-wig, recollect. A better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine-why, we could scarcely have found a fault with him, and could not have liked him as we do.(85)

At thirty-three years of age, this most distinguished wit, scholar, and gentleman was without a profession and an income. His book of _Travels_ had failed: his _Dialogues on Medals_ had had no particular success: his Latin verses, even though reported the best since Virgil, or Statius at any rate, had not brought him a Government place, and Addison was living up two shabby pair of stairs in the Haymarket (in a poverty over which old Samuel Johnson rather chuckles), when in these shabby rooms an emissary from Government and Fortune came and found him.(86)

A poem was wanted about the Duke of Marlborough's victory of Blenheim.

Would Mr. Addison write one? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton, took back the reply to the Lord Treasurer G.o.dolphin, that Mr. Addison would.

When the poem had reached a certain stage, it was carried to G.o.dolphin; and the last lines which he read were these:

But O my muse! what numbers wilt thou find To sing the furious troops in battle join'd?

Methinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound, The victors' shouts and dying groans confound; The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies, And all the thunders of the battle rise.

'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved, That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examined all the dreadful scenes of war: In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, To fainting squadrons lent the timely aid, Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, And taught the doubtful battle where to rage.

So when an angel by divine command, With rising tempests shakes a guilty land (Such as of late o'er pale Britannia pa.s.sed), Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, Rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm.

Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was p.r.o.nounced to be of the greatest ever produced in poetry. That angel, that good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and landed him in the place of Commissioner of Appeals-vice Mr. Locke providentially promoted. In the following year, Mr.

Addison went to Hanover with Lord Halifax, and the year after was made Under-Secretary of State. O angel visits! you come "few and far between"

to literary gentlemen's lodgings! Your wings seldom quiver at second-floor windows now!

You laugh? You think it is in the power of few writers nowadays to call up such an angel? Well, perhaps not; but permit us to comfort ourselves by pointing out that there are in the poem of the _Campaign_ some as bad lines as heart can desire: and to hint that Mr. Addison did very wisely in not going further with my Lord G.o.dolphin than that angelical simile. Do allow me, just for a little harmless mischief, to read you some of the lines which follow. Here is the interview between the Duke and the King of the Romans after the battle:-

Austria's young monarch, whose imperial sway Sceptres and thrones are destined to obey, Whose boasted ancestry so high extends That in the pagan G.o.ds his lineage ends, Comes from afar, in grat.i.tude to own The great supporter of his father's throne.

What tides of glory to his bosom ran Clasped in th' embraces of the G.o.dlike man!

How were his eyes with pleasing wonder fixt, To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt!

Such easy greatness, such a graceful port, So learned and finished for the camp or court!

How many fourth-form boys at Mr. Addison's school of Charterhouse could write as well as that now? The _Campaign_ has blunders, triumphant as it was; and weak points like all campaigns.(87)

In the year 1718 _Cato_ came out. Swift has left a description of the first night of the performance. All the laurels of Europe were scarcely sufficient for the author of this prodigious poem.(88) Laudations of Whig and Tory chiefs, popular ovations, complimentary garlands from literary men, translations in all languages, delight and homage from all-save from John Dennis in a minority of one-Mr. Addison was called the "great Mr.

Addison" after this. The Coffee-house Senate saluted him Divus: it was heresy to question that decree.

Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1717. And letters of his are extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written to young Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him as "my dearest lord", and asks affectionately about his studies, and writes very prettily about nightingales, and birds'-nests, which he has found at Fulham for his lords.h.i.+p. Those nightingales were intended to warble in the ear of Lord Warwick's mamma. Addison married her ladys.h.i.+p in 1716; and died at Holland House three years after that splendid but dismal union.(89)

But it is not for his reputation as the great author of _Cato_ and the _Campaign_, or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as my Lady Warwick's husband, or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his n.o.ble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about, hanging and ruthless-a literary Jeffries-in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried: only peccadilloes and small sins against society: only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops;(90) or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux' canes and snuff-boxes. It may be a lady is tried for breaking the peace of our sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerously from the side-box: or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian's head: or a citizen's wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too little for her husband and children: every one of the little sinners brought before him is amusing, and he dismisses each with the pleasantest penalties and the most charming words of admonition.

Addison wrote his papers as gaily as if he was going out for a holiday.

When Steele's _Tatler_ first began his prattle, Addison, then in Ireland, caught at his friend's notion, poured in paper after paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his daily observation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed an almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty years old: full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his brain, manuring hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting again, like other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much as yet; a few Latin poems-graceful prolusions; a polite book of travels; a dissertation on medals, not very deep; four acts of a tragedy, a great cla.s.sical exercise; and the _Campaign_, a large prize poem that won an enormous prize. But with his friend's discovery of the _Tatler_, Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful talker in the world began to speak. He does not go very deep: let gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he _couldn't_ go very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night's rest or his day's tranquillity about any woman in his life:(91) whereas poor d.i.c.k Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and to cry his honest old eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do not show insight into or reverence for the love of women, which I take to be, one the consequence of the other. He walks about the world watching their pretty humours, fas.h.i.+ons, follies, flirtations, rivalries; and noting them with the most charming archness. He sees them in public, in the theatre, or the a.s.sembly, or the puppet-show; or at the toy-shop higgling for gloves and lace; or at the auction, battling together over a blue porcelain dragon, or a darling monster in j.a.pan; or at church, eyeing the width of their rivals' hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the "Garter" in St.

James's Street, at Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to the Drawing-room with her coronet and six footmen; and remembering that her father was a Turkey merchant in the City, calculates how many sponges went to purchase her ear-ring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box; or he demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women. Addison was one of the most resolute club-men of his day. He pa.s.sed many hours daily in those haunts. Besides drinking, which, alas! is past praying for; you must know it, he owned, too, ladies that he indulged in that odious practice of smoking. Poor fellow! He was a man's man, remember. The only woman he _did_ know, he didn't write about. I take it there would not have been much humour in that story.

He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the Grecian, or the Devil; to pace "Change and the Mall"(92)-to mingle in that great club of the world-sitting alone in it somehow: having goodwill and kindness for every single man and woman in it-having need of some habit and custom binding him to some few; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong to hint a little doubt about a man's parts, and to d.a.m.n him with faint praise); and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humours of all of us-laughs the kindest laugh-points our neighbour's foible or eccentricity out to us with the most good-natured, smiling confidence; and then, turning over his shoulder, whispers _our_ foibles to our neighbour.

What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and his charming little brain-cracks?(93) If the good knight did not call out to the people sleeping in church, and say "Amen" with such a delightful pomposity: if he did not make a speech in the a.s.size-court _a propos de bottes_, and merely to show his dignity to Mr. Spectator:(94) if he did not mistake Madam Doll Tearsheet for a lady of quality in Temple Garden: if he were wiser than he is: if he had not his humour to salt his life, and were but a mere English gentleman and game-preserver-of what worth were he to us? We love him for his vanities as much as his virtues. What is ridiculous is delightful in him: we are so fond of him because we laugh at him so. And out of that laughter, and out of that sweet weakness, and out of those harmless eccentricities and follies, and out of that touched brain, and out of that honest manhood and simplicity-we get a result of happiness, goodness, tenderness, pity, piety; such as, if my audience will think their reading and hearing over, doctors and divines but seldom have the fortune to inspire. And why not? Is the glory of Heaven to be sung only by gentlemen in black coats? Must the truth be only expounded in gown and surplice, and out of those two vestments can n.o.body preach it? Commend me to this dear preacher without orders-this parson in the tye-wig. When this man looks from the world, whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, up to the Heaven which s.h.i.+nes over us all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up with a more serene rapture: a human intellect thrilling with a purer love and adoration than Joseph Addison's. Listen to him: from your childhood you have known the verses: but who can hear their sacred music without love and awe?

Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth, Repeats the story of her birth; And all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though, in solemn silence, all Move round this dark terrestrial ball; What though no real voice nor sound, Among their radiant orbs be found; In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, For ever singing as they s.h.i.+ne, The hand that made us is divine.

It seems to me those verses s.h.i.+ne like the stars. They s.h.i.+ne out of a great deep calm. When he turns to Heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man's mind: and his face lights up from it with a glory of thanks and prayer.

His sense of religion stirs through his whole being. In the fields, in the town: looking at the birds in the trees: at the children in the streets: in the morning or in the moonlight: over his books in his own room: in a happy party at a country merry-making or a town a.s.sembly, goodwill and peace to G.o.d's creatures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill his pure heart and s.h.i.+ne from his kind face. If Swift's life was the most wretched, I think Addison's was one of the most enviable. A life prosperous and beautiful-a calm death-an immense fame and affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name.(95)

Lecture The Third. Steele

What do we look for in studying the history of a past age? Is it to learn the political transactions and characters of the leading public men? Is it to make ourselves acquainted with the life and being of the time? If we set out with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has it entire? What character of what great man is known to you? You can but make guesses as to character more or less happy. In common life don't you often judge and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behaviour-the cut of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a different motive to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is so with those you know, how much more with those you don't know? Say, for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of Marlborough. I read Swift's history of the times in which he took a part; the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age-he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity: he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best information; and I get little or no insight into this secret motive which, I believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough's career, which caused his turnings and windings, his opportune fidelity and treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed him finally on the Hanoverian side-the winning side; I get, I say, no truth, or only a portion of it, in the narrative of either writer, and believe that c.o.xe's portrait or Swift's portrait is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take this as a single instance, prepared to be as sceptical about any other, and say to the Muse of History, "O venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single statement you ever made since your ladys.h.i.+p was a Muse!

For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look down. You bid me listen to a general's oration to his soldiers: Nonsense!

He no more made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You p.r.o.nounce a panegyric of a hero: I doubt it, and say you flatter outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character: I doubt it, and think you are prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an autobiography: I doubt all autobiographies I ever read except those, perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his cla.s.s.

_These_ have no object in setting themselves right with the public or their own consciences; these have no motive for concealment or half-truths; these call for no more confidence than I can cheerfully give, and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the _Spectator_, and say the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true. Out of the fict.i.tious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society-the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?"

As we read in these delightful volumes of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is revivified. The Maypole rises in the Strand again in London; the churches are thronged with daily wors.h.i.+ppers; the beaux are gathering in the coffee-houses; the gentry are going to the Drawing-room; the ladies are thronging to the toy-shops; the chairmen are jostling in the streets; the footmen are running with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre doors. In the country I see the young Squire riding to Eton with his servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of the family, to see him safe. To make that journey from the Squire's and back, Will is a week on horseback. The coach takes five days between London and Bath. The judges and the bar ride the circuit. If my lady comes to town in her post-chariot, her people carry pistols to fire a salute on Captain Macheath if he should appear, and her couriers ride ahead to prepare apartments for her at the great caravanserais on the road; Boniface receives her under the creaking sign of the "Bell" or the "Ram", and he and his chamberlains bow her up the great stair to the state-apartments, whilst her carriage rumbles into the courtyard, where the Exeter "Fly" is housed that performs the journey in eight days, G.o.d willing, having achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its pa.s.sengers for supper and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe in the kitchen, where the Captain's man-having hung up his master's half-pike-is at his bacon and eggs, bragging of Ramillies and Malplaquet to the townsfolk, who have their club in the chimney-corner. The Captain is ogling the chambermaid in the wooden gallery, or bribing her to know who is the pretty young mistress that has come in the coach? The pack-horses are in the great stable, and the drivers and ostlers carousing in the tap. And in Mrs.

Landlady's bar, over a gla.s.s of strong waters, sits a gentleman of military appearance, who travels with pistols, as all the rest of the world does, and has a rattling grey mare in the stables which will be saddled and away with its owner half an hour before the "Fly" sets out on its last day's flight. And some five miles on the road, as the Exeter "Fly" comes jingling and creaking onwards, it will suddenly be brought to a halt by a gentleman on a grey mare, with a black vizard on his face, who thrusts a long pistol into the coach window, and bids the company to hand out their purses.... It must have been no small pleasure even to sit in the great kitchen in those days, and see the tide of humankind pa.s.s by. We arrive at places now, but we travel no more. Addison talks jocularly of a difference of manner and costume being quite perceivable at Staines, where there pa.s.sed a young fellow "with a very tolerable periwig", though, to be sure, his hat was out of fas.h.i.+on, and had a Ramillies c.o.c.k. I would have liked to travel in those days (being of that cla.s.s of travellers who are proverbially pretty easy _coram latronibus_) and have seen my friend with the grey mare and the black vizard. Alas! there always came a day in the life of that warrior when it was the fas.h.i.+on to accompany him as he pa.s.sed-without his black mask, and with a nosegay in his hand, accompanied by halberdiers and attended by the sheriff,-in a carriage without springs, and a clergyman jolting beside him to a spot close by c.u.mberland Gate and the Marble Arch, where a stone still records that here Tyburn turnpike stood. What a change in a century; in a few years! Within a few yards of that gate the fields began: the fields of his exploits, behind the hedges of which he lurked and robbed. A great and wealthy city has grown over those meadows. Were a man brought to die there now, the windows would be closed and the inhabitants keep their houses in sickening horror. A hundred years back, people crowded to see that last act of a highwayman's life, and make jokes on it. Swift laughed at him, grimly advising him to provide a Holland s.h.i.+rt and white cap crowned with a crimson or black ribbon for his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully-shake hands with the hangman, and so-farewell. Gay wrote the most delightful ballads, and made merry over the same hero. Contrast these with the writings of our present humourists! Compare those morals and ours-those manners and ours!

We can't tell-you would not bear to be told the whole truth regarding those men and manners. You could no more suffer in a British drawing-room, under the reign of Queen Victoria, a fine gentleman or fine lady of Queen Anne's time, or hear what they heard and said, than you would receive an ancient Briton. It is as one reads about savages, that one contemplates the wild ways, the barbarous feasts, the terrific pastimes, of the men of pleasure of that age. We have our fine gentlemen, and our "fast men"; permit me to give you an idea of one particularly fast n.o.bleman of Queen Anne's days, whose biography has been preserved to us by the law reporters.

In 1691, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun was tried by his peers for the murder of William Mountford, comedian. In Howell's _State Trials_, the reader will find not only an edifying account of this exceedingly fast n.o.bleman, but of the times and manners of those days. My lord's friend, a Captain Hill, smitten with the charms of the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, determined to carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney-coach with six horses, and a half-dozen of soldiers, to aid him in the storm. The coach with a pair of horses (the four leaders being in waiting elsewhere) took its station opposite my Lord Craven's house in Drury Lane, by which door Mrs.

Bracegirdle was to pa.s.s on her way from the theatre. As she pa.s.sed in company of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the Captain seized her by the hand, the soldiers hustled Mr. Page and attacked him sword in hand, and Captain Hill and his n.o.ble friend endeavoured to force Madam Bracegirdle into the coach. Mr. Page called for help: the population of Drury Lane rose: it was impossible to effect the capture; and bidding the soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off, Hill let go of his prey sulkily, and he waited for other opportunities of revenge. The man of whom he was most jealous was Will Mountford, the comedian; Will removed, he thought Mrs. Bracegirdle might be his: and accordingly the Captain and his lords.h.i.+p lay that night in wait for Will, and as he was coming out of a house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in talk, Hill, in the words of the Attorney-General, made a pa.s.s and run him clean through the body.

Sixty-one of my lord's peers finding him not guilty of murder, while but fourteen found him guilty, this very fast n.o.bleman was discharged: and made his appearance seven years after in another trial for murder-when he, my Lord Warwick, and three gentlemen of the military profession were concerned in the fight which ended in the death of Captain Coote.

This jolly company were drinking together at Lockit's in Charing Cross, when angry words arose between Captain Coote and Captain French; whom my Lord Mohun and my lord the Earl of Warwick(96) and Holland endeavoured to pacify. My Lord Warwick was a dear friend of Captain Coote, lent him a hundred pounds to buy his commission in the Guards; once when the captain was arrested for 13_l_. by his tailor, my lord lent him five guineas, often paid his reckoning for him, and showed him other offices of friends.h.i.+p. On this evening the disputants, French and Coote, being separated whilst they were upstairs, unluckily stopped to drink ale again at the bar of Lockit's. The row began afresh-Coote lunged at French over the bar, and at last all six called for chairs, and went to Leicester Fields, where they fell to. Their lords.h.i.+ps engaged on the side of Captain Coote. My Lord of Warwick was severely wounded in the hand, Mr. French also was stabbed, but honest Captain Coote got a couple of wounds-one especially, "a wound in the left side just under the short ribs, and piercing through the diaphragma," which did for Captain Coote. Hence the trials of my Lords Warwick and Mohun: hence the a.s.semblage of peers, the report of the transaction, in which these defunct fast men still live for the observation of the curious. My Lord of Warwick is brought to the bar by the Deputy Governor of the Tower of London, having the axe carried before him by the gentleman gaoler, who stood with it at the bar at the right hand of the prisoner, turning the edge from him; the prisoner, at his approach, making three bows, one to his grace the Lord High Steward, the other to the peers on each hand; and his grace and the peers return the salute. And besides these great personages, august in periwigs, and nodding to the right and left, a host of the small come up out of the past and pa.s.s before us-the jolly captains brawling in the tavern, and laughing and cursing over their cups-the drawer that serves, the bar-girl that waits, the bailiff on the prowl, the chairmen trudging through the black lampless streets, and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords are clas.h.i.+ng in the garden within. "Help there! a gentleman is hurt": the chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gentleman over the railings, and carry him, ghastly and bleeding, to the bagnio in Long Acre, where they knock up the surgeon-a pretty tall gentleman-but that wound under the short ribs has done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen, and gentleman gaoler with your axe, where be you now? The gentleman axeman's head is off his own shoulders; the lords and judges can wag theirs no longer; the bailiff's writs have ceased to run; the honest chairmen's pipes are put out, and with their brawny calves they have walked away into Hades-all as irrecoverably done for as Will Mountford or Captain Coote. The subject of our night's lecture saw all these people-rode in Captain Coote's company of the Guards very probably-wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy in many a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern-fled from many a bailiff.

In 1709, when the publication of the _Tatler_ began, our great-great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and delightful paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light literature in a later day exhibited when the Waverley novels appeared, upon which the public rushed, forsaking that feeble entertainment of which the Miss Porters, the Anne of Swanseas, and worthy Mrs. Radcliffe herself, with her dreary castles and exploded old ghosts, had had pretty much the monopoly. I have looked over many of the comic books with which our ancestors amused themselves, from the novels of Swift's coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the delectable author of the _New Atlantis_, to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the _London Spy_ and several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collection at the British Museum, you may see, besides the _Craftsman_ and _Post Boy_, specimens, and queer specimens they are, of the higher literature of Queen Anne's time. Here is an abstract from a notable journal bearing date, Wednesday, October 13th, 1708, and ent.i.tled _The British Apollo; or, Curious Amus.e.m.e.nts for the Ingenious, by a Society of Gentlemen_. The _British Apollo_ invited and professed to answer questions upon all subjects of wit, morality, science, and even religion; and two out of its four pages are filled with queries and replies much like some of the oracular penny prints of the present time.

One of the first querists, referring to the pa.s.sage that a bishop should be the husband of one wife, argues that polygamy is justifiable in the laity. The society of gentlemen conducting the _British Apollo_ are posed by this casuist, and promise to give him an answer. Celinda then wishes to know from "the gentlemen", concerning the souls of the dead, whether they shall have the satisfaction to know those whom they most valued in this transitory life. The gentlemen of the _Apollo_ give but cold comfort to poor Celinda. They are inclined to think not: for, say they, since every inhabitant of those regions will be infinitely dearer than here are our nearest relatives-what have we to do with a partial friends.h.i.+p in that happy place? Poor Celinda! it may have been a child or a lover whom she had lost, and was pining after, when the oracle of _British Apollo_ gave her this dismal answer. She has solved the question for herself by this time, and knows quite as well as the society of gentlemen.

From theology we come to physics, and Q. asks, "Why does hot water freeze sooner than cold?" Apollo replies, "Hot water cannot be said to freeze sooner than cold, but water once heated and cold, may be subject to freeze by the evaporation of the spirituous parts of the water, which renders it less able to withstand the power of frosty weather."

The next query is rather a delicate one. "You, Mr. Apollo, who are said to be the G.o.d of Wisdom, pray give us the reason why kissing is so much in fas.h.i.+on: what benefit one receives by it, and who was the inventor, and you will oblige Corinna." To this queer demand the lips of Phoebus, smiling, answer: "Pretty, innocent Corinna! Apollo owns that he was a little surprised by your kissing question, particularly at that part of it where you desire to know the benefit you receive by it. Ah! madam, had you a lover, you would not come to Apollo for a solution; since there is no dispute but the kisses of mutual lovers give infinite satisfaction. As to its invention, 'tis certain nature was its author, and it began with the first courts.h.i.+p."

After a column more of questions, follow nearly two pages of poems, signed by Philander, Armenia, and the like, and chiefly on the tender pa.s.sion; and the paper wound up with a letter from Leghorn, an account of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene before Lille, and proposals for publis.h.i.+ng two sheets on the present state of Aethiopia, by Mr. Hill; all of which is printed for the authors by J. Mayo, at the Printing Press against Water Lane in Fleet Street. What a change it must have been-how Apollo's oracles must have been struck dumb, when the _Tatler_ appeared, and scholars, gentlemen, men of the world, men of genius, began to speak!

Shortly before the Boyne was fought, and young Swift had begun to make acquaintance with English Court manners and English servitude, in Sir William Temple's family, another Irish youth was brought to learn his humanities at the old school of Charterhouse, near Smithfield; to which foundation he had been appointed by James Duke of Ormond, a governor of the House, and a patron of the lad's family. The boy was an orphan, and described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos and simplicity, some of the earliest recollections of a life which was destined to be chequered by a strange variety of good and evil fortune.

I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters and ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little Irish boy.

He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times.

Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape the flogging block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have myself inspected, but only as an amateur, that instrument of righteous torture still existing, and in occasional use, in a secluded private apartment of the old Charterhouse School; and have no doubt it is the very counterpart, if not the ancient and interesting machine itself, at which poor d.i.c.k Steele submitted himself to the tormentors.

Besides being very kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy went invariably into debt with the tart-woman; ran out of bounds, and entered into pecuniary, or rather promissory, engagements with the neighbouring lollipop-vendors and piemen-exhibited an early fondness and capacity for drinking mum and sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements here made of Steele's early life; but if the child is father of the man, the father of young Steele of Merton, who left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered the Life Guards-the father of Captain Steele of Lucas's Fusiliers, who got his company through the patronage of my Lord Cutts-the father of Mr. Steele the Commissioner of Stamps, the editor of the _Gazette_, the _Tatler_, and _Spectator_, the expelled Member of Parliament, and the author of the _Tender Husband_ and the _Conscious Lovers_; if man and boy resembled each other, d.i.c.k Steele the schoolboy must have been one of the most generous, good-for-nothing, amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb _tupto_, I beat, _tuptomai_, I am whipped, in any school in Great Britain.

Almost every gentleman who does me the honour to hear me will remember that the very greatest character which he has seen in the course of his life, and the person to whom he has looked up with the greatest wonder and reverence, was the head boy at his school. The schoolmaster himself hardly inspires such an awe. The head boy construes as well as the schoolmaster himself. When he begins to speak the hall is hushed, and every little boy listens. He writes off copies of Latin verses as melodiously as Virgil. He is good-natured, and, his own masterpieces achieved, pours out other copies of verses for other boys with an astonis.h.i.+ng ease and fluency; the idle ones only trembling lest they should be discovered on giving in their exercises, and whipped because their poems were too good. I have seen great men in my time, but never such a great one as that head boy of my childhood: we all thought he must be Prime Minister, and I was disappointed on meeting him in after-life to find he was no more than six feet high.

d.i.c.k Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, contracted such an admiration in the years of his childhood, and retained it faithfully through his life.

Through the school and through the world, whithersoever his strange fortune led this erring, wayward, affectionate creature, Joseph Addison was always his head boy. Addison wrote his exercises. Addison did his best themes. He ran on Addison's messages: f.a.gged for him and blacked his shoes: to be in Joe's company was d.i.c.k's greatest pleasure; and he took a sermon or a caning from his monitor with the most boundless reverence, acquiescence, and affection.(97)

Steele found Addison a stately college Don at Oxford, and himself did not make much figure at this place. He wrote a comedy, which, by the advice of a friend, the humble fellow burned there; and some verses, which I dare say are as sublime as other gentlemen's composition at that age; but being smitten with a sudden love for military glory, he threw up the cap and gown for the saddle and bridle, and rode privately in the Horse Guards, in the Duke of Ormond's troop-the second-and, probably, with the rest of the gentlemen of his troop, "all mounted on black horses with white feathers in their hats, and scarlet coats richly laced," marched by King William, in Hyde Park, in November, 1699, and a great show of the n.o.bility, besides twenty thousand people, and above a thousand coaches. "The Guards had just got their new clothes," the _London Post_ said: "they are extraordinary grand, and thought to be the finest body of horse in the world." But Steele could hardly have seen any actual service. He who wrote about himself, his mother, his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the wine he drank, would have told us of his battles if he had seen any. His old patron, Ormond, probably got him his cornetcy in the Guards, from which he was promoted to be a captain in Lucas's Fusiliers, getting his company through the patronage of Lord Cutts, whose secretary he was, and to whom he dedicated his work called the _Christian Hero_. As for d.i.c.k, whilst writing this ardent devotional work, he was deep in debt, in drink, and in all the follies of the town; it is related that all the officers of Lucas's, and the gentlemen of the Guards, laughed at d.i.c.k.(98) And in truth a theologian in liquor is not a respectable object, and a hermit, though he may be out at elbows, must not be in debt to the tailor. Steele says of himself that he was always sinning and repenting. He beat his breast and cried most piteously when he _did_ repent: but as soon as crying had made him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. In that charming paper in the _Tatler_, in which he records his father's death, his mother's griefs, his own most solemn and tender emotions, he says he is interrupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, "the same as is to be sold at Garraway's, next week," upon the receipt of which he sends for three friends, and they fall to instantly, "drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit to themselves, and not separating till two o'clock in the morning."