De Libris: Prose and Verse Part 8

And thus outgrew this work _per se_,-- This queer, kaleidoscopic, Delightful, blabbing, vivid, free Hotch-pot of daily topic.

So artless in its vanity, So fleeting, so eternal, So packed with "poor Humanity"-- We know as Pepys' his journal.[51]

Note:

[51] Written for the Pepys' Dinner at Magdalene College, Cambridge, February 23rd, 1905.

A FRENCH CRITIC ON BATH

Among other pleasant premonitions of the present _entente cordiale_ between France and England is the increased attention which, for some time past, our friends of Outre Manche have been devoting to our literature. That this is wholly of recent growth, is not, of course, to be inferred. It must be nearly five-and-forty years since M. Hippolyte Taine issued his logical and orderly _Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise_; while other isolated efforts of insight and importance--such as the _Laurence Sterne_ of M. Paul Stapfer, and the excellent _Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au XVIII^e Siecle_ of the late M. Alexandre Beljame of the Sorbonne--are already of distant date.

But during the last two decades the appearance of similar productions has been more recurrent and more marked. From one eminent writer alone--M. J.-J. Jusserand--we have received an entire series of studies of exceptional charm, variety, and accomplishment. M. Felix Rabbe has given us a sympathetic a.n.a.lysis of Sh.e.l.ley; M. Auguste Angellier,--himself a poet of individuality and distinction,--what has been rightly described as a "splendid work" on Burns;[52] while M. emile Legouis, in a minute examination of "The Prelude," has contrasted and compared the orthodox Wordsworth of maturity with the juvenile semi-atheist of Coleridge. Travelling farther afield, M. W. Thomas has devoted an exhaustive volume to Young of the _Night Thoughts_; M. Leon Morel, another to Thomson; and, incidentally, a flood of fresh light has been thrown upon the birth and growth of the English Novel by the admirable _Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les Origines du Cosmopolitisme Litteraire_ of the late Joseph Texte--an investigation unquestionably of the ripest scholars.h.i.+p, and the most extended research. And now once more there are signs that French lucidity and French precision are about to enter upon other conquests; and we have M. Barbeau's study of a famous old English watering-place[53]--appropriately dedicated, as is another of the books already mentioned, to M. Beljame.[54]

Notes:

[52] A volume of _Pages Choisies de Auguste Angellier, Prose et Vers_, with an Introduction by M. Legouis, has recently (1908) been issued by the Clarendon Press. It contains lengthy extracts from M.

Angellier's study of Burns.

[53:]_Une Ville d'Eaux anglaise au XVIIIe Siecle, La Societe Elegante et Litteraire a Bath sous la Reine Anne et sous les Georges_. Par A.

Barbeau. Paris, Picard, 1904.

[54] The list grows apace. To the above, among others, must now be added M. Rene Huchon's brilliant little essay on Mrs. Montagu, and his elaborate study of Crabbe, to say nothing of M. Jules Derocquigny's Lamb, M. Jules Douady's Hazlitt, and M. Joseph Aynard's Coleridge.

At first sight, topography, even when combined with social sketches, may seem less suited to a foreigner and an outsider than it would be to a resident and a native. In the att.i.tude of the latter to the land in which he lives or has been born, there is always an inherent something of the soil for which even trained powers of comparison, and a special perceptive faculty, are but imperfect subst.i.tutes. On the other hand, the visitor from over-sea is, in many respects, better placed for observation than the inhabitant. He enjoys not a little--it has been often said--of the position of posterity. He takes in more at a glance; he leaves out less; he is disturbed by no apprehensions of explaining what is obvious, or discovering what is known. As a consequence, he sets down much which, from long familiarity, an indigenous critic would be disposed to discard, although it might not be, in itself, either uninteresting or superfluous. And if, instead of dealing with the present and actual, his concern is with history and the past, his external standpoint becomes a strength rather than a weakness. He can survey his subject with a detachment which is wholly favourable to his project; and he can give it, with less difficulty than another, the advantages of scientific treatment and an artistic setting. Finally, if his theme have definite limits--as for instance an appreciable beginning, middle, and end--he must be held to be exceptionally fortunate. And this, either from happy guessing, or sheer good luck, is M. Barbeau's case. All these conditions are present in the annals of the once popular pleasure-resort of which he has elected to tell the story.

It arose gradually; it grew through a century of unexampled prosperity; it sank again to the level of a county-town. If it should ever arise again,--and it is by no means a _ville morte_,--it will be in an entirely different way. The particular Bath of the eighteenth century--the Bath of Queen Anne and the Georges, of Nash and Fielding and Sheridan, of Anstey and Mrs. Siddons, of Wesley and Lady Huntingdon, of Quin and Gainsborough and Lawrence and a hundred others--is no more.

It is a case of _Fuit Ilium_. It has gone for ever; and can never be revived in the old circ.u.mstances. To borrow an apposite expression from M. Texte, it is an organism whose evolution has accomplished its course.

M. Barbeau's task, then, is very definitely mapped-out and circ.u.mscribed. But he is far too good a craftsman to do no more than give a mere panorama of that daily Bath programme which King Nash and his dynasty ordained and established. He goes back to the origins; to the legend of King Lear's leper-father; to the _Diary_ of the too-much-neglected Celia Fiennes; to Pepys[55] and Grammont's Memoirs; to the days when hapless Catherine of Braganza, with the baleful "_belle_ Stewart" in her train, made fruitless pilgrimage to Bladud's spring as a remedy against sterility. He sketches, with due acknowledgments to Goldsmith's unique little book, the biography of that archquack, _poseur_, and very clever organiser, Mr. Richard Nash, the first real Master of the Ceremonies; and he gives a full account of his followers and successors. He also minutely relates the story of Sheridan's marriage to his beautiful "St. Cecilia," Elizabeth Ann Linley. A separate and very interesting chapter is allotted to Lady Huntingdon and the Methodists, not without levies from the remarkable _Spiritual Quixote_ of that Rev. Richard Graves of Claverton, of whom an excellent account was given not long since in Mr. W. H. Hutton's suggestive _Burford Papers_. Other chapters are occupied with Bath and its _belles lettres_; with "Squire Allworthy" of Prior Park and his literary guests, Pope, Warburton, Fielding and his sister, etc.; with the historic Frascati vase of Lady Miller at Batheaston, which stirred the ridicule of Horace Walpole, and is still, it is said, to be seen in a local park.

The dosing pages treat of Bath--musical, artistic, scientific--of its gradual transformation as a health resort--of its eventual and foredoomed decline and fall as the one fas.h.i.+onable watering-place, supreme and single, for Great Britain and Ireland.

Note:

[55] Oddly enough--if M. Barbeau's index is to be trusted, and it is an unusually good one,--he makes no reference to Evelyn's visit to Bath. But Evelyn went there in June, 1654, bathed in the Cross Bath, criticised the "_facciata_" of the Abbey Church, complained of the "narrow, uneven and unpleasant streets," and inter-visited with the company frequenting the place for health. "Among the rest of the idle diversions of the town," he says, "one musician was famous for acting a changeling [idiot or half-wit], which indeed he personated strangely."

(_Diary_, Globe edn., 1908, p. 174.)

But it is needless to prolong a.n.a.lysis. One's only wonder--as usual after the event--is that what has been done so well had never been thought of before. For while M. Barbeau is to be congratulated upon the happy task he has undertaken, we may also congratulate ourselves that he has performed it so effectively. His material is admirably arranged. He has supported it by copious notes; and he has backed it up by an impressive bibliography of authorities ancient and modern. This is something; but it is not all[56]. He has done much more than this. He has contrived that, in his picturesque and learned pages, the old "Queen of the West" shall live again, with its circling terraces, its grey stone houses and ill-paved streets, its crush of chairs and chariots, its throng of smirking, self-satisfied prom-enaders.

Note:

[56] To the English version (Heinemann, 1904) an eighteenth-century map of Bath, and a number of interesting views and portraits have been added.

One seems to see the clumsy stage-coaches depositing their touzled and tumbled inmates, in their rough rocklows and quaint travelling headgear, at the "Bear" or the "White Hart," after a jolting two or three days'

journey from Oxford or London, not without the usual experiences, real and imaginary, of suspicious-looking hors.e.m.e.n at Hounslow, or masked "gentlemen of the pad" on Claverton Down. One hears the peal of five-and-twenty bells which greets the arrival of visitors of importance; and notes the obsequious and venal town-waits who follow them to their lodgings in Gay Street or Milsom Street or the Parades,--where they will, no doubt, be promptly attended by the Master of the Ceremonies, "as fine as fivepence," and a very pretty, sweet-smelling gentleman, to be sure, whether his name be Wade or Derrick. Next day will probably discover them in chip hats and flannel, duly equipped with wooden bowls and bouquets, at the King's Bath, where, through a steaming atmosphere, you may survey their artless manoeuvres (as does Lydia Melford in _Humphry Clinker_) from the windows of the Pump Room, to which rallying-place they will presently repair to drink the waters, in a medley of notables and notorieties, members of Parliament, chaplains and led-captains, n.o.blemen with ribbons and stars, dove-coloured Quakers, d.u.c.h.esses, quacks, fortune-hunters, lackeys, lank-haired Methodists, Bishops, and boarding-school misses. Ferdinand Count Fathom will be there, as well as my Lord Ogleby; Lady Bellaston (and Mr. Thomas Jones); Geoffry Wildgoose and Tugwell the cobbler; Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble; the caustic Mrs. Selwyn and the blus.h.i.+ng Miss Anville. Be certain, too, that, sooner or later, you will encounter Mrs, Candour and Lady Sneerwell, Sir Benjamin Backbite and his uncle, Mr. Crabtree, for this is their main haunt and region--in fact, they were born here. You may follow this wors.h.i.+pful and piebald procession to the Public Breakfasts in the Spring Gardens, to the Toy-shops behind the Church, to the Coffee-houses in Westgate Street, to the Reading Rooms on the Walks, where, in Mr. James Leake's parlour at the back--if you are lucky--you may behold the celebrated Mr. Ralph Allen of Prior Park, talking either to Mr. Henry Fielding or to Mr. Leake's brother-in-law, Mr. Samuel Richardson, but never--if we are correctly informed--to both of them together. Or you may run against Mr. Christopher Anstey of the over-praised _Guide_, walking arm-in-arm with another Bathonian, Mr.

Melmoth, whose version of Pliny was once held to surpa.s.s its original.

At the Abbey--where there are daily morning services--you shall listen to the silver periods of Bishop Kurd, whom his admirers call fondly "the Beauty of Holiness"; at St. James's you can attend the full-blown lectures, "more unctuous than ever he preached," of Bishop Beilby Porteus; or you may succeed in procuring a card for a select hearing, at Edgar Buildings, of Lady Huntingdon's eloquent chaplain, Mr. Whitefield.

With the gathering shades of even, you may pa.s.s, if so minded, to Palmer's Theatre in Orchard Street, and follow Mrs. Siddons acting Belvidera in Otway's _Venice Preserv'd_ to the Pierre of that forgotten Mr. Lee whom f.a.n.n.y Burney put next to Garrick; or you may join the enraptured audience whom Mrs. Jordan is delighting with her favourite part of Priscilla Tomboy in _The Romp_. You may a.s.sist at the concerts of Signer Venanzio Rauzzini and Monsieur La Motte; you may take part in a long minuet or country dance at the Upper or Lower a.s.sembly Rooms, which Bunbury will caricature; you may even lose a few pieces at the green tables; and, should you return home late enough, may watch a couple of stout chairmen at the door of the "Three Tuns" in Stall Street, hoisting that seasoned toper, Mr. James Quin, into a sedan after his evening's quantum of claret. What you do to-day, you will do to-morrow, if the bad air of the Pump Room has not given you a headache, or the waters a touch of vertigo; and you will continue to do it for a month or six weeks, when the lumbering vehicle with the leathern straps and crane-necked springs will carry you back again over the deplorable roads ("so _sidelum_ and _jumblum_," one traveller calls them) to your town-house, or your country-box, or your city-shop or chambers, as the case may be. Here, in due course, you will begin to meditate upon your next excursion to THE BATH, provided always that you have not dipped your estate at "E.O.", or been ruined by milliners' bills;--that your son has not gone northwards with a sham Scotch heiress, or your daughter been married at Charicombe, by private license, to a pinchbeck Irish peer. For all these things--however painful the admission--were, according to the most credible chroniclers, the by-no-means infrequent accompaniment or sequel of an unguarded sojourn at the old jigging, card-playing, scandal-loving, pleasure-seeking city in the loop of "the soft-flowing Avon."

It is an inordinate paragraph, outraging all known rules of composition!

But then--How seductive a subject is eighteenth-century Bath!--and how rich in memories is M. Barbeau's book!

A WELCOME FROM THE "JOHNSON CLUB"

To William John Courthope, _March 12, 1903_

When Pope came back from Trojan wars once more, He found a Bard, to meet him on the sh.o.r.e, And hail his advent with a strain as clear As e'er was sung by BYRON or by FRERE.[57]

You, SIR, have travelled from no distant clime, Yet would JOHN GAY could welcome you in rhyme; And by some fable not too coldly penned, Teach how with judgment one may praise a Friend.

There is no need that I should tell in words Your prowess from _The Paradise of Birds_;[58]

No need to show how surely you have traced The Life in Poetry, the Law in Taste;[59]

Or mark with what unwearied strength you wear The weight that WARTON found too great to bear.[60]

There Is no need for this or that. My plan Is less to laud the Matter than the Man.

This is my brief. We recognise in you The mind judicial, the untroubled view; The critic who, without pedantic pose, Takes his firm foothold on the thing he knows; Who, free alike from pa.s.sion or pretence, Holds the good rule of calm and common sense; And be the subject or perplexed or plain,-- Clear or confusing,--is throughout urbane, Patient, persuasive, logical, precise, And only hard to vanity and vice.

More I could add, but brevity is best;-- These are our claims to honour you as Guest.

Notes:

[57] _Alexander Pope: his Safe Return from Troy. A Congratulatory Poem on his Completing his Translation of Homer's Iliad._ (In _ottava rima_.) By Mr. Gay, 1720(?). Frere's burlesque, _Monks and Giants_--it will be remembered--set the tune to Byron's _Beppo_.

[58] _The Paradise of Birds_, 1870.

[59] _Life in Poetry, Law in Taste_, two series of Lectures delivered in Oxford, 1895-1900. 1901.

[60] _A History of English Poetry_. 1895 (in progress).

THACKERY'S "ESMOND"

At this date, Thackeray's _Esmond_ has pa.s.sed from the domain of criticism into that securer region where the cla.s.sics, if they do not actually "slumber out their immortality," are at least preserved from profane intrusion. This "n.o.ble story"[61]--as it was called by one of its earliest admirers--is no longer, in any sense, a book "under review."

The painful student of the past may still, indeed, with tape and compa.s.s, question its details and proportions; or the quick-fingered professor of paradox, jauntily turning it upside-down, rejoice in the results of his perverse dexterity; but certain things are now established in regard to it, which cannot be gainsaid, even by those who a.s.sume the superfluous office of anatomising the accepted. In the first place, if _Esmond_ be not the author's greatest work (and there are those who, like the late Anthony Trollope, would willingly give it that rank), it is unquestionably his greatest work in its particular kind, for its sequel, _The Virginians_, however admirable in detached pa.s.sages, is desultory and invertebrate, while _Denis Duval_, of which the promise was "great, remains unfinished. With _Vanity Fair_, the author's masterpiece in another manner, _Esmond_ cannot properly be compared, because an imitation of the past can never compete in verisimilitude or on any satisfactory terms with a contemporary picture.

Nevertheless, in its successful reproduction of the tone of a bygone epoch, lies _Esmond's_ second and incontestable claim to length of days.

Athough fifty years and more have pa.s.sed since it was published, it is still unrivalled as the typical example of that cla.s.s of historical fiction, which, dealing indiscriminately with characters real and feigned, develops them both with equal familiarity, treating them each from within, and investing them impartially with a common atmosphere of illusion. No modern novel has done this in the same way, nor with the same good fortune, as Esmond; and there is nothing more to be said on this score. Even if--as always--later researches should have revised our conception of certain of the real personages, the value of the book as an imaginative _tour de force_ is unimpaired. Little remains therefore for the gleaner of to-day save bibliographical jottings, and neglected notes on its first appearance.

Note: