ART. VI. Calamities of Authors; including some Inquiries respecting their moral and literary Characters. By the Author of Curiosities of Literature.' 3 Volumes, 8vo. London. Murray. 1812. F we were to form our opinion of this book from its title-page, it would not be very favourable: authors are there introduced as a genus, and their moral and literary characters spoken of as if each had not a moral and literary character of his own. Neither should we think more highly of the writer's precision of style by looking at the end, where a portentous metaphor about barren fertility' stares the reader in the face. But the middle of the book is much better than the two ends: it is one of those works which are designed for the breakfast table and the sofa, and is so well adapted for its purpose, that he who takes it up will not readily lay it down. The matter is as amusing as any lover of light reading can desire, and of such a desultory kind that a comment might easily be made as extensive as the text. 6 The first head, or chapter, treats of Authors by Profession. Before the invention of printing, authorship was necessarily confined to the privileged orders, and the only persons who profited by their works were probably those minstrels who sung their own compositions: but as soon as books could be rapidly and easily multiplied, authorship became a trade. Luther even speaks of the price per sheet in his days. I have no plenty of money,' he says, and yet I deal thus with the printers: I receive nothing from them for recompence of my many copies. Sometimes I take of them one copy, this I think is due to me; whereas other writers, yea translators, for every eight leaves have an angel.' In the regular progress of society, it became as natural that the author should live by the pen, as that the priest should live by the altar, or the soldier by the sword: that literature, therefore, like every thing else which may be made a means of emolument, should become a trade or profession, is somewhat oddly placed among the calamities of literary men, though it may be perfectly true that it is a very unprofitable profession. The examples which are given, relate rather to want of principle in the individuals than to any thing else. Political traders who offer themselves to the best bidder are what the Solomons and Brodums are in medicine,-adventurers of equal probity and equal respectability, but in a less lucrative craft. The writer is not correct in affirming that they form a race peculiar to our country; France has swarmed with them. is in this place that the anecdote should have occurred to him of the poor wretch who endeavoured to excuse himself to the French minister It minister whom he had libelled, by pleading poverty and saying that he must live. The minister replied, I see no necessity for it. Among men of this description, Tacitus Gordon, as the author calls him, ought not to have been classed; it is unjust to infer that because he was a political writer and was made a commissioner of wine-licenses, he was therefore a hireling. Gordon was certainly the warm advocate of a political party, but he was neither a poor mån nor a profligate one: his translation of Tacitus is not inferior to Murphy's; its latinisms even give it a peculiarity which represents the strong mannerism of the original better than can be done by mere idiomatic English. Chatterton is adduced as another instance, for his well known memorandum upon the death of Beckford the Lord Mayor. £. s. d. 1 11 0 £.2 2 3 3 5 5 0 3 18 6 Aud this is called a balance-sheet of literary iniquity and trade! Poor Chatterton! who does not see in this the sportiveness of a boy of genius, who, however he was led astray by the warmth of factious feeling, despised, in his better moments, the worthless men whom party warmth had led him to panegyrise, and who, boy as he was, already began to feel that party politics and subjects of a transitory interest, were unworthy of him? Literary iniquity! Heavier condemnation could not be bestowed upon Pasquin, or Pigott, upon the very vermin of literature, than has been lavished Pigott,-upon upon this youth for a jest which was as much the effect of growing strength of mind, as of gaiety of heart. Tom Nash confesses that when the bottom of his purse was turned upward,' he used to compose pieces for gentlemen who aspired to authorship,' and was fain to let his plough stand still in the midst of a furrow, to follow these Senior Fantasticos to whose amorous villanellas he prostituted his pen.' This mode of obtaining reputation upon false pretences is as old as Martial's days, and is not yet wholly obsolete. Within our knowledge, there came a letter to a living poet from a gentleman ambitious of poetical fame, proposing to him sweet remuneration' for a collection of original pieces, which the applicant wished to publish as his own. It was desired that they might be chiefly amatory, and a few of them in Latin. From From the sufferings of authors,' the writer passes to the patrons of former times, and exemplifies the want of patronage in Churchyard, that old Palemon free from spight, Whose carefull pipe may make the hearer rew; That sung so long until quite hoarse he grew. What Phineas Fletcher says of Spenser might, with more truth, be applied to his more unfortunate contemporary. Poorly, poor man, he lived; poorly, poor man he died. He wrote, as these volumes tell us, his own history under the title of the Tragicall Discourse of the haplesse Man's Life:' and an epitaph, which was written for him in mirth, and perhaps in mockery, brings down the melancholy sum to its conclusion. Poverty and poetry his tomb doth enclose, Wherefore, good neighbours, be merry in prose. The case of Stow, to whom all later antiquaries are so deeply indebted, is more disgraceful to the times, for Stow had fair claims upon national patronage. He devoted his life, and expended his patrimony in the study of English antiquities; and in his eightieth year was rewarded with letters patent from James I. granted at the poor old man's petition, as a recompence for his labour and travel of forty-five years, in setting forth the Chronicles of England, and eight years taken up in the survey of the cities of London and Westminster, towards his relief now in his old age.' These letters permitted him, for one twelvemonth, to gather the benevolence of well disposed people within this realm of England-to ask, gather and take the alms of all our loving subjects! This brief was published from the pulpit, and it produced so little that the privilege of being a licensed beggar was renewed to him for another year. James was the most literary of all our monarchs, and learning, though less generally diffused, was even more fashionable in his days, than in our own; for the higher classes of women were scholars: yet men of erudition and painful industry, were suffered to live and die in penury. He was too prodigal to his minions, to afford any thing for the relief of such men as Stow and Minsheu and Purchas; and patronage was but another name for charity. The Reformation, though in many, and far more important, points it was highly beneficial to literature, proved injurious to it, in some respects, in this country. Monasteries have often been called hives of drones; but were those institutions as favourable to religion and morality as they assuredly are to letters, we might well be permitted to wish for their re-establishment. The various orders which had formerly vied with each other in mon strous strous legends, phantasmagoric and legerdemain miracles, and unnatural austerities, began, when they saw the progress of the Reformation, to rival each other in literary exertions, without abandoning, or, at that time, abating their old practices. Gibbon makes a sarcastic comparison between the great works which were sent forth by one Benedictine monastery, and those which the English universities have produced; he does not state why such works are more to be expected from monasteries than from universities. The man of letters who entered a convent, looked to nothing beyond its walls; he had bidden adieu to the world, and to all worldly prospects nor was he allowed to indulge in indolence and procrastination, the sins by which such men are most easily beset; his superior called upon him to perform the task for which he was thought fit, and obedience is the first of monastic virtues. His reputation reflected credit upon the order, and the order defrayed the expense of the work. Had Stow and Ockley been born in a catholic country, they would have found, like Mabillon and Calmet in France, and Florez in Spain, all they wanted,--the means of devoting their lives to the most laborious literary pursuits, without ruin to themselves. The case of poor old Stow is followed in these volumes, by one which is less known. Myles Davies was a Welch clergyman, with a national warmth of mind, and rather more genius, sui generis, than usually falls to a Welchman's lot; for, be the cause what it may, Wales has by no means given to the British empire its fair proportion of great men. He endeavoured to live by literature, but soon found this so hopeless a pursuit, that he sought to obtain from the bounty of the rich, what it was in vain to look for from public patronage. The writer, who has been collecting his story, suspects that his mind became a little disordered: the extracts which are given, betray no symptoms of derangement—they are in a strain of thought and feeling, such as pressing embarrassments, and the pride of knowledge and of talents, might well produce in an indignant mind. He used to carry his books to those persons who, he presumed, would purchase them, and receive payment as an act of charity; his own account of this wretched trade is as lively as it is curious. "Some parsons would hollow to raise the whole house and posse of the domestics to raise a poor crown; at last all that flutter ends in sending Jack or Tom out to change a guinea, and then 'tis reckoned over half a dozen times before the fatal crown can he picked out, which must be taken as it is given, with all the parade of alms-giving, and so to be received with all the active and passive ceremonial of mendication and alms-receiving-as it the books, printing and paper, were worth nothing at all, and as if it were the greatest charity for them to touch them them or let them be in the house; For I shall never read them,' says one of the five shilling-piece chaps I have no time to look in them,' says another;--' 'Tis so much money lost,' says a grave dean;- My eyes being so bad,' said a bishop; that I can scarce read at all. What do you want with me?' said another;- Sir, I presented you the other day with my Athena Britannica, being the last part published.' -'I don't want books, take them again; I don't understand what they mean.' The title is very plain,' said I, and they are writ mostly in English. I'll give you a crown for both the volumes.' They stand me, Sir, in more than that, and 'tis for a bare subsistence I present or sell them; how shall I live? I care not a farthing for that, live or die, 'tis all one to me.'-' Damn my master!' said Jack, 'twas but last night he was commending your books and your learning to the skies; and now he would not care if you were starving before his eyes; nay he often makes game at your clothes, though he thinks you the greatest scholar in England.'"'-pp. 78, 79. Passing over a sketch of Cowley's character, (in which the neglect and ingratitude which he experienced from the court, are probably enough ascribed to his Ode in honour of Brutus,) a lively account: of Horace Walpole, (which in the severity of its censure partakes too much of the vice that it condemns,) and some remarks upon old John Dennis, (in which sufficient-praise is not awarded to the sound sense of his better critical works,) we come to a very amusing article upon Orator Henley. This name is familiar to every reader of Pope; but the history of the motley adventurer to whom it belongs is almost unknown, even to annotators and bibliographers-so ephemeral is notoriety! Mr. D'Israeli-(we may name the author of these volumes, since he indicates himself in the title-page-tells us that this clerical buffoon was an indefatigable student, a proficient in all the learned languages, an elegant poet, and a wit of no inferior class. His wit and his industry are not to be doubted; and the man who in his 'Complete Linguist,' published a grammar of ten languages, must either have possessed considerable erudition, or a very uncommon share of impudence and quackery: but Henley was so abundantly gifted with these requisites for his calling, that the title of this poly-grammar must not be admitted as a proof that he was qualified for the task which he undertook. As for his poetry, Mr. D'Israeli, in his peculiar phraseology, says that it surmounts mediocrity; and he adduces a few passages in support of this opinion; but he has failed in this attempt to show cause why the sentence, which time has past upon it, should be reversed. Henley had been master of a free-school in Leicestershire, and introduced some novelties there which did not answer the purpose for which they were intended; so he left the country, and came to London as a literary adventurer. He wrote for the booksellers, VOL. VII. NO. XV. and |