Curiosities of Literature Volume Iii Part 2

I am, &c.,

P. DES MAIZEAUX.

The ma.n.u.scripts were never returned to Des Maizeaux; for seven years afterwards Mrs. Collins, who appears to have been a very spirited lady, addressed to him the following letter on the subject of a report, that she had permitted transcripts of these very ma.n.u.scripts to get abroad.

This occasioned an animated correspondence from both sides.

SIR, _March 10, 1736-37_.

I have thus long waited in expectation that you would ere this have called on Dean Sykes, as Sir B. Lucy said you intended, that I might have had some satisfaction in relation to a very unjust reproach--viz., that I, or somebody that I had trusted, had _betrayed_ some of the transcripts, or MSS., of Mr. Collins into the Bishop of London's hands. I cannot, therefore, since you have not been with the dean as was desired, but call on you in this manner, to know what authority you had for such a reflection; or on what grounds you went for saying that these transcripts are in the Bishop of London's hands. I am determined to trace out the grounds of such a report; and you can be no friend of mine, no friend of Mr. Collins, no friend to common justice, if you refuse to acquaint me, what foundation you had for such a charge. I desire a very speedy answer to this, who am, Sir,

Your servant,

ELIZ. COLLINS.

_To Mr. Des Maizeaux, at his lodgings next door to the Quakers'

burying-ground, Hanover-street, out of Long-Acre._

TO MRS. COLLINS.

_March 14, 1737._

I had the honour of your letter of the 10th inst., and as I find that something has been misapprehended, I beg leave to set this matter right.

Being lately with some honourable persons, I told them it had been reported that some of Mr. C.'s MSS. were fallen into the hands of strangers, and that I should be glad to receive from you such information as might enable me to disprove that report. What occasioned this surmise, or what particular MSS. were meant, I was not able to discover; so I was left to my own conjectures, which, upon a serious consideration, induced me to believe that it might relate to the MSS. in eight volumes in 8vo, of which there is a transcript. But as the original and the transcript are in your possession, if you please, madam, to compare them together, you may easily see whether they be both entire and perfect, or whether there be anything wanting in either of them. By this means you will a.s.sure yourself, and satisfy your friends, that several important pieces are safe in your hands, and that the report is false and groundless. All this I take the liberty to offer out of the singular respect I always professed for you, and for the memory of Mr. Collins, to whom I have endeavoured to do justice on all occasions, and particularly in the memoirs that have been made use of in the General Dictionary; and I hope my tender concern for his reputation will further appear when I publish his life.

SIR, _April 6, 1737_.

My ill state of health has hindered me from acknowledging sooner the receipt of yours, from which I hoped for some satisfaction in relation to your charge, in which I cannot but think myself very deeply concerned. You tell me now, that you was left to your own conjectures what particular MSS. were reported to have fallen into the hands of strangers, and that upon a serious consideration you was induced to believe that it might relate to the MSS. in eight vols.

8vo, of which there was a transcript.

I must beg of you to satisfy me very explicitly who were the persons that reported this to you, and from whom did you receive this information? You know that Mr. Collins left several MSS. behind him; what grounds had you for your conjecture that it related to the MSS.

in eight vols., rather than to any other MSS. of which there was a transcript? I beg that you will be very plain, and tell me what strangers were named to you; and why you said the Bishop of London, if your informer said stranger to you. I am so much concerned in this, that I must repeat it, if you have the singular respect for Mr.

Collins which you profess, that you would help me to trace out this reproach, which is so abusive to, Sir,

Your servant,

ELIZ. COLLINS.

TO MRS. COLLINS.

I flattered myself that my last letter would have satisfied you, but I have the mortification to see that my hopes were vain. Therefore I beg leave once more to set this matter right. When I told you what had been reported, I acted, as I thought, the part of a true friend, by acquainting you that some of your MSS. had been purloined, in order that you might examine a fact which to me appeared of the last consequence; and I verily believe that everybody in my case would have expected thanks for such a friendly information. But instead of that I find myself represented as an enemy, and challenged to produce proofs and witnesses of a thing dropt in conversation, a hearsay, as if in those cases people kept a register of what they hear, and entered the names of the persons who spoke, the time, place, &c., and had with them persons ready to witness the whole, &c. I did own I never thought of such a thing, and whenever I happened to hear that some of my friends had some loss, I thought it my duty to acquaint them with such report, that they might inquire into the matter, and see whether there was any ground for it. But I never troubled myself with the names of the persons who spoke, as being a thing entirely needless and unprofitable.

Give me leave further to observe, that you are in no ways _concerned_ in the matter, as you seem to be apprehensive you are. Suppose some MSS. have been taken out of your library, who will say you ought to bear the guilt of it? What man in his senses, who has the honour to know you, will say you gave your consent to such thing--that you was privy to it? How can you then take upon yourself an action to which you was neither privy and consenting? Do not such things happen every day, and do the losers think themselves injured or _abused_ when they are talked of? Is it impossible to be betrayed by a person we confided in?

You call what I told you was a report, a surmise; you call it, I say, an _information_, and speak of _informers_ as if there was a plot laid wherein I received the information: I thought I had the honour to be better known to you. Mr. Collins loved me and esteemed me for my integrity and sincerity, of which he had several proofs; how I have been drawn in to injure him, to forfeit the good opinion he had of me, and which, were he now alive, would deservedly expose me to his utmost contempt, is a grief which I shall carry to the grave. It would be a sort of comfort to me, if those who have consented I should be drawn in were in some measure sensible of the guilt towards so good, kind, and generous a man.

Thus we find that, _seven years_ after Des Maizeaux had inconsiderately betrayed his sacred trust, his remorse was still awake; and the sincerity of his grief is attested by the affecting style which describes it: the spirit of his departed friend seemed to be hovering about him, and, in his imagination, would haunt him to the grave.

The nature of these ma.n.u.scripts; the cause of the earnest desire of retaining them by the widow; the evident unfriendliness of her conduct to Des Maizeaux; and whether these ma.n.u.scripts, consisting of eight octavo volumes with their transcripts, were destroyed, or are still existing, are all circ.u.mstances which my researches have hitherto not ascertained.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] _Van Effen_ was a Dutch writer of some merit, and one of a literary knot of ingenious men, consisting of Sallengre, St.

Hyacinthe, Prosper Marchand, &c., who carried on a smart review for those days, published at the Hague under the t.i.tle of "Journal Litteraire." They all composed in French; and Van Effen gave the first translations of our "Guardian," "Robinson Crusoe," and the "Tale of a Tub," &c. He did something more, but not better; he attempted to imitate the "Spectator," in his "Le Misanthrope," 1726, which exhibits a picture of the uninteresting manners of a nation whom he could not make very lively.

_De Limiers_ has had his name slipped into our biographical dictionaries. An author cannot escape the fatality of the alphabet; his numerous misdeeds are registered. It is said, that if he had not been so hungry, he would have given proofs of possessing some talent.

[15] I find that the nominal pension was 3_s._ 6_d._ per diem on the Irish civil list, which amounts to above 63_l._ per annum. If a pension be granted for reward, it seems a mockery that the income should be so grievously reduced, which cruel custom still prevails.

[16] This letter, or pet.i.tion, was written in 1732. In 1743 he procured his pension to be placed on his wife's life, and he died in 1745.

He was sworn in as gentleman of his majesty's privy chamber in 1722--_Sloane MSS._ 4289.

[17] There is a printed catalogue of his library.

[18] This information is from a note found among Des Maizeaux's papers; but its truth I have no means to ascertain.

HISTORY OF NEW WORDS.

Neology, or the novelty of words and phrases, is an innovation, which, with the opulence of our present language, the English philologer is most jealous to allow; but we have puritans or precisians of English, superst.i.tiously nice! The fantastic coinage of affectation or caprice will cease to circulate from its own alloy; but shall we reject the ore of fine workmans.h.i.+p and solid weight? There is no government mint of words, and it is no statutable offence to invent a felicitous or daring expression unauthorised by Mr. Todd! When a man of genius, in the heat of his pursuits or his feelings, has thrown out a peculiar word, it probably conveyed more precision or energy than any other established word, otherwise he is but an ignorant pretender!

Julius Caesar, who, unlike other great captains, is authority on words as well as about blows, wrote a large treatise on "a.n.a.logy," in which that fine genius counselled to "avoid every unusual word as a rock!"[19] The cautious Quintilian, as might be expected, opposes all innovation in language. "If the new word is well received, small is the glory; if rejected, it raises laughter."[20] This only marks the penury of his feelings in this species of adventure. The great legislator of words, who lived when his own language was at its acme, seems undecided, yet pleaded for this liberty. "Shall that which the Romans allowed to Caecilius and to Plautus be refused to Virgil and Varius?" The answer to the question might not be favourable to the inquirer. While a language is forming, writers are applauded for extending its limits; when established, for restricting themselves to them. But this is to imagine that a perfect language can exist! The good sense and observation of Horace perceived that there may be occasions where necessity must become the mother of invented words:--

----Si forte necesse est Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum.

If you write of things abstruse or new, Some of your own inventing may be used, So it be seldom and discreetly done.

ROSCOMMON.

But Horace's canon for deciding on the legality of the new invention, or the standard by which it is to be tried, will not serve to a.s.sist the inventor of words:--

----licuit, semperque licebit, Signatum praesente nota procudere nummum.[21]

This _praesens nota_, or public stamp, can never be affixed to any new coinage of words: for many received at a season have perished with it.[22] The privilege of stamping words is reserved for their greatest enemy--Time itself! and the inventor of a new word must never flatter himself that he has secured the public adoption, for he must lie in his grave before he can enter the dictionary.

In Willes' address to the reader, prefixed to the collection of Voyages published in 1577, he finds fault with Eden's translation from Peter Martyr, for using words that "smelt too much of the Latine." We should scarcely have expected to find among them _ponderouse_, _portentouse_, _despicable_, _obsequious_, _homicide_, _imbibed_, _destructive_, _prodigious_. The only words he quotes, not thoroughly naturalised, are _dominators_, _ditionaries_, (subjects), _solicitute_ (careful).

The Tatler, No. 230, introduces several polysyllables introduced by military narrations, "which (he says), if they attack us too frequently, we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear;" every one of them still keep their ground.