Of the birth, or early part of the life, of Ambrose Philips, I have not been able to find any account. His academical education he received at St. John’s college, in Cambridge[170], where he first solicited the notice of the world by some English verses, in the collection, published by the university, on the death of queen Mary.
From this time, how he was employed, or in what station he passed his life, is not yet discovered. He must have published his Pastorals before the year 1708, because they are, evidently, prior to those of Pope.
He afterwards, 1709, addressed to the universal patron, the duke of Dorset, a poetical Letter from Copenhagen, which was published in the Tatler, and is, by Pope, in one of his first letters, mentioned with high praise, as the production of a man “who could write very nobly.”
Philips was a zealous whig, and, therefore, easily found access to Addison and Steele; but his ardour seems not to have procured him any thing more than kind words; since he was reduced to translate the Persian Tales for Tonson, for which he was afterwards reproached, with this addition of contempt, that he worked for half-a-crown. The book is divided into many sections, for each of which, if he received half-a-crown, his reward, as writers then were paid, was very liberal; but half-a-crown had a mean sound.
He was employed in promoting the principles of his party, by epitomising Hacket’s Life of Archbishop Williams. The original book is written with such depravity of genius, such mixture of the fop and pedant, as has not often appeared. The epitome is free enough from affectation, but has little spirit or vigour[171].
In 1712, he brought upon the stage the Distrest Mother, almost a translation of Racine’s Andromaque. Such a work requires no uncommon powers; but the friends of Philips exerted every art to promote his interest. Before the appearance of the play, a whole Spectator, none, indeed, of the best, was devoted to its praise; while it yet continued to be acted, another Spectator was written, to tell what impression it made upon sir Roger; and, on the first night, a select audience, says Pope[172], was called together to applaud it.
It was concluded with the most successful epilogue that was ever yet spoken on the English theatre. The three first nights it was recited twice; and not only continued to be demanded through the run, as it is termed, of the play, but, whenever it is recalled to the stage, where, by peculiar fortune, though a copy from the French, it yet keeps its place, the epilogue is still expected, and is still spoken.
The propriety of epilogues in general, and, consequently, of this, was questioned by a correspondent of the Spectator, whose letter was undoubtedly admitted for the sake of the answer, which soon followed, written with much zeal and acrimony. The attack and the defence equally contributed to stimulate curiosity and continue attention. It may be discovered, in the defence, that Prior’s epilogue to Phædra had a little excited jealousy; and something of Prior’s plan may be discovered in the performance of his rival. Of this distinguished epilogue the reputed author was the wretched Budgel, whom Addison used to denominate[173] “the man who calls me cousin;” and when he was asked, how such a silly fellow could write so well, replied, “the epilogue was quite another thing when I saw it first.” It was known in Tonson’s family, and told to Garrick, that Addison was himself the author of it, and that, when it had been at first printed with his name, he came early in the morning, before the copies were distributed, and ordered it to be given to Budgel, that it might add weight to the solicitation which he was then making for a place.
Philips was now high in the ranks of literature. His play was applauded; his translations from Sappho had been published in the Spectator; he was an important and distinguished associate of clubs, witty and political; and nothing was wanting to his happiness, but that he should be sure of its continuance.
The work which had procured him the first notice from the publick, was his Six Pastorals, which, flattering the imagination with Arcadian scenes, probably found many readers, and might have long passed as a pleasing amusement, had they not been, unhappily, too much commended.
The rustick poems of Theocritus were so highly valued by the Greeks and Romans, that they attracted the imitation of Virgil, whose eclogues seem to have been considered as precluding all attempts of the same kind; for, no shepherds were taught to sing by any succeeding poet, till Nemesian and Calphurnius ventured their feeble efforts in the lower age of Latin literature.
At the revival of learning in Italy, it was soon discovered, that a dialogue of imaginary swains might be composed with little difficulty; because the conversation of shepherds excludes profound or refined sentiment; and, for images and descriptions, satyrs and fawns, and naiads and dryads, were always within call; and woods and meadows, and hills and rivers, supplied variety of matter, which; having a natural power to sooth the mind, did not quickly cloy it.
Petrarch entertained the learned men of his age with the novelty of modern pastorals in Latin. Being not ignorant of Greek, and finding nothing in the word eclogue, of rural meaning, he supposed it to be corrupted by the copiers, and, therefore, called his own productions æglogues, by which he meant to express the talk of goatherds, though it will mean only the talk of goats. This new name was adopted by subsequent writers, and, amongst others, by our Spenser.
More than a century afterwards, 1498, Mantuan published his Bucolicks with such success, that they were soon dignified by Badius with a comment, and, as Scaliger complained, received into schools, and taught as classical; his complaint was vain, and the practice, however injudicious, spread far, and continued long. Mantuan was read, at least in some of the inferiour schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of the present century. The speakers of Mantuan carried their disquisitions beyond the country, to censure the corruptions of the church; and from him Spenser learned to employ his swains on topicks of controversy.
The Italians soon transferred pastoral poetry into their own language: Sannazaro wrote Arcadia in prose and verse: Tasso and Guarini wrote Favole Boschareccie, or sylvan dramas; and all nations of Europe filled volumes with Thyrsis and Damon, and Thestylis and Phyllis.
Philips thinks it somewhat strange to conceive “how, in an age so addicted to the muses, pastoral poetry never comes to be so much as thought upon.” His wonder seems very unseasonable; there had never, from the time of Spenser, wanted writers to talk occasionally of Arcadia and Strephon; and half the book, in which he first tried his powers, consists of dialogues on queen Mary’s death, between Tityrus and Corydon, or Mopsus and Menalcas. A series or book of pastorals, however, I know not that any one had then lately published.
Not long afterwards, Pope made the first display of his powers in four pastorals, written in a very different form. Philips had taken Spenser, and Pope took Virgil for his pattern. Philips endeavoured to be natural, Pope laboured to be elegant.
Philips was now favoured by Addison, and by Addison’s companions, who were very willing to push him into reputation. The Guardian gave an account of pastoral, partly critical, and partly historical; in which, when the merit of the moderns is compared, Tasso and Guarini are censured for remote thoughts and unnatural refinements; and, upon the whole, the Italians and French are all excluded from rural poetry; and the pipe of the pastoral muse is transmitted, by lawful inheritance, from Theocritus to Virgil, from Virgil to Spenser, and from Spenser to Philips.
With this inauguration of Philips, his rival Pope was not much delighted; he, therefore, drew a comparison of Philips’s performance with his own, in which, with an unexampled and unequalled artifice of irony, though he has himself always the advantage, he gives the preference to Philips. The design of aggrandizing himself he disguised with such dexterity, that, though Addison discovered it, Steele was deceived, and was afraid of displeasing Pope by publishing his paper. Published, however, it was, (Guardian, 40,) and from that time Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence.
In poetical powers, of either praise or satire, there was no proportion between the combatants; but Philips, though he could not prevail by wit, hoped to hurt Pope with another weapon, and charged him, as Pope thought, with Addison’s approbation, as disaffected to the government.
Even with this he was not satisfied; for, indeed, there is no appearance that any regard was paid to his clamours. He proceeded to grosser insults, and hung up a rod at Button’s, with which he threatened to chastise Pope, who appears to have been extremely exasperated; for, in the first edition of his letters, he calls Philips “rascal,” and in the last still charges him with detaining, in his hands, the subscriptions for Homer, delivered to him by the Hanover club.
I suppose it was never suspected that he meant to appropriate the money; he only delayed, and with sufficient meanness, the gratification of him by whose prosperity he was pained.
Men sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became ridiculous, without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his friends, who decorated him with honorary garlands, which the first breath of contradiction blasted.
When upon the succession of the house of Hanover every whig expected to be happy, Philips seems to have obtained too little notice; he caught few drops of the golden shower, though he did not omit what flattery could perform. He was only made a commissioner of the lottery, 1717, and, what did not much elevate his character, a justice of the peace.
The success of his first play must naturally dispose him to turn his hopes towards the stage: he did not, however, soon commit himself to the mercy of an audience, but contented himself with the fame already acquired, till after nine years he produced, 1722, the Briton, a tragedy which, whatever was its reception, is now neglected; though one of the scenes, between Vanoc, the British prince, and Valens, the Roman general, is confessed to be written with great dramatick skill, animated by spirit truly poetical.
He had not been idle, though he had been silent: for he exhibited another tragedy the same year, on the story of Humphry, duke of Gloucester. This tragedy is only remembered by its title.
His happiest undertaking was of a paper, called the Freethinker, in conjunction with associates, of whom one was Dr. Boulter, who, then only minister of a parish in Southwark, was of so much consequence to the government, that he was made, first, bishop of Bristol, and, afterwards, primate of Ireland, where his piety and his charity will be long honoured.
It may easily be imagined that what was printed under the direction of Boulter would have nothing in it indecent or licentious; its title is to be understood as implying only freedom from unreasonable prejudice. It has been reprinted in volumes, but is little read; nor can impartial criticism recommend it as worthy of revival.
Boulter was not well qualified to write diurnal essays; but he knew how to practise the liberality of greatness and the fidelity of friendship. When he was advanced to the height of ecclesiastical dignity, he did not forget the companion of his labours. Knowing Philips to be slenderly supported, he took him to Ireland, as partaker of his fortune; and, making him his secretary[174], added such preferments, as enabled him to represent the county of Armagh in the Irish parliament.
In December, 1726, he was made secretary to the lord chancellor; and in August, 1733, became judge of the prerogative court.
After the death of his patron he continued some years in Ireland; but at last longing, as it seems, for his native country, he returned, 1748, to London, having, doubtless, survived most of his friends and enemies, and among them his dreaded antagonist, Pope. He found, however, the duke of Newcastle still living, and to him he dedicated his poems, collected into a volume.
Having purchased an annuity of four hundred pounds, he now certainly hoped to pass some years of life in plenty and tranquillity; but his hope deceived him; he was struck with a palsy, and died June 18, 1749, in his seventy-eighth year[175].
Of his personal character, all that I have heard is, that he was eminent for bravery and skill in the sword, and that in conversation he was solemn and pompous. He had great sensibility of censure, if judgment may be made by a single story which I heard long ago from Mr. Ing, a gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. “Philips,” said he, “was once at table, when I asked him, how came thy king of Epirus to drive oxen, and to say ‘I’m goaded on by love?’ After which question he never spoke again[176].”
Of the Distrest Mother, not much is pretended to be his own, and, therefore, it is no subject of criticism: his other two tragedies, I believe, are not below mediocrity nor above it. Among the poems comprised in the late collection, the Letter from Denmark may be justly praised; the Pastorals, which, by the writer of the Guardian, were ranked as one of the four genuine productions of the rustick muse, cannot surely be despicable. That they exhibit a mode of life which does not exist, nor ever existed, is not to be objected: the supposition of such a state is allowed to pastoral. In his other poems he cannot be denied the praise of lines sometimes elegant; but he has seldom much force, or much comprehension. The pieces that please best are those which from Pope and Pope’s adherents procured him the name of Namby Pamby, the poems of short lines, by which he paid his court to all ages and characters, from Walpole, “the steerer of the realm,” to Miss Pulteney in the nursery. The numbers are smooth and sprightly, and the diction is seldom faulty. They are not loaded with much thought, yet, if they had been written by Addison, they would have had admirers: little things are not valued but when they are done by those who can do greater.
In his translations from Pindar, he found the art of reaching all the obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below his sublimity; he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more smoke.
He has added nothing to English poetry, yet, at least, half his book deserves to be read: perhaps he valued most himself that part which the critick would reject.
Gilbert West is one of the writers of whom I regret my inability to give a sufficient account; the intelligence which my inquiries have obtained is general and scanty.
He was the son of the reverend Dr. West; perhaps[177] him who published Pindar, at Oxford, about the beginning of this century. His mother was sister to sir Richard Temple, afterwards lord Cobham. His father, purposing to educate him for the church, sent him first to Eton, and afterwards to Oxford; but he was seduced to a more airy mode of life, by a commission in a troop of horse, procured him by his uncle.
He continued some time in the army; though it is reasonable to suppose that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love, or much neglected the pursuit, of learning; and, afterwards, finding himself more inclined to civil employment, he laid down his commission, and engaged in business under the lord Townshend, then secretary of state, with whom he attended the king to Hanover.
His adherence to lord Townshend ended in nothing but a nomination, May, 1729, to be clerk extraordinary of the privy council, which produced no immediate profit; for it only placed him in a state of expectation and right of succession, and it was very long before a vacancy admitted him to profit.
Soon afterwards he married, and settled himself in a very pleasant house at Wickham, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety. Of his learning, the late collection exhibits evidence, which would have been yet fuller, if the dissertations which accompany his version of Pindar had not been improperly omitted. Of his piety, the influence has, I hope, been extended far by his Observations on the Resurrection, published in 1747, for which the university of Oxford created him a doctor of laws by diploma, March 30,1748, and would, doubtless, have reached yet further, had he lived to complete what he had for some time meditated, the Evidences of the Truth of the New Testament. Perhaps it may not be without effect to tell, that he read the prayers of the publick liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening he called his servants into the parlour, and read to them first a sermon, and then prayers. Crashaw is now not the only maker of verses to whom may be given the two venerable names of poet and saint.
He was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were weary of faction and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent table, and literary conversation. There is at Wickham a walk made by Pitt; and, what is of far more importance, at Wickham, Lyttelton received that conviction which produced his Dissertation on St. Paul.
These two illustrious friends had for awhile listened to the blandishments of infidelity; and when West’s book was published, it was bought by some who did not know his change of opinion, in expectation of new objections against christianity; and as infidels do not want malignity, they revenged the disappointment by calling him a methodist.
Mr. West’s income was not large; and his friends endeavoured, but without success, to obtain an augmentation. It is reported, that the education of the young prince was offered to him, but that he required a more extensive power of superintendence than it was thought proper to allow him.
In time, however, his revenue was improved; he lived to have one of the lucrative clerkships of the privy council, 1752: and Mr. Pitt at last had it in his power to make him treasurer of Chelsea hospital.
He was now sufficiently rich; but wealth came too late to be long enjoyed; nor could it secure him from the calamities of life: he lost, 1755, his only son; and the year after, March 26, a stroke of the palsy brought to the grave one of the few poets to whom the grave might be without its terrours.
Of his translations, I have only compared the first Olympick Ode with the original, and found my expectation surpassed, both by its elegance and its exactness. He does not confine himself to his author’s train of stanzas: for he saw that the difference of the languages required a different mode of versification. The first strophe is eminently happy: in the second he has a little strayed from Pindar’s meaning, who says, “if thou, my soul, wishest to speak of games, look not in the desert sky for a planet hotter than the sun; nor shall we tell of nobler games than those of Olympia.” He is sometimes too paraphrastical. Pindar bestows upon Hiero an epithet, which, in one word, signifies “delighting in horses;” a word which, in the translation, generates these lines:
Hiero’s royal brows, whose care
Tends the courser’s noble breed,
Pleas’d to nurse the pregnant mare,
Pleas’d to train the youthful steed.
Pindar says of Pelops, that “he came alone in the dark to the White Sea;” and West,
Near the billow-beaten side
Of the foam-besilver’d main,
Darkling, and alone, he stood:
which, however, is less exuberant than the former passage.
A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover many imperfections; but West’s version, so far as I have considered it, appears to be the product of great labour and great abilities.
His Institution of the Garter, 1742, is written with sufficient knowledge of the manners that prevailed in the age to which it is referred, and with great elegance of diction; but, for want of a process of events, neither knowledge nor elegance preserve the reader from weariness.
His Imitations of Spenser are very successfully performed, both with respect to the metre, the language, and the fiction; and being engaged at once by the excellence of the sentiments, and the artifice of the copy, the mind has two amusements together. But such compositions are not to be reckoned among the great achievements of intellect, because their effect is local and temporary; they appeal not to reason or passion, but to memory, and pre-suppose an accidental or artificial state of mind. An imitation of Spenser is nothing to a reader, however acute, by whom Spenser has never been perused. Works of this kind may deserve praise, as proofs of great industry, and great nicety of observation; but the highest praise, the praise of genius, they cannot claim. The noblest beauties of art are those of which the effect is coextended with rational nature, or, at least, with the whole circle of polished life; what is less than this can be only pretty, the plaything of fashion, and the amusement of a day.
There is, in the Adventurer, a paper of verses given to one of the authors as Mr. West’s, and supposed to have been written by him. It should not be concealed, however, that it is printed with Mr. Jago’s name in Dodsley’s collection, and is mentioned as his in a letter of Shenstone’s. Perhaps West gave it without naming the author; and Hawkesworth, receiving it from him, thought it his; for his he thought it, as he told me, and as he tells the publick.
William Collins was born at Chichester, on the 25th of December, about 1720. His father was a hatter of good reputation. He was, in 1733, as Dr. Warton has kindly informed me, admitted scholar of Winchester college, where he was educated by Dr. Burton. His English exercises were better than his Latin.
He first courted the notice of the publick by some verses to a Lady Weeping, published in the Gentleman’s Magazine.
In 1740, he stood first in the list of the scholars to received in succession at New college, but unhappily there was no vacancy. This was the original misfortune of his life. He became a commoner of Queen’s college, probably with a scanty maintenance; but was, in about half a year, elected a demy of Magdalen college, where he continued till he had taken a bachelor’s degree, and then suddenly left the university; for what reason I know not that he told.
He now, about 1744, came to London a literary adventurer, with many projects in his head, and very little money in his pocket. He designed many works; but his great fault was irresolution; or the frequent calls of immediate necessity broke his schemes, and suffered him to pursue no settled purpose. A man doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote inquires. He published proposals for a History of the Revival of Learning; and I have heard him speak with great kindness of Leo the tenth, and with keen resentment of his tasteless successour. But probably not a page of the history was ever written. He planned several tragedies, but he only planned them. He wrote now and then odes and other poems, and did something, however little.
About this time I fell into his company. His appearance was decent and manly; his knowledge considerable, his views extensive, his conversation elegant, and his disposition cheerful. By degrees I gained his confidence; and one day was admitted to him when he was immured by a bailiff, that was prowling in the street. On this occasion recourse was had to the booksellers, who, on the credit of a translation of Aristotle’s Poeticks, which he engaged to write with a large commentary, advanced as much money as enabled him to escape into the country. He showed me the guineas safe in his hand. Soon afterwards his uncle, Mr. Martin, a lieutenant-colonel, left him about two thousand pounds; a sum which Collins could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he did not live to exhaust. The guineas were then repaid, and the translation neglected.
But man is not born for happiness. Collins, who, while he studied to live, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner lived to study than his life was assailed by more dreadful calamities, disease and insanity.
Having formerly written his character[178], while, perhaps, it was yet more distinctly impressed upon my memory, I shall insert it here.
“Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties. He was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of elysian gardens.
“This was, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius; the grandeur of wildness, and the novelty of extravagance, were always desired by him, but not always attained. Yet, as diligence is never wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise produced, in happier moments, sublimity and splendour. This idea which he had formed of excellence, led him to oriental fictions and allegorical imagery, and, perhaps, while he was intent upon description, he did not sufficiently cultivate sentiment. His poems are the productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished with knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat obstructed in its progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties.
“His morals were pure, and his opinions pious; in a long continuance of poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected that any character should be exactly uniform. There is a degree of want, by which the freedom of agency is almost destroyed; and long association with fortuitous companions will, at last, relax the strictness of truth, and abate the fervour of sincerity. That this man, wise and virtuous as he was, passed always unentangled through the snares of life, it would be prejudice and temerity to affirm; but it may be said that at least he preserved the source of action unpolluted, that his principles were never shaken, that his distinctions of right and wrong were never confounded, and that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, but proceeded from some unexpected pressure, or casual temptation.
“The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness. He languished some years under that depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it. These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellects, he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned. He was, for some time, confined in a house of lunaticks, and afterwards retired to the care of his sister in Chichester, where death, in 1756, came to his relief[179].
“After his return from France, the writer of this character paid him a visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his sister, whom he had directed to meet him: there was then nothing of disorder discernible in his mind by any but himself; but he had withdrawn from study, and travelled with no other book than an English testament, such as children carry to the school: when his friend took it into his hand, out of curiosity, to see what companion a man of letters had chosen, ‘I have but one book,’ said Collins, ‘but that is the best.’”
Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to converse, and whom I yet remember with tenderness.
He was visited at Chichester, in his last illness, by his learned friends, Dr. Warton and his brother; to whom he spoke with disapprobation of his Oriental Eclogues, as not sufficiently expressive of Asiatick manners, and called them his Irish Eclogues. He showed them, at the same time, an ode inscribed to Mr. John Hume, on the superstitions of the Highlands; which they thought superiour to his other works, but which no search has yet found[180].
His disorder was not alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than intellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk with his former vigour.
The approaches of this dreadful malady he began to feel soon after his uncle’s death; and, with the usual weakness of men so diseased, eagerly snatched that temporary relief, with which the table and the bottle flatter and seduce.
But his health continually declined, and he grew more and more burdensome to himself.
To what I have formerly said of his writings may be added, that his diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may, sometimes, extort praise when it gives little pleasure.
Mr. Collins’s first production is added here from the Poetical Calendar.
TO MISS AURELIA C——R,
ON HER WEEPING AT HER SISTER’S WEDDING.
|
Cease, fair Aurelia, cease to mourn; With love united hymen stands, |
John Dyer, of whom I have no other account to give than his own letters, published with Hughes’s correspondence, and the notes added by the editor, have afforded me, was born in 1700, the second son of Robert Dyer, of Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire, a solicitor of great capacity and note.
He passed through Westminster school under the care of Dr. Freind, and was then called home to be instructed in his father’s profession. But his father died soon, and he took no delight in the study of the law; but having always amused himself with drawing, resolved to turn painter, and became pupil to Mr. Richardson, an artist then of high reputation, but now better known by his books than by his pictures.
Having studied awhile under his master, he became, as he tells his friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales, and the parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting, and, about 1727, printed Grongar Hill in Lewis’s Miscellany.
Being, probably, unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other painters, travelled to Italy; and coming back in 1740, published the Ruins of Rome.
If his poem was written soon after his return, he did not make much use of his acquisitions in painting, whatever they might be; for decline of health and love of study determined him to the church. He, therefore, entered into orders; and, it seems, married, about the same time, a lady of the name of “Ensor, whose grandmother,” says he, “was a Shakespeare, descended from a brother of every body’s Shakespeare;” by her, in 1756, he had a son and three daughters living.
His ecclesiastical provision was, for a long time, but slender. His first patron, Mr. Harper, gave him, in 1741, Calthorp, in Leicestershire, of eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten years, and then exchanged it for Belchford, in Lincolnshire, of seventy-five. His condition now began to mend. In 1751, sir John Heathcote gave him Coningsby, of one hundred and forty pounds a year; and, in 1755, the chancellor added Kirkby, of one hundred and ten. He complains that the repair of the house at Coningsby, and other expenses, took away the profit. In 1757 he published the Fleece, his greatest poetical work; of which I will not suppress a ludicrous story. Dodsley, the bookseller, was one day mentioning it to a critical visiter, with more expectation of success than the other could easily admit. In the conversation the author’s age was asked; and being represented as advanced in life, “He will,” said the critick, “be buried in woollen.”
He did not, indeed, long survive that publication, nor long enjoy the increase of his preferments; for in 1758 (July 24th,) he died.
Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an elaborate criticism. Grongar Hill is the happiest of his productions: it is not, indeed, very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so pleasing, the images which they raise are so welcome to the mind, and the reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again.
The idea of the Ruins of Rome strikes more but pleases less, and the title raises greater expectation than the performance gratifies. Some passages, however, are conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in the neighbourhood of dilapidating edifices, he says,
The pilgrim oft
At dead of night, mid his orison hears
Aghast the voice of time, disparting tow’rs,
Tumbling all precip’tate down, dash’d,
Rattling around, loud thund’ring to the moon.
Of the Fleece, which never became popular, and is now universally neglected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to attention. The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to couple the serpent with the fowl. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity, by interspersing rural imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the writer’s arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, however willing to be pleased.
Let me, however, honestly report whatever may counterbalance this weight of censure. I have been told, that Akenside, who, upon a poetical question, has a right to be heard, said, “That he would regulate his opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer’s Fleece; for if that were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence.”
William Shenstone, the son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Pen, was born in November, 1714, at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, one of those insulated districts which, in the division of the kingdom, was appended, for some reason, not now discoverable, to a distant county; and which, though surrounded by Warwickshire and Worcestershire, belongs to Shropshire, though, perhaps, thirty miles distant from any other part of it.
He learned to read of an old dame, whom his poem of the Schoolmistress has delivered to posterity; and soon received such delight from books, that he was always calling for fresh entertainment, and expected that, when any of the family went to market, a new book should be brought him, which, when it came, was in fondness carried to bed and laid by him. It is said, that, when his request had been neglected, his mother wrapped up a piece of wood of the same form, and pacified him for the night.
As he grew older, he went for awhile to the grammar-school in Hales-Owen, and was placed afterwards with Mr. Crumpton, an eminent schoolmaster at Solihul, where he distinguished himself by the quickness of his progress.
When he was young, June, 1724, he was deprived of his father, and soon after, August, 1726, of his grandfather; and was, with his brother, who died afterwards unmarried, left to the care of his grandmother, who managed the estate.
From school he was sent, in 1732, to Pembroke college, in Oxford, a society which, for half a century, has been eminent for English poetry and elegant literature. Here it appears that he found delight and advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though he took no degree. After the first four years he put on the civilian’s gown, but without showing any intention to engage in the profession.
About the time when he went to Oxford, the death of his grandmother devolved his affairs to the care of the reverend Mr. Dolman, of Brome, in Staffordshire, whose attention he always mentioned with gratitude.
At Oxford he employed himself upon English poetry; and, in 1737, published a small miscellany, without his name.
He then for a time wandered about to acquaint himself with life, and was sometimes at London, sometimes at Bath, or any other place of publick resort; but he did not forget his poetry. He published, in 1741, his Judgment of Hercules, addressed to Mr. Lyttelton, whose interest he supported with great warmth at an election: this was next year followed by the Schoolmistress.
Mr. Dolman, to whose care he was indebted for his ease and leisure, died in 1745, and the care of his own fortune now fell upon him. He tried to escape it awhile, and lived at his house with his tenants, who were distantly related; but finding that imperfect possession inconvenient, he took the whole estate into his own hands, more to the improvement of its beauty, than the increase of its produce.
Now was excited his delight in rural pleasures, and his ambition of rural elegance: he began, from this time, to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great, and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers. Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to be hidden; demands any great powers of mind, I will not inquire: perhaps a surly and sullen speculator may think such performances rather the sport than the business of human reason. But it must be at least confessed, that to embellish the form of nature is an innocent amusement; and some praise must be allowed, by the most supercilious observer, to him who does best what such multitudes are contending to do well.
This praise was the praise of Shenstone; but, like all other modes of felicity, it was not enjoyed without its abatements. Lyttelton was his neighbour and his rival, whose empire, spacious and opulent, looked with disdain on the petty state that appeared behind it. For awhile the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when, by degrees, the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress, by conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them, at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity; and where there is vanity there will be folly[181].
The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water.
His house was mean, and he did not improve it; his care was of his grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floors flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money for its reparation.
In time his expenses brought clamours about him, that overpowered the lamb’s bleat and the linnet’s song; and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fawns and fairies[182]. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing[183]. It is said, that if he had lived a little longer, he would have been assisted by a pension: such bounty could not have been ever more properly bestowed; but that it was ever asked is not certain; it is too certain that it never was enjoyed.
He died at the Leasowes, of a putrid fever, about five on Friday morning, February 11, 1763; and was buried by the side of his brother in the church-yard of Hales-Owen.
He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever she was, to whom his Pastoral Ballad was addressed. He is represented, by his friend Dodsley, as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind to all that were within his influence: but, if once offended, not easily appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses; in his person he was larger than the middle size, with something clumsy in his form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his grey hair in a particular manner; for he held that the fashion was no rule of dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural form[184].
His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated.
His life was unstained by any crime; the Elegy on Jesse, which has been supposed to relate an unfortunate and criminal amour of his own, was known by his friends to have been suggested by the story of Miss Godfrey, in Richardson’s Pamela.
What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his letters, was this:
“I have read, too, an octavo volume of Shenstone’s letters. Poor man! he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against his will in retirement, and in a place which his taste had adorned, but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and commend it; his correspondence is about nothing else but this place and his own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen, who wrote verses too.”
His poems consist of elegies, odes, and ballads, humorous sallies, and moral pieces.
His conception of an elegy he has in his preface very judiciously and discriminately explained. It is, according to his account, the effusion of a contemplative mind, sometimes plaintive, and always serious, and, therefore, superiour to the glitter of slight ornaments. His compositions suit not ill to this description. His topicks of praise are the domestick virtues, and his thoughts are pure and simple; but, wanting combination, they want variety. The peace of solitude, the innocence of inactivity, and the unenvied security of an humble station, can fill but a few pages. That of which the essence is uniformity will be soon described. His elegies have, therefore, too much resemblance of each other.
The lines are, sometimes, such as elegy requires, smooth and easy; but to this praise his claim is not constant; his diction is often harsh, improper, and affected: his words ill-coined, or ill-chosen; and his phrase unskilfully inverted.
The lyrick poems are almost all of the light and airy kind, such as trip lightly and nimbly along, without the load of any weighty meaning. From these, however, Rural Elegance has some right to be excepted. I once heard it praised by a very learned lady; and, though the lines are irregular, and the thoughts diffused with too much verbosity, yet it cannot be denied to contain both philosophical argument and poetical spirit.
Of the rest I cannot think any excellent: the Skylark pleases me best, which has, however, more of the epigram than of the ode.
But the four parts of his Pastoral Ballad demand particular notice. I cannot but regret that it is pastoral: an intelligent reader, acquainted with the scenes of real life, sickens at the mention of the crook, the pipe, the sheep, and the kids, which it is not necessary to bring forward to notice, for the poet’s art is selection, and he ought to show the beauties without the grossness of the country life. His stanza seems to have been chosen in imitation of Rowe’s Despairing Shepherd.
In the first part are two passages, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or nature:
I priz’d ev’ry hour that went by,
Beyond all that had pleas’d me before;
But now they are past, and I sigh,
And I grieve that I priz’d them no more.
When forc’d the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt in my heart!
Yet I thought (but it might not be so)
’Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
She gaz’d, as I slowly withdrew;
My path I could hardly discern;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.
In the second, this passage has its prettiness, though it be not equal to the former:
I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the woodpigeons breed;
But let me that plunder forbear,
She will say ’twas a barbarous deed:
For he ne’er could be true, she averr’d,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I lov’d her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.
In the third, he mentions the commonplaces of amorous poetry with some address:
’Tis his with mock passion to glow!
’Tis his in smooth tales to unfold,
How her face is as bright as the snow,
And her bosom, be sure, is as cold;
How the nightingales labour the strain.
With the notes of his charmer to vie;
How they vary their accents in vain,
Repine at her triumphs and die.
In the fourth, I find nothing better than this natural strain of hope:
Alas! from the day that we met,
What hope of an end to my woes,
When I cannot endure to forget
The glance that undid my repose?
Yet time may diminish the pain:
The flow’r, and the shrub, and the tree,
Which I rear’d for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me.
His Levities are, by their title, exempted from the severities of criticism; yet it may be remarked, in a few words, that his humour is sometimes gross, and seldom sprightly.
Of the moral poems, the first is the Choice of Hercules, from Xenophon. The numbers are smooth, the diction elegant, and the thoughts just; but something of vigour is still to be wished, which it might have had by brevity and compression. His Fate of Delicacy has an air of gaiety, but not a very pointed general moral. His blank verses, those that can read them may, probably, find to be like the blank verses of his neighbours. Love and Honour is derived from the old ballad, “Did you not hear of a Spanish Lady?”—I wish it well enough to wish it were in rhyme.
The Schoolmistress, of which I know not what claim it has to stand among the moral works, is surely the most pleasing of Shenstone’s performances. The adoption of a particular style, in light and short compositions, contributes much to the increase of pleasure: we are entertained at once with two imitations, of nature in the sentiments, of the original author in the style, and between them the mind is kept in perpetual employment.
The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity; his general defect is want of comprehension and variety. Had his mind been better stored with knowledge, whether he could have been great, I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable[185].