The style of Molière has often been censured by the fastidiousness of his native critics, as bas and du style familier. This does not offend the foreigner, who is often struck by its simplicity and vigour. Molière preferred the most popular and naïve expressions, as well as the most natural incidents, to a degree which startled the morbid delicacy of fashion and fashionable critics. He had frequent occasions to resist their petty remonstrances; and whenever Molière introduced an incident, or made an allusion of which he knew the truth, and which with him had a settled meaning, this master of human life trusted to his instinct and his art.
This pure and simple taste, ever rare at Paris, was the happy portion of the genius of this Frenchman. Hence he delighted to try his farcical pieces, for we cannot imagine that they were his more elevated comedies, on his old maid-servant. This maid, probably, had a keen relish for comic humour, for once when Molière read to her the comedy of another writer as his own, she soon detected the trick, declaring that it could not be her master's. Hence, too, our poet invited even children to be present on such rehearsals, and at certain points would watch their emotions. Hence, too, in his character of manager, he taught his actors to study nature. An actress, apt to speak freely, told him, "You torment us all; but you never speak to my husband." This man, originally a candle-snuffer, was a perfect child of nature, and acted the Thomas Diaforius, in Le Malade Imaginaire. Molière replied, "I should be sorry to say a word to him; I should spoil his acting. Nature has provided him with better lessons to perform his parts than any which I could give him." We may imagine Shakspeare thus addressing his company, had the poet been also the manager.
A remarkable incident in the history of the genius of Molière is the frequent recurrence of the poet to the passion of jealousy. The "jaundice in the lover's eye," he has painted with every tint of his imagination. "The green-eyed monster" takes all shapes, and is placed in every position. Solemn, or gay, or satirical, he sometimes appears in agony, but often scorns to make its "trifles light as air," only ridiculous as a source of consolation. Was Le Contemplateur comic in his melancholy, or melancholy in his comic humour?
The truth is, that the poet himself had to pass through those painful stages which he has dramatised. The domestic life of Molière was itself very dramatic; it afforded Goldoni a comedy of five acts, to reveal the secrets of the family circle of Molière; and l'Abbate Chiari, an Italian novelist and playwright, has taken for a comic subject, Molière, the Jealous Husband.
The French, in their "petite morale" on conjugal fidelity, appear so tolerant as to leave little sympathy for the real sufferer. Why should they else have treated domestic jealousy as a foible for ridicule, rather than a subject for deep passion? Their tragic drama exhibits no Othello, nor their comedy a Kitely, or a Suspicious Husband. Molière, while his own heart was the victim, conformed to the national taste, by often placing the object on its comic side. Domestic jealousy is a passion which admits of a great diversity of subjects, from the tragic or the pathetic, to the absurd and the ludicrous. We have them all in Molière. Molière often was himself "Le Cocu Imaginaire;" he had been in the position of the guardian in L'Ecole des Maris. Like Arnolphe in L'Ecole des Femmes, he had taken on himself to rear a young wife who played the same part, though with less innocence; and like the Misanthrope, where the scene between Alceste and Celimène is "une des plus fortes qui existant au théâtre," he was deeply entangled in the wily cruelties of scornful coquetry, and we know that at times he suffered in "the hell of lovers" the torments of his own Jealous Prince.
When this poet cast his fate with a troop of comedians, as the manager, and whom he never would abandon, when at the height of his fortune, could he avoid accustoming himself to the relaxed habits of that gay and sorrowful race, who, "of imagination all compact," too often partake of the passions they inspire in the scene? The first actress, Madame Béjard, boasted that, with the exception of the poet, she had never dispensed her personal favours but to the aristocracy. The constancy of Molière was interrupted by another actress, Du Parc; beautiful but insensible, she only tormented the poet, and furnished him with some severe lessons for the coquetry of his Celimène, in Le Misanthrope. The facility of the transition of the tender passion had more closely united the susceptible poet to Mademoiselle de Brie. But Madame Béjard, not content to be the chief actress, and to hold her partnership in "the properties," to retain her ancient authority over the poet, introduced, suddenly, a blushing daughter, some say a younger sister, who had hitherto resided at Avignon, and who she declared was the offspring of the count of Modena, by a secret marriage. Armande Béjard soon attracted the paternal attentions of the poet. She became the secret idol of his retired moments, while he fondly thought that he could mould a young mind, in its innocence, to his own sympathies. The mother and the daughter never agreed. Armande sought his protection; and one day rushing into his study, declared that she would marry her friend. The elder Béjard freely consented to avenge herself on De Brie. De Brie was indulgent, though "the little creature," she observed, was to be yoked to one old enough to be her father. Under the same roof were now heard the voices of the three females, and Molière meditating scenes of feminine jealousies.
Molière was fascinated by his youthful wife; her lighter follies charmed: two years riveted the connubial chains. Molière was a husband who was always a lover. The actor on the stage was the very man he personated. Mademoiselle Molière, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. With what fervour the poet feels her neglect! with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend who would have dissolved the spell!
The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows than slights. Mademoiselle had the art of persuading Molière that he was only his own "cocu imaginaire;" but these domestic embarrassments multiplied. Mademoiselle, reckless of the distinguished name she bore, while she gratified her personal vanity by a lavish expenditure, practised that artful coquetry which attracted a crowd of loungers. Molière found no repose in his own house, and retreated to a country-house, where, however, his restless jealousy often drove him back to scenes which he trembled to witness. At length came the last argument of outraged matrimony—he threatened confinement. To prevent a public rupture, Molière consented to live under the same roof, and only to meet at the theatre. Weak only in love, however divided from his wife, Molière remained her perpetual lover. He said, in confidence, "I am born with every disposition to tenderness. When I married, she was too young to betray any evil inclinations. My studies were devoted to her, but I soon discovered her indifference. I ascribed it to her temper; her foolish passion for Count Guiche made too much noise to leave me even this apparent tranquillity. I resolved to live with her as an honourable man, whose reputation does not depend on the bad conduct of his wife. My kindness has not changed her, but my compassion has increased. Those who have not experienced these delicate emotions have never truly loved. In her absence her image is before me; in her presence, I am deprived of all reflection; I have no longer eyes for her defects; I only view her amiable. Is not this the last extreme of folly? And are you not surprised that I, reasoning as I do, am only sensible of the weakness which I cannot throw off?"
Few men of genius have left in their writings deeper impressions of their personal feelings than Molière. With strong passions in a feeble frame, he had duped his imagination that, like another Pygmalion, he would create a woman by his own art. In silence and agony he tasted the bitter fruits of the disordered habits of the life of a comedian, a manager, and a poet. His income was splendid; but he himself was a stranger to dissipation. He was a domestic man, of a pensive and even melancholy temperament. Silent and reserved, unless in conversation with that more intimate circle whose literature aided his genius, or whose friendship consoled for his domestic disturbances, his habits were minutely methodical; the strictest order was observed throughout his establishment; the hours of dinner, of writing, of amusement, were allotted, and the slightest derangement in his own apartment excited a morbid irritability which would interrupt his studies for whole days.
Who, without this tale of Molière, could conjecture, that one skilled in the workings of our nature would have ventured on the perilous experiment of equalizing sixteen years against forty—weighing roses against grey locks—to convert a wayward coquette, through her capricious womanhood, into an attached wife? Yet, although Mademoiselle could cherish no personal love for the intellectual being, and hastened to change the immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she seems to have been impressed by a perfect conviction of his creative genius. When the Archbishop of Paris, in the pride of prelacy, refused the rites of sepulture to the corpse of Molière THE ACTOR, it was her voice which reminded the world of Molière THE POET, exclaiming—"Have they denied a grave to the man to whom Greece would have raised an altar!"
* * * * *
THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE.
The "Memoirs of the poet Racine," composed by his son, who was himself no contemptible poet, may be classed among those precious pieces of biography so delightful to the philosopher who studies human nature, and the literary man whose curiosity is interested in the history of his republic. Such, works are rare, and rank in merit next to autobiographies. Such biographical sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, contain what we often regret is wanting in the more regular life of a professed biographer. These desultory memoirs interest by their warmth, their more personal acquaintance with the hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which give so much life to the individual character.
The prominent feature in the character of Racine was an excessive tenderness of feeling; his profound sensibility even to its infirmity, the tears which would cover his face, and the agony in his heart, were perhaps national. But if this sensibility produced at times the softest emotions, if it made him the poet of lovers, and even the poet of imagination, it also rendered him too feelingly alive to criticism, it embittered his days with too keen a perception of the domestic miseries which all men must alike undergo.
During a dramatic performance at St. Cyr, the youthful representative of Esther suddenly forgot her part; the agitated poet exclaimed, "Oh, mademoiselle, you are ruining my piece!" Terrified at this reprimand, the young actress wept; the poet flew to her, wiped away her tears, and with contagious sympathy shed tears himself. "I do not hesitate," says Louis Racine, "to relate such minute circumstances, because this facility of shedding tears shows the goodness of the heart, according to the observation of the ancients—
[Greek:] "agathohi d aridakryes andres."
This morbid state of feeling made his whole literary life uneasy; unjust criticism affected him as much as the most poignant, and there was nothing he dreaded more than that his son should become a writer of tragedies. "I will not dissimulate," he says, addressing his son, "that in the heat of composition we are not sometimes pleased with ourselves; but you may believe me, when the day after we look over our work, we are astonished not to find that excellence we admired in the evening; and when we reflect that even what we find good ought to be still better, and how distant we are still from perfection, we are discouraged and dissatisfied. Besides all this, although the approbation I have received has been very flattering, the least adverse criticism, even miserable as it might be, has always occasioned me more vexation than all the praise I received could give me pleasure." And, again, he endeavours to impress on him that the favour he received from the world he owed not to his verses. "Do not imagine that they are my verses that attract all these kindnesses. Corneille composes verses a hundred times finer than mine, but no one regards him. His verses are only applauded from the mouths of the actors. I do not tire men of the world by reciting my works; I never allude to them; I endeavour to amuse them with matters which please them. My talent in their company is, not to make them feel that I have any genius, but to show them that they possess some themselves. When you observe the duke pass several hours with me, you would be surprised, were you present, that he frequently quits me without my having uttered three words; but gradually I put him in a humour of chatting, and he leaves me more satisfied with himself than with me." When Rochefoucault said that Boileau and Racine had only one kind of genius, and could only talk about their own poetry, it is evident that the observation should not have extended to Racine, however it might to Boileau. It was Racine's excessive sensibility which made him the finest dramatic reciter. The celebrated actress, Mademoiselle Champmeslé,[A] the heroine of his tragedies, had no genius whatever for the stage, but she had beauty, voice, and memory. Racine taught her first to comprehend the verses she was going to recite, showed her the appropriate gesture, and gave her the variable tones, which he even sometimes noted down. His pupil, faithful to her lessons, though a mere actress of art, on the stage seemed inspired by passion; and as she, thus formed and fashioned, naturally only played thus effectively in the dramas of her preceptor, it was supposed that love for the poet inspired the actress.
[Footnote A: Racine first met this actress at the Marquis de Sevigné's petit soupers; so much lamented by his more famous mother in one of her admirable letters, who speaks of "the Racines and the Despreaux's" who assisted his prodigality. In one of Madame de Sevigné's letters, dated in 1672, she somewhat rashly declares, "Racine now writes his dramas, not for posterity, but for Mademoiselle Champmeslé:" she had then forsaken the marquis for the poet, who wrote Roxane in Bajazet expressly for her. —ED.]
When Racine read aloud he diffused his own enthusiasm once with Boileau and Nicole, amid a literary circle, they talked of Sophocles, whom Racine greatly admired, but from whom he had never dared to borrow a tragic subject. Taking up a Greek Sophocles, and translating the OEdipus, the French poet became so deeply imbued with the Greek tragedian, that his auditors caught all the emotions of terror and pity. "I have seen," says one of those auditors, "our best pieces represented by our best actors, but never anything approached the agitation which then came over us; and to this distant day I have never lost the recollection of Racine, with the volume in his hand, full of emotion, and we all breathlessly pressing around him."
It was the poet's sensibility that urged him to make the most extraordinary sacrifice that ever poet made; he wished to get rid entirely of that poetical fame to which he owed everything, and which was at once his pleasure, his pride, and his property. His education had been a religious one, in the Port-Royal;[A] but when Nicole, one of that illustrious fraternity, with undistinguishing fanaticism, had once asserted that all dramatic writers were public poisoners of souls, Racine, in the pride and strength of his genius, had eloquently repelled the denouncement. But now, having yet only half run his unrivalled course, he turned aside, relinquished its glory, repented of his success, and resolved to write no more tragedies.[B] He determined to enter into the austere order of the Chartreux; but his confessor, more rational than his penitent, assured him that a character so feeling as his own, and so long accustomed to the world, could not endure that terrible solitude. He advised him to marry a woman of a serious turn, and that little domestic occupations would withdraw him from the passion he seemed most to dread, that of writing verses.
[Footnote A: For an account of this very celebrated religious foundation, its fortunes and misfortunes, see the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 94.—ED.]
[Footnote B: Racine ultimately conceived an aversion for his dramatic offspring, and could never be induced to edit a proper edition of his works, or even give a few lessons in declamation to a juvenile princess, who selected his Andromaque for the subject, perhaps out of compliment to the poet, whose first visit became in consequence his last.—ED.]
The marriage of Racine was an act of penance—neither love nor interest had any share in the union. His wife was a good sort of woman, but perhaps the most insensible of her sex; and the properest person in the world to mortify the passion of literary glory, and the momentary exultation of literary vanity.[A] It is scarcely credible, but most certainly true, since her own son relates the fact, that the wife of Racine had neither seen acted, nor ever read, nor desired to read, the tragedies which had rendered her husband so celebrated throughout Europe; she had only learned some of their titles in conversation. She was as insensible to fortune as to fame. One day, when Racine returned from Versailles, with the princely gift from Louis XIV. of a purse of 1000 louis, he hastened to embrace his wife, and to show her the treasure. But she was full of trouble, for one of the children for two days had not studied. "We will talk of this another time," exclaimed the poet; "at present let us be happy." But she insisted he ought instantly to reprimand this child, and continued her complaints; while Boileau in astonishment paced to and fro, perhaps thinking of his Satire on Women, and exclaiming, "What insensibility! Is it possible that a purse of 1000 louis is not worth a thought!" This stoical apathy did not arise in Madame Racine from the grandeur, but the littleness, of her mind. Her prayer-books and her children were the sole objects that interested this good woman. Racine's sensibility was not mitigated by his marriage; domestic sorrows weighed heavily on his spirits: when the illness of his children agitated him, he sometimes exclaimed, "Why did I expose myself to all this? Why was I persuaded not to be a Chartreux?"—His letters to his children are those of a father and a friend; kind exhortations, or pathetic reprimands; he enters into the most domestic detail, while he does not conceal from them the mediocrity of their fortune. "Had you known him in his family," said Louis Racine, "you would be more alive to his poetical character, you would then know why his verses are always so full of sentiment. He was never more pleased than when, permitted to be absent from the court, he could come among us to pass a few days. Even in the presence of strangers he dared to be a father, and used to join us in our sports. I well remember our processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I the rector, and the author of 'Athaliah,' chanting with us, carried the cross."
[Footnote A: The lady he chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family was of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described as possessing any marked personal attractions.—ED.]
At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days. He was naturally of a melancholic temperament, apt to dwell on objects which occasion pain, rather than on those which exhilarate. Louis Racine observes that his character resembled Cicero's description of himself, more inclined to dread unfortunate events, than to hope for happy ones; semper magis ad versos rerum exitus metuens quam sperans secundos. In the last incident of his life his extreme sensibility led him to imagine as present a misfortune which might never have occurred.
Madame de Maintenon, one day in conversation with the poet, alluded to the misery of the people. Racine observed it was the usual consequence of long wars: the subject was animating, and he entered into it with all that enthusiasm peculiar to himself. Madame de Maintenon was charmed with his eloquent effusion, and requested him to give her his observations in writing, assuring him they should not go out of her hand. She was reading his memoir when the king entered her apartment; he took it up, and, after having looked over a few pages, he inquired with great quickness who was the author. She replied it was a secret; but the king was peremptory, and the author was named. The king asked with great dissatisfaction, "Is it because he writes the most perfect verses, that he thinks that he is able to become a statesman?"
Madame de Maintenon told the poet all that had passed, and declined to receive his visits for the present. Racine was shortly after attacked with violent fever. In the languor of recovery he addressed Madame de Maintenon to petition to have his pension freed from some new tax; and he added an apology for his presumption in suggesting the cause of the miseries of the people, with an humiliation that betrays the alarms that existed in his mind. The letter is too long to transcribe, but it is a singular instance how genius can degrade itself when it has placed all its felicity on the varying smiles of those we call the great. Well might his friend Boileau, who had nothing of his sensibility nor imagination, exclaim, with his good sense, of the court:—
Quel séjour étranger, et pour vous et pour moi!
Racine afterwards saw Madame de Maintenon walking in the gardens of Versailles; she drew aside into a retired allée to meet him; she exhorted him to exert his patience and fortitude, and told him that all would end well. "No, madam," he replied, "never!" "Do you then doubt," she said, "either my heart, or my influence?" He replied, "I acknowledge your influence, and know your goodness to me; but I have an aunt who loves me in quite a different manner. That pious woman every day implores God to bestow on me disgrace, humiliation, and occasions for penitence, and she has more influence than you." As he said these words, the sound of a carriage was heard; "The king is coming!" said Madame de Maintenon; "hide yourself!"
To this last point of misery and degradation was this great genius reduced. Shortly after he died, and was buried at the feet of his master in the chapel of the studious and religious society of Port-Royal.
The sacred dramas of Esther and Athaliah were among the latter productions of Racine. The fate of Athaliah, his masterpiece, was remarkable. The public imagined that it was a piece written only for children, as it was performed by the young scholars of St. Cyr, and received it so coldly that Racine was astonished and disgusted.[A] He earnestly requested Boileau's opinion, who maintained it was his capital work. "I understand these things," said he, "and the public y reviendra." The prediction was a true one, but it was accomplished too late, long after the death of the author; it was never appreciated till it was publicly performed.
[Footnote A: They were written at the request of Madame de Maintenon, for the pupils of her favourite establishment at St. Cyr; she was anxious that they should be perfect in declamation, and she tried them with the poet's Andromaque, but they recited it with so much passion and feeling that they alarmed their patroness, who told Racine "it was so well done that she would be careful they should never act that drama again," and urged him to write plays on sacred subjects expressly for their use. He had not written a play for upwards of ten years; he now composed his Esther, making that character a flattering reflection of Maintenon's career.—ED.]
Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the booksellers. Boileau particularly, though fond of money, was so delicate on this point that he gave all his works away. It was this that made him so bold in railing at those authors qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages d'un libraire, and he declared that he had only inserted these verses,
Je sai qu'un noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime
Tirer de son travail un tribut légitime,
to console Racine, who had received some profits from the printing of his tragedies. Those profits were, however, inconsiderable; the truth is, the king remunerated the poets.
Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed by Colbert for six hundred livres, to give him the means of continuing his studies of the belles-lettres. He received, by an account found among his papers, above forty thousand livres from the cassette of the king, by the hand of the first valet-de-chambre. Besides these gifts, Racine had a pension of four thousand livres as historiographer, and another pension as a man of letters.
Which is the more honourable? to crouch for a salary brought by the hand of the first valet-de-chambre, or to exult in the tribute offered by the public to an author?
* * * * *
OF STERNE.
Cervantes is immortal—Rabelais and STERNE have passed away to the curious.
These fraternal geniuses alike chose their subjects from their own times. Cervantes, with the innocent design of correcting a temporary folly of his countrymen, so that the very success of the design might have proved fatal to the work itself; for when he had cut off the heads of the Hydra, an extinct monster might cease to interest the readers of other times, and other manners. But Cervantes, with judgment equal to his invention, and with a cast of genius made for all times, delighted his contemporaries and charms his posterity. He looked to the world and collected other follies than the Spanish ones, and to another age than the administration of the duke of Lerma; with more genuine pleasantry than any writer from the days of Lucian, not a solitary spot has soiled the purity of his page; while there is scarcely a subject in human, nature for which we might not find some apposite illustration. His style, pure as his thoughts, is, however, a magic which ceases to work in all translations, and Cervantes is not Cervantes in English or in French; yet still he retains his popularity among all the nations of Europe; which is more than we can say even of our Shakspeare!
Rabelais and Sterne were not perhaps inferior in genius, and they were read with as much avidity and delight as the Spaniard. "Le docte Rabelais" had the learning which the Englishman wanted; while unhappily Sterne undertook to satirise false erudition, which requires the knowledge of the true. Though the Papemanes, on whom Rabelais has exhausted his grotesque humour and his caustic satire, have not yet walked off the stage, we pay a heavy price in the grossness of his ribaldry and his tiresome balderdash for odd stories and flashes of witty humour. Rabelais hardly finds readers even in France, with the exception of a few literary antiquaries. The day has passed when a gay dissolute abbe could obtain a rich abbey by getting Rabelais by heart, for the perpetual improvement of his patron—and Rabelais is now little more than a Rabelais by tradition.[A]
[Footnote A: The clergy were not so unfavourable to Rabelais as might have been expected. He was through life protected by the Cardinal Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who employed him in various important negotiations; and it is recorded of him that he refused a scholar admittance to his table because he had not read his works. This familiarity with his grotesque romance was also shared by Cardinal Duprat, who is said to have always carried a copy of it with him, as if it was his breviary. The anecdote of the priest who obtained promotion from a knowledge of his works is given in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 10.—ED.]
In my youth the world doted on Sterne! Martin Sherlock ranks him among "the luminaries of the century." Forty years ago, young men in their most facetious humours never failed to find the archetypes of society in the Shandy family—every good-natured soul was uncle Toby, every humorist was old Shandy, every child of Nature was Corporal Trim! It may now be doubted whether Sterne's natural dispositions were the humorous or the pathetic: the pathetic has survived!
There is nothing of a more ambiguous nature than strong humour, and Sterne found it to be so; and latterly, in despair, he asserted that "the taste for humour is the gift of heaven!" I have frequently observed how humour, like the taste for olives, is even repugnant to some palates, and have witnessed the epicure of humour lose it all by discovering how some have utterly rejected his favourite relish! Even men of wit may not taste humour! The celebrated Dr. Cheyne, who was not himself deficient in originality of thinking with great learning and knowledge, once entrusted to a friend a remarkable literary confession. Dr. Cheyne assured him that "he could not read 'Don Quixote' with any pleasure, nor had any taste for 'Hudibras' or 'Gulliver;' and that what we call wit and humour in these authors he considered as false ornaments, and never to be found in those compositions of the ancients which we most admire and esteem."[A] Cheyne seems to have held Aristophanes and Lucian monstrously cheap! The ancients, indeed, appear not to have possessed that comic quality that we understand as humour, nor can I discover a word which exactly corresponds with our term humour in any language, ancient or modern. Cervantes excels in that sly satire which hides itself under the cloak of gravity, but this is not the sort of humour which so beautifully plays about the delicacy of Addison's page; and both are distinct from the broader and stronger humour of Sterne.
[Footnote A: This friend, it now appears, was Dr. King, of Oxford, whose anecdotes have recently been published. This curious fact is given in a strange hodge-podge, entitled "The Dreamer;" a remarkable instance where a writer of learning often conceives that to be humour, which to others is not even intelligible!]
The result of Dr. Cheyne's honest confession was experienced by Sterne, for while more than half of the three kingdoms were convulsed with laughter at his humour, the other part were obdurately dull to it. Take, for instance, two very opposite effects produced by "Tristram Shandy" on a man of strong original humour himself, and a wit who had more delicacy and sarcasm than force and originality. The Rev. Philip Skelton declared that "after reading 'Tristram Shandy,' he could not for two or three days attend seriously to his devotion, it filled him with so many ludicrous ideas." But Horace Walpole, who found his "Sentimental Journey" very pleasing, declares that of "his tiresome 'Tristram Shandy,' he could never get through three volumes."
The literary life of Sterne was a short one: it was a blaze of existence, and it turned his head. With his personal life we are only acquainted by tradition. Was the great sentimentalist himself unfeeling, dissolute, and utterly depraved? Some anecdotes which one of his companions[A] communicated to me, confirm Garrick's account preserved in Dr. Bumey's collections, that "He was more dissolute in his conduct than his writings, and generally drove every female away by his ribaldry. He degenerated in London like an ill-transplanted shrub; the incense of the great spoiled his head, and their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud —an invalid in body and mind." Warburtou declared that "he was an irrecoverable scoundrel." Authenticated facts are, however, wanting for a judicious summary of the real character of the founder of sentimental writing. An impenetrable mystery hangs over his family conduct; he has thrown many sweet domestic touches in his own memoirs and letters addressed to his daughter: but it would seem that he was often parted from his family. After he had earnestly solicited the return of his wife from France, though she did return, he was suffered to die in utter neglect.
[Footnote A: Caleb Whitefoord, the wit once famed for his invention of cross-readings, which, appeared under the name of "Papirius Cursor."]
His sermons have been observed to be characterised by an air of levity; he attempted this unusual manner. It was probably a caprice which induced him to introduce one of his sermons in "Tristram Shandy;" it was fixing a diamond in black velvet, and the contrast set off the brilliancy. But he seems then to have had no design of publishing his "Sermons." One day, in low spirits, complaining to Caleb Whitefoord of the state of his finances, Caleb asked him, "if he had no sermons like the one in 'Tristram Shandy?'" But Sterne had no notion that "sermons" were saleable, for two preceding ones had passed unnoticed. "If you could hit on a striking title, take my word for it that they would go down." The next day Sterne made his appearance in raptures. "I have it!" he cried: "Dramatic Sermons by Torick." With great difficulty he was persuaded to drop this allusion to the church and the playhouse![A]
[Footnote A: He published these two volumes of discourses under the title of "Yorick's Sermons," because, as he stated in his preface, it would "best serve the booksellers' purpose, as Yorick's name is possibly of the two the more known;" but, fearing the censure of the world, he added a second title-page with his own name, "to ease the minds of those who see a jest, and the danger which lurks under it, where no jest is meant." All this did not free Sterne from much severe criticism.—ED.]
We are told in the short addition to his own memoirs, that "he submitted to fate on the 18th day of March, 1768, at his lodgings in Bond-street." But it does not appear to have been noticed that Sterne died with neither friend nor relation by his side! a hired nurse was the sole companion of the man whose wit found admirers in every street, but whose heart, it would seem, could not draw one to his death-bed. We cannot say whether Sterne, who had long been dying, had resolved to practise his own principle,—when he made the philosopher Shandy, who had a fine saying for everything, deliver his opinion on death—that "there is no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groan? and convulsions—and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains in a dying man's room. Strip it of these, what is it?" I find the moment of his death described in a singular book, the "Life of a Foot-man." I give it with all its particulars. "In the month of January, 1768, we set off for London. We stopped for some time at Almack's house in Pall-Mall. My master afterwards took Sir James Gray's house in Clifford-street, who was going ambassador to Spain. He now began house-keeping, hired a French cook, a house-maid, and kitchen-maid, and kept a great deal of the best company. About this time, Mr Sterne, the celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond-street. He was sometimes called 'Tristram Shandy,' and sometimes 'Yorick;' a very great favourite of the gentlemen's. One day my master had company to dinner who were speaking about him: the Duke of Roxburgh, the Earl of March, the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Hume, and Mr. James. 'John,' said my master, 'go and inquire how Mr. Sterne is to-day.' I went, returned, and said,—I went to Mr. Sterne's lodging; the mistress opened the door; I inquired how he did. She told me to go up to the nurse; I went into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten minutes; but in five he said, 'Now it is come!' He put up his hand as if to stop a blow, and died in a minute. The gentlemen were all very sorry, and lamented him very much[A]."
[Footnote A: "Travels in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, during a series of thirty years and upwards, by John Macdonald, a cadet of the family of Kippoch, in Invernesshire, who after the ruin of his family, in 1765, was thrown, when a child, on the wide world, &c. Printed for the author, 1790."—He served a number of noblemen and gentlemen in the humble station of a footman. There is such an air of truth and sincerity throughout the work that I entertain no doubt of its genuineness.]
Such is the simple narrative of the death of this wit[A]! Some letters and papers of Sterne are now before me which reveal a piece of secret history of our sentimentalist. The letters are addressed to a young lady of the name of De Fourmantel, whose ancestors were the Berangers de Fourmantel, who during the persecution of the French Protestants by Louis XIV. emigrated to this country: they were entitled to extensive possessions in St. Domingo, but were excluded by their Protestantism. The elder sister became a Catholic, and obtained the estates; the younger adopted the name of Beranger, and was a governess to the Countess of Bristol. The paper states that Catherine de Fourmantel formed an attachment to Sterne, and that it was the expectation of their friends that they would be united; but that on a visit Sterne became acquainted with a lady, whom he married, in the space of one month, after having paid his addresses to Miss de Fourmantel for five years. The consequence was, the total derangement of intellect of this young lady. She was confined in a private madhouse. Sterne twice saw her there; and from observation on her state drew the "Maria" whom he has so pathetically described. The elder sister, at the instigation of the father of the communicator of these letters, came to England, and took charge of the unhappy Maria, who died at Paris. "For many years," says the writer of this statement, "my mother had the handkerchief Sterne alludes to." The anxious wish of Sterne was to have his letters returned to him. In this he failed; and such as they are, without date, either of time or place, they are now before me.
[Footnote A: Sterne was buried in the ground belonging to the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, situated in the Bayswater Road. His funeral was "attended only by two gentlemen in a mourning coach, no bell tolling;" and his grave has been described as "distinguished by a plain headstone, set up with an unsuitable inscription, by a tippling fraternity of Freemasons." In 1761, long before his death, was published a satire on the tendencies of his writings, mixed with a good deal of personal censure, in a pamphlet entitled "A Funeral Discourse, occasioned by the much lamented death of Mr. Yorick, preached before a very mixed society of Jemmies, Jessamies, Methodists, and Christians, at a nocturnal meeting in Petticoat Lane; by Christopher Flagellan, A.M." As one of the minor "Curiosities of Literature" this tract is worth noting; its author, in a preface, says that "it has been maliciously, or rather stupidly, reported that the late Mr. Sterne, alias Yorick, is not dead; but that, on the contrary, he is writing a fifth and sixth, and has carried his plan as far as a fiftieth and sixtieth volume of the book called 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy;' but they are rather to be attributed to his ghastly ghost, which is said to walk the purlieus of Covent Garden and Drury Lane."—ED.]
The billets-doux are unquestionably authentic, but the statement is inaccurate. I doubt whether the narrative be correct in stating that Sterne married after an acquaintance of one month; for he tells us in his Memoirs that he courted his wife for two years; he, however, married in 1741. The "Sermon of Elijah," which he presents to Miss de Fourmantel in one of these letters, was not published till 1747. Her disordered mind could not therefore have been occasioned by the sudden marriage of Sterne. A sentimental intercourse evidently existed between them. He perhaps sought in her sympathy, consolation for his domestic infelicity; he communicates to her the minutest events of his early fame; and these letters, which certainly seem very like love-letters, present a picture of his life in town in the full flower of his fame eager with hope and flushed with success.
LETTER I.
"My dear Kitty,—I beg you will accept of the inclosed sermon, which I do not make you a present of merely because it was wrote by myself, but because there is a beautiful character in it of a tender and compassionate mind in the picture given of Elijah. Read it, my dear Kitty, and believe me when I assure you that I see something of the same kind and gentle disposition in your heart which I have painted in the prophet's, which has attached me so much to you and your interests, that I shall live and die
"Your affectionate and faithful servant,
"Laurence Sterne.
"P.S.—If possible, I will see you this afternoon before I go to Mr. Fothergil's. Adieu, dear friend,—I had the pleasure to drink your health last night."
LETTER II.
"My dear Kitty,—If this billet catches you in bed, you are a lazy, sleepy little slut, and I am a giddy, foolish, unthinking fellow, for keeping you so late up—but this Sabbath is a day of rest, at the same time that it is a day of sorrow; for I shall not see my dear creature to-day, unless you meet me at Taylor's half an hour after twelve; but in this do as you like. I have ordered Matthew to turn thief, and steal you a quart of honey; what is honey to the sweetness of thee, who art sweeter than all the flowers it comes from! I love you to distraction, Kitty, and will love you on so to eternity—so adieu, and believe, what time will only prove me, that I am,
"Yours."
LETTER III.
"My dear Kitty,—I have sent you a pot of sweetmeats and a pot of honey —neither of them half so sweet as yourself—but don't be vain upon this, or presume to grow sour upon this character of sweetness I give you; for if you do I shall send you a pot of pickles (by way of contraries) to sweeten you up, and bring you to yourself again—whatever changes happen to you, believe me that I am unalterably yours, and according to your motto, such a one, my dear Kitty,
"Qui ne changera pas qu'en mourant.
"L.S."
He came up to town in 1760, to publish the two first volumes of 'Shandy,' of which the first edition had appeared at York the preceding year.
LETTER IV.
"London, May 8.
"My dear Kitty,—I have arrived here safe and sound—except for the hole in my heart which you have made, like a dear enchanting slut as you are. —I shall take lodgings this morning in Piccadilly or the Haymarket, and before I send this letter will let you know where to direct a letter to me, which letter I shall wait for by the return of the post with great impatience.
"I have the greatest honours paid me, and most civilities shown me that were ever known from the great; and am engaged already to ten noblemen and men of fashion to dine. Mr. Garrick pays me all and more honour than I could look for: I dined with him to-day, and he has prompted numbers of great people to carry me to dine with them—he has given me an order for the liberty of his boxes, and of every part of his house, for the whole season; and indeed leaves nothing undone that can do me either service or credit. He has undertaken the whole management of the booksellers, and will procure me a great price—but more of this in my next.
"And now, my dear girl, let me assure you of the truest friendship for you that ever man bore towards a woman—wherever I am, my heart is warm towards you, and ever shall be, till it is cold for ever. I thank you for the kind proof you gave me of your desire to make my heart easy in ordering yourself to be denied to you know who—while I am so miserable to be separated from my dear, dear Kitty, it would have stabbed my soul to have thought such a fellow could have the liberty of coming near you.—I therefore take this proof of your love and good principles most kindly— and have as much faith and dependence upon you in it, as if I was at your elbow—would to God I was at this moment—for I am sitting solitary and alone in my bedchamber (ten o'clock at night after the play), and would give a guinea for a squeeze of your hand. I send my soul perpetually out to see what you are a-doing—wish I could convey my body with it—adieu, dear and kind girl. Ever your kind friend and affectionate admirer.
"I go to the oratorio this night. My service to your mamma."
LETTER V.
"My dear Kitty,—Though I have but a moment's time to spare, I would not omit writing you an account of my good fortune; my Lord Fauconberg has this day given me a hundred and sixty pounds a year, which I hold with all my preferment; so that all or the most part of my sorrows and tears are going to be wiped away.—I have but one obstacle to my happiness now left —and what that is you know as well as I.[A]
"I long most impatiently to see my dear Kitty. I had a purse of guineas given me yesterday by a bishop—all will do well in time.
"From morning to night my lodgings, which by the bye are the genteelest in town,[B] are full of the greatest company.—I dined these two days with two ladies of the bedchamber—then with Lord Buckingham, Lord Edgcumb, Lord Winchelsea, Lord Littleton, a bishop, &c. &c.
"I assure you, my dear Kitty, that Tristram is the fashion.—Pray to God I may see my dearest girl soon and well.—Adieu.
"Your affectionate friend,
"L. STERNE."
[Footnote A: Can this allude to the death of his wife?—that very year he tells his daughter he had taken a house at York, "for your mother and yourself."]
[Footnote B: They were the second house from St. Alban's Street, Pall
Mall.]
* * * * *
HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH.
The rarest of literary characters is such an historian as Gibbon; but we know the price which he paid for his acquisitions—unbroken and undeviating studies. Wilkes, a mere wit, could only discover the drudgery of compilation in the profound philosopher and painter of men and of nations. A speculative turn of mind, delighting in generalising principles and aggregate views, is usually deficient in that closer knowledge, without which every step we take is on the fairy-ground of conjecture and theory, very apt to shift its unsubstantial scenes. The researchers are like the inhabitants of a city who live among its ancient edifices, and are in the market-places and the streets: but the theorists, occupied by perspective views, with a more artist-like pencil may impose on us a general resemblance of things; but often shall we find in those shadowy outlines how the real objects are nearly, if not wholly lost—for much is given which is fanciful, and much omitted which is true.
Of our two popular historians, Hume and Robertson, alike in character but different in genius, it is much to be lamented that neither came to their tasks with the previous studies of half a life; and their speculative or theoretical histories are of so much the less value whenever they are deficient in that closer research which can be obtained only in one way; not the most agreeable to those literary adventurers, for such they are, however high they rank in the class of genius, who grasp at early celebrity, and depend more on themselves than on their researches.
In some curious letters to the literary antiquary Dr. Birch, Eobertson acknowledges "my chief object is to adorn, as far as I am capable of adorning, the history of a period which deserves to be better known," He probably took his lesson from Voltaire, the reigning author of that day, and a great favourite with Robertson. Voltaire indeed tells us, that no writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw any interest into a history; that we must know to paint and excite the passions; and that a history, like a dramatic piece, must have situation, intrigue, and catastrophe; an observation which, however true, at least shows that there can be but a moderate quantity of truth in such agreeable narratives. Robertson's notion of adorning history was the pleasing labour of genius—it was to amplify into vastness, to colour into beauty, and to arrange the objects of his meditation with a secret artifice of disposition. Such an historian is a sculptor, who, though he display a correct semblance of nature, is not less solicitous to display the miracles of his art, and enlarges his figures to a colossal dimension. Such is theoretical history.
The theoretical historian communicates his own character to his history; and if, like Robertson, he be profound and politic, he detects the secret motives of his actors, unravels the webs of cabinet councils, explains projects that were unknown, and details stratagems which never took place. When we admire the fertile conceptions of the Queen Regent, of Elizabeth, and of Bothwell, we are often defrauding Robertson of whatever admiration may be due to such deep policy.
When Hume received from Dr. Birch Forbes's Manuscripts and Murdin's State-papers, in great haste he writes to his brother historian:—"What I wrote you with regard to Mary, &c., was from the printed histories and papers. But I am now sorry to tell you that by Murdin's State-papers, the matter is put beyond all question. I got these papers during the holidays by Dr. Birch's means; and as soon as I read them I ran to Millar, and desired him very earnestly to stop the publication of your history till I should write to you, and give you an opportunity of correcting a mistake so important; but he absolutely refused compliance. He said that your book was now finished; that the whole narrative of Mary's trial must be wrote over again; that it was uncertain whether the new narrative could be brought within the same compass with the old: that this change would require the cancelling a great many sheets; that there were scattered passages through the volumes founded on your theory." What an interview was this of Andrew Millar and David Hume! truly the bibliopole shone to greater advantage than the two theoretical historians! And so the world had, and eagerly received, what this critical bookseller declared "required the new printing (that is, the new writing) of a great part of the edition!"
When this successful history of Scotland invited Robertson to pursue this newly-discovered province of philosophical or theoretical history, he was long irresolute in his designs, and so unpractised in those researches he was desirous of attempting, that his admirers would have lost his popular productions, had not a fortunate introduction to Dr. Birch, whose life had been spent in historical pursuits, enabled the Scottish historian to open many a clasped book, and to drink of many a sealed fountain. Robertson was long undecided whether to write the history of Greece, of Leo X., that of William III. and Queen Anne, or that of Charles V., and perhaps many other subjects.
We have a curious letter of Lord Orford's, detailing the purport of a visit Robertson paid to him to inquire after materials for the reigns of William and Anne; he seemed to have little other knowledge than what he had taken upon trust. "I painted to him," says Lord Orford, "the difficulties and the want of materials—but the booksellers will out-argue me." Both the historian and "the booksellers" had resolved on another history: and Robertson looked upon it as a task which he wished to have set to him, and not a glorious toil long matured in his mind. But how did he come prepared to the very dissimilar subjects he proposed? When he resolved to write the history of Charles V., he confesses to Dr. Birch: "I never had access to any copious libraries, and do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors; but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. Your erudition and knowledge of hooks is infinitely superior to mine, and I doubt not but you will be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books; but at the same time, when one writes upon any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it upon which he can lay his hands." This avowal proves that Robertson knew little of the history of Charles V. till he began the task; and he further confesses that "he had no knowledge of the Spanish or German," which, for the history of a Spanish monarch and a German emperor, was somewhat ominous of the nature of the projected history.
Yet Robertson, though he once thus acknowledged, as we see, that he "never had access to any copious libraries, and did not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors," seems to have acquired from his friend, Dr. Birch, who was a genuine researcher in manuscripts as well as printed books, a taste even for bibliographical ostentation, as appears by that pompous and voluminous list of authors prefixed to his "History of America;" the most objectionable of his histories, being a perpetual apology for the Spanish Government, adapted to the meridian of the court of Madrid, rather than to the cause of humanity, of truth, and of philosophy. I understand, from good authority, that it would not be difficult to prove that our historian had barely examined them, and probably had never turned over half of that deceptive catalogue. Birch thought so, and was probably a little disturbed at the overwhelming success of our eloquent and penetrating historian, while his own historical labours, the most authentic materials of history, but not history itself, hardly repaid the printer. Birch's publications are either originals, that is, letters or state-papers; or they are narratives drawn from originals, for he never wrote but from manuscripts. They are the true materia historica.
Birch, however, must have enjoyed many a secret triumph over our popular historians, who had introduced their beautiful philosophical history into our literature; the dilemma in which they sometimes found themselves must have amused him. He has thrown out an oblique stroke at Bobertson's "pomp of style, and fine eloquence," "which too often tend to disguise the real state of the facts."[A] When he received from Robertson the present of his "Charles V.," after the just tribute of his praise, he adds some regret that the historian had not been so fortunate as to have seen Burghley's State-papers, "published since Christmas," and a manuscript trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, in Lord Boyston's possession. Alas! such is the fate of speculative history; a Christmas may come, and overturn the elaborate castle in the air. Can we forbear a smile when we hear Robertson, who had projected a history of British America, of which we possess two chapters, when the rebellion and revolution broke out, congratulate himself that he had not made any further progress? "It is lucky that my American History was not finished before this event; how many plausible theories that I should have been entitled to form are contradicted by what has now happened!" A fair confession!
[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 387.]
Let it not be for one moment imagined that this article is designed to depreciate the genius of Hume and Robertson, who are the noblest of our modern authors, and exhibit a perfect idea of the literary character.
Forty-four years ago, I transcribed from their originals the correspondence of the historian with the literary antiquary. For the satisfaction of the reader, I here preserve these literary relics.
Letters between Dr. Birch and Dr. W. Robertson, relative to the Histories of Scotland and of Charles V.
"TO DR. BIRCH.
"Gladsmuir, 19 Sept. 1757.
"Reverent Sir,—Though I have not the good fortune to be known to you personally, I am so happy as to be no stranger to your writings, to which I have been indebted for much useful instruction. And as I have heard from my friends, Sir David Dalrymple and Mr. Davidson, that your disposition to oblige was equal to your knowledge, I now presume to write to you and to ask your assistance without any apology.
"I have been engaged for some time in writing the history of Scotland from the death of James V. to the accession of James VI. to the throne of England. My chief object is to adorn (as far as I am capable of adorning) the history of a period which, on account of the greatness of the events, and their close connection with the transactions in England, deserves to be better known. But as elegance of composition, even where a writer can attain that, is but a trivial merit without historical truth and accuracy, and as the prejudices and rage of factions, both religious and political, have rendered almost every fact, in the period which I have chosen, a matter of doubt or of controversy, I have therefore taken all the pains in my power to examine the evidence on both sides with exactness. You know how copious the materia, historian in this period is. Besides all the common historians and printed collections of papers, I have consulted several manuscripts which are to be found in this country. I am persuaded that there are still many manuscripts worth my seeing to be met with in England, and for that reason I propose to pass some time in London this winter. I am impatient, however, to know what discoveries of this kind I may expect, and what are the treasures before me, and with regard to this I beg leave to consult you.
"I was afraid for some time that Dr. Forbes's Collections had been lost upon his death, but I am glad to find by your 'Memoirs' that they are in the possession of Mr. Yorke. I see likewise that the 'Dépêches de Beaumont' are in the hands of the same gentleman. But I have no opportunity of consulting your 'Memoirs' at present, and I cannot remember whether the 'Dépêches de Fenelon' be still preserved or not. I see that Carte has made a great use of them in a very busy period from 1563 to 1576. I know the strength of Carte's prejudices so well, that I dare say many things may be found there that he could not see, or would not publish. May I beg the favour of you to let me know whether Fenelon's papers be yet extant and accessible, and to give me some general idea of what Dr. Forbes's Collections contain with regard to Scotland, and whether the papers they consist of are different from those published by Haynes, Anderson, &c. I am far from desiring that you should enter into any detail that would be troublesome to you, but some short hint of the nature of these Collections would be extremely satisfying to my curiosity, and I shall esteem it a great obligation laid upon me.
"I have brought my work almost to a conclusion. If you would be so good as to suggest anything that you thought useful for me to know or to examine into, I shall receive your directions with great respect and gratitude.
"I am, with sincere esteem,
"Rev'd Sir, Y'r m. ob. & m. h. S'r,
"Wm. ROBERTSON."
TO DR. BIRCH.
"Edinburgh, 1 Jan. 1759.
"Dear Sir,—If I had not considered a letter of mere compliment as an impertinent interruption to one who is so busy as you commonly are, I would long before this have made my acknowledgments to you for the civilities which you was so good as to show me while I was in London. I had not only a proof of your obliging disposition, but I reaped the good effects of it.
"The papers to which I got access by your means, especially those from Lord Royston, have rendered my work more perfect than it could have otherwise been. My history is now ready for publication, and I have desired Mr. Millar to send you a large paper copy of it in my name, which I beg you may accept as a testimony of my regard and of my gratitude. He will likewise transmit to you another copy, which I must entreat you to present to my Lord Royston, with such acknowledgments of his favours toward me as are proper for me to make. I have printed a short appendix of original papers. You will observe that there are several inaccuracies in the press work. Mr. Millar grew impatient to have the book published, so that it was impossible to send down the proofs to me. I hope, however, the papers will be abundantly intelligible. I published them only to confirm my own system, about particular facts, not to obtain the character of an antiquarian. If, upon perusing the book, you discover any inaccuracies, either with regard to style or facts, whether of great or of small importance, I will esteem it a very great favour if you'll be so good as to communicate them to me. I shall likewise be indebted to you, if you'll let me know what reception the book meets with among the literati of your acquaintance. I hope you will be particularly pleased with the critical dissertation at the end, which is the production of a co-partnership between me and your friend Mr. Davidson. Both Sir D. Dalrymple and he offer compliments to you. If Dean Tucker be in town this winter, I beg you will offer my compliments to him.
"I am, w. great regard, Dr. Sir,
"Y'r m. obed't. & rust. o. ser't.,
"WILLIAM ROBERTSON.
"My address is, one of the ministers of Ed."
TO DR. BIRCH.
"Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1759.
"Dear Sir,—I beg leave once more to have recourse to your good nature and to your love of literature, and to presume upon putting you to a piece of trouble. After considering several subjects for another history, I have at last fixed upon the reign of Charles V., which contains the first establishment of the present political system of Europe. I have begun to labour seriously upon my task. One of the first things requisite was to form a catalogue of books which must be consulted. As I never had access to very copious libraries, I do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors, but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down just in the order which they occurred to me, or as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. I beg you would be so good as to look it over, and as your erudition and knowledge of books is infinitely superior to mine, I doubt not but you'll be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books, but at the same time when one writes upon any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it, upon which he can lay his hands. I am sufficiently master of French and Italian; but have no knowledge of the Spanish or German tongues. I flatter myself that I shall not suffer much by this, as the two former languages, together with the Latin, will supply me with books in abundance. Mr. Walpole informed me some time ago, that in the catalogue of Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, there is a volume of papers relating to Charles V., it is No. 295. I do not expect much from it, but it would be extremely obliging if you would take the trouble of looking into it and of informing me in general what it contains. In the catalogue I have inclosed, this mark × is prefixed to all the books which I can get in this country; if you yourself, or any friend with whom you can use freedom, have any of the other books in my list, and will be so good as to send them to Mr. Millar, he will forward them to me, and I shall receive them with great gratitude and return them with much punctuality. I beg leave to offer compliments to all our common friends, and particularly to Dean Tucker, if he be in town this season. I wish it were in my power to confer any return for all the trouble you have taken in my behalf—"
FROM DR. BIRCH TO THE REV. DR. ROBERTSON, AT EDINBURGH.
"London, 3 Jany. 1760.
"Dear Sir,—Your letter of the 13 Dec'r. was particularly agreeable to me, as it acquainted me with your resolution to resume your historic pen, and to undertake a subject which, from its importance and extent, and your manner of treating it, will be highly acceptable to the public.
"I have perused your list of books to be consulted on this occasion; and after transcribing it have delivered it to Mr. Millar; and shall now make some additions to it.
"The new 'Histoire d'Allemagne' by Father Barre, chancellor of the University of Paris, published a few years ago in several volumes in 4^to., is a work of very good credit, and to be perused by you; as is likewise the second edition of 'Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire & du Droit public d'Allemagne,' just printed at Paris, and formed upon the plan of President Henault's 'Nouvel Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire de France,' in which the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II. will be proper to be seen by you.
"The 'Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cardinal Granvelle,' by Father Rosper Levesque, a Benedictin monk, which were printed at Paris in two vol's. 12^o. in 1753, contain some particulars relating to Charles V. But this performance is much less curious than it might have been, considering that the author had the advantage of a vast collection, above an hundred volumes of the Cardinal's original papers, at Besançon. Among these are the papers of his eminence's father, who was chancellor and minister to the Emperor Charles V.
"Bishop Burnet, in the 'Summary of Affairs before the Restoration,' prefixed to his 'History of his Own Time,' mentions a life of Frederick Elector Palatine, who first reformed the Palatinate, as curiously written by Hubert Thomas Leodius. This book, though a very rare one, is in my study and shall be sent to you. You will find in it many facts relating to your Emperor. The manuscript was luckily saved when the library of Heydelberg was plundered and conveyed to the Vatican after the taking of that city in 1622, and it was printed in 1624, at Francfort, in 4^to. The writer had been secretary and councillor to the elector.
"Another book which I shall transmit to you is a valuable collection of state papers, made by Mons'r. Rivier, and printed at Blois, in 1665, in two vols. f^o. They relate to the reigns of Francis I., Henry II., and Francis II. of France. The indexes will direct you to such passages as concern the Emperor.
"As Mons'r. Amelot de la Houssaic, who was extremely conversant in modern history, has, in the 1st. tome of his 'Mémoires Historiques Politiques et Littéraires,' from p. 156 to 193, treated of Charles V., I shall add that book to my parcel.
"Varillas's 'Life of Henry II. of France' should be looked into, though that historian has not at present much reputation for exactness and veracity.
"Dr. Fiddes, in his 'Life of Cardinal Wolsey,' has frequent occasion to introduce the Emperor, his contemporary, of which Bayle in his Dictionary gives us an express article and not a short one, for it consists of eight of his pages.
"Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's preceptor, when he was secretary to S'r. Richard Morysin amb. from K. Edward VI. to the imperial court, wrote to a friend of his 'a report and discourse of the affairs and state of Germany and the Emperor Charles's court.' This was printed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but the copies of that edition are now very rare. However this will be soon made public, being reprinted in an edition of all the author's English works now in the press.
"The 'Epîtres des Princes,' translated from the Italian by Belleforest, will probably supply you with some few things to your purpose.
"Vol. 295 among the Harleian MSS. contains little remarkable except some letters from Henry VIII's amb'r. in Spain, in 1518, of which, you may see an abstract in the printed catalogue.
"In Dr. Hayne's 'Collection of State Papers in the Hatfield History,' p. 56, is a long letter of the lord of the council of Henry VIII., in 1546, to his amb'r. with the Emperor."
TO DR. BIRCH.
Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College of Edinburgh, Oct. 8, 1765.
" . . . I have met with many interruptions in carrying on my 'Charles V.,' partly from bad health, and partly from the avocations arising from performing the duties of my office. But I am now within sight of land. The historical part of the work is finished, and I am busy with a preliminary book, in which I propose to give a view of the progress in the state of society, laws, manners, and arts, from the irruption of the barbarous nations to the beginning of the sixteenth century. This is a laborious undertaking; but I flatter myself that I shall be able to finish it in a few months. I have kept the books you was so good as to send me, and shall return them carefully as soon as my work is done."
* * * * *
OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY THE DEATHS OF THE AUTHORS.
In those "Dances of Death" where every profession is shown as taken by surprise in the midst of their unfinished tasks, where the cook is viewed in flight, oversetting his caldron of soup, and the physician, while inspecting his patient's urinal, is himself touched by the grim visitor, one more instance of poor mortality may be added in the writers of works designed to be pursued through a long series of volumes. The French have an appropriate designation for such works, which they call "ouvrages de longue haleine," and it has often happened that the haleine has closed before the work.
Works of literary history have been particularly subject to this mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, and human life has not yielded a sufficient portion for the communication of extensive acquirement! After years of reading and writing, the literary historian, who in his innumerable researches is critical as well as erudite, has still to arbitrate between conflicting opinions; to resolve on the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at remote researches:—but he dies, and leaves his favourite volumes little more than a project!
Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general forgetfulness of the nature of all human concerns in the mind of the antiquary, who is so busied with other times and so interested for other persons than those about him. "It is the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have mortality always before him."
A few illustrious scholars have indeed escaped the fate reserved for most of their brothers. A long life, and the art of multiplying that life not only by an early attachment to study, but by that order and arrangement which shortens our researches, have sufficed for a MURATORI. With such a student time was a great capital, which he knew to put out at compound interest; and this Varro of the Italians, who performed an infinite number of things in the circumscribed period of ordinary life, appears not to have felt any dread of leaving his voluminous labours unfinished, but rather of wanting one to begin. This literary Alexander thought he might want a world to conquer! Muratori was never perfectly happy unless employed in two large works at the same time, and so much dreaded the state of literary inaction, that he was incessantly importuning his friends to suggest to him objects worthy of his future composition. The flame kindled in his youth burned clear in his old age; and it was in his senility that he produced the twelve quartos of his Annali d'Italia as an addition to his twenty-nine folios of his Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, and the six folios of the Antiquitates Medii Ævi! Yet these vast edifices of history are not all which this illustrious Italian has raised for his fatherland. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works has drawn an admirable character of Muratori.
But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied the labours of the literary worthies of this order. TIRABOSCHI indeed lived to complete his great national history of Italian literature; but, unhappily for us, WARTON, after feeling his way through the darker ages of our poetry, and just conducting us to a brighter region, in planning the map of the country of which he had only a Pisgah view, expires amid his volumes! Our poetical antiquary led us to the opening gates of the paradise of our poetry, when, alas! they closed on him and on us! The most precious portion of Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment.