Greene had written “The Art of Coney-catching.” He was a great adept in the arts of a town-life.
Sir Egerton Brydges in his reprint of “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit,” has given the only passage from “The Quip for an Upstart Courtier,” which at all alludes to Harvey’s father. He says with great justice, “there seems nothing in it sufficiently offensive to account for the violence of Harvey’s anger.” The Rev. A. Dyce, so well known from his varied researches in our dramatic literature, is of opinion that the offensive passage has been removed from the editions which have come down to us. Without some such key it is impossible to comprehend Harvey’s implacable hatred, or the words of himself and friends when they describe Greene as an “impudent railer in an odious and desperate mood,” or his satire as “spiteful and villanous abuse.” The occasion of the quarrel was an attack by Richard Harvey, who had the folly to “mis-term all our poets and writers about London, piperly make-plays and make-bates,” as Nash informs us; “hence Greene being chief agent to the company, for he writ more than four other, took occasion to canvass him a little,—about some seven or eight lines, which hath plucked on an invective of so many leaves.”—Ed.
Nash was a great favourite with the wits of his day. One calls him “our true English Aretine,” another, “Sweet satyric Nash,” a third describes his Muse as “armed with a gag-tooth (a tusk), and his pen possessed with Hercules’s furies.” He is well characterised in “The Return from Parnassus.”
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“His style was witty, tho’ he had some gall; |
Nash abounds with “Mother-wit;” but he was also educated at the University, with every advantage of classical studies.
Bombast was the tailors’ term in the Elizabethan era for the stuffing of horsehair or wool used for the large breeches then in fashion; hence the term was applied to high-sounding phrases—“all sound and fury, signifying nothing.”—Ed.
These were the loose heavy breeches so constantly worn by Swiss soldiers as to become a national costume, and which has been handed down to us by the artists of the day in a variety of forms. They obtained the name of galeaze, from their supposed resemblance to the broad-bottomed ship called a galliass.—Ed.
Harvey’s love of dress, and desire to indulge it cheaply, is satirically alluded to by Nash, in confuting Harvey’s assertion that Greene’s wardrobe at his death was not worth more than three shillings—“I know a broker in a spruce leather jerkin shall give you thirty shillings for the doublet alone, if you can help him to it. Hark in your ear! he had a very fair cloak, with sleeves of a goose green, it would serve you as fine as may be. No more words; if you be wise, play the good husband, and listen after it, you may buy it ten shillings better cheap than it cost him. By St. Silver, it is good to be circumspect in casting for the world; there’s a great many ropes go to ten shillings? If you want a greasy pair of silk stockings to shew yourself in the court, they are there to be had too, amongst his moveables.”—Ed.
This unlucky Venetian velvet coat of Harvey had also produced a “Quippe for an Vpstart Courtier, or a quaint dispute between Veluet-breeches and Cloth-breeches,” which poor Harvey declares was “one of the most licentious and intolerable invectives.” This blow had been struck by Greene on the “Italianated” Courtier.
Harvey’s opponents were much nimbler penmen, and could strike off these lampoons with all the facility of writers for the stage. Thus Nash declares, in his “Have with you to Saffron Walden,” that he leaves Lilly, who was also attacked, to defend himself, because “in as much time as he spends in taking tobacco one week, he can compile that would make Gabriell repent himself all his life after.”—Ed.
He had written an antiquarian work on the descent of Brutus on our island.—The party also who at the University attacked the opinions of Aristotle were nicknamed the Trojans, as determined enemies of the Greeks.
It may be curious to present Stuart’s idea of the literary talents of Henry. Henry’s unhappy turn for humour, and a style little accordant with historical dignity, lie fairly open to the critic’s animadversion. But the research and application of the writer, for that day, were considerable, and are still appreciated. But we are told that “he neither furnishes entertainment nor instruction. Diffuse, vulgar, and ungrammatical, he strips history of all her ornaments. As an antiquary, he wants accuracy and knowledge; and, as an historian, he is destitute of fire, taste, and sentiment. His work is a gazette, in which we find actions and events, without their causes; and in which we meet with the names, without the characters of personages. He has amassed all the refuse and lumber of the times he would record.” Stuart never imagined that the time would arrive when the name of Henry would be familiar to English readers, and by many that of Stuart would not be recollected.
The critique on Henry, in the Monthly Review, was written by Hume—and, because the philosopher was candid, he is here said to have doted.
So sensible was even the calm Newton to critical attacks, that Whiston tells us he lost his favour, which he had enjoyed for twenty years, for contradicting Newton in his old age; for no man was of “a more fearful temper.” Whiston declares that he would not have thought proper to have published his work against Newton’s “Chronology” in his lifetime, “because I knew his temper so well, that I should have expected it would have killed him; as Dr. Bentley, Bishop Stillingfleet’s chaplain, told me, that he believed Mr. Locke’s thorough confutation of the Bishop’s metaphysics about the Trinity hastened his end.” Pope writhed in his chair from the light shafts which Cibber darted on him; yet they were not tipped with the poison of the Java-tree. Dr. Hawkesworth, died of criticism.—Singing-birds cannot live in a storm.
In one of his own publications he quotes, with great self-complacency, the following lines on himself:—
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“The wits who drink water and suck sugar-candy, |
Dr. Kenrick’s character and career is thus summed up in the “Biographia Dramatica:”—“This author, with singular abilities, was neither happy or successful. Few persons were ever less respected by the world; still fewer have created so many enemies, or dropped into the grave so little regretted by their contemporaries. He was seldom without an enemy to attack or defend himself from.” He was the son of a London citizen, and is said to have served an apprenticeship to a brass-rule maker. One of his best known literary works was a comedy called Falstaff’s Wedding, which met with considerable success upon the stage, although its author ventured on the difficult task of adopting Shakespeare’s characters, and putting new words into the mouth of the immortal Sir John and his satellites.—Ed.
That all these works should not be wanting to posterity, Prynne deposited the complete collection in the library of Lincoln’s-Inn, about forty volumes in folio and quarto. Noy, the Attorney-General, Prynne’s great adversary, was provoked at the society’s acceptance of these ponderous volumes, and promised to send them the voluminous labours of Taylor the water-poet, to place by their side; he judged, as Wood says, that “Prynne’s books were worth little or nothing; that his proofs were no arguments, and his affirmations no testimonies.” But honest Anthony, in spite of his prejudices against Prynne, confesses, that though “by the generality of scholars they are looked upon to be rather rhapsodical and confused than polite or concise, yet, for antiquaries, critics, and sometimes for divines, they are useful.” Such erudition as Prynne’s always retains its value—the author who could quote a hundred authors on “the unloveliness of love-locks,” will always make a good literary chest of drawers, well filled, for those who can make better use of their contents than himself.
Prynne seems to have considered being debarred from pen, ink, and books as an act more barbarous than the loss of his ears. See his curious book of “A New Discovery of the Prelate’s Tyranny;” it is a complete collection of everything relating to Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton; three political fanatics, who seem impatiently to have courted the fate of Marsyas. Prynne, in his voluminous argument, proving the illegality of the sentences he had suffered, in his ninth point thus gives way to all the feelings of Martinus Scriblerus:—“Point 9th, that the prohibiting of me pen, ink, paper, and books, is against law.” He employs an argument to prove that the abuse of any lawful thing never takes away the use of it; therefore the law does not deprive gluttons or drunkards of necessary meat and drink; this analogy he applies to his pen, ink, and books, of which they could not deprive him, though they might punish him for their abuse. He asserts that the popish prelates, in the reign of Mary, were the first who invented this new torture of depriving a scribbler of pen and ink. He quotes a long passage from Ovid’s Tristia, to prove that, though exiled to the Isle of Pontus for his wanton books of love, pen and ink were not denied him to compose new poems; that St. John, banished to the Isle of Patmos by the persecuting Domitian, still was allowed pen and ink, for there he wrote the Revelation—and he proceeds with similar facts. Prynne’s books abound with uncommon facts on common topics, for he had no discernment; and he seems to have written to convince himself, and not the public.
But to show the extraordinary perseverance of Prynne in his love of scribbling, I transcribe the following title of one of his extraordinary works. He published “Comfortable Cordial against Discomfortable Fears of Imprisonment, containing some Latin verses, sentences and texts of Scripture, written by Mr. Wm. Prynne on his chamber-walls in the Tower of London during his imprisonment there; translated by him into English verse,” 1641. Prynne literally verifies Pope’s description—
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“Is there who lock’d from ink and paper, scrawls |
We have also a catalogue of printed books written by Wm. Prynne, of Lincoln’s-Inn, Esq., in these classes—
| Before | } | |
| During | } | his imprisonment, with the motto Jucundi acti labores. 1643. |
| Since | } |
The interesting particulars of this interview have been preserved by the Archbishop himself—and it is curious to observe how Laud could now utter the same tones of murmur and grief to which Prynne himself had recently given way. Studied insult in these cases accompanies power in the hands of a faction. I collect these particulars from “The History of the Troubles and Tryal of Archbishop Laud,” and refer to Vicars’s “God in the Mount, or a Parliamentarie Chronicle,” p. 344, for the Puritanic triumphs.
“My implacable enemy, Mr. Pryn, was picked out as a man whose malice might be trusted to make the search upon me, and he did it exactly. The manner of the search upon me was thus: Mr. Pryn came into the Tower so soon as the gates were open—commanded the Warder to open my door—he came into my chamber, and found me in bed—Mr. Pryn seeing me safe in bed, falls first to my pockets to rifle them—it was expressed in the warrant that he should search my pockets. Did they remember, when they gave this warrant, how odious it was to Parliaments, and some of themselves, to have the pockets of men searched? I rose, got my gown upon my shoulders, and he held me in the search till past nine in the morning (he had come in betimes in the morning in the month of May). He took from me twenty-one bundles of papers which I had prepared for my defence, &c., a little book or diary, containing all the occurrences of my life, and my book of private devotions; both written with my own hand. Nor could I get him to leave this last; he must needs see what passed between God and me. The last place he rifled was a trunk which stood by my bedside; in that he found nothing but about forty pounds in money, for my necessary expenses, which he meddled not with, and a bundle of some gloves. This bundle he was so careful to open, as that he caused each glove to be looked into; upon this I tendered him one pair of the gloves, which he refusing, I told him he might take them, and fear no bribe, for he had already done me all the mischief he could, and I asked no favour of him; so he thanked me, took the gloves, and bound up my papers, and went his way.”—Prynne had a good deal of cunning in his character, as well as fortitude. He had all the subterfuges and quirks which, perhaps, form too strong a feature in the character of “an utter Barrister of Lincoln’s Inn.” His great artifice was secretly printing extracts from the diary of Laud, and placing a copy in the hands of every member of the House, which was a sudden stroke on the Archbishop, when at the bar, that at the moment overcame him. Once when Prynne was printing one of his libels, he attempted to deny being the author, and ran to the printing-house to distribute the forms, but it was proved he had corrected the proof and the revise. Another time, when he had written a libellous letter to the Archbishop, Noy, the Attorney-General, sent for Prynne from his prison, and demanded of him whether the letter was of his own handwriting. Prynne said he must see and read the letter before he could determine; and when Noy gave it to him, Prynne tore it to pieces, and threw the fragments out of the window, that it might not be brought in evidence against him. Noy had preserved a copy, but that did not avail him, as Prynne well knew that the misdemeanour was in the letter itself; and Noy gave up the prosecution, as there was now no remedy.
While Keeper of the Records, he set all the great energies of his nature to work upon the national archives. The result appeared in three folio volumes of the greatest value to the historian. They were published irregularly, and at intervals of time—thus the second volume was issued in 1665; the first in 1666; and the third in 1670. The first two volumes are of the utmost rarity, nearly all the copies having been destroyed in the great fire of London.—Ed.
Hume, in his History, has given some account of this enormous quarto; to which I refer the reader, vol. vi. chap. lii.
Milton admirably characterises Prynne’s absurd learning, as well as his character, in his treatise on “The likeliest means to remove hirelings out of the Church,” as “a late hot querist for tythes, whom ye may know by his wits lying ever beside him in the margin, to be ever beside his wits in the text. A fierce Reformer once; now rankled with a contrary heat.”
The very expression Prynne himself uses, see p. 668 of the Histriomastix; where having gone through “three squadrons,” he commences a fresh chapter thus: “The fourth squadron of authorities is the venerable troope of 70 several renowned ancient fathers;” and he throws in more than he promised, all which are quoted volume and page, as so many “play-confounding arguments.” He has quoted perhaps from three to four hundred authors on a single point.
Toland was born in Ireland, in 1669, of Roman Catholic parents, but became a zealous opponent of that faith before he was sixteen; after which he finished his education at Glasgow and Edinburgh; he retired to study at Leyden, where he formed the acquaintance of Leibnitz and other learned men. His first book, published in 1696, and entitled “Christianity not Mysterious,” was met by the strongest denunciation from the pulpit, was “presented” by the grand jury of Middlesex, and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman by the Parliament of Ireland. He was henceforth driven for employ to literature; and in 1699 was engaged by the Duke of Newcastle to edit the “Memoirs of Denzil, Lord Hollis;” and afterwards by the Earl of Oxford on a new edition of Harrington’s “Oceana.” He then visited the Courts of Berlin and Hanover. He published many works on politics and religion, the latter all remarkable for their deistical tendencies, and died in March, 1722, at the age of 53.—Ed.
These letters will interest every religious person; they may be found in Toland’s posthumous works, vol. ii. p. 295.
Toland pretends to prove that “there is nothing in the Christian Religion, not only which is contrary to reason, but even which is above it.”—He made use of some arguments (says Le Clerc) that were drawn from Locke’s Treatise on the Human Understanding. I have seen in MS. a finished treatise by Locke on Religion, addressed to Lady Shaftesbury; Locke gives it as a translation from the French. I regret my account is so imperfect; but the possessor may, perhaps, be induced to give it to the public. The French philosophers have drawn their first waters from English authors; and Toland, Tindale, and Woolston, with Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Locke, were among their earliest acquisitions.
In examining the original papers of Toland, which are preserved, I found some of his agreements with booksellers. For his description of Epsom he was to receive only four guineas in case 1000 were sold. He received ten guineas for his pamphlet on Naturalising the Jews, and ten guineas more in case Bernard Lintott sold 2000. The words of this agreement run thus: “Whenever Mr. Toland calls for ten guineas, after the first of February next, I promise to pay them, if I cannot show that 200 of the copies remain unsold.” What a sublime person is an author! What a misery is authorship! The great philosopher who creates systems that are to alter the face of his country, must stand at the counter to count out 200 unsold copies!
Des Maiseaux frees Toland from this calumny, and hints at his own personal knowledge of the author—but he does not know what a foreign writer authenticates, that this blasphemous address to Bacchus is a parody of a prayer in the Roman ritual, written two centuries before by a very proper society of Pantheists, a club of drunkards!
Warburton has well described Des Maiseaux: “All the Life-writers we have had are, indeed, strange insipid creatures. The verbose tasteless Frenchman seems to lay it down as a principle that every life must be a book, and what is worse, it proves a book without a life; for what do we know of Boileau, after all his tedious stuff?”
One of these philosophical conferences has been preserved by Beausobre, who was indeed the party concerned. He inserted it in the “Bibliothèque Germanique,” a curious literary journal, in 50 volumes, written by L’Enfant, Beausobre, and Formey. It is very copious, and very curious, and is preserved in the General Dictionary, art. Toland. The parties, after a warm contest, were very wisely interrupted by the Queen, when she discovered they had exhausted their learning, and were beginning to rail at each other.
A political society which obtained its name from the malt liquors consumed at its meetings, and which was popularly termed October from the month when it was usually brewed. This club advocated the claims of the House of Hanover, and may have originated the Mughouses noted in p. 32.—Ed.
I subjoin, for the gratification of the curious, the titles of a few of these books. “Spanhemii Opera;” “Clerici Pentateuchus;” “Constantini Lexicon Græco-Latinum;” “Fabricii Codex Apocryphus Vet. et Nov. Test.;” “Synesius de Regno;” “Historia Imaginum Cœlestium Gosselini,” 16 volumes; “Caryophili Dissertationes;” “Vonde Hardt Ephemerides Philologicæ;” “Trismegisti Opera;” “Recoldus, et alia Mahomedica;” all the Works of Buxtorf; “Salviani Opera;” “Reland de Relig. Mahomedica;” “Galli Opuscula Mythologica;” “Apollodori Bibliotheca;” “Palingenius;” “Apuleius;” and every classical author of antiquity. As he was then employed in his curious history of the Druids, of which only a specimen is preserved, we may trace his researches in the following books: “Luydii Archæologia Britannica;” “Old Irish Testament,” &c.; “Maccurtin’s History of Ireland;” “O’Flaherty’s Ogygia;” “Epistolarum Hibernicarum;” “Usher’s Religion of the ancient Irish;” “Brand’s Isles of Orkney and Zetland;” “Pezron’s Antiquités des Celtes.”
There are some singular papers among these fragments. One title of a work is “Priesthood without Priestcraft; or Superstition distinguished from Religion, Dominion from Order, and Bigotry from Reason, in the most principal Controversies about Church government, which at present divide and deform Christianity.” He has composed “A Psalm before Sermon in praise of Asinity.” There are other singular titles and works in the mass of his papers.
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A lover of all literature, and knowing more than ten languages; a champion for truth, an assertor of liberty, but the follower or dependant of no man; nor could menaces nor fortune bend him; the way he had chosen he pursued, preferring honesty to his interest. His spirit is joined with its ethereal father from whom it originally proceeded; his body likewise, yielding to Nature, is again laid in the lap of its mother: but he is about to rise again in eternity, yet never to be the same Toland more. |
Steele has given a delightful piece of self-biography towards the end of his “Apology for Himself and his Writings,” p. 80, 4to.
In the “Epistolary Correspondence of Sir Richard Steele,” edition of 1809, are preserved these extraordinary love-despatches; “Prue” used poor Steele at times very ill; indeed Steele seems to have conceived that his warm affections were all she required, for Lady Steele was usually left whole days in solitude, and frequently in want of a guinea, when Steele could not raise one. He, however, sometimes remonstrates with her very feelingly. The following note is an instance:—
“Dear Wife,—I have been in great pain of body and mind since I came out. You are extremely cruel to a generous nature, which has a tenderness for you that renders your least dishumour insupportably afflicting. After short starts of passion, not to be inclined to reconciliation, is what is against all rules of Christianity and justice. When I come home, I beg to be kindly received; or this will have as ill an effect upon my fortune, as on my mind and body.”
In a postscript to another billet, he thus “sneers at Lady Steele’s excessive attention to money”:—
“Your man Sam owes me threepence, which must be deducted in the account between you and me; therefore, pray take care to get it in, or stop it.”
Such despatches as the following were sent off three or four times in a day:—
“I beg of you not to be impatient, though it be an hour before you see
“Your obliged husband,
R. Steele.”
“Dear Prue,—Don’t be displeased that I do not come home till eleven o’clock.
Yours, ever.”
“Dear Prue,—Forgive me dining abroad, and let Will carry the papers to Buckley’s.
Your fond devoted
R. S.”
“Dear Prue,—I am very sleepy and tired, but could not think of closing my eyes till I had told you I am, dearest creature, your most affectionate, faithful husband,
R. Steele.
“From the Press, One in the morning.”
It would seem by the following note that this hourly account of himself was in consequence of the connubial mandate of his fair despot:—
“Dear Prue,—It is a strange thing, because you are handsome, that you will not behave yourself with the obedience that people of worse features do—but that I must be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of my time. I send this to tell you I am waiting to be sent for again when my Lord Wharton is stirring.”
Leland, in his magnificent plan, included several curious departments. Jealous of the literary glory of the Italians, whom he compares to the Greeks for accounting all nations barbarous and unlettered, he had composed four books “De Viris Illustribus”, on English Authors, to force them to acknowledge the illustrious genius, and the great men of Britain. Three books “De Nobilitate Britannica” were to be “as an ornament and a right comely garland.”
What reason is there to suppose with Granger that his bust, so admirably engraven by Grignion, is supposititious? Probably struck by the premature old age of a man who died in his fortieth year, he condemned it by its appearance; but not with the eye of the physiognomist.
Burton, the author of “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” offers a striking instance. Bishop Kennett, in his curious “Register and Chronicle,” has preserved the following particulars of this author. “In an interval of vapours he would be extremely pleasant, and raise laughter in any company. Yet I have heard that nothing at last could make him laugh but going down to the Bridge-foot at Oxford, and hearing the bargemen scold and storm and swear at one another; at which he would set his hands to his sides, and laugh most profusely; yet in his chamber so mute and mopish, that he was suspected to be felo de se.” With what a fine strain of poetic feeling has a modern bard touched this subject!—
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“As a beam o’er the face of the waters may glow, Moore’s “Irish Melodies.” |
Dr. Edmund Castell offers a remarkable instance to illustrate our present investigation. He more than devoted his life to his “Lexicon Heptaglotton.” It is not possible, if there are tears that are to be bestowed on the afflictions of learned men, to read his pathetic address to Charles II., and forbear. He laments the seventeen years of incredible pains, during which he thought himself idle when he had not devoted sixteen or eighteen hours a day to this labour; that he had expended all his inheritance (it is said more than twelve thousand pounds); that it had broken his constitution, and left him blind as well as poor. When this invaluable Polyglott was published, the copies remained unsold in his hands; for the learned Castell had anticipated the curiosity and knowledge of the public by a full century. He had so completely devoted himself to oriental studies, that they had a very remarkable consequence, for he had totally forgotten his own language, and could scarcely spell a single word. This appears in some of his English Letters, preserved by Mr. Nichols in his valuable “Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century,” vol. iv. Five hundred of these Lexicons, unsold at the time of his death, were placed by Dr. Castell’s niece in a room so little regarded, that scarcely one complete copy escaped the rats, and “the whole load of learned rags sold only for seven pounds.” The work at this moment would find purchasers, I believe, at forty or fifty pounds.—The learned Sale, who first gave the world a genuine version of the Koran, and who had so zealously laboured in forming that “Universal History” which was the pride of our country, pursued his studies through a life of want—and this great orientalist (I grieve to degrade the memoirs of a man of learning by such mortifications), when he quitted his studies too often wanted a change of linen, and often wandered in the streets in search of some compassionate friend who would supply him with the meal of the day!
The following are extracts from Ockley’s letters to the Earl of Oxford, which I copy from the originals:—
“Cambridge Castle, May 2, 1717.
“I am here in the prison for debt, which must needs be an unavoidable consequence of the distractions in my family. I enjoy more repose, indeed, here, than I have tasted these many years, but the circumstance of a family obliges me to go out as soon as I can.”
“Cambridge, Sept. 7, 1717.
“I have at last found leisure in my confinement to finish my Saracen history, which I might have hoped for in vain in my perplexed circumstances.”
Cowel’s book, “The Interpreter,” though professedly a mere explanation of law terms, was believed to contain allusions or interpretations of law entirely adapted to party feeling. Cowel was blamed by both parties, and his book declared to infringe the royal prerogative or the liberties of the subject. It was made one of the articles against Laud at his trial, that he had sanctioned a new edition of this work to countenance King Charles in his measures. Cowel had died long before this (October, 1611); he had retired again to collegiate life as soon as he got free of his political persecutions.—Ed.
“The Discoverie of Witchcraft, necessary to be known for the undeceiving of Judges, Justices, and Juries, and for the Preservation of Poor People.” Third edition, 1665. This was about the time that, according to Arnot’s Scots Trials, the expenses of burning a witch amounted to ninety-two pounds, fourteen shillings, Scots. The unfortunate old woman cost two trees, and employed two men to watch her closely for thirty days! One ought to recollect the past follies of humanity, to detect, perhaps, some existing ones.
Except by the hand of literary charity; he was more than once relieved by the Literary Fund. Such are the authors only whom it is wise to patronise.
There is an affecting remonstrance of Dryden to Hyde, Earl of Rochester, on the state of his poverty and neglect—in which is this remarkable passage:—“It is enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and starved Mr. Butler.”
The author explains the nature of his book in his title-page when he calls it “A Chorographicall Description of tracts, rivers, mountaines, forests, and other parts of this renowned Isle of Great Britaine, with intermixture of the most remarquable stories, antiquities, wonders, rarityes, pleasures, and commodities of the same; digested in a Poem.” The maps with which it is illustrated are curious for the impersonations of the nymphs of wood and water, the sylvan gods, and other characters of the poem; to which the learned Selden supplied notes. Ellis calls it “a wonderful work, exhibiting at once the learning of an historian, an antiquary, a naturalist, and a geographer, and embellished by the imagination of a poet.”—Ed.
In the dedication of the first part to Prince Henry, the author says of his work, “it cannot want envie: for even in the birth it alreadie finds that.”—Ed.
An elegant poet of our times alludes, with due feeling, to these personal sacrifices. Addressing Poetry, he exclaims—
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“In devotion to thy heavenly charms, |
How often may we lament that poets are too apt “to clasp the altar with infant arms.” Goldsmith was near forty when he published his popular poems—and the greater number of the most valued poems were produced in mature life. When the poet begins in “infancy,” he too often contracts a habit of writing verses, and sometimes, in all his life, never reaches poetry.
My old favourite cynic, with all his rough honesty and acute discrimination, Anthony Wood, engraved a sketch of Stockdale when he etched with his aqua-fortis the personage of a brother:—“This Edward Waterhouse wrote a rhapsodical, indigested, whimsical work; and not in the least to be taken into the hand of any sober scholar, unless it be to make him laugh or wonder at the simplicity of some people. He was a cock-brained man, and afterwards took orders.”
It was published in quarto in 1673, and has engravings of the principal scene in each act, and a frontispiece representing the Duke’s Theatre in Dorset Gardens, where it was first acted publicly; it had been played twice at court before this, by noble actors, “persons of such birth and honour,” says Settle, “that they borrowed no greatness from the characters they acted.” The prologues were written by Lords Mulgrave and Rochester, and the utmost éclat given to the five long acts of rhyming bombast, which was declared superior to any work of Dryden’s. As City Poet afterwards Settle composed the pageants, speeches, and songs for the Lord Mayor’s Shows from 1691 to 1708. Towards the close of his career he became impoverished, and wrote from necessity on all subjects. One of his plays, composed for Mrs. Mynns’ booth in Bartholomew Fair, has been twice printed, though both editions are now uncommonly rare. It is called the “Siege of Troy;” and its popularity is attested by Hogarth’s print of Southwark Fair, where outside of Lee and Harper’s great theatrical booth is exhibited a painting of the Trojan horse, and the announcement “The Siege of Troy is here.”—Ed.
One of his lively adversaries, the author of the “Canons of Criticism,” observed the difficulty of writing against an author whose reputation so much exceeded the knowledge of his works. “It is my misfortune,” says Edwards, “in this controversy, to be engaged with a person who is better known by his name than his works; or, to speak more properly, whose works are more known than read.”—Preface to the Canons of Criticism.