an all-engrossing subject of conversation in literary circles, and Milton's poor reward for his divine epic was particularly insisted upon; Mr. Tegg, we remember, either in speech or by letter, ridiculed the idea of such a circumstance ever occurring again, and either exclaimed or wrote"Only bring me a Paradise Lost, and see what I will give for it!" The intelligent publisher of Cheapside was safe in what he said, there is no occasion to suspect that a new epic reaching to the height of Milton's poem is likely to be produced again.

Charles II. condescended to talk familiarly with poets, but did little to foster their genius or better their condition. He fed them with kind words and fair promises, but his remembrance was not easily awakened. This "Unthinking king," as he was called by one of his court favourites, was not however wholly neglectful of letters. He gave the laurel on Davenant's death, and the office of historiographer on Howell's, to glorious John Dryden; recommended subjects for the employment of Dryden's muse; permitted his imperious mistresses to protect his plays; nominated his son to the Charterhouse School, and, shortly before he died, gave him a small sinecure situation in the Customs. But his salary was not very regu· larly paid. He was, moreover, employed by the king in party satire, and indifferently rewarded for what he did. Others, however, fared still worse. Cowley died at Chertsey, neglected by the court he had served in exile; and the king, who carried Hudibras about with him in his pocket, and quoted from it, it is said inimitably well, did nothing for the poet but grant a protection to him from the piratical booksellers of the period. Butler's end is well known; he lived for some years before his death in an obscure alley, and died at last disappointed and in want. "Which," asks Goldsmith, with infinite irony, "is the greatest scandal on his age, Butler's poem or Butler's fate?

These sad lessons were not without their advantage to the poets who came after. "It is enough for one age," says Dryden, urging his clains for public employment on Hyde Lord Rochester, "it is enough for

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCIII.

one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and to have starved Mr. Butler." The lesson was of temporary use. Lord Rochester relieved his wants, and obtained for him the small sinecure situation in the Customs already alluded to.

In the short reign of King James II. poor Nat. Lee was supported while in Bedlam by the bounty of the king; but Otway died in want, choked, it is said, with the first mouthful of bread he had obtained for a very long time.

King William III. knew no more about poetry than he knew of St. Evremond, and exhibited his Dutchgarden taste in poetry in selecting the individual to whom he assigned the laurel, removed for political considerations from the brows of Dryden. He gave it to Shadwell. The then lord chamberlain, the witty Earl of Dorset, may have had something to do with this: Shadwell was a friend of his; he admired, and with reason, his comic powers, and wished, perhaps, to do something for him. But Shadwell was not a poet in any sense of the word, and his appointment carried a bad precedent with it, for though he was the first bad poet who wore the laurel, he was not the last. He was the poetic-father of a Tate, a Eusden, and a Pye. But William was essentially a soldier. We are not, therefore, to quarrel with him for his selection of Shadwell, or that he mistook Blackmore for a poet, and dubbed him Sir Richard for his bad epic called King Arthur.

"The hero William and the martyr Charles;

One knighted Blackmore and one pensioned Quarles."

But here the rhyme occasioned an injustice, for Quarles, though tedious at times, was a true poet; whereas Blackmore is one dead level of a bog throughout.

The age of Anne was an era in the history of letters. Literary men found ample and almost unexpected encouragement from the ministerial advisers of the crown. Whig and Tory leaders vied with each other in advancing the interests of such as could assist them. The battle of Blenheim was sung by a Whig and by a Tory poet; and Addison's Cato was a party

play. The great Whig patron was Charles Montague, earl of Halifax ; the great Tory patron, Harley, earl of Oxford. Halifax found a sinecure situation for Congreve, and Addison and Steele experienced his bounty. Pope kept aloof from the sea of polities; while Swift was the adviser of Harley, and Prior his ambassador at the Hague. The queen herself took very little interest in literature, and Whig encouragement ceased when Charles Montague died; for the great Duke of Marlborough, and his sonin-law the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, knew or cared very little about it. Yet the queen was not insensible to the wants of literary men. infant children of Farquhar received a small annuity at her hand, and the widow of Betterton a pension of 100%. a-year.

The

The death of the queen and the accession of the house of Hanover brought the Whigs once more in office. Addison was for some time secretary of state; Steele received a patent for a new theatre; Rowe was sworn in as poet-laureate, and his widow, at his death, received a pension. But Addison was not very long in office, and Steele's pecuniary difficulties began anew. The king was a stranger to our language, and had no particular taste for the literature of the people he came amongst. His favourite Whigs encountered the ridicule of Swift and contemptuous irony of the splenetic St. John. The Whigs had no one to defend them. Addison was dead, and Steele idle and unwilling. They soon grew callous to what was said, and overlooked in indifference the cultivation of letters and the wants of literary men. Something, however, was done. By the interest and friendship of Dodington, the king was taught to find a poet in Dr. Young, and, better still, induced to settle a pension of 2001. a-year on the youthful satirist.

Swift has made a complaint in verse of the neglect of letters in his time, but his complaint is not altogether founded on justice. He accuses Halifax of neglecting Congreve, talks of the poet's "one poor office,"

Congreve spent in writing plays
And one poor office half his days;
While Montague, who claim'd the station
To be Mæcenas of the nation,
For poets open table kept,

But ne'er consider'd where they slept."

Who keeps open table now? Who has kept an open table for poets since? But Halifax did not confine his patronage to poets; he knew and valued the great Sir Isaac Newton, and, by his interest, he was made Master of the Mint. The truth is, Swift was so disgusted with the Whigs of Walpole's time, that every Whig from the devil-who was the first Whig, according to Dr. Johnson's idea-came in for a share of his sarcastic condemnation. The change was, indeed, great between the regard entertained for letters in the reign of Queen Anne, and the light in which letters were held in the reign of her successor.

Swift pined and complained in a poor-paid Irish deanery. It is true that he had nothing to expect from a Whig administration. His wit was enlisted on the other side, and carried this serious evil with it, that the Whigs, in contemning Swift, extended their contempt to letters in general.

George II. was just such another as George I.*, and Sir Robert Walpole just such another as the Earl of Godolphin. The king left every thing to Walpole and his queen. And what a reign!

"Beneath his reign shall Eusden wear the bays,

Cibber preside lord chancellor of plays.”

POPE to George 11.

Walpole encouraged no kind of merit; the contempt of posterity was nothing to a man who had no cares, or wants, or anxieties beyond the exigencies of the year. Gay expressed, like Spenser, the sorrows of court expectancies; and every attempt to direct the current of patronage into the wide field of literature was wholly ineffectual,

Harmonious Cibber entertains The court with annual birthday strains; Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace; Where Pope will never shew his face: Where Young must torture his invention,

To fatter knaves or lose his pension."

SWIFT.

The whole patronage of the crown was engrossed by Walpole; and "Bob, the poet's foe," as he was called, felt a secret pleasure in overlooking the claims of literature and the necessities of literary men.

Gay got something, it is true, at last. He was offered the situation of gentleman-usher to the Princess Louisa, a girl of two years old.

"Say, had the court no better place to choose

For thee than make a dry-nurse of thy Muse?

How cheaply had thy liberty been sold, To squire a royal girl of two years old; la leading-strings her infant steps to guide,

Or with her go-cart amble side by side."

Great interest had been made for Gay. Mrs. Howard, the mistress of the king, used all her influence in his behalf; but Walpole stood in the way of his obtaining a pension or a post of honour. The " servile usher's place" was thought an insult, and as such was indignantly declined. Walpole, perhaps, suspected as much; and he knew that, in obstructing Gay's advancement, he angered Swift, whom he hated, and Bolingbroke, whom he detested. Gay had no second offer, and Pope complains that a poet of his reputation should die unpensioned,

"Gay dies unpension'd with a hundred friends."

Caroline, queen of George II. felt or affected a sympathy with men of genius. She conversed with Newton and corresponded with Leibnitz.

To the widow of Dr. Clarke she assigned a yearly pension. Savage enlisted himself as her volunteer laureate, and enjoyed her bounty. He was, however, excluded at her death, and the only one excluded from the list of persons entitled to pensions from the crown. In Rich

mond garden she erected a Temple of Fame, containing the busts of four great men, Locke, Newton, Woolaston, and Clarke, and gave the key of the temple to Stephen Duck, the thresher-poet. The wits played off their jokes at her majesty's expense. Pope accuses her of sneaking from living worth to dead; and Swift admires her parsimony in exalting heads that cannot eat.

Frederick prince of Wales, the father of George III., was to have had a niche in a new edition of the royal and noble authors. The prince, it appears, is the author of a French hunting song. He did not, however, exhibit any partiality for poets. Lord Lyttelton, his secretary, and a poet withal, saddled, it is true, some poetic pensioners upon him. Mallet was made assistant-secretary; the gentle elegiac Hammond filled the office of equerry to the prince; 1007. a-year was assigned to Gilbert West, and the same sum to Thomson, the poet of The Seasons. See by how slight a tenure they held their situations, and how little the prince, in reality, cared for the authors he had about him! Ile quarrelled with Lyttelton, and the poets were all routed in a day.

"The accession of George III. opened," says Boswell, "a new and brighter prospéct to men of literary merit, who had been honoured with ceding_reign.' no mark of royal favour in the preThe new minister, Lord Bute, gave a pension of 300l. a-year to Dr. Johnson, and the same Beattie and Mallet were pensioned sum to Home, the author of Douglas. by the crown. The king condescended to converse with Dr. Johnson. His minister recommended a literary work of great national importance to the pen of Walpole, and held out hopes that the work would meet with the encouragement of government. But Bute went out of power, and nothing was done. Small annuities to literary men still continued to be granted. Dr. Shebbeare

and Tom Sheridan each received a pension. The king, it was said, had pensioned a he-bear, meaning Dr. Johnson, as well as a she-bear (Dr. Shebbeare). No one knew why Tom Sheridan received a pension. "What!" said Johnson, "have they given him a pension? Then, it is time for me to give up mine."

The wisdom of rewarding literature in the person of Tom Sheridan may well be doubted. Mallet had no great claims upon the government as a literary man. His ballad, it is true, is very beautiful; but William and Margaret did nothing for him. He was pensioned for the dirty work he had executed for a ministry in want of support. Many writers of sterling reputation were in the meantime overlooked. The delightful author of The Vicar of Wakefield became, for very existence, a mere literary hack or drudge for booksellers." In Ireland," says Goldsmith, "there has been more money spent in the encouragement of the Padareen ware, than given in rewards to literary men since the time of Usher." Smollett sought the assistance of Lord Shelburne, then in power, but nothing was done for the entertaining novelist; and he was allowed to end his days in perpetual exile, pinched in his means, and enfeebled in body, from the incessant employment of his pen.* Burns was snatched from the sickle and the

plough "to gauge ale firkins," and support a wife and family on the poor emoluments of an exciseman's office. A word to the Commissioners of Excise in Scotland, from one who quoted his poems to Mr. Addington with the highest approbation, would have given him a lift in his office, gladdened the hearth, and lengthened the life of a true-born poet. We refer to Mr. Pitt; when Mr.

Addington reminded that great statesman of the poet's genius, and the poor situation it was his lot to fill, Mr. Pitt promised to do something for him, pushed the bottle on, and remembered his promise, if he remembered it at all, when the finehearted poet of genuine nature,

"Who to the Illustrious' of his native land,

So properly did look for patronage,"

was, alas, no more!

If ever a poet deserved a pension from the British crown for the real service he had rendered his country, that poet was Charles Dibdin. His ballads and songs cheered up the heart of poor Jack in stormy times, maintained a manly and a loyal feeling throughout the British navy, and are working the same good still. They are the best exponents of the heart of an English sailor. But what was done for Dibdin? Something, we believe, at last, when he was old and unable to enjoy it-solitary, and could not impart it.

Pope went to sleep while Frederick prince of Wales talked about poetry to him at his own table; but George IV., while conversing accidentally on the same subject, could engage the ear of a poet as much inclined to quarrel with kings as Pope himself.

:

He," (the Prince Regent) Lord Byron writes to Sir Walter Scott, "ordered me to be presented to him at a ball and after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities; he preferred you to every bard past and present, and asked which of your works pleased me most. It was a difficult question. I answered, I thought the Lay. He said his own opinion was nearly similar. In speaking of the others, I told him that I thought you more the poet of princes, as they

never appeared more fascinating than in Marmion, and the Lady of the Lake. He was pleased to coincide, and to dwell on the description of your Jameses, as no less royal and poetical. He spoke alternately of Homer and yourself, and seemed well-acquainted with both."'

This, it must be owned, is a very pleasing anecdote; but the prince was invariably kind to Scott. He offered him the laureateship, conferred a baronetcy upon him, gave him a gold snuffbox set in brilliants, "as a testimony of his esteem for his genius and merit;" made him a present of a splendid copy of Montfauçon's Antiquities richly bound in scarlet, and a set of the Variorum Classics, for the library at Abbotsford; appointed his son Charles to a clerkship in the Foreign Office; made up what he called "a snug little dinner for him" at Carlton House; called him by his Christian name of Walter; talked of his "tyrannical self;" quoted Tom Moore, "Don't you remember Tom Moore's description of me at breakfast?

"The table spread with tea and toast, Death-warrants and the Morning Post;

commanded him, on another occasion, to pass a day with him at Windsor, where he was received, he tells us, with the same mixture of kindness and courtesy which always distinguished the king's conduct towards him.

If other testimony were wanted of King George IV.'s regard for letters, his annual gift to the Royal Society of Literature, already alluded to, would be proof sufficient. There is, however, a little picture, not so well known as it deserves to be, which exhibits him in a most pleasing light. The picture we refer to is contained in a letter written in 1826, and addressed by the king himself to the late Sir William Knighton :

"Dear Friend,- A little charitable impulse induces me to desire you to inquire into the distressed circumstances of poor old O'Keefe, now ninety years of age and stone-blind, whom I knew a little of formerly, having occasionally met him at parties of my juvenile recreation and hilarity, to which he then contributed not a little. Should you really find him so low in the world, and so divested of all comfort as he is represented to be, then I do conceive that

there can be no objection to your offering him from me such immediate relief, or such a moderate annual stipend, as will enable him to close his hitherto long life in comfort, at any rate, free from want and absolute beggary, which I greatly fear, at present, is but too truly his actual condition and situation. Perhaps, on many accounts and reasons, which I am sure I need not mention to you, this had best be effectuated by an immediate application, through you, to our lively little friend, G. Colman, whose good heart will, I am certain, lead him to give us all the assistance he can, especially as it is for the preservation of one of his oldest invalided brothers and worshippers of the Thespian Muse. G. R."

This is very beautiful. Instances of this kind are of too rare an oc

currence.

He

We have already alluded to a speech of Sir Robert Peel's in parliament, and when out of power, in reply to a proposition of Mr. Hume's that the leading characters of our country in literature, art, and science, should receive some badge or riband of distinction from the crown. ridiculed the idea, and preferred the solid pudding of a pecuniary reward to the mere empty honours of a yard of riband. And well and nobly has he made good his sentiments. Here is a list of the pensions he granted during his two administrations of 1835 and 1841: