Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 63

_The Ape at last on master's necke will stande: Then gegge betimes these gaping greedie gutts._ _Least that too soone, and then too late ye feele, He strikes at head that first began with heele._

The third tricke is, _what Apes by flattering waies Cannot come by with biting, they will s.n.a.t.c.h_; Our _Martin_ makes no bones, but plainely saies, Their fists shall walke, they will both bite and scratch.

He'll make their hearts to ake, and will not faile, _Where pen cannot, their penknife shall prevail_.[428]

But this is false, he saith he did but mock: A foole he was, that so his words did scanne.

He only meant with pen their pates to knocke; A knaue he is, that so turns cat in pan.

But, _Martin_, sweare and stare as deepe as h.e.l.l, Thy sprite, thy spite and mischeuous minde doth tell.

_The thing that neither Pope with booke nor bull, Nor Spanish King with s.h.i.+ps could doe without, Our MARTINS heere at home will worke at full: If Prince curbe not betimes that rabble rout._ That is, destroy both Church and State and all; For if t' one faile, the other needes must fall.

Thou England, then, whom G.o.d doth make so glad Through Gospel's grace and Prince's prudent reigne, Take heede lest thou at last be made as sad, Through _Martin's_ makebates marring, to thy paine.

For he marrs all and maketh nought, nor will, Saue lies and strife, and works for _England's_ ill.

_And ye graue men that answere MARTIN'S mowes, He mocks the more, and you in vain loose times.

Leaue Apes to Doggs to baite, their skins to Crowes_, And let old _Lanam_[429] lashe him with his rimes.

_The beast is proud when men read his enditings_; Let his workes goe the waie of all wast writings.

Now, _Martin_, you that say you will sp.a.w.ne out Your brawling brattes, in euery towne to dwell, _We will provide in each place for your route, A bell and whippe that Apes do loue so well._ And if yo skippe, and will not wey the checke, We 'il haue a springe, and catche you by the necke.

And so adieu, mad _Martin_-mar-the-land Leaue off thy worke, and "more work"[430] hearest thou me Thy work's nought worth, take better worke in hand.

_Thou marr'st thy worke, and thy work will marre thee._ Worke not anewe, least it doth work thy wracke, And then make worke for him that worke doth lacke.

And this I warn thee, Martin Monckies-face, Take heed of me; my rime doth charm thee bad.

I am a rimer of the Irish race, And haue alreadie rimde thee staring mad.

But if thou cease not thy bald jests to spread, I'le never leave till I have rimde thee dead.

FOOTNOTES:

[424] In Herbert's "Typographical Antiquities," p. 1689, this tract is int.i.tuled, "A Whip for an Ape, or Martin Displaied." I have also seen the poem with this t.i.tle. Readers were then often invited to an old book by a change of t.i.tle: in some cases, I think the same work has been published with several t.i.tles.

[425] _Martin_ was a name for a _bird_, and a cant term for an _a.s.s_; and, as it appears here, an _Ape_. Our _Martins_, considered as birds, were often reminded that their proper food was "hempen seed," which at length choked them. That it meant an _a.s.s_, appears from "Pappe with a Hatchet." "Be thou Martin the bird or Martin the beast, a bird with the longest bill, or a _beast with the longest ears_, there's a net spread for your neck."--Sign. B. 5. There is an old French proverb, quoted by Cotgrave, _voce_ Martin:--"_Plus d'un ASNE a la foire, a nom +Martin+_."

[426] Martin was a _protege_ of this _Dame Lawson_. There appear to have been few political conspiracies without a woman, whenever religion forms a part. This dame is thus noticed in the mock epitaphs on Martin's funeral--

"Away with silk, for I will mourn in sacke; Martin is dead, our new sect goes to wrack.

Come, gossips mine, put finger in the eie, He made us laugh, but now must make us crie."

DAME LAWSON.

"Sir Jeffrie's Ale-tub" alludes to two knights who were ruinously fined, and hardly escaped with life, for their patronage of Martin.

[427] _Chwere_, _i.e._ "that I were," alluding to their frequently adopting the corrupt phraseology of the populace, to catch the ears of the mob.

[428] It is a singular coincidence that Arnauld, in his caustic retort on the Jesuits, said--"I do not fear your _pen_, but your _penknife_." The play on the word, tells even better in our language than in the original--_plume_ and _canife_.

[429] I know of only one _Laneham_, who wrote "A Narrative of the Queen's Visit at Kenilworth Castle," 1575. He was probably a redoubtable satirist. I do not find his name in Ritson's "Bibliographia Poetica."

[430] Alluding to the t.i.tle of one of their most virulent libels against Bishop Cooper ["Hay any worke for Cooper," which was a pun on the Bishop's name, conveyed in the street cry of an itinerant trader, and was followed by another ent.i.tled] "More work for a Cooper." Cooper, in his "Admonition to the People of England," had justly observed that this _Mar-Prelate_ ought to have many other names. See note, p. 510.

I will close this note with an extract from "Pappe with a Hatchet," which ill.u.s.trates the ill effects of all sudden reforms, by an apposite and original image.

"There was an aged man that lived in a well-ordered Commonwealth by the s.p.a.ce of threescore years, and finding, at the length, that by the heate of some men's braines, and the warmness of other men's blood, that newe alterations were in hammering, and that it grewe to such an height, that all the desperate and discontented persons were readie to runne their heads against their head; comming into the midst of these mutiners, cried, as loude as his yeeres would allow:--'Springalls, and vnripened youthes, whose wisedomes are yet in the blade, when this snowe shall be melted (laying his hand on his siluer haires) then shall you find store of dust, _and rather wish for the continuance of a long frost, than the incomming of an vntimely thaw_.'"--_Sig. D. 3.

verso._

LITERARY QUARRELS

FROM PERSONAL MOTIVES

Anecdote of a BISHOP and a DOCTOR--Dr. MIDDLETON and Dr.

BENTLEY--WARBURTON and Dr. TAYLOR--WARBURTON and EDWARDS--SWIFT and DRYDEN--POPE and BENTLEY--why fiction is necessary for satire, according to Lord ROCHESTER'S confession--ROWE and ADDISON--POPE and ATTERBURY--Sir JOHN HAWKINS and GEORGE STEEVENS--a fierce controversial author a dangerous neighbour--a ludicrous instance of a literary quarrel from personal motives between BOHUN and the WYKEHAMISTS.

Literary Quarrels have abundantly sprung from mere personal motives; and controversies purely literary, sometimes of magnitude, have broken out, and been voluminously carried on, till the public are themselves involved in the contest, while the true origin lies concealed in some sudden squabble; some neglect of petty civility; some unlucky epithet; or some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which mortified or enraged the author. How greatly has pa.s.sion prevailed in literary history! How often the most glorious pages in the chronicles of literature are tainted with the secret history which must be placed by their side, so that the origin of many considerable works, which do so much honour to the heads of their authors, sadly accuse their hearts. But the heaven of Virgil was disturbed with quarrels--

Tantaene animis clestibus irae?

_aeneid._

Can heavenly minds such high resentment show?

_Dryden._

And has not a profound observer of human affairs declared, _Ex privatis odiis respublica crescit?_ individual hatreds aggrandize the republic. This miserable philosophy will satisfy those who are content, from private vices, to derive public benefits. One wishes for a purer morality, and a more n.o.ble inspiration.

To a literary quarrel from personal motives we owe the origin of a very remarkable volume. When Dr. Parr delivered his memorable sermon, which, besides the "_sesquipedalia verba_," was perhaps the longest that ever was heard--if not listened to--Bishop Hurd, who had always played the part of one of the most wary of politicians in private life, and who had occasion once adroitly to explain the French word _Retenue_, which no man better understood, in a singularly unguarded moment, sarcastically observed that he did not like "the doctor's long vernacular sermon." The happy epithet was soon conveyed to the cla.s.sical ear of the modern Grecian: it was a wasp in it! The bishop had, in the days of literary adventure, published some pieces of irony, which were thought more creditable to his wit than his feelings--and his great patron, Warburton, certain juvenile prose and verse--all of which they had rejected from their works. But this it is to be an author!--his errors remain when he has outlived and corrected them. The mighty and vindictive Grecian in rage collected them all; exhausted his own genius in perpetuating follies; completed the works of the two bishops in utter spite; and in "Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian," has furnished posterity with a specimen of the force of his own "vernacular" style, giving a lesson to the wary bishop, who had scarcely wanted one all his life--of the dangers of an unlucky epithet!

Dr. Conyers Middleton, the author of the "Life of Cicero," seldom wrote but out of pique; and he probably owed his origin as an author to a circ.u.mstance of this nature. Middleton when young was a _Dilettante_ in music; and Dr. Bentley, in contempt, applied the epithet "fiddling Conyers." Had the irascible Middleton broken his violin about the head of the learned Grecian, and thus terminated the quarrel, the epithet had then cost Bentley's honour much less than it afterwards did. It seems to have excited Middleton to deeper studies, which the great Bentley not long after felt when he published proposals for an edition of the New Testament in Greek. Middleton published his "Remarks, paragraph by paragraph, upon the proposals,"

to show that Bentley had neither talents nor materials proper for the work. This opened a great paper-war, and again our rabid wolf fastened on the majestic lion, "paragraph by paragraph." And though the lion did affect to bear in contempt the fangs of his little active enemy, the flesh was torn. "The proposals" sunk before the "paragraph by paragraph," and no edition of the Greek Testament by Bentley ever appeared. Bentley's proposals at first had met with the greatest success; the subscription-money amounted to two thousand pounds, and it was known that his nephew had been employed by him to travel abroad to collect these MSS. He declared he would make use of no MS. that was not a thousand years old, or above; of which sort he had collected twenty, so that they made up a total of twenty thousand years. He was four years studying them before he issued his proposals. The Doctor rested most on eight Greek MSS., the most recent of which was one thousand years old. All this wore a very imposing appearance. At a touch the whole magnificent edifice fell to pieces! Middleton says, "His twenty old MSS. shrink at once to eight, and he is forced again to own that even of these eight there are only four which had not been used by Dr. Mill;" and these Middleton, by his sarcastic reasoning, at last reduces to "some pieces only of the New Testament in MS." So that twenty MSS. and their twenty thousand years were battered by the "fiddling Conyers" into a solitary fragment of little value! Bentley returned the subscription-money, and would not publish; the work still lies in its prepared state, and some good judges of its value have expressed a hope to see it yet published. But Bentley himself was not untainted in this dishonourable quarrel: he well knew that Middleton was the author of this severe attack; but to show his contempt of the real author, and desirous, in his turn, of venting his disappointment on a Dr. Colbatch, he chose to attribute it to him, and fell on Colbatch with a virulence that made the reply perfectly libellous, if it was Bentley's, as was believed.

The irascibility of Middleton, disguising itself in a literary form, was still more manifested by a fact recorded of him by Bishop Newton.

He had applied to Sir Robert Walpole for the masters.h.i.+p of the Charter-house, who honestly informed him that Bishop Sherlock, with the other Bishops, were against his being chosen. Middleton attributed the origin of this opposition to Bishop Sherlock, and wreaked his vengeance by publis.h.i.+ng his "Animadversions upon Sherlock's Discourses on Prophecy." The book had been long published, and had pa.s.sed through successive editions; but Middleton pretended he had never seen them before, and from this time Lambeth-house was a strong provocative for his vindictive temper.

Nor was the other great adversary of Middleton, he who so long affected to be the lord paramount, the Suzerain in the feudal empire, rather than the republic of letters--Warburton himself--less easily led on to these murderous acts of personal rancour. A pamphlet of the day has preserved an anecdote of this kind. Dr. Taylor, the Chancellor of Lincoln, once threw out in company an opinion derogatory to the scholars.h.i.+p of Warburton, who seems to have had always some choice spirits of his legion as spies in the camp of an enemy, and who sought their tyrant's grace by their violation of the social compact. The tyrant himself had an openness, quite in contrast with the dark underworks of his satellites. He boldly interrogated our critic, and Taylor replied, undauntedly and more poignantly than Warburton might have suspected, that "he did not recollect ever _saying_ that Dr.

Warburton was no scholar, but that indeed he had always _thought_ so."

To this intrepid spirit the world owes one of the remarkable prefaces to the "Divine Legation"--in which the Chancellor of Lincoln, intrepid as he was, stands like a man of straw, to be buffeted and tossed about with all those arts of distortion which the wit and virulence of Warburton almost every day was practising at his "established places of execution," as his prefaces and notes have been wittily termed.

Even Warburton himself, who committed so many personal injuries, has, in his turn, most eminently suffered from the same motive. The personal animosity of a most ingenious man was the real cause of the utter destruction of Warburton's critical reputation. Edwards, the author of the "Canons of Criticism," when young and in the army, was a visitor at Allen's of Prior-park, the patron of Warburton; and in those literary conversations which usually occupied their evenings, Warburton affected to show his superiority in his acquaintance with the Greek writers, never suspecting that a red coat covered more Greek than his own--which happened unluckily to be the case. Once, Edwards in the library, taking down a Greek author, explained a pa.s.sage in a manner which did not suit probably with some new theory of the great inventor of so many; a contest arose, in which Edwards discovered how Warburton came by his illegitimate knowledge of Greek authors: Edwards attempted to convince him that he really did not understand Greek, and that his knowledge, such as it was, was derived from French translations--a provoking act of literary kindness, which took place in the presence of Ralph Allen and his niece, who, though they could not stand as umpires, did as witnesses. An incurable breach took place between the parties, and from this trifling altercation, Edwards produced the bitter "Canons of Criticism," and Warburton those foaming notes in the _Dunciad_.

Such is the implacable nature of literary irascibility! Men so tenderly alive to intellectual sensibility, find even the lightest touch profoundly enter into the morbid const.i.tution of the literary temper; and even minds of a more robust nature have given proof of a sickly delicacy hanging about them quite unsuspected. Swift is a remarkable instance of this kind: the foundation of the character of this great wit was his excellent sense. Yet having, when young, composed one of the wild Pindarics of the time, addressed to the Athenian Society, and Dryden judiciously observing that "cousin Jonathan would never be a poet," the enraged wit, after he had reached the maturity of his own admirable judgment, and must have been well aware of the truth of the friendly prediction, could never forgive it.

He has indulged the utmost licentiousness of personal rancour; he even puns miserably on his name to degrade him as the _emptiest_ of writers. His spirited translation of Virgil, which was admired even by Pope, he levels by the most grotesque sarcastic images to mark the poet's diminutive genius--he says this version-maker is so lost in Virgil, that he is like "the lady in a lobster; a mouse under a canopy of state; a shrivelled beau within the penthouse of a full-bottomed perriwig." He never was generous enough to contradict his opinion, and persisted in it to the last. Some critic, about Swift's own time, astonished at his treatment of Dryden, declares he must have been bia.s.sed by some prejudice--the anecdote here recorded, not then probably known, discovers it.

What happened to Pope on the publication of his Homer shows all the anxious temper of the author. Being in company with Bentley, the poet was very desirous of obtaining the doctor's opinion of it, which Bentley contrived to parry as well as he could; but in these matters an author who calculates on a compliment, will risk everything to obtain it. The question was more plainly put, and the answer was as plainly given. Bentley declared that "the verses were good verses, but the work is not Homer--it is Sponda.n.u.s!" From this interview posterity derives from the mortified poet the full-length figure of "_the slas.h.i.+ng_ Bentley," in the fourth book of the Dunciad:

The mighty Scholiast, whose unwearied pains Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains.

When Bentley was told by some officious friend that Pope had abused him, he only replied, "Ay, like enough! I spoke against his Homer, and the _portentous cub_ never forgives!" Part of Pope's severe criticism only is true; but to give full effect to their severity, poets always infuse a certain quant.i.ty of fiction. This is an artifice absolutely necessary to practise; so I collect from a great master in the arts of satire, and who once honestly avowed that no satire could be composed unless it was _personal_; and no personalities would sufficiently adorn a poem without _lies_. This great satirist was Rochester. Burnet details a curious conversation between himself and his lords.h.i.+p on this subject. The bishop tells us that "he would often go into the country, and be for some months wholly employed in study, or the sallies of his wit chiefly directed to satire. And this he often defended to me by saying, there were some people that could not be kept in order, or admonished, but in this way." Burnet remonstrated, and Rochester replied--"A man could not write with life unless he were _heated by revenge_; for to make a satire without resentments, upon the cold notions of philosophy, was as if a man would, in cold blood, cut men's throats who had never offended him. And he said, the _lies_ in these libels came often in as _ornaments_, that could not be spared without _spoiling the beauty_ of the poem." It is as useful to know how the materials of satire are put together; as thus the secret of pulling it to pieces more readily may sometimes be obtained.

These facts will sufficiently establish this disgraceful principle of the personal motives which have influenced the quarrels of authors, and which they have only disguised by giving them a literary form.