Political Criticism On Literary Compositions

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Title:     Political Criticism On Literary Compositions
Author: Isaac Disraeli [More Titles by Disraeli]

ANTHONY WOOD and LOCKE--MILTON and SPRAT--BURNET and his History--PRIOR and ADDISON--SWIFT and STEELE--WAGSTAFFE and STEELE--STEELE and ADDISON--HOOKE and MIDDLETON--GILBERT WAKEFIELD--MARVEL and MILTON--CLARENDON and MAY.

VOLTAIRE, in his letters on our nation, has hit off a marked feature in our national physiognomy. "So violent did I find parties in London, that I was assured by several that the Duke of MARLBOROUGH was a coward, and Mr. POPE a fool."

A foreigner indeed could hardly expect that in collecting the characters of English authors by English authors (a labour which has long afforded me pleasure often interrupted by indignation)--in a word, that a class of literary history should turn out a collection of personal quarrels. Would not this modern Baillet, in his new Jugemens des Sçavans, so ingeniously inquisitive but so infinitely confused, require to be initiated into the mysteries of that spirit of party peculiar to our free country!

All that boiling rancour which sputters against the thoughts, the style, the taste, the moral character of an author, is often nothing more than practising what, to give it a name, we may call Political Criticism in Literature; where an author's literary character is attacked solely from the accidental circumstance of his differing in opinion from his critics on subjects unconnected with the topics he treats of.

Could Anthony Wood, had he not been influenced by this political criticism, have sent down LOCKE to us as "a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented, prating and troublesome?"[1] But Locke was the antagonist of FILMER, that advocate of arbitrary power; and Locke is described "as bred under a fanatical tutor," and when in Holland, as one of those who under the Earl of Shaftesbury "stuck close to him when discarded, and carried on the trade of faction beyond and within the seas several years after." In the great original genius, born, like BACON and NEWTON, to create a new era in the history of the human mind, this political literary critic, who was not always deficient in his perceptions of genius, could only discover "a trader in faction," though in his honesty he acknowledges him to be "a noted writer."

A more illustrious instance of party-spirit operating against works of genius is presented to us in the awful character of MILTON. From earliest youth to latest age endowed with all the characteristics of genius; fervent with all the inspirations of study; in all changes still the same great literary character as Velleius Paterculus writes of one of his heroes--"Aliquando fortunâ, semper animo maximus:" while in his own day, foreigners, who usually anticipate posterity, were inquiring after Milton, it is known how utterly disregarded he lived at home. The divine author of the "Paradise Lost" was always connected with the man for whom a reward was offered in the London Gazette. But in their triumph, the lovers of monarchy missed their greater glory, in not separating for ever the republican Secretary of State from the rival of Homer.

That the genius of Milton pined away in solitude, and that all the consolations of fame were denied him during his life, from this political criticism on his works, is generally known; but not perhaps that this spirit propagated itself far beyond the poet's tomb. I give a remarkable instance. Bishop Sprat, who surely was capable of feeling the poetry of Milton, yet from political antipathy retained such an abhorrence of his name, that when the writer of the Latin Inscription on the poet JOHN PHILIPS, in describing his versification, applied to it the term Miltono, Sprat ordered it to be erased, as polluting a monument raised in a church.[2] A mere critical opinion on versification was thus sacrificed to political feeling:--a stream indeed which in its course has hardly yet worked itself clear. It could only have been the strong political feeling of Warton which could have induced him to censure the prose of Milton with such asperity, while he closed his critical eyes on its resplendent passages, which certainly he wanted not the taste to feel,--for he caught in his own pages, occasionally, some of the reflected warmth. This feeling took full possession of the mind of Johnson, who, with all the rage of political criticism on subjects of literature, has condemned the finest works of Milton, and in one of his terrible paroxysms has demonstrated that the Samson Agonistes is "a tragedy which ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded." Had not Johnson's religious feelings fortunately interposed between Milton and his "Paradise," we should have wanted the present noble effusion of his criticism; any other Epic by Milton had probably sunk beneath his vigorous sophistry, and his tasteless sarcasm. Lauder's attack on Milton was hardily projected, on a prospect of encouragement, from this political criticism on the literary character of Milton; and he succeeded as long as he could preserve the decency of the delusion.

The Spirit of Party has touched with its plague-spot the character of Burnet; it has mildewed the page of a powerful mind, and tainted by its suspicions, its rumours, and its censures, his probity as a man. Can we forbear listening to all the vociferations which faction has thrown out? Do we not fear to trust ourselves amid the multiplicity of his facts? And when we are familiarised with the variety of his historical portraits, are we not startled when it is suggested that "they are tinged with his own passions and his own weaknesses?" Burnet has indeed made "his humble appeal to the great God of Truth" that he has given it as fully as he could find it; and he has expressed his abhorrence of "a lie in history," so much greater a sin than a lie in common discourse, from its lasting and universal nature. Yet these hallowing protestations have not saved him! A cloud of witnesses, from different motives, have risen up to attaint his veracity and his candour; while all the Tory wits have ridiculed his style, impatiently inaccurate, and uncouthly negligent, and would sink his vigour and ardour, while they expose the meanness and poverty of his genius. Thus the literary and the moral character of no ordinary author have fallen a victim to party-feeling.[3]

But this victim to political criticism on literature was himself criminal, and has wreaked his own party feelings on the Papist Dryden, and the Tory Prior; Dryden he calls, in the most unguarded language, "a monster of immodesty and impurity of all sorts." There had been a literary quarrel between Dryden and Burnet respecting a translation of Varillas' "History of Heresies;" Burnet had ruined the credit of the papistical author while Dryden was busied on the translation; and as Burnet says, "he has wreaked his malice on me for spoiling his three months' labour." In return, he kindly informs Dryden, alluding to his poem of "The Hind and the Panther," "that he is the author of the worst poem the age has produced;" and that as for "his morals, it is scarce possible to grow a worse man than he was"--a personal style not to be permitted in any controversy, but to bring this passion on the hallowed ground of history, was not "casting away his shoe" in the presence of the divinity of truth.[4] It could only have been the spirit of party which induced Burnet, in his History, to mention with contempt and pretended ignorance so fine a genius as "one Prior, who had been Jersey's secretary." It was the same party-feeling in the Tory Prior, in his elegant "Alma," where he has interwoven so graceful a wreath for Pope, that could sneer at the fine soliloquy of the Roman Cato of the Whig Addison:

I hope you would not have me die
Like simple Cato in the play,
For anything that he can say.

It was the same spirit which would not allow that Garth was the author of his celebrated poem--

Garth did not write his own Dispensary,

as Pope ironically alludes to the story of the times:--a contemporary wit has recorded this literary injury, by repeating it.[5] And Swift, who once exclaimed to Pope, "The deuce take party!" was himself the greatest sinner of them all. He, once the familiar friend of Steele till party divided them, not only emptied his shaft of quivers against his literary character, but raised the horrid yell of the war-whoop in his inhuman exultation over the unhappy close of the desultory life of a man of genius. Bitterly has he written--

From perils of a hundred jails,
Withdrew to starve, and die in Wales.

When Steele published "The Crisis," Swift attacked the author in so exquisite a piece of grave irony, that I am tempted to transcribe his inimitable parallels of a triumvirate composed of the writer of the Flying Post, Dunton the literary projector, and poor Steele: the one, the Iscariot of hackney scribes; the other a crack-brained scribbling bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed. The following is a specimen of that powerful irony in which Swift excelled all other writers; that fine Cervantic humour, that provoking coolness which Swift preserves while he is panegyrising the objects of his utter contempt.

"Among the present writers on the Whig side, I can recollect but three of any great distinction, which are the Flying Post, Mr. Dunton, and the Author of 'The Crisis.' The first of these seems to have been much sunk in reputation since the sudden retreat of the only true, genuine, original author, Mr. Ridpath, who is celebrated by the Dutch Gazetteer as one of the best pens in England. Mr. Dunton hath been longer and more conversant in books than any of the three, as well as more voluminous in his productions: however, having employed his studies in so great a variety of other subjects, he hath, I think, but lately turned his genius to politics. His famous tract entitled 'Neck or Nothing' must be allowed to be the shrewdest piece, and written with the most spirit of any which hath appeared from that side since the change of the ministry. It is indeed a most cutting satire upon the Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke; and I wonder none of our friends ever undertook to answer it. I confess I was at first of the same opinion with several good judges, who from the style and manner suppose it to have issued from the sharp pen of the Earl of Nottingham; and I am still apt to think it might receive his lordship's last hand. The third and principal of this triumvirate is the author of 'The Crisis,' who, although he must yield to the Flying Post in knowledge of the world and skill in politics, and to Mr. Dunton in keenness of satire and variety of reading, hath yet other qualities enough to denominate him a writer of a superior class to either, provided he would a little regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the grammatical part, and get some information on the subject he intends to handle."[6]

So far this fine ironical satire may be inspected as a model; the polished weapon he strikes with so gracefully, is allowed by all the laws of war; but the political criticism on the literary character, the party feeling which degrades a man of genius, is the drop of poison on its point.

Steele had declared in the "Crisis" that he had always maintained an inviolable respect for the clergy. Swift (who perhaps was aimed at in this instance, and whose character, since the publication of "The Tale of a Tub," lay under a suspicion of an opposite tendency) turns on Steele with all the vigour of his wit, and all the causticity of retort:--

"By this he would insinuate that those papers among the Tatlers and Spectators, where the whole order is abused, were not his own. I will appeal to all who know the flatness of his style, and the barrenness of his invention, whether he doth not grossly prevaricate? Was he ever able to walk without his leading-strings, or swim without bladders, without being discovered by his hobbling or his sinking? "

Such was the attack of Swift, which was pursued in the Examiner, and afterwards taken up by another writer. This is one of the evils resulting from the wantonness of genius: it gives a contagious example to the minor race; its touch opens a new vein of invention, which the poorer wits soon break into; the loose sketch of a feature or two from its rapid hand is sufficient to become a minute portrait, where not a hair is spared by the caricaturist. This happened to Steele, whose literary was to be sacrificed to his political character; and this superstructure was confessedly raised on the malicious hints we have been noticing. That the Examiner was the seed-plot of "The Character of Richard St--le, Esq.," appears by its opening--"It will be no injury, I am persuaded, to the Examiner to borrow him a little (Steele), upon promise of returning him safe, as children do their playthings, when their mirth is over, and, they have done with them."

The author of the "Character of Richard St--le, Esq.," was Dr. Wagstaffe, one of those careless wits[7] who lived to repent a crazy life of wit, fancy, and hope, and an easy, indolent one, whose genial hours force up friends like hot-house plants, that bloom and flower in the spot where they are raised, but will not endure the change of place and season--this wit caught the tone of Swift, and because, as his editor tells us, "he had some friends in the ministry, and thought he could not take a better way to oblige them than by showing his dislike to a gentleman who had so much endeavoured to oppose them," he sat down to write a libel with all the best humour imaginable; for, adds this editor, "he was so far from having any personal pique or enmity against Mr. Steele, that at the time of his writing he did not so much as know him, even by sight." This principle of "having some friends in the ministry," and not "any knowledge" of the character to be attacked, has proved a great source of invention to our political adventurers;--thus Dr. Wagstaffe was fully enabled to send down to us a character where the moral and literary qualities of a genius, to whom this country owes so much as the father of periodical papers, are immolated to his political purpose. This severe character passed through several editions. However the careless Steele might be willing to place the elaborate libel to the account of party writings, if he did not feel disturbed at reproaches and accusations, which are confidently urged, and at critical animadversions, to which the negligence of his style sometimes laid him too open, his insensibility would have betrayed a depravity in his morals and taste which never entered into his character.[8]

Steele was doomed even to lose the friendship of Addison amid political discords; but on that occasion Steele showed that his taste for literature could not be injured by political animosity. It was at the close of Addison's life, and on occasion of the Peerage Bill, Steele published "The Plebeian," a cry against enlarging the aristocracy. Addison replied with "The Old Whig," Steele rejoined without alluding to the person of his opponent. But "The Old Whig" could not restrain his political feelings, and contemptuously described "little Dicky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets." Steele replied with his usual warmth; but indignant at the charge of "vassalage," he says, "I will end this paper, by firing every free breast with that noble exhortation of the tragedian--

Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights,
The generous plan of power deliver'd down
From age to age, &c."

Thus delicately he detects the anonymous author, and thus energetically commends, while he reproves him!

Hooke (a Catholic), after he had written his "Roman History," published "Observations on Vertot, Middleton, &c., on the Roman Senate," in which he particularly treated Dr. Middleton with a disrespect for which the subject gave no occasion: this was attributed to the Doctor's offensive letter from Rome. Spelman, in replying to this concealed motive of the Catholic, reprehends him with equal humour and bitterness for his desire of roasting a Protestant parson.

Our taste, rather than our passions, is here concerned; but the moral sense still more so. The malice of faction has long produced this literary calamity; yet great minds have not always degraded themselves; not always resisted the impulse of their finer feelings, by hardening them into insensibility, or goading them in the fury of a misplaced revenge. How delightful it is to observe Marvell, the Presbyterian and Republican wit, with that generous temper that instantly discovers the alliance of genius, warmly applauding the great work of Butler, which covered his own party with odium and ridicule. "He is one of an excellent wit," says Marvell, "and whoever dislikes the choice of his subject, cannot but commend the performance."[9]

Clarendon's profound genius could not expand into the same liberal feelings. He highly commends May for his learning, his wit and language, and for his Supplement to Lucan, which he considered as "one of the best epic poems in the English language;" but this great spirit sadly winces in the soreness of his feelings when he alludes to May's "History of the Parliament;" then we discover that this late "ingenious person" performed his part "so meanly, that he seems to have lost his wit when he left his honesty." Behold the political criticism in literature! However we may incline to respect the feelings of Clarendon, this will not save his judgment nor his candour. We read May now, as well as Clarendon; nor is the work of May that of a man who "had lost his wits," nor is it "meanly performed." Warburton, a keen critic of the writers of that unhappy and that glorious age for both parties, has pronounced this "History" to be "a just composition, according to the rules of history; written with much judgment, penetration, manliness, and spirit, and with a candour that will greatly increase your esteem, when you understand that he wrote by order of his masters the Parliament."

Thus have authors and their works endured the violations of party feelings; a calamity in our national literature which has produced much false and unjust criticism.[10] The better spirit of the present times will maintain a safer and a more honourable principle,--the true objects of LITERATURE, the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, stand entirely unconnected with POLITICS and RELIGION, let this be the imprescriptible right of an author. In our free country unhappily they have not been separated--they run together, and in the ocean of human opinions, the salt and bitterness of these mightier waves have infected the clear waters from the springs of the Muses. I once read of a certain river that ran through the sea without mixing with it, preserving its crystalline purity and all its sweetness during its course; so that it tasted the same at the Line as at the Poles. This stream indeed is only to be found in the geography of an old romance; literature should be this magical stream!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A forcible description of Locke may be found in the curious "Life of Wood," written by himself. I shall give the passage where Wood acknowledges his after celebrity, at the very moment the bigotry of his feelings is attempting to degrade him.

Wood belonged to a club with Locke and others, for the purpose of hearing chemical lectures. "John Locke of Christchurch was afterwards a noted writer. This John Locke was a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented. The club wrote and took notes from the mouth of their master, who sat at the upper end of a table, but the said John Locke scorned to do it; so that while every man besides of the club were writing, he would be prating and troublesome."

[2] This anecdote deserves preservation. I have drawn it from the MSS. of Bishop KENNET.

"In the Epitaph on JOHN PHILIPS occurs this line on his metre, that

'Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus,
Primoque pene par.'

These lines were ordered to be razed out of the monument by Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester. The word Miltono being, as he said, not fit to be in a Christian church; but they have since been restored by Dr. ATTERBURY, who succeeded him as Bishop of Rochester, and who wrote the epitaph jointly with Dr. FREIND."--Lansdowne MSS., No. 908, p. 162.

The anecdote has appeared, but without any authority. Dr. SYMMONS, in his "Life of Milton," observing on what he calls Dr. Johnson's "biographical libel on Milton," that Dr. Johnson has mentioned this fact, seems to suspect its authenticity; for, if true, "it would cover the respectable name of Sprat with eternal dishonour." Of its truth the above gives sufficient authority; but at all events the prejudices of Sprat must be pardoned, while I am showing that minds far greater than his have shared in the same unhappy feeling. Dr. Symmons himself bears no light stain for his slanderous criticism on the genius of THOMAS WARTON, from the motive we are discussing; though Warton, as my text shows, was too a sinner! I recollect in my youth a more extraordinary instance than any other which relates to Milton. A woman of no education, who had retired from the business of life, became a very extraordinary reader; accident had thrown into her way a large library composed of authors who wrote in the reigns of the two Charleses. She turned out one of the malignant party, and an abhorrer of the Commonwealth's men. Her opinion of CROMWELL and MILTON may be given. She told me it was no wonder that the rebel who had been secretary to the usurper should have been able to have drawn so finished a character of SATAN, and that the Pandæmonium, with all the oratorical devils, was only such as he had himself viewed at Oliver's council-board.

[3] I throw into this note several curious notices respecting BURNET, and chiefly from contemporaries.

Burnet has been accused, after a warm discussion, of returning home in a passion, and then writing the character of a person. But as his feelings were warm, it is probable he might have often practised the reverse. An anecdote of the times is preserved in "The Memoirs of Grub-street," vol. ii. p. 291. "A noble peer now living declares he stood with a very ill grace in the history, till he had an opportunity put into his hands of obliging the bishop, by granting a favour at court, upon which the bishop told a friend, within an hour, that he was mistaken in such a lord, and must go and alter his whole character; and so he happens to have a pretty good one." In this place I also find this curious extract from the MS. "Memoirs of the M---- of H----." "Such a day Dr. B----t told me King William was an obstinate, conceited man, that would take no advice; and on this day King William told me that Dr. B----t was a troublesome, impertinent man, whose company he could not endure." These anecdotes are very probable, and lead one to reflect. Some political tergiversation has been laid to his charge; Swift accused him of having once been an advocate for passive obedience and absolute power. He has been reproached with the deepest ingratitude, for the purpose of gratifying his darling passion of popularity, in his conduct respecting the Duke of Lauderdale, his former patron. If the following piece of secret history be true, he showed too much of a compliant humour, at the cost of his honour. I find it in Bishop Kennet's MSS. "Dr. Burnet having over night given in some important depositions against the Earl of Lauderdale to the House of Commons, was, before morning, by the intercession of the D----, made king's chaplain and preacher at the Rolls; so he was bribed to hold the peace."--Lansdowne MSS., 990. This was quite a politician's short way to preferment! An honest man cannot leap up the ascent, however he may try to climb. There was something morally wrong in this transaction, because Burnet notices it, and acknowledges--"I was much blamed for what I had done." The story is by no means refuted by the naïve apology.

Burnet's character has been vigorously attacked, with all the nerve of satire, in "Faction Displayed," attributed to Shippen, whom Pope celebrates--

----"And pour myself as plain
As honest Shippen or as old Montaigne."

Shippen was a Tory. In "Faction Displayed," Burnet is represented with his Cabal (so some party nicknames the other), on the accession of Queen Anne, plotting the disturbance of her government. "Black Aris's fierceness," that is Burnet, is thus described:--

"A Scotch, seditious, unbelieving priest,
The brawny chaplain of the calves'-head feast,
Who first his patron, then his prince betray'd,
And does that church he's sworn to guard, invade,
Warm with rebellious rage, he thus began," &c.

One hardly suspects the hermit Parnell capable of writing rather harsh verses, yet stinging satire; they are not in his works; but he wrote the following lines on a report of a fire breaking out in Burnet's library, which had like to have answered the purpose some wished--of condemning the author and his works to the flames--

"He talks, and writes, that Popery will return,
And we, and he, and all his works will burn;
And as of late he meant to bless the age
With flagrant prefaces of party rage,
O'ercome with passion and the subject's weight,
Lolling he nodded in his elbow-seat;
Down fell the candle! Grease and zeal conspire,
Heat meets with heat, and pamphlets burn their sire;
Here crawls a preface on its half-burn'd maggots,
And there an introduction brings its fagots;
Then roars the prophet of the northern nation,
Scorch'd by a flaming speech on moderation."

Thomas Warton smiles at Burnet for the horrors of Popery which perpetually haunted him, in his "Life of Sir T. Pope," p. 53. But if we substitute the term arbitrary power for popery, no Briton will join in the abuse Burnet has received on this account. A man of Burnet's fervid temper, whose foible was strong vanity and a passion for popularity, would often rush headlong into improprieties of conduct and language; his enemies have taken ample advantage of his errors; but many virtues his friends have recorded; and the elaborate and spirited character which the Marquis of Halifax has drawn of Burnet may soothe his manes, and secure its repose amid all these disturbances around his tomb. This fine character is preserved in the "Biographia Britannica." Burnet is not the only instance of the motives of a man being honourable, while his actions are frequently the reverse, from his impetuous nature. He has been reproached for a want of that truth which he solemnly protests he scrupulously adhered to; yet, of many circumstances which were at the time condemned as "lies," when Time drew aside the mighty veil, Truth was discovered beneath. Tovey, with his visual good humour, in his "Anglia Judaica," p. 277, notices "that pleasant copious imagination which will for ever rank our English Burnet with the Grecian Heliodorus." Roger North, in his "Examen," p. 413, calls him "a busy Scotch parson." Lord Orford sneers at his hasty epithets, and the colloquial carelessness of his style, in his "Historic Doubts," where, in a note, he mentions "one Burnet" tells a ridiculous story, mimicking Burnet's chit-chat, and concludes surprisingly with, "So the Prince of Orange mounted the throne."

After reading this note, how would that learned foreigner proceed, who I have supposed might be projecting the "Judgments of the Learned" on our English authors? Were he to condemn Burnet as an historian void of all honour and authority, he would not want for documents. It would require a few minutes to explain to the foreigner the nature of political criticism.

[4] Dryden was very coarsely satirised in the political poems of his own day; and among the rest, in "The Session of the Poets,"--a general onslaught directed against the writers of the time, which furnishes us with many examples of unjust criticism on these literary men, entirely originating in political feeling. One example may suffice;

"Then in came Denham, that limping old bard,
Whose fame on the Sophy and Cooper's-hill stands,
And brought many stationers, who swore very hard
That nothing sold better except 'twere his lands.
But Apollo advised him to write something more,
To clear a suspicion which possessed the Court,
That Cooper's-hill, so much bragg'd on before,
Was writ by a vicar, who had forty pounds for't."

[5] Dr. Wagstaffe, in his "Character of Steele," alludes to the rumour which Pope has sent down to posterity in a single verse: "I should have thought Mr. Steele might have the example of his friend before his eyes, who had the reputation of being the author of The Dispensary, till, by two or three unlucky after-claps, he proved himself incapable of writing it."--WAGSTAFFE'S Misc. Works, p. 136.

[6] I know not how to ascertain the degree of political skill which Steele reached in his new career--he was at least a spirited Whig, but the ministry was then under the malignant influence of the concealed adherents to the Stuarts, particularly of Bolingbroke, and such as Atterbury, whose secret history is now much better known than in their own day. The terrors of the Whigs were not unfounded. Steele in the House disappointed his friends; from his popular Essays, it was expected he would have been a fluent orator; this was no more the case with him than Addison. On this De Foe said he had better have continued the Spectator than the Tatler.--LANSDOWNE'S MSS. 1097.

[7] Wagstaffe's "Miscellaneous Works," 1726, have been collected into a volume. They contain satirical pieces of humour, accompanied by some Hogarthian prints. His "Comment upon the History of Tom Thumb," ridicules Addison's on the old ballad of "Chevy Chase," who had declared "it was full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in the greatest of the ancient poets," and quoted passages which he paralleled with several in the Æneid. Wagstaffe tells us he has found "in the library of a schoolboy, among other undiscovered valuable authors, one more proper to adorn the shelves of Bodley or the Vatican than to be confined to the obscurity of a private study." This little Homer is the chanter of Tom Thumb. He performs his office of "a true commentator," proving the congenial spirit of the poet of Thumb with that of the poet of Æneas. Addison got himself ridiculed for that fine natural taste, which felt all the witchery of our ballad-Enniuses, whose beauties, had Virgil lived with Addison, he would have inlaid into his mosaic. The bigotry of classical taste, which is not always accompanied by a natural one, and rests securely on prescribed opinions and traditional excellence, long contemned our vernacular genius, spurning at the minstrelsy of the nation; Johnson's ridicule of "Percy's Reliques" had its hour, but the more poetical mind of Scott has brought us back to home feelings, to domestic manners, and eternal nature.

[8] I shall content myself with referring to "The Character of Richard St--le, Esq.," in Dr. Wagstaffe's Miscellaneous Works, 1726. Considering that he had no personal knowledge of his victim, one may be well surprised at his entering so deeply into his private history; but of such a character as Steele, the private history is usually too public--a mass of scandal for the select curious. Poor Steele, we are told, was "arrested for the maintenance of his bastards, and afterwards printed a proposal that the public should take care of them;" got into the House "not to be arrested;"--"his set speeches there, which he designs to get extempore to speak in the House." For his literary character we are told that "Steele was a jay who borrowed a feather from the peacock, another from the bullfinch, and another from the magpye; so that Dick is made up of borrowed colours; he borrowed his humour from Estcourt, criticism of Addison, his poetry of Pope, and his politics of Ridpath; so that his qualifications as a man of genius, like Mr. T----s, as a member of Parliament, lie in thirteen parishes." Such are the pillows made up for genius to rest its head on!

Wagstaffe has sometimes delicate humour; Steele, who often wrote in haste, necessarily wrote incorrectly. Steele had this sentence: "And ALL, as one man, will join in a common indignation against ALL who would perplex our obedience:" on which our pleasant critic remarks--"Whatever contradiction there is, as some suppose, in all joining against all, our author has good authority for what he says; and it may be proved, in spite of Euclid or Sir Isaac, that everything consists of two alls, that these alls are capable of being divided and subdivided into as many alls as you please, and so ad infinitum. The following lines may serve for an illustration:--

'Three children sliding on the ice
Upon a summer's day;
As it fell out, they all fell in;
The rest they ran away.'

"Though this polite author does not directly say there are two alls, yet he implies as much; for I would ask any reasonable man what can be understood by the rest they ran away, but the other all we have been speaking of? The world may see that I can exhibit the beauties, as well as quarrel with the faults, of his composition, but I hope he will not value himself on his hasty productions."

Poor Steele, with the best humour, bore these perpetual attacks, not, however, without an occasional groan, just enough to record his feelings. In one of his wild, yet well-meant projects, of the invention of "a Fish-pool, or Vessel for Importing Fish Alive," 1718, he complains of calumnies and impertinent observations on him, and seems to lay some to the account of his knighthood:--"While he was pursuing what he believed might conduce to the common good, he gave the syllables Richard Steele to the publick, to be used and treated as they should think fit; he must go on in the same indifference, and allow the TOWN their usual liberty with his name, which I find they think they have much more room to sport with than formerly, as it is lengthened with the monosyllable SIR."

[9] "Rehearsal Transprosed," p. 45.

[10] The late Gilbert Wakefield is an instance where the political and theological opinions of a recluse student tainted his pure literary works. Condemned as an enraged Jacobin by those who were Unitarians in politics, and rejected because he was a Unitarian in religion by the orthodox, poor Wakefield's literary labours were usually reduced to the value of waste-paper. We smile, but half in sorrow, in reading a letter, where he says, "I meditate a beginning, during the winter, of my criticisms on all the ancient Greek and Latin authors, by small piecemeals, on the cheapest possible paper, and at the least possible expense of printing. As I can never do more than barely indemnify myself, I shall print only 250 copies." He half-ruined himself by his splendid edition of Lucretius, which could never obtain even common patronage from the opulent friends of classical literature. Since his death it has been reprinted, and is no doubt now a marketable article for the bookseller; so that if some authors are not successful for themselves, it is a comfort to think how useful, in a variety of shapes, they are made so to others. Even Gilbert's "contracted scheme of publication" he was compelled to abandon! Yet the classic erudition of Wakefield was confessed, and is still remembered. No one will doubt that we have lost a valuable addition to our critical stores by this literary persecution, were it only in the present instance; but examples are too numerous!

[The end]
Isaac Disraeli's essay: Political Criticism On Literary Compositions

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